workers vanguard no 776 - 08 march 2002

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 776 - 08 March 2002

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soeNo. 776 8 March 2002

Defiance by Army Reservists Shakes Zionist BunkerAll Israeli Troops, SettlersOut of the Occupied Territories!MARCH 4-As European andUnited Nations emissaries embarkedon yet another round of "shuttlediplomacy" in response to the latest"peace" proposal in the Near East,Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharongave his reply in the language thismass murderer knows best. On February 28, he ordered his troops toinvade Balata, the largest refugeecamp on the West Bank, and anothercamp near the town of Jenin. TheGestapo-style raid began in the deadof night when American-madeApache helicopters knocked outelectricity in Balata. At least 30 Palestinian refugees were killed anddozens of homes reduced to rubble.

ReutersIsraeli soldier terrorizes Palestinian youth at West Bank checkpoint. Zionist rulershave turned Occupied Territories into virtual concentration camp.

Since the start of the current Intifada17 months ago, Israeli occupation forcesand their ultra-Zionist settler auxiliarieshave slaughtered over 800 Palestinians,many of those children. Palestinian villages and camps in the Occupied Territories have been turned into virtual concentration camps, surrounded by militaryblockades, "strategic highways" and anetwork of despised army checkpointswhere Palestinians are routinely h.umiliated and terrorized. Malnutrition is rampant as many Palestinians have beendenied any access to a livelihood otherthan pitiful UN handouts. PalestinianAuthority leader Yasir Arafat, despite hisevery attempt to conciliate the Zionistbutchers and their American patrons,remains imprisoned in his Ramallahheadquarters. Describing the plight of thePalestinian people, Columbia Universityprofessor Edward Said wrote in an articlein Counterpunch (14 January):

"The result today is that the Palestinians are locked up in 220 ghettos controlled by the army; American-suppliedApache helicopters, Merkava tanks, andF-16s mow down people, houses, olivegroves and fields on a daily basis; schoolsand universities as well as businesses andcivil institutions are totally disrupted;hundreds of innocent civilians have beenkilled and tens of thousands injured;Israel's assassinations of Palestinian leaders continue; unemployment and povertystand at about 50 per cent-and all this

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while [U.S. "peace" envoy] GeneralAnthony Zinni drones on about Palestinian 'violence' to the wretched Arafat, whocan't even leave his office in Ramallahbecause he is imprisoned there by Israelitanks, while his several tattered securityforces scamper about trying to survive thedestruction of their offices and barracks."We demand the immediate removal ofall anti-Arab fortifications in the Occupied Territories-the settlements and theapartheid highway network. Al l Israeli

troops, settlers out now! Defend the Palestinian people!Cracks in the Zionist Bunker

The latest escalation in Zionist stateterror came in response to a "peace" proposal by Saudi Crown P r i n c ~ A b d u l l a h , who has offered a " n o r m a l i z a t i o ~ ~ ' in diplomatic relations between the Arabregimes and Israel in return for withd r ~ w a l from the West Bank and Gaza,

ReutersTel Aviv, F.ebruary 16: 14,OOO-strong demonstration was first major protest byIsraelis against Zionist rampage in Occupied Territories since start of Intifada.

which were seized by the Zionists in1967. Abdullah's plan intersects adeepening rift between the U.S. andits imperialist rivals in Europe. Whilethe European powers and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan embracedthe plan, U.S. Secretary of StateColin Powell initially dismissed it asa "minor development." With VicePresident Cheney preparing to visitArab leaders in the region to try tostrong-arm them into backing American plans for an invasion of SaddamHussein's Iraq, Powell upgraded theplan to an "important step."

The new diplomatic flurry alsointersects a growing polarizationwithin Israeli society. Until recently,the Zionist rulers' murderous onslaught against the Palestinians haddeepened a chauvinist consensusamong the Hebrew-speaking population. The liberal Zionist "peacecamp" had all but disappeared. Thebourgeois Labor Party, with whichArafat hoped to cut a deal, is firmly

ensconced in Sharon's bloody "nationalunity" government; indeed Labor defenseminister Eliezer is the architect of theassault on the West Bank refugee camps.But fissures in the Zionist fortress arenow coming to the fore.

These fissures have been both reflectedin and impelled by the defiant statementby more than 50 army reservists in January declaring their refusal to serve in theOccupied Territories: "We hereby declarethat we shall not continue to fight thisWar of the Settlements. We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders inorder to dominate, expel, starve andhumiliate an entire people." While hundreds of other soldiers have quietly refused to serve in the West Bank and Gazaover the past year and a half, this publicstatement of defiance by loyal, longtimeofficers and soldiers rocked the Zionistgarrison.

Though the high command has suspended 48 reservists and imprisonedthree, the number of signatories to thestatement has surpassed 300 in the lastfive weeks. This comes on top of an earlier protest statement by more than 60high school students declaring that theywould refuse to take part in "confiscationof lands, arrests, executions without trial,destruction of houses, closure, tortureand prevention of medical treatment."Remarkably, the "refuseniks" are supported by 26 percent of the Israeli pUblic.Arie Arnon, a spokesman for the liberalZionist Peace Now movement, declared:"There has never been such popular support for' a movement of refusing to servein the army or what the right-wing wouldcall treason" (AI-Ahram Weekly, 21 February). On February 16, 14,000 demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand, "Get out ofthe territories, get back to negotiations!"

The growing polarization extends rightto the top of Israeli society. Exactly onecontinued on page 10


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Turkey: Free All Leftist andKurdish Political Prisoners!The longest hunger strike in historyhas now gone on for more than 500days, as leftist political prisoners andtheir ~ u p p o r t e r s continue their desperateprotest against the blood-drenched Turkish police state. While the London Guardian (19 January) reported that 45 peoplehad died in the death fast to date, spokesmen for a solidarity committee in Germany say that the death toll now standsat 85. Dozens more prisoners and supporters have been murdered by policerampages.Initially involving over a thousandTurkish and Kurdish leftists, the hungerstrike began in October 2000 to protest government plans under a new "antiterror" law to move leftist prisoners fromdormitory-style prisons where they hadsome soiidarity. and protection into new"F-type" prisons featuring "isolationcells," where they can be tortured andkilled with impunity by prison guards.Two months later, the government unleashed a bloody attack on 28 prisonscynically code-named "Operation Returnto Life"-using troops and police with

helicopters, tanks and bulldozers. Scoresof prisoners were killed and many moreinjured, while survivors were dragged offto isolation prisons.The government massacre was metwith huge protests throughout Turkey.Coming amid the ongoing war of terroragainst the Kurdish population, and ayear after the death sentence meted outto Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leaderAbdullah Ocalan, these demonstrationsin solidarity with Turkish and Kurdishleftists represented a significant development. In cities around Europe, Turkishand Kurdish leftists likewise joined inprotests against the Turkish regime'sbloody state terror.More than 140 inmates and supportersoutside the prison walls are currentlyengaged in the death fast-consumingonly water, sugar, salt and vitamin supplements-and new teams join the protestevery few months to replace those whohave perished. While the regime callouslyrejects attempts to resolve the hungerstrike, spurning a proposed compromiseby the Turkish Bar Association that

The October Revolution andWomen's LiberationAt a time when women in the most "democratic" capitalist countries were denied eventhe right to vote, the October Revolution of1917 brought un heard-of gainsfor women in

all areas of public and private life. Today,women are still oppressed in myriad waysdespite formal legal equality in the. U.S. andEurope, while capitalist counterrevolution inTROTSKY the former USSR has led to a brutal rollback LENINof women's rights there and emboldenedanti-woman reactionaries internationally. As stressed by Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin inthis 1920 commemoration of International Working Women's Day, the struggle forwomen's liberation is inseparable from the fight for international socialist revolution.Even in the matter of formal equality (equality before the law, the "equality" of thewell-fed and the hungry, of the man of property and the propertyless), capitalism cannot be consistent. And one of the most glaring manifestations of this inconsistency isthe inequality of women. Complete equality has not been granted even by the most progressive republican, and democratic bourgeois states.The Soviet Republic of Russia, on the other hand, at once swept away all legislativetraces of the inequality of women without exception, and immediately ensured theircomplete equality before the law.... -But the Soviet system is the last!)ecisive struggle for the abolition of classes, for economic and social equality. Democracy, even democracy for those who were oppressedby capitalism, including.the oppressed sex, is not enough for us.It is the chief task of the working women's movement to fight for economic and socialequality, and not only formal equality, for women. The chief thing is to get women totake part in socially productive labour, to liberate them from "domestic slavery," to freethem from their stupefying and humiliating subjugation to the eternal drudgery of thekitchen and the nursery.This struggle will be a long one, and it demands a radical reconstruction both of socialtechnique and of morals. But it will end in the complete triumph of communism.-v. . Lenin, "International Working Women's Day" (4 March'I920)

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EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer,Alan WildeThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPo., New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices.po.STMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPo., New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is 5 March.

No. 776 8 March 2002

April 2001 burial ofTurkish militant whodied on hungerstrike in solidaritywith leftist prisoners.would have allowed prisoners to at leastshare a common area, it continues to terrorize all tho.se who support the protest.On November 5, police launched amassive military-style invasion of KucukArmutlu, a working-class suburb of Istanbul which had become a center of supportfor the hunger strikers: As helicoptersflew overhead, armored vehicles crashedthrough street barricades and police firedinto buildings housing hunger strikers.Four p r o t e s t e ~ s were killed as their housewas set ablaze. Eighteen others werearrested and face sentences of up to 22years on charges of belonging to or aiding an illegal organization. Earlier, ninedoctors who had spoken out againstforced feeding of prisoners were threatened with ten years in prison. Anotherman faces a six-year prison sentence simply for writing a book about two daughters who died in the huri'ger strike. Downwith the isolation prisons! Down with theanti-terror law! Free Abdullah Ocalan!Free aU leftist and Kurdish political prisoners! Down with the ban on the PKKand left-wing political groups!The leftist groups organizing the deathfasts in Turkey look to the example of the1980-81 hunger strike by Bobby Sandsand nine other Irish Republican prisonersin the notorious "H-Block" of North Ireland's Long Kesh prison. The H-Blockhunger strikers were also protesting onerous conditions imposed on political prisoners, demanding basic rights such asbeing able to freely associate with eachother and to organize education and recreation and that their political status berecognized. But Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher-supported bythe Labour Party-coldly watched Sandsand his nine comrades go to their deathsrather than give in to their demands.Today, the European bourgeoisies

BAY AREAAlternate Saturdays, 2 p.m.March 9: Marxist Materialism

1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor, OaklandInformation and readings: (510) 839-0851

CHICAGOAlternate Tuesdays, 6 p.m.. March 26: Defende DeformedWorkers States-China, Cuba,

North Korea and Vietnam-AgainstImperialism, Counterrevolution!For Workers Political Revolution!University of Illinois at Chicago104 Stevenson Hall,

701 South Morgan StreetInformation and readings: (312) [email protected] ANGELES

Alternate Saturdays, 2 p.m.March 16: Women's Libe rationThrough Socialist Revolution!3806 Beverly Blvd., Suite 215

Information and readings: (213) [email protected]

weep crocodile tears at Turkey's violationof "human rights," using it as a pretext forrefusing the country's application for membership in the European Union (EU). Butthe imperialists, especially Germany andthe U.S., have long backed the Turkishregime to the hilt because of its loyalservices as a strategic NATO bastion, andmany of these capitalist governmentshave themselves banned the PKK as wellas immigrant organizations as part of the"war on terror." In fact, it was as a resultofEU pressure that isolation prisons wereintroduced in Turkey in the first place.The "F-type" prisons are modeled afterthe infamous "Stammheim" isolationprison built by Germany under the SocialDemocrats (SPD) in the 1970s, whichwas meant mainly for the Red Army Faction (two of whose leaders allegedly"committed suicide" while in isolation).As our comrades in Europe havestressed at solidarity protests from thestart of the Turkish hunger strike, thepower of the multiethnic proletariat, particularly in Germany, must be brought tobear against the Turkish police state andits imperialist sponsors if these desperate protests are not to result simply inremoving from the battlefield hundredsmore devoted fighters for social liberation. Unfortunately, the unquestionedheroism of the groups organizing the hunger strikes-the Guevarist DHKP-C, theMaoist TKIP and TKPIML, and the K u r d ~ ish nationalist PKK-is accompanied bythe politics of petty-bourgeois reformismand nationalism that rejects the possibility of mobilizing the proletariat in thefight for socialist revolution.A mobilization of labor's social powerin defense of the leftist prisoners and inopposition to the Turkish terror regime isnot only necessary but distinctly possible.continued on page 1

NEW YORK CITYAlternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.March 12: Trotskyists Hailed theRed Army in Aghanistan!For Women's LiberationThrough Socialist Revolution!

Columbia University (116th and Broadway)Hamilton Hall, Room 306Information and readings: (212) 267-1025

TORONTOWednesday, 5:30 p.m.March 20: Building aRevolutionary Party

York University Student Ctr., Room 313Iniormation and readings: (416) [email protected]

Alternate Wednesdays, 6 p.m.March 13: Break With thePro-Imperialist NDP-Forge aLeninist Vanguard Party!UBC student Union Building, Rm. 213Informatio.n and readings: (604) [email protected],;J,,....fh ........ .LW.b. SI'el

. W i i , i i i } l : ~ j r - ~ ! ~ P ' ! g '.WORKERS VANGUARD


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RAWA Afghan FeministsBack Imperialist ReactionManipulating outrage over the destruction of the World Trade Center to mobilize domestic support for the terror bombing of Afghanistan, America's imperialistrulers also cynically seized on the plight

of Afghan women under the former Taliban regime. Laura Bush denouncedthe Taliban's "brutality against women,"Secretary of State Colin Powell intonedthat "the rights of the women of Afghanistanwill not be negotiable" and, in thedays immediately following the Taliban'souster, the Western press was filled withaccounts of the handful of women inKabul who courageously ventured outwithout the obligatory head-to-toe burqa.But now that Washington has installeda puppet regime.in Kabul, buttressed bythousands of United Nations troops, nary aword is heard about the supposedly "nonnegotiable" rights of Afghan women.Little wonder! The Pashtun saying that"a woman is best either in the house or inthe grave" still captures daily reality in"liberated" Kabul. The new Afghan government, centered on the U.S.rbackedNorthern Alliance, is made up of the samegang of mujahedin warlords who turnedthe country into a nightmarish hellholewhen they last took power in 1992, paving the way for the Taliban with intertribal mass slaughters (and are already ateach other's throats again today). All thebarbaric sharia (Islamic religious) lawsremain, only slightly modified. A leadingAfghan judge declared that those convicted of "adultery" will still be stoned todeath ... but with smal ler stones. Women'sl'ights marches are prohibited. Womenremain subject to purdah, forcible seclusion in the home.

That the Bush administration, whichwould like to see every abortion clinic inthe U.S. destroyed, could posture as "liberators" of Afghan women is certainlygrotesque. Yet this cynical charade wasaided by an array of leftists and feministsin the U.S. and Europe who beat thedrums for imperial ist intervention. Exemplifying such efforts was a "women'srights" demonstration in Paris on September 29, barely a week before the bombingbegan, which prominently featured. e.or-traits of assassinated Northern Alliancewarlord Ahmed Shah Mllssoud and demands for the U.S. to put an end to theTaliban.Especially prominent amid this hypocritical crusade about Afghan women wasthe Revolutionary Association of theWomen of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWAhas been hailed by pseudo-Marxist andanarchist groups around the world and itsspokesmen were invited to address leftistantiwar protests. At the same time, it hasbeen embraced by Democratic Party politicians and the Voice of America in theU.S. and showered with imperialist "human rights awards" from France to Asia.During the Taliban's. reign, RAWAactivists courageously taught in underground schools for girls and went intoAfghanistan with cameras hidden undertheir burqas in order to capture videofootage of Taliban atrocities againstwomen. They even organized a demonstration in the mujahedin stronghold ofPeshawar, Pakistan in defiance of mobsof armed Islamic fundamentalist cutthroats. But these self-styled Afghan feminists are neither revolutionary, leftist noreven genuine ch'ampions of women'srights. RAWA openly lobbied for UNimperialist "peacekeeping" forces inAfghanistan, and supports the reinstatement of the former king, Zahir Shah, who8 MARCH 2002

Above: Woman-hating mujahedincutthroats backed by U.S. in 1980s againstSoviet forces in Afghanistan. Below: Afghan women in 1980, as Red Armyintervention opened prospect of social emancipation. Tass

was ousted in 1973. In fact, a RAWA representative was invited to be part of ZahirS h ~ h ' s delegation to the Bonn talks whichset up the current imperialist-sponsoredpuppet government.RAWA's Web site declares, " If you arefreedom-loving and anti-fundamentalistyou are with RAWA." The truth is thatRAWA stood with the Islamic fundamentalists and fought against the Soviet military intervention that brought the Qnlyhope of emancipation to the hideouslyoppressed women of Afghanistan in the1980s. And it is that record of allyingwith imperialist-backed reaction .againstthe Soviet Union-and emancipated Afghan women-that RAWA trumpets tothis day. This virulent anti-Communismis RAWA's calling card, opening doors inthe corridors of bourgeois political influence and the wallets of Western feministsand liberals.- Those Afghans who are against religious fundamentalism and for women'sliberation passionately wanted the Red

Army to mop up the imperialist-backedmullahs and khans who stood for theenslavement of women and murderedthose who dared teach young girls toread. When Soviet forces moved intoAfghanistan in December 1979, afterrepeated requests for military assistancefrom the Kabul government, the "leftists" who today embrace RAWA as fighters for women's rights joined with theimperialists in denouncing the Soviet"invasion." Not least because the struggle for women's emancipation is so central to the liberating goals of Marxism,we Trotskyists forthrightly declared:Hail Red Army! Extend social gains ofOctober Revolution to Afgha n peoples!The Soviet military intervention wasone of the few genuinely progressiveacts carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy, opening the vista of social liberationto the downtrodden Afghan peoples. In1988-89, when then Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev, in a vain attempt toappease the imperialists, withdrew Soviet

forces from Afghanistan, we denouncedthis as a crime against both the Afghanand Soviet peoples. Events have bitterlyand amply verified our warning that thiswould mean a bloodbath for Afghan women and leftists. And the Stalinist bureaucracy's treachery in Afghanistan was thedirect precursor to capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union itself.Women's Emancipation andthe Battle for Afghanistan

Afghanistan had been a Soviet clientstate for decades before-the Red Armymoved in, but the Stalinists had not disturbed the social 'order in this deeplybackward country. At the same time, mostof the tiny stratum that made up theAfghan intelligentsia were educated andtrained in the Soviet Union, which theyrightly regarded as a source of socialprogress. In 1973, officers loyal to theleft-nationalist People's Democratic Partyof Afghanistan (PDPA) played a majorrole in overthrowing the monarchy andparticipated in the newly installed Daudgovernment. When Daud moved right andtried to crush the PDPA in 1978, massdemonstrations of students and government workers erupted in Kabul. The PDPAmilitary faction outgunned Daud's forcesand he was killed. This was the so-called"April Revolution," essentially a left-wingmilitary coup with popular support amongintellectuals and government workers.In power, the PDPA embarked on aprogram of reforms: canceling peasantdebts, carrying out land redistribution,prohibiting forced marriages and lowering the bride price to a nominal sum. ThePDPA's measures, particularly thoseaimed at freeing women from feudal tyranny, threatened the mullahs' stranglehold on social and economic life andimmediately provoked a murderous backlash. Even the New York Times (9 February 1980) acknowledged, "It was theKabul revolutionary government's granting of new rights to women that pushedOrthodox Moslem men in the Pashtoonvillages of eastern Afghanistan into picking up their guns."

A decree allowing women to divorcewas not officially announced because ofthe Islamic revolt. Most explosively, thePDPA made schooling compulsory forgirls and launched literacy programs forwomen, building 600 schools in just overa year. The tribal insurgents denouncedschooling for women as the first step in a"life of shame" and the earliest bloody confrontations were over women's literacy, asPDPA cadres and women literacy workerswere driven from villages and killed.With social development somewherebetween tribalism and feudalism, therewas no internal social base for the reformspursued by the PDPA, much less for proletarian revolution. In 1978, out of a population of some 17 million, only 35,000worked in manufacturing while the parasitic mullah caste numbered 250,000! Thelandlords and tribal khans controlled 42percent of arable land as well as access towater, giving them life and death powerover the landless peasants. There wasalmost noindustry, no railroads, few highways, primitive sanitation and wretchedhealth care. Life expectancy was 40 yearsand infant mortality about 25 percent; halfof all children died before age five. Illiter_ cy was a staggering 90 percent for menand 9S percent for women.The PDPA could not quell the lJlujahe- -din insurgency, which was heavily backedcontinued on page 6 .

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In Honor of Our.ComradeA memorial for our comrade BillMoultrie was held on January 26 inBerkeley, California. A longtime member,of the Spartacis t League, Bill died on January 3 of complications following surgery for lung cancer, He was 74 years old.Nearly 100 comrades, friends and familymembers filled the room to remember and

Bill Moultrie On the walls around the room wherethe memorial meeting took place wereother displays of photographs and documents chronicling different periods: hiswartime experience; his work at the RedCross Blood Bank where he organizedDetroit's first mobile blood unit; unionhonor Bill's life and work.Bill was born in 1927 in St. Louis.His family was desperately poor for mostof his childhood. Later in his life KatBurnham, his companion of 33 years,remembers Bill having difficulty readingAngela's Ashes because the grinding poverty, the charming alcoholic father, thestrong but martyred mother were so likehis own. Bill's childhood household contained not a single book, and the familyattitude toward self-improvement was"Who do you think you are?" 'In 1943, at the height ofWorld War II,in an attempt to escape the dead end intowhich he saw his life heading, Bill liedabout his age in order to join the Merchant Marine. Before his first trip wasover, he had decided that the war was asenseless waste of lives. After the war Billliterally grew up in the labor movementof the Detroit area, moving from oneassembly line to another in this proletarian center of the Midwest before he wentto work for Bell Telephone in 1958. Hebecame a shop steward ill the Communications Workers of America (CWA) andfive years later, in unheard-of rapidity,was elected president of Local 4016.Soon thereafter Bill's mettle as a unionleader was put to the test in the 1968nationwide phone strike. After the CWAInternational sold out the strike, Bill heldthe Michigan locals together in a wildcatstrike. A statement for the memorial byGene Herson described what Bill was upagainst in challenging both the company"which was bigger and more powerful than a numberof countrie s ... and a formidable union bureaucracywith a close working relationship with the CIA":"The International bureaucrats hacked away at Bill'slocal, conducting mail ballots, splitting the local, put-ting it into receivership and so on. 'Ma Bell' cut offthe dues deductions, strangling the local's finances.The International backed this, while doing a hatchetjob on Bill's character and reputation. Eventually Billwas driven out of the industry."Most people would be demoralized and defeatedafter such an experience. But Bill didn't let themdestroy him. He was able to learn from his defeat andgo forward and contribute to the revolutionary workersmovement."

PhotoMarch 1984: Bill at protest on behalf of BayArea militants framed up during 1983 phonestrike.

1927-2002Bill joined the Spartacist League shortly after thestrike, and he and Kat moved out to the San Francisco Bay Area. In a statement read to the memorial,Tweet Carter recalled her work with Bill in the 1970sand '80s:"Bill's vast practical experience in the working-classstruggle strengthened everything we did ...."We led some real struggles in the working class inCalifornia. We frequently got a serious hearing forour program, and episodically a significant sector afthe working class adopted an element of that programin struggle. Bill's contributions were instrumentalto this."In addition to the three scheduled speakers at thememorial, Benny Montgomery, Al Nelson and Wanda- Rutland (who read a statement from Helen Cantor, 'one of the group that introduced Bill to revolutionary,politics), a number of comrades came up to the- podium to talk about Bill' s contributions to the workof the party or to read statements from others whocould .not attend. Paul Costan, a longtime supporter ofthe SL who had worked with Bill in the '70s,presided. His remarks captured a quality in Bill thatmany others also remarked on:"Bill detested self-inflation in others and tolerated'none in himself. Yet I don't feel that this somewhatself-effacing demeanor was based on any lack of con-fidence .... He had a quick and sharp wit and used itto puncture the pompous, but'mostly with a smile. Hewas a natural story-teller, and his stories were lacedwith wry lessons and asides."

Over the years Bill had also become an accomplished cabinetmaker, a skill which he used to goodeffect when the party occupied new headquarters in1979. On behalf of the maintenance department,Corky Benedict wrote about the challenge we facedof re-leveling six oversized double-panel elevatordoors that had t o ~ b o t h slide back and forth and openout. "The rest of the maintenance comrades and I lookat the repair work on those doors, still functioningsome 23 years later, and think warmly of Bill's andKat's work and care and their contribution to thesafety of all comrades." Bill was very proud of hiscertificate from the SL, displayed at the memorialmeeting, "to the finest red carpenter in the country."Indeed, those who spoke at the memorial did so froma podium emblazoned with a copper hammer andsickle that Bill made for the Bay Area branch over 20years ago and that we still use today.

cards from some of the many jobs he heldin the Detroit area before being employedby Bell Telephone; "Class War in theCWA," when Bill was president of Local4016, including photos of his children onthe picket line of the wildcat strike; Bill'swork at the California School for theBlind where he made deliveries on hisheavy-duty supplies tricycle, cheering upthe often mUltiply handicapped students.There were also displays showing Bill'sparents and his siblings, photos of hischildren, and many of Bill and Kattogether at different times over the lastthree decades, as well as of their trip tothe Soviet Union in 1984. In addition todisplays of his woodworking and beautiful pictures that Bill took himself, nine ofBill's "suncatchers"-wondrous structures of leaded glass-were hung in thewindows and cast rainbows around theroom.Two of Bill's four children came to thememorial. His daughter Pam spoke verymovingly for herself and her three brothers, Ray, Mike and Joe. She concluded:"We'd like to thank all of you for lettingus share this day with you. It means somuch to us to be able to learn more abouthis life and about the way he tried to bet-ter the world. It's a side of him that wenever knew. It warms us to know thereare so many people that loved him, thatlooked up to and respected Bill."One of Kat's two sisters, Kelly Hoerber,teamed up with Irving Bunton, a memberof the Labor Black League, to sing a rendition in shifting harmonies of the medieval song "Dona Nobis Pacem" C'Give UsPeace"), which Bill liked very much.Perhaps the finest tribute to Bill was the fact t hat ayoung black high school student, who came with hisparents to the memorial meeting, was inspired toemulate Bill's life as a revolutionist and has nowjoined the Spartacus Youth Club.

* * *We reprint below excerpts, edited for publication,

of remarks by SL national chairman Jim Robertson"and of the presentation by Al Nelson.JOn Robertson: In the German Social DemocraticParty before the division between the reforI11ists andrevolutionaries had become clear, at a time when Bismarck made the party illegal, they had a name: ver-trauensmann, a trusted man. In that undergroundperiod, there was no police control, there was nopolitical control, and the party did its best as thesocialist party in Germany. The key between the leadership and the localities were the vertrauensmiinner.And that's what Bill was like. He was somebody whoalso in our organization we had full trust in; he was atrusted man.I'm really sorry that Bill never had a chance to gettogether and chat with Jim Cannon. I met Cannon afew times, but he rightly got my number as a snottykid and was not very impressed. But I think he wouldhave taken a more serious measure of Bill Moultrie.

Al Nelson: Bill Moultrie was a very unusual man,both personally and politically. When I got to knowhim better and learned more about his childhood, Iwas awed by what he had done with his life. Herewas a man who was born with a cleft palate sosevere that until he was 10 years old only his immediate family could understand him when he spoke.His family was so desperately poor that when he wasa child his father took Bill with him as he went doorto door asking for money for his family, callingattention to the child's disability to encourage donations. Yet this same person went on to become thepresident of Communications Workers of AmericaLocal 4016, the second-largest local in Michigan. InApril of 1968 his forceful leadership, and the solidsupport of his membership, was crucial to keepingthe entire Michigan unit of Bell Telephone-some62,000 phone workers-out in a solid wildcat strike

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after a bitter national phone strike was betrayed bythe CWA International bureaucracy. He also becamea powerful public speaker. He was a real workers'leader, not one of those lawyers in $1,000 suits thatpass themselves off as "lab or statesmen."Bill's first acquaintance with the Spartacist Leaguewas in January 1968 at the University ofIowa wherewe happened to have a small group of young comrades who had recently joined the SL. Bill was partof a group of 19 local presidents who had been handpicked by the CWA International president, JoeBeirne, to attcmd a three-month leadership school.The idea was to take union leaders distinguished bytheir riiilitancy and groom them for sell-out roles inthe International bureaucracy. But it didn't quite workout that way.'These were politically charged times, right in themiddle of mass protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam. Most campuses were seething hotbeds of radical and leftist politics. The previous year Army airborne troops (including a young Geronimo Pratt)had been sent into Detroit to quash a riot againstracist police terror. Our comrades, including Kat,eagerly made contact with the unionists and got aninvitation to make a political presentation to them.Soon about a third of these unionists were regularlygoing to leftist parties every weekend. A few monthslater every single one of them would actively opposethe national contract settlement by the International.But Bill wasn't dabbling. Soon he was having regularserious discussions with the Spartacist group there,and began devouring Marxist books of all kinds.Bill's local of several thousand workers-whichextended 100 miles north of Detroit and far to thewest as well-was probably unique. Here there wasno fraternization or socializing whatsoever withmanagement. No chummy lunches, no selling out ofgrievances behind the backs of the members. A hardclass line was drawn. The union represented theworkers, and management was the enemy-it was aquestion of principle. And that tradition was shapedby Bill Moultrie. He was also responsible for theunion taking up the defense of women workers,which was also unusual then.Even before he came to Iowa, Bill had begun torealize that these hard class principles clashed withthe pro-capitalist policy of class collaboration of theCWA labor bureaucracy and their purely legalisticstrategy of relying on government intervention andDemocratic Party electoral politics. Based on hisown e.JSP,yrience he had begun to reject this policy infavor of a position for the political independence ofthe working class. He came to the conclusion thatworkers needed their own political party and hadbuttons made up that proclaimed, "We need a laborparty." Soon, reinforced by his bitter experience inthe upcoming strike, he would draw the conclusionthat the trade-union bureaucracy was the chief obstacle to class struggle in the U.S. and that there couldbe no lasting gains for any section of the workingclass short of a workers revolution, which requiredthe leadership of an international revolutionary party.It was during the wildcat strike or soon afterwardswhen the International was moving against him that Ifirst met Bill. He wanted to talk with the leadershipof the Spartacist League, so a secret meeting was setup. When I met Bill I said something like, "We're inno position to give you any a d ~ i e e that will help youin your present s i t u ~ t i o n . What we can do is changeyour understanding of the world and show you theway forward for the workers to overthrow the wholecapitalist system. I f you can accept that then we cantalk. Otherwise there isn't much we can do to help

8 MARCH 2002

you." There was a pause and then Bill said, "OK,let's talk." Bill had a million questions, none of themabout trade-union work. What he wanted to talkabout were things like the soviets, the workers councils, in 1917: how did they work, what will a workersgovernment look like, how will the workers rule?What was' the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 about?What's our attitude on Cuba?Bill was a revolutionist until his last breath. Hewas unique in our party. But we can look forward to

Bill, a highlyskilled craftsman,working on SLheadquarterswith hislongtimecompanionKat, 1980.

~ " . , C'tl.

the next upsurge of mass struggle of the workers.There we will see other revolutionary workers likeBill Moultrie step forward to lead the working classin the final battle for the abolition of all classes.* * *

In 1969 Bill began to write a book about his polit-ical transformation from trade unionist to revo-lutionist. He never finished it, although he wroteseveral chapters of memoirs that were gatheredfor the memorial into a binder for all to read. Com-rade Larry Ackerson read the introduction to thebook, which we reprint here, before the memorialmeeting was concluded with the singing of the"Internationale."

This is the story of a man and the struggle for revolution. One might think: what revolution? The Russian revolution? Hungarian revolution? or Cuba? No,is the answer to all of these questions. This is thestory of a man and the upcoming world wide revolution of the working class, and more importantly thestory of a revolution in his way of thinking. One ofWebster's definitions of revolution says "a completechange": this then is the story of a man and how hesaw the world, both before the "revolution" tookplace in his mind and after.After 41 years of struggling to justify and try to live-within the system this man finally became boldenough to defy what he had always been taught wasright. Through his own initiative, with the help ofbooks, many many friends and a new look around himand his environment, he raised his consciousness tothe level. to realize that this system is wrong, onlybenefits the rich, oppresses the poor, the "blacks,"women, children, all, save those who rule; those who

Bay Areamemorialmeeting for Bill,January 26.Displaychronicled hisyears as militantworkers leader.

own the very means of existence.He discovered that the saying that we must all worktogether to make this a better world is a completemyth and a contradiction; he discovered that there are"classes" under this society, the working class and theruling class and that the ruling class has one sole purpose, to exploit the working class to make money.This story deals with all the contradictions that arenow in the early 1970s becoming a subject of conversation and struggle throughout the world-the role of

the church, the oppression of women, discrimination,the destruction of mankind in wars, pollution of theair, water and land and the immediate threat of totalannihilation of the planet by use of nuclear weapons.When one speaks of another being "brain washed"one immediately thinks of having the brain twistedinto thinking and doing "evil" things.This is the story of a man who readily admits tobeing "brain washed" and who would hasten to addthat he means by that that his brain has been cleaned,all the dirt and filth that his parents, teachers, unionleaders, government leaders and the ruling class haveput there have been washed away. He is now able tosee things clearly. His eyes are no longer blurred byblind patriotism, unquestioned leadership and disregard fOf his surroundings.This then is the story of a professional revolutionary-This book was written specifically for thosewho must toil daily for their bread, who must bear thebrunt of the oppression of the "rulers"; this book waswritten for the "working class of the world" and it isthe dearest hope of the writer that they will followhim through his life story, his struggles and frustrations, and that they too will have their brain washedand join in the struggle of life or death because unlessthe working class recognizes this society for what itis, builds a world on a new foundation after destroying the old, he may not live long enough to readanother book.I dedicate this book to Kathleen, who without herpatience, understanding and a fanatical feeling forthe love of life and the working class, I might havedied never knowing what kind of world I lived inand never have been able to help bring about theinevitable revolution of the working class againsttheir oppressors.

WV Photos

5


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RAWA ...(continued from page 3)by the U.S., Pakistan and Iran (where theIslamic theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power in early 1979).Repeatedly and urgently, the PDPA askedthe Soviet government for military aid,including troops. Concerned above all topursue the chimera of detente with imperialism, the Kremlin temporized. Buttoward the end of 1979, the Soviet highcommand watched anxiously as U.S.warships were positioned' in the PersianGulf and reports emerged that Washingtonmight invade Iran. The U.S. was alreadybankrolling the Afghan mujahedin andtrying to foment Islamic counterrevolution in Soviet Central Asia.In December 1979, fearing the PDPAregime was about to collapse and withAfghan president Hafizullah Amin reportedly making approaches to the U.S., theSoviet Union sent in 100,000 soldiers tocombat the Islamic reactionaries. Theimperialists seized on the Red Armyintervention to launch a renewed ColdWar drive. As the CIA undertook its biggest covert operation ever, Afghanistanbecame the front line of the imperialists'relentless drive to destroy the SovietUnion. In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinskinational security adviser to the Democratic Carter administration that launchedthe CIA's campaign-boasted: "Thatsecret operation was an excellent idea. Ithad the effect of drawing the Russiansinto the Afghan trap."The threat of a CIA-backed Islamictakeover on the USSR's southern flankposed pointblank unconditional militarydefense of the Soviet degenerated workers state. As we wrote at the time:"A victory for the Islamic-feudalist insurgency in Afghanistan will not only meana hostile, imperialist-allied state on theUSSR's southern border. It will mean theextermination of the Afghan left and thereimposition of feudal barbarism-theveil, the bride price. Moreover, the Sovietmilitary occupation raises the possibilityof a social revolution in this wretchedlybackward country, a possibility which didnot exist before."-Spartacist (English-languageedition) No. 29, Summer 1980The Soviet intervention was unambiguously progressive, underlining the Trotskyist understanding that despite itsdegeneration under a Stalinist bureaucratic caste, the Soviet Union remained aworkers state embodying the historicgains of the October Revolution of 1917,centrally the planned economy and collectivized property. These were enormousgains, not least for women and the historically Muslim peoples of Soviet CentralAsia (today Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan),where conditions before the BolshevikRevolution had been as backward... andbenighted as in Afghanistan.A Red Army victory 'posed the extension of the social gains of the OctoberRevolution to Afghanistan through a prolonged occupation and the count ry's integration into the Soviet system. Thoughundertaken purely for defensive geopolitical reasons, the Soviet military intervention cut against the grain of the nationalist Stalinist dogma of "socialism in onecountry." The Red Army troops, many of

6

Protest in Islamabad, December 1998. Last year RAWA openly appealed forimperialist "peacekeeping" forces in Afghanistan.them recruits from Soviet Central Asia,who fought against the CIA-backed muja-hedin genuinely believed they were fulfilling their "internationalist duty." Andso they were! This military interventionin defense of the Soviet degeneratedworkers state opened up the possibilitynot only of tremendous gains for thehideously oppressed Afghan peoples butoffered the prospect of reanimating theBolshevik program of proletarian revolutionary internationalism in the SovietUnion. As we stressed at the time, a genuinely internationalist perspective towardAfghanistan required a political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy andreturn the Soviet Union to the road ofLenin and Trotsky.What They Fought for: RAWAEmbraces Mujahedin

Formed in 1977, RAWA opposed thePDPA government from the start, denouncing the PDPA in crude anti-Communist terms as Soviet "stooges." Whenthe Red Army moved in, RAWA joinedthe imperialist-sponsored insurgency.RAWA founder Meena Keshwar Kamaldeclared at that time, "To fight against theRussian aggressors is inseparable fmmstruggle against the fundamentalists.Nevertheless for the time being we shouldgive priority to the former" (Arizona Per-sian Bulletin [Web site], 10 October1997). In October 1981, Keshwar Kamalwas invited to attend the congress ofFrench imperialist president Fran


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RAWA's homage to Islamic stricturesstands in contrast to the e x p e r i e n c e ~ ofyoung women who came to adulthoodand received an education during theSoviet period. "Life was good under theSoviets," recalled Saira Noorani, a youngwoman doctor. "Every girl could go tohigh school and university. We could gowherever we wanted and wear what weliked" (Observer, 30 September 2001).Another account, in the 1988 book Warin Afghanistan by journalist Mark Urban,who was far from friendly to the Sovietforces, powerfully testified to the stakesfor Afghan women:'There is no doubt that thousands ofwomen are committed to the regime, astheir prominent participation in Revolu-tionary Defence Group militias shows.'Eyewitnesses stated that militant militiawomen played a key role in defendingthe besieged town of Urgun in 1983.Four of the seven militia commandersappointed to the Revolutionary Councilin January 1986 were women,"

By 1989, confronting the treacherousSoviet withdrawal, all PDPA womenmembers were receiving military training and arms and some 15,000 womenhad joined the militias, taking up arms todefend not only the rights they had wonbut their very lives.Fake Leftists Sided with IslamicReaction Against Red Army

Socialist-minded youth in the Westmight try to imagine that they are at theUniversity of Kabul in 1979 as the SovietArmy rolls in to beat back the CIA'sIslamic rebels. Look across the border toSoviet Central Asia: there are schools,factories and hospitals. Women, regardedas human beings instead of property, arenot bought and sold in marriage. They aredoctors, engineers and political leaders.No matter what indices you check-lifeexpectancy, infant mortality, literacythe differences between the two societiesare measured in centuries, not decades.Do you don a burqa and follow MeenaKeshwar Kamal into Pakistan to join theIslamic insurgents based there, or do youjoin a militia to drive out and destroy themujahedin enslavers of women? Do youdefend the Soviet Union, or support imperialist counterrevolution? Are you for oragainst the liberation of women from feudal barbarism?The gut-level response of radical leftists should have been the fullest solidarity with the Red Army. Instead, mostleft groups-including those that hadsupported the PDPA before the Sovietintervention-and most feminists joinedthe anti-Communist, anti-woman outcryagainst the USSR. Today they weep overAfghan women: but when there wasactually a chance to throw off the veil,achieve literacy and break the power ofthe mullahs, the despicable fake leftistswere on the side of their own ~ a p i t a l i s t governments' support for the mujahedincutthroats.Among the most vociferous of thosetailing the imperialist anti-Soviet crusadewas the International Socialist Organization (ISO), at that time affiliated withTony Cliff's British Socialist WorkersParty. When the Red Army came to theassistance of Afghan women and leftists,the British Socialist Worker (12 January1980) screamed, "Troops Out of Afghanistan!" In Australia, the Cliffites joined avile anti-Communist action in Melbourne, baldly declaring in a leaflet, "Wecall for the victory of the Afghan rebelsin their war against Russian occupation."The Cliffites went on to championreactionary, anti-Semitic Solidarnosc inPoland, the only "union" Reagan everloved, funded by the CIA and the Vaticanfor the sole purpose of spearheading capitalist counterrevolution.

When the Soviets began withdrawingtroops in order to appease the imperialists, the ISO's Socialist Worker (May1988) cheered: "We welcome the defeatof the Russians in Afghanistan. It willgive heart to all those inside the USSRand in Eastern Europe who want to breakthe rule of Stalin's heirs." It did "giveheart" to the forces of capitalist counter- -revolution that in the next few years succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union8 MARCH 2002

and the deformed workers states of EastEurope, turning these cou ntries into devastated hellholes racked by mass unemployment, homelessness, hunger andbloody ethnic slaughters, not to mentiona brutal rollback of women's rights.The openly anti-Soviet Cliffites werefar from the only self-styled socialistswho lined up behind the imperialists'anti-Soviet war drive. The late ErnestMandel's United Secretariat (USec),though formally claiming to defend theSoviet Union, joined in screaming forSoviet troops out of Afghanistan and inhailing counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarnosc. Last September, the FrenchLigue Communiste Revolutionnaire, theUsec's star section, was the central organized presence behind the pro-imperialistrally "for Afghan women" in Paris. TheUSec's capitulation to Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan is continued in

the Clinton administration in the late1990s, as Washington began denouncingits erstwhile Afghan "freedom fighters"as "Islamic terrorists." That these feminists are animated by the interests andconcerns of the U.S. imperialist rulersis hardly surprising. Their central purpose is to secure equal opportunity forpetty-bourgeois and bourgeois womenwithin the framework of capitalist classsociety.Women's oppression is rooted in classsociety, centrally through the institutionof the family. Even in the most advancedbourgeois societie s only the overthrow ofcapitalist class rule can lay the materialbasis for the full emancipation of womenin an egalitarian, international socialistsociety. But in those countries wherebourgeois revolutions never occurred, thequestion of women's li beration is literallyone of life and death-a fight for such

"ARTISAN I,EFENn: CQMMI'n-EEFUHORAISIMG SOOAL

No 10 Ihe v.,,- Defend ~ ~ h a n Women!

barbarism and enslavement. RAWA stoodon the other side. Today it continues tolook to the imperialist powers as theagency for bringing some modicum offreedom to Afghanistan.Imperialism cannot and will not bringWestern-style democracy to Afghanistan or any of the colonial and semicolonial countries. The development ofadvanced industrial economies and parliamentary democracy in the West wasaccompanied by, and to a large extentbased on, the exploitation of the colonialcountries. The imperialists' continuingsubjugation of the "Third World" requires that they maintain and reinforcethe indigenous forces of social and cultural backwardness.Twenty-two years ago, the promise ofliberation for the Afghan peoples lay in aprolonged Soviet occupation. Today, aftercapitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet

LeBolchevik' WV/Le Bolchevik photoCol}ectio!" in Paris ~ u ~ u r b .


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China...(continued from page 12)heard from the bloodsoaked imperialistswho normally rail against Beijing's"human rights" violations.In return for its obsequious bowing tothe U.S.-led "war on terror," the CCPregime hoped to gain the imperialists'acquiescence to its efforts to quash resistance in China's minority regions, mostimportantly against Turkic Uighur separatists in Xinjiang province. Although theyhave carried out sporadic attacks againstChinese officials and soldiers, the separatists pose no substantial threat currentlyto CCP rule in Xinjiang. Nonetheless,Beiji.ng is intent on cracking down onany signs of unrest in this region, whichis of significant strategic importance.Xinjiang is thought to contain vast oil reserves and is a route for oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia. Last year, Chinajoined with Russia and four Central Asiancountries to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose aims includecracking down on Islamic militancy inCentral Asia and undertaking massive,

more importantly, redress the total subjugation of women in that semi-feudal,clerically dominated society. Against theSoviet intervention-one of the few unquestionably progressive acts undertakenby the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracythe Chinese Stalinists backed the enslavers of Afghan women and providedthe CIA with invaluable "listening posts"in Xinjiang, on the border of Soviet Central Asia.The ignominious withdrawal of theSoviet Army in 1988-89 by the bureaucratic caste then led by Mikhail Gorbachev contributed not just to the reenslavement of Afghan women but to thedisintegration of the Soviet Union itself.The Gorbachev regime's retreat fromAfghanistan, where the Red Army hadnot been militarily defeated, was fullyin the service of appeasing imperialism.The Moscow bureaucracy subsequentlyhanded over East Germany to the forcesof capitalist counterrevolution. Finally,counterrevolution destroyed the SovietUnion itself, the most powerful and dominant of those societies where capitalismhad been overthrown. This world-historicdefeat reduced the working people of

tionary movements abroad. This issuewas urgently posed when the RedArmy defeated an invasion by Pilsudski'sFrench-backed Polish nationalist regimein 1920. After intense debate, the Bolsheviks decided to follow the retreatingPoles across the border, "sounding outwith our bayonets Poland's readiness forsocial revolution," as Lenin put it, andseeking a common border with Germany,then in the throes of deep political andsocial crisis. A victory for the Red Armywould have been of immense aid in assuring proletarian revolutions in Poland andGermany and breaking through the isolation of the Soviet workers state. But theRed Army was turned back from Warsawin August 1920, a defeat that helped setthe stage for the degeneration of the Russian Revolution.In Afghanistan in the 1980s, which wasso backward that it lacked even a proletariat, t h ~ Soviet Army presence in supportof the modernizing government providedthe possibility of liberating the societyfrom extreme backwardness and oppressiveness. Six decades before, it was theRed Army's defeat of counterrevolutionary "White" forces in Central Asia that

BoccanGibod/Sipa UPIChina's anti-Soviet alliance with U.S. imperialism over Afghanistan: foreign minister Huang Hua with Afghanreactionaries in Pakistan, 1980; Ronald Reagan hosts mujahedin cutthroats at White House, 1983.development projects in Xinjiang.As it undermines the defense of theChinese deformed workers state againstimperialism, the CCP regime increasingly opens designated areas of China toraw exploitation by the imperialists andthe offshore Chinese bourgeoisie, whooperate in league with corrupt state officials and local businessmen (often thesame people). Who the CCP tops fear arethe Chinese masses, who are increasinglyunable to make a living or even providetheir children with education and accessto health care. The central governmenthas devoted ten divisions of the People'sLiberation Army (PLA) to try to maintain"domestic order" against workers, theunemployed, small farmers and retireeswho have participated in the thousa,nds ofstrikes and protests against the privationsof "market reforms."Through greater economic penetration,political subversion and increased military pressure and threats, the imperialists are intent on the restoration of capitalism in China. We Trotskyists of theInternational Communist League fightfor unconditional military defense ofChina against imperialism and domesticcounterrevolution. What is needed is theforging of an authentically communisti.e., Leninist-Trotskyist-party t9 leadthe combative Chinese proletariat in apolitical revolution against the Stalinistbureaucratic caste that undermines theworkers state and the gains of the 1949Revolution.Fake Left's Class TreasonOver Afghanistan

the former USSR and East Europeandeformed workers states to unimaginablelevels of immiseration and social decline.It also served to profoundly set back proletarian consciousness internationally, asmost workers today no longer identifytheir struggles with the aspiration to asocialist future.Serving alongside the Beijing bureaucracy in aid of the imperialist war driveagainst the USSR were Maoist groupssuch as the Revolutionary CommunistParty in the U.S., which denounced"Soviet imperialism" in Afghanistan.They were joined by a range of ostensiblyTrotskyist outfits, including the UnitedSecretariat (USee), which demandedSoviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.Recently, the Hong Kong "Pioneer" group,a USee affiliate, wrote that after the USSR':invaded" Afghanistan, "the resulting proSoviet regime carried out some progressive reforms, but they were to no avail.The history of the 20th century provedthat one cannot build socialism throughthe use of arms. Therefore, the totaldefeat of the USSR in Afghanistan actually also foretold the fate of the USSR."This is petty-bourgeois pacifism in thedefense of imperialist-sponsored counterrevolution! The withdrawal of Soviettroops from Afghanistan did indeedherald the final undoing of the OctoberRevolution, and from East Berlin toMoscow the ICL fought to the end todefeat the forces of capitalist counterrevolution. While fake Trotskyists andMaoists howled along with the i m p ~ r i a l -ists over Afghanistan, we declared: 'HailRed Army! Extend social gains of theOctober Revolution to Afghan peoples!

extended Soviet power to that region,which subsequently provided a beacon tothe downtrodden masses of Afghanistanand elsewhere in the Islamic world. Likewise, the rule of the Chinese People'sRepublic was spread to Tibet through theagency of the PLA, sealed by its victoryover the imperialist-backed rebellion ledby the Dalai Lama in the late 1950s.From Afg'hanistan in the 1980s to theYeltsin-Ied counterrevolution in 1991-92to China today, the USee was and is onthe o ther sideof he barricades. At a public forum in Tokyo in November, a Pioneer spokesman made this clear bydeclaring that his group would defendcapitalist Taiwan in a war with China,falsely claiming that China has become acapitalist state. The flimsiness of thisrationale for Pioneer's anti-Communismcan be gauged in the fact that even ifChina were capitalist, it would have theright to claim Taiwan on the basis ofnational unification. Against such coun-

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terfeit "Trotskyists," the ICL stands forthe defense of the Chinese deformedworkers state against Taiwan or any othercapitalist state, and against the domesticforces of counterrevolution as well. Thefight for proletarian political revolution ispremised on defense of the gains of the1949 Revolution.Stalinism: Gravedigger ofRevolutions

From Mao to-Deng, the CCP's treacherous collusion with U.S. imperialismwas carried out in the name of the Stalinist dogma of building "socialism in onecountry." This "theory," propounded byStalin in late 1924, served as a justification for the domination of the bureaucratic caste that had usurped politicalpower from the Soviet proletariat in thecontext of economic backwardness andisolation and the demoralization of theSoviet workers over the failure of anexpected socialist revolution in Germanyin the fall of 1923.In the words of Lenin's "Declaration ofRights of the Working and Exploited People" (January 1918), the fundamental taskof the October Revolution was "to establish a socialist organisation of society andto achieve the victory of socialism in allcountries." To this end, the nascent workers state under Lenin and Trotsky'SBolshevik Party devoted some of its scantresources to building the Third (Communist) International, forging, in the imperialist centers and their colonies, revolutionary parties fighting to consigncapitalism to the dustbin of history. Having propounded "socialism in one country," the Stalinis t usurpers, in the interestof maintaining and enhancing their casteprivileges and power, offered to confinesocialist revolution within "their" borders. Finally, they explicitly embracedthe program of class collaboration and"peaceful coexistence" with the "democratic" imperialists with the elaborationof the Popular Front in 1935. The imperialists, however, maintained their implacable opposition to the overturn of capitalist rule anywhere."Socialism in one country" was theprogram of Mao's->;.DP when it tookpower. Unlike the proletarian revolutionin Russia in 1917, the 1949 Chinese Revolution was bureaucratically deformedfrom its inception under the rule of thepeasant-based CCP/People's LiberationArmy. Today, under the increasing pressures of the world capitalist market, thedominant section of the Beijing Stalinistregime openly advocates a return to a"free market" economy.In every particular-in its attempt toappease imperialism, in its "discovery"of the superiority of capitalist "reforms,"in its contempt for the well-being of themasses-the CCP bureaucracy mimicsits Soviet counterparts and prepares theway for the destruction of the 1949 Revolution. In his September 1939 article onStalin's pact with Hitler's Germany("Stalin-Hitler's Quartermaster"), LeonTrotsky put it aptly when he noted that

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Beijing helped set the stage for the current wave of renewed imperialist aggression through its collusion with the U.S.against the Soviet military presence inAfghanistan in the 1980s. Working in tandem with the CIA, the CCP regime underDeng Xiaoping provided arms to themujahedin cutthroats. The Soviet Armyentered Afghanistan in defense of andat the request of a modernizing regimewhose reforms sought to mitigate thepower of the landowning oligarchy and,

Pioneer's opposition to efforts to"build socialism through the use of arms"is an echo of Karl Kautsky and othersocial democrats who reviled the OctoberRevolution and the establishment of thedictatorship of the proletariat in Russia.Pioneer mimics as well the Stalinists wholater denounced Trotsky for allegedly-supporting the "export of revolution." ForLenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks, theRed Army was an auxiliary of revolu-1----------- Make checks payable/mail to -------"---- \Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

8 WORKERS VANGUARD


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"the ruling caste is no longer capableof thinking about tomorrow. Its formulais that of all doomed regimes: 'after usthe deluge'."In the context of a world economicrecession, China's entry into the WTOmay well lead to chaos, particularly inthe countryside, where 70 percent of thepopulation lives. The nation's farmerscannot match the productivity of agriculture in more advanced societies and, withthe worldwide contraction of trade, it isunlikely that China's industrial productswill be hot sellers on the world market.Further _ mperial ist ec'onomic penetration, with accelerating unemploymentand immiseration for China's masses,may well be the short-term outcome. Inan article in the Nation (4 March), JiangXueqin, who recently traveled throughChina, wrote that "contrary to Western perceptions that the common peopleare benefiting from the free market, theChinese see their government and thenation's elite as conspiring to sell themout to imperialists, aka the Americans."It is a measure of the overwhelming. and fatuous egotism of the CCP leadership that it has formally approved JiangZemin's plan to open the doors of theparty to capitalists. For the moment, thebureaucracy has refrained from actuallyimplementing that move (although it hasbegun classes for entrepreneurs aspiringto CCP membership). Under the economic "reforms" initiated by Deng, theCCP regime has already invited offshoreChinese capitalists to re-invest on themainland. Many in the top echelons ofthe party have moved to secure their ownplace at the top of society in the eventof capitalist counterrevolution, althoughtens of millions of other CCP members would be, at best, discarded by asuccessful counterrevolution, as theircounterparts were in East Europe andthe USSR. Many of these same topbureaucrats have also secured their ticketout of China by having their childrenestablish foreign citizenship. Premierdesignate Hu Jintao's daughter now hasboth American citizenship and a lucrative post at J. P. MfJrgan.The roadblock in the way of the forcesof capitalist restoration is the Chineseproletariat, which has repeatedly shown

Korea...(continued/rom page 12)aim, and that of the giant chaebol conglomerates that dominate South Koreancapitalism, is to undermine the NorthKorean deformed workers state, in partthrough economic penetration, in. pursuitof capitalist reunification with the South.But it is Seoul's U.S. imperialist overlords who call the shots, guaranteeingtheir domination with more than 37,000American troops stationed in SouthKorea.Since 1945, U.S. troops in Korea andin Japan have been crucial to the pursuitof American domination of the PacificRim region. Under the fig leaf of a UnitedNations "police action," the U.S. invadedKorea in 1950 and over the next threeyears killed close to four million peoplein the Korean War, raining bombs andnapalm throughout the peninsula. ButU.S. imperialism's attempt to overrunNorth Korea was turned back by theC"ombined forces of the North and theChinese People's Liberation Army. TheKOrean peninsula was divided with theestablishment of the Demilitarized Zone,which is packed with more weaponryper square inch than any other place onearth. The DMZ is a class line betweenthe capitalist South and the North, wherea bureaucratically deformed workers stateissued out of a social revolution that overthrew the capitalists and landlords. Forunconditional military defense of NorthKorea against imperialism and capitalistcounterrevolution!

From the outset, the U.S. military presence in Korea has been a dagger at thethroat of the North Korean and Chinesedeformed workers states. It has also been8 MARCH 2002

Reuters Front LinePratt &Whitney CEOs open joint venture in China. Workers protest layoffs and official plundering at Beijing factory;banner reads, "Where Is 150 Million Yuan Worth of State Property?" CCP's "market reforms" have generated massiveproletarian resistance.its determination to defend its livelihoodagainst the ravages of "market reforms."This was exemplified by the February2000 revolt in northeast China of some20,000 miners and their families, whobattled police and army units called outto smash their protest against the closingof a state-owned molybdenum mine. Anarticle in the Japan Times (11 January)on an internal CCP document issued lastyear reported "more than a few hundredincidents of disgruntled workers demonstrating against the loss of jobs or nonpayment of salaries while peasants protested against dues exacted by the localauthorities. The document recorded onlythose incidents that involved more than10,000 people, and did not mentionmany other smaller-scale ones."In deathly fear of the proletariat, thebureaucracy seeks to prevent any sign ofopposition to its rule. At the same time, itseeks to pacify the masses by sowing thenationalist illusion that "market reforms"are. necessary for building a modern,powerful China. Reflecting the growth ofnationalist sentiment, it was reported inthe immediate aftermath of September 11that Web sites in China posted statementsvoicing approval of the attack on theWorld Trade Center as just retribution forthe crimes of U.S. imperialism. That heinous attack-resulting in the deaths ofseveral thousand ordinary, working people of all nationalities and races-was

wielded against challenges by the SouthKorean masses to the chaebol bourgeoisie, from suppressing numerous peasantuprisings in the 1940s to supporting theSouth Korean military's crushing of theMay 1980 uprising in the city of Kwangju, .in which some 2,000 people were massacred. U.S. troops were instrumental inmaintaining -the military dic tatorship inSeoul that lasted until the late 1980s.The struggle against imperialism andthe chaebol bourgeoisie must be wagedas a fight for socialist revolution inthe South, whose proletariat is One ofthe most combative in' the world. Shortlyafter Bush's visit, electricity and railworkers organized by the Federation ofKorean Trade Unions went on a three-daystrike against privatization plans, laterjoined by tens of thousands of auto workers at Hyundai and Kia. Coming at a timewhen the imperialists are increasing pressure on the South Korean government torein in labor militancy, these strikes weremet with brutal repression. Dan ByongHo, president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has been seized andsome 36 other strike leaders are threat

ened with arrest. The labor movementinternationally must demand: Fr..ee DanByong Ho! Hands of fall strikers!The key political obstacle standing inthe way of the South Korean proletariat'Sroad to power is the nationalism thatserves to bind the working class toits "own" capitalist class. Reinforced bythe history of Korea's SUbjugation byJapanese and U.S. imperialism, nationalist ideology is prevalent among SouthKorean student left groups, some ofwhich politically support the StalinistNorth Korean regime. Nationalism isfostered as well by the trade-unionbureaucracy, feeding illusions among the

entirely criminal from the standpoint ofthe international working class. Whoeverperpetrated it embraced the same mentality as the racist rulers of America, identifying the working masses with theircapitalist exploiters and oppressors. Forthe U.S. rulers, the attack served as apretext for unleashing their militarymight around the world and, along withthe bourgeoisie everywhere else, carrying out a war on the home front againstimmigrants, minorities and the entireworking class.At the outbreak of the war againstAfghanistan, ICL sections internationallyraised the call, "For class struggle againstthe capitalist rulers at home! DefendAfghanistan against imperialist attack!"We publicized the example of Japanesedock workers at Sasebo port who refusedto load armaments and supplies ontoJapanese navy ships headed to assist thewar against Afghanistan (see "JapaneseLongshoremen Refuse to Load Warships," WVNo: 770, 7 December 2001).The . road forward for the Chineseworking class lies not in retrogradenationalism but in proletarian internationalism. The all-around modernizationand development of China-providingthe basis for a decent life for all its inhabitants-requires access to the kind ofadvanced productive forces possessed byJapan, the U.S. and West Europe, and thatat bottom requires the overthrow of capi-

workers in a "progressive" and "antiimperialist" wing of the South Koreanbourgeoisie, which in fact is completelyunder the thumb of ' imperialism. Theproletariat can only go forward on thebasis of class independence from theSeoul bourgeoisie, whose ta lk'of "friendship" with the North is a means of bringing about a united capitalist Korea.The North Korean foreign ministry>responded to Bush's diatribes by stating that his comments represented the"gangster-like logic of a typical rogueand a kingpin of terrorism." That description certainly fits Bush and his unhingedCold Warriors in Washington. While theimperialists have maintained a starvationembargo against North Korea, it waswith the destrl!ction of the Soviet Unionthrough capitalist counterrevolution in1991-92 that the North Korean economy lost its lifeline and was sent into adevastating tailspin. However, beginningin the mid 1990s China has supportedNorth Korea with subsidized power andfood shipments. In recent years, rhetoricaside, Pyongyang has bent over backwardto accommodate nearly all the imperialists' demands, from shelving missile teststo freezing its nuclear energy program.Smelling blood, the Japanese imperialists

talist class rule in those countries. Thestruggle for proletarian political revolution in China must be linked to the fightfor socialist revolution in the imperialistcenters.Against Reactionary Separatismand Han Chauvinism

It is more than ironic that Jiang Zeminnow assists the U.S. imperialists inAfghanistan in order to legitimize hisefforts to crush separatist sentiment inXinjiang province. It was the efforts ofhis predecessor, Deng Xiaoping, in support of the CIA-backed mujahedin thatpropelled Uighurs and others to seektraining in "holy war" in Afghanistanand opened the border to the arms andinfluence of the mullahs. The pullout ofthe Soviet Army from Afghanistan andsubsequent disintegration of the USSRinspired some in Xinjiang to dream oftheir own "Islamic republic."Unlike the "Free Tibet" forces aroundthe Dalai Lama, who have long beensupported by the CIA, the Xinjiang separatists seem to have little followingoutside the exile circles who fled Chinaafter resistance to CCP rule died outin the province in the early 1950s. Weoppose reactionary separatist movementsthat wield the call for "national independence" as a bludgeon against the 1949Revolution, which brought enormouscontinued on page 10

have stepp8d up their provocations, sinking a "suspected North Korean spy ship" inChinese waters in December, killing 15.Far from seeking proletarian struggleto overthrow the South Korean bourgeoisie, the North Korean Stalinists call for"peaceful" reunification. This perspective, offered first under Kim II Sung andnow under his son and successor KimJong II, flows from the nationalism of thisparticularly bizarre bureaucracy, whoseautarkic program of juche (self-reliance)is an extreme variant of the Stalinistdogma of "socialism in one country." TheInternational Communist League fightsfor the revolutionary reunification ofKorea-through socialist revolution inthe South and proletarian political revolution in the North.Korean workers must embrace an internationalist perspective, linking. theirstruggles with those of the Chinese workers against the threat of capitalist counterrevolution there and of the proletariat in'the imperialist centers, particularly Japanand the U.S., against their capitalistexploiters. To lead the fight for a socialist Asia, we fight to build revolutionaryTrotskyist parties, sections of a reforgedFourth International. All U.S. troops outof Korea now!.

! ~ 9 ( ~ ~ / ~ ~ ! ; g ~ a g ~ ' . . i ~ " . .. ~ ~ ( l r Q t s For a Revolutionary Workers Party!

Saturday, March 23, 7:30 p.m.Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, 427 Bloor Street West (one block west of Spadina)

TORONTO For more information: (416) 59341389


10/12

Israel...(continued from p age 1)year ago, a much-publicized conference of leading figures from the defenseand political establishments called formass expulsion of Palestinians from theOccupied Territories. Now the Councilfor Peace and Security-a group cif1,000 reserve generals and senior officers and ex-officials from the Mossadand Shin Beth intelligence agencieshas announced a campaign for unilateralIsraeli withdrawal from the Gaza Stripand part of the West Bank, including thedismantling of most settlements.What is animating such sentimentwascaptured by Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli commentator and columnistfor Yediot Ahranot: "After 17 months ofintifada, we must admit that the Palestinians have not been broken. Despairhas only steeled them. Economic andhuman distress has only pushed themto acts of madness." While the Zionistrampage in the Occupied Territories continues unabated, the Palestinians haveinflicted significant blows against Israelitroops and settlers.What really shook the Zionist rulerswas the destruction in February of aMerkava 3 tank by a handmade landmine. As the New York Times (16 February) noted: "The stark evidence that eventhe Israeli flagship tank-the Merkava 3,one of the toughest tanks in the worldwas vulnerable to Palestinian weaponsfanned fears today that Israeli forceswere facing the same kind of punishingwar of attrition in the West Bank andGaza Strip that they fought so long inLebanon." It was in response to the 1982invasion of Lebanon-under the command of the butcher Sharon-that themilitary "refusenik" organization YeshGvul (There Is a Limit) was first formed.The recent cracks in Israeli societyreflect a common perception that Sharonhas delivered neither the peace nor thesecurity he promised when he was electedlast year. Since December, his approvalrating has dropped from 70 percent to 42percent. The Jerusalem Post (18 February), a right-wing government mouthpiece, wails that Israel's "resolve" iscracking and a "chorus of "defeatism canbe heard in the land." But Sharon's latest

China ...(continued from page 9)gains in health, living standards and education to the minority peoples.Our proletarian-internationalist defense of the Chinese deformed workersstate against counterrevolutionary separatists is counterposed to the natlo-nalismof the ruling bureaucratic caste, whichfavors the Han Chinese who constituteover 90 percent of the popUlation. Thus,while the 1949 Revolution provided thebasis for social advancement for all, thepolicies of the bureaucracy for the mostpart have tended toward Sinification, frequently supplemented by efforts to submerge minority regions in a sea of Hanemigres. Mongolians now make up lessthan a fifth of the population of InnerMongolia, while the Uighur proportion ofXinjiang's population has dropped fromthree-fourths to less than half; aboutequal to the Han popUlation there. As inTibet, state officials and party cadres inwhat is offi cia lly known as the "XinjiangUighur Autonomous Region" are overwhelmingly Han Chinese and Mandarinis the official language, making government virtually inaccessible to the nativepopulations.Over the last two decades, massiveunemployment in the Chinese heartlandengendered by economic "reforms" hasaccelerated Han emigration to minorityregions in search of jobs or rudimentarybusiness ventures. As investment fundsfrom the central government begin topour int6 Xinjiang in order to develop _its mineral resources, Han managers andentrepreneurs prefer the better-educated,10

Sharon's 1982massacre of. Palestinians inSabra and Shatilarefugee camps inLebanon waspreceded bydisarming of PLOfighters by UNintervention force.

provocations in the Occupied Territories,followed by a Cabinet decision to furtherintensify the war of terror against the Palestinians, underline that the Israeli government could well yet seek to implementa cataclysmic "peace of the graveyard."When Foreign Minister Shimon Perestold the Knesset (parliament) that "wecan't just expel 3.5 millIon people fromtheir homes," a right-wing parliamentarian shot back, "Yes we can, yes we can."A leading member of the Israeli Cabinet,Tourism Minister Benny Elom, is an openadvocate of the forcible "transfer" of thePalestinian population out of the territories, a genocidal "final solution" supported by 35 percent of the Israeli population, according to a February 15 poll bythe Israeli paper Ma'ariv.Following a sniper attack on one of thehated checkpoints yesterday that killedseven soldiers and three settlers, a spokesman for the Aksa Martyrs Brigade said,"This is our new slogan now: Break thesiege and remove the checkpoints." Theattacks against army checkpoints andbases and against the heavily armed settler auxiliaries are directed at the militaryforces of the oppressive Zionist occupation. In contrast, the suicide bombings ofIsraeli civilians at shopping malls anddiscos, carried out by Islamic groups likeHamas and the secular nationalist Aksa,

"more reliable" and Mandarin-speakingemigres, while the native peoples becomemore resentful. Indicative of the ChineseStalinists' own chauvinism against Islamic minorities is Beijing's hailing of capitalist Russia's suppression of the Chechenpeople's just struggle for independence.The deep - grievances of Xinjiang'sminorities under the Han-chauvinist officialdom can be gauged by the fact that. they used to regularly flee to the Soviet. Union. In 1962 alone, tens of thousandsof Xinjiang Muslims .undertook a massexodus across the border into Soviet Central Asia. Although the Soviet bureaucracy was imbued with Great Russianchauvinism, its conduct was conditionedby the fact that Russians were but a slightmajority within the Soviet state. In orderto integrate the peoples of diverse national and ethnic backgrounds that madeup the Soviet Union, the bureaucracyretained a more democratic heritage inregard to the nationalities question thanMao's China. Even under the administration of the bureaucracy, the USSR'splanned economy served to greatly modernize and develop the Central AsianSoviet republics, to the benefit particularly of women.The economic and social policies ofthe CCP bureaucracy provide all the fuelnecessary to light the fires of secession.A successful proletarian political revolution would instantly move to provideChina's minority r e g i o n ~ with a maximum of self-rule while providing all thetechnical, educational and financial resources necessary to redress the backwardness and misery endemic in thoseareas. Under such a regime, China'sminority regions would become a beacon

are reprehensible and criminal from aproletarian standpoint. Such indiscriminllte terror, deeming all Jews to be enemies, mirrors the anti-Arab chauvinismof the far more murderous Zionist rulersand serves to drive Hebrew-speakingworkers into the arms of their capitalistexploiters. ,But while the Palestinianattacks on the Israeli army have helpedfuel sentiment for a withdrawal, the Palestinians cannot prevail in a military conflict with the Zionist juggernaut.At bottom, the military struggle of thePalestinian nationalists is aimed at pressuring the imperialists and the Arab bourgeoisies. Looking to the Arab regimes toaid the Palestinian cause is a suicidalstrategy. The result of this strategy wasseen in the 1970 "Black September" massacre of thousands of Palestinian fightersby the Jordanian monarchy. That the reactionary Saudi monarchy is now embracedby Arafat and others as a guardian of Palestinian national rights is a travesty. Afterthe 1991 U.S.-led Gulf War, Saudi Arabiajoined Kuwait in brutally expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinian (andYemeni) laborers, and Palestinians arestill excluded from entering Saudi Arabia.Only through the overthrow of not onlythe Israeli bourgeoisie but of the Jordanian monarchy and the other Arab rulingclasses can the right of national self-

in the struggle for social liberation o(national and ethnic minorities in Central,South and East Asia. .The Chinese Stalinist bl!reaucracy hasplaced the 1949 Revolution' in grave danger. Simultaneously, its policies havesparked the social protests and workingclass resistance that are the necessary tinder for proletarian political revolution, aharbinger of which was seen in the 1989uprising that began with students in Tiananmen Square and quickly drew the

determination for both the PalestinianArab and Hebrew-speaking peoples andthe many other peoples of the region beequitably realized. For a socialist federa-tion of the Near East!The fissures in the Zionist bunker poseopportunities for revolutionaries to drivea wedge between the Hebrew-speakingproletariat and its chauvinist exploiters.Adding to the growing war-weariness ofthe Hebrew-speaking population is theeconomic impact of the war against thePalestinians. As the conflict drags onwithout apparent end, the sharp losses intourism and construction have begun tomean cuts in jobs and social services forIsraeli workers, and there have been anumber of strikes recently.As revolutionary Marxists, we seek tosmash the Zionist garrison state fromwithin. As we wrote recently, "We haveno illusions that it will be easy to shatterthe intense anti-Arab chauvinism of theHebrew-speaking working class. But it isthe task of revolutionaries to utilize everyopportunity, every strike, every actionthat pits the working class against the 'Zionist capitalist rulers to emphasize thenecessity for joint struggle by the Palestinian Arab and Hebrew-speaking workers. In the course of such struggles will beforged the internationalist Trotskyistparty which champions the national rightsof the Palestinians as part of the fight toplace the proletariat in power" (WV No.771,28 December 2001)."Remember Sabra and Shatila-Don't Trust the UN!"

The fight for proletarian state powerthroughout the Near East is the only roadforward for the Palestinian people. Thepetty-bourgeois nationalists of Arafat'sPalestine Liberation Organization (PLO)see no other road than to beg the imperialists to pressure the Zionist butchersfor "peace." This is also the plea of thereformist and centrist left organizations inthe West which, rejecting the possibilityof proletarian revolution, cynically peddIe the lie that their own bourgeoisies canbring national justice to the Palestinians.Given the overt hos,tility of the Bushadministration tow'ard the Palestinians,and the even more foam-flecked supportfor Sharon by Democrats like Hill'aryClinton, the reformist Workers World(10 January) in the U.S. limits itself to

working class into the struggle. Criticallylacking then, and now, is a Trotskyistparty that links defense of the collectivized foundations of the Chinese workersstate to the spread of socialist revolutionthroughout Asia and internationally; particularly in the centers of imperialistpower. The ICL is dedicated to resolvingthe problem of revolutionary leadershipas we fight to reforge Trotsky'S FourthInternational-world party of socialistrevolution.

...... { S P A ~ . J A G I . S ~ ~ E A P E I ~ . S ~ i L .~ ! ~ . ~ . I . Q.i r e . ~ . t o r . Y ~ . ~ . d .. P 9 . ~ l i C. . . Q . ~ f i c e s

Web site: www.icl-f

workers vanguard no 776 - 08 march 2002

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