WfJ/iIlE/iS VAllfJIJA/i,

No. 333
25
X.-S23
1 July 1983
Vietnam News Agency
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Two, Three, Many Defeats for Imperialism!

Granma
Stalinist Deal with the Vatican?
100:"of COll!1terf
e
vttlution
, SEE PAGE TWO '
Ronald Reagan came to power
vowing to avenge the U.S.' humiliating
defeat in Vietnam by quickly smashing
leftist insurgency in Central America.
But despite trillions in armaments, CIA
mercenaries and the concerted Cold
War campaign, Washington has not
pulled off a victory against Communism
in what it believes to be its own
backyard. Because the U.S.-backed
butchers in El Salvador are on the run,
and its contras are repulsed at the
Nicaraguan border, all wings of Yankee
imperialism-from Democratic doves
to Reaganite hawks-fear "another
Vietnam." They fear another defeat at
the hands of a desperately poor and
poorly armed population determined to
win against the tyranny of U.S. imperi-
alism and its puppet regimes.
But for the workers and peasants of EI
Salvador, for revolutionaries in Amer-
ica and throughout the world, Vietnam
was a victory! That is why the Spartacist
League and the Spartacus Youth
League say: Two, Three, Many Defeats
for u.s. Imperialism!
"N0 more Vietnams" is the
counterrevolutionary battle cry of an
imperialist power still smarting from the
rout it suffered militarily and politically
in Southeast Asia. Despicably, it is also
the primary slogan around which the
July 2 El Salvador protest in Washing-
ton, D.C. has been called. Making an
explicit appeal to the Democratic
liberals who hope to head off U.S.
defeat in Central America through a
"negotiated sellout," the Workers
World Party/People's Anti-War Mobi-
lization/ All-Peoples Congress (WWP/
PAM/ APC) of Sam Marcy has draped
the July 2 demo in the stars and
stripes.
This "emergency" demonstration was
called months in advance to coincide
with the July 4th patriotic holiday. The
Marcyite organizers chose the Vietnam
War Veterans Memorial for their rallv
imperialists' grotesque monu"-
ment to the mission of "their boys," the
Lt. Calleys who were driven out by the
heroic Vietnamese. Perhaps the Marcy-
ites are considering beginning the rally
with a moment of silence or a prayer for
the U.S. troops.
We have noted that the Veterans
Memorial would be "a fitting place for a
rally of the American Legion" (WV No.
331, 3 June). Now the Marcyites find
they are competing with precisely such
reactionaries for this "sacred" patriotic
space. A lash-up of fascistic "captive
nations" emigres, the New Right and
flag-waving veterans groups. as well as
Cuban and Vietnamese gusanos have
threatened a counterdemonstration
with disgusting ex-Panther and Moonie
showpiece Eldridge Cleaver as speaker,
to "neutralize" the July 2 rally at the
Memorial. But "No More Vietnams"
rally spokesman Bob Lamoth has tried
to indicate to these fanatic anti-
Communists that the Marcyite demojs
pretty neutral already: "We don't mean
to offend anyone," he whined about the
use of the Memorial. "We think it is
important to point out that there were
57,000 Americans killed in Vietnam,
and our purpose is to keep that from
happening again" ( Washington Post, 24
June).
The July 2 "call to action" (printed in
the New York Times, I May) is one of
the most disgustingly chauvinist docu-
ments ever produced even by the U.S.
"peace movement." It sums up the result
of the Vietnam .War: "300,000 Gl's
wounded and 57,000 dead. Over $150
billion spent on a cruel, illegal and
unjust war that finally had to be
abandoned." The call says not one word
about the one million Vietnamese
slaughtered by U.S. imperialism, not a
word about the Vietnamese men,
women and children cruelly maimed for
life by napalm, the razing of whole
villages until the countryside resembled
a moonscape. In fact, more bombs were
dropped by the U.S. in the Vietnam War
than in all of World War II. But for the
organizers of the July 2 demonstration,
like the Senators and Congressmen they
hope to appeal to, all of this is covered
under the cost-effectiveness of pursuing
the war.
The Vietnam War was not one which
"finally had to be abandoned." The U.S.
was driven out by the National Libera-
tion Front (NLF) and North Vietnam-
continued on page 9
Stalinist Deal with the Vatican?
FIB_
The Pope of Counterrevolution
I
Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of
the Spartacist League of the U.S.
Dietz
Rosa Luxemburg, Communist
leader and martyr, epitomized the
Internationalist tradition of Poland's
historically socialist proletariat.
tremendous potential force for counter-
revolution. And it is precisely the
Stalinists v.'ho are responsible for the
existence of this grave threat to the
social conquests of the degenerated and
deformed workers states."
-"The President's Pope?" WV
No. 217, 20 October 1978
Behind Pope Wojtyla stands the
power of Western imperialism, now in
particular its capacity for economic
blackmail. Poland owes $25 billion or
more to Western bankers and govern-
ments. The Jaruzelski regime hoped
that allowing the pope's visit would ease
Reagan's economic sanctions and per-
haps open the way for additional
Western credits or. at least. easier
repayment terms. The minister of
reiipon and atheism, Adam Lopatka.
t",-p;jll\ed Ih;s ;iisastrous maneuver:
"; ';f: trip by the head of the Vatican
star': and the chhrch will make the
cc-.r;t'''Juation of this unfriendly polrcy
tu\urd more difficult." Not a
chance. Reagan & Co. will stop being
"<J,driendly" toward Poland only when
Wojryla is in power in the Belvedere
Palace and Jaruzelski is in prison or
dead.
While the Moscow Stalinists have
taken a harder line on Poland than their
Warsaw counterparts, they very much
want to cut down their present massive
subsidies to the Polish kulaks and neo-
Pilsudskiite scum. So the Kremlin, too,
is under pressure to accept a deal with
the Vatican. The Polish crisis is the
product of decades of capitulation by
the Stalinists to capitalist restoration-
ist forces and world imperialism. A
Trotskyist leadership in the USSR
would make short shrift of the mess in
Poland.
\Vojtyla's anti-Communist pilgrim-
age and the reported deal to establish a
church-run "union" In Poland
demonstrate anew that the Stalinist
bureaucracy acts as a transmission belt
for the imperialist pressures on the
Soviet bloc. There can be no "peaceful
coexistence" with the Vatican. the
International Monetary Fund. Ronald
Reagan, NATO and other agencies of
global counterrevolution. The social
gains of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
and their extension to East Europe after
World War II can be defended only hy
proletarian political revolution which
ousts the Stalinist bureaucracy and
restores the Soviet Union. land of the
October Revolution, as a bastion of
w-orld communism.
Stalinists Conciliate
Clerical-Nationalist Reaction
But Wojtyla is making a bid to
enhance the already enormous political
weight of the Catholic church in Polish
society. (In fact, the Italian wing of the
Vatican is clearly upset that the Polish
pope has become so deeply embroiled in
the political life of his homeland.) After
his second meeting with Jaruzelski, a
son of the Polish upper classes educated
by the Jesuits, reports began circulating
about a deal, most of them emanating
from Rome.
Lech Walesa is reportedly being
dumped as the church's favorite sonin
Poland. Since the general strike on the
Baltic coast in August 1980, the Vatican
has constantly praised him for having
uncompromisingly and unconditionally
followed the directives of the church.
This, of course, led him to become a
front mar for Western imperialism,
financially for the West Germans,
militarily for the Americans. His proud
boast was that he had never read a
book-which is how he got invited to
lecture at Harvard. He is a Polish
version of Father Gapon, who was
finally murdered by the Social Revolu-
tionaries as a tsarist agent. Well, rww
the Vatican paper, L'Osservatore Rom-
ano, observes, "Officially Lech Walesa
once more leaves the scene" because "he
has lost his battle." Walesa is undoubt-
edly too far gone to have learned from
what is happening to him, so we will not
lecture to him that the path of the
socialist class struggle is the way. But
maybe others in Poland will learn from
his contemptible fate.
For decades the Polish Stalinists have
conciliated the Catholic church in a vain
effort to secure social stability. After the
1956 "thaw" the church was allowed to
become the only voice of political
opposition. At the same time, the Polish
Stalinists abandoned agriCUltural col-
lectivization and so perpetuated a class
of priest-ridden peasant smallholders
hostile to socialism. When Karol Wojty-
la, then archbishop of Krakow. was
elected the first Polish pope in 1978, we
warned:
"To the Stalinists Pope John Paul II
may seem a prince of peace and detente.
a JIlan of the post-Helsinki, period.
Domestically the Gierek regime por-
trays him as a symhol of Communist-
Catholic coexistence. Hut he now stands
at the head of manv millions of
practicing Calholics in Last Furope, a
be a matter of indifference to the nations
of the world, especially Europe and
America" (Warsaw).
"Solidarity" was a time "when the
Polish worker stood up for himself with
the gospel in hand and a prayer on his
lips" (Czestochowa).
"Do not be swallowed up by
immorality and indifference, .. , The
nation is called to victory" (Krakow).
Pope Wojtyla was the imperialists'
man in Poland. His visit gave a
"legitimate" cover for anti-
Communist demonstrations, far and
away the largest since Walesa's power
grab was spiked two and a half years
ago. Altogether, an estimated ten
million people filled the churches, the
parks, the soccer stadiums dominated
by monstrous altars and crosses. Soli-
darnose activists brandished their
crosses and banners, wore their Black
Madonna pins, flashed their V-signs
and marched through streets pro-
claiming. "The priests are with us. The
pope is with us."
It was a week-long orgy of anti-
Russian Polish nationalism: every
religious image made political, every
"sacred" site chosen to further the
chilling appeal: the pilgrimage to the
icon of the Black Madonna of Czesto-
chowa, credited with having broken the
siege of the "foreign invaders" (Swedish
Protestants in 1655). "Before your
altars, we entreat you, oh lord, deign to
restore to us a free homeland," intoned
the pope, dressed in royal crown and red
cape emblazoned with the Polish eagle
and the cross. Home Army songs are
sung at mass, along with "Oh God, Who
Has Defended Poland" and "March,
March Dombrowski," ode to the emigre
general who fought the Russians under
Napoleon. And everywhere Wojtyla
warns about the "arrogance of power."
The beleaguered Stalinist officialdom
is dismayed by it all. "The pope is the
only authority in the country," one of
them exclaimed (Los Angeles Times. 20
June). A genuinely communist regime,
as opposed to this wretched bureaucra-
cy. would have a base in the population
to pursue the struggle against clerical-
ism. What is involved is not a religious
issue, a matter of personal faith in god.
Marxists do not go around burning
crucifixes and knocking down churches.
If the church stays out of political life,
then social development over the gener-
ations will determine whether or not
people continue to believe in an afterlife.
BLj-rnett'7C'o-nt-act
Pope stirs the spirit of clerical counterrevolution in Nowa Huta-town of the
Stakhanovite "Man of Marble," now a Solidarnosc stronghold.

1 July 1983
WORKERS
VANGIJARD
Pilgrimage for the Cold War
"He goes right in there and stops just
short of stirring up rebellion," Republi-
can Senator Charles Percy observed
approvi.ngly (New York Times. 24
June). And indeed Wojtyla whipped up
anti-Communist hysteria, exhibiting his
authority in Poland in order to increase
his bargaining power. For more than a
week he roamed the country, preaching
the gospel according to NATO, de-
manding Polish "sovereignty" and
"freedom" from Russian "domination":
"The fate of Poland in 19l53 cannot
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PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner
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v/(;'N(J(.J 1r1f
No. 333
JUNE 28-Pope John Paul Wojtyla's
eighHiay "pilgrimage" to his Polish
"homeland" unleashed an orgy of anti-
Communist and anti-Soviet demonstra-
tions, as all knew it would. He reignited
the forces of clerical-nationalist coun-
terrevolution which were temporarily
checked h.y General Jaruzelski's Decem-
ber 1981 countercoup against Solidar-
nose' bid for power. Everyone has been
asking, why did Warsaw allow it? What
did the beleaguered Polish Stalinists
hope to gain from the pope's inflamma-
tory visit?
As we go to press there are sensational
and increasingly detailed reports of a
deal between the Vatican pontiff and the
Polish general. Allegedly martial law
would be lifted in exchange for the
disappearance of Solidarnose and a
return to oblivion for its leader. Lech
Walesa. A new "union" would be
sanctioned under the direct control of
the Catholic church hierarchy. In
addition. the church would establish a
bank providing loans for Poland's
several million peasant smallholders
and petty entrepreneurs. In turn, West-
ern imperialist powers-'Wojtyla's
masters-would lift sanctions to ease
the economic pressure on Poland.
We are not in a position to know if
such a deal were made. But we warn: this
would threaten the very foundations of
proletarian state power in Poland,
endangering the entire Soviet bloc. The
Catholic hierarchy seeks institutional-
ized control over the economic life of the
nation, interposing itself as an interme-
diary between the regime and the petty
bourgeoisie and working class. We
Trotskyists, who in late 1981 pro-
claimed "Stop Solidarnose Counterrev-
olution!" insist that only through
proletarian political revolution in the
bureaucratically degenerated/ deformed
workers states and socialist revolution
in the capitalist West can the forces of
counterrevolution be defeated.
2 WORKERS VANGUARD
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Smash Apartheid-
For Workers Revolution!
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decades. In all, over 600 pieces of Spartacist literature

were sold to the anti-apartheid demonstrators.
The U. S. imperialists have a big stake in the survival
of the Pretoria regime, a staunch ally in Reagan's war
drive against the USSR. But cracks are appearing in
the apartheid structure as the power and militancy of
the black working class grows. The key is the
construction of a revolutionary Trotskyist party to
lead the proletariat in the fight to topple the brutal
apartheid system and go forward to a black-centered
workers and peasants government. As our comrades
chanted on June 16: "Black labor is the key to smash
apartheid slavery!"


The June 9 lynching of three African National
Congress (ANC) fighters by the racist South African
police state ignited militant outrage from blacks and
opponents of apartheid all over the world. In protest
against the executions of Jerry Mosololi, Thabo
Motaung and Thelle Mogoerane, on June 16 an angry
crowd-2,000-strong and overwhelmingly black-
marched in New York City from South Africa's UN
offices to Madison Square Garden chanting, "Libera-
tion, yes! Apartheid, no! Death to apartheid, blow by
blow!"
The nationalists and Stalinists who organized the
protest tried to channel this anger and militancy into
their strategy of pressuring the blood-soaked U.S.
government to reform apartheid. In line with the call
for a boycott of South Africa by the "democratic"
imperialists, the protest focused on the Duran-Moore
boxing match taking place in the Garden, which was
sponsored by Bob Arum, who has promoted fights
within South Africa. The Trotskyists of the Spartacist
LeaguejSpartacus Youth League (SL/SYL) countered
with the call: "Not liberal divestment schemes, but
labor action to smash apartheid!"
The SL/SYL intervened with a contingent of 50
peopie, including militant trade unionists, that called
for the U.S. v..'orking class to take action in defense of
the South African oppressed-notably hot-cargoing
military goods to the South African butchers.
Unaffiliated demonstrators eagerly carried Spartacist
placards with slogans like "Free Tsotsobe, Shabangu,
Moise-Free All Victims of Apartheid!", "South
Africa Out of Namibia-Military Victory to
SWAPO!" and "Smash Reagan/Botha Anti-Soviet
War Drive-The Main Enemy h at Home
l
" Our
"Put Botha on the run--ANC fighters need
guns!" was picked up by
near the SL contingent. We panicularly raised the
defense of ANC leaders Nelson and Winnie
Mandela-"South Africa's last, best hope" as fighters
against apartheid and all forms of racialism-who
have been jailed and persecuted for more than two
Nicaragua Needs MIGs
On the Jalapa Front
On June 2, hundreds of Honduras-
based counterrevolutionaries backed by
the U.S. launched their third major
attack on northern Nicaragua in as
many months. The mercenaries, called
"freedom fighters" by Ronald Reagan
and "beasts" by the Nicaraguan people,
are largely former members of dictator
Anastasio Somoza's murderous Nation-
al Guard, paid and directed by the CIA
in an overt-covert war against the
radical nationalist Sandinista National
Liberation Front (FSLN). In March a
Somozaist invasion reached into the
heart of the country. In May they
surrounded the town of Jalapa, isolat-
ing its FSLN defenders for several days.
This time the contras managed to hold a
thin sliver of Nicaraguan territory
including the border village of EI
Porvenir for over a week, while destroy-
ing a significant part of the tobacco
harvest. Ominously, the Honduran
army prepared this attack with a two-
day barrage of mortar fire. Reagan and
his puppets are preparing a counterrev-
olutionary war throughout the region. It
must be met by a struggle for workers
revolution, from Central America to the
U.S.
Last month, the Peruvian magazine
Caretas (16 May) published an article
entitled "En el frente de Jalapa" (On the
Jalapa Front). This recalled the Spanish
Civil War song, "En el frente de
Jarama," whose lines continued, "No
tenemos ni aviones, ni tanques, ni
canones" (We don't have planes or tanks
or cannons). The song reflected the
unequal struggle in which the Republi-
can soldiers were starved of arms by
the "democratic" imperialists' "non-
intervention pact," in cooperation with
Stalin who allowed only a trickle of
Soviet weapons to reach the Loyalist
side, while the Francoists were supplied
with the most up-to-date aircraft and
artillery by the German and Italian
fascists. With mass support and a
growing people's militia, the FSLN can
beat back anything short of a direct U.S.
invasion. But today on the Jalapa front,
Sandinista soldiers could repeat the
refrain as they, too, lack planes, tanks
and heavy guns while Honduras has the
most modern air force in the region,
equipped with U.S. and Israeli jets. As
FSLN interior minister Tomas Borge
remarked: "We're lacking weapons. We
don't lack the people to hold them"
(Wall Street Journal, 31 May).
U.S. aggression against the Sandinis-
tas continues to escalate. In May
Reagan cut off the sugar quota-shades
of Cuba 1960. In response to Managua's
expulsion of three CIA spies, whose
guilt was demonstrated on videotape,
on June 7 Washington closed down
every Nicaraguan consulate in the
country and summarily deported 21
diplomats. This measure was only two
steps short of a formal declaration of
war: next comes breaking of diplomatic
relations. Yet only four days after it was
revealed that the Americans attempted
to poison Nicaraguan foreign minister
Miguel D'Escoto, the intended victim
held a chat with U.S. "peace" envoy
Richard Stone, former lobbyist of the
Guatemalan military dictatorship! The
FSLN comandantes seemdetermined to
follow the treacherous advice of Fidel
Castro, who counseled them on the
morrow of their victory over Somoza to
"avoid [the Cubans'] mistakes" and seek
to conciliate the Yankee imperialists
whatever the cost. But while the Sandi-
nistas keep turning the other cheek, the
CIA is amassing a counterrevolutionary
army on both borders, staging bloody
invasions and activating a capitalist fifth
column to "destabilize" the country
from within.
With every step toward open war, the
Reagan administration is pushing Ni-
caragua down the "Cuban road,"
toward the formation of a bureaucrati-
cally deformed workers state. But the
Sandinistas remain wedded to their
petty-bourgeois nationalist program of
"nonalignment, mixed economy and
political pluralism." Recently the FSLN
regime seized the properties of 15
landowners guilty of collaboration with
the contras, as well as two factories of a
leading businessman who had systemat-
ically "decapitalized" them (milking
profits to feed bank accounts in Miami
or Switzerland). Yet these are still
measures aimed only at those counter-
revolutionary plotters who have been
caught. Marxists understand that the
capitalist class as a whole is the base of
counterrevolution, which would bring
back the bloody tyranny of the Somoza-
ist butchers to protect their profits and
property, in concert with U.S. imperial-
ism's global anti-Soviet war drive.
The question posed sharply in Nicara-
gua today is that of social revolution or
bloody counterrevolution: will San-
dinistas act as Cuban Castroists and
finally expropriate the bourgeoisie; oras
Spanish Loyalists whose policies of
preserving capitalist rule strangled pro-
letarian revolution and let the Francoists
pass-at a cost of hundreds ofthousands
of dead and decades ofdictatorship?The
Spartacist tendency fights for the forma-
tion of Trotskyist parties throughout the
region, forged on the program of
permanent revolution: Kill the contras-
workers to power! Smash Reagan's Bay
of Pigs-Nicaragua needs MIGs! De-
fend, complete, extend the Nicaraguan
revolution!
1 JULY 1983
3
Anger Over Aratai's .Betrayals
Mutiny in the PLO
armed power which will now be resup-
plied with American F-16s and other
modern weapons. Israeli/imperialist
troops out of Lebanon! The only kink
for Reagan's imperialist ambitions in
the region is the refusal thus far of Syria
to go along with the deal by withdraw-
ing its 40,000 troops from Lebanon
along with its Soviet-supplied missiles.
Should the Soviet Union become
directly involved in an imperialist-
designed military provocation in the
Near East, the urgent requirement for
the international proletariat would be
unconditional military defense of the
Soviet Union.
The workers and oppressed masses in
the Near East will gain nothing by
supporting the Syrian army, and will
suffer bloody repression at its hands.
The road to liberation for the displaced
Palestinians can only lie in workers
revolution throughout the region-
from Tel Aviv to Damascus. The recent
antiwar protests in Israel as wel1 as
significant strike activity there shows
that the country is not a Zionist
monolith but is rent by deep class and
social divisions. Revolutionary commu-
nist (Trotskyist) parties are urgently
needed in the Near East, seeking to
mobilize the working class at the head of
the oppressed masses to overthrow
capitalism. Given Israel's dominant role
in the region--with up to 30,000
occupying troops in Lebanon-it is
especially incumbent on the Israeli
workers to demand: Israel out of
Lebanon and the Occupied Territories!
Self-determination for both the Pales-
tinian Arabs and Hebrew-speaking
people can be achieved only within the
framework of a Socialist Federation of
the Near East. born of a common class
struggle of Arab and Hebrew workers
against their own ruiers.
The recent Shultz/Gemayel/Begin
agreement to turn southern Lebanon
into an Israeli protectorate and the
presence of American troops in Leba-
non paves the way for a Pax Americana
in the Near East, backed up by Israeli
any worse, Arafat might have to ask for
asylum at the Militant offices.
Far from encouraging the PLO
mutiny, some American ruling circles
are not at all happy about Arafat's
declining fortunes, since the main
beneficiary is the Soviet-backed Syrian
regime. On June 25 the New York
Times' well-connected military analyst,
Drew Middleton, reported:
"The worst development, some
intelligence sources said. would be the
ouster of Mr. Arafat by left-wing
organizations such as the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
backed by Syria with the blessing of the
Soviet Union. The sources said a
consequence could be a more aggressive
P.L.O. in which the number of fullv
armed battalions could be increased
with Soviet help to at least five, from the
present three."
Frey/Time-
PLO exits Beirut: then came the Israeli-instigated massacre of Palestinians at
Shatila and Sabra.
Palestinians into Hashemite vassals, it is
not because they are champions of
Palestinian national liberation. The
Reagan plan gores their ox because it
would deny Syria the return of the
Golan Heights seized by Israel in the
1967 war. More general1y, Assad & Co.
have their own ambitions for a Greater
Syria incorporating Lebanon and all of
Palestine. Should any significant sec-
tion of the Palestinian population fall
under the sway of the Syrian Ba'athists,
they would be suppressed as ruthlessly
as the Palestinians in Hussein's Jordan.
Therefore, proletarian revolution-
aries cannot support either the Arafat
loyalists or the pro-Syrian dissidents.
All of the present factions making up the
petty-bourgeois nationalist PLO, in-
cluding the "radical" PFLP and
DPFLP, are beholden to one or another
of the treacherous Arab bourgeois
regimes with their constantly shifting
alliances and enmities.
Unintentional satirical comment on
the PLO mutiny is being provided by the
fake-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party
(SWP). At first these fervent Arafat
cheerleaders tried to ignore the whole
thing. The 10 June Militant ran a giant
centerfold interview with PLO UN
observer Dr. Hatem Husseini, who
brashly asserted that the organization
was "more united and determined" than
ever. Two weeks later the SWP blamed
it all on the Western press:
"Disputes within the PLO. involving
longstanding differences. are being
played up in the media. This is part of
the attempt to discredit and divide the
Palestinian liberation movement."
-Afilitant. 24 June
Never mind that PLO commandos are
killing one another and that Arafat was
expelled from Syria practically at gun
point. If the bourgeois media hype gets
passively until its own forces were
attacked, and made a separate cease-fire
while the PLO was being systematically
destroyed" (Washington Post. 16 June
1982). Musa also conveniently forgets
that the Syrian army first entered
Lebanon in 1976 (with an Arab League
mandate) to support the Christian
Maronite forces against the PLO. The
Syrian intervention shifted the balance
of forces, setting the stage for the
massacre of Palestinians at Tel Zaatar
by the Phalangists and Chamounists.
If the Damascus rulers now oppose
the Reagan plan to make the West Bank
Arafat disarmed
PLO, now Assad
wants to
subjugate it.
UJ
"0
<no
<0

Spiegel (6 June) if he did not fear

becoming totallv dependent on the
Syrians, Musa replied: "No. As long as
Syria rejects the Reagan initiative and
Syrian tanks stand with us against the
Israelis, as long as we have a common
goaL so long as that we are comrades-in-
arms."
Musa conveniently omits that last
summer his Syrian "comrades-in-arms"
negotiated a separate cease-fire with the
invading Israelis, thus allowing Begin/
Sharon to concentrate their entire
military might against the PLO forces.
Henry Kissinger noted at the time with
malicious glee that "Syria stood by
these in negotiations with the Jordanian
monarch. According to the leader of the
mutiny, Colonel Saed Musa, Arafat was
willing to agree that the West Bank and
Gaza Palestinians would become
vassals to the Hashemite throne.
The mutiny in the PLO ranks clearly
expresses angry frustration over the last
year's defeats and betrayals, in particu-
lar Arafat's open turn toward Pax
Americana in the Near East. Centered in
the Fatah, the predominant organiza-
tion in the PLO coalition, the mutiny
represents a deep split. It must be a
desperate act, since it challenges the
personal authority of Arafat, who for
almost ten years has held the Arab
League franchise as the official leader of
the Palestinian people. At the same
time, it is also clear that the Palestinian
fighters' anger at Arafat is being
manipulated by the Syrian Ba'athist
regime for its own ends, which have
nothing to do with Palestinian national
liberation.
The mutiny began in early May when
Arafat attempted to replace two PLO
officers in the Syrian-occupied Bekaa
Valley of Lebanon with his own loyal-
ists. The leader of the mutiny, Saed
Musa, reportedly walked into the
headquarters of the elite PLO Yarmouk
Brigade in the Bekaa and took over with
the help of two mutinous battalions. By
early June the conflict had escalated
into a ful1-scale battle around Baalbek,
resulting in several dead and wounded.
The mutiny could not have taken
place without the support of the
Syrians. Syrian officers were reportedly
present at the takeover of the Yarmouk
Brigade, and the rebels were able to
open up an office in Damascus as well as
seize six PLO supply centers in the
Syrian capital. Just before he was
expelled from Damascus, Arafat pro-
tested: "The Syrian tanks are surround-
ing and sieging our troops at every
base." Syrian strongman Assad clearly
intends to control all of the PLO forces
as he now controls the significant
Palestinian organization al-Saiqa.
For their part, the leaders of the anti-
Arafat mutiny make no secret of their
support to the Assad regime. When
asked by the liberal West German Der
Minister Ariel Sharon's Lebanon
strategy was close to the mark. His plan
to drive the P.L.O. into the iron grip of
the Syrians has in large measure
worked. As a result. the organization is
losing its unity and independent
identity.... "
As his reward for brokering the
introduction of imperialist troops into
Lebanon, last September Arafat was
given the Reagan plan, which proposes
to establish a Palestinian "entity" under
the guns of Jordan's King Hussein,
butcher of the 1970 Black September
massacre. The PLO chief found "posi-
tive elements" in Reagan's plan and
spent the next several months pursuing
JUNE 26-With the open mutiny in the
Palestinian guerrilla army in Lebanon
and the expulsion of Yasir Arafat from
Syria. the Palestine Liberation Organi-
zation (PLO) is facing the most serious
crisis in its almost 20-year history.
Retreating to the northern Lebanese
port of Tripoli, Arafat loyalists are
hemmed in by Israeli patrol boats on the
sea and hostile Syrian forces on the
city's edge. Arafat is paying for his own
treachery during the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon last summer. The heroic
resistance of the Palestinian guerrillas
during the siege of Beirut was betrayed
by Arafat's deal with Washington-
without a peep of protest from the PLO
"radicals" like George Habash (PFLP)
and Nayef Hawatmeh (DPFLP) or the
leaders of the present anti-Arafat
mutiny-allowing PLO forces to be
disarmed and dispersed by the U. S.
Marines, French Foreign Legion and
Italian troops. The immediate result of
the imperialist disarmament of the
PLO commandos was the Israeli-
orchestrated Lebanese Phalangist
massacre of Palestinians at Shatila and
Sabra.
The U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of
Lebanon demonstrated in the most
naked way the genocidal program of
Zionism. Tens of thousands of Pales-
tinians were killed, hundreds of thou-
sands driven from their refugee camp
homes. The only language to describe
Israel's invasion and occupation of
Lebanon is the language of the Nazi
holocaust in East Europe. The Israeli
army itself described its mission with the
Hebrew word letaher-the "purifica-
tion" of Lebanon of PLO forces. And
with the aid of the Arafat leadership and
the Syrian Ba'athists, the Zionist crimi-
nals have gone a long way toward
achieving that aim.
After the withdrawal from Beirut
Arafat became a general without an
army. The PLO commandos were
dispersed in concentration camps across
the Arab world, while those remaining
in Lebanon were firmly under the
control of the Syrian army. The New
York Times (5 June) observed:
"Given what has happened to the
P.L.O. over the last vear it would
appear that former Israeli Defense
4
WORKERS VANGUARD
Birmingham Bomber Jailed: Put Him Awal for Good!
J.B. Stoner: Racist Terrorist
AP
Birmingham, 1963: bombing of Baptist Church kills four young black girls.
"J.B. Stoner was the man behind all the bombings," according to one
Alabama lawman.
zation in Marietta, a racist suburb of
Atlanta. The custodian of those KKK
headquarters is none other than Jerry
Ray. Stoner's law partner is NSRP
supporter James Venable, leader of the
National Knights of the KKK located in
Stone Mountain, Georgia. And Mariet-
ta, known as "Lockheed country"
after its major employer, is in the
Sixth Congressional district whose
House representative is the fanatical
Birchite wltchhunting demagogue, Lar-
ry McDonald.
Black Democrats and the NAACP
have responded to the resurgence of the
Klan in Georgia by pushing a measure
introduced by Atlanta state representa-
tive Tyrone Brooks to create an "anti-
terrorist task force" as part of the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
The measure passed early this year and,
as is always the case with "anti-
extremist" legislation, deference is paid
to the fascists while zeal is exhibited
toward the targets of the fascists: the left
and labor movement. Already, the
Revolutionary Communist Party and
Socialist Workers Party have been
singled out. .
That the creation of the GBI "anti-
terrorist task force" has done nothing to
stop the growth of the Klan was
ominously demonstrated in late May
when 100 members of the Knights of the
Invisible Empire led by Bill Wilkinson
paraded through the streets of the
integrated Atlanta suburb of College
Park. The KKK got a city permit to
march through the efforts of the ACLU
which appeaM:d .tM.cily..councif&.de1loial
to federal district court. The ACLV, so
solicitous of "rights" for fascists, is also
campaigning to prod the state to
investigate Klan murders of Mexican
workers in Georgia. But as has been
demonstrated for over a century, Klan
mobilizations are not a question of"free
speech" but of firebombings, lynch
terror and racist murder.
The strategy to stop the fascists was
demonstrated in Washington, D.C. on
November 27 when the 5,OOO-strong
Labor/Black Mobilization, initiated by
the Spartacist League, kept the Klan off
the streets of the nation's capital, a
Southern and predominantly black city.
This was the most important victory
against racist terror in the U.S. in
decades. But that demonstration only
started the work necessary to sweep the
race-terrorists off the streets once and
for all. This perspective was summed up
in a popular chant at that demonstra-
tion: "1,2,3,4-Time to Finish the Civil
War, 5,6,7,8-Forward to a Workers
State!" It will take a workers revolution
in this country to avenge that murder of
four black girls in September 1963 and
the countless victims of racist terror, so
that black people can walk the streets of
this country without fear and in dignity
and freedom.
Atlanta Spartacist League Forum/Video Showing
Speaker: Ed Kartsen, Chairman, November 27 Labor/Black Mobilization to
Stop the KKK; New York City Transit Worker
Saturday, July 9, 7:00 p.m.
Saint Anthony's Educational Center, 951 Gordon St. S. W.
struggle. not only because it saves lives.
but also because it raises the level of
consciousness of the civil rights move-
ment by encouraging independent
action and discouraging reliance upon
the institutions of the bourgeois state."
-"Toward Arming the Negro
Struggle." Spartacist No.5.
November-December 1965
Stoner has also had a long relationship
with Jerry Ray, brother of James Earl
Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther
King, and was at one time the attorney
for James Earl Ray. Sims' book, The
Klan, marshals substantial evidence
that Stoner may have been involved in a
conspiracy to kill King and in James
Earl Ray's escape from prison.
Stoner has used the NSRP as a
platform to run for public office a
number of times with increasing and
ominous success in statewide races
during the '70s. In 1970, with Jerry Ray
as his campaign organizer, Stoner ran
for governor and got 17,000 votes. In
1972 he polled 40,000 for U.S. Senate
and in 1974, 70,000 votes for lieutenant
governor. As there were plenty of right-
wing and racist candidates in each of
these races, a large vote for Stoner
meant at least passive support for a
notorious and self-declared race-
terrorist.
Stoner's National States Rights
Party was associated with the most
notorious racist killers of this past
generation, including former Michigan
Klan leader Robert Miles. imprisoned
for the 1971 Pontiac school bus bomb-
ings; and Byron de la Beckwith, the
murderer of civil rights leader Medgar
Evers. The NSRP is engaged in broker-
ing the unity' of all fascist forces in the
country. It is aligned to the United
Racist Front formed by Virgil Griffin,
the North Carolina Klan leader who
rode in the lead car at the 1979
Greensboro massacre.
The NSRP's second in command,
Edward Fields, heads the Klan organi-
had worked out a method to communi-
cate with Nazi propagandist Lord Haw
Haw. He moved to Chattanooga at age
18 and joined t ~ Ku Klux Klan there.
Three years later he formed his own
fascist group, the "Stoner Anti-Jewish
Party." In 1946 he told an Atlanta
newspaper the purpose of this group
was "to make being a Jew punishable by
death," and criticized Hitler as "too
moderate" in dealing with Jews!
His anti-Semitic pronouncements
were so extreme that they resulted in his
expulsion from the Association of
Georgia Klans in 1950. But Stoner never
broke off his relationship with the KKK.
In 1952 he moved to Atlanta, linking up
with Edward Fields. Together they
formed the National States Rights
Party (NSRP) in the late '50s, as the self-
styled political arm of the KKK. The
NSRP organized lynch-mob rallies
throughout the South as Stoner traveled
from St. Augustine, Florida to Bogalu-
sa, Louisiana in the company of racist
demagogue "Connie" Lynch. A typical
rally occurred in Anniston, Alabama
where Lynch told his audience: "If it
takes killing to get the Negroes out of
the white man's streets and to protect
our constitutional rights, I say 'Yes, kill
them'!" A carload of men left that rally
and gunned down a black man on a
stretch of highway where a Freedom
Riders bus had been burned in 1961.
Bogalusa was in central Louisiana.
known as Klan country. When CORE
tried to organize a voter registration
drive. arrned Klansmen patrolled the
streets while on the edge of town Stoner
and Lynch would work up crowds with
their race-hate. But here courageous
black residents fought back. organizing
the armed Deacons for Defense and
Justice. The Spartacist League (SL).
although in existence for a bare two
years as an independent organization,
sought to mobilize national support for
the efforts of the Deacons, writing:
"The Deacons organization is a
tremendous step forward for the Negro
Stoner was charged with the 1958 Bethel
Baptist Church bombing, and Chamlis
was found guilty in a trial later that year.
But Patsy Sims in her book The Klan
(New York: Stein and Day, 1978) asserts
that state troopers had information at
the time of the original indictments that
would have led to the implication of an
out-of-state man as the ringleader in the
bombings: '''One lawman told me that
J.B. Stoner was the man behind all the
bombings."
Biography of a Racist Murderer
Born in Walker County, Georgia in
1924, Benjamin Stoner was a vicious
'racist from his youth. By the age of 16 he
ATLANTA-It was a testament to
"justice" in racist, imperialist America
and the state of Alabama, where George
("Segregation Forever") Wallace has
returned to the state house over which
the Confederate flag still flies. Twenty-
five years after the bombing of the
Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham,
one of America's bloodiest race-
terrorists, "J.B." Stoner, began serving
the minimum sentence of ten years for
his heinous crime.
Turning himself in earlier this month
after four months as a fugitive, this
unrepentant racist killer told reporters,
"I am a white political prisoner." And in
a gracious demonstration of "Southern
hospitality," Wallace's prison authori-
ties treated Stoner like a war hero. The 3
June Atlanta Constitution described
how "State corrections officials were
polite and even shook hands with their
newest charge as they subjected him to a
pat-down search." Prison authorities
assured: "Stoner would be given a cell to
himself and measures taken to ensure
his safety." But if Stoner were integrated
into the mainstream of Alabama pris-
ons. with their large black population,
the cause of genuine justice would be
quickly served.
The cordiality of the state of Alabama
toward this fascist murderer was
reflected in the Southern bourgeois
press which has treated him as some-
thing of a folk hero. Typical was an
Atlanta Constitution (6 June) headline,
"Stoner's Life on the Run Pleasant."
Well, he certainly wasn't troubled by
those former employers of the racist
killer Gary Rowe, the FBI. No doubt
Stoner exploited a KKK and fascist
underground whose "close working
relationship" with Southern police is
notorious. Stoner's bombing was one of
60 to rock that city during the civil rights
movement, so that it acquired the
nickname "Bombingham." The Atlanta
Journal ran an article the day after
Stoner turned himself in: "Bombing a
passionless memory now." Not for its
victims, blacks, Jews and other minori-
ties, the labor movement and every
decent American that opposes fascist
terror and racist murder!
There is one Birmingham bombing in
particular, burned into the conscious-
ness of this country, that no "New
South" claptrap is going to render a
"passionless memory." It was a little
past ten in the morning when Ella
Demand dismissed her Sunday school
class. Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson
and Addie Mae Collins, all age 14, and
II-year-old Denise McNair went down-
stairs to a lounge to put on their choir
robes when an explosion ripped through
the Sixth Street Baptist Church. Horri-
fied Qlack residents rushed to the church
past riot police with dogs and shotguris
mobilized to keep them back. They
watched as the mutilated bodies of the
four girls were carried from the rubble.
Twenty-one other members of the
congregation were seriously injured.
The date: 15 September 1963.
Five hundred National Guardsmen
were sent by Governor George Wallace
to Birmingham that night to intimidate
and terrorize angry blacks. By daybreak
police had murdered two more black
youth. one while riding his bicycle. The
bombers were known to the police and
within a few days Robert Cham!is. a
former Klansman, and two other men
were indicted. But the state presented a
case so weak that charges were reduced
to illegal possession of dynamite, and
even these were thrown out on appeal.
Chamlis was reindicted in September
1977 for the bombing, the same month
1 JULY 1983 5
1973: Popular Front Brought Bloody Coup...
1983: Now "Unity" With Pinochet's Henchmen
General Strike in Chile
UPI Hoy
EI Teniente miners (left) Yote for a general strike. Chilean soldiers (right) comb through working-class barrios May 14.
On June 14, hundreds of thousands of
Chileans joined in a national "day of
protest" against the decade-old dictator-
ship of General Augusto Pinochet. The
demonstrations extended from banging
pots and honking horns in middle-
class neighborhoods to bonfires and
barricades in the impoverished pobla-
ciones on the outskirts of Santiago.
More than 1,300 people were arrested
and three killed as the Carabineros
clashed with protesters in the center of
the capital. "People of all ages and
classes joined in defying the govern-
ment," reported the liberal New York
Times with satisfaction. When the
government responded by arresting
Rodolfo Seguel, president of the Cop-
per Workers Federation (CTC). and
other miners' leaders, it was met with a
call for an unlimited general strike
beginning June 23. The work stoppage
was largely limited to copper miners
(who had already been out for a week)
and the truck owners, and on June 26
the action was called off on orders from
the Catholic church hierarchy.
The military regime, as usual, blamed
everything on "the Communist Party
and its known and permanent strategy
of violence and subversion." Pinochet
proclaimed, "Weare going to send the
politicians back to their caves to end this
problem." While the reformists (Social-
ists and Communists alike) are tied to a
wretched "multisector front" dominated
by former Pinochet supporters. their
Christian Democratic allies were an-
gling for a coup by "democratic"
officers-a petition calling for a "change
in command" is now circulating in the
barracks (Clarin [Buenos Aires], 23
June). But even though the May/June
. actions have been led by forces seeking a
"negotiated transition," this crisis must
be seized upon to build a revolutionary
opposition rooted in the Chilean prole-
tariat. The Trotskyists of the interna-
tional Spartacist tendency demand, as
we have ever since that tragic September
II: "Smash the Junta-For Workers
Revolution!"
The bloody defeat of the Chilean
proletariat ten years ago raised once
again fundamental lessons of the com-
munist movement. Salvador Allende's
Unidad Popular (UP) coalition of mass
reformist workers parties allied with
tiny middle-class liberal formations was
a classic "popular front." And as in the
Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices
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Fri .. 500-800 pm, Sat 300-600 pm
1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland. California Phone (415) 835-1535
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Tues. 530-900 pm Sat 200-530 p m
523 S Plymouth Court 3rd Floor
Chicago. Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003
New York City
Tues 600-900 pm Sat 1200-400 p m
41 Warren St (one block belOW
Chambers 5t near Church St )
New York NY Phone (2121267-1025
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of Canada ,
Toronto J
Sat 100-500 P m
299 Queen St W SUite 502
Toronto. Ontario Phone (416) 593-4138
6
~
III
1930s (in France, Spain and Chile
notably), this class-collaborationist bloc
paved the way to disaster by subordinat-
ing the workers to "democratic" bour-
geois politicians like Christian Demo-
crat Frei and "constitutionalist" officers
like Pinochet. The UP literally dis'armed
the Chilean masses militarily and
politically, preventing any serious resis-
tanc,e to the coup. The 1973 defeat was
severe, but not a holocaust as in China
1927 or Germany 1933, after which the
proletariat did not raIse its head for a
generation. As a Spartacist League/
U.S. Political Bureau meeting stated a
few months after the coup:
"The urgent and central political task
within the Chilean and international
ostensibly revolutionary left is to
assimilate concretely the lessons of
popular fror,tism with or without
revisionist 'structural transition to
socialism' or petty-bourgeois guerrilla-
ist rhetoric. Our international tendency
is uniquely qualified programmatically
to assist in such a regroupment perspec-
tive. Objectively. the stage in Chile is
being set for a giant civil war, perhaps
within a few years. because the underly-
ing enthusiasm and capacity of the
proletariat have not been exhausted.
But without the painstaking and patient
construction of a Bolshevik party by
work from both without and within the
country. this momentous opportunity
can be let slip."
-"Perspective for Proletarian
Revolution in Chile."
WV No. 41, 29 March 1974
As the Pinochet regime finally begins to
totter, this task has never been more
urgent.
Split in the Ruling Class
The June 14 protest came in response
to the army crackdown against a similar
action a month earlier (see accompany-
ing article). In late Maya National
Workers Command (CNT) was formed,
headed by CTC leader Seguel. The
objective of the CNT action was
proclaimed to be "total recuperation of
[the people's] dignity and full democra-
cy." While the day began with some
bomb explosions of suspicious origin,
the protest was utterly peaceful. if not to
say impotent. Copper workers refused
to eat in company cafeterias. schoolchil-
dren stayed home, etc. Once again
government repression hit the poor
neighborhoods hardest. Seguel talked
of Gandhi. while C:"T leaders "privately
blamed leftist youths [for the downtown
clashes with police] who they said were
outside their control" (New York Times,
15 June). The next day plainclothesmen
-
arrested the 29-year-old CTC chief,
soon to be followed by the rest of the
copper union leaders.
This finally provoked a strike, as
workers at the EI Salvador, EI Teniente
and Andina mines walked out. The
unions at Chuquicamata, the largest
open-pit copper mine in the world,
buckled under to government pressure,
As the strike continued, CNT leaders
called for a national work stoppage;
they were joined by small businessmen
who are on the verge of bankruptcy as a
result of Chile's staggering depression,
The Christian Democrats indicated
their approval, and the American
embassy protested against the arrest of
Segue!. From the beginning it has been
clear that the current unrest reflects a
split in the Chilean ruling class. While
the work stoppage petered out, influen-
tial imperialist mouthpieces insist that
Pinochet's days are numbered.
The organizers of the May and June
actions were clearly rightist in orienta-
tion. While three union leaders associat-
ed with the Communist Party were
arrested, the Copper Federation is
controlled by Christian Democrats.
CTCjCNT leader Seguel even brags
that on II September 1973 he hung out
the Chilean flag in support of the
Pinochet coup. The other leading group
is the Democratic Workers Union
(UDT), an outfit associated with the
American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD), a CIA "labor"
front formed by the anti-Communist
American AFL-CIO and leading multi-
national corporations. These company
unionists were actively involved in the
U.S. campaign of "destabilizing" the UP
regime, as were the truckers whose
lengthy 1972 and 1973 lockouts were
financed directly by the CIA. By
forming a political bloc with these paid
agents of imperialism. the "Socialist"
and "Communist" sellouts are once
again preparing to sabofage the work-
ers' struggles if they go beyond the limits
of (bourgeois) "democracy." Genuine
revolutionaries would have intervened
in the recent protests organizing inde-
pendent actions and warning the /'lasses
against "unity" with such criminals It'ho
howled with the wolves/or the Pinochc/
bloodbath.
Who Supported the
Copper Miners?
The fake-lefts are predictably
enthusing over a "New Generation of
Labor Leaders Defying Pinochet"
(Guardian [New York], 29 June).
Others are touting Seguel as a "new
Walesa." Certainly this Christian Dem-
ocrat who hailed Pinochet is just as
reactionary as the head of the Polish
company union for the Vatican and
Western bankers. But how has it come
to pass that these are the most promi-
nent Chilean union leaders today? What
we are witnessing is the heavy legacy of
the UP popular front, ten years later. In
the last months of the Allende regime,
the leftist government repeatedly acted
to hold back militant workers (as in the
cordones industriales), to give back
plants seized from the capitalists, to
enforce a "gun control" law through
searching factories and leftist party
offices. This not only greatly demoral-
ized the most class-conscious proletariat
in South America, but in the case of the
famous El Teniente copper strike, the
popular front forced many into the arms
of the right. This betrayal is vividly
recalled by every copper miner in Chile
today.
The May-June 1973 miners strike was
called to demand payment of a cost-of-
living adjustment, due under a "sliding
scale" won initially from the imperialist
copper corporations and maintained by
the state mining company CODELCO
in 1972. As Nixon & Co. tightened the
screws on Chile, "making the economy
scream," rather than proceeding to
expropriate the bourgeoisie the Unidad
Popular tried to squeeze better-paid
sectors of the working class. When the
miners struck for their rights, they were
denounced as "privileged" anct-"econo-
mistic" including by much of t h ~ "far
left." The foaming Stalinists even called
the strikers "fascists." Yet the miners in
the past had been the vanguard of the
Chilean labor movement, as they are
once again today, They had voted for
leftist union leaders, even supporting a
tiny left-reformist split from the Social-
ist Party which refused to join the UP,
The strike leader. Guillermo Medina,
though a former Christian Democrat.
was elected as a maverick with leftist
support. and some Socialist union
officials voted for the strike. But when
Ailcnde declared military rule in the
mIning town of Rancagua and tried to
force the strikers back to \\ork. this
changed dramatically.
\Vhile the entire Chilean popular
front was denouncing the miners, the
Spartacists supported their just action
continued on page 10
WORKERS VANGUARD
Pinochet to the Wall,
Workers to Power!
Sygma
Santiago, May 14-Shaky Plnochet regime responds to May moblllzations with mass arrests, torture, killing.
JUNE 13-The May Days in Chile
marked the first coordinated national
mass protests in the country since the
bloody overthrow of Allende's left-wing
Unidad Popular (UP) regime a decade
ago. The old images return: once again
the stadiums are filled with prisoners,
once again they are banging empty pots
and pans. Enraged sectors of the petty
bourgeoisie are in the streets again, this
time against Pinochet. Yet the funda-
mental force in the May protests was not
the lawyers, students and housewives
from the harrio alto. It was the working
class, from the powerful copper miners
to the hundreds of thousands of unem-
ployed who set up barricades in Santia-
go's shantytowns. The political leaders,
from the reactionary right to the
pseudo-socialist left, are seeking to put
together a new class-collaborationist
alliance to hold these masses in check.
They know that once the working class
arises it wiil shake this shoestring
country from the Atacama Desert to the
Antarctic. But the only way to avenge
the tens of thousands dead, the hundred
thousand sent to concentration camps,
the million Chileans forced into exile,
the only way to wipe the milico butchers
off the face of the earth forever, is
through workers revolution.
May II opened a new stage in the
struggle against the Pinochet dictator-
ship, the stage of open mobilization.
The regime responded with its accus-
tomed brutality, arresting, beating,
killing. But already a new day of protest
has been called for June 14. As one
leader of the protests remarked, "Under
the terror, the Chilean masses have lost
everything, even their fear." A corre-
spondent reports: "Audiences watching
the American film Reds routinely break
mto cheers and whistles when the sound
track plays the Internationale, the
anthem of the world communist move-
ment" (Miami Herald, 29 March).
Today the junta has become almost
completely isolated from the civilian
population, supported on its bayonets
alone. Chile's so-called "economic
miracle" produced by the notorious
"Chicago boys" has devastated the
country: official unemployment well
over 30 percent, spiraling bankruptcies.
With massive discontent at every level of
the population, Pinochet's agony has
begun. This opportunity must be seized
to bring down the dictatorship through
revolutionary action. The Spartacist
tendency has called ever since that
infamous September II, "Down with
the junta-Workers to power!"
A moment is approaching that
1 JULY 1983
millions of Chileans have been yearning
for, as the jobless scratched through
garbage piles for a scrap to eat, as they
have suffered through ten years of
brutal repression under the military
boot. The day of reckoning would come,
days of vengeance when the tyrants who
goosestep past the burnt-out Moneda
Palace could be brought to revolution-
ary justice. But the reformist misleaders
of the left and labor movement are
putting together one of the most hideous
"popular fronts" in history, including
not only Socialists and Radicals (sup-
ported by the Communists), but also the
Christian Democrats who cheered the
'73 coup, the National Party which
spearheaded the rightist mobilizations,
and even some of the fascist Patria y
Libertad terrorists! During the time of
Allende, powerful workers struggles
which took over factories and farms
were blocked by the UP popular front,
paving the way for the bloody takeover
by "constitutionalist" General Pinochet.
Today the "democratic" and "multi-
party" alliances threaten to strangle 'a
brewing mass insurrection. It is urgently
necessary to forge a Trotskyist party,
drawing the tragic lessons of the popular
front, to lead the Chilean proletariat to
victory. The alternative is another
catastrophic defeat, as today's "demo-
crats" once again become the blood-
hounds when things get "out of hand."
May Days in Santiago
The May II protests were called by
the Confederation of Copper Workers
(CTC), representing 22,000 workers of
the state-owned CODELCO mining
-0
Ql
:J
o
'"
3
Ql
iNi olvido, oj
perd6n,
Pinochet al
pared6n!
(Neither forgive
nor forget,
Pinochet to the
wall!)
corporation. In the last couple years a
new leadership, politically close to the
Christian Democrats, has taken over the
CTC, growing out of the two-month
copper strike of 1981 and replacing the
previous unconditional pinochetistas at
the head of this strategic union. A
national congress of the CTC in April
originally called for a national work
stoppage against the "complete eco-
nomic, social, cultural and political
system... which is surrounding us and
crushing us." At the end of their
congress, the miners marched through
the capital, defying busloads of police.
The regime, caught off guard. hesitated
briefly and then responded the only way
it knows how. Attempts by several
hundred protesters to march on May I
were broken up by bands of government
thugs in plainclothes. And in the next
days tanks surrounded the EI Teniente,
Chuquicamata and El Salvador mines
as the army threatened dire conse-
quences in the event of a strike. On May
7 CTC leader Rodolfo Seguel rescinded
the call for a strike, urging "peaceful but
active protests" instead.
But the whole country was in a state
of expectation, and even though the
action was called off it could not stop
the outpouring of rebellion on the 11th.
The CTC tops had called for a classless
"civic protest," including the banging of
pots and pans, that symbol of the right-
wing "destabilization" of Allende's UP.
And the middle class expressed its
growing desperation: parents kept
children home from school, key inter-
sections were tied up in the evening with
everyone honking their horns, when
darkness fell students poured out of the
universities to hold lightning rallies.
When police tried to scatter them it led
to running battles all over downtown
Santiago and government forces were
not able to regain control until dawn.
But the hard core of the protests was in
the slum neighborhoods. where barri-
cades went up in fuli daylight and the
riot police launched murderous charges.
Thousands took part in the actions: two
were killed and 350 arrested in the
capital and hundreds more in the
provinces. Among those detained were
three prie'sts and 34 seminarians.
While the protests ranged from the
slums to the suburbs. the dictatorship
knew who was their real enemv: the
repression was concentrated over-
whelmingly in the workers districts. The
following day there was a funeral for
one of the victims of the cop terror in the
barrio of La Victoria. Fifteen hundred
people joined the funeral procession
shouting anti-government slogans.
Theh in the early morning hours of May
14 the military struck hard. At 4 a.m.
dozens of army trucks carrying heavily
armed combat troops pulled up to the
La Victoria and loao Goulart shanty-
towns. Streets were cordoned off as
loudspeakers ordered all males over the
age of 14 to come out. Some 3,000 men
were picked out and hauled off to the
soccer stadiums where they stood for
hours in the rain for "identity checks."
Several hundred were then removed to
police stations to face beatings and
torture at the hands of the CNI
(Pinochet's secret police. formerly the
DINA). But the repression no longer
intimidates. and new anti-government
actions have already been announced.
May II came after a geometric
escalation of protests against the mili-
tary regime over the last six months. In
December 1982 a series of demonstra-
tions by the National Union Coordinat-
ing Committee (CNS) brought hun-
dreds into the streets of Santiago,
resulting in the deportation and banish-
ment (to remote areas of Chile) of
several CNS leaders. In January 10,000
Christian Democratic Party (PDC)
supporters paraded on the anniversary
of the death of PDC leader Eduardo
Frei. And on March 25 thousands
surged through downtown Santiago in a
demonstration announced over Radio
Moscow's "Escucha Chile" (Listen
Chile) shortwave radio program. Some
250 Communist Party (PCCh) youth
battled it out with the cops, throwing
bricks and receiving blasts from water
cannons which were used for the first
time since 1973.
Bourgeois Opposition Grows
Behind the explosion of opposition to
the Pinochet regime is a depression
rivaling that of the 1930s. But while it is
fed by the worldwide capitalist crisis, the
policies of the Chilean dictatorship have
turned this into a catastrophe. The
"economic miracle" of the "Chicago
boys," disciples of monetarist madman
Milton Friedman. have devastated
Chile. Last year. according to officia
figures. the country's gross national
production plunged by 14 percent.
compared to a ! percent decline in
South America as a whole. According to
government statistics. 30 percent of the
workforce is jobless and another 5 per-
cent are working on government starva-
tion wage ($27 a month) projects. In a
continued on page 8
7
TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA
SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY
National Office Chicago Madison
Box 1377, GPO Box 6441 c/o SYL
New York, NY 10116 Main P.O. Box 2074
(212) 732-7860 Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701
(312) 427-0003 (608) 251-3398
Ann Arbor
New York
c/o SYL Cleveland
P.O. Box 8364 Box 91954
Box 444
Ann Arbor. MI 48107 Cleveland. OH 44101
Canal Street Station
(313) 662-2339 (216) 621-513S
New York, NY 10013
(212) 267-1025
Atlanta Detroii.
Norfolk
Box 4012
Box 32717
P.O. Box 1972. Main P.O.
Atlanta, GA 30302
Detroit. MI 48232
Norfolk. VA 23501
(313) 961-'680
(8041 543-4300
Berkeley/Oakiand
DO. Box 32552 Houston
San Francisco
C/'J, 94604 Box ;6474
Box 5712
(415) 835-15% HoustOl. TX 77207
San Francisco. CA 94101
Bostc.in Los Angeles
(415) 863-6963
Box 840 Box 29574 Washington, D.C.
Central Station Los Feliz Station P.O. Box 75073
Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Washington, D.C. 20013
(617) 492-3928 (213) 663-1216 (202) 636-3537
Pinochet...
(continued from page 7)
country of II million people, more than
350,000 are homeless. Beggars are
everywhere, the desperately poor cluster
around soup kitchens as unemployment
reaches 90 percent in some of the
Santiago slums. Production has fallen
to below 1972 levels, while those
workers who have jobs are earning only
40 percent of what they were making ten
years ago in terms of real wages
(adjusted for inflation). Chile under
Pinochet has become an unmitigated
economic disaster area.
If Milton Friedman returned to Chile
today he would be lynched by the most
"respectable" citizens, once his avid
supporters. Conservative wheat farmers
issued a manifesto in Temuco last
December calling for a debt moratori-
um, government takeover of the bank-
ing system and fixed interest rates. Last
month the rabidly right-wing small
truck owners threatened to repeat their
shutdown/lockout which paralyzed
transport and helped bring down
Allende in 1973, unless the government
reverses its economic policies. Even
Roberto Thieme, one of the top leaders
of the fascist Patria y Libertad terror-
ists, has denounced Pinochet for selling
out to the international bankers. And
former junta General Leigh, too, has
become a born-again democrat.
Concluding that the present ruling
clique is incapable of competently
managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie,
late last year truckers leader Villarin got
together with Christian Democratic
spokesman Lavandero to launch the
"Project to Develop a National Consen-
sus" (Proden). This right-wing coalition
called on Pinochet to step down as head
of government (while remaining in
command of the armed forces) as a new
military junta together with the bour-
geois parties would prepare for elections
two years hence. In March the Proden
gave rise to a broader "multiparty"
coalition based on the so-called "Demo-
cratic Manifesto." This document calls
for rescinding the state of emergency,
reestablishing individual liberties, dis-
closing the fate of the "disappeared,"
legalizing political parties and sealing a
pact between the state, employers and
workers. The Manifesto does not call
even for the end of the military regime,
and its talk of a "social pact" is nothing
but a device to save the milico butchers
from a richly deserved fate-out of fear
of a popular uprising. Yet not only arch-
reactionaries signed this disgustingly
anti-democratic manifesto; the multi-
partidaria also includes bourgeois liber-
al social democrats (formerly Radicals)
and reformist socialists of the Altamira-
no, Almeyda and Ampuero fractions of
the splintered Socialist Party (PS).
For a Chilean Trotskyist Party
The days are numbered for the
Pinochet regime. Will the regime crisis
be transformed into a revolutionary
crisis of Chilean capitalism'? Certainly
CORRECTIONS
The article "Avenge Black South
African Martyrs" ( WV No. 332, 17
June) incorrectly reported that
1,200 leaflets were distributed for
the June 8 protest outside the South
African airline office in San Fran-
cisco. In fact, 12,000 leaflets were
distributed.
In the article "Racist Courts Give
FBI/KKK Informers License to
Kill" (WV No. 331, 3 June), a
paragraph was garbled through a
paste-up error. It should have read:
"The judge went further, aping J.
Edgar Hoover's tribute in stating
that Gary Rowe was 'a good
informer, perhaps the best informer
in the whole area.' This is the man
who planned, organized and led
most of the major KKK terrorist
actions in Alabama during the time
he was on the FBI's payroll!"
8
the "pracer" (Fuhrer) Pinochet shows
the same qualities as a Nicholas Roma-
nov or Louis XVI: having forgotten
nothing and learned nothing, his answer
to all challenges is ... more clubs and
more bullets. And while the masses are
starving, while the Moneda remains a
burnt-out shell, Pinochet is building a
palatial new bunker preparing, perhaps,
for a fiery Gotterdammerung. Mean-
while, the Argentine junta, which
already suffered a disastrous defeat
through its Falklands/Malvinas adven-
ture, is now facing a swelling tide of
outrage over the ghosts of the "disap-
peared." In Bolivia the (not very)
"popular democratic" government is
being challenged by the very working
class it claims to represent. Thus the
opportunity is posed throughout the
Southern Cone, that the overthrow of
the bloody rule of the milico butchers
could open the road to workers revolu-
tion. But it requires the intervention ofa
Bolshevik vanguard, built in the
struggle to reforge Leon Trotsky's
Fourth International, to mobilize the
proletariat on the program of perma-
nent revolution.
Today the most radical elements of
the Chilean left are calling for a new
edition of the UP, which prepared the
way for Pinochet (Allende's last minis-
ter of defense) by demobilizing, demor-
alizing and directly repressing the com-
bative workers. But the major parties
are promoting an even more sinister
popular front with the very counterrev-
olutionaries who worked together with
the CIA to prepare the 1973 bloodbath,
who for years cheered the "patriot"
Pinochet ... until their own profits were
affected. The Communist Party of Chile
is one of the most abysmally reformist
parties in the firmament of Latin
American Stalinism. For seven years
after the generals and admirals took
power, the PCCh continued to preach
the "peaceful road" lie. In late 1980 these
gravediggers of the revolution reluctant-
ly came out for "armed struggle" to
"restore democracy." Now, in the midst
of the anti-Soviet war drive, this empty
gesture is being used to keep the
Communists out of the multiparty
fronts. But this has not stopped the
groveling Stalinists from supporting
them. In January, PCCh leader Corva-
Ian issued a call for:
" ... an understanding with all opposi-
tion forces of the left, center and right to
reconstruct the country ... even though
this implies that the left will not
participate in the government."
-El Puelche, April 1983
The Socialist Party has again split
into a myriad of squabbling clienteles:
MAS, USOPO, CNR, Consensus
Group, 24th Congress, Spark, Com-
mander, Vanguard Tendency, Workers
Front, etc. The right-wing elements last
year sponsored the Convergencia So-
cialista regroupment with ex-Christian
Democrats of MAPU and Ie. based on
a "pluralist" platform rejecting an
"exclusively Marxist vision." They have
also joined the "Democratic Manifesto"
grouping despite the exclusion of the
CPo But even the most left-talking
sectors of the PS are holding up
bourgeois democracy as the alternative
to Pinochet "fascism."
What about the Revolutionary Left
Movement (MIR), at one time the
nemesis of the CP which even blamed
the Pinochet coup on supposed MIR
"ultraleft" excesses. Under the UP the
MIR followed a policy of "criticai
support" to Allende, providing a squad
of bodyguards to the "compariero
presidente" while fostering land take-
overs which went beyond the narrow
limits of the land reform inherited from
the Christian Democrats. As guerriJla-
ists they had no confidence in the power
of the working class: during the crucial
months of 1972-73 the MIR was
pushing its empty comandos comunales
("professional" barrio militias) and
stood largely outside the mushrooming
cordones industriales, district factory
committees representing embryos of
dual power. After the coup it sponsored
some ill-fated adventures while insisting
on the suicidal policy of keeping all its
militants inside the country. Today the
MIR has issued a disgusting appeal for
petty-bourgeois exiles to return to Chile
using various kinds of imperialist aid
("Carta abierta al exilio chileno,"
January 1983), and MIR leader Andres
Pascal Allende sent a positively grovel-
ing letter to the president of the
Christian Democrats, praising the PDC
leader's "high civic profile," praising
Christian Democracy's supposed aspi-
ration for "real mass democracy in
Chile" (!) and proposing points for a
social pact (AIR, January-February
1983).
The struggle to expose and politically
defeat the reformist betrayers of the
Chilean proletariat, who delivered it
bound hand and foot to the military and
now promise to do the same for the
Christian Democrats, requires the
leadership of a Trotskyist vanguard.
Drawing the lessons of the UP popular
front, it prepares the road to a workers'
victory. The reformist misleadersjustify
their class collaboration with endless
arguments about the need to "restore
democracy." Suffering through the long
night of military bonapartism, the
Chilean masses certainly yearn for
"bread, justice and freedom." They can
and must be mobilized around demo-
cratic demands, but these can be won
only through revolutionary struggle
against the bourgeoisie. In a military
confrontation between bourgeois de-
mocracy and bonapartism, the working
class fights on the side of the former,
with the Spanish republic against the
Francoists. with Kerensky against
Kornilov. But the working class defends
democracy, and its democratic rights in
particular, with its own revolutionary
methods and against all the parties and
politicians of the class enemy.
Not a treacherous social pact to
provide immunity for the torturers and
killers, b'lt people's tribunals to mete
out justice to the junta criminals and
their accomplices! Smash the CNI/
DINA secret police, stronghold of the
Pinochet dictatorship! For the forma-
tion of soldiers and sailors committees
in the armed forces, to mobilize the
worker-peasant ranks against the
Prussian-minded officer caste, uni-
formed guard dogs of the bourgeoisie!
For an agrarian revolution-the peas-
ants must seize the landed estates! No
negotiated "return to the barracks" with
carefully orchestrated "free elections"
(manipulated by the CIA), but a
revolutionary constituent assembly.
None of these demands can be achieved
except through a mass workers uprising,
to overthrow the butcher junta and
establish a workers and peasants gov-
ernment. Moreover, a victorious work-
ers revolution would immediately pass
on to socialist tasks, including expropri-
Toronto
Box 7198. Station A
Toronto. Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138
at ion of the capitalist class. Today it is
vital to begin organizing in clandestinity
the future workers militias, to rebuild
the cordones industriales as potential
soviets, and to forge the nucleus of a
Leninist-Trotskyist party in struggle
against all variants of popular frontism.
In 1970 when the rest of the left was
hailing Allende, we wrote prophetically:
"It is the most elementary duty for
revolutionary Marxists to irreconcila-
bly oppose the Popular Front in the
election and to place absolutely no
confidence in it in power. Any 'critical
support' to the Allende coalition is class
treason, paving the way for a bloody
defeat for the Chilean working people
when domestic reaction, abetted by
international imperialism, is ready."
-Spartacist No. 19,
November-December 1970
After the fall of the UP, with its tragic
toll of thousands of the best fighters for
the workers' cause, the shameless
Moscow Stalinists blamed "ultralefts"
while their Castroite allies lamented
only that the masses were not armed.
But now the PCCh and MIR are united
in calling for "armed struggle" ... and in
desperately seeking an alliance with the
Christian Democratic friends of the
CIA and ex-friends of Pinochet! In
demonstration after demonstration, the
reformists chanted, "The people united
will never be defeated," a cynical
apology for their own role in preparing
the bloody defeat of September 1973 by
"uniting" the working people with their
exploiters. Now once again we warn:
popular front means workers' blood!
Shortly after the fall of the UP and the
assassination of Salvador Allende,
Chilean Stalinist poet Pablo Neruda
also died when troops raided his home.
His magnum opus, the Canto General,
had been put to music and was to have
been performed in Santiago that month.
In that poem Neruda referred in bitter
terms to an earlier period when the
northern deserts and frozen southern
islands were populated by concentra-
-tion camps full of communists. The
hangman then was named Gonzalez
Videla, who like Pinochet was brought
to power by the popular front (in 1946).
Neruda wrote:
"Gonzalez Videla is the rat who sweeps
his tail full of dung and blood, over my
land which he sold out. Every day
"He pulls the stolen money out of his
pockets and thinks whether tomorrow
he will sell territory or blood.
"He had betrayed everything. He rose
like a rat on the shoulders of the
people...."
But Comrade Neruda-who betrayed,
who sold out'? Gonzalez Videla and
Pinochet were doing their duty to their
rapacious class in bloodily suppressing
the workers. It was the Stalinists, the
reformists and popular frontists, who
betrayed. The task of the Trotskyists is
to expose that betrayal, break their
stranglehold and lead the struggle for
workers revolution. "i Pinochet al pa-
redan, obreros al poder!".
Vancouver
Box 26. Station A
Vancouver. B. C. V6C 2L8
(604) 681-2422
WORKERS VANGUARD
Victims of U.S.-backed death squads: liberals want to cut a deal with Salva-
doran butchers, but a negotiated solution will only lead to a bloodbath.
best hope of heading off a military
victory by the leftist insurgents. The
reformists and rad-libs join the Demo-
crats and their bourgeois counterparts
in Central America in calling for a
negotiated sellout of the Salvadoran
rebel fighters in the field. We say:
Forward to military victory against the
U.S.-backed junta! Keep the butchers
on the run!
"No more Vietnams" means for the
Democrats no more social revolutions,
no more "going Communist," no more
"Soviet bases." The Vietnamese not
only defeated the U.S. war machine and
shattered the morale of the U.S.
military, but they made a social revolu-
tion against capitalism in their country.
In so doing, they "alienated" liberal
public opinion, particularly as the anti-
Soviet war drive heated up under Jimmy
Carter. His "human rights" campaign
specifically and vindictively targeted
Vietnam. "Boat people," "reeducation
camps" and "Soviet yellow rain" (a.k.a.
bee shit) were all supposed to outrage
public opinion in the "free world" and
reverse the image of U.S. imperialism
from terror-bombers to defenders of the
victims of "totalitarianism."
When Vietnam intervened In
Cambodia in 1979, China played the
role of eat's paw for U.S. imperialism
and threatened to teach the Vietnamese
a "bloody lesson." The Pentagon no
doubt itched to more directly get in on
the action-but it could not. Nor could
the U.S. intervene when Cuban troops
backed up the Angolan MPLA against
the South African invasion of Angola in
1975-76. The bipartisan anti-Soviet war
drive seeks to do away with the
"Vietnam syndrome" and free the U.S.
imperialists to intervene where and
when they want to.
Unfortunately, the imperialist propa-
ganda that behind every movement for
social justice in the world lurks a
Kremlin plot to spread "Marxist states"
is not true. Soviet arms are not flowing
into El Salvador-although they are
sorely needed. Nor are the Sandinistas
getting what they need to kill the
Somocista invaders. Certainly the Viet-
namese received insufficient military
aid from the USSR (compared to what
was given to capitalist Egypt, for
example). The Stalinist bureaucracies
which sit atop the deformed and
degenerated workers states will go (and
have gone) to almost any lengths to
contain the global class war in their pipe
dream of "peaceful coexistence" with
imperialism.
U.S. imperialism is hell-bent on
reclaiming the one-sixth of the globe
ripped from the capitalist world when
the workers of Russia made a revolution
in 1917. But the frightened U.S. left has
been in rapid flight to the right since
Reagan's election. Unable and unwilling
to stand up to the anti-Soviet war drive,
the reformists now find themselves
organizing a social-patriotic show for
the bourgeoisie to bury the spectre of
Vietnam and sell out the heroic fighters
in the hills of Central America. The
Spartacists say: Salvadoran butchers on
the run-Leftist rebels need Russian
guns! Smash Reagan's Bay of Pigs-
Nicaragua needs MIGs!.
.- .
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Spartacist Forum/Film Showing
Smash Reagan's Nicaraguan Bay of Pigs!
Military Victory to Salvadoran leftists!
set central America Aflame
With Workers Revolution!
Plus: Special Film Showing-
"Target Nicaragua: Inside the Covert War"
Directed and Produced by Saul Landau
Saturday, July 2, 7:00 p.m.
Hotel Madison. Arlington Room-2nd Floor, 15th and M Streets. N.W.
for more information: (202)636-3537
Class Struggle at Home
Not "dovish" peace-crawls which
pressure for a sellout, but revolutionary
struggle is needed now. We must
organize concrete acts of working-class
solidarity here in the heart of the
imperialist monster. This is why class-
struggle unionists of the International
Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's
Union have been fighting for hot-
cargoing of goods bound for EI Salva-
dor and a coastwide port shutdown (see
articles, page 12). During the Vietnam
War the SL called for political strikes
against the war. The fundamental
defeatism of the reformists, who see no
possibility of mobilizing the working
class. led them to rely on the Democrats,
the very party responsible for the
genocidal war in Vietnam-and subse-
quently, willy-nilly, to adopt the imperi-
alist doves' fear and loathing of the
Vietnamese Revolution.
Now the Democrats smell "Vietnam-
style" defeat in El Salvador. "We are
backing sure losers," Democratic Party
spokesman Dodd replied to Reagan. In
the next breath he underlined, "We will
oppose the establishment of Marxist
states in Central America. We will not
accept ... the creation of Soviet military
bases in Central America." And only a
week after Reagan's "get tough on
Communism in Central America"
speech, Salvadoran FDR leader Gui-
llermo Ungo announced: "The United
States has the right to stop the spread of
communism" (Baltimore Sun, 3 May).
That's supposed to be the "opposition"
to Reagan and his puppets! The Dodds
and Ungos view negotiations as the last,
tional who voted war credits to their
"own" bourgeoisie in World War I: "In
the civil war between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in
no small numbers, stand side by side
with the bourgeoisie, with the 'Ver-
sailles' against the 'Communards'"
(Preface to Imperialism).

n"_", e-;:>....
'; . ,."' .....

1 "";",,,-

. ...:. ...:.- ..-

-r;;;.-. . I

.......lII<W :::;)08!
please the anti-Reagan, anti-Soviet
popular front we raised the slogan:
"Defense of Cuba/USSR Begins in El
Salvador!" The pop-frontists take a
side: at the 3 May 1981 march on the
Pentagon, last March 27 in Washing-
ton, they set up goon squads and called
the capitalist cops to prevent demon-
strators from joining with the Trotskyist
revolutionaries of the SL. Big for Bella,
ready for Teddy, clean for Conyers-the
reformists could not tolerate our slo-
gans, our open defense of the Soviet
Union against imperialism, or the fact
that we carried the Cuban, NLF and
FMLN flags in solidarity with those
targets of U.S. imperialism's anti-Soviet
war drive. They could not tolerate that
we openly sided with the U.S.' enemies.
Because the U.S. position has
deteriorated dramatically in Central
America, the reformists must even more
openly take the side of U.S. imperialism.
Lenin could have been describing these
American social-patriots when he wrote
about the traitors of the Second Interna-
Sinhala-Ianguage Lanka Sp-arta-
cist (right) and Tamil-language
lIIangai Spartacist (left).
talist "opposition" party. These
Tamil workers, many of them wom-
en, are strategic to the agriculture-
based economy. They are also a
living link to the tens of millions of
Tamils in India, that prison house of
oppressed nationalities and starving
people. Proletarian revolutionary
struggle in Lanka can be the spring-
board for socialist revolution
throughout the Indian subcontinent.
Support the important work of our
comrades in South Asia by
contributing to the SL/Lanka publi-
cations fund. Payable to/mail to:
Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO,
New York, NY 10116. Earmark
checks "Lanka publications."
The Spartacist League of Lanka
(Ceylon) has announced a campaign
for funds to support its public press.
The SL/Lanka publishes Lanka
Spartacist (in Sinhalese) and JIlangai
Spartacist (in Tamil) and intends to
raise 5,000 rupees. The Lanka com-
rades recently issued No.3 of JIlangai
Spartacist which will be circulated
not only on the island but among
Tamil militants abroad. In recent
months in Europe and the U.S.,
hundreds of militant Tamil national-
ists have demonstrated alongside
comrades of the international Spar-
tacist tendency to protest the Jaya-
wardene government's continuing
brutal military occupation of the
Jaffna peninsula.
The Lanka comrades' struggle for
Tamil national rights is key to our
international revolutionary perspec-
tives. Our Trotskyist propaganda
must reach not only vanguard ele-
ments among the embattled Tamil
national minority concentrated in the
North and East of the island, but
especially the Tamil plantation work-
ers whose grueling labor brings in
most of the country's hard-currency
export earnings. These workers,
whose parents and grandparents
were mainly brought to Ceylon from
Ind ia by the British imperialists, are
denied basic citizenship and real
union protection. They are virtually
ignored by the parliamentarist "left"
which has for decades marched to the
Sinhala-chauvinist tune of the capi-
SL/Lanka Publications Fund
Which Side Are You On?
It is not an accident that it is the
Spartacist League (SL) which has raised
the call for "Military victory to Salva-
doran leftists!" While the Marcyites and
the rest of the reformists were looking to
(continued from page 1)
ese forces. The imperialists were defeat-
ed militarily in the field. But the rad-libs
and reformists like to pretend that they
coaxed U.S. rulers to "abandon" Viet-
nam with their "peace crawls" in New
York and Washington. Now once again
it is defeat of the U.S. and U.S.-backed
regimes which is posed in Central
America. So one of the endorsers of the
July 2 demonstration, CISPES (Com-
mittee in Solidarity with the People of
EI Salvador), asks us to "remember how
the U.S. finally had to leave Vietnam in
disgrace, with embassy staff and 'allies'
rushing to helicopters on the U.S.
embassy roof to escape." We sure do
remember! And we long to see just such
a hasty exit from the American embassy
compound in San Salvador!!
Fear of losing again-the so-called
"Vietnam Syndrome"-continues to
haunt all wings of U.S. imperialism.
Ever since Reagan announced in May
there is "no thought" of sending U.S.
combat troops to Central America,
there has been a campaign to win over
the hearts and minds of Congress to do
exactly that. At the June Williamsburg
economic summit Reagan declared that
it couldn't be "ruled out." Army chief of
staff Edward C. Meyer, with plenty of
caveats about the "lessons of Vietnam,"
said he'd be willing to send in the troops,
but "there will have to be a consensus
within the U.S. populace." Washington
is well aware that the entire South
American continent is a tinderbox and
the intervention of Yankee troops in
Central America could easily trigger
resistance and upheaval from Chile to
Mexico. So the U.S. government is
trying to soften up the U.S. populace
precisely for that possibility.
Central
America...
1 JULY 1983 9
Chile General
Strike...
(continued from page 6)
("Defend Chilean Miners' Strike," WV
No. 23, 22 June 1973). We have
discussed the 1973 copper strike in detail
in our review of the sophisticated
Stalinist propaganda film, "The Battle
of Chile." We pointed out that "the
profitsfrom EI Teniente went not to the
workers but to buy the armedforees new
airplanes. and guns which were later
used to massacre leftists by the tens of
thousands" ("How The Battle of Chile
Disarms the Workers," WV No. 202, 21
April 1978). And in the crucial last
months of 1973 we repeatedly put
forward a revolutionary program of
extending strike action, factory and
hacienda takeovers, calling to turn the
cordones industriales into genuine
soviets, to break with the bourgeoisie
and fight for workers' action to smash
the impending coup, for a workers and
peasants government. We repeatedly
recalled our 1970 warning that the
popular front in power was "paving the
way for a bloody defeat for the Chilean
working people when domestic reac-
tion, abetted by international imperial-
ism, is ready." (These articles are
collected in our Spanish-language
pamphlet, "Chile: Lecciones del Frente
Popular," Cuadernos Marxistas No.3.)
Only the Trotskyists, who defended
the Chilean miners both against the UP
and Pinochet, have the moral authority
to speak to the copper workers today
and warn them that their present
Christian Democratic union tops will
block any genuinely militant struggle
against the hated Pinochet dictatorship.
It is necessary to forge a revolutionary
leadership of the Chilean workers
movement. This cannot be done
through joining the various "left" blocs.
including: such bureaucratic shells as the
"CUT [United Workers Federation] in
exile." but only through intransigent
struggle against all brands of popular
frontism and reformism. Against the ex-
MIRistas of the Bloque Popular Unita-
rio (BPU), who turn disgust with the
treachery of the reformists into "anti-
party" sentiment, we seek to forge a
Chilean Trotskyist party that can be an
authentic vanguard of proletarian
revolution.
Port
Shutdown...
(continued from page 12)
to union-busting throughout the Bay
Area ports and coastwise. A serious
fight must begin to get rid of these
treacherous misleaders who once again
have proven to be labor cops for the
bosses.
The walkout was marked by
exemplary militancy in the ranks, who
were eager for a fight. As a dozen huge
container ships lay idle in the Bay, 700
longshoremen picketed the Levin Metal
Corporation terminal in Richmond,
stopping a security car carrying scabs
from entering the terminal and turning
away trucks. Two dozen other ILWU
members with picket signs used a rented
fishing boat to set up a floating picket of
a cargo vessel, which was honored by
the Masters, Mates and Pilots union.
The notorious Richmond cops, who
delight in beating and killing black
people, didn't show up all day, despite
the issuance of injunctions and restrain-
ing orders to stop the picketing. The
idea ofgoing up against 700 militant and
mainly black longshoremen obviously
scared the hell out of these racist killers.
This example of the power of organized
labor points the way to putting an end to
cop terror in the heavily black city of
Richmond.
The Local 10 bureaucrats were forced
into calling the port shutdown by an
10
angry and militant membership who
want to fight to keep their jobs. The
union bureaucrats have been temporiz-
ing with the Levin Metal Corporation's
refusal to use ILWU longshoremen for
six months. Token picketing earlier this
year had been called off after injunc-
tions were issued. The practice of "ghost
workers" was tolerated, whereby ILWU
longshoremen dispatched to the Levin
terminal would be paid for standing
around all day while the anti-union
company used its own employees to
load the ship.
Last Saturday, in response to mem-
bership pressure and in an attempt to
refurbish their image after being handed
a stunning defeat over their attempt to
purge Stan Gow from union leadership,
the Local 10 officers organized a "mass
picket" by 200 ILWU longshoremen of
the Levin terminal. However the picket
line was set up at noon, four hours after
work had started on the ship, and any
attempt to stop the loading of the ship
was expressly forbidden by Local 10
secretary-treasurer Bill Bancroft who
was on the spot. The 200 longshoremen
had come for action and they became
furious at Bancroft when they learned
there was to be none. On penalty of fines
they were forced to remain there
impotently watching the ship being
loaded by non-ILWU workers for six
hours. The long afternoon was punctu-
ated by angry shouting matches between
the outraged longshoremen and Ban-
croft. The next day, fearful of an
explosion by the ranks, the decision was
announced that the port would be shut
down Monday.
While the membership was enthu-
siastically and eagerly doing battle with
the bosses, the union bureaucrats were
in negotiations behind their backs
selling out the port shutdown. ILWU
International president Jimmy Herman
and the union's Coast Committee were
huddled in a meeting with the Pacific
Maritime Association (PMA) where
they jointly agreed that the port shut-
down was an "illegal work stoppage."
After getting all their lines from the
union lawyers, the Local 10 officers
went into negotiations with Levin Metal
Corporation and the deal was struck. At
7:30 p.m. Local 10 president Carr and
his mouthpiece Bancroft arrived back at
the picket line and announced that
Levin had "agreed" to use a token of
four ILWU longshoremen at the termi-
nal. This complete sellout, which for-
malizes the anti-union "ghost worker"
practices, was praised by Carr and
Bancroft as a "victory" and, over shouts
of outrage by the furious longshoremen,
the shutdown was declared over. Pande-
monium broke out and hundreds of
disgusted workers began leaving the
terminal.
This utter betrayal by the Internation-
al and Local 10 officers is of a piece with
their sniveling, groveling capitulation to
.. :E
.<
"
~
o
o
Longshoremen's
mass picket in
Richmond
shows the way
to beat the
maritime bosses,
but ILWU tops
sold them them
out.
Reagan and Kirkpatrick over the U.S.
war in EI Salvador and their refusal to
take action to defend anti-apartheid
fighters in South Africa. It underlines
what became clear by their trial of Stan
Gow: that they do not speak for the
union members but instead act as the
political police of the bosses. These
labor traitors must be thrown out and
replaced by a class-struggle leadership
that will use the power of labor to
defend the interests of the working class
here and internationally, in the struggle
against the union-busting maritime
bosses as well as in the struggle against
imperialism by our class brothers in EI
Salvador and South Africa. One long-
shoreman said to a WV salesman,
"These guys are rotten, but we got them
when they tried to get Stan." The
membership's victorious defense of Stan
Gow shc)wed that the officers can be
beaten. The port shutdown showed that
the members are willing and eager to
engage in class struggle against the
bosses. The supporters of Stan Gow
must now take a step forward and join
with him to help in the construction
of a class-struggle leadership in the
ILWU.
Bureaucrats'
Bay of Pigs...
(continued from page 12)
appointed himself hanging judge and
stage-managed the proceedings. Mr.
Bancroft is pretty proud of his years of
training in the bosses' law, law that has
victimized many a longshoreman. He
proceeded to eliminate "all this mun-
dane and petty bullshit"-like Gow's
right to present his witnesses and ask his
questions, and have his lawyer present,
or even a tape recorder. He ordered out
all but one ofGow's witnesses, members
of the Local 6 Militant Caucus, and
made the first of several threats to caUin
the SF cops to enforce his "justice."
As events of the next week showed,
Bancroft was only warming up. Prose-
cutor Carl Smith could scarcely contain
himself to get out one of his first
questions to Gow: "Do you belong to
any political organizations outside the
union?" Smith had apparently forgotten
the more classic McCarthyite query,
"Are you now or have you ever been...?"
We don't know which cop agency Smith
asked the question on behalf of (even the
trial court thought it was out of line),
but Gow has never made a secret of his
support for the revolutionary program
of the Spartacist League (SL). Much to
the bureaucrats' chagrin, it's precisely
that program that has exposed their role
as the "progressive" cops for the
capitalists inside the labor movement.
Even in rigged trial courts, life is no
bed of roses for the embattled fakers of
the Local 10 leadership. They wanted
Gow banned from union office for the
next five years. But despite their efforts
to conduct a trial more appropriate to
some caricature of a mobster-infested
Teamster local, they had to settle for a
30-day suspension and a six-month
probation. Clearly the members of the
trial court, who have to work the docks
daily, were queasy about giving the
bureaucracy everything it demanded.
When the verdict against Gow was
announced, Militant Caucus members
went to work mobilizing for a big
turnout at the membership meeting the
following Thursday. They covered the
hiring hall with leaflets ("Dump the
Verdict! Defend Stan Gow!" reprinted
in WV No. 332, 17 June), pointing out
the link between the witchhunt and the
officers' support to the Democrats'
austerity policies and the bipartisan
anti-Soviet war drive. One thing really
galled the bureaucrats-that they hadn't
backed Gow down. Just two days before
their purge trial, he was out organizing
to hot cargo the South Africa-bound
NedIIoyd Kimberley, protesting the
lynching of three black ANC fighters by
the apartheid police state. The official
Local 10 South Africa Liberation
Support Committee and its head,
People's World supporter Leo Robin-
son, could only suggest phone calls to
the South African consulate! But the
largely black dockers saw who was
fighting for the victims of Reagan's
favorite "free world" racists, particular-
ly when Carr gave orders to work the
ship and ignore the "illegal" picket set
up by Gow and other ILWU militants.
Carr, Bancroft & Co. are dumb as
well as vicious, and it seems they are
going blind too. Sensing the swell of
membership support for Gow, their fury
grew white hot. With no way to answer
the militants, they tried to silence them.
The day before the Local meeting,
Bancroft called his friends in the SFPD
again and had Local 6 Militant Caucus
member Jackie Clark arrested. The boys
in blue also threw other ILWU members
out of the hall. Bay Area papers began
to cover this unprecedented scandal. As
Clark told the San Francisco Examiner
(16 June), "I've been going into that hall
for three, four years now and talking to
people about political issues. I've
handed out leaflets many times, and I've
never been told to leave. Calling the
police is not the way trade unions run
their business."
The bureaucrats will let damn near
anyone into the hall, except opposition-
ist union members. But arresting a
Local 6 general exec board member like
Clark and claiming she's an "outside
agitator" isn't very smart. Clark has
been fighting her firing by R.J.
Reynolds/ Heublein for honoring lBEW
pickets, while Bancroft's history runs
more toward crossing picket lines (like
those of construction workers at the
University of California). His "outside
agitator" bust against Clark backfired
like the rest of the purge campaign.
Most dockers don't like the cops, and
Bay Area blacks are seething with anger
over brazen cop murders like in
Richmond-they don't want them
busting into their homes or union halls.
The militants' hard work paid off-
nearly 500 showed up for the Local
meeting. According to Gow, the officers
tried to create a stampede to end the
meeting early by directing their support-
ers to line up to have their union books
stamped. But the chief dispatchers
walked up to the mike and proposed a
$25 fine on anyone who didn't return to
the meeting. Thus the bureaucrats were
forced to sit through an hour-long
discussion in which the purge attempt
and the sellout policies behind it were
decisively repudiated.
The commotion in the hall dropped to
silence as Gow made his appeal, and
burst into applause as he finished. His
trial counsel, Roy Bowie, did the job a
union defense needs-getting the work-
ers on their feet to denounce the
WORKERS VANGUARD
JExaminer I
87
i.
;:;
.,
..
!'
;-
!
I
I
-----------_._----
THE TRIBUNE
SATURDAV
'b, (;".", fl., f",,,, 1,;7f
The !l1t'mbt'rship of Local 10 of the International
Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reversed a
trial board's decision last night against Stan Gow, accused
of "unbecoming conduct" for trying to stop 1000ding
operations on a ship bound for El Salvador.
Bill Bancroft, secretary,trea.-;urt'r of Local 10, withheld
d('tails of the meeting. The trial board found Gow guilty
last Saturday and recommendf'<l a :lkiay suspt'nsion and
six months probaticm.
Gow favors a 24-hour work stoppage at West Coast
ports to protest shipment of goods to the government in EI
Salvador.
He couln not be reatll('d last night.
Charlot! Gow, hi'i wift" said the vote in her husband's
favor was 101
meeting tomght '11' the 1,BOO member<; of Local 10.
Bancroft said Clark and the others showed up at the
NOI'th Point hiring hall Tuesday night and handed out
fliers to Local 10 members. The fliers, published by a
longshore group called the Militant Caucus, accused the
ILWU of staging a "witchhunt purge trial" against Gow.
They said '1he Local 10 bureaucracy (was trying) to
railroad Stan Gow out of the leadership of the union."
I asked them to leave," said Bancroft. "They refused,
the police were called, they issued a citation to Jackie and
told her if she returned she would be arrested."
Clark and her cohorts, including Gow, were back at the
hiring hall bright and early yesterday.
When the police were called, the other Local 6 demon-
strators left. Only Clark and Gow stayed Bancroft said
Gow had a right to diortribute hiers because he is a Local 10
member. "Those rights don't extend to people who are not
a member of Local 10. We don't allow nonLocal10 people
to get involved in our politics."
Bancroft said the !.<;sue of EI Salv'ador was a "smoke
screen
He said the IL\\'U opposed by resolution the present
government in El Salvador dnd backed the guerrillas
there. The IL\\<'U also opposed the shipment of arms to
gO\'ernment troops there. he said.
"BUt that's not the here," he asserted. ''The i:>=e is
wiwthf'r Stan Gow will be able to impose his ....i11 on the
membership. Twice now his motions to call a work
stoppage hav'e been voted down, by our loc-ai's executive
board and by the lLWU convention in Portland (Ore) in
April
"Which me;!n, that we are not going to e10Sf' do""n our
ports unless the membership mandates it. If in fact he had
tJe.on-'rucc"5.<ful in ,huttmg down that ship lback in Marchi.
lLWl: member; II nuld have iost almas< $'2.:lCOO in a
gU3<antee for that week. And that's the rt""al He set
up an illegal picket line allegedly ,'ndorsed by Local 10
when m fact it wasn't"
Clark. jailPd for two hOllI"i. v.a' fr('(' on $'250 bail.
Valerie We'it, her attorney, s.lid her client had "every
right' 10 be at the Local 10 hirin!( hall "That has always
bt-en the practice of the union. Ja<'kie feels that it is very
important for the union to take action on E1 Salvador."
She said that her client and the others also wanted
Local 10 membf>1O to be a....are of tonight's meeting.
Members back ILWU maverick
814 S.F. EXAMINER Fri, June 17, 1983
member and of bringing his local
into jeopardy by his action.
Gow, a socialist and a member of,
the "Militant Caucus," was suspend-
ed from his job for 30 days and
placed on probation for six months.
However. Gow appealed and the
conviction was thrown out Thursday
night in a raucous meeting attended
by several hundred members of Lo-
cal 10 in its headquarters at 400
North Point St. in San Francisco.
Gow said he organized the protest
because he Sides with the rebels in EI
Salvador. One of Gow's supporters,
Jackie Clark. of Local 6. was arrest-
ed by San Francisco police Wednes-
day when she tried to pass out leaf-
lets at 400 North Point.
S.F. EXAMINER tMW:- Thurs" June 16. 1983
Union policy
dispute ends
with an arrest
By Norman Melnil:k
Examiner staff writer
An officer of the International Longshoremen's and
WllTehousemen's Union was arrested yesterday in the
esealating dispute between the union and a faction favor
ing a work stoppage over the EI Salvador issue.
Jackie Clark, 33, a member of the general executive
board of IL\\<'U Local 6, was jailed at the instigation of Bill
Bancroft, secretarytreasurer of ILWU Local 10. He said
she had been repeatedly told to get off Locall0's premises
at Fisherman's Wharf and had disregarded the order.
"I a'ikPd Jacqueline and the others to leave," Baneroft
said, "and they saJd nope, and I said I'm going to call th..
police. and they said do what you have to do. 1called the
police.
Said ClarK '"I"v-e been going into that hall for three.
four years now and taLldng to poople abom politic:al iSSUffi
I've handPd out leaflets lnany times, and I've never been
told to lea'.p Callu'g the polb
o
is not the way trade union,
run their blL'illle'i'i,"
Clark was to be arraigned today in San FranciSio
MUnJC';p;; 1Coun on a charge of trespassing.
Sh.. d:1C\ 1\ other members of Local 6 were at the
lLWl' hL-mg hal! at 400 North Point St to proleb, a union
trIal board's del'ision to discipline Loc.allOexecutive board
. member Stan Gow.
Gow, 55 yesterday. had tned to stop loadmg operatiolb
on a ShIp bound for El Salvador in March and was found
guilt\' Saturday of conduct unbecoming to a union mem-
ber TIw tnal board rE'('ommendro a :J).day work SU'iWn
sion and "X month." probation
Whetht'r thest' go lllto effect wilt hl' decided at a
protest at the foot of Seventh Street
in Oakland.
Bill Bancroft, secretary-treasurer
of Local 10, confirmed the reversal
Friday, saying "the membership is
the ruling body in our union."
On March 29, Gow and about 10
other longshoremen from another lo-
cal picketed a ship, the Lafayette,
which was carrying general cargo to
EI Salvador.
A trial committee of Local 10
voted 16-4 last Saturday to convict
Cow of conduct unbecoming a union
were executive board members. in
duding himself. said Gow.
Watkins arrived and was quoted
by Gow as statmf! "This looks like. a
demonstration picket line." Gow said:
''I'd like it to be more than that. Then
someone else made a comment simi-
lar to mine, and (Watkins) went inside
to talk about the picketing and 45
minutes later he left."
Gow said most of the ILWU mem-
bers ignored his picket line and went
to work that night, "except those who
called up Watkins to make sure it
wasn't an official union action."
Earlier, Gow said, he had in-
formed the Local 10 president that he
intended to picket the ship. Gow said
Carr told him that he would recom-
mend that union members go
through the picket line since it was
not sanctioned.
The picketing broke up shortly
after Watkins left, Gow said.
But he didn't stop there, Gow
admitted. He said he introduced the
matter again at the lLWU convention
in Portland in April. Hi, motion re-
ceived only one delegate vote -.- his.
He said he conducted "a very
heav'y fight" for his motion. "I think it
was culled for. Opposition to
this war lin lOt Salvador; 1'; something
that cans for labor union
Of' 'lay 12 he was informed that
charges had been brought against
hun and hst .Saturda-..,'. at 3 fiVE-hour
hearing before a trial boarrl of 2t)
ILWU Local 10 'nembers. he W15
found guilty of umduct unbecoming
a union he said,
He said the pick,'ts who had joined
him in Oakland were not allowed to
testifv. Nor was the lawyer he hired
allow'Pd to be in the same room "ith
him, he said.
Gow said he was the only one
charged. "Frankly, 1 think my just
having taken some action when they
didn't want any action, they just
wanted to take paper action. In a
sense, it was like a purge." !The IL\\<'U
is opposed to the pre;ent government
in EI Salvador.)
By l'\orman Melnitk
Examiner staff writer
A 24-year member and officer of
the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union says he
is facing a :J).day sm.-pension because
he picketed a ship bearing cargo for
EI Salvador.
"I think this is a measure of ac-
commodation to the Reagan adminis-
tration," said Stan Go\\', an avowed
socialist who has been on the execu
tive board of ILWU Local 10 for the
last nine years.
Gow, who will be 55 tomorrow,
said the local's trial board found him
guilty of being "a discredit to the
uninn ..
"H,)\\, 'an I he a di,credit 10 the
nniun'!'" ht
C
13;t night. .,\ should
thUlk inat the ILWl. which has done
.;' thin}!,:, in the past. wouid sup-
bt;t rnavbp this 1.1.) what, is
HI the 'union. r think they
warn no prob:eHls,"
ILWL' Presidfnt Jam,,-s R.
H.'rm"n: "1 have no comment be-
cause thi, is a local matter."
Locai 10 President John Carr
would not confirm the action or
make any comment on the matter.
Gow said he at the Sev
enth Street pier in Oakland the night
of March 29. He and a
other ILWU members picketed a ship
whose destination was EI Salvador.
Gow said he handed out leaflets
containing the signatures of 23 of the
1.600 members of Local 10 calling for
a 24-hour Pacific Coast work stoppage
by ILWU members. Three of the 23
Dock union
punishes
EI Salvador
ship picket
Union members throw out
longshoreman's conviction
By Lester On
Tribllne Sid Writer
A longshoreman's conviction by a
union trial committee for organizing
a protest against the EI Salvador
government has been tossed out by
members of Local 10 of the interna-
tional Longshoremen's and Ware-
housemen's Union,
In a rebuke to the leadership of
Local 10. the members voted Thurs-
day night to reject the conviction of
Stanley Gow, 55, of Oakland, for hiS
part on March 29 in organizing the
Make payable/mail to Spartacist PUblIShing Co. Box 1377 GPO. New York. New York 10116
Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League
-
333
leaflet concluded:
"[n his 24 vears in the ILWLJ Stan Gow
has never -stopped fighting against the
bosses. racism and imperialism. That's
wh\ the I nternational and Local
officers-acting as political policemen
for the bo,ses and the government-
went after him. Thev know thev are
sitting on a powder keg. Thc task now is
to consolidate this victorv and translate
it into action against the bosses
and their imperialist government.".
0$2/10 introductory issues of
Workers Vanguard (includes Spartacist)
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. (includes Spartacist)
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International Rates 24 'ssues-$20 a,rmail/$5 seama,l
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Address

Theodore Draper once wrote that John

F. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba was "one of those rare politico-
military events-a perfect failure."
Well, Herman, Carr and Bancroft-
errand boys for the sinister warmonger
Jeane Kirkpatrick and her boss
Reagan-managed to achieve their own
"Bay of Pigs." It's a defeat they can't
forget. As the "Longshore Militant"
can he beaten again. It's a question of
program, leadership and organization.
"Another valuable lesson of this ""hole
fight to stop the witchhunt against Stan
is learning who your friends are and
who your enemies are when the chips
are down. And not just the open
enemies. but the hidden enemies as well.
We'll have more to sav on this score
later." '
There's a changed mood around the
Local 10 hall these days. WV salesmen
report that People's World hawkers
scurry away when confronted about
their support to the bureaucrats' witch-
hunt. Seeing our coverage of the purge
attempt, members proudly boast, "We
took care of that." The majority black
membership of Local 10 doesn't buy
Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive, and
they want to put a stop to imperialist
butchery in Central America and South
Africa. One black member in particular
respected Gow's action under fire
against the Nedlloyd Kimberley: "All
the guys have been talking about it. We
just couldn't let them do that to him.
Wrong is wrong is wrong." Already the
Local 10 misleaders are feeling the sting.
Their attempt to short sell the fight to
protect longshore jobs against scabs in
Richmond is meeting heavy resistance.
The anti-Communist historian
frameup they knew was aimed at them
too. The bureaucrats spoke, but Carr
was a mere shadow of the arrogant
witchhunter who only days earlier
taunted Gow: "You're dead!" Bancroft
spoke too, as did Leo Robinson. who
remembers how the Stalinists helped the
FBI sic the Smith Act on Trotskyist
Teamsters in Minneapolis decades ago
(although now that Leo has counted the
votes, he says he was "mistaken").
The ranks weren't buying "progres-
sive" purges though. First there was a
voice vote, and the guard claimed it was
unclear. So the bureaucrats took a show
of hands. About 40 people meekly
raised their hands for the motion, but
then about 400 Local 10 members rose
up, jumping out of their seats to vote
against the purge as chants of "No! No!
No!" rang out. The verdict was thrown
into the trash. While the fakers and their
friends slunk away, the members
thronged around Gow to congratulate
him on their victory. A "Longshore
'Militant" leaflet entitled "We Won!"
laid it out:
"This victory was a powerful example of
the initiative and resoun:cs of the
workers when they stick together and
organi/e to fight in their own interests.
II the officers can he heaten once they
1 JULY 1983 11
W'Ii/(ERS ""'UAIi'

II!S ayo ureaucrats'

Victory' for Longshore Militancy' and Democracy
.'Hot Cargo Arms to EI SaivadOrfJSouthAfr;ca!
SAN FRANCISCO-At the June 16
membership meeting of SF Longshore
Local 10, members handed a stinging
rebuke to the liberal witchhunters who
run the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union (lLWU),
and struck a substantial blow for the
right to organize concrete labor solidari-
ty actions with their class brothers
around the world. At issue was the
purge attempt aimed at Stan Gow,
"Longshore Militant" editor and Local
10 executive board member, for his
attempt to stop the loading of the
freighter Lafayette with death cargo
bound for Reagan's butchers in EI
Salvador. The ILWU Local 10 leader-
ship charged Gow with "conduct unbe-
coming a union member," but Local 10
members were not about to sit still for
International president Jimmy Her-
man's plans to make the ILWU safe for
his imperialist masters. Hundreds over-
whelmingly rejected (by a 10-10-1
margin) a Local trial court's verdict
against Gow, and in the process handed
the bureaucrats the biggest defeat
they've suffered in years.
Gow was made the target of this purge
attempt for the "crime" of trying to put
teeth in one of the officials' empty
solidarity resolutions. For two and a
half years, the ILWU's paper pledge to
"hot-cargo" military goods to El Sal-
vador has been one more dead letter of
liberal "solidarity." Along with mem-
bers of several different ILWU locals,
Gow picketed the Lafayette on March
29. Several weeks later, after the
Longshore Coast Caucus where the
bureaucrats nearly lost a bid to table
Gow's motion for a one-day port
shutdown to stop Reagan's lifeline to
the Salvadoran butchers, the fakers in
the leadership went into the witchhunt
frenzy that produced the charges.
Herman, Local president Carr and their
Stalinist cheerleaders wanted to run
Stan Gow out of the union to make sure
that Reagan/ Kirkpatrick got their
death cargos worked.
Mgny longshoremen remember that
their union once defended victims of the
anti-Communist witchhunts of the
1950s. The jailing of ILWU president
Harry Bridges for opposing the Korean
War was met by port shutdowns in San
Francisco and Hawaii. But for the
sellout bureaucrats today, fighting for
.class-struggle tactics and international
solidarity is "conduct unbecoming a
union member"! The membership threw
this out, and there's also an older layer,
including founders of the union reach-
ing up to the highest levels, with whom
this crude purge attempt didn't sit well.
The charges against Gow were an
affront to decency, and the "trial" was
run to match. Local 10 secretary-
treasurer Bill "Bankrupt" Bancroft
continued on page 10
Longshoremen Stabbed in the Back by'ILWU
Bay Area Port Shutdown Sold Out
SAN FRANCISCO / OAKLAND,
June 27-A solid port shutdown by
2,000 International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU)
dock workers and ship clerks, that
completely paralyzed all shipping oper-
ations in the San Francisco Bay Area for
over ten hours, ended abruptly tonight'
with a stab in the back by ILWU
International and Local 10 officers. The
walkout had been triggered by a union-
busting operation being carried out by
the Levin Metal Corporation which was
refusing to use ILWU longshoremen to
load cargo at its Port of Richmond
terminal. What could have been a
chance to stand up to the maritime
bosses and teach them a lesson in
workers power was instead turned into
an utter capitulation by the union tops
on the key question of non-union labor.
ILWU members must reject
this sellout, which is an open invitation
continued on page 10
Militant
700-strong
longshoremen's
picket shuts
down scab
operation in
Richmond,
California.
o
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12 1 JULY 1983