WfJRIlERS ,,1N(;III1,, 25¢No. 390 1 November 1985

•el

•o Olse,

,IIar

William ampbell

Mourners at funeral for victims of apartheidterror defy South African racist pollee state.

OCTOBER 27-"A storm of oppres-sion will be followed by the rain of myblood/I am proud to give my life, mysolitary life." So wrote black SouthAfrican poet Benjamin Moloise, asupporter of the African NationalCongress (ANC) who was in prisonunder sentence of death for two years.Moloise was framed for the just execu-tion of a police stool pigeon whosetestimony sent three ANC militants tothe gallows in 1983. At about 7 a.m. onOctober 18, 30-year-old Moloise washanged at Pretoria Central Prison.

The night before the execution,several hundred defiant youth gatheredin an illegal vigil at the home ofMoloise's mother in Soweto , but sol-diers in armored trucks surrounded herhome and forced tear gas into it todisperse the peaceful gathering. In afinal gratuitous display of viciousness,the prison officials would not even letthe 53-year-old mother in to say a finalfarewell to her son, instead forcing herto wait outside the gates for word of herson's death. Even the body of the deadpoet will be held by the state, while thebereaved mother is given a "gravenumber." "This government is cruel,"was Mamike Moloise's comment thatmorning. "It is really, really cruel."

With shouts of "Blood of Moloise!"black crowds took to the streets after3,500 attended a memorial service inJohannesburg. Sparked by racist whiteshurling debris from their apartments,shop windows were broken and twocops were stabbed in the four-hourmelee, which marked the first time thatthe escalating confrontation between

the racist government and blacks hasspread to the white preserve of down-town Johannesburg. TV images ofwhites attacked by enraged blacks wereflashed around the world, raising thespectre of a horrible race war.. The white supremacist regime isindeed bent on provoking race war-one in which the unarmed black masseswill suffer a monstrous bloodletting ofhistoric proportions. Only the ultra-reactionary nuts in Reagan's White

House can continue to depict thisregime as some kind of "reform" regime.As liberal Anthony Lewis wrote, in acolumn titled "Ending an Illusion," justafter Moloise's execution:

"Over these last days and weeks [theSouth African government] has finallydisposed of the illusion that it is readyfor serious change-s-political change-in the apartheid system...."Instead they are going back to thehistoric strategy: beating the blacks intosubmission.... One explanation of its

Turnley/Detroit Free Press

deliberately provocative tactics now isthat it hopes to bring this yearlong crisisto a head by arousing more protest andthen crushing it ruthlessly."

-New York Times, 21 October

Again and again in recent days, themailed fist of apartheid butchery hasbeen brought down, upping the dailydeath toll and revealing the true face ofthe racist police state. In one typicalincident in late October, police set up an

continued on page 10

CORS Riot Against Minorities, Poor

Thatcher Burns BritainIn the space of one month, British prime

minister Margaret Thatcher and her racist copshave set off explosions of ghetto anger inseveral of the country's major cities. In earlySeptember there was the massive policeinvasion of Birmingham's predominantly blackand Asian district of Handsworth. Less thanthree weeks later came London's Brixton,where the 1981 "riots" first burst into flames.When cops shot a West Indian mother in theback, angry crowds surrounded the policestation; burning barricades of overturned cars

soon appeared. Then it was the turn ofLiverpool's Toxteth. And on October 7, innorth London, the cops got more than theybargained for. This time not only bricks andbottles, but shotgun fire greeted police invaderswho charged into a housing project in Totten-ham. The cops came up one short.

Last March, after 12 bitter months on thepicket lines, Britain's militant miners wereforced back to the pits. They had been dealt adefeat, fighting essentially alone against the

continued on page 4

Cop terrorsparks

explosionin London

black ghettoof Brlxton.

WV Sub Drive Success: 164 Percentl~) Final Totals

sold 80 points at Harvard, where theSpartacus Youth League is active, and119 points at the University of Massa-chusetts in Amherst. The Washington,D.C. local sold 123 points at Howard,the country's premier black university.Atlanta comrades sold 62 points atAtlanta University as well as 12 pointsto transit workers. Southern work got aboost from a Southern Tour to cam-puses in Norfolk, Virginia and ChapelHill and Greensboro, North Carolina.Comrades from Boston, Washingtonand Cleveland participated and sold 46points. A reporter from the trip wrote:

"Black students were very open to ourstrategy for labor-centered struggleboth here and in South Africa, particu-larly since the power of labor has beenunderscored by the emergence of blacktrade unions battling the apartheidregime. There was positive excitementaround our anti-fascist work. especiallyNovember 27."

November 27 (1982) was the day that aSpartacist-initiated mobilization heavi-ly based on black union membersstopped the Ku Klux Klan frommarching in the nation's capital. Oneamusing anecdote from the tour wasthat one of the people met in Chapel Hillwas "a guy who had last seen WV at abookstore in Managua," Nicaragua.More than 300 pieces of literature weresold on the tour.

The New York sub drive turned insome impressive campus numbers. AtYale, scene of a militant campusworkers strike last year, we sold 176points; successful work was also done atColumbia (91-1/2 points) and Cornell(82 points), where anti-apartheid pro-tests have flared sporadically. But thepolitical center of this year's sub drive inNew York has been the Stamberg/Kartsen election campaign whose callsfor the multiracial unions of the city tomobilize against racist police terrorhave struck a nerve particularly amongblack working people. Well over 100points have been sold at campaignevents including protest demonstra-tions, public meetings and soapboxingin black and working-class neighbor-hoods. And 92 points were sold to NewYork transit workers; an SL supporterin the transit union noted that "signifi-cantly, 48 of these points were resub-scriptions to WV from people whosubscribed in previous sub drives,indicating the cohering of a readership \core in this powerhouse of New YorkCity labor."

Though the WV sub base is still verymodest by anyone's standards, our presshas become recognized increasingly asthe premier leftist paper in America-informed sources say that WVis eagerlypassed from hand to hand in theeditorial offices of the Village Voice,and we utterly swept the "Left PressAwards" at WBAI, NYC's rad-lib radiostation. We welcome our new readers-and our old readers-and hope that formany of you, reading our communistpress will be the first step toward greaterinvolvement in the social strugglesthrough which a revolutionary working-class leadership will be forged .•

%Quota Final

(in points) TotalsLocal

Atlanta 100 127 127Boston 350 436 125Chicago 280 422';, 151Cleveland 180 374 208Los Angeles 160 305 191New York 900 1,070'1, 119Oakland 470 781';' 166San Francisco 230 528';' 230Washington, D.C. 150 212 141At-large 355'1,

National Total 2,820 4,612'12 164

most productive sub drive work was atthe University of Michigan at, AnnArbor, where comrades from Cleve-land, Chicago and Toronto combined tosell 133 points. That regional effort,along with thoughtful resubscriptionwork (68 points), enabled the Clevelandcomrades to .sell more than twice theirquota, making this "the most successfulsub drive in the local's history." Proba-bly also heading for a record is Toronto,where the Trotskyist League of Cana-da's sub drive was still going on whenour figures were compiled. So far theCanadian comrades have reported 307-1/2 points in subs to SL/U.S. periodi-cals, not counting subs to their ownpaper, Spartacist Canada. One excitingcomponent of the sub drive work inCanada was a trip to Sudbury, Ontario,a historically important proletariancenter of the nickel mining industry,where 44 points were sold.

The three SL locals on the West Coasthad no trouble making their quotasthanks in good part to the NorthernTour to Oregon and Washington State,where five comrades netted 444-1/2points, including 171 at the Universityof Oregon at Eugene and 140 atEvergreen College in Olympia, Wash-ington. This success enabled Los An-geles, with a low quota, to reach 191percent despite selling only 40 points atUCLA and 51-1/2 at Santa Barbara.Elsewhere in the University of Califor-nia system, 120 points were sold atBerkeley, 139-1/2 at Santa Cruz, and 97at Davis. And "South Africa managedto penetrate even at Stanford," notedcomrade Larry A. from Oakland after121 points were sold there.

Among SF area unioniSts, phoneworkers bought the most subs (115points). A good number of these weresold by comrade San (Oakland local),who once again topped the individualpoints list with 174 points. ComradeSan managed to win even withoutparticipating in this year's NorthernTour. The individual runners-up werePaula and Steve B. from SF with 161and 127 points respectively, Debbie H.(New York) with 125-1/2,Alden (SF)with 109-1/2, Tim (L.A.) with 103-1/2,Christina (Boston) with 91 and Gordy(Ann Arbor) with 87.

On the East Coast, the Boston local

Africa. If right-wing attitudes andcomplacency haven't disappeared, theycertainly have been elbowed off centerstage."

Like last year, Labor Day marcheswere small and conservative. Oneexception to the unions' general quies-cence was Chicago transit. In responseto a racist frame-up of a black busdriver, David Johnson, after a tragictraffic accident, 700 militant transitworkers defied their union tops andmarched on police headquarters, forc-ing the dropping of charges againstJohnson. After getting this little taste ofworkers power, Chicago transit workersbought 41 points in subs to the Sparta-cist press. Other highlights of theChicago sub drive were 85 pointsin resubscriptions and 88 pointsin working-class neighborhoods (theSouth Side and Maywood). Chicago'smain sub drive campus was the Univer-sity of Wisconsin in Madison (103-1/2points).

On campuses in the Midwest, the

Bourgeois Democracy andWorkers Revolution

Karl Kautsky, German social democra-cy's leading theoretician, distorted theMarxist understanding of the state tojustify his opposition to the 1917 Russianproletarian revolution. In his polemicagainst Kautsky, Lenin wrote:

Take the bourgeois parliament. Can it beTROTSKY that the learned Kautsky has never heard LENIN

that the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments aresubjected by the stock exchange and the bankers? This does not mean that we mustnot make use of bourgeois parliament (the Bolsheviks made better use of it thanprobably any other party in the world, for in 1912-14 we won the entire workers' curiain the Fourth Duma). But it does mean that only a liberal can forget the historicallimitations and conventional nature of the bourgeois parliamentary system asKautsky does. Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people atevery step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal equalityproclaimed by the "democracy" of the capitalists and the thousands of reallimitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians into wage-slaves. It isprecisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes of the people to the rottenness,mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It is this contradiction that the agitators andpropagandists of socialism are constantly exposing to the people, in order to preparethem for revolution!

-V.l. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolutionand the Renegade Kautsky (1918)

Congratulations to participants in the1985 Workers Vanguard subscriptiondrive. The six-week drive reached4,612-1/2 points nationally, for animpressive 164 percent of the quota.These totals include well over a thou-sand subs to Young Spartacus and 598to Women and Revolution. Only 57subs to Spanish-language Spartacistwere sold (evidently the existence of thisperiodical has not yet penetrated thelocals' collective consciousness), butthese included 29 Spanish Spartacistsubs sold in Watsonville, Californiawhere cannery workers are on strike.Overall, the 1985 sub drive netted morehan 700 points over last year's totals,

reflecting some politicization of stu-dents primarily around the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa.

Evaluating the previous year's subdrive in WVwe had noted that "for mostlocals this year it was tough going," withYouth for Reagan and the "new patriot-ism" the predominant mood on collegecampuses. Then last spring came thestirrings of student protest over SouthAfrica-a wave of activism whichwas "divestrnent'l-centered and firmlyliberal-led but' frequently pretty mili-tant. This fall, hitting the campusesagain, our comrades generally foundnot too much going on politically, butthere was a diffuse political curiosityand responsiveness to our poli-tics. Comrade Tom D. from Bostonreported:

. "The line 'Are you interested in what'shappening in South Africa, in the fightagainst apartheid'!' opened a lot ofdoors.. " If students actually hadn'tparticipated in demonstrations, theyknew about them and were anxious toknow more. Students were also veryinterested in our New York electioncampaign and the connections we drawbetween racism here and in South

D $2/4 issues of, Women and Revolution

D $2/10 introductory issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)

390

SPECIAL! A packet of Spartacist literature with one-year subscnptlons to bothWorkers Vanguard and Young Spartacus.

D $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)D New D Renewal

Name _

Address ~ _

____________ Phone (

City State Zip _

D $2/9 issues of Young Spartacus

-------Subscribe Now!-------

!!!'!c!.'!! or..~.'!.li!!.~f!.1l ~EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Noah Wilner

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau

EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule, George Foster, Liz Gordon, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor f~~. 390:~Gordon}

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and With 3-week interval December.by the Sparlacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard,Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.

Opinions ,expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

No. 390 1 November 1985 Make payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, New Yor1\10116---------------------------------2 WORKERS VANGUARD

1'1'1'1'1'B2da 0_ A...ee-lT_#82M-16.2 ShotgunsGas & smoke canisters

The MOVE siege':Manpower

and a....nalinvolvacl

Hasler/Philadelphia Inquirer

t't't't't't't'6223a-A....Team A: Stakeout unit3 UZI$1 Shotgun80mb disposal unit

t't't't't't'6232 0 .... A....T••m #2: &tak~tunit3M-16s1 ShOtgun w/scope1 .22-250 rifle11385 kitR.ngeper....1 BrOWning automatic rifle

ists to show elementary human decencyand compassion for the .farrrily andsupporters of the incinerated MOVEmembers. We demanded freedom fortheir comrades, 13 of whom are stillincarcerated because they tried todefend themselves from a 600-strongcop assault on their Philadelphia homein 1978 in which one cop was killed, andfor Ramona Africa who is being held on$3.2 million hail because she survivedthe May 13 racist holocaust.

In addition to prominently denounc-ing this crime from the pages of ourpress, the SL organized a public meetingin New York City, July II to memorial-ize MOVE. We were honored to haveLaVerne Sims and Louise James speakat that forum. LaVerne concluded herremarks with the warning, if you don'tdo something about the MOVE massa-cre, you're "only going to wake uptomorrow and find it happening righthere in New York." Impelled by thePhiladelphia inferno and the rampageof racist killings by Koch's cops in NYC,the Spartacist election campaign in NewYork has centered on the need for laborto mobilize to crush racist terror, fromPhiladelphia and Harlem to Cape Townand Soweto.

It is our obligation to evoke outrageover the hideous racist MOVE massa-cre, engraving it forever in the memoryof the working class and its allies. As SLspokesman Ed Kartsen told the July IIforum: "Neither the Greensboro massa-cre nor the Philadelphia bombing willever be forgotten. A victorious workersrevolution will submit the criminalsresponsible for the Osage Avenue mas-sacre to revolutionary justice. They'll betreated fairly, just like American GIsthat liberated Hitler's Dachau deathcamps treated the prison guards whowere there: the GIs executed about 122of them before they could be stopped,and the liberated prisoners dispatchedanother 50 with shovels." Proletarianvengeance for the MOVE martyrs!.

Carolina.The following day, the commission

released a letter from the FBI confirm-ing that in January it gave the cops 39. 75pounds of the extremely powerfulmilitary explosive C-4. What Goodeoriginally called an "entry device,"police now claim contained two poundsof Tovex TR-2, the Du Pont highexplosive used in underground mining,combined with 1.25 pounds of C-4.

While Jesse Jackson rushed to theside of his fellow black DemocratGoode, various reformist and centristpseudo-socialists fell over each otherapologizing for the Philadelphia mayorand/ or denying White House involve-ment, obscenely blaming the MOVEmassacre on the martyred victims. It fellto the Spartacist League to expose thehorrendous racist crime, and that themurderous conspiracy necessarily ran

. from the black Democratic mayor to theracist Republican administration inWashington. It was up to the Trotsky-

6218 Pin. 51:.Tam #4: St••Ollt unit3 M.16s1 Shotgun1 .22-250 rifle

~ 1 GaskIt

~~~rc:U~O::'le shot, Silenced .22 rifle w/scope

Brooks, a former army major general,claimed he was so out of touch that hefirst heard about the evacuation of theWest Philadelphia neighborhood overhis car radio as he returned fromVirginia the day before the assault.Contrary to Goode's claims, bothBrooks and Sambor testified that the

use of explosives against the MOVEhouse had been plannedfor over a year.And Sambor openly bragged that heasked fire officials to allow the fire torage unimpeded, purportedly to burn a"bunker" off the roof, thereby contra-dicting earlier statements that firefight-ers were prevented from putting out thefire because of gunfire from the MOV,=:house.-- Realizing mey could be up onhomicide charges, several key policepersonnel, including Lieutenant Frank'Powell, the bomb squad commanderwho dropped the bomb, and WilliamKlein, who built the bomb. have re-fused to testify on grounds of self-incrimination. But on October 24, twocops, Sergeant Albert Revel and OfficerMichael Tursi, revealed that the watercannons could not remove the "bun-ker," and that the police had contingen-cy plans to plant explosives on the roofof the MOVE house before the May 13

.bombing. Other cops testified that priorto the helicopter bombing, Samborordered at least three powerful explo-sives charges to blow open the house.One explosion blew the front off thehouse and off three neighboring houses,leaving a pile of rubble waist-deep.-

Perhaps the most important testimo-. ny to come out of the hearings-is thatdirectly linking the MOVE massacrewith the Reagan administration. Short-ly after the bombing, Sambor told theNew York Times (19 May) that he andhis aides went over the plans for theassault with local FBI agents on May IIand "The F.B.I. found the plan sound."Revel revealed in his testimony thatthe city obtained Browning automaticrifles, an M-60 machine gun (which fires800 7.62mm calibre rounds per minute)and an anti-tank gun with the help of anagent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco and Firearms. The ATF is thesame gang which sent an agent to helporganize the 1979 Klan/Nazi massacreof five leftists in Greensboro, North

f't'f't't't't't'f6228 Pine St.T.am #3: Stakeout uRi.2 M·16s .1 Shotgun w/sccoe130.06 nne .1 .22-250 nfte1 Gas kit

~~~~:-=:~linegunRunner1 Shotgun

SOURCE: Poloce reperlS oblillned by The InquIler

t't'f't't't't't't't't'Additi _

t.OCIItion: PinttStr••t Alleyao...geDriv_oy1 Silenced .22 rifle w!_3 ShotgunsLOClltion: 62d a Pine ......,1 9mm machIne gun1 Uzi2 ShotgunsL_'lon: S2d a Addioon Str_, 30.06 rifle2 ShotgunsL_tion: 8200 _ ofl'lne _ A:6,1 Shotgun ~... ()._ot....o_..._ ~'Itf,c_. CrMk "'wy.•0_ A...T_'7

~ ~t~~n ~~A1~~Gas & smoke cemsters ' .....'1

LaVerne Sims(far left) andLouise Jamesindict Goodeas "Mayorof Murder,"October 10.

The mayor and hisbattalion of death. Racistmurder conspiracy ranfrom Democratic mayorGoode to the FBI andReagan's White House.

ere was a carefully planned conspiracyto commit state terrorism, a conspiracythat extended from Philadelphia cityhall to Meese and Reagan's WhiteHouse.

The one incontestable fact to emergewas that from the moment of thisheinous crime, Philadelphia officialdomdid nothing but lie. The most incredibletestimony came from the mayor him-self. Elected on the claim that he wasa "competent, hands-on manager,"

passing, pettifogging and lies. But as thevarious actors scrambled to get out ofthe line of fire, repeatedly contradictingeach other, and above all because of thesheer magnitude of this monstrousracist crime, the hearings have beencompelled to reveal, as we said from thevery beginning, that the MOVE massa-

Goode testified that' subordinates kepthim ignorant of the details even thoughthe operation involved the militarymobilization of an entire city govern-ment in collusion with the feds. Inparticular, Goode said he knew nothingof the plans to drop a bomb from ahelicopter until he saw it on Tvin hisoffice. He then obscenely claimed tohave watched the ensuing fire rage outof control for an hour, incinerating theMOVE house and surrounding blackneighborhood, because he thought itwas being put out ... until he "realized"that what he saw on his screen wasnot water but "SJ10W" or electricalinterference!

Goode's testimony was flatly contra-dicted by his former deputy and manag-ing director Leo Brooks (who was

- forced to resign over the bombing)and chief of police Gregore Sambor.

I,Steve Webb/Philadelphia Tribune

Wilson Goode:"Mayor of Murder"

With the exception of the powerfultestimony of Louise J ames and her sisterLaVerne Sims who indicted Goode asthe "Mayor of Murder," the hearings,now in their third week, have indeedbeen a circus of cover-ups, buck-

farce, a circus," is how Goode's commis-sion was described by Louise James, aformer MOVE member whose son wasone of the eleven incinerated by thePhilly cops. Even former mayor Wil-liam Green, who appointed Goode. ascity managing director during hisadministration, criticized the commis-sion as a panel of "allies, supporters andrecipients of city business," comparing itto Nixon appointing his own SenateWatergate committee.

The police bombing of black Phila-delphia last May 13 was racist massmurder. Eleven members of the blackback-to-nature MOVE group, includingfive children, were burned alive and 61homes burned down, leaving 250 peoplehomeless. This cold-blooded executioncame in the immediate aftermath ofReagan's salute to Nazi SS storrntroop-ers at Bitburg. We headlined our storyof this Nazi-like holocaust, "BitburgHits Philly, Reagan Bombs BlackBabies." The MOVE massacre wasindeed a sinister symbol of the Reaganyears, a warning to every black personand anyone else who might get "out ofline" by opposing this hideously racist,anti-Soviet 'war-crazy government.

Philadelphia's black Democratic may-or Wilson Goode rushed forward atthe time to "take full responsibility" forthis grotesque massacre, claiming even

Britain...(continued from page 1)

whole state apparatus of British capital-ism, but they were not broken. Theyproudly marched back to work withunion banners flying, with drums andbagpipes playing. Maggie Thatchervowed to be "vindictive in victory," andshe certainly carried through on thatthreat. But a mere six months later theIron Lady was in big trouble. Herpopularity sank to new lows, and as hercops rampaged through the ghettos ofBirmingham, Liverpool and London,the impoverished residents-black,Asian and white-fought back withjustice on their side. The haughty Toriesin Whitehall are well aware that Hands-worth, Toxteth and Brixton couldspark a new wave of militant socialstruggle.

Nero fiddled as Rome burned;Thatcher lit the torch and stoked thefires that set Britain's cities aflame.Meanwhile the opposition Labour

ed the notorious virginity tests for Asianwomen seeking entry into Britain.~ For decades, the British left has been

straitjacketed by Labourism, subordi-nating itself politically to the parlia-mentarist lieutenants of British capital.The British .Communist Party, nowdeeply split between ultrareformist"Euros" and old-line Stalinists, long agoembraced the "parliamentary road" tooblivion and became a second-rateLabour Party. The Spartacist League ofBritain fights to split the Labour Party,winning the working-class base from thepro-capitalist tops. Right now is aunique opportunity to unite minoritiesand the poor with the heavy battalionsof organized labor. And it is a keymoment to forge a genuinely Bolshevikparty of workers revolution.

The last time Thatcher's popularratings were so low she managed to getout of the hole with her dirty littleFalklands/Malvinas war, drowninghundreds of Argentine sailors aboardthe Belgrano out of sheer bloodlust.This time Thatcher tried to whip up a

meeting that targeted a popular bingohangout for arson attack. That was thefirst building to burn. Then they tried topit Asians against blacks: the FleetStreet press deliberately spread lies thattwo Asian men were seen being beatenup and thrown into a burning buildingby "black mobs." Every sector of theHandsworth community repudiated thepolice/media provocation; black andAsian community leaders came togetherto lay wreaths in memory of the twoAsian men burned to death, andpublicly called for a boycott of agovernment "inquiry."

On September 28, seven armed policekicked down the door of a council housein Normandy Road, Brixton at 6:30 inthe morning and shot, black housewifeCherry Groce in cold blood, paralyzingher from the waist down. What followedwas a police riot, as cops first rampagedon the streets and then systematicallyterrorized residents of black housingestates. As a pall of smoke hung overwhole sections, Brixton was sealed offunder police occupation.

take his family to a good restaurant.Told that he could not, the Germanremarked that neither he nor hisemployees would ever tolerate such asituation."

Thatcher has deliberately deindustri-alized Britain, shutting down largechunks of steel and coal production. Infact, Britain is the only industrial nationwith an absolute decline in manufactur-ing output in the last decade. An all-partyHouse of Lords committee warned of theimpending collapse of British industry asNorth Sea oil runs dry, and of "a majorpolitical and economic crisis in theforeseeable future." For blacks andAsians, brought over in large numbers inthe '50s and '60s to do the dirtiest, lowestpaying jobs, there's nowhere-to go. Yetthe Nationality Act, which was pre-pared by a Labour government, deniescitizenship to' many children of WestIndian, Asian and otherCommonwealthcitizens who lived and worked in Britainmost of their lives.

Bankruptcy of Labourism

The need for working-class powerand socialist reconstruction of society isposed pointblank in Britain today. TheThatcher government is exposed, ex-hausted, brittle and discredited. Themost militant section of the proletar-iat-the miners-was defeated buthardly crushed. And Labourite parlia-mentarist illusions have been shaken.Certainly after a year of hard classstruggle the reformist pipe dream ofa peaceful transformation of Britishsociety is a bad joke for militants. Theseconditions sharply pose the possibilityfor a regroupment of class-strugglemilitants into a revolutionary vanguardparty.

Furthermore, traditional barriersbetween the proletariat and the op-pressed Irish, black and Asian minori-ties were pierced during the minersstrike. Minorities who knew from theirown experience the savagery of the copswere the most stalwart supporters of theembattled miners. The Brixton commu-nity "adopted" six South Wales pits;Protestant British miners marching inBelfast to demonstrate support for theCatholic population were greeted withbanners saying "Victory to the Miners!"And sparked by the miners' wivescommittees, the role of women in thecoal strike reverberated through thecountry. The miners and their allieslearned some hard lessons about thecapitalist state. What's needed is aBolshevik party at the head of theworking class, acting as a genuinetribune of the people, so that next timearound we win.

But the workers movement remainstied to the reformist Labour Party. Indecaying Britain, where there is no roomfor credible reform, social democracytoday means increasingly overtly break-ing social struggles. Striking miners andother militants disparagingly refer toLabour Party leader Neil Kinnock as"Ramsay MacKinnock," after despisedLabour leader Ramsay MacDonald,who defected to the class enemy in the1930s. Kinnock supported Thatcher'sscab ballot and condemned the miners'defense of their picket lines against thestrikebreaking cops and scabs.

Now, as a section of the bourgeoisiehas deserted Thatcher, and Kinnocksmells the possibility of leading the nextgovernment, he is all the more eager todemonstrate his loyalty to the capitalistorder. When a local black Labourcouncillor, Bernie Grant, refused tocondemn Tottenham youth for coura-geously defending themselves againstThatcher's cops and forthrightly assert-ed that the police got a "bloody goodhiding," Kinnock echoed the savageTory denunciation of Grant. He and hisdeputy. chief Roy Hattersley immediate-ly issued a statement dissociating theLabour Party from Grant's eminentlydecent stance.

If even most militant workers remaintied to the Labour Party, it is not onaccount of the despised Kinnock but outof illusions in the "lefts" in the trade

A week later, London police stoppedblack man Floyd Jarrett, ostensiblysearching for stolen goods. The copsknew Jarrett: he worked in a communityyouth organization preparing free mealsfor pensioners. No stolen goods-butthey arrested him anyway and took hiskeys. Then they burst into his home inTottenham and pushed his mother, whosuffered from heart trouble, to the floor.They refused to call an ambulance whileshe lay dying. After a protest over theracist murder, hundreds of copsswarmed the Broadwater Farm Estate.But in an ensuing ten-hour battle, thecops got what they had coming: 230were injured, several wounded byshotgun fire, one dead.

In the wake of Tottenham, theThatcherites and the cops pulled out allthe stops; The metropolitan policecommissioner put London's residents"on notice" that in the future the copswould use tear gas and plastic bullets-standard tools of the trade for theBritish occupation forces in NorthernIreland. Four kids as young as 13andalocal shopkeeper were hastily framed upfor "murder" of a cop. But more far-sighted sections of the imperialists areworried. The editors of the New YorkTimes (10 October) had this advice:" ... unskilled young Britons in the innercity see themselves as left out of theGovernment's plans for eventual eco-nomic revival. As long as they do, theseoutbursts of violence are likely to berepeated."

The day before, the same paperpublished a perceptive article by R.W.Apple, who recently completed an eight-and-a-half-year stint as Times bureauchief in London, Apple related thefollowing story:

"A West German industrialist whonegotiates labor contracts spent a fewdays recently talking to some Englishcounterparts and looking at theirfigures. When he saw the average wageof an unskilled factoryworker, heaskedhow such a man could ever afford to

massive provocation against what sheperceived to be the most vulnerablesection of the British populace. Shewanted the cities to burn-and thenblame it on the blacks, Asians and reds.But hardly anyone is buying this one.Hostility to the government and espe-cially the police permeates wide layers ofthe population. Whole sections of theindustrial proletariat have been madepermanently jobless, and the memory ofbrutal police charges against the over-whelmingly white miners is fresh ineveryone's mind. The government'sattempt to scapegoat the minorities as"work-shy welfare bums" fell flat. It waswhite as well as black and Asian youthwho drove Home Secretary DouglasHurd out of Handsworth and battledthe cops in Tottenham.

Even the influential Economist (5October), expressing widespread uneasewithin the ruling class, told Thatcher tocall a halt the week after Brixton with itsheadline, "Disarm Britain's Police."These snobbish Tories are not con-cerned with the lives of blacks andAsians; they're worried about theshattering of the political fabric ofcapitalist Britain: "British policemen arelosing their traditional respect." Andwhen the Tories convened in Blackpoolfor their annual conference, it took anarmy of cops to guard it. No one hasforgotten that only a year ago Thatcherand her entire cabinet were almostblown to kingdom come by the IRA, tothe expressed indifference or outrightjubilation of the vast majority of hersubjects. An Economist (12 October)photo of Thatcher in Blackpool wasaptly captioned, "From the bunker."

Thatcher in the Bunker

Thatcher deliberately sought to fo-ment a racist bloodbath, either through

_ naked police terror or through anattempt to incite interracial violence.One week before Handsworth blew, thepolice sponsored a white vigilante

Spartacist LeaguelSpartacus Youth League

Public Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE-

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

ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.rn., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00 p.rn.161 W. Harrison St., 10th FloorChicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

New York CityMon.-Thurs.: 5:00-8:00 p.rn.,Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

APThatcher's "law and order": police brutalize Brlxton black youth (left), attack miners' picket line (right).

Party offers nothing but soft-coreThatcherism. From the year-long min-ers strike, the most important struggle inthis country in decades, to the .recentghetto revolts,- Labour leader NeilKinnock has done nothing but stab thestruggles of Britain's poor and workingpeople in the back. Judas got theproverbial 30 pieces of silver forrhistreachery, but Judas Kinnock is work-ing overtime to earn his peerage. Thecountryis fallingapart and it will-takesocialist revolution to rebuild Britain.

As almost nowhere else in' theindustrialized capitalist world, the starkchoice in Britain is socialism or rampantdecay and devastation-and thedevas-tation is there for everyone to see. Afterhalf a decade of Thatcher's monetarism,unemployment is officially 13.5percent,and double that in the industrial areas ofnorthern England, Scotland and SouthWales. In ghettos like Handsworth andBrixton it approaches 60 percent. Thereformists' welfare state schemes havealready been tried and proven bankrupt.The standard of living has fallen below

. Italy and Spain. And it's not justThatcher: the Wilson/Callaghan La-bour government broke strikes, senttroops to Northern Ireland and institut-

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

Morison "Espionage" Frame-UpRonald Reagan wants war, and no

war mobilization is complete withoutmuzzling government employees andthe press. So last year governmentprosecutors found a victim-SamuelLoring Morison, a civilian employee ofthe U.S. Navy-and charged him with"espionage" for a routine leak to thepress. This week Morison was convictedand now faces up to 40 years in prisonand a $40,000 fine. The Reaganites'totalitarian message has been sent toevery journalist and government em- ~ployee in the country: toe the line orelse!

This utterly gratuitous frame-up wasclearly a test case aimed pointblank atthe First Amendment's guarantees offree speech and freedom of the press; itwas designed to shut up governmentemployees and intimidate the newsmedia through fear. It's part of acampaign by the White House includingexclusion of reporters from U.S. mili-tary operations (the "Grenada guide-lines"), systematic eavesdropping on

unions and Labour Party. Divisionswithin the British workers movementare shaped by the conflict between thegroveling pro-CIA. anti-Soviet rightwing and a disparate. mushy "left." Themost prominent "left" leader is NationalUnion of Mineworkers (NUM) headArthur Scargill, who had earned thewidespread enmity of the right for hisforthright denunciation of Polish Soli-darnosc as counterrevolutionary.

The bosses may cheer for Kinnock,but much of Labour's working-classbase looks to Scargill's NUM and theclass struggle it symbolizes. At therecent Labour Party conference aresolution was put forward by Scargillcalling for a future Labour governmentto reinstate sacked miners, review thecases of jailed miners and reimburse theNUM for its funds seized by Thatcher.This got a rnajority despite frenziedopposition by Kinnock. And yet Scar-gill, along with the other lefts, calls forunity within the Labour Party, support-ing the election of a Labour governmentunder strikebreaker Kinnock!

The miners strike was an acid test forevaluating every grouping that wouldlead the British proletariat. The right-wing Labourites who most hate theRussian Revolution proved themselvesequally the enemy of the Britishrevolution-they were the open scab-herders. But in the final analysis it wasthe treachery of the "lefts" in refusing tospread the strike that defeated theNUM. They did not want to shut downThatcher's Britain because they areunwilling to fight for power. As for themyriad pseudo-Trotskyists, both insideand outside the Labour Party, they at

As Thatcher burns Britain, shehollers for red scapegoats. Tablold-press shrieks, "Trots blamed forriot terror."

1 NOVEMBER 1985

'"EE'"CJ

government phones, proposals to arbi-trarily subject millions of federal em-ployees and employees of governmentcontractors to polygraph tests, a lifetimesecrecy oath for over 100,000 govern-ment officials, and the elimination of thealready highly circumscribed Freedomof Information Act.

A 1982 Reagan administration reportasserted that the espionage laws "couldalso be used to prosecute a journalistwho knowingly receives and publishesclassified documents or information"(New York Times, 23 February). Theonly other time the U.S. governmenttried to use espionage laws against itsofficials for leaking information to thepress was in the case of Daniel Ellsbergand Anthony Russo, who leaked thefamous "Pentagon Papers" that ex-posed massive government lying aboutthe Vietnam War.

That case was dismissed in 1973because of government misconduct, butnow Reagan wants to set a precedentthat will stick. So they picked true-blue

best tailed the "lefts," helping thebackstabbing social democrats main-tain their hold on the proletariat.

The Spartacist League sharplyexposed the Labour and union "lefts."demanding they break in struggle fromthe open class traitors. The SL called fora Triple Alliance of miners, railwaymenand transport workers to strike jointlyagainst Thatcher. This would have beenin effect a general strike, posing thequestion of workers power. But al-though two dock strikes were calledbriefly, union leaders in rail, transportand maritime who proclaimed their"solidarity" with the NUM would notbreak with the scabherding leadershipof the Trades Union Congress andmobilize their ranks alongside theminers. The miners strike perfectly boreout Leon Trotsky's observation aboutthe British "lefts":

" ... leftism of this kind remains left onlyso long as it has no practical obliga-tions. But as soon as the question ofaction arises, the left wingers respectful-ly cede the leadership to the rights."

-"Problems of the British LaborMovement," 12 January 1926

Forge a Leninist-TrotskyistParty!

A revolutionary vanguard party inBritain can only be forged throughbreaking the stranglehold of Labourismon the working class. But that will takeeffective Leninist tactics. Simple sectari-an dismissal of the divisions withinBritish social democracy no less thanopportunist tailing of the Labour andunion "lefts" are equally formulas forsterility. A Leninist-Trotskyist partycan be forged only through splitting the

Morison, a civilian analyst for the NavalIntelligence Support Center in Suitland,Maryland and grandson of the famednaval historian Samuel Eliot Morison.If this scion of a patrician naval familycan be jailed on "espionage" charges fora run-of-the-mill leak, then you can besure that real opponents of the govern-ment will face an even worse fate.

It was the sort of leak which everyPentagon general hands out daily inorder to push his pet weaponsprogram-the inside scoop on the so-called "Soviet threat." Besides his navalanalyst job, Morison also worked foryears as American editor of the prestig-ious British military publication, Jane'sFighting Ships. His Navy employerknew this relationship and counte-nanced it, as do the military establish-ments in every other Western country,for which the Jane's publications serveas house organs and reference guides.

So Morison saw nothing wrong withsending three satellite photos to Jane'sDefence' Weekly showing a Soviet

Labour Party, bringing key sectors ofthe working class under the revolution-ary banner while exposing and political-ly defeating the pro-capitalist mis-leaders, both "left" and right. Todaythe opportunities for a regroupment,through splits and fusions of 'would-berevolutionary forces, are more favor-able than at any time in years.

The organizations of the so-called"far left" for the most part have eitherliquidated into the Labour Party orblindly tail it. And in the face of massive,turbulent social struggle the Labourtops lined up against the miners. Today,not surprisingly, Kinnock & Co. areeven more hostile to the black, Asianand white poor in the ghettos explodingin just outrage against the murderingcops. For pseudo-socialists who thinkthat the Labour Party is an instrumentfor progressive change, that poses a bigproblem. No wonder that today variousfake-left groups in Britain-from thelimp Communist Party to the ex-guerrilla enthusiasts of the ex-IMG-have split or are on-the verge of splits.

And where is Gerry Healy? TheWorkers Revolutionary Party (WRP)just announced that its founding fatherand Stalin-style infallible-type leaderhas been expelled for bureaucraticabuse of power, self-glorification, per-sonal degeneration, corruption and"unprincipled relations with bourgeoisnationalist leaders and with tradeunion and Labour Party reformists inBritain."

After Tottenham, the Thatcher gov-ernment attempted unsuccessfully towhip up a red scare blaming the ghettoexplosion on "outside agitators," inparticular "Trotskyites and anarchists."A few days later the establishment ToryLondon Times (10 October) ran a storyheadlined "Far Left Exerts Little Influ-ence in Riot Areas," debunking this.The Times article noted frankly that itcould find only two ostensibly Trotsky-ist groups that even sided with theembattled ghetto residents againstthe cops. One was the virulently anti-Soviet Revolutionary Communist Party(which openly courted scabs during theminers strike); the other was theSpartacist League.

"The Spartacists call [for] 'mobilisingwhatever resources possible in organiz-ing mass protest against the policeoccupation'," reports the Times. Thearticle added, "Most of the othermultifarious leftist groups, including theWorkers Revolutionary Party andMilitant have explicitly condemnedrioting." The WRP egregiously calledfor "neighbourhood defence guards toprevent vandalism, looting and the

aircraft carrier under construction in aBlack Sea shipyard. He also sent themagazine classified Navy reports abouta series of controversial, and well-publicized, explosions which occurredat a Soviet naval port in 1984. Thephotos and reports were published, andthe U.S. government seized on that as anexcuse to prosecute not simply for theftbut for "espionage" as well. A JusticeDepartment lawyer argued with astraight face in federal court, "foreignagents read that magazine"!

At the heart of the government casewas the fact that the photos were madeby the technically classified KH-IIphoto reconnaissance satellite, and soreleasing them would supposedly be"potentially" damaging to U.S. security.But this would-be sinister charge fellapart when defense witnesses explainedthat the KH-II satellite has been anopen secret for years-at least since1978, when a CIA officer sold thetechnical manual for the KH-II to theSoviets for $3,000. (Knowledge of the"Keyhole" satellites may also havebeen passed to the Soviets in the mid-'70s by Christopher Boyce, who want-ed to throw a monkey wrench inUS. spy-in-the-sky operations and CIA

continuedon page- 9

drugs trade" (News Line, I October)-in short, a ghetto auxiliary for Thatch-er's racist cops! In contrast, the SLuniquely demanded: Down with theracist cop occupations of Handsworth,Brixton, Tottenham-Cops out now!Drop the charges against victims of thepolice dragnets-Free those framed upfor "murder" in Tottenham! Jail thekiller cops and throwaway the keys!

Workers Hammer

Black miner addresses Spartacistmeeting in Birmingham: "DefendHandsworthl Racist cops out nowl"

Build trade union-centered communitydefense guards to defeat racist attacksand cop terror!

The SL called an emergency meetingin Handsworth when the area was underpolice occupation. The cops hated it-they arrested three of our comrades forleafletting. But a well-integrated crowdof several dozen blacks, Asians andwhites showed up in defiance of thecops. The miners we organized to comewere particularly well received. As oneminer put it: "Ten years ago I wouldn'thave bothered ... but now you're goingthrough what we went through." Thereare tens of thousands of militantworkers who share these sentiments;indeed, at a miners meeting in Barnsleyon October 19, several thousand minerscheered NUM leader Arthur Scargillwhen he condemned cop violence inBrixton. Condemnations are notenough-in the face of Thatcher's copsrampaging, the watchword must be:Cops out! Miners to Brixton!

The British proletariat needs aBolshevik party, modeled on the partyof Lenin and Trotsky that led theRussian workers and oppressed, allraces, all nationalities, menand women,to victory over capitalism in 1917.•

5

Democrats, Labor Fakers Whig Ug

Protectionist Poison,Anti-Japanese Trade War

'~eNe\tJ!J~~m~JlagazineToday, 40 years after the end of WorldWarfCthe-[apanese are on the moveagain in one of history's most brilliantcommercial offensives, as they go aboutdIsmantling American industry. Whethertheyarestillonly smart, or have finallylearned to be wiser than we, will betested intlle-next 10 years. Only then

~ill.~~~~~\oV-~~~flii~lY_\oVon t~~_~(lI"'"

test shot up the air conditioning unit of alatrine. The finest technical minds in thiscountry are too busy perfecting the likesof the Sergeant York and working onthe Star Wars fantasy to bother aboutthe modernization of American indus-try. In an article on "America's High-Tech Crisis," Business Week (II March)warned:

"The U.S. is frittering away its lead inhigh tech by spending too little oncivilian research and development.Expenditures there have fallen behindthose of our trading partners as apercentage of gross national product."

Secondly, much of the U.S. budgetdeficit-40 percent last year-is fi-nanced by foreign borrowing. In Aprilthe United States became a debtornation for the first time since WorldWar I, and by early '86 it is slated tosurpass Brazil as the world's biggestdebtor. The massive inflow of foreignmoney soaked up by the Pentagondrove the value of the dollar through theceiling, pricing U.S. exports out ofworld markets and making importsartificially cheap. As former AssistantSecretary of the Treasury Fred Bergstenexplained:

"Such an external position. which isclearly unsustainable, is meanwhilecausing severe-in some cases irrevers-ible-damage to U.S. export andimport-competing industries. More andmore are finding they simply cannotovercome a price disadvantage of 40percent or so now levied on them by theartificially strong dollar."

-"The State of the Debate:Reaganomics." Foreign Policy,Summer 1985

The mad ambitions of the U.S. rulingclass to dominate the world and rollback Communism are far beyond thecapacity of American capitalism. TheSoviet Union through its collectivizedeconomy, despite Stalinist bureaucraticdeformation, has in the past 20 yearsachieved a rough nuclear parity. Thecapitalists are bleeding the productivewealth of America as they drive hell-bent toward nuclear holocaust. Thelabor fakers who scream for protection-ism are simply paving the road to war.The real answer to this bankrupting of

Detroit club and beat him to death. Theclub owner described the scene:

"We got 16 percent unemployment intown. There's lots of hard feelings. Inmy opinion, these people come in, theysee a man. supposedly Japanese. Theylook at this guy and see Japan-'thereason all my buddies are out of work'."

Protectionist hysteria leads to racistmurder.

Anti-Soviet MilitarismCripples U.S. Industry

Labor Day, New York City: Trade-union bureaucracy shoves protectionismdown the workers' throats.

Reagan took office in 1981 vowing to.achieve "military superiority" over theSoviet Union, that is, first-strike nuclearcapacity. Since then the Pentagon hasspent $1 trillion on fancy-ass weaponrythat doesn't work. In this same periodthe U.S. balance-of-trade deficit in-creased fivefold, from $28 billion to anestimated $150 billion this year. Thetrade deficit with Japan alone jumpedfrom $13 billion in 1981 to an expected$50 billion in 1985.

Is it just a coincidence that we nowhave both runaway military spendingand a complete collapse of Americanindustrial competitiveness? Not at all.To finance the war drive against theSoviet Union, the U.S. has racked upmammoth budget deficits. Under Rea-gan the national debt has increasedmore than in the previous 200 years ofthe American republic! The Treasurynow says that unless Congress raises thedebt ceiling to over $2 trillion, UncleSam is going to start bouncing checks.

Reaganomics has dealt a cripplingdouble blow to American industry.First, massive borrowing by the U.S.Treasury drove interest rates to historichighs and starved civilian industry forfunds for investment in new plant andequipment and for research. Half of the$100 billion spent annually for researchand development in the U.S. comes outof the Pentagon budget. And even hard-line militarists like Barry Goldwatercomplain this is a colossal boondoggleof waste and mismanagement. Forexample, the army spent almost $2billion on the Sergeant York anti-aircraft gun, a total lemon which in one

Anti-Japanesejingoism paves the wayfor imperialist war.

U.S.A.A.F.

union-busting and the deindustrializa-tion of America. On this issue they arewaving the flag more frantically than theReagan gang.

Not so long ago Democratic presi-dentialloser Walter Mondale ranted toan electrical workers convention:

"We've been running up the white flag.when we should be running up theAmerican flag! ... if you try to sell anAmerican car in Japan. you better havethe United States Army with you whenthey land on the docks."

Speaking in the depressed auto capitalof Detroit, Democratic Congressionalleader Tip O'Neill blustered, "If I werePresident ... I'd fix the Japanese likethey've never been fixed." And Interna-tional Ladies Garment Workers' headSol Chaikin appeals to the worst kind of"yellow peril" racism: "It's as if we'rebeing poured into a Mixmaster withChina, India, Japan, Taiwan; they'vehomogenized the international labormarket and are squeezing us out liketoothpaste." Sounds like the KKKscreaming about "race mixing."

Protectionist poison runs deepest inthe burnt-out industrial belt of theMidwest, the so-called Rust Belt, whereforeigners and foreign products havebecome whipping boys for capitalistimmiseration. While the United AutoWorkers did nothing to fight hundredsof thousands of layoffs in the early1980s, and gave multibillion-dollarconcessions to the auto bosses, UAWofficials encouraged Toyota-bashing asa way to let hard-pressed workers blowoff steam. Solidarity House bannedforeign cars from union parking lots. Atthe Ford plant in Lima, Ohio, HowardFields, a 28-year veteran in the plant,was fired with union support forparking a Nissan in a company parkinglot. Even more chilling was the 1982murder of Chinese American draftsmanVincent Chin by a Chrysler foreman andhis stepson who chased Chin out of a

Theodore II.WhIte:THE DANGER FROM JAPAN

1IIIIi

Commemorating the 40th anniver-sary of the U.S. victory over Japan, theNew York Times Magazine (28 July)ran a virulent article on "The DangerFrom Japan," by well-known journal-ist Theodore H. White. For White, theA-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasakiwas not devas: .iting enough: "Today ...the Japanese are on the move again inone of history's most brilliant com-mercial offensives, as they go aboutdismantling American industry." Heconcluded:

"The superlative execution of theirtrade tactics may provoke an incalcu-lable reaction-as the Japanese mightwell remember of the course that ranfrom Pearl Harbor to the deck of theU.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay [wherethe Japanese capitulation was signed]just 40 years ago."

In other words, if they don't stopsending us their Toyotas, we're going tostart sending them our H-bombs.

American imperialism is going towar, trade war against the Japanese.And the whole country is being pre-pared. "Trade Wars," proclaims UncleSam on the front cover of Timemagazine (7 October). America's uni-versities and think tanks are churningout tracts, claiming that the Americaneagle is being slowly roasted in the heatof Japan's rising sun: Japan Is No. I.The Japanese Challenge. The JapaneseConspiracy- The Plot to DominateIndustry Worldwide and How to Dealwith It. There are now over 300 pro-tectionist bills before Congress. Onelikely to pass would slap an additional25 percent tariff on goods from Japan aswell as South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.

The most rabid trade warmongersare not the usual right-wing yahoos, oreven the Pentagon's kept academics, butliberal Democrats and the labor bu-reaucracy. In fact, protectionism is theliberals' and reformists' only answer tomass unemployment, wage-gouging,

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

Solidarity House Asked For It, We Got It

Fremont Toyota/GMSweetheart Deal

A Class-Struggle Answer

From the first givebacks at Chryslerin 1979 to giving up basic union condi-tions at NUMMI, Solidarity House hasargued that such sellouts are necessaryto "save" jobs. In Fremont the class-struggle road to save jobs, wages,benefits and union conditions was putforward by the UA W Militant Caucus,an opposition group politically support-ed by the Spartacist League, with analmost decade-long history in the plant.When GM announced it was shuttingdown Fremont in early 1982, theMilitant Caucus campaigned for a sit-down strike, the very tactic whichhelped build the UA W during the GreatDepression of the 1930s. This proposalwon widespread support from Fremontworkers, their backs to the wall, but theUAW officialdom buried it under abarrage of anti-J apanese protectionism.

. After the shutdown, the Militantcontinued on page 9

present Fremont contract that oldHitler-lover Henry Ford would not havefelt at home with back in the open shopdays before the UA W was forged in themass, militant struggles of the 1930s andearly'40s.

The Wages of Protectionism

Once the largest auto plant on theWest Coast, Fremont GM was shutdown in early 1983. From a peak of7,000 workers, successive layoffs re-duced the workforce to 2,000 when thegates were shut. When G M reopened theplant last year in partnership withToyota, they ripped up the old UA Wcontract-no recall rights, no seniorityrights, no nothing. Among the 1,200workers hired so far, veteran Fremontworkers and members with ten or moreyears seniority, if they were rehired atall are treated as "new hires" with 15pe;cent lower wages than the industrystandard.

The heart of the agreement is thevirtual elimination of the approximately85 specialized job classifications that aretypical in U.S. auto plants. Instead,there are now only four basic classifica-tions: one for production workers andthree for skilled trades. Skilled workersare also being trained to work on theassembly line when needed. What allthis means in practice is that with eachworker expected to perform a variety ofjobs, anywhere in the plant, the com-pany is able to use fewer workers toproduce a given number of cars. Someindustry experts estimate labor costsavings as high as 40percent. In Marxistterms, it's a whopping increase in therate of exploitation.

Gone are the relatively "easier" jobsthat older workers with seniority used toget-the only way they could survive thepounding pace. You work where man-agement says and how managementsays-period. Seniority has little ornothing to do with it. There is unlimitedmandatory overtime in the first year ofthe contract. The UAW "cooperatively"eliminated any reference to a grievanceprocedure, and union shopfloor repre-sentation is a bad joke. So behind all thetalk of "shared responsibility," the real-ity is the UAW bureaucracy workingopenly as company cops to give GM andToyota a free hand for massive speedupand labor discipline-all in the nameof making NUMMI a protectionist"success."

UPI

Toyota chairman Elji Toyoda (left)and GM chairman Roger Smithtourtheir Joint venture in Fremont.

worst ever negotiated by the UA W, isnot only a complete sellout of Fremontworkers, but poses a real danger to therest of labor. It could become theleading edge for wholesale attacks onbasic union conditions across thecountry, starting in auto, The newSaturn contract with GM may be thefirst fruit: no expiration date, nomembership ratification, and introduc-tion of what amounts to pieceworkwages. .

What's happening at Fremont is not,as is being claimed, the importation ofexotic "Japanese management tech-niques." Rather, it's another step inAmerican capital's offensive to roll backdecades of hard-won gains for industrialunionism. The N UM M I agreement is.not a "new kind of labor-managementrelationship" at all. It used to be calledcompany unionism when it prevailed inthe U.S. in the 1920s. There is little in the

And like Mary and her little lamb,wherever the UA W bureaucracy goes,America's social democrats are sure tofollow. Thus the social-democratic InThese Times (24July-6 August) wrote ofthe N UM M I agreement: "the union hasthe luxury of watching how the newagreement works, without the backs-to-the-wall antagonism that has character-ized auto industry labor relations in thelast decade."

The NUMMI pact, a "luxury" for theunion?! This contract, possibly the

WV Photo~ugust 1983: Union members protest dissolving of UAW Local 1364 inFremont, California.

OAKLAND-The New United MotorManufacturing, Inc. is not exactly ahousehold name in this country. YetNUMMI, a joint venture betweenGeneral Motors and Toyota in Fre-mont, California, is being viewed as animportant development in the Americanauto industry, both by the bosses andtheir labor lieutenants in the UnitedAuto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy.The UA W Solidarity House leadershiphailed the N UM M I agreement as "a newkind of labor-management relation-ship," to serve as a test model not onlyfor other Japanese-owned operations orjoint ventures but also for the AmericanBig Three, for example G M's new Sat-urn Project.

For the UA W tops, Fremont GM/Toyota is a great "success story" in theircampaign for import protectionism. Inlate 1982, then-union president DouglasFraser declared that passage of theferociously protectionist "domestic con-tent" bill would be "a major step towardforcing the Japan-based multinationalauto companies to create jobs here inAmerica where they enjoy a hugemarket" (Solidarity, 16-31 January1983). The Japanese auto giant Toyotacould see what was coming and movedto get in under rising import barriers.The result was Fremont GM/Toyota.The Solidarity House gang asked forJapanese investment in the U.S., andauto workers got it. .. in the ass.

The San Francisco Examiner supple-ment Image (6 October) recently ran anarticle titled '''Wa' and the Art of AutoAssembly," hailing the "new spirit ofcooperation" at Fremont! The laborfakers, too, are proclaiming a new era ofdeepening class collaboration. A "Spe-cial Report to the Membership" (June1985) on the NUMMI contract states:"the union acknowledges that it mustcontribute to the company's prosperityand productivity in order to secure thegoals of stable employment and risingincome for the members." A letter to themembers of the Fremont local bydistrict director Bruce Lee informsthem:

,•... the parties agree to share all therisk, responsibility and reward ofpartnership. . ."We share the risk in that the unionagrees to abandon part of its traditionalreactive, adversarial role in favor ofa proactive, advocacy role...... [ouremphasis]

This "new cooperation" is plain old classcollaboration.

Reaganomics and Protectionism

Unbridled militarism has intensifiedall the weaknesses and contradictions ofAmerican capitalism as it plunges intoglobal trade war. Seemingly, Reagan isstanding 'up for "free trade" against therising protectionist tide coming fromCongress. He even recently recalled thefiasco of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff,which deepened the Great Depressionboth here and abroad. However, Rea-gan's "free trade" posture is just that-aposture. Early this year the conservativeand generally pro-Reagan LondonEconomist (16 February) commented:

"Four years of Reaganomics havc con-signed American tradc officials to thedust-heap of economic policy. Thestrength of the dollar ... and the $1~3billion trade deficit that emerged In19H4 have forced free marketeers likeMr William Brock. President Reagan'strade representative, and M r MalcolmBaldrige, the secretary of commerce: toprotect more industries from foreigncompetition ,~han any of their recentpredecessors.

Former Treasury official Bergsten not-ed that "the current administration hasadopted more import controls than anyof its predecessors since at least the1920s." Most of these are directed atJapan, but nothing and no country issacred. This June the Reagan ganglaunched the spaghetti war with Italy byimposing a 40 percent tariff on pastamade without eggs and 25 percent onpasta made with eggs.

Faced with moves for even greaterprotectionism from Congress, lastmonth Reagan announced his ownprogram for the trade crisis: pressuringforeign central banks to drive down thevalue of the dollar and subsidizingexports. These are simply another formof protectionism. Every textbook oninternational economics has a standarddemonstration that currency devalua-tion and export subsidies have the sameeffect as increased tariffs and quotas.

While Reagan's reference to theSmoot-Hawley tariff is hypocritical andself-serving, the experience of the 1930sis, indeed, very relevant in today'sworld. Protectionist measures provokedretaliation and counter-retaliation. F 01'-eign trade-vital to a healthy econo-my-was reduced to a trickle of what ithad been in the 1920s. Mass unemploy-ment and economic nationalism fueledthe rise of fascism in Germany andmilitarism in Japan. Foreign marketscould no longer be secured througheconomic competition but only by war.There is a direct line from the Smoot-Hawley tariff to the A-bombing ofHiroshima.

America is to build a workers party thatwill lead the fight for a workers govern-ment that will take industry out of thehands of its corrupt and predatoryowners, rebuilding this country-andthe world-on the foundations of aplanned socialist economy.

Why Japan, Inc. Works

Noone is putting a gun to the head ofAmerican businessmen and consumersto make them buy $60 billion worth ofJapanese steel, computer parts, photo-copiers, autos, televisions, etc. Japaneseproducts are not only cheaper but alsobetter quality, and everyone knows it.Protectionist yahoos complain that thedeficit is all the fault of "unfair tradepractices." Yet, apart from agricultureand forestry, Japanese protectionismhas a negligible effect on Americanexports. In fact, Japan has the lowestaverage tariffs of any advanced capital-ist country. They don't need them. TheJapanese government would have topay its citizens to get them to buyAmerican-made cars, TVs or personalcomputers! Even Undersecretary ofCommerce Lionel Olmer admitted:

"Take away all barriers to the Japanesemarket. push the yen to a sharply higherlevel against the U.S. dollar, and Ibelieve the U.S. would still run a trade

continued on page 8

1 NOVEMBER 1985 7

The Bitter Fruits ofProtectionism

It takes nerve for American laborfakers like the Garment Workers' SolChaikin or the UAW's Owen Bieber toscream protectionism by pointing to theweakness and class collaborationism ofJapanese unions. With every passingday the AFL-CIO acts worse than theJapanese company unions. The Reaganyears have been the years of thegiveback contract throughout Ameri-can industry. Three million unionizedworkers-one out of every six-havebeen forced to take wage and benefitcuts by the rapacious employers andcowardly, legalistic labor bureaucrats.Has this "saved" jobs? No way! Since1981 almost two million manufacturingjobs have gone down the tubes asAmerican industry has gone to seed.American capitalism's brutal o'ffensive

traditional Japanese paternalism. Ja-pan's exceptionally rapid transitionfrom feudalism to capitalism in the late19th century (the Meiji Restoration) hasleft its mark on all aspects of Japanesesociety, including relations betweenlabor and capital. However, the Japa-nese labor movement as it exists todaywas in a sense made in the USA. Thepresent-day company unionism wasforged during the.American occupationof Japan under General Douglas Mac-Arthur (1945-51) and its immediateaftermath.

The humiliation and defeat of Japa-nese militarism and the zaibatsu (oldruling families like Mitsui and Mitsubi-.hi) in the Pacific War led to aiotentially revolutionary situation inapan. Thousands of leftists and

working-class militants were' releasedfrom prison. After a decade of near-totalitarian suppression, the Japanesetoiling masses exploded. By 1948, 6.5million workers had organized them-selves into trade unions. The main unionfederation, Sanbetsu, was stronglyinfluenced by the pro-M oscow Commu-nist Party. In 1947 a massive strikewave, involving 40 percent of theorganized labor force, shook Mac-Arthur's Japan.

In the first years of the occupation,the U.S. sought to block the economicrevival of its defeated imperialist enemy.However, the unexpected shock of theChinese Revolution in 1949 and theoutbreak of the Korean War the fol-lowing year radically reversed Washing-ton's attitude toward Japan, which nowbecame the "cornerstone" of the ColdWar alliance in the Far East.

To make Japan safe for the "freeworld," MacArthur moved to break thelabor movement for the benefit of thezaibatsu. In 1950 the American occupa-tion authorities helped set up the pro-company union federation SOHYO inorder to undermine the militant Sanbet-suo A red purge drove some 20,000union militants from their jobs. It ishistorical irony that the AmericanCaesar, Douglas' MacArthur, helpedbring about the powerful revival ofJapanese industrial capitalism, which isnow causing U.S. imperialism no endof trouble. But then militant anti-Communism often rebounds against itsperpetrators. Consider, for example,Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

Company unionism in Japan wasconsolidated during the height of theWashington/Tokyo Cold War axis inthe early 1950s. The combative andleftist-led labor movement was effec-tively destroyed in a series of bitter,hard-fought strikes-Nissan and Toyo-ta auto, the Mitsui coal mines, Nihonsteel. A labor historian at TokyoUniversity, Ichiro Saga, rightly ob-served in a TV documentary on Nissan:

"There isno denyingthat inJapan laborand management cooperate closely. Butit wasn't alwaysso. In the early postwaryears there were unions that put theinterests of the workers first. It wasonlyafter these unions were crushed thattoday's collaborative system of laborrelations comes about. It is definitelynot the product of Japan's culture."

How U.S. Imperialism HelpedBreak Japanese Labor

There is another important way inwhich U.S. imperialism has strength-ened the economic power of Japan,Inc. The Japanese labor movementis notoriously unmilitant and class-collaborationist even by the standardsof traditional American business union-ism. The big firms like Mitsubishi andNissan all have "enterprise unions,"similar to the company unions whichprevailed in the U.S. during the reac-tionary 1920s. During the past threeyears the annual time lost due to strikesin Japan averaged /6 minutes peremployee! As economist Kozo Yama-mura put it, "cooperative, if not docile,labor unions and employees willing towork unstintingly also seem to beintegral parts of the [Japanese] model"(Yamamura, ed., Policy and Trade Is-sues of the Japanese Economy [1982]).

Especially in American academiccircles, "enterprise unionism" is com-,monly said to be the product of

While the elite of America's scientificcommunity is building missiles to blowup the world, its Japanese counterpart isrevolutionizing industrial production.

War II. There is nothing pacifistic abou.Japan, Inc.

Nonetheless, Japan's military budgetstill accounts for only I percent of itsgross national product compared to 7percent in Reagan's America. In otherwords, American capitalism spendsproportionally seven times as much onthe military. The Washington Post (14August) projected:

..... if Japan were to spend at the samerate as the United States, it would haveto come up with about $65 billion morein tax revenues this year, money thatwould then not be available for newequipment for factories, research anddevelopment, education and otherprograms that figure in Japan's eco-nomic success."

Der Spiegel.

Computerized Nissan plant in Japan (above). Obsolete blast furnaces beingleveled in Youngstown, Ohio (below). U.S. bosses drove Industrial plant intothe ground, now complain "competition ain't fair."

ca is the country which gave the worldthe term "conspicuous consumption."And the yuppies of the "me generation"have even less concern for the futurethan their forebears. Additionally, theU.S. tax system massively subsidizeshome ownership for white middleAmerica. While Japanese junior execu-tives and civil servants are buyingindustrial bonds, their American coun-terparts are taking out second mort-gages and racking up their credit cardbalances.

The second main reason for the farhigher rate of investment of Japan, Inc. Iis the qualitatively lower level ofmilitary spending. To be sure, Japan canno longer be spoken of as an economicgiant but a military midget. Japan'smilitary budget has grown quite rapidlyin recent years, especially under PrimeMinister Yasuhiro Nakasone, a would-be Japanese Reagan who served as anaval officer in WW II. Japan today hasthe sixth largest military budget in theworld. A resurgent Japanese imperial-ism has its own expansionist programaimed at creating a new Greater EastAsia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And thisincludes taking the Kuril Islands fromthe Soviet Union, which occupied themafter Japan was defeated in World

Dave Burrell, piano; Francis Haynes,steel drums; Vince Herring, altosaxophone; Charles Davis, tenorsaxophone; and Leon Dorsey, bass

at Small's Paradise

Tuesday, Nov. 5, 8:00 p.m.

Spartacist·~ Election Night Party

Beaver Harris 360 0 Music Experience"Jazz at gale force, pacedby Mr. Harris's swirlingcymbals and crashing beat."-Jon Pareles, New York Times

2294 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. (Seventh Ave. at 130tn St.)Admission. New "'ork For more information:$5.00 II (212) 267-1025

(continued from page 7)

ueficit with Japan, perhaps on the orderof $15 billion."

- Wall Street Journal, 4 AprilAnother common protectionist ar-

gument is that the Japanese rip offAmerican inventions and then producethese items more cheaply, partly due tolower labor costs. The head of Con-gress's Office of Technology Assess-ment, John Gibbons, asserts: "We areahead in fundamental research, but they[the Japanese] get all our science papersand research, and they add to that theirmastery of 'process technology,' trans-lating fundamental research into themaking of things."

This may have been true in the 1950s,but it is certainly not true today. Itwas the Japanese who first developedthe household VCR, Walkman tapeplayer, Trinitron TV tube, stratified-charge automobile engine, portablecopier, as well as many industrial manu-facturing systems. Japan is even supply-ing the Pentagon with high-tech itemssuch as heat-resistant ceramics, fiberoptics for computers, and lasers. Inshort, Japanese industry is on thecutting edge of technological progress inmanufacturing.

Explaining the undeniable superiori-ty of Japanese industry has become anacademic industry in America's univer-sity economics departments and busi-ness schools. Some "experts" emphasizethe "samurai spirit" of the Japanesebusinessman. You almost expect theHarvard Business School to startteaching iaido (traditional Japaneseswordsmanship). Other experts put itdown to the ineptness of Americanbusinessmen trying to sell in the Japan-ese market; for example, almost nonebother to learn Japanese. More signifi-cant is the fact that most Japanese plantmanagers are engineers, while theirAmerican counterparts are financialoperators, interested in short-termgains, who might just as well be runningcondos or casinos.

However, the basic reason for Ja-pan's competitive superiority can beexplained in a few statistics. Between1960and 1983Japan invested 30 percentof its gross national product in newplant and equipment; the U.S. only 18percent. Since the mid-1950s Japan hasnot only devoted a larger share of itsindustrial production to capital goodsbut the gap has progressively widened.During the 1970s half of Japanesemanufacturing output consisted ofcapital goods compared to only 30percent in the U.S. So there is really nomystery as to why the Japanese canproduce better and cheaper goods.

A more fundamental question is,what accounts for Japanese capitalism'sability to invest 40 percent more a yearin its industrial plant than its deteriorat-ing American rival? There are two basicreasons. First, personal savings in Japanaverage over 25 percent of after-taxincome; in the U.S. it's only 5 percent! Inboth societies personal savings are con-centrated overwhelmingly in the upperand middle classes. It is thus determinedby the lifestyle and values of thebourgeoisie and its hangers-on. Ameri-

ProtectionistPoison...

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

Crachiola/Macomb Daily

Taking the heat off the Big Three: Datsun-bashing in Detroit suburb in 1980.

National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

DetroitBox 32717Detrolt, MI 48232

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta.Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) 384-9716

Madisonc/o SYL, Box 2074Madison, WI 53701(608) 257-8625

New YorkBox 444, Canal St. Sta.New York, NY 10013(212) 267-1025

'against labor and the collapse of itsinternational competitiveness have thesame root cause: the insane war driveagainst the Soviet Union.

Despite all the clamor from protec-tionist yahoos, the U.S. is not and hasnot been for many years an openmarket. Steel, auto, textiles and appar-el, shoes and other industries are allprotected, in some cases since the 1960s.What have American working peoplegotten out of this? Take the quotas onJapanese autos, which were imposed in1981 and expired early this year.Toyota, Nissan & Co. naturally jackedup their prices, netting an additional $2billion a year profit in the Americanmarket. And, of course, the U.S. BigThree were also able to raise their prices.The Federal Trade Commission esti-mated that four years of import quotas"saved" 44,000 jobs in auto but at a cost

to consumers of $240,000 per job!For the UAW bureaucracy, the

quotas were also a means of pressuringJapanese carmakers to produce in theU.S. In this sense Fremont Toyota/GMis a great "success story" of anti-Japanese protectionism (see "FremontToyota/GM Sweetheart Deal," page6). In 1982 GM closed down its plant inFremont, California, once the largestauto factory on.the West Coast, claim-ing it could no longer compete with theJapanese. Early this year the plant wasreopened as a joint venture betweenToyota and GM. As an inducement tothe Japanese carmaker the UAW topsnegotiated a sweetheart deal, arguablythe worst contract in the union's re-

Morison...(continuedfrom page 5)

"destabilization" of the AustralianLabor government.)

Roland S. Inlow, a retired top CIAofficial who was "closely involved" inthe KH-II program, testified in Mori-son's defense that the release of thephotos now "would cause no damage orinjury to the United States." The defensealso tried groveling with a "patriotic"stance, arguing that Morison onlywanted to alert the American people to"increase the defense budget." But it wasno use-the Reaganites had found aconvenient victim, ironically one oftheir own who fully supports the anti-Soviet war drive.

If this ruling stands, Reagan & Co.will have succeeded in establishing aversion of the British Official SecretsAct, enabling them to clamp down onnews leaks inside and outside thegovernment. The New York Times (4March) called attention to the sinisterimplications and editorialized, "It Isn'tSpying." "If you stopped leaking ingovernment, you wouldn't know any-thing," said defense attorney RobertMuse. That is precisely Reagan's pur-pose. The U.S. capitalist media is docileenough to pretend to believe Reagan's

1 NOVEMBER 1985

cent wretched history. And FremontToyota/GM is not an isolated case. Onthe contrary, it is widely viewed as a trialmodel for things to come in theAmerican auto industry.

Protectionism is the road to industrialrot. Look at the steel industry. Since1968, when the Nixon gang muscledJapan into "voluntary" export re-straints, steel has been the most protect-ed of any basic U.S. industry. And everyyear the U.S. steel industry becomesmore backward, its plants more dilapi-dated, productive capacity is cut. Some700,000 steel workers have been thrownon the scrap heap in recent years. Since1979 U.S. Steel has closed down 150plants and facilities, reducing its capaci-ty by 30 percent. And this massiveretrenchment in steelmaking is notbecause the company is going bankrupt.It spent almost $6 billion a few years

back to purchase Marathon Oil.The capitalist rulers of this country

are driving American industry right intothe ground, while the labor fakers' onlyanswer is giveback contracts and tradeprotectionism. The real answer is for theworking people to take control of theeconomy and run it in their interests. Inother words, we need a workers govern-ment. To get a workers government wehave to build a revolutionary workersparty to fight both capitalist parties, theliberal "friend of labor" Democrats aswell as the Reaganite right.

From Trade War to HiroshimaWhile Americans may not see any

particular connection between protee-

account of his KAL 007 spy planeadventure, for example, in which over200 innocent airline passengers died.But (despite the Times' best efforts) notall of the bourgeois media were servileenough to totally suppress the variousfacts that objectively show that KAL007 was a deliberate U.S. war provoca-tion. The Reaganites want to "finish thejob" on the press.

American Civil Liberties UnionWashington area director Morton Hal-perin, who as a former senior staffmember of Nixon's National SecurityCouncil was himself a victim of govern-ment spying, noted that the trial andconviction are a "threat to the FirstAmendment." But the Times andACLU liberals are sporadic and selec-tive defenders of the First Amendment.Former ACLU general counsel MorrisErnst maintained a collaborative .rela-tionship with FBI fuhrer J. EdgarHoover for anti-communist witchhunt-ing and persecution that spanned fourdecades. During the 1950s McCarthyperiod, the New York Times conductedits own witchhunt, firing staff memberswho took the Fifth Amendment beforeredbaiting Congressional committees.

Like Captain Dreyfus, the Jewishofficer of the French army who wasframed on treason charges at the turn of

"the century, Samuel Morison is a loyalservant of his imperialist ruling class.

tionism and war, that connection isseared with the heat of nuclear fissioninto the memory of the Japanese. Aleader of Tokyo's ruling Liberal Demo-cratic Party, Susumu Nikaido, ex-plained a Jew years ago: "Opinionsexpressed about Japan in the UnitedStates are anti-Japanese. They give usthe impression of the prewar days" (LosAngeles Times, 19 March 1982). Like-wise, prominent Japanese politicalcommentator Akrasono .has stated,"The Japanese people are remindedof the pre-World War II ABCD[American-British-Chinese-Dutch] en-circlement of Japan."

Indeed, the stage is being set foranother Pacific War. Japan was driveninto that war by a decade of tradeprotectionism and economic sanctionsdirected against it. With the onset of theGreat Depression, tariff barriers wereerected everywhere against the Japanese"trade menace" as it was then called.Most damaging to Japan was tradeprotectionism in the Asian colonies ofthe other imperialist powers (e.g., Brit-ish India, French Indochina). Japan wasthus pushed into creating its own EastAsia Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.

To counter Japanese expansionismAmerican lind British imperialismresorted first to economic warfare. InJuly 1941 (five months before PearlHarbor) the U.S., British and Dutchembargoed Japan's oil supplies withoutwhich it could not sUJVive. The eminentBritish military historian B.H. LiddellHart wrote, "the steps which Rooseveltand Churchill took in July to cut off her[Japan's] economic resources werebound to make her strike back in theonly way possible for her-by force ofarms" (History of the Second WorldWar [1970]).

U.S. imperialism thus provokedJapan into war and then ended it withone of the most cold-blooded atrocitiesin modern times: dropping the firstnuclear weapons on the defenselesspopulations of Hiroshima and Nagasa-ki. While the Japanese were the victimsof the A-bomb attack, in a sense the realtarget was the Russians. The' Japanesegovernment was ready to surrender, andWashington knew it. The bomb wasdropped to intimidate the Soviet Union,whose victorious armies threatened tooverturn capitalism, albeit in a bureau-cratically deformed way, across EasternEurope. Now, once again, the criescoming from Wall Street and Washing-ton are "roll back Communism" anddestroy the Japanese "trade menace."As we wrote (WVNo. 385, 9August) on

But the Morison "espionage" case likethe Dreyfus "treason" trial poses vitalissues for all, champions of democraticrights, especially the working class. Be-cause these rights are vital to the legalexistence of the workers movement inbourgeois society, labor must be their

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

BostonBox 840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 663-0715

ClevelandBox 91037Cleveland, OH 44101

• (216) 621-5138

TROTSKYIST LEAGUEOF CANADA

the 40th anniversary of theAsbombingof Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

, "It will take international socialistrevolution to create a world in whichthere will be no more Hiroshimas, nomore Nagasakis. We look forward tothe day when we can all enjoy Americanjazz on Mitsubishi stereo TVs whilesipping Stolichnaya vodka.".

Fremont...(continuedfrom page 7)

Caucus put forward a motion, passed byFremont Local 1364, to "use every tacticnecessary" to ensure that all hiring at thereopened plant would be according toseniority, and that there would be nosubstandard contract. Doug Fraser'sfinal act as union president was to keepthe question from coming to a vote atthe UAW convention. His successor,Owen Bieber, "resolved" the seniorityissue by dissolving Local 1364,and then,in September 1983, signing a tentativeagreement with NUMMI. Tony De-Jesus, a former president of 1364, washired by the company to help them weedout troublemakers from the thousandsof ex-GM worker applicants. Once theplant opened, Dejesus moved from hismanagement job into the presidency ofthe "new" Local 2244.

You don't have to be a socialist and aMarxist to know that the NUMMIagreement is a sweetheart deal-anygood trade unionist can tell you that.But the roots of this sellout lie in thebosses' greed and the decrepit state ofAmerican capitalism. The U.S. rulingclass, while pouring hundreds of billionsinto war preparations against the SovietUnion, has run this country's industrialplant into the ground. Japanese indus-try is more' efficient because they investmore in it. Today American capital cancompete with the Japanese only throughwage-gouging and speedup, and eventhat won't succeed.

American and Japanese workersmust unite against their bosses, who arein league with each other and with theunion misleaders, as the Fremontexample so strikingly shows. UAWchief Bieber & Co., who are trying tooutdo the Japanese company unions inclass collaboration, must be swept awayby a new leadership forged on a pro-gram of militant class struggle. We mustrip the productive wealth out of thehands of the bourgeoisie throughworkers revolution, replacing theboom-bust anarchy of capitalist pro-duction with international socialistplanning.•

most consistent champions, with its ownclass-struggle methods and through thestrength of its own organization. Forthese rights can only be ultimatelysecured when state power is taken awayfrom the war-crazed capitalist class by aworkers government. •

NorfolkBox 1972, Main PONorfolk, VA 23501

OaklandBox 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 835-1535 .

San FranciscoBox 5712San Francisco, CA 94101(415) 863-6963

Washington, D.C.Box 75073Washington, D.C. 20013(202) 636-3537

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

9

BuryApartheid...(continued from page 1)

ambush in the middle-class "coloured"(mixed-race) Cape Town suburb ofAthlone by driving 'a flat-bed truckaround in an attempt to lure stone-throwing youth, When the youth ap-peared, cops jumped out of crates on thetruck and opened fire with pump-actionshotguns, killing three youths (ages II,16 and 18) and wounding 15. In the pastyear, according to official figures nearly800. have been killed, mostly at thehands of the police. Anti-apartheidactivists place the death toll at well over1,000.

President Botha tried to put on apretense of a return to normalcy byannouncing on October 24 the end ofthe state of emergency in six of the 36magisterial districts covered. But thenext day he declared a new state ofemergency in and around Cape Town,the country's second largest city, where30 or more people were killed in thespace of 12 days this month. Meanwhilethe police made a sweep of the WesternCape, detaining over 40 anti-apartheidactivists, "including virtually all of theexecutive members of the multiracialUnited Democratic Front in the area"(New York Times, 26 October).

The UDF is a class-collaborationist,coalition of hundreds of organizations,from unions to church groups, opposedto apartheid. The UDF leaders, draw