WfJ/tIlE/tS ,,IN(;(J,I/t, 25¢No. 204 ~-~ .

.. J( ~JJ 5 May 1978

While NATO Beefs Up Death Arsenal,Liberals/Stalinists Protest Only N-Bomb

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Thus the U.S. would mandate produc­tion of the N-bomb while threatening itsdeployment should the Soviet Uniondeploy its new SS20 intermediate rangeballistic missile in Europe.

Carter, however, torpedoed the"compromise" and ordered the March20 meeting which would have ratifiedthis blackmail postponed. The WhiteHouse has made much of the "strongpersonal beliefs and ... doubts about themorality of nuclear warfare" whichprompted Carter's hesitation. More tothe point however was the U.S. presi­dent's demand for an assurance thathaving taken the rap for producing theunpopular Dr. Strangelove weapon hewould have the OK of his NATO allies

continued on page 10

"Compromise"

All the while NATO has been inchingtoward a "compromise" which wouldseek to use the bomb to extract majorSoviet concessions in the SALT talks.

It seems the Italian Christian Democratic Communist-backed governmentwants Aldo Moro dead more than the Red Brigades do. Turning its back onMoro's desperate pleas, the Christian Democratic regime has refused torelease the 13 anarcho-Maoists whose freedom the Red Brigades aredemanding in exchange for the ex-prime minister's freedom. The CommunistParty has been equally adamant in its call for no negotiations with Moro's

captors.The hard line is not designed simply to discourage future political

kidnappings. If the Italian ruling class forces the Red Brigades' hand byrefusing to negotiate. thus c:hallenging them to kill Moro, the political climatewill be prepared for massive repression of the "far left."

~otable among the self-serving appeals of ruling-class "humanitarians" isPope Paul's appeal to the Red Brigades to release their prisoner in the name of"human compassion." Of course, the head of the Catholic Church made nosuch appeal to the Italian state for "human compassion" in dealing with itsown leftist captives.

The 13 imprisoned Red Brigade militants, however misguided theirprogram and activities. were seeking to struggle on behalf of the oppressedmasses. We, as revolutionary proletarian communists, stand for their freedom

continued on page II

Mom Kidnappl!!g:

Make the Deal!

The Stalinists, who have been in theforefront of the clamor against theneutron bomb, tail the' widespreadrevulsion against this weapon by cater­ing to and spreading the ideology ofbourgeois pacifism. U.S. CommunistParty leader Gus Hall thus recentlycalled for creation of an "independent"movement against militarism. This issimply one more example of theCPUSA's endless quest for a bloc with a"progressive wing" of the imperialistDemocratic Party of Jimmy Carter:

Left: Lance missile, carrier for N-bomb. Pacifists protest "anti-people weapon."

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readily penetrate buildings and armoredvehicles without damage to these struc­tures. The neutrons however causemassive damage to central nervoussystems. People exposed to the radia­tion will be unable to function withinhalf an hour and will die a lingeringdeath, succumbing a day or so later tofits and heart failure.

Popular attitudes toward the neutronbomb are similar to the horror ofchemical or bacteriological warfare.However, while the U.S. imperialistshypocritically refrain from widespreaddeployment of the latter agents becauseof their limited military utility, they areunlikely to renounce the neutron bombwhich lends itself to a wide variety ofmilitary uses. including "surgical" coun­terrevolutionarv measures around theworld and in the U.S. itself. In particu­lar, NATO sees the N-bomb as itsanswer to the overwhelming superiorityof the Soviet bloc (Warsaw Pact) intanks deployed in Central Europe.

As Trotskyists we are absolutelyopposed to the U.S. and West Europeanarmed forces acquiring the neutronbomb. as we are to the capitalistgovernments' entire military programs.Not one man nor one penny should goto the imperialist military, whose targetsare the degenerated! deformed workersstates and the labor and left movementsthroughout the world! Instead of evermore "wonder weapons" from themerchants of death, we demand aprogram of useful public works to fightunemployment. This will not be won bylobbying liberal Democratic Congress­men for butter instead of guns, but onlythrough class struggle against thebourgeoisie.

This places us on entirely differentground from the Stalinists, reformistsand other enemies of class struggle whowant to reform the U.S. militaryprogram to favor the "peace-loving"imperialists against Pentagon "hawks."

The neutron bomb is simply a verysmall atomic fission bomb that releasesmost" of its energy in the form of highlypenetrating subatomic particles (neu­trons). According to published reports,blast damage from the neutron bomb isconfined to an area of 300 yards radius.while the intense heat generated by theexplosion extends out approximatelyanother 100 yards. (By way of compari­son, a "small" one-megaton thermo­nuclear warhead has a blast damageradius of three miles and is capable ofcreating fires and inflicting third-degreeburns as far as eleven miles from thecenter of the ex plosion.)

Beyond the 400-yard radius.extending outward to a range of 1,400yards the neutron bomb emits largequantities of energetic neutrons that

What Is the Neutron Bomb?

For weeks preceding Jimmy Carter'sApril 7 decision to defer production ofthe U.S.' much heralded "enhancedradiation" weapon, the world wasobsessed with the neutron bomb.

In the Netherlands, a Labor Party-ledmovement garnered one millionsignatures on an anti-neutron bombpetition and the Minister of Defenseresigned in a gesture of protest. Thesecretary general of the West GermanSocial Democratic Party (SPD) de­nounced the weapon as a "symbol ofperversity." In virtually every Europeancountry, thousands demonstrated whilethe media reported in banner headlineseach relevant augury of Carter's expect­ed decision.

With the public outcry again~t thegrisly N-bomb-lahe1ed the weaponwhich "destroys people and notproperty"-the politicians found it a hotpotato which they tried to pass on tosomeone else. Carter consulted hisconscience and decided that explicitagreement by West European govern­ments to deploy would have to precede aU.S. decision to produce the bomb.West German chancellor Schmidt,hearing the voices of his SPD ranks,insisted that the decision to produce

'must precede the agreement to deploy.After this charade had run its course

the imperialist war hawks began wring­ing their hands. Pentagon generalswondered anonymously what couldhave inducted Carter to take this step­was he some kind of religious pacifistnut'! NATO commander (and formerNixon advisor) General Haig threat­ened to resign. West European govern­ments grumbled about the "erratic"U.S. policy. But when all is said anddone Carter's postponement of pro­duction will barely affect the develop­ment of the new weapon. and theimperialist arms build-up is mountingdespite all the talk of a SALT-II armslimitation agreement with the Russians.

NYC Transit Ranks Said No to Contract-Strike Nowl

Courts Throw Out TWU Vote

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Marxist Working-Class Weeklyof the Spartacist League of the U,S,

WOIiKEliSVIINGlJllliD

struction unions. Carnegie's associateJim Haughton formed Harlem FightBack and started suing the building­trades unions to win forced hiring ofblack workers. This scheme played intoNixon's hands as he was in the processof cooking up the Philadelphia Plan toslash the "high wages" of seasonalconstruction workers by using thebattering ram of "affirmative action" totry to bust the unions. While Haugh­ton's schemes opened the constructionunions up to government attack. forCarnegie to imitate the process in transitW,h not only anti-labor but completelyabsurd from the point of view of theTWe ranks. Certainly the lily-whiteGuinan; Lav.e leadership runs Local 100like its pr,qlt: preserve. But for all itsmonunluul cynicism and demagogu­en. It to; ';!:ling atop a militant member­ship. b,!::c:h black and Puerto Rican.which could easily dump the bureaucra­cy if it had a leadership committed tomobilizing the ranks to throw thesellouts 'Out and unite the entire unionaround a program to fight the T A!

The new delay in the transit contractis expected to affect the negotiationsbetween the city and the MunicipalLabor Coalition. representing morethan 200.000 city workers. However.Koch has a reliable ally in Coalitionleader Victor Gotbaum. who has beenrunning around exposing himself atevery opportunity. First Gotbaum insis­ted that city workers would settle fornothing less than parity with the TWU.Th'en alter the initial T\VlJ settlementGotbaum bragged he would win cityworkers more than the 2-year 6 percenttransit increase the biggest joke of theseason from the expert loser who couldnever win more of anything for anybodyat any time, But as soon as Koch said hewould not even match the TWUsettlement with the city workers. Got­haum was back in the press saying,"We're willing to compromise .... Wedidn't say we had to have the same astransit. just similar." (New York Times.25 April). The antics of this flabbysocial-democratic joker are by no meansfunny. for they spell wage freeze. speed­up and layoffs for the 200.000 municipalworkers he is betraying.

A chilling example of the price ofrefusing to fight came in a reportedtentative agreement between the News­paper Guild and union-busting ,Veil'York Post boss Rupert Murdoch.Thinking it could keep its hands lookingclean. the Guild agreed to palm off\1urdoch's demand for a 30 percentreduction of the editorial staff (hy firingat management discretion. moreover) as"voluntary" layoffs. Thus with Guild"permiSSion" the 145 affected mer~hers

of the 450 reporters. editors andad\ en iSing and clerical workers in thePO\! (judd uml now have until Mav 21to so "volunteer'"

-\t the pre,,:nt time Transit Workersaro: boiling mad. City workers can sectho: hand\\ riting on the wall for anotherselloLlt (what happens when they haveno more penSIon fund, left to loo!'!) asGothaurn babbles on. Post employeesare watching theirjobs being given awayas union-busting spreads in the newspa­per industry. 'vOIl' is the time for action.The militant TWLJ ranks must breakhoth from the Guinan leadership andthe treacherous union-suers of theCommittee of Concerned TransitWorkers and take the lead in a powerfuljoint strike of all transit. municipal'workers and newspaper employees thatwould reverse the inroads made duringthe hank-manipulated 1974-75 "fiscalcrisis." •

announced the judge's decision was "AVictory for All New York City Work­ers." A victory? Instead of going out onan immediate strike in accord with theunion's "no contract, no work" principleO'Donnell announced the new electionwould take "at least a month." and a fullweek later the Sell York Post (2 May)was reporting that the TWU had yet toprepare the new ballots for printing andmailing: By dragging out the votingprocedures as long as possible thehureauCIac~ sees its beq chance todemnrd!ilc and beat do\\ I1 theopposition.

But far more important than theresults of the second balloting are thelong-run effects of tying the future of theT\VL' to the whims of the capitalistcourts-those same "neutral" bodieswhich just invoked the Taft-Hartley Actto try to break the miners' strike. who inconjunction with the bankers and BigMAC have been running the city unionsfor the past three years! In turning thegrowing rank-and-file opposition awayfrom militant labor action towardreliance on the capitalist state, theCommittee of Concerned TransitWorkers sets up the unions for defeat.As if to prove it. one Committee leader.\1ike Warren. even suggested in courtApril 24 that one candidate for "impar­tial" poll watcher would be none otherthan Mayor Koch. who has beenrunning around firing city workers likecrazv.

In taking the union to court over theTWU contract Concerned TransitWorkers made no "mistake"-- thegroup has been in the husiness of doingjust that for most of the past decade. Infact its predecessor. Joe Carnegie\'Transit Rank and Fiie group. becamenotorious for Its history of uSing thecapltaltst courts as a factional weaponagain.,t the union hureaucracy. some­tJnle., \\ith disastrous results. In 1972.for example. when thousands of TWlmemhers \\Cte if1\oh ed in a bitterstruggle to turn down thaI selloutcontract. Transit Rank and File playedinto the vicious anti-union sentiment ofthe time by going to court to try todecert ify the TW U for its 1970 failure tosign a no-strike pledge as part of itshistoric defiance of the union-bustingTar/or IAlII' forhidding governmentworkers to strike! At the present timethis suit is before the State SupremeCourt with the TWLJ lawyers now usingit as yet another reason to hold up thesecond-ballot procedures!

In the late 1960's. playing on the totalalienation of the black ghetto popula­tion from the racist job-trusting con-

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Demonstration called by Concerned Transit Workers outside TWU officeApril 11.

on the ballot to read. "I Reject and Voteto Strike."

As it turned out the membership wasnot intimidated. But the Committee ofConcerned Transit Workers was. Con­cerned Transit leader Henry Lewis. Jr.made this clear at the April II midtownrally when he announced. "We are not inany way. shape. or form calling for astrike." So rather than mobilize theranks to throw back the GuinanjLawesellout. these phony "militants" wentrunning to the hosses' courts.

Braintrusted by long-time anti-TWLdemagogue Joe Carnegie. they lined upfor front men a couple of hot-shot "anti­imperialist" attorneys from the :\ationalLawyers Guild (a "progressive" outfitwhich gives workshops on how to takethe unions to court). Before a packedcourtroom April 24 they challenged theTWLJ's voting procedures on the basisof- what else"-the anti-union Lan­drum-Griffin Act. passed to enable thebourgeoisie to "clean up" the unions byoutlawing militant labor action!

Certainly the lawyers had no problemfinding a slew of evidence to back uptheir vote-fraud charge. They listedimproper poll-watching procedures. thewording of the ballot and. most egre­giously. the bureaucracy's blatant at­tempt to stuff the ballot boxes with thevotes of the 25 percent of the TWLJmemhership who do not even workunder the T A contract. but are employ­ed hy other operating companies!

At the first hearing on April 24 thebureaucracy came out against theConcerned Transit Workers suit. insist­Ing the counting procedures werecompletely fair. But something hap­pened overnight -like a peek at thehallots"-which convinced the T\\Tofficials it would be in their interest tocall off the vote. Thus hack In court the\en next dav Local 100 President John

, ,

Lawe and TWU lawyer JC'hn F. O'Don-nell announced the Concerned TransitWorkers had caused "confusion" andleft a cloud over the earlier vote. "It isimportant memhers feel the vote wasfair and that there was no impropriety."O'Donnell magnanimously told thecourt as he recommended a brand newvote.

In welcoming O'Donnell's suggestionJudge Brieant told Concerned TransitWorkers lawyer James Reif. "You had asurprise victory:' an opinion shared byall the labor reformists. black liberalsand phony socialists. Thus the Amster­dam ,Vell'S (29 April) declared it a"stunning victory" while the SocialistWorkers Party's Militant (5 May)

.\..

5 May 1978No. 204

Published weekly except bl-weekly In Augustand December by the Spartaclst PubliShingCo 260 West Broadway. New York. N Y 10013Telephone 966-6841 (Editorial) 925-5665(BUSiness) Address all correspondence toBox 1377 GPO New York. N Y 10001Domestic subSCriptions $500 per yearSecond-class postage paid at New York. N Y

Opinions expressed In Signed articles orletters do not necessarrly express the edlrorralVIeWpOint

As the press was reporting massiveopposition among NYC transit workersto the proposed sellout contract. onApril 25 a federal district judge threwout TWU contract-ratification ballotsand ordered an entirely new vote.

The court action bought valuabletime for Mavor Koch. Governor Carevand the bu;eaucrats of the Transpo;tWorkers Union (TWU) in their desper­ate effort to beat down the oppositionand head off a strike. ~ot onlv woulda suhway and hus shutdown paralyzethe center of LJ .S. finance. but above allthe citv rulers fear a strike hv thepowerf~l TWU Local 100 could o'pen anew round of labor struggle here toreverse the draconian layoffs and jobcuts forcibly extracted from the munici­pal unions In the previous round of"bargaining."

From the \1arch 26 mass rally andunion meetll1g. where TWLJ membersunanimously voted to strike. to thenumerous anti-contract rallies. demon­strations and meetings across the citvwhich followed the April I sellout. th~transit ranks have repeatedly showntheir angry determination to fight. Lastweek newspaper opinion polls of theLocal 100 membership indicated theyhad confounded all predictions byrejecting the contract. but even thoughthey have already been working a monthwithout a contract. transit workers arenow supposed to give their misleadersanother chance to wear down opposi­tion.

The Guinan [awe hureailcraC\ of theTWL used even trick In the books toforce the contract's acceptance. The~

only stopped short of actually pryingopen the ballot boxes and forging thevotes when the courts came to their aidby simply stealing the vote. But worst ofall was the treacherous action of theCommittee of Concerned TransitWorkers. who brought the ballot-boxcase to the capitalist court in the firstplace and then agreed with Guinan tothrow out the vote!

Transit workers! You have hadenough of this vote-rigging. vote­stealing flim-flam! You have alreadyturned this rotten contract down anddon't need another vote! The time tostrike is now! :\0 Contract-;\o Work!

The transit situation has been bal­anced on a razor's edge since April Iwhen the Guinan/ Lawe leadershipagreed to the Transit Authority's (TA)insulting contract offer stipulating ameasly 3 percent wage increase. "pro­ductivity" (i.e.. layoff) clauses andschemes for hiring of part-timers. Fromthe get-go Guinan has relied on scaretactics to defuse the opposition. firstspending union money on newspaperads which blamed the opposition on"outsiders." Then in a move to intimi­date the ranks he worded the "no" box

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

I~

Swedish USec Face to Facewith Trotskyism

W'liliEliS".fiIlAlil)Marxist Working-Class Newspaper of the Spartacist League48 issues (one year): $5-lntroductory offer (16 issues): $2. International rates:48 issues-$20 airmail/$5 seamail; 16 introductory issues-$5 airmail.-includes Spartacist

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Make checks payable/mail to: 204

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Date:Time:Place:

"Like alchemists of the old days, theyare looking for the saving formula,"Christer F. told a recent Spartacistpublic meeting in Stockholm, Sweden.Comrade Christer was talking about thecentrist Kommunistiska Arbetarfor­bundet (KAF-Communist WorkersLeague), Swedish section of the UnitedSecretariat (USee), of which he hadbeen a long-time member before finallyrejecting the USee's brand of get-rich­quick opportunism and solidarizingwith the principled Trotskyist politics ofthe international Spartacist tendency(iSt). Comrade Christer recounted thestory of his oppositional struggle in therightward-moving KAF, which culmi­nated at the KAF national congress lastDecember with the KAF leadership'shilariously ineffectual efforts to railroadhim and a cothinker, Comrade Gunilla,out of the organization.

It all began when the two leftoppositionists submitted a document,"For a Trotskyist Program," in Novem­ber during the pre-conference discus­sion period. Though centrists must beprofessional confusionists and abhorabove all any attempt at programmaticclarity, the furor unleashed by thedocument is explicable only in terms ofthe precarious internal situation of theKAF. The USec's uneasy truce betweenthe former International MajorityTendency (lMT) of Ernest Mandel andthe faction led politically by the reform­ist American Socialist Workers Party(SWP) has been dutifully carried out inSweden through the dismantling ofTendencies A and B. But disgust withthe social-democratic SWP has not beenfully expunged from the ranks of theKAF, which has historically been ratherleftist within the USee spectrum. Thusthe two oppositionists were heaping salton still-open wounds when they wrote:

"Todav the KAF assists in spreadingillusions about the bourgeois state. Thebourgeois state and its repressive appa­ratus are charged with failure tointervene on behalf of immigrants whoare harassed. political refugees who areturned away. and 'terrorists' who aresent packing.... The Malmo local calledfor better behavior on the part of cops inconnection with attacks on immigrants(In1ernationalen, 12 August 1977)."This is indeed different from a fewyears back when the KAF protestedagainst the SWP as the latter putforward the demand that police!military troops should be sent in todefend (sic!) blacks in Boston."

-"For a Trotskyist Program"

The document also castigated the USecfor increasingly open abandonment ofthe Trotskyist principle of uncondition­al defense of the Soviet Union againstimperialism:

"Defense of the Soviet Union isabandoned-evidently it is acceptablethese days to endorse appeals withMaoists and the bourgeoisie aimeddirectly against the deformed anddegenerated workers states. The SWP iseven permitted to fuse with a statecapitalist grouping without protestfrom any leading organ."

In Sweden, a country which directlyfaces the Soviet Union across the BalticSea (the nearest major city to Stock­holm is Leningrad). this is certainly noabstract question. The oppositionistsnoted that the cadres who founded theKAF in 1971 had been gained largelyfrom the sizable Swedish Maoistgroups through the posing of Trotskyistpositions on such questions as the classnature of the Soviet Union.

The left critics' insistence ondiscussing the differences between thepro-I MT and pro-SWP wings of the

USec was certainly galling to the KAFleadership, which has tried to relegatethem to the status of "merely historical"disputes (the USee's equation of"histor­ical" with unimportant itself speaksvolumes). But an even more sensitivesubject raised by Christer and Gunillawas the question of the KAF's founder­ing trade-union work. After the dissolu­tion of Tendencies A and B, a workeristcurrent, Tendency C, remained toplague the KAF leadership's dreams ofinternal peace. Though this current wasfar from possessing a coherent criticalanalysis of KAF trade-union work, itsformation reflected uneasiness withinthe organization over the KAF's turnfrom "putting the union up against thewall" to attempts to become a pressuregroup on the union bureaucracy, oftenthrough forming propaganda blocs withleft social democrats or Stalinists. "Fora Trotskyist Program," with its insis­tence that "KAF should have commun­ists in the trade unions and not tradeunionists in the party," put forward astrategy counterposed to that of theKAF: the need to construct an alterna­tive leadership, based on a revolution­ary transitional program, to oust thepro-capitalist labor "leaders."

The reaction of the KAF leadership to"For a Trotskyist Program" was not apolitical reply but an attempt to insti­gate organizational measures againstthe dissidents on the grounds that theirviews overlapped those of the Spartacisttendency. At the instigation of oneJakob Lundmark, head of the formerpro-SWP faction. the KAF PoliticalBureau (PB) addressed a letter toChrister and Gunilla demanding theyaffirm that the KAF and the USec were"revolutionary Trotskyist organizationswhich stand for revolutionary politicsand represent a continuity back to theFourth International's founding Con­gress in 1938 and the early Comintern"(letter of 26 November 1977). The twocomrades replied that the PB's demandfor a loyalty oath was simply an attemptto expel them "solely on the basis of ourpolitical views and our politicalstruggle." They noted they were beingvictimized for political "characteriza­tions that were acceptable before this"­that is, before the bitter faction fight inthe USec was shoved under the diplo­matic rug.

In their courageous reply, the com­rades exposed the USec rotten bloc,noting the former factions' publiccriticisms of each other and contrastingthe PB's concern that they affirm theUSec's "continuity" to the FourthI nternational with Ernest Mandel'sinfamous 1976 statement, "What dolabels matter?" While noting the diffi­culty of judging any political currentfrom a distance. Christer and Gunillaforthrightly refused to deny the "com­monality" of their views with the iSt "onsome questions."

The PB responded with a draconianrecommendation that the two be ex­pelled at the upcoming KAF congress.A special Commission of Inquiry wasconstituted and enjoined to discoversome basis for this purge. The Commis­sion began to take testimony frommembers of the several locals of whichthe dissidents had been members duringtheir years in the KAF. Simultaneously,to provide a political cover, Lundmarkdistributed a turgid ten-page attack onChrister and Gunilla and the iSt,drawing heavily on the political distor-

tions of ex-Spartacist Bob Pearlman,now in the American SWP.

But the scheme backfired. The witch­hunting "inquiry" could produce not ashred of evidence of indiscipline byChrister and Gunilla, but only testimo­nials to their seriousness and disciplinedfunctioning, as comrades who hadworked with them in branches over theyears testified to their dedication andactive work as KAF members. Facedwith the Commission's refusal to recom­mend that the comrades be expelled, theembarrassed leadership was abruptlyforced to change its mind about takingup the question of disciplinary action atthe congress. Despite a statementprotesting the leadership's bureaucraticmaneuver signed by 18 delegates. thematter was tabled to another "investi­gative" body which was instructed tolook into such matters as the opposi­tionists' "uncomradely tone." But eventhis second, presumably more carefullypicked, commission refused to cover fora purely political expulsion and againexonerated the two comrades.

The ferocious purge assault directedat Comrades Christer and Gunilla was atest of the KAF leadership's willingnessto abandon the remnants of its left pastto act as loyal flunkies for Mandel-atest which the KAF PB "passed" withflying colors. The leadership is movingto expunge from the cadres any leftimpulses remaining from the KAF in itsearlier period. To their credit. some ofthe KAF cadres refused to be suckedinto complicity with the leadership'scynical attempts to carry out the firstpolitical expulsion in the history of theorganization. But the KAF has movedvery far from the leftist impressionismof its younger days, and with the "help"of its international mentors of the USecit will rapidly complete its rightistconsolidation.

In the months following the congress,the KAF has undergone massive disinte­gration. An internal bulletin noted:

"Education did not function. On thewhole. members and candidates com­plain of lack of education. However,emphasis on pre-conference discussionwent by the boards. The expectations ofmany people were transformed intodisappointment.... Propaganda doesnot function in any meaningful way....Recruitment is uneven ... we have aminimum of local intervention ... we arelosing people in the trade unions."

-Stockholm local bulletinNo. 61

Members have been leaving the KAF insignificant numbers. In fact. accordingto a leadership report to the Stockholm

local, only one functional trade-unionfraction remained in the city: day-carecenter employees. The state-capitalistTendency D quit and the workeristTendency C retreated into passivity,apparently content to allow the leader­ship to do as it pleased in exchange forbeing left in peace to do "its" trade­union work. Thus the main winner atthe congress was the pro-SWP wing;with the KAF moving ever more to theright in its capitulation to the petty­bourgeois "movements" like anti­nuclear power and its rotten blocs withsocial democrats and Stalinists, thereformist political logic of the SWP isgaining strength in the organization.

Explosive factional potential stilllurks beneath the diplomatic ceasefire inthe USec. But the SWP's social­democratic reformism cannot be effec­tively combated by the impressionisticcentrism of the IMT. To the SWP's"strategy" of becoming the "best build­ers" of petty-bourgeois and reformistorganizations under the "theory" that"consistent" democracy equals social­ism. the IMT can counterpose only averbal sleight-of-hand which terms thedisgruntlements of disparate strata a"new radicalization" of a new"vanguard."

With all political discussion effective­ly blocked. with the organization in ashambles. with the IMT and SWPloyalists more than willing to join handsagainst any serious left opposition,Christer and Gunilla resigned from theKAF in February to pursue politicaldiscussion with the international Spar­tacist tendency. Through their workwith the Stockholm Spartacist com­rades and through such activities as theStockholm public meeting on the KAFand the recent publication of thedocumentation of their oppositionalstruggle, the comrades demonstratetheir commitment to assisting theirformer comrades of the KAF to find theroad forward to the authentic Trotsky­ism of the iSt. _

France: May 1968,Ten Years AfterSpeaker: Samuel Lewis

Editor, Young SpartacusSaturday, May 67:30 p.m.Farrell Hall, 111Washington Place (justwest of 6th Avenue)

For more information call (212) 925-5665

NEW YORK

5 MAY 1978 3

Shut Down All IH Plants!

';"-.:?"".. "< ,.$ ~~_.

Williams/Louisville-Courier Journal

each case, it has ignored seniorityprovisions and denied the laid-offworkers both SUB and short-workweekbenefits, trying to lay the blame on theLouisville strikers. But Harvester'sschemes backfired-instead of dividingthe workers, they have created a newmood of inter-plant solidarity in theunion's ranks.

At the company's East Moline plant,the layoff for the second Monday in arow of nearly a thousand workers, outof line of seniority and without benefits,sparked a walkout that has kept theplant shut down for a week. Picketsshowed up early at the plant gates,wearing hoods so they would not berecognized and disciplined. No one inany of the three UAW locals at the plantwent to work. At Harvester's FortWayne. Indiana truck plant thefiring offour workers two weeks ago led to anoverwhelming strike vote. Likewise.strike authorization from the Interna­tional has reportedly been requested

continued on pare II

WORKERS VANGUARD

~~AC;:I!!~WSl left Wing, london SlJartacist Group fuse

The rebirth of BritishTrotskyism

$partlCist~ ~'.}./,-ifounded . .- .

[!II Delence 01"" ReVOlutionary Programme ...8 J:=

into the pickets, that's where the troublebegan. We had three pickets injured bycars hitting them and, at that point, ourpeople defended themselves."

When the confrontation was over,company spokesmen whined that morethan 20 cars had been seriously dam­aged and five scabs injured, a report thatWells said was "grossly exaggerated."Whatever the exact extent of thedamage. Harvester got the point. Thenext day the strikebreakers were senthome, and no parts have been madesll1ce.

The battle in Louisville, which asWells told WV has been inspired by themilitancy and solidarity of the coalminers' recent strike. is sparking a waveof "miners fever" throughout the Har­vester chain. Critically short of parts.the company has laid off thousands ofworkers at its Melrose Park, EastMoline and Farmall plants in Illinois. In

Shut Down Harvester!

UAW pickets stop scabs at International Harvester plant in Louisville.

SUbscriptions to SpB are availablefrom Spartacist Publications. PO Box18S. London WCIH 8JE. England. Inaddition to a 12-issue subscription for£ L a joint Sp B/11 T sub is also a\ailablefor British readers at a rate of £4. Singlecopies of Sp B No. I may also beobtained by sending 25 cents to Sparta­cist Publishing Co.. Box 1377. GPO.New York. NY 10001.

devoted to the documentation of themajor factional struggle which split theWorkers Socialist League (WSL) ofAlan Thornett. Some two dozen sup­porters of the Trotskyist Faction (TF)emerged from the WSL in solidaritywith the iSt. These resolutions-a mainprogrammatic document and two sup­plementary documents on the Irishquestion and on the WSL's work inTurkey-demonstrate the principledbasis for the fusion between the TF andthe London Spartacist Group accom­plished at the SL/B founding confer­ence in early March. The "Tasks inBritain" document of the SL/B and afront-page article about the WSL fight(published simultaneously in itT)round out this special first issue ofSpartacist Britain.

ordering foundry workers to join inscabbing on their own union brothers,claiming that respect for the picket linesviolated an agreement with the com­pany! A Solidarity House directivethreatened the loss of insurance benefitsand company disciplinary action if thefoundry workers refused to comply. TheUAW bigwigs also ordered Local 1336to pull down its pickets at one gate to letthe foundry workers in.

But the striking Harvester workerswere not about to simply knuckle underto company scabherding and bureau­cratic sabotage. Determined that theirpicket lines would not be overrun andwith what one local UAW spokesmantermed "considerable hard feelings"toward the InternationaL over 1,000strikers massed at the plant gates earlyMonday morning, April 24. ThirtyLouisville cops were rushed to the sceneas scabs began showing up in their cars.but according to Local president Wells,"I don't think over a couple of them gotin the plant. ... When they tried to run

Mass Pickets Trounce Scabs atLouisville Harvester

The Political Bureau of the SpartacistLeague/U.S. and the Editorial Board ofWorkers Vanguard salute our Britishcomrades on the occasion of the firstissue of Spartacist Britain. SpB is thenew, soon-to-be-monthly paper of theSpartacist League of Britain (SL/B).sympathizing section of the internation­al Spartacist tendency (iSt).

The stabilization of a regular andfrequent S L/ B press will be a centralfactor in the transformation of theBritish organization into a fightingpropaganda group capable of sustainedprogrammatic intervention into. thestruggles of left-wing activists, trade­union militants and campus radicals inBritain, as well as immigrant workersand foreign students. A continuing goalof Spartacist Britain is revolutionaryregroupment through polarizing andsplitting the fake-Trotskyist groupswhich abound on the British centristspectrum. Sp B is an important factor inthe development of the SL/ B towardstatus as a full section of the iSt. Itsestablishment also marks a shift towardincreased iSt press capacity outside:\" orth America.

The first issue of SpB, dated April1978. was a special l6-page issue

4

WV Hails Launching of&Aartacist ,Britain

It's been a long time since the bossestried to scab on an official strike at amajor United Auto Workers (U AW)­organized plant. The strength of theunion -built in the militant and oftenbloody picket-line battles of the1930's -has kept management scab­herding restricted to small and isolatedUAW-organized feeder plants, such asthe long fight at Essex Wire in Indianaor the ongoing strike at the FleckManufacturing plant in southern Ontar­io. So when International Harvestertried to keep production going at itsmajor parts plant in Louisville. Ken­tucky through the use of managementscabs. the company got a much deservedlesson: last week 1.000 UAW membersturned out to repel the strikebreakersand shut the plant down tight.

The strike began April 13, when 1,400members of UA W Local 1336 walkedout in a sanctioned strike againstHarvester's attempts to cut incentivepay nearly in half on certain productionjobs and over accumulated health andsafety grievances. Local president LarryWells told WV that the workers werealso angered about recent layoffs thatwere instituted out of line of seniority.Some 1,250 members of UA W Local817, who work in Harvester's foundry atthe same site, respected the strikers'picket lines along with eight craftul1lons.

The Louisville plant supplies keyparts for other plants throughout theHarvester chain. and within davs thestrike began crippling prod uctioncompany-wide. Management brazenlydecided to try to keep the plant open.Exploiting the UA W's regular policy ofallowing managerial personnel intostruck plants. Harvester brought inhundreds of foremen, many from out­of-state plants and kept productionrolling.

Instead of aiding the striking workersin beating back this outrageous anddangerous precedent, the UAWl nter­national lent Harvester a hand by

Strike to Protest Trudeau's Wage Controlsl

Wide Support for Militant Motionat Canadian Postal Convention

CooperfToronto Sun

warpath. The reactionary Toronto Sun,(16 January), whining about "commu­nist infiltration" of the Post Office,bleated: "The average citizen can't makesense out of the postal zanies­Revolutionary Marxists, CanadianParty of Lab"our, Spartacus group, andsuch. These guys make Moscow-lineCommunists seem staid patriots bycomparison." The Canadian bourgeoi­sie has since increasingly teed off atCanadian postal workers, scapegoat­ing them for every ill imaginable­featherbedding, resistance to automa­tion, striking, socialist activity, etc. Thisculminated only a few weeks ago withthe Conservative Party's release for"study" of its Ritchie Report, theessential proposal of which is thatstrikes be banned outright in the PostOffice.

Underneath the rabid campaign ofthe press and the capitalist politiciansstands real fear of the postal workers'demonstrated traditions of militantfights to win and preserve union gains.The bosses well remember that govern­ment workers won even the restrictedright to strike only as the result of an"illegal" postal strike which smashedexisting no-strike legislation. And it isfundamentally the failure of the bosses'several-years' campaign to qualitativelycripple and demoralile the postalunions, despite the treachery of theunion bureaucracy, that stands behindthe new round of anti-union legislation.

While seeking to mobilize the rest oflabor in militant actions against thegovernment's current and proposedreactionary laws, Canadian postalworkers must prepare now for anationwide strike of both unions.CU PW members have worked foralmost a vear without a contract whilethe feden'll government has spat on theLCUC settlement (which formallyexpires this June) by refusing to passthrough contractually guaranteed cost­of-living raises. No more capitulation tothe Trudeau government and its anti­union laws!

As the strategic section of publicemployees, postal workers must initiatethe fight against federal pay controlsand anti-strike legislation by strikingnow, demanding a big wage boost, fullcost-of-living protection, no layoffsthrough a shorter workweek at no cut inpay, and a closed shop. Such a policy,combined with an aggressive campaignto mobilize the Canadian labor move­ment against attempts by the govern­ment to break such a strike, is the onlyway forward .•

Toronto postal workers walk out in 1975 strike.

In the wake of the Christmas-timestrike. the Toronto press went on the

whose real purpose is similar to thenoxious "productivity" committees insteel and other unions. McBurneyblasted this outright treachery: "There isonly one way to resolve disputesbetween the employer and employee... and that is through industrialaction." Pointing to the bureaucracy'sconsistent record of kowtowing tomanagement, McBurney warnedagainst placing any confidence inMcGarry & Co.

McBurney's intervention set the stagefor a real convention battle. Whendiscussion was opened on the executiveboard's resolution on Bill C-45, adelegate from Toronto rose and putforward the bulk of the resolutionintroduced earlier by McBurney inLocal I and passed there. The proposalput to the convention included thedemand for a two-day general strikeagainst the government's anti-laborlegislation, and the floor fight whicherupted proved to be the key struggle ofthe convention. Delegates from Quebec,Kingston and Toronto went to the mikesto speak in favor of it. Despite theunanimous opposition of the nationalexecutive a third of the delegates rose insupport of this resolution when the votewas called. The LCUC bureaucracy wasvisibly shaken.

The sizable vote for the oppositionmotion in the floor fight testifies to thefact that the union leadership faces anincreasingly militant and restless rankand file. The Toronto LCUC member­ship has already forced its local leadersto repudiate the treacherous Intergroupscheme. And despite the sabotage fromtrade-union leaders, rank-and-file post­al workers have fought back time andagain with a spirit of militancy andsolidarity not seen for years.

Thus. last December in Toronto­which has been earmarked as thekey initial target for the govern­ment's union-bashing spree-man­agement provoked a sit down strike bymembers of the CU PW through its use ofnon-union labor for union jobs. Whenmanagement responded by indefinitelysuspending nine postal workers, includ­ing two executive board officials andfour shop stewards, the CU PW localcalled an official strike. With powerfulbacking by postal drivers, members ofthe LCUC, the strike shut down most ofToronto's postal operations. Althoughtwo workers were later fired, the timelyaction by CUPW members and LCUCdrivers staved off a much greater defeat.

the Labour Code. while it allowsnegotiations over automation, containsrestrictions on the right to strike almostidentical to those under PSSRA. Postalworkers stand to gain nothing bytrading in one piece of anti-unionlegislation for another-the answer is tosmash all the capitalist government'santi-labor legislation.

It is precisely the groveling of thetrade-union bureaucrats that embold­ens the Canadian bourgeoisie in its anti­labor drive. The current round ofreactionary legislation is the directresult of the failure of Canada's uniontops to smash the government's wagecontrols program in 1975-77. Ratherthan mounting a defensive general striketo defeat wage controls, the CanadianLabour Congress (CLC) staged an ill­organized token "day of protest" on 14October 1976 in 'order to dissipate thetremendous hostility to this anti-laborlaw among rank-and-file trade union­ists. Having taken careful notice of theCLC's cowardice and the subsequentrefusal of the trade-union bureaucratsto launch strikes against wage controls,the Trudeau government has nowdecided it can proceed with confidenceagainst postal and other governmentworkers.

Faced with dozens of delegatesfurious at its do-nothing stance, theMcGarry leadership of the LCUeattempted to put on a left face at theconvention. However, its emergencyresolutions dealing with wage controland anti-strike legislation, while filledwith militant-sounding rhetoric andvague threats of industrial action, in factcommitted the delegates to nothingmore than endorsing the limp past andfuture actions of the LCUC nationalexecutive and of the Canadian LabourCongress.

It was primarily the intervention ofdelegate Bob McBurney that exposedthe LCUC leadership's unwillingness totake decisive actions against the govern­ment's anti-union campaign. McBur­ney, elected from Toronto Local I, is alongtime steward in the drivers' sectionof his local. During the DecemberCUPW strike in Toronto, McBurneysponsored a resolution calling forsolidarity .with the CU PW workerswhich unanimously passed the LCUCstewards body and was instrumental inmobilizing LCUC drivers to refuse tocross CU PW picket lines. McBurneywas elected delegate on the basis of aclass-struggle program which includeddemands for an end to class­collaborationist committees with thegovernment; for a joint nationwidecontract struggle of all postal workers tobeat back the government attack:smashing all anti-labor legislation: forthe right of self-determination forQuebec: and for the building of agenuine workers party-as opposed tothe pusillanimous social-democraticr\ew Democratic Party-to fight for aworkers government.

In his speech on the convention floor,McBurney reminded delegates howl.CUC president McGarry had enforcedthe criminal policy of crossing picketlines of members of other postal unionswhen they were on strike-thus deepen­ing the craft divisions among postalworkers. McBurney also challengedMcGarry's cooperation with manage­ment in establishing "Intergroup"-ajoint union-management committee

TOROr\TO-Last week the 38th con­vention of the Letter Carriers Union ofCanada (LCUC) met in Quebec Cityunder the ominous shadow of Canadianprime minister Trudeau's determinationto implement new anti-labor legislationdirected against government employees.The planned institution of new wagecontrols and increased restrictions onthe right to strike for these workers isparticularly resented by postal workers,who have been the target of a several­years' campaign by the government tocripple their unions through massiveintroduction of automation, layoffs.speed-up and the wholesale junking oftraditional work rules. But despitesuccessive government attacks, theconvention demonstrated that the mem­bership is not demoralized. Much to thedistress' of the conservative LCUCbureaucracy a significant minority ofthe delegates voted for a militantresolution calling for a general proteststrike against the anti-labor legislation.

Trudeau's determination to extendwage controls for government workersis but a part of his vicious anti-laboroffensive. Since 1975 Canadian workingpeople have been saddled with generalwage controls. Supposedly designed tocurb inflation, they in fact only led to thedriving down of workers' living stand­ards as pay increases were slashed andprices continued to skyrocket at ratessubstantially exceeding those in the U.S.The Canadian bourgeoisie's decision todismantle this highly unpopular andpatently ineffective program was acynical ploy undertaken on the eve ofthis summer's scheduled elections. Withunemployment running at near-recordlevels, the bosses were less concernedabout the threat of strikes by privatesector employees. But Trudeau & Co.are absolutely determined to maintainwage controls on public sector workersand to use this as a wedge in the futureagainst the rest of labor.

The immediate targets of thegovernment's drive are the postalworkers, who by virtue of their greatertrade-union consciousness, demonstrat­ed militancy and ability to cripplecommunications in Canada through anationwide shutdown of the Post Office,represent the greatest threat amongpublic employees to the government'sattempts to establish a harsh laborpeace. It was therefore not surprisingthat the first measure chosen by Tru­deau to push through Parliament in hiscurrent anti-labor campaign was BillC-45. which makes it illegal for postalworkers to strike during a federalelection. This bill, already passed, isdesigned to toughen up restrictionsagainst strikes in the Public ServiceStaff Relations Act (PSSRA). Trudeau& Co. are also pushing Bill C-26--aproposal to legalize mail tampering byCanada's political cops, the RoyalCanad ian Mounted Police-as welllegislation to end automatic indexing[cost-of-living allowances] of pensionsfor government workers before age 60.

Thus far the only response fromLCUC president Bob McGarry. alongwith the leadership of the CanadianUnion of Postal Workers (CU PW). hasbeen to ask that the postal unions bebrought under the reactionary Canadal.abour Code (instead of the presentPSSRA). by begging the government tomake the Post Office into a semi­autonomous Crown Corporation. But

fIE:IIr

~E:-

5 MAY 1978 5

Dollar sinks against other currencies.

thus threatening an adverse effect ontheir balance of trade), reducing thevalue of their reserves and (by abandon­ing the previous standard) throwing thesystem into chaos or accumulatingever more of the key currency. a policywhich feeds domestic inflation. Eventu­ally the contradiction reaches a criticalpoint and the system collapses.

The British pound sterling standardlasted but six veal'S ( 1925-31). Becauseof the overwhelming economic andmilitary superiority of the U.S. as itemerged from World War II. the dollarstandard lasted far longer. Nonetheless,it too collapsed of its inherent contradic­tions. During the 1950's and 60's theU.S. ran a balance of trade surplus but acontinual balance of payments deficit.This \\as due to massive capital invest­ment in West Europe as well as thecolonial world. By accumulating dollarsin the 1960's. the West European rulingclasses were in effect subsidizing theAmerican takeover of their own produc­tive assets. Gaullist France sought tocounter this by converting all its dollarholdings into gold. By the late 1960'sforeign dollar holdings exceeded manytimes over the U.S. gold reserves at theofficial gold price.

The gradual decline in the productivi­ty of U.S. industry relative to WestEurope and Japan was reinforced by theinflationary financing of the VietnamWar. In 1971 the U.S. ran a balance oftrade deficit for the first time since 1893!In August of that year Nixon abolishedthe con\ertibility of the dollar at theofficial $35 gold price. devalued againstthe other major currencies and slappedon a tariff hike (the latter directlyviolating U.S.-sponsored internationaltreaties). So ... end of dollar standard!

One last attempt was made topreserve fixed exchange rates. This wasthe Smithsonian Agreement of Decem­ber 1971. which Nixon hailed as "thegreatest monetary agreement in worldhistory." At the time we wrote:

.. the differences are too irrecon­cilable for a return to a stable interna­tional monetarv sYstem. The nextperiod will be· one of internationalfinancial anarchy. quite similar to the19.10·s. with managed fluctuating ex­change rates .... numerous ad hoc tradeand capital controls. bilateral commer­cial and credit deals and the completeinterpenetration of political and finan­cial relations."

"American Empire Shaken."WI' :\0.2. November 1971

:\ ixon's "greatest monetary agree­ment in world history" collapsed a scant14 months later with another dollardevaluation. Since March 1973 ex­change rates have been determined bymarket supply and demand specula­tion. influenced by various and conflict­ing efforts of government intervention.This system or rather non-system iscalled "managed fluctuating exchangerates" in official pronouncements and"dirty floating" by its wide spectrum ofcritics. Today exchange rates are gov­erned neither by purely market factorsnor by any kind of systematic andpredictable government policy. Govern­ment intervention in the foreign ex­change market. like all other economicpolicies. is the temporary outcome ofconflicting capitalist interests (e.g..financiers versus industrialists), thepressure of the labor movement andinter-imperialist rivalries and alliances.Moreover. exchange rate policies arc'governed not only by narrow. short­term economic considerations but alsoby strategic political and militaryfactors.

Some neanderthal right-wing econo­mists like Milton Friedman advocatefreelv fluctuating exchange rates withno gO\ernment intenention. Under thiskind of lailse::l'aire regime. specltlation\\(wld lead to such wildly gyratingc\change rates that it \\ ould be impossi­ble for importers or exporters to projcctprices. costs and profits. A truly freemarket for foreign exchange would thuslead to a ljualitati\e contraction 01international commerce and an acceler-

~

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96

1

1:[-lT.t 1 ! ,Dollar AgainstForeign Currene)

80

82

84

88

86

94 .-.

90

92-··

78 ... ··

I l'76 ' -. . .

741- .

I ! I72 1.... +..--.1."..

70 1 1-l-I681"rr- i66r.. ··l..···l·······!··64 1 -1· ..··..I·····t... ,

62 t···· ····t····f ..! I I 160 ["""T"'''' ""1"

58 L .....! ....i....j ..I I Swiss franc561---f ··.·t··l54L..LJ 1

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I! I i j

46 "· ..·T·t .;. ; I I

II ~7~"k;7h '7~' '74 '75

As of December

Index: May 1970=100

: t

•

Since last June the value of the dol­lar has plummeted sharply against theso-called "strong" currencies- 15 per­cent against the West German mark.20 percent against the Japanese yen, 2l\percent against the Swiss franc. Thissharp devaluation has naturally acceler­ated a tendency to move away from thedollar as the basic currency of interna­tional capitalism. Thus the cartel ofpetroleum exporting countries (OPEC)is considering denominating the price ofoil in a mix of major currencies ratherthan io dollars as it is at present. Moresignificantly, at the Copenhagen Com­mon Market summit in April. WestGerman chancellor Helmut Schmidtproposed that member countries settleaccounts with one another only in theirown currencies and also intervene toprop up weak currencies. like the Italianlira. only in Common Market denomi­nations. In other words. Schmidtproposed to transform West Europeinto a mark zone. using dollars only inextra-European transactions.

The Carter administration hasblamed the huge U.S. balance ofpayments deficit and resulting dollardevaluation on purely conjunct uralfactors--the high cost of oil imports. thestagnation of the West Europeaneconomies which limits demand forAmerican exports. However. far moreprofound factors are involved in thecurrent and indeed recurrent dollarcrisis. The "Great Dollar Slide of 1977­78" marks a further phase in the declineof American dominance in the capitalistworld. a dominance achieved throughits \ictory in World War II and thesuppression of the post-war revolution­ary wave in West Europe and Japan.

The Historic World Money Crisis

The recurrent devaluations of theAmerican dollar since 1970 are not onlvan expression of the relative weakeningof the American economy. but also of afundamental crisis of the imperialistfinancial system. The continual interna­tional monetary "crises" are clear anddramatic proof of the Leninist assertionthat since August 1914 the nation-statesystem has become a fundamentalbarrier to the expansion of production.World War I destroyed once and for allthe gold standard. which fixed the valueof national currencies in terms of gold.All imperialist powers financed the warthrough domestic inflation. eliminatingthe link between their currencies and auniversal standard of value.

After a period of internationalmonetary chaos. the sterling standardwas established in 1925 by making theBritish pound convertible into gold at asupposedly stable price. The sterlingstandard broke down under the impactof the Great Depression. The 1930'swere a period of international financialanarchy. continual competitive devalu­ations and widespread trade protection­ism. At the Bretton Woods conferencein 1944 the U.S. established the dollarstandard by making its currency conver­tible into gold for governments (notprivate parties) at $35 an ounce. Thisstandard lasted until ;\i ixon's 15 August(1971). when the U.S. was forced by itsdeclining economic position among theimperialist powers to drastically devaluethe dollar.

Fundamentally the gold standard'cannot be replaced by a nationalcurrency. The "strong" key currencyalways eventually becomes the'weakestin the system. Because its currency is "asgood as gold." the key country can runlarge balance of payments deficits withlittle restraint. And the capitalists andgovernment of the key currency countrynaturally exploit this advantage. Thekey country inevitably floods the worldwith its currency far in excess of its goldholdings and of foreign demand forexchange resenes. The other capitalistcountries are th~n faced with the hardchoice of forcing devaluation of the keycurrency- which means sacrificing theirown competitive advantage (makingtheir exports relatively more expensive.

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ated tendency toward regional blocs andnational autarky. .

If the establishment of freely fluctuat­ing exchange rates is impossible, so isthe restoration of the pre-World War Igold standard. Under the nineteenthcentury gold standard a country run­ning a balance of payments deficit hadto contract its money supply, cuttingwages and prices. Today the labormovement in the advanced bourgeois­democratic countries (and even undermany bonapartist regimes in the back­ward capitalist countries) is too strongto allow the imposition of such cuts inmoney wages. Today bourgeois austeri~

ty programs aim at holding moneywage increases below the rate ofinflation. The classic gold standardcould only be restored by an interna­tional counterrevolution which de-

conjunctural situation another keyfactor is involved: the long-term erosionof American industrial competitiveness.Between 1968 and 1977 the U. S. share ofworld exports declined from 19 percentto less than 14 percent (Business Week,10 April). Since 1974 the value of U.S.exports has increased at an annual rateof9 percent while imports have risen atan annual rate of 13.5 percent (Econo­mist. I April). Moreover, the entireincrease in value of U.S. exports since1974 comes from higher prices, notgreater volume. In other words the realvolume of American exports has re­mained unchanged for the past fouryears.

While publicly deploring the fallingvalue of the dollar. the Carter adminis­tration has in reality adopted a policy ofcompetitive devaluation, one of the

quarter of this year the U.S. grossnational productfell, albeit slightly, forthe first time in three years.

While all administration officials,even Blumenthal, have to pay lip serviceto a "strong" dollar. liberal Democraticacademics can frankly defend competi­tive devaluation. Thus, Paul Samuel­son, the country's leading liberal econo­mist. writes in his regular Newsweek (27March) column:

"Had Chancellor Schmidt and PrImeMinister Fukuda been given their waybv President Carter and TreasurvSecretarv Michael BlumenthaL the LJ .5.interventions to stabilize the dollarwould have left us tens of billionspoorer today and we'd be having a 197Hcrisis of sharp parity readjustments."To back up our dubious interventions.the Fed would have had to clamp downon the money supply. numbing theforces of recovery in building and

U.S. economy. Thus the Carter-backeddollar devaluation has produced a riftbetween manufacturing and financialinterests.

The house organ of the Americanfinance aristocracy, the Wall StreetJuurnal, has waged a vociferous cam­paign against the "malign neglect" of thedollar. In a 19 December 1977 editorial,it warns the Carter administration inCassandra-like terms:

"... the falling dollar means that theU.S. will suffer faster inflation thanmost of the world. with all the domesticeconomic and social consequences. Thevalue of the dollar is nothing to neglect.either benignly because of somemisguided religion about free markets.or malignly because you think a cheaperdollar will give exporters an edge inforeign competiton. Whatever thetheoretical economics. surely the expe­rience of the industrialized nations since

Somas

~'~.

U,-,Money as universal standard of value (gold) is not thepromissory note of national state credit. Soviet Chervonetz,South African Kruggerand, British New Sovereign (above)retain their value as the American dollar (right) plummetsagainst other currencies.

stroyed the trade unions, and might notbe feasible even then.

Although the dollar has fluctuatedwidely against other currencies and goldsince the March 1973 devaluation. it hasstill remained the basic unit of interna­tional trade and finance. There has,however, been a gradual tendency forthe West German mark to become thesecond reserve currency. While in 1970foreign banks held only $700 million inmarks as reserves, by 1976 the figure hadrisen to $7.7 billion (Business Week, 27March). The present plunge in thedollar's value threatens to turn theretreat from the dollar as the world'sbasic currency into a rout.

Carter's "Malign Neglect" of theDollar

The Carter administration has fo­cused blame for the huge U.S. balanceof payments deficit and falling dollar onthe high cost of oil imports. Since theArab states and oil monopolies arehardly popular with the Americanpeople. they are easy targets for all of thecountry's economic ills. While the four­fold increase in the world price of oilsince 1973 has created serious problemsfor the advanced capitalist countries, itdoes not account for the exceptionalU.S. trade deficit this past year. TheU.S. imports a smaller percentage of itsoil than West Europe or Japan. thelatter country now running a large tradesurplus.

The basic cause of the present largeAmerican balance of trade deficit is thatthe L .S. has recovered in part from the1974-75 world depression (although theunemployment rate is still higher than in1973). while West Europe and Japanhave not. In 1977 industrial productionin the U.S. increased about 5 percent; itincreased' only 3 percent in Japan.remained more or less constant in WestGermany. France and Britain and fellSpercent in Italy (L .S. Department ofCommerce. International EconomicIndic(J{()fS. March 197~). Given thisconjunctural pattern. it is natural thatthe L .S. would tend to pull in importsand find it hard to export.

However. in addition to the present

5 MAY 1978

standard "beggar my neighbor" meas­ures of the 1930's Depression. Europeanbusiness circles have accused Washing­ton of manipulating exchange rates forcompetitive advantage. For example theconservative West German BonnerGeneral-AnzeiKer wrote: "The dollar'sdownward slide is the result of amanipulation to help balance continu­ing export weakness" (quoted in WallStreet Journal. 19 December 1977). Infact Washington has not activelyintervened to devalue the dollar; it hasjust passively let the market andspeculation take their course-straightdown. This policy has been labeled"malign neglect" by Fritz Leutwiler.head of the Swiss central bank.

Treasury Secretary Michael Blum­enthal, the chief architect of the "malignneglect" policy. denounces his numer­ous critics, who urge deflationary mea­sures to "defend" the dollar. for risking arecession:

"We don't believe that a recession in theUnited States is the right way to dealwith the dollar problem. I hope no oneseriously suggests that the United Statesshould follow policies getting us back tothat situation as a means of solving thedollar problem."

-Business Week. 3 April

The Carter administration has toldthe critics of "malign neglect" not toworry so much, because the dollar'sdownward slide will be reversed in duecourse by the imminent recovery of theWest European economies. This "wait­ing for the West German boom"scenario was presented, for example. inearly March by Charles Schultze. headof the Council of Economic Advisers:"Our growth rate won't be that muchfurther ahead of our trading partnersthis year because they are going to begrowing faster" ( "Vall Street Journal. 6March). This is not so much wishfulthinking as a cynical cover argument tojustify competitive devaluation. In fact.Schultze's prediction that the Americanand West European growth rates will becloser together this year may turn out tobe the case. but in exactly the oppositedirection than he projects. While there isno sign of a significant upturn in theWest European economies. in the first

private investment. Production wouldpresumably be lower than it now is."

The claim of the liberal devaluation­ists, like Blumenthal and Samuelson,that the recent plunge of the dollar is inthe best interest of American workingpeople is false. Even leaving aside theirchauvinist attitude toward workers inJapan or West Germany. these liberalsignore or deny the inflationary impactof the sharp dollar devaluation. Whilethe U.S. is less -dependent on importsthan any other major capitalist country,domestic prices are not insulated fromexchange rate changes. Dollar devalua­tion means that the price of all foreigngoods in the U. S. market must rise.Volkswagen. for example, has raised itsprices five times since last April.Moreover, American products whichcompete with foreign goods will alsoraise their prices. For example, lastDecember General Motors boosted theprice of its sub-compact Chevette by$100 despite weak demand. Since thissub-compact competes mainly withWest European and Japanese models,G M could raise its price and still hold acompetitive advantage. Competitivedevaluation. like outright trade protec­tionism, means inflation.

The American capitalist class is by nomeans solidly behind Carter's "malignneglect" of the dollar. Far from it! If onthe one hand the dollar devaluationgives General Motors a competitiveedge against Volkswagen, Chase Man­hattan will lose billions if Saudi Arabiaor Kuwait shift accounts to the Dresd­ner Bank or Bank of Tokyo to preservetheir value. A significant share of theprofits of the major American bankscomes from financing trade betweenthird countries and holding foreignshort-term capital. For example, whenBralil imports electrical equipmentfrom Sweden. this transaction is proba­bly not in cruzeiros or kroner but in U.S.dollars and is probably cleared throughaccounts in one of the big '\lew Yorkbanks. American financial interestshave a vital stake in preserving thedollar as the basic medium of worldcommerce and investment. even if thisrequires a slower growth rate for the

World War II shows that a fallingcurrencv foretells not economic healthbut economic sickness."

We need hardly add that for the WallStreet Journal the economic health ofthe United States is measured by thenext quarter's profits of Chase Manhat­tan and Morgan Guaranty Trust.

The ruling-class dispute over Carter's"malign neglect" of the dollar is atbottom part of the continuing argumentbetween inflationists and deflationists,the two basic currents of bourgeoiseconomic policy since the Great Depres­sion. The labor movement has generallysupported liberal Keynesian inflation­ists who promise a higher growth rateand reduced unemployment. In reality,the working class has nothing to gain bytolerating inflation in the expectation ofminimizing unemployment. Accelerat­ing inflation, as in 1972-73. will alwayslead to a crisis and sharp downturn. AsLeon Trotsky wrote over 40 years ago:

"In this period of social crisis. ofeconomic shocks. inflation and def7a­tion are two complementarr instru­ments/or throwinf{ on to the people thecost oj'decayinf{ capitalism. Bourgeoisparties organize formidable discussionson the question: is it better to cut theworkers' throats with the saw ofinflation or with the simple knife ofdeflation'} Our struggle is directed withthe same energy against the saw andagainst the knife." [emphasis inoriginal]

"The Belgian Dispute and theDe Man Plan."I-Vritinf{s 1934-35

Carter's Turnabout TowardDeflation

Without admitting that the pastdevaluationist policy was mistaken,Carter has recently reversed himself andseems half-seriously trying to preventfurther decline in the dollar's value.There is widespread speculation thatBlumenthal. the hardliner behind the"let the dollar plunge" strategy, will beaxed as Wall Street has been screamingfor his head for months. Carter'sturnabout toward "defending" thedollar is probably motivated by realpressures from financial interests. worryabout the accelerating inflation. a desire

continued Oil paKe 8

7

Of Dollars, West German Marksand NATO

"They are obstinate. But we areobstinate too" (Business Week, 27

Doll'ar Crisis .. ~

Workers Vanguardin BOUND VOLUMES

Volume 1 includes:• WV nos. 1-34• Workers Action nos. 7-10• subject index

imperialist powers. [t has, for example,hailed Soviet dissidents such as Bukov­sky and Plyusch, who support Carter's"human rights" campaign. as the van­guard of socialist democracy in theUSSR. By ignoring the Cold War aimswhich strongly affect U.S.-West Eu­ropean economic relations. Mandersarticle avoids the embarrassing questionof Soviet defensism.

Since World War II inter-imperialistrivalry arising from conflicting econom­ic interests has been mitigated andlimited by common hostility to theSoviet Union. This is particularly true inthe case of West Germany. The relativeweakness of anti-American economicnationalism a la Gaullism among theGerman capitalist class stems from itsoverriding hostility toward Soviet Rus­sia. This is not to say that NATO and theother U.S.-dominated alliances cansurvIve indefinitely in the face ofgrowing economic conflicts among themajor imperialist countries. Even forthe German ruling class there is anupper limit to the amount it will pay thePentagon for services rendered.

[nter-imperialist economic conflictsmust eventually erode and break up theU.S.-dominated anti-Soviet alliances.Such a development will not lessen butrather heighten the dangers of a thirdimperialist world war. To the extent thatthe recent dollar crisis intensifies inter­imperialist rivalries and economic na­tionalism, it sends out alarm signalswarning of the urgent need for theworking class to sweep away theirrational and destructive world capital­ist system.•

NMU Militants' Statement on Canal Treaties

Hand It Back to thePanamanians Now!

The Militant-Solidarity Caucus, an oppOSItIOn group in the Nationa[Maritime Union (NMU) which is running two candidates for office in thecurrent national union elections-Eugene Herson for National President andJack Heyman for National Secretary-Treasurer-has issued the followingstatement regarding the Panama Canal:

"The Panama Canal treaties constitute an attack on the NMU membersand all working people. in Panama and elsewhere! Our union is the largestunion in the Canal Zone, with thousands of canal workers, line handlers,deckhands, dockers and others. These treaties cooked up by the Cartergovernment and tinpot dictator Omar Torrijos license the U.S. governmentto deploy troops in perpetuity in Panama to keep the Canal "open, neutral,secure, and accessible." It is a direct statement of their intent to crush anystruggle by these workers through military strikebreaking. Thus, it isparticularly incumbent on the NMU to rally the labor movement to smashthese vile treaties.

"The Canal treaties do not alter one bit the subordination of thePanamanian working people to the U.S. corporate powers that has existedover the past 75 years. The treaties' guarantees of "political independence orsovereign integrity" to the Republic of Panama are a thorough farce. Thisstandard formula of international hypocrisy has never deterred the CIA, theMarines and the paid assassins of the U.S. government from instigating andcarrying out bloody executions and slaughters in Chile, Guatemala, theDominican Republic and other Latin American states. But this "guarantee" isa transparent joke in the case of the Panama treaties, since they provide forU.S. control and occupation of the Canal Zone-the lifeblood of thePanamanian economv.

"The debate in th~ Senate was a fraud. Despite all the bickering over"reservations" and "amendments," all of these capitalist politicians­Democrats and Republicans alike-stood four-square for maintaining theCanal as a strategic outpost of U.S. capitalism. The real essence of this policywas stated by Senator Hayakawa: "We stole it fair and square." Coming freshon the heels of Carter's invoking of Taft- Hartley against striking coal miners,the organized robbery in Panama once again demonstrates the savage enmityof the Democratic Party Carter government for working people, both hereand abroad.

"The Shannon Wall administration of the '\I M U. along with George Meanyand the rest of the American trade union bureauc'racy. has not uttered a wordof criticism of these pacts. As the loyal handmaidens of Carter and thecorporate-controlled U.S. government. they tolerate and usually championsuch anti-labor. imperialist treaties. [n sharp distinction, the Militant­Solidarity Caucus demands that the Canal be handed over immediately to thePanamanians. with no compensation to the U.S. government and with noreduction in wages and benefits for the Canal workforce. All U.S. militarybases must be dismantled now. But the Caucus emphasizes that only if theCanal is ripped from capitalist control by the Panamanian working peopleand operated under a workers and peasants government, will it genuinelyprovide for the needs of the broad masses of Panamanians.

"We further call on the N M U to take the lead in repudiating support for theDemocratic and Republican parties of big business. The trade unions mustfight to build a workers party that will struggle to eliminate the predatoryAmerican capitalist and imperialist system which oppresses working peoplehere and abroad."

example. he attributes the. support ofWest Europe and Japan for a "strong"dollar basically to a desire for interna­tional monetary stability:

"What fright<:ns the imperialist v.orld isnot so much the fall of the dollar in andof itself. In the last analysis. capitalismhas suniv<:d the decline of the poundsterling and any numher of othermon<:tary and financial catastrophes.What frightens them is that there is noother currency ready to take the place ofth<: dollar. the v.av the dollar hadpreviously taken the 'place of the poundsterling as the main resene currencv."

To be sure, countries as dependent onforeign trade as West Germany andJapan have a real stake in worldmonetary order. However. the Germancapitalist class has not subsidized theAmerican economy for the past decadesimply in order to secure stable ex­change rates. Any analysis of the dollar­mark exchange rate which abstractsfrom the Washington-Bonn anti-Sovietalliance is fundamentally flawed.

Propaganda. as Trotsky onceobserved. does not consist in sayingeverything one knows about a givensubject. A short article on the recentdollar crisis cannot cover all the impor­tant factors in','olved. However. thatMandel writes an article dealing withU.S.-West German economic relationswithout mentioning NATO or theSoviet bloc may be more than a matterof misplaced emphasis.

During the past period, particularlywith the rise of Eurocommunism,Manders USec has abandoned inpractice the Trotskyist principle ofdefense of the Soviet degeneratedworkers state against the capitalist-

February). So spoke Count OttoLambsdorff. West German economicsminister. about his negotiations with theCarter administration. And indeedrecent Washington-Bonn economIcnegotiations resemble a scene from agangster movie. Schmidt threatens tokill the dollar if the U.S. doesn't deflate.Carter threatens to let it die. Carter andBlumenthal trumpet virtuously aboutthe American rate of growth and preachthat Bonn must stimulate its economy.Schmidt complains that the cheapdollar-is killing West European industri­al exports, and backed by London andParis he demands of the U.S. higherinterest rates, tighter credit, a reducedbudget deficit and tariffs or quotas onimported oil.

Despite much grousing, the WestGerman government has in fact inter­vened in the exchange markets to keepthe dollar from dropping precipitously.Between :\O\ember and February theWest German central bank purchasedS II billion in American currency andshort-term capital. although since thenit has been more niggardly in accumu­lating this unwanted paper. OtmarEmminger. head of the West Germancentral bank, spoke nothing less thanthe truth when he stated:

"If we hadn't intervened. it would havefallen into the cellar and we would havehad real turbulence in exchange mar­kets, because for davs and even weeksthere wasn't anv den1and for dollars."

-- Wall Sireet Journal. 14 March

Why has the West German govern­ment. however reluctantly, pouredbillions into the exchange markets inorder to keep up the value of the dollar?Bonn officials, like Emminger, claimonly the loftiest of motives-a desire tomaintain the stability of internationalfinancial arrangements. But this is onlyone and not the most important one ofBonn's motives for supporting thedollar. Since the appreciation of themark increases the cost of West Germangoods in the world mark'et, Bonn'sforeign exchange policy is in part anexport subsidy, not different in principlefrom a tax rebate on export earnings.However. West Germany's primaryreason for lending (or giving) the U.S.billions is not in the narrow senseeconomic.

The German capitalist class aspires toreconquer the eastern part of theircountry from the Soviet bloc. Hitler'sheirs in the ministries of Bonn andbanking houses of Frankfurt calculatethat in order to reverse their defeat inWorld War II they require a militaryalliance with American imperialism. Itis their counterrevolutionary allianceagainst the Soviet degenerated workersstate that is the central element in U.S.­West German relations. )\;ot only inrecent months but since the late 1960's,massive German lending to "defend" thedollar has been the price extracted byWall Street for keeping a nuclear­equipped American army on the Elbe.One of the reasons that the Germanruling class reacted so strongly toCarter's decision not to go ahead withthe neutron bomb is that they had in asense just shelled out more than S IIbillion for it.

Any analysis of the dollar crisis whichignores the link between deUischmarkdiplomacy and )\;ATO is seriouslyaskew. The 24 April issue of Interconti­nental Press published an article, "TheHeadlong Plunge of the AmericanDollar," by Ernest Mandel.theoretician/leader of the pseudo­Trotskyist United Secretariat (USee).As a piece of economic analysis Man­ders article is essentially correct. Heunderstands that the present dollarcrisis is not purely conjunctural butexpresses the long-term decline inAmerican industrial productivity rela­tive to the other major capitalistcountries.

But Manders analysis of the foreignexchange policies of Washington, Bonn,Saudi Arabia and the like is limited topurely economic considerations. For

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(continuedfrom paRe 7)

to avoid a major fracture with hisimportant West German ally andperhaps concern for the stability ofinternational monetary arrangements.

The much publicized sale of $300million in gold over the next six monthsis a trivial measure, not even worthanything as a stop-gap. However, it isbeing interpreted as a token of a broadershift in economic policy. In the past fewmonths there has been a significant turntoward a deflationary U.S. monetarypolicy. While in the last quarter of 1977bank reserves increased at an annualrate of 10.6 percent. in the first quarterof this year the rate slowed to 4.4 percent(Business Week, I May).

The fact that Carter intends to deflatethe economy in part so as to stop thedollar's slide does not mean that this willnecessarily happen. Capitalist politi­cians must claim and indeed believe thatthey can control the economy throughfiscal and mpnetary policy. They cannotrun for office saying that there is little, ifanything, they can do about inflation orunemployment. However, in reality thebasic direction of the economv is notdecided in Washington, but is the sumtotal of innumerable capitalist decisionseach designed to maximize their ownprofits or at least cut losses. Highinterest rates and red uced bank reserveswill not under all circumstances lead to acontraction in borrowing, consumptionand investment, just as "easy money"will not automatically stimulate theeconomy.

Under the present conjuncture, how­ever, a tightening ofcredit probably willhave a contractionary effect on theeconomy. The U.S. recovery from the1974-75 depression was fueled bypersonal consumption expenditure in­creasing faster than real income. Thishas meant an enormous rise in personalindebtedness. During the 1976-77 two­year period both outstanding consumerinstallment loans and mortgages forfamily houses increased by over 30percent (Federal Reserve Bullet in,March 1978). Under these conditions atightening of credit must lead to acontraction of consumer spending.

It is not a coincidence tRat the firstquarter of this year saw both a sharp fallin the expansion of bank reserves and adecline in the gross national product.Carter's economists have called the firstquarter fall in output a fluke caused bythe coal strike and bad weather. Thecoal strike and cold weather might causeproduction bottlenecks, but can hardlyaccount for the fall in real consumptionexpenditure. The increase in consumerdurable purchases was only $2 billion atan annual rate (a decline in real terms),down from an $8.4 billion rate in the lastquarter of 1977 (Wall Street Journal, 20April). Moreover, in the first quarterinventory accumulation spurted over 20percent, indicating weakness in finaldemand, not production bottlenecks.(lhid.) While business investment maycontinue to expand, Carter's deflation­ary monetary policy must depresshome building and auto and otherconsumer durables markets.

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

1.5. Tri~s Over Class Line,-Again

Court UpholdsBureaucratic Purge inCWA

The Militant Action Caucus of the Communications Workers of America(CW A) has a long history of opposing government intervention into theunions. not least when so-called "dissidents" drag the union and its officersinto the bosses' courts in the name of "union democracy" or "fightingcorruption." Those would-be opponents of the entrenched bureaucracy whodespair of mobilizing the ranks and instead turn to the "good graces" of theanti-labor government end up strengthening capitalist control of the labormovement. This elementary lesson, which should be a starting point for c1ass­struggle unionists, was recently underscored in a federal court of appealsdecision in New York upholding the right of union officers to purge dissidentsubordinates.

The case stemmed from an incident in 1977 when Dave Newman, a stewardin New York's giant CW A Local 110 I, wrote a newsletter criticizing the loca!leadership for not preparing a strike over last year's phone contract. LocalIIGI president Ed Dempsey responded by throwing Newman out of hiselected position. Instead of mobilizing the union membership against thisbureaucratic high-handedness, however, Newman raced to get an injunctionagainst the union and argued in court that the Landrum-Griffin Act protectedhis actions.

Newman initially got his injunction and was reinstated. Later, however, thefederal court of appeals reversed the earlier decision and, in a precedent­setting decision, ruled that stewards are "agents of Local management" andcan be removed for violating the "responsibility of officers"-such as, forexample, disagreeing with their higher-ups.

In the 3 April issue of Workers' Power, newsp'aper of the InternationalSocialists (I.S.), CWA Local 110 I member Ilene Winkler vehemently proteststhis ruling and its "potentially disastrous effect throughout the labormovement." But Winkler has no words of censure for Newman, who broughtthe case into court in the first place, beseeching the pro-company judges todecide the norms of union democracy.

This is not surprising since Newman was associated for years with the nowdefunct United Action group, which always received the fulsome praise ofWorkers' Power, including when it took the union to court. Shortly before itsplintered and collapsed, for example, United Action threatened to takeDempsey to court for bringing union charges against four of its supporters.Winkler also "forgets" to mention that United Action (and the I.S.) supportedDempsey's election in 1972, only to see this hack turn on them and the rest ofthe New York CW A membership.

Workers' Power is shocked by the court ruling and moans, "WhatHappened to Free Speech?" Naive reformists always seem surprised when thecapitalist state reveals its true face. But the purpose of the Landrum-GriffinAct which Newman sought protection from was never to defend militantunionists' rights. This bill was consciously conceived as a way to open up theunions to the government's prying, snooping and regulation of internal unionaffairs. When the courts interpret such laws to stifle union democracy, theyare doing no differently from when they issue anti-strike injunctions or jailpicketers.

All CWA members and militant unionists must fight this federal courtdecision strengthening the union bureaucrats' power to muzzle their critics.They should also condemn those fake-oppositionists who invite the courts tomake such decisions-and then pathetically yelp at the results. But somepeople never learn. Newman is now planning. and Workers' Power isuncritically publicizing, an attempt to continue the "fight"... by appealing tothe Supreme Court. It is now the Nixon-appointee-dominated, increasinglyconservative "high court" that these traitors ask to determine who can holdunion office. While these fake-militants and fools continue their self-defeatingreliance on capitalist "justice," phone workers must look to the MilitantAction Caucus to lead the necessary battles against Ma Bell, the CWAbureaucracy and their allies in the legislative halls and courtrooms.•

Margolis...(continuedfrom page 12)operators full voting members, Margo­lis continued her efforts to organize thisdivision despite the refusal throughoutthe campaign of Local vice president fortraffic, Letha Lane, to authorize Margo­lis to enter the traffic buildings.

With Margolis' election militanttdephone workers for the first time willbe represented on the floor of a nationalCWA convention. Together with thefight for jobs. the MAC program callsfor international labor solidarity (breakall ties with the CIA-backed AI FLO)and a workers party to fight bothcapitalist parties. It will indeed be ararity to hear such demands in this cold­war union where even the rare "opposi­tion" delegates never brought forward aprogram going beyond shop-floormilitancy.

Even when it was not yet able to getconvention delegates elected, the MACcaucus for years has been fighting for itsprogram at CW A conventions. At the1973 Miami convention Gerald Kirkpa­trick. then-president of Local 9410,disturbed by the militancy in his local.initiated a union-wide witchhunt andred-scare by introducing the so-called"19-2C" amendment. This would haveallowed the Beirne/Watts bureaucracyto purge from the union all dissidentswhose literature dared to criticize anypart of the union leadership. But MAC'saggressive leadership of the united-front"No-on-19-2C" campaign at Miami waskey to winning the delegates to defeatfrom the floor this amendment whichthreatened the rights of all unionmembers.

Though his gag-rule scheme wasdefeated, Kirkpatrick was successful ayear later in driving many militantsfrom the San Francisco Local, not leastbecause of their own stupidity. Duringthe 1974 contract fight supporters of theProgressive Labor (PL)-backed Work­ers Action Movement and the Revolu­tionary Union-supported "Traffic Jam"group at first refused to fight on theunion floor for MAC's motion for anindustry-wide contract strike. Then,only two weeks later, they convincedseveral dozen militants to "take a walk"which ended in a precipitous wildcatstrike. In cahoots with the companyKirkpatrick easily smashed this action.The company then took advantage ofthe radicals' isolation to fire ten of thewildcat leaders and place most of therest of the participants on final warning.

Stearns...(continued from page 12)the UMWA already at his Leatherwoodand Scotia deathtrap mines.

The Stearns strike is at a criticalpoint. Earlier this month, the first coalsince July 1976 was shipped out of themine by over 30 scabs who are escortedin daily under armed guard. Productionhas ceased for the time being, after theApril 20 shooting death of one of thescabs, but eleven new strikebreakershave been hired in the last several daysand production is expected to resumesoon.

The killing of the strikebreaker as hereturned home after a day of scabbing.and reports from other scabs that theyhave been fired on, has served as anexcuse for stepped-up cop harassmentof the striking miners. Despite intensequestioning and house searches. how­ever. no one has been charged for theshooting. The strikers are justifiablyenraged at the state police harassment ofunion men and protection of companygun thugs. Pninting to the name of thedeceased fink crossed off the list oftraitors kept in the Whitley City localhall one militant bluntly stated."That's one good scab." And at thepicket site near the mine. fresh sandbagshel\e been piled up in front of the

5 MAY 1978

MAC mounted a vigorous defense ofthe victimized militants, but the disas­trous effect of the wildcat (which PLpersisted in calling a victory) was tousher in a period of demoralization andpolitical quiescence which the Local isonly now beginning to overcome.

The following year Margolis, one ofthe few vocal militants still on the job,was fired in a company frame-up shortlyafter she had testified at a CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission againstPacific Telephone's proposal to chargefor directory assistance calls. After ayear-long fight she won her job back, avirtually unprecedented occurrence inphone, re-invigorating the fellow unionmembers who had fought hard todefend her. Since that time Margolis hasbeen a recognized leader in the Local.winning steward elections both at BushDirectory Assistance and Geary Ga­rage. although both times the cringingexecutive board refused to certify her.

Perhaps the most significant aspect ofMargolis' election as conventiondelegate was the number of Localmembers who voted onl)' for the MACcandidate leaving the eight other slotsblank. A test of MAC's support as wellas an indication of a potential forrenewed struggle in the Local, theelection was also a test of the otheroppositionists. Thus one of the few PLsupporters not blown out during the1974 wildcat-John Smrekar-receivedonly 34 votes, the lowest of all thecandidates.

The modest victory represented byMargolis' election was a testimony toMAC's eight-year record of principledstruggle in the CWA. The MilitantAction Caucus has repeatedly demon­strated its serious, militant leadership,in sharp contrast to the slew of phonyoppositionist groups who (until theydisappeared from view) oscillated wildlybetween capitulation to the bureaucracyand going around the union altogetherin adventurist job actions, when theywere not going to the bosses' courtsagainst the union. It was MAC's class­struggle program and mobilization ofthe union ranks which enabled Margolisto win the fight for her job and nowbreak through the company/bureaucracy conspiracy and win aconvention delegateship even at a timewhen the bosses thought they wereriding high. As the MAC election leafletstates. "The election of Jane Margoliswill be a step in forging a new class­struggle leadership that can turn CW Ainto a strong union.".

strikers' makeshift shelter in case ofrenewed attacks from the company'swell-armed "security" guards.

Facing down cop intimidation andresisting bureaucratic sabotage, theStearns strikers remain determined towin. "We started this thing 21 monthsago," Phillip Tucker told today's rally,"we're not going to quit now." The strikesupporters cheered Darrell Vanoverwhen-recalling the fines, arrests, beat­ings and jail sentences that have beenmeted out to the miners-he said,"We've got a circuit judge that lied to us.We've got a governor that lied to us. I'vegot news for [Kentucky governor]J ullian Carroll. We're tired of his tactics.I say they're outside the law."

At the end of the rally, which includedentertainment by a Tennessee countryband and a lunch prepared by theStearns Womens Club, a member of theClub announced a march through thestreets of Stearns. With the exception ofDistrict 19 IEB representative EddieSturgill. not one of the union's high­ranking officials was in sight as themarchers headed through the smalltown chanting "Stearns coal is unioncoal" and stopping at each scab's housealong the route to curse and ridicule thestrikebreakers. The march proceeded tothe Justus road--entrance to theStearns mine where Kentucky statepolice blocked the way. After cursing

"Carroll's pigs," the rally headed backto town before breaking up.

Faced with the allied forces of thecompany, courts, cops and scabs, theminers in Stearns are well aware of theneed for outside support. "If we werejust fighting Blue Diamond, they'd beunder the sod by now," one minercommented. "but we're fighting thegovernment." The same militant pro­posed a solution: "Monday morning I'dlike to see the miners come out. Whatbetter way to get publicity? If you wantto bring the strike to national attention,call a five-day memorial period."

It is exactly this action which broughtDuke Power to its knees in the longBrookside strike. But when WVaskedorganizing director Jim Varney if aunion-wide work stoppage. which iseven provided lor in the UMWAcontract's memorial-period clause, hadbeen discussed. he answered lamely.''I'm not sure that that is the answer."

The answers to Blue Diamond'sstrikebreaking will not be forthcoming

from the discredited UMWA leaders.Coal miners, however, must not allowthe Stearns strikers to be isolated anddefeated. The coal operators are watch­ing this strike intently as a test case ofthe union's ability to organize thedrastically increasing percentage ofnon-union coal which threatens thepower and very existence of theUMWA.

What is needed in Stearns is massaction by the union to defend the em­battled strikers. Mass pickets anddemonstrations by the militant ranks ofthe UMWA would keep the scabs outand the state troopers at bay. Kentuck­y's District 19, which voted heavilyagainst all three of Arnold Miller'stakeaway contracts, has a particularobligation to stand by the Stearnsstrikers. And the heat must he kept onthe UMWA tops for solidarity strikeaction which is the key to victory hereand to organizing non-uni(1n minesthroughout the region. Don't falternow---the coal operators' eyes are onthis crucial battle!.

9

Sunday Times (London)

NATO commanders want neutron bomb to offset overwhelming Soviet tank superiority (above) in Central Europe.

NeutronBomb...(continuedfrom page 1)to deploy this weapon in Europe;Having failed to obtain this assurance.Carter made his alleged decision"against" the neutron bomb, whileordering that NATO weapons,. inparticular the army's Lance missile and8-inch cannon, be prepared to carry it.As an administration official put it:"Carter's decision puts us 90 percentdown the road toward where we wouldhave been with a complete green light"(Nell·slI·eek. 17 April).

While bourgeois politics certainlyhave their bizarre aspects, there is nohumor to be found in the neutron bombcontroversy. Contrary to the beliefs ofits various pacifist and Stalinist oppo­nents, however. this is not owing to theparticular properties of this "ultimatecapitalist weapon." What is disturbingabout all of the attention that thebourgeoisie is giving to a small fissionwarhead is that it ignores the majoreffort being mounted to overhaulN ATO'sjuggernaut~its forces aimed atthe Soviet heartland.

U.S. Beefs Up NATO Forces

rhetoric_ For the last year. i!12.rticIe afterarticle in such semi-ofh;',al publicationsas the Atlantic COlin jf Quarterly andOrhis. major bourge'Jis political andmilitary figures have been describing inincreasingly desperate language thebalance of forces in central Europe­and in increasingly threatening lan­guage the necessary response.

Thus a recent book by a Belgiangeneral entitled Europe Without De­fense holds that a conventional attackby the Warsaw Pact would place

architects of the Vietnam War. SamHuntington.

Neutrons Over Nuremburg

For the military strategists of imperi­alism. obsessed with the vision of thewar for the West being waged againstSoviet Panzer divisions on West Ger­man or Belgian soil, development of ananti-tank weapon with minimum "colla­teral" damage became paramount. Theneutron bomb seems ideally suited.

Brown's 1979 budget calls for a special­ized c'rapid reaction strike force" sta­tioned outside of Europe. consisting oftwo army airborne divisions and amarine amphibious division totaling100,000 men. Such an army wouldenable the imperialists to make briefforays into the Persian Gulf. Saudioilfields or sub-Saharan Africa. At thesame time, Carter has announced atleast a year's delay in his promisedwithdrawal of troops from SouthKorea.

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Stalinists Push BourgeoisPacifism

Against this military build-up thedemands of the anti-neutron bombprotesters are the height offolly-and ofcourse occupying their place at the headof the purveyors of pacifist illusions arethe pro-Moscow Stalinists.

Neutron bomb or no neutron bomb.U. S. imperialism possesses 7,000 tacti­cal nuclear warheads on the Europeancontinent -and it will use them. Theonly serious argument of the "anti­neutron bomb movement." the argu­ment that provides a meeting ground for

More significant is the inexorablemovement of the Pentagon toward a"nuclear first-strike capability" againstthe Soviet Union. For some time U.S.air force generals have been clamoringfor the production of a new generationof ballistic missiles with accuracies farexceeding those required for the de­st!"uction of a city-i.e.. the sort ofaccuracy required to destroy a Sovietintercontinental ballistic missile(ICBM) in its launching silo. ThusBrown has given the go-ahead forproduction of the MK-I2A warheadand quintupled funding for an ICBMfired from a mobile launcher. the so­called MX missile.

The stated rationale for the latterdecision is an alleged increase in theratio of Soviet to U _So land-basedstrategic forces. This is a transparentfabrication. For one thing, it is theSoviet Union which should be worriedas its ICBM force is predominantlyland-based and in a low state ofreadiness. Furthermore. as New YorkTimes military analyst Drew Middletonnoted in a 10 October article, theexpenditure of at least $30 billion forsuch increased mobility in land-basedICBM's is outlandish, as the U.S.imperialists currently admit to possess­ing 656 very mQbile missiles aboardsubmarines. M X's real selling point isthat it will carry seven to fourteenindependently deliverable and extreme­ly accurate warheads as compared to thethree aboard the currently deployedMinuteman III ICBM.

At the same time the Pentagon isintent upon developing a battery ofBuck Rogers-type weapons to attempt

. to eliminate both the Soviet submarineforce and intelligence satellites. Inselling the latter the most bizarrefabrications have been concocted. Thusin October of 1975 there were numerousfront-page stories of Soviet "killer rays"which had temporarily blinded U.S.satellites. Months later it was revealedthat these rays emanated from a largefire on a Russian natural gas pipeline.

The mounting imperialist militarypreparations. prepared for by Carter's"human rights" propaganda offensives.while focused on Europe is actuallyquite general in scope. To begin withCarter. who campaigned with a promiseto Cllt defense spending. now proposesto raise this spending to $173 billion by .1983. In addition to the NATO buildup.

Despite these inter-imperialist ten­sions. however, there is a consensusamong the imperialist powers (andChina and the Maoists) that a majorWestern rearming is necessary. Andcontrary to the views of the pro-SovietStalinists. this attitude is not restrictedto a nefarious band of war hawks. It isindicative of the degree to whichbourgeois opinion has moved rightwardthat the abandonment of any weaponssystem. even for a more effectiveweapon. is viewed as a major surrenderto the Warsaw Pact. Hence the flak overthe B-1 and neutron bomb.

Imperialist War Preparations

Graham Finlayson/Fortune

However. as the Carter/Schmidtshenanigans demonstrate. the effort tohone the NATO sword is not all thatsimple. The U.S. capitalist. his dollarstill declining against the West Germanmark, has repeatedly condemned therefusal of its European allies to increasemilitary expenditures. The Europeanbourgeoisies. for their part, are highlycritical of what is viewed as the sabotageof their security by the U.S. at bilateralsummit meetings with the Soviet Union.In addition the Greek/Turkish rivalryhas led to a paralysis on NATO'ssouthern flank.

300-600 p m

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British tanks in West Germany.

Russian troops on the Rhine within 48hours. Liberal senator Gary Hart wenteven further. claiming that the Sovietforces have "virtually a free ride to theEnglish Channel." Even more graphicwas the picture painted by influentialsenator Sam Nunn, who is emerging asthe Henry Jackson of conventional andtactical nuclear warfare:

"What confronts :-;ATO across theinter-German border is not 935.000[Warsaw Pact] troops but 935.000 Pacttroops organized. deployed. trained ande4uipped for a Blitzkrieg. and governedby a doctrine based on surprise and apostulated rate of advance of 70kilometers per day."

Most ominous of all was a speech Cartergaveat Lake Forest University in Marchin which he more or less threatened tomatch the Russians weapon for weapon.The speech was drafted by one of the

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A 1977 U.S. government interagencystudy painted a very gloomy picture of;\;ATO's forces in Central Europe. Thestudy concentrated on the two-to-oneadvantage that the Warsaw Pact enjoysin tanks and its three-to-two advantagein manpower. It also noted that superiorSoviet supplies reduce the amount ofwarning time that NATO forces wouldhave in case of attack.

The study prompted an Augustdirective by Carter that ;\lATa forces bestrengthened, a directive which wasimplemented in Defense SecretaryHarold Brown's 1978 report to Con­gress and his 1979 budget. The latter isbeing touted as the "N ATO budget."The 3 percent real increase in fundscalled for in the 1979 proposal isintended largely for expenditures inEurope --for new weapons and forgreater integration of imperialist mili­tary activities. Of particular import isthe emphasis on tank warfare. Brownpldns to spend $4.7 billion over nineyears to produce a new tank. the XM-l.and projects additional massive expend­itures on laser-guided anti-tank missiles.tactical intelligence devices and tacticalaircraft.

More ominous than any specificbudgetary item is the accompanying

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10 WORKERS VANGUARD

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Don Hogan'Charles/New York Times

Epoca

Renato Curcio, leader of RedBrigades, in Torino courtroom.

onment, like the Communists andChristian Democrats who are seeking tobuild up the capitalist repressive forcesfor a crackdown on the "far left."

Free the 13 anarchist militants.'Free all lefl-wing politicalprisoners.'Make lhe deal!

sent. This has in the past kept speed-upat a much lower level than in the autoplants.

Faced with a contraction in marketdemand, Harvester is out to smash thesehard-won standards. Union representa­tives have been fired, job standards tornup and draconian new shop rulesintroduced. The layoffs in violation ofseniority which underlie the Louisvillestrike have been common at manyplants.

What is needed to stop Harvester'soffensive is a UAW strike of the entirecompany. This is particularly urgentnow that IH workers are demonstratingmilitant solidarity with the Louisvillestrikers in the face of the company'sdenial of layoff benefits. While Solidari­ty House tries to drive UAW membersback to work across picket lines, unionmilitan'ts must demand company-widestrike action to win an end to speed-up,full benefits for all those laid off due tothe Louisville strike, no discipline forthe East Moline wildcatters, reinstate­ment with full back pay for those fired inthe current harassment campaign andvictory to the Louisville strikers. Shutdown International Harvester!

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IlirhoU! ('(If/diliof/s. And Morn's execu­tion tw the Red Brigades would in nov\ay sene the socialist cause, and wouldinstead be used to justify increasedreactionary state terror against leftistmilitants.

The abduction of Aldo Moro was astupid act of individual terrorism.'\evertheless Marxists must denouncethe reactionary "anti-terrorist" hysteriabeing whipped up against the RedBrigades, with the complicity of various"far left" groups who refer (without ashred of evidence) to the kidnapping as arightist-manipulated plot and "neglect"to demand freedom for the prisonersnow being tried in Torino. The onlypeople who today have an interest inopposing the exchange proposed by theRed Brigades are those who expect togain by murder and continued impris-

Apparently not satisfied with traditional means of dealing with strikingworkers-such as scab labor, retaliatory firings, strikebreaking thugs-JudgeWilliam Caisley of the McLean County, Illinois Circuit Court has ordered 22striking firemen jailed for 42 days. The firemen, who constitute three-quartersof the fire department of Normal, Illinois, have been imprisoned since March31.

Eighteen of them are released, however, when they are needed to fight fires.In alternate 24-hour periods they are locked in either the jailor the firehouseand let out only when the fire alarm rings.

This outrageous attack upon the most elementary democratic rights of thefiremen clearly exposes the hypocrisy of the claim of the bourgeois courts toact as a neutral arbiter in labor disputes. The sight of labor negotiations atwhich the firemen face the town's bargaining team from behind steel barsgraphically illustrates the "even-handed" nature of bourgeois "justice."

This atrocious attack must be stopped at once! Free the firefighters!

Striking firemen are brought back to jail after work shift at thefirehouse.

Illinois Judge Jails FireDepartment

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from UA W Local 6 in Melrose Park,where the parts shortage has causedheavy layoffs which have also beenmade ignoring seniority.

Harvester's across-the-board attacksdemand a company-wide response: theUA W must strike the entire IH chain.The corporation's blatant strikebreak­ing is only the latest of its mountingoffensive against UA W workers. Forthe past few months, Harvester has beenon a campaign of speed-up and harass­ment aimed at reversing historic uniongall1s.

The agricultural implement section ofthe UA W has traditionally had a bettercontract and superior conditions tothose of the UAW-organized auto andtruck plants. This reflects its origins inthe Communist Party-led Farm Equip­ment Workers as well as the relativelygreater stability of the industry due to itsproduction of capital goods for aninternational market. For example, allovertime is voluntary, and productionstandards are specified in the contract asunchangeable without the union's con-

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exchange with veteran SWPer MorrisStarsky, SWP theoretician emeritusJoseph Hansen sought to place equalblame for the arms race on the USSRand the U. S. --essentially abandoningthe Trotskyist call for unconditionalmilitary defense of the former. Perhapssomewhat embarrassed, the SWP hasnot-all-that-transparently sought tostep back from this egregious betrayal ofTrotskyism in an article in the 17 MarchA1iIitant entitled "U .S. versus USSR:Who Is to Blame for the Threat ofWar?" In the article David Frankelattempted to place the "blame" on theU.S.

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However, in the face of masses ofpacifists and liberals even the slickestleft reformist is prostrate. First, accord­ing to Frankel, a real revolutionarygovernment would accept "slight mili­tary disadvantages in the interest ofhelping to clarify the political issuesfacing the masses around the world."Such a government would, for example,encourage "a movement of hundreds ofthousands in opposition to nuclearpower."

What idiocy' Frankel is in effectshamefacedly advocating that theUSSR (and China) give up certain"slight" military advantages to cater tothe pacifist anti-technological delusionsof sections of the petty bourgeoisie, bestexemplified by the. motley ClamshellAlliance. Perhaps Comrade Frankelwill someday inform us what "slightmilitary disadvantages" the USSRshould accept vis-a-vis the imperialists.Does he agree with his comrade JoeHansen that the USSR should unilater­ally begin disarming to "expose" theimperialists? Perhaps Frankel wantsthis "initiative" to continue until theimperialists can launch a successfulnuclear first strike against the USSR.That would really concretely expose thepredatory war aims of American imperi­alism, wouldn't it? Or would heperhaps feel that Jimmy Carter wasrather ineptly carrying out his anti­Soviet "human rights campaign" thathis party so shamelessly tails?

In fact, encouraging grosslyreformist, pacifist movements andaccepting military disadvantage is pre­cisely what Stalinism does-and in a bigway-from its withdrawal of forcesfrom the western borders of the USSRprior to World War II to SA LTnegotiations today.

To a revolutionist, Stalinism's crimesinclude the acceptance and promulga­tion of bourgeois "disarmament" and"detente" schemes' which put the de­formed and degenerated workers statesat a military disadvantage. Thus as anintegral part of the Trotskyist move­ment's defense of the gains of the socialrevolutions embodied in the Soviet,East European, Chinese, Cuban andIndochinese deformed workers states,revolutionaries, have an obligation todenounce these schemes and exposethose pro-imperialist reformists whofoster them. Above aiL the successfuldefense and extension of the gains of the19/7 October Revolution requiresconstruction of Trotskyist parties inthe Soviet Lnion and deformed v.ork­ers states, to lead the working masses inpolitical revolution to oust the counter­rev olutionarv Stalinist bureaucracies .•- ....

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Part and parcel of this is the criminalStalinist hoax of the possibility ofreforming the bourgeoisie's arsenal ofterroL of exchanging guns for butter-.the "disarmament talks."

Contrary to the reformist illusion,d isa rmament agreements are eithermeaningless public-relations gimmicksor part of the imperialist militaryo((ensiw'. Under the terms of the SA LTI agreement the U.S. tripled its invento­ry of strategic warheads by M IR Ying ItsICB:-'1's. Carter's SALT offensive oflastyear called for a virtual cessation ofSoviet strategic arms programs, and theoutline of the SALT II agreement yet tobe finalized will allow the U.S. to loadits B-52's (or 747's) with deadly Cruisemissiles, deploy the ultramodern Tri­dent submarine and increase the num­ber of its strategic launchers as well.Even under these terms, Henry Jacksonhas vowed to lead a (probably success­ful) fight against ratification.

Similarly, at the Mutual andBalanced Force Reductioh negotia­tions, the United States is seeking tost rengthen its military posture. Thesetalks have been stalled since 1975 whenNATO proposed that in return for itsremoval of 1,000 tactical nuclear weap­ons and 29,000 U.S. troops, the Sovietsshould remove an entire army from EastGermany!

Giving backhanded support to theStalinist peace gimmicks are the reform­ists of the SWP. Last year. in an

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If one is a Rand Corporation strategicanalyst for whom war is simply thecontinuation of game theory by othermeans, perhaps this makes sense. Butfor the imperialist generals war is quitedefinitely a life-and-death matter, andthere are no holds barred. In fact, thenew army field manual dictates thattactical nuclear weapons dominate\iATO battlefield strategy and calls foreach commander to fire large numbers(50 or more) of high-yield nucleardevices.

It is a time-tested aspect of Stalinistmisleadership to concentrate on thecurrently least popular weapon as thefocus for its "pro-peace" front groupsand as the UN prepares for its Maysession on disarmament. the CPs aremilking the neutron bomb for all it'sworth. (A "weapon against people notpropcrty"'~ WelL so is the bow andarrow.) What is forgotten in the "neu­tron bomb hysteria" is that whatgenerally makes a weapon unpopular inthe bourgeois circles of which Stalinistsare so fond is its effectiveness. TheABM "victory" gaVe us MIR Y; the B-1"victory" gave us Cruise, After each ofthese "victories," the imperialist militaryposture was ill fact improved.

:";\,dlnish the pope, pacifists and liber­als, IS that the neutron bomb lowers the"nud,~ar threshold," i,e" its lessercollateI'd I damage makes it more likelyto he uscJ.

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5 MAY 1978 11

WfJliNEIiS "RIIJ'1i1J

UMWA Top.s Ollp.0se Mass Picketing

Stearns Miners Must NotStand Alone'

UMWA strike supporters march in Stearns, Kentucky.wv PtlOlO

strike in Harlan County in 1973-74. Itproved a dismal failure there evepthough Duke was a major public utilitymuch more vulnerable to public expo­sure than the small, largely family­owned Blue Diamond Coal Company.Blue Diamond's principal stockholderGordon Bonnyman has used hired guns,scabherding state police and injunction­issuing courts to fight off the unioniza­tion of his three mines and has broken

continued on page 9

union's International Executive Board(I EB), organizing director Varney toldWV that the union officialdom is stillopposed to mass picketing, "We have nointention of bringing anyone in. We willcomply with the court order [limitingpickets to six per gate] to the fullestextent."

The media-pressure strategy outlinedfor the Stearns strike is a carbon copy ofthat used against the Duke PowerCompany in the 13-month Brookside

desperately needed reinforcements. theUM W A leadership has in fact adamant­ly opposed mass picketing at the struckJustus mine.

Last February. UMWA presidentArnold Miller fired several organizershere and transferred chief organizer LeePotter to Denver. reportedly for failureto stop the hundreds of roving picketswho bolstered the Stearns picket linestwice during the national strike. ThoughPotter was recently reinstated by the

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WHITLEY CITY, Kentucky, April29- Striking coal miners, their familiesand supporters rallied today at awooded campground a few miles northof here in the 21 st month of a bitter fightfor union recognition at the StearnsJustus mine. But in addition to theirdisappointment at the small turnout of350. the embattled miners werefrustrat­ed when they heard leaders of the UnitedMine Workers of America (UMWA)"unveil" a strategy doomed to failure.Aside from hollow assurances of their"100 percent" support, the only thingunion secretary-treasurer Willard Essel­styn, director of organizing Jim Varneyand Kentucky district officials had tooffer was the promise of a publicitycampaign " ... to educate Blue Diamondstockholders." Esselstyn himself ex­pressed t he International's policy withunintended irony: "There is only oneway to lead your people and that is tostand behind them."

The Stearns miners had been led tobelieve that district and InternationalU M WA officials were mobilizing thou­sands of miners to come to today's rallyin a show of solidarity and strength. Buthaving starved 160,000 coal miners intoaccepting a miserable national contract,the U M W A bureaucrats were not aboutto tlex any union muscle on behalf of theStearns strikers, who have been left totwist slowly in the wind in the wake ofthe strike against the major coaloperators. Rather than bringing inminers from across the coalfields for

Militant Action Caucus Victory

Margolis Elected CWA Convention DelegateSAN FRANCISCO. April28-0fficialelection results for national conventiondelegates from Local 9410 of theCommunications Workers of America(CW A). announced here tonight. re­ported the victory of Militant ActionCaucus (MAC) candidate Jane Margo­lis. Margolis, a PBX installer and'former Local 9415 (East Bay) executiveboard representative for traffic. received299 votes and was elected as ORe of theS. F. Local's nine delegates out of a fieldof 35 candidates. Local 9410, the largestnorthern California local. will host theCW A convention which begins June 12.

The MAC campaign highlighted twokey demands~a CW A-wide strike for ashorter workweek at no loss in pay tofight layoffs and opposition to theInternational's support for the BellTelephone monopoly. Margolis was theonly voice of militant opposition in anotherwise lackluster election. In a localonce a hotbed of political struggle, theother eight victors were all formerdelegates or present local officers and

executive board representatives. mem­bers of the select club of Local 9410bureaucratic tlunkies. Although shefinished ninth. Margolis' vote total wasnot significantly different from the restof those elected except the three localofficers. Significantly. 50 Local 9410members "bulleted" their ballots. votingonly for the MAC candidate.

Moreover. Margolis won in the faceof constant company harassmentthroughout the election period. Duringthis time the MAC candidate. aloneamong the nominees, was prevented bysecurity guards from distributing hercampaign literature in key traffic (oper­ator) locations. This is not the first timethe Bell System has tried to silenceMAC candidates. Several times thecompany has tried to ban their literatureon the grounds that it is hostile toAT&T: MAC calls for nationalizationof the telephone company withoutcompensation! Ma Bell was not wrong insingling out Margolis as the onlycandidate who represented a real threat.

but its heavy-handed censorship did notintimidate the CW A ranks.

In an industry where thepredominantly female traffic and large­ly male craft departments have beenhistorically pitted against each other. itwas significant that Margolis' supportwas evenly divided among both divi­sions. This retlected the long struggle ofthe Militant Action Caucus for unionprograms to defend and upgrade wom­en workers. while giving no quarterto union-busting affirmative actionschemes. and MAC's fight for strikeaction to protect the jobs of plantworkers threatened by speed-up andautomation.

In addition Margolis received muchsupport from new hires in traffic. thehigh-turnover section traditionally mostsubject to company harassment andintimidation. While the union leader­ship is habitually lax in collecting the $2initiation fee necessary to make new

continued on page 9 Jane MargolisWV Photo

12 5 MAY 1978