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soC!:No. 701 ~ X - 6 2 3 20 November 1998

Down With.Starvation Blockade!U.S. Out of the Near East!

NOVEMBER 17-Massively reinforcing its armada of warships, submarines, aircraft carriers, tighterbombers and cruise missiles in thePersian Gulf, U.S. imperialism isonce again poised to unleashbloody carnage on the Iraqi people.The Clinton White House has nowannounced a postponement of themilitary strike as the Iraqi regimeagreed to again allow free rein tothe imperialist spies who masquerade as "arms inspectors." Trumpeting Washington's aim of overthrowing the Saddam Husseinregime, Clinton hellows, "Iraq hasbacked down, but that is notenough." British Labour primeminister Tony Blair rants that the"slightest obstruction" of UnitedNations weapons inspectors will bemet with an "immediate attack, nowarning whatever." Today's NewYork Times headlines, "Allies SeeBombing of Iraq as Inevitable."

etanas

our ooavraq!1991, which included the use of depleted uranium shells (see "IraqCancer Epidemic Made in U.S.A.,"WV No. 690, 8 May). Down with

the starvation blockade! U.S. impe-rialism: Get your bloody hands of fIraq!Fearful of stirring up domesticdiscontent, America's rulers relyon high-tech missile and bombingstrikes which minimize U.S. casualties while wreaking devastation on the Iraqi population.An editorial in the New York Times(13 November), mouthpiece ofthe liberal bourgeoisie, virtuallyscreamed for Iraqi blood, callingfor a "sustained" bombing campaign which would necessarilyinclude "a regrettable risk of civilian casualties."

As we declared in a statement of W d h'ld . B hd d . f d' I I . I' t bl k d hAP. . . omen an c I ren In ag a walt or scarce me Ica care. mperla IS oc a e asthe S p a r t a c l s ~ League. P O ~ l t I c a l killed well over a million Iraqis, now Clinton threatens renewed terror bombing.

The repeated displays of terrorby U.S. imperialism are aimed atenforcing the subjugation of thesemi colonial peoples of the worldand demonstrating to its capitalist rivals that the American bour-Bureau at the tIme of ClInton s lastterror-bombing threat (WV No. 685, 27February): "Whether or not America'scapitalist rulers decide this time to ye tagain rain death and destruction on Iraqimen, women and children does notchange by one iota the rapacious andmurderous character of this imperialistsystem." Against the reformist "socialists" who perpetuate the liberal lie thatimperialism is just a "bad policy" whichcan be changed through mass pressure,we asserted:"As Lenin stressed in polemicizingagainst similar views advanced by German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky,imperialism is 'the highest stage of capitalism,' marked by the concentration anddomination of finance capital, the preeminence of the export of capital and competition among the advanced capitalistcountries to control markets and spheresof exploitation. War is a necessary product of the capitalist system."This marks the eighth time since theone-sided 1991 Persian Gulf War thatWashington has either perpetrated orthreatened mass destruction of Iraq. Tensof thousands were slaughtered in 1991 by

U.S.-led forces acting under a UN figleaf. Over a million children and hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis havesince died from malnutrition and diseaseresulting from the imperialist embargo.As one Iraqi official remarked bitterly,the imperialists "wil l not kill in a m i l i ~ a r y

strike more than they are killing withsanctions every day." The death rateamong children from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea has increased morethan tenfold. The country has also beenravaged by a horrifying cancer epidemiccaused by the imperialists' rape of Iraq in

geoisie remains top dog. In cynically railing against destitute Iraq'ssupposed "weapons of mass destruction,"Washington is asserting its "right" to amonopoly over such weapons. The U.S.has not only enormous stockpiles ofchemical and biological weapons buta nuclear arsenal capable of wiping outthe world's population many times over.And it is the only country to have usednuclear weapons in wartime, incineratingover 200,000 Japanese and Korean civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.In organizing protests at various campuses around the U.S. last week inresponse to the war buildup, the Spartacus Youth Clubs raised the call, "DefeatU.S. Imperialism Through ProletarianRevolution!" As an SYC spokesman ata November 12 speakout at UCLAstressed: "What is necessary is the building of a class-struggle, revolutionaryworkers party that stands opposed tothe Democratic and Republican partiesof war and racism. Such a party isabsolutely essential in the struggle forcontinued on page 10

""".j ,... No Illusions in Bourgeois Liberals-For Workers Revolution!, '{'1 ! 1J 'f1 f ; ! 1Defeat of Reconstruction and theGreat Rail Strike of 1877

,...

The Shaping ofRacist American CapitalismSee Page Six

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On ReconstructionAugust 17, 1998

Dear Editor,old Slave Codes. In the 1896 Plessycase, the Supreme Court codified "separate but equal" segregation as the law ofthe land ... . With the withdrawal of thelast Union troops in 1877, KKK terrorstalked the South unchallenged."

I write concerning a significant episodeof (Black) history, which I believe getsshort shrift in the fonnulations I have readupon it in the pages of WV. If , after reading below, it turns out that I have beenmistake'n, and the points I make havebeen covered in WV, then you can ignorethis letter. But even if they have been covered, I believe they still lack the properemphasis. My concern is over how theperiod after the Compromise of 1877 ischaracterized, most recently, but I thinknot atypically in the 'otherwise fine andimportant article, "Death Row SpeedupTargets Minorities" (WV, No. 694, 31July 1998). I quote the fonnulation in itscontext:

As a precis of a crucial period of U.S.history-the defeat of Reconstructionthe above is perhaps adequate. However,my main disagreement concerns theoverly mechanistic, and historically inaccurate, depiction of this defeat thatequates the Compromise of 1877 with theestablishment of Jim Crow. Secondarily,"t. think it's worth pointing out that KKKand other race terrorists rampagedthroughout the Reconstruction period,only half-heartedly challengeq by theUnion government. There did continue tobe black militias during this latter period,, but their influence was largely kept incheck. On this latter point, please refer toDu Bois's Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. But to return to my mainpoint, the Compromise of 1877 may haveofficially ended the Northern attempt atReconstruction of the South, ending inthe so-called "redemption" of the Southern states, but it did not result inthe immediate disenfranchisement of theblacks, nor did Jim Crow immediatelyspring into existence in 1877-78. In fact,

" ... the promise of black freedom wasbetrayed by the Northern capitalists, whowere not about to take any action whichwould threaten the dominance of privateproperty, North or South. Even minimalland redistribution was stopped and thelarge plantations maintained, with theformer slaves becoming impoverishedsharecroppers and tenant farmers. Following the defeat of Reconstruction, formalized by the Compromise of 1877, theblack freedmen were again disenfranchised under Jim Crow laws steeped inthe spirit, and at times the letter, of the

Black Liberation ThroughSocialist RevolutionThe fight against black oppression is central to the struggle for socialist revolution inthis deeply racist country. This understanding was brought to the American Communistmovement by the Communist Internationalof Lenin and Trotsky at its Fourth Congressin 1922. Drawing on the experience of theOctober Revolution of 1917, the RussianTROTSKY Bolsheviks imbued the early American Com- LENINmunist Party with the need to actively takeup the fight against racial oppression in the U.S.

Three hundred years ago the American Negro was dragged from his homeland,brought in indescribably horrible conditions on board ship, and sold into slavery. For250 years he worked as a slave under the lash of American overseers. His labourcleared the forests, built the roads, planted the cotton, laid the railways, and kept thearistocracy of the south. His wages were poverty, ignorance, humiliation, and wretchedness. The Negro was not a docile slave; his history is rich in revolts, disturbances, andsubterranean methods of gaining freedom. But all his struggles were savagely suppressed. He was forced into subjection by torture, and the bourgeois press and religionjustified his enslavement. Slavery then became an obstacle to American development ona capitalist basis; personal slavery came into conflict with wage slavery, and personalslavery was bound to go under. The civil war, which was not a war to free the Negroes,but a war to maintain the industrial predominance of capital in the northern states, confronted the Negro with the choice between slavery in the south and wage slavery inthe north. The longings, the blood, and the tears of the "emancipated" Negroes were apart of the fabric of American ,qlpitalism. As America, which had meanwhile risen tothe position of a world Power, was inevitably dragged into the maelstrom of the worldwar, the Negro was declared to be equal in rank to the whites. He had to kill and bekilled for "democracy." ..The Communist International notes with satisfaction the resistance of the exploitedNegro to the exploiters' attack, for the enemy of his race and the enemy of the whiteworkers are one and the same-capitalism and imperialism.

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-"Theses of the Fourth Comintern Congress on the Negro Question,"November 1922, reprinted in Jane Degras, The Communist International1919-1943 Documents (1971)

! . ~ ~ ! ! ! ! o r . . 4 . . ' ! . ! ! ~ ! ! . ' ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob ZornPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Jane PattersonEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U,S, Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 ( Editorial), (212) 732-7861(BUSiness). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:vanguard@tiac.n etDomestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to JNorkers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed In signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is November 17,No. 701 20 November 1998

as is well documented in C. Vann Woodward's classic study, The Strange Careerof Jim Crow, originally published in1955, an entire historical period wasrequired to wipe out (and then never completely) the gains made through tremendous suffering, fighting and sacrifice byboth blacks and whites during both theCivil War and in the attempt to imposeRadical Reconstruction thereafter. DuBois wrote, in his seminal study notedabove, written in the early 1930s:"Negroes did not surrender the balloteasily or immediately. They continued[after 1877] to hold remnants of political power in South Carolina and Florida,Louisiana, in parts of North Carolina, inTexas, Tennessee and Virginia, BlackCongressmen came out of the Southuntil 1895 and black legislators servedas late as 1896 [po 692] ... . The wholehistory of this post-Reconstructiondevelopment is yet to be writ ten .... " [pp.693-694]

Both Du Bois and Woodward point outthat the fight against the black vote, andthe attempt to subjugate blacks economically, socially and politically, was symbolized by the rise of the accommodationist Booker T. Washington, whoseprog ram' was not enunciated until themid-1890s! What happened in the almost20 years between the official' end of theReconstruction period and the Plessy v.Ferguson case in 1896? Some of thedevelopment can be followed in the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court prior toPlessy, which sought to sharply curtailthe special protections of the FourteenthAmendment and the Reconstruction-era1875 Civil Rights Act. For instance in thethree Civil Rights Cases of 1883, thecourt tried to emasculate efforts by Radical Republicans to promote racial equality, e.g. by prohibiting racial segregation.But the U.S. capitalist government stillheld that it could prohibit discriminatoryaction by a State government. It wasn'tuntil the period of reaction had consolidated itself by the mid-1890s that the outright legal overturn of Civil War andReconstruction attempts at equal protection and civil rights was made explicit inthe notorious Plessy case. In this latter,

Letterthe Supreme Court upheld a Louisianalaw requiring segregation in railway cars.In other words, the legal codification ofsegregation took almost a generation following the Compromise of 1877. Thecapital (so to speak) of earlier struggles,and the struggles of men and women inthe 20 years following the end of officialReconstruction, ensured that black America would not go down fighting [sic]. Perhaps WV would like to research and writean article on this someday.Why bother to carp upon a single sentence in a WV article? Well, for one, Ihave read the same fonnulation of thisperiod in previous WV articles, and havelong thought of writing a letter about it. Ido not write with any substantive criticism, but only, really, to suggest a reformulation of how a particular period inhistory is presented. This may have significance, as we are now living though aperiod of international defeat and reactionourselves. I would suggest only a modestrefonnulation of the immediate postReconstruction period somewhat alongthe lines as follows: "The gains of CivilWar battle and Reconstruction were noteasily overturned. Following the Compromise of 1877, a losing battlewas fought against the forces of racist,capitalist reaction, culminating in thenear-universal establishment of Jim Crowsegregation laws and the political disenfranchisement of blacks only by the endof the nineteenth century." This reformulation, brief and not too different fromWV's, has this virtue, it does not telescopehistorical development, nor does it makeit seem that blacks rolled over in defeatwith the end of Reconstruction. I am surethat the editorial staff of WV can do a better job than me in coming up with the correct formulation.

WVRepJiesFraternally,Jeffrey K.

We appreciate Jeffrey K.'s observationsand refer him to the article in this issueon "Defeat of Reconstruction and theGreat Rail Strike of 1877-The Shapingof Racist American Capitalism.".

Cops at UPS VictimizeJamal Defense Rally OrganizersThe following is a Partisan DefenseCommittee leaflet issued on November15 in response to police harassment of

trade unionists who were mobilizing ata UPS location in the suburb of WillowSprings for the November 21 Chicagorally to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.It's no secret to Teamster membersthat the United Parcel Service desperately wants to destroy the union, whichobstructs its quest for ever higher profits. In fact, after the successful 1997UPS strike, which broke a very longchain of labor defeats, UPS beefed upits union-busting, racist security forcesfor that very purpose. At the HodgkinsUPS facility these thugs, acting in concert with local cops, were mobilized tothreaten, assault and illegally detainsupporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, theradical black journalist facing execution on frame-up charges in Pennsylvania. The same state forces arrayedagainst the union moved to suppressthe defense of Jamal.On the night of November 13 twoJamal supporters were handing out flyers at the Willow Springs Roadentrance to UPS calling for a masslaborlblack protest demanding: "AllOut to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolishthe Racist Death Penalty!" Soon twoUPS guards arrived on the scene incompany Broncos. One, Thomas Evoy,identified himself as a state policeman;

the other flashed a sheriff's deputybadge. When ordered to leave the area,the two asserted their right to distributelabor material on public property. Evoyradioed for the Willow Springs cops.When they then attempted to leave,Evoy thrust a heavy mag lite into thechest of one of the leafletters, threatening to arrest them himself and saying,"Consider yourselves detained." Beforelong, the two Jamal supporters weresurrounded by five Willow Springscruisers, two unmarked police cars andtwo Indian Point squad cars!The purpose of this overwhelming police mobilization, ostensibly inresponse to an alleged traffic "violation," was to send a message of intimidation and implied terror to any whowould seek to link the struggle forblack rights to the power of the multiracial working class. UPS, notoriousfor its racist mistreatment of blackworkers across the country, is especially motivated to squash any threatof laborlblack power. But for Teamster members at UPS as well as otherunionists, the lesson should be clear:union rights and black rights mustmarch forward together-or they willfall back separately. In the aftennath oflast year's strike, UPS and the copsally to strangle the social power of theunion; this is the power that must bemobilized to defend Jamal. .

WORKERS VANGUARD

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Government H a n H s O f f . N e w Y o r ~ C i t y D . C . 3 1 The increased combativity of theAmerican labor movement which hasbeen evident beginning with last year'sTeamsters (lET) strike against UPShas prompted a counteroffensive by WallStreet, the government and its courtsaimed at completely shackling theunions. This has been highlighted by thegovernment "stepping up its years-longintervention into the Teamsters followingthe UPS strike, voiding last December'sre-election of lET president Ron Carey,imposIng new elections and expellingCarey from the union altogether.

ISO Cheers Feds' Union "Reformers" of cops, and for good reason: the ISO andits international patrons, Tony Cliff'sBritish Socialist Workers Party, have timeand again supported the "struggles" ofprison guards anchops. Thus the BritishSocialist Worker (8 February 1997) posits that cops could cease being "agents ofthe state" if they "rebel collectively."And in 1996, the Canadian InternationalSocialists supported a strike by "unionized" prison guards in Ontario in whichthey subjected inmates to a lockdownand, when the prisoners protested, rushedinto the jail from their picket lines to suppress them.ow, expanding this anti-union vendetta, the government has targeted American Federation of State, County andMunicipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 37 in New York City, whichrepresents some 120,000 city workers in56 locals. Under the guise of fighting"corruption," four separate sets of investigators are probing the union, while theManhattan District Attorney's office hassubpoenaed financial records from everysingle local. These ominous intrusionsinto the union have. nothing to do withthe measly financial shenanigans theD.A.'s office claims to be investigatingand everything to do with further crippling the unions as defensive organizations of the working class. Governmenthands of f the unions!The D.C. 37 bureaucracy has itselfbeen instrumental in shackling the potential power of the union by its embrace ofthe capitalist politicians who run the cityand their anti-union laws. D.C. 37 president Stanley Hill-a longtime backer ofviciously racist, anti-labor Republicanmayor Rudolph Giuliani-has run pointfor City Hall's massive cutbacks whichhave meant tens of thousands of layoffsand further devastation of the ghettosand barrios. In 1995, Hill pushed througha five-year contract which included atwo-year wage freeze and millions ofdollars in givebacks. The following year,Hill endorsed Giuliani's imposition ofslave-labor, union-busting "workfare,"which has led to more rounds of layoffsand has served to pit the desperateminority poor against the unions. Andthe D.C. 37 tops have long bowed toNew York State's Taylor Law banningpublic workers strikes-it's been morethan 25 years since D.C. 37 last went onstrike.Nationally, the AFSCME bureaucracyhas eagerly "organized" prison guardsand cops-the racist, strikebreakingguard dogs of the capitalist rulers. Thepolice, courts and prisons are at tht;! coreof the capitalist state, which exists to pro-

tect the class rule, property and profits ofthe bourgeoisie. The emancipation oflabor and the liberation of all theexploited and oppressed depends on thedestruction of the capitalist state machinery through socialist revolution, creatinga society where those who labor rule.Today, the labor movement is beingincreasingly threatened and hogtied byhaving the class enemy in its house. Withcop-infested and court-controlled unions,the labor movement cannot effectivelywield its power on behalf of workers

and the oppressed. We say: cops andcourts out of the unions! For the unionsto act as instruments of class strugglerequires a political struggle against thepro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. Thismeans in the first place a fight forthe complete independence of the unionsfrom' the capitalist state, its cops andcourts, and from the Democratic andRepublican parties of capital.The Spartacist League opposes stateintervention into the unions as a matterof principle. Not so for such reformistsas the International Socialist Organization (ISO), which has long promotedthe Teamsters for a Democratic Union(TDU), an outfit which literally wrotethe blueprint for the feds' takeover ofthe union. Along with other reformist"socialists," the ISO trumpeted RonCarey, who tooK office as a direct resultof the government's intervention into theunion. But once the state removed their

s p a r t a c i S ~ E v e ~ t s Spartacistl..eag4 .F01I,1m< .

BOSTONFor Black Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!Friday, November 20, 7 p.m.

Sever Hall, Room 102Harvard UniversityFor more information: (617) 666-9453

/ i > ' i ~ p a ~ ' ~ H . rOYJh9jyb ....\ViiJjoSbow.ric;/DI.r:us$!pnNEW YORK CITY

Come see thePartisan Defense Committee video:"From Death Row,This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal"Wednesday, December 2, 2:30 p.m.

Borough of Manhattan Community College199 Chambers Street, Room S114For more information: (212) 267-1025

.$ p , t f , ~ ~ U ~ Y Q i I 1 i ! q l ~ c ' ~ ~ . e j . ((NEW YORK CITY

Confronting the"Death of Communism" Myth:The Revolutionary Party in thePost-Soviet WorldTuesday, November 24, 7 p.m.

Loeb Student Center, Room 413New York University (laGuardia PIJWash. Sq. South)For readings and information: (212) 267-1025

20 NOVEMBER 1998

TORONTOThe Revolutionary Partyand Its ProgramThursday, November 26, 7:30 p.m.

International Student CentreRiddell RoomUniversity of Toronto33 St. George Street (north of College St.)For readings and information: (416) 593-4138

man from office, the ISO started howlingabout the evils of government intervention. Thus a Socialist Worker (19 June)article on the Teamsters talked about theneed for "shop-floor organization independent of the union bureaucracy-andfor getting both the mob and the federalgovernment out of the union."Stung by what happened to Carey, theISO has suddenly "discovered" the danger of government intervention. Thatthis is sheer hypocrisy is shown bytheir response to the events in AFSCME

D.C. 37. In Socialist Worker (25 September), the ISO lauds the "Committeefor Real Change" (CRC) headed byLocal 375 chief Roy Commer and MarkRosenthal, the president of Local 983.The ISO claims the CRC stands for"organizing the unorganized, includingworkfare workers" and for implementing various reforms in the union. Whatthe ISO doesn't say is that these bureaucrats have been acting as point men forstate intervention into the union. WhenRosenthal took office earlier this year, heproceeded to turn over to the D.A.reports on the union's. finances. AndCommer responded to his recent suspension from union office by fiting a complaint against the union in federal court.The ISO doesn 't say a word about howthese bureaucrats look to "reform" theunion by running to the courts and finking for the D.A. Nor does the ISO everobject to the AFSCME tops' "organizing"

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared some 125 years ago, and the entire

TimesAFSCME D.C. 37 hospitafworkersprotest closures and cutbacks,1996. D.C. 37 chief Stanley Hill haspushed through layoffs and unionbusting, slave-labor "workfare"schemes for racist mayor Giuliani.course of labor struggle has shown,that "the working class cannot simply layhold of the ready-made state machineryand wield it for its own purposes." In contrast, the ISO has a reformist perspective.As we wrote in "Government Steps UpAnti-Labor Attacks" (WV No. 675, 3October 1997): "What the ISO pushes issocial-democratic politics, the view thatthe capitalist state, which is organized todefend the interests of the bourgeois ruling class, can be pressured to act onbehalf of the interests of the exploited."Key to unchaining labor's power is toimbue workers with the understandingthat the capitalist state is the deadlyenemy of the unions, of blacks andall minorities. The necessary instrumentto sow that consciousness is a revolutionary workers party, forged throughpolitical struggle against capitalism's"labor lieutenants" and their "socialist"mouthpieces .

8ellelltl0, Clt/II-Wt/, P,IIOlle'lY Organize forI. Mumia Abu-Jamal's FreedomJoin us for the 13th annual HolidayAppeal to raise funds for those imprisoned for championing the rights oflabor and the oppressed. In sendingmonthly stipends to class-war prisonersand additional funds to them and theirfamilies during the holidays, the PDC

continues a tradition dating back to theInternational Labor Defense of the1920s.This year's benefits are particularly

focused on the urgent struggle to freeblack death row political prisonerMumia Abu-Jamal. With the rejectionof Jamal's appeal by the PennsylvaniaSupreme Court, there is an immediatedanger that Governor Tom Ridge willsign a death warrant, aiming to silenceforever this courageous fighter againstracist injustice. Build the HolidayAppeal-Build the fight to free Mumiaand abolish the racist death penalty!

t t i w ' o r ~ , Gl1icagcf . BayAreaFriday, December 45 to 9 p.m.

AFSCME District Council 170775 Varick St. (at Canal)For more information:(212) 406-4252

Sunday, December 63 to 7 p.m.UE Hall

37 S. Ashland (at Monroe)For more information:(312) 454-4931

Sunday, December 61 to 4 p.m.ILWU Local 34 Hall4 Berry St., San FranciscoFor more information:(510) 839-0852

SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE

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Philippines: Estrada RegimeTurns Screws on Workers, Poor

NOVEMBER 16-Less than five monthsinto his term as president of the Philippines, Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada'simage as guardian of the masa (masses)is fading, and fading fast. Campaigningon the slogan "Erap para sa mahirap"(Erap for the poor) and on promises ofjobs, cheap food and housing, the capitalist politician was elected in May on awave of popular discontent over the austerity dictates imposed by his predecessor, former general Fidel Ramos, at thebehest of the International MonetaryFund (IMF) and U.S. imperialism. Withclass polarization progressively sharpening and labor militancy threatening toundermine the stability of this classicU.S. neocolony, Estrada is backing callsfor emergency presidential powers and amoratorium on strikes. He is also championing the return of U.S. military forcesto the country, throwing his supportbehind the Visiting Forces Agreement(VFA) signed early this year by Ramos.Shortly before Estrada's June 30 inauguration, Philippine Airlines (PAL)pilots walked out-defying a government injun ctio n-aga inst a uQion-bustingattack by PAL boss and Estraaa backerLucio Tan. The pilots were subsequently.joined by flight attendants and thecombative PAL Employees Association(PALEA) representing ground crews. Theday after Estrada's inauguration, PALstrikers joined with other trade unionists,impoverished slum dwellers and youth ina 10,000-strong protest at the openingsession of Congress in Manila, where the"populist" president unveiled a hardnosed austerity program entailing deepcuts in the already measly social servicesbudget and wholesale privatization ofremaining state-owned firms and utilities.What lies behind the American militarypresence in the Philippines has beenamply evident in recent days, as Indonesia again erupts in mass protests met withbloody repression. Less than six monthsafter dictator Suharto was forced out bystudent protests and plebeian upheavals,his successor and former henchman, B. J.Habibie, is likewise using military terrorto prop up his austerity regime. The economic crisis which has engulfed theregion, sending shock waves as faras Japan, Russia and Brazil, has driven millions to the edge of starvation. Atthe same time, it has impelled the urbanand rural masses to fight for their verysurvival.There has recently been imperialist4

investment in light industry in the Philippines, although the country was sidelinedduring the much-touted Southeast Asian"economic miracle." Now it is being buffeted by the effects of the economiccrash. The lines of men and womensometimes stretching more than half amile-outside the Malacafiang presidential palace pleading for jobs, housing,medical care and scholarships attest tothe desperate conditions throughout the

Amid desperate poverty,Filipinos plead tor help atpresidential palace of JosephEstrada (near left, withbillionaire patron EduardoCojuangco).

historic tasks of the bourgeois-democraticrevolution, including expropriation of thelanded estates. As Bolshevik leader LeonTrotsky explained in The Permanent Rev-olution (1931):"With regard to countries with a belatedbourgeois development, especially thecolonial and semi-colonial countries, thetheory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democ-racy and national emancipation is

No Illusions in Bourgeois Liberals-For Workers Revolution!

country. The number of jobless hasclimbed by 30 percent in one year. ThePhilippine peso has plunged to a recordlow, and the only thing apparently keeping the economy afloat is dollar remittances from the vast number of Filipinosworking abroad. These conditions haveprovoked widespread proletarian unrest,measured in the 32 percent increase instrikes and lockouts over the past year.The PAL strike, which served as a beacon for workers throughout the archipelago, went down to bitter defeat last monthin the face of government-backed strikebreaking, sealed by a backroom dealbetween the PALEA tops and the airlinebosses (see "Philippine Airline StrikeKnifed," page 9). But the groundswell ofdissent and labor activity coming hard onthe heels of the PAL strike was sufficientto rattle the capitalist rulers. Workers onthe island of Cebu recently occupied andshut down a major plant while a nationwide walkout at Philippine Telegraph& Telephone crippled automated tellermachines and lotto terminals.The fraud of "Erap para sa mahirap" isnot just the product of Estrada's intimate relationship with imperialism andthe Philippine oligarchy. In the epoch ofcapitalist decay, the bourgeoisie of thecountries of belated capitalist development-the junior partners of the imperialists-are incapable of carrying out the

conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of thesubjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses."The Philippine proletariat must take itsplace at the head of the unemployed poor,the rural masses, women, subjugated ethnic and national minorities in a strugglefor socialist revolution against all wings

of the capitalist class. Such a strugglemust be based on a perspective for proletarian revolution throughout the regionand internationally, especially the U.S.,Japan and Australia. This is underscoredby the U.S. military presence, whichseeks to enforce imperialist "stability" inthis increasingly tumultuous region andto assist Washington's interests againstJapan. It is also a dagger at the throat ofthe Chinese bureaucratically deformedworkers state, which is teetering on thebrink of capitalist counterrevolution.Trotskyists stand for unconditionalmilitary defense of China and the otherremaining deformed workers statesagainst imperialist attack and internalcounterrevolution while fighting for proletarian political revolution to oustthe nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies.Socialist revolution in the Philippineswould be an enormous impetus to theChinese workers fighting the ravages ofthe Beijing regime's "market reforms."Above all, what is needed is the forging

of a proletarian vanguard party committedto the Trotskyist program of permanentrevolution and steeled in political combat against the myriad forms of nationalist class collaboration promoted by theStalinist-dominated Philippine left.An ''ArchipelagicAircraft Carrier"

Significantly, the return of the U.S.military under the Visiting Forces Agreement comes 100 years after the U.S.seized the archipelago in the 1898Spanish-American War which signaledAmerica's emergence as an imperialistpower. In the process of suppressingnationalist resistance, the U.S. militarylaunched a brutal, racist war that resultedin the slaughter of hundreds of thousandsof Filipinos. As we noted in "A Centuryof U.S. Imperialist Plunder" (WV No.686, 13 March): "The conquest of thePhilippines, leading to decades of bloodycolonial repression, was a statement ofU.S. imperialist appetites in the Pacificand a harbinger of the future war withJapanese imperialism, which culminatedin the American A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945."The strategic importance of the Philippines for the U.S. was laid out followingWorld War II by General DouglasMacArthur, whose father commandedthe war of extermination against independence fighters at the turn of the century: "Now the Pacific has become anAnglo-Saxon lake and our line ofdefense runs through a chain of islandsfringing the coast of Asia" (quoted inNautilus Research, Pacific Command:The Structure and Strategy of the USMilitary in the Pacific [July 1983]). In1951, MacArthur told the U.S. Congress:"From this island chain we can dominatewith sea and air power every Asiatic portfrom Vladivostok to Singapore and prevent any hostile movement into thePacific."Despite half a century of nominal independence, the Philippines remains animpoverished semicolonial vassal of theU.S. Described by the London Economistas an "archipelagic aircraft carrier," thecountry has long served as a linchpin oftl'le anti-Communist ASEAN alliance inSoutheast Asia. During the anti-SovietCold War, the Philippines provided strategic military bases at Clark andSubic Bay for U.S. imperialism's savagecounterrevolutionary war in the 1960sand '70s against the heroic Vietnamese

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workers and peasants. When the U.S.opted to abandon its Philippine basesshortly after the counterrevolutionarydestruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, the Pentagon took literally everything, except the tons of toxic waste leftbehind. For more than half a century, theU.S. military arrogantly treated the Philippines as its whorehouse. Thousands ofAmerasian children were abandonedwhen the U.S. military left. Now thesechildren, especially those of black GIs,face ostracism in the communities aroundthe former bases.Estrada became the darling of thenationalist '-'left" in good part because hespoke out against the U.S. military baseswhile serving as an opposition senatorunder ,the administration of PresidentCorazon "Cory" Aquino. Recognizing thebrittleness of bourgeois rule in a neocolony situated in a potential cockpitof interimperialist rivalry, Estrada nowopenly courts the favors of the UnitedStates. The VFA allows the U.S. militaryunlimited access to ports and installationsthroughout the Philippines. U.S. interestsare especially focused around GeneralSantos City at the southern tip of Mindanao-where USAID funds were used toupgrade the airport and ship handlingfacilities-which faces the maritimeboundary with Indonesia and Malaysia.

The VFA, which has provoked nationalist protests by- elements ranging fromthe powerful Catholic hierarchy to theStalinist and social-democratic left, is aresponse to intensified interimperialistcompetition and growing social turmoilin the region. The Philippines offers theU.S. a strategic position from which tothreaten the sea lanes that are Japan'sshortest oil supply routes as well as ajumping-off point for military intervention to quell social unrest in neighboringsemicolonial countries. We say: Smashthe VFA and ASEAN! U.S. troops out ofthe Philippines!Dead End ofBourgeois Populism

Estrada's election was hailed by ahost of liberals and avowed leftists asa "victory for the people." In fact,Estrada is simply the latest in a long lineof imperialist-sponsored "populist" orcacique (landowner) politicians, fromcolonial Commonwealth caudillo ManuelQuezon and post-independence presidentRamon Magsaysay to dictator FerdinandMarcos and Aquino herself. For decades,Washington propped up the hated, corrupt Marcos dictatorship. When Marcosbecame too discredited to continue rulingin the 1980s, the U.S. promoted longtime CIA asset and millionaire BenignoAquino. Following his assassination byMarcos' thugs in 1983, his wife took upthe baton of the "democratic" opposition.Three years later, Cory Aquino, one ofthe largest landowners in the country,was catapulted to office .by the "peoplepower" movement supported by Washington, the Catholic Church ... and muchof the "left." Months after becomingpresident, Aquino unleashed troops andcops on a demonstration in Manila calling for agrarian reform, killing 18 peasants and wounding scores more. Despitea veneer of parliamentary democracy, thePhilippines remains a brutal police statein which leftists and working-class militants face imprisonment and death-squadterror.Estrada was a loyal Marcos supporter who organized goon-squad attacksagainst Aquino's followers. He gainedpopularity playing grade B movie rolesas a hoodlum and, ironically, an incorruptible union leader, and earned hispolitical spurs as the mayor of San Juan,a suburb of Metro Manila. One ofhis chief patrons is billionaire businessman and former Marcos crony EduardoCojuangco. When Cojuangco allowedthe peasants on one of his eleven haci-endas on the island of Negros to become"stockholders" in the plantation, Estradahailed his padrino as the "godfather ofland reform." Under the government'sfraudulent "land reform" scheme, Cojuangco retains 60 percent control whilethe "emancipated" tenant farmers con-20 NOVEMBER 1998

} R H h ' : l p A i N ~ S :

tinue to slave as his plantation hands.As the case of Cojuangco illustrates,the bourgeoisie and the landlord class insuch semicolonial countries are inextricably intertwined. Half of the peasantryconsists of tenants who are forced to handover up to three-quarters of their crops torapacious landlords, while well over athird of the overall population lives belowthe official poverty line. Food prices haveskyrocketed in recent months amid widespread sh.ortages. Genuine agrarian revolution-expropriation of the landedestates-can only be realized through theoverthrow of capitalist class rule. Directly

Loeb/Philadelphia InquirerWorkers at Philippine shoe factorymake 15 cents an hour. Oppressedwomen workers will play key role infight for socialist revolution.related to the land question is the oppression of the dozens of ethnic, religious andlinguistic minorities on this chain of over7,000 islands. Various Muslim insurgencies have raged for years on the island ofMindanao, one of the poorest areas in thearchipelago. And, as in Indonesia andelsewhere in the region, ethnic Chineseare simultaneously represented in thebourgeoisie and subjected to vile racistpersecution.The woman question is also a centraland explosive issue in this 80 percentCatholic country. While large numbers ofwomen have been drawn into the workforce in recent years, they have also beenthe hardest hit as unemployment climbsin the spreading economic crisis. Evenbefore, millions of women were forcedto seek work abroad-in the U.S., Japanand the oil-rich Arab emirates-asnurses or servants, many of them treatedliterally as slaves. Philippine law en-AP

U.S. uses Philippine neocolonyas strategiC outpost againstJapanese imperialist rival and toquell social unrest in region. U.S.military presence is dagger atthroat of Chinese deformedworkers state.

shrines the oppression of women, whocannot even sign contracts without ahusband's consent. The 1987 constitutionpromulgated under Aquino includes oneof the most severe anti-abortion laws inthe world, and a bill proposed last yearwould make abortion punishable bydeath both fo t the woman and the doctorwho performs it.It is necessary to fight for free abortion on demand and free quality healthcare for all. Marxists call for strict separation of church and state and opposeevery manifestation of discriminationagainst women, homosexuals and ethnic,national and religious minorities. Religious backwardnes s-whether Catholic orMuslim-serves to bolster the family,the key institution for the oppression ofwomen.To even begin to emancipate womenfrom domestic slavery and all-sidedoppression, the system of capitalist exploitation must be swept away throughsocialist revolution, leading to the creation of an international planned, collectivized economy. The ICL seeks to buildan internationalist revolutionary vanguard party to act as a tribune of the people, mobilizing the proletariat in defenseof all the oppressed against the common class enemy. Particularly in Asia,the fight for the emancipation of womenis a key component of this perspective.For women's liberation through socialistrevolution!For ProletarianClass Independence!

The chief condition for any real struggle against imperialist subjugation andcapitalist exploitation and oppression isthe class independence of the proletariat.Yet the Filipino left has historically beenmired in class collaboration. In advancedcapitalist countries, such class collaboration often takes the political form of"popular fronts"-bourgeois coalitionsof reformist workers parties and openlycapitalist parties. In semicolonial countries, the same treacherous strategy isgenerally manifested through the vehicleof bourgeois nationalism.In the recent elections, the various leftgroups either tailed Estrada or politelyrefrained from opposing him, givingtheir supporters the signal to go vote for"Erap." But many voters who had earliersported the bumper sticker "Erap para sa

Philippine Airlines workers demonstrate insupport of striking pilots in June (left). Workerspicket electrical utility owned by U.S. Union Oilduring 1996 strike.

mahirap" have now replaced it with onereading, "I'm sorry I voted for Erap."And a columnist for Manila's Today (25July) observed, "Those who can't affordto buy bumper stickers, much less a carto stick them on ... suffer the greatest disillusionment and feel the deepest senseof betrayaL" In turn, the reformist"socialists" now seek to distance themselves from Estrada.Such opportunist twists and turns are inkeeping with the-whole history of Filipino Stalinism and help explain why theleft there consists of a veritable alphabetsoup of groups which are barely distinguishable politically-all agreeing on theMenshevik/Stalinist "two stage" model.Each new betrayal tends to result in acliquist split in which one faction oranother is denounced for relying toomuch on the "national bourgeoisie" andnot understanding the "leading role of theworking class in the democratic revolution" or for focusing too much on "guerrillaism" instead of electoral politics.In warning against illusions in Aquinoin 1986, we wrote: "Many a Third Worldnationalist regime has sought to protectits left flank by bringing the Communistsinto a 'democratic (or anti-fascist, antiimperialist, etc.) coalition government,'only to set them up for a massacre onthe morrow" ("Philippines Workers MustFight for Power!" WVNo. 415, 7 November 1986). What is necessary is aprogrammatic break with all variants ofthe Menshevik/Stalinist dogma of "twostage revolution," which subordinatesthe proletariat to a "progressive" or "antiimperialist" wing of the bourgeoisie inthe fight for "democratic" capitalismwhile putting off the struggle for socialism to a future that never comes. From theChinese Revolution of 1925-27, whichwas drowned in blood by Chiang Kaishek's nationalist Guomindang, to theslaughter of Indonesian Communists bySuharto's military and Muslim fundamentalist gangs in 1965, history hasrepeatedly demonstrated that "two-stagerevolution" means bloody defeat for theworking class and oppressed.This has been amply confirmed in thePhilippines as well. In leading the Hukbalahap-the "People's Anti-JapaneseArmy"-during World War II, the oldPhilippine Communist Party (PCP) followed Stalin's prescription of supportingthe "democratic" imperialist Allies. Withthe end of the war and American reconquest of the islands, the U.S. imperialiststurned their guns on the Huks, drowningthe peasant-based rebellion in blood.This campaign, assisted by Magsaysayand a young Benigno Aquino (whosefamily collaborated with the Japaneseduring the war), served as the laboratoryin which the CIA developed the bloodytechniques of "counterinsurgency" laterused to slaughter millions of Vietnamese.The current Philippine CommunistParty (CPP) of Jose Maria Sison, whichemerged as a Maoist split from the proMoscow PKP in 1968, is no less weddedto such nationalist class collaboration ism.The Sisonites have led the New People'sArmy (NPA) in a peasant-guerrilla struggle which has waxed and waned over theyears as overtures are made to each newbourgeois regime. While defying murderous state repression, such "armed struggle" is essentially a means to pressurethe bourgeoisie.

continued on page 9

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Young Sparlaeusr-Oefeatof Reconstfuctio'n':a'nltheGreatRaiIStrike of 1877 I

The Shaping ofRacist American CapitalismWe publish below an edited pres-entation by Young Spartacus editorJacob Zorn at a Chicago Spartacus

Youth Club forum last month.

:) tion of this was the founding of theRepublican Party in 1854, in thecourse of the fight for a free Kansas. During that struggle over"bleeding Kansas," free-soilers,including the heroic John Brown,bravely fought pro-slavery marauders. The most radical representatives of the strong abolitionistmovement which developed-suchas Brown, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Thaddeus Stevens-foresaw that only armedaction would end slavery. If youwant to learn more about this, I recommend the fifth issue of our pamphlet series Black History and theClass Struggle, titled "Finish theCivil War!"

As Marxists, we understand thatracism is not a question of "badideas." Rather, there is a materialbasis for racial oppression. It is necessary to understand how this material basis was shaped by the historyof this society. And that meansunderstanding the pivotal events of1877. That year saw the final defeatof Reconstruction, as the bourgeoisie withdrew the last federal troopsfrom the South, where they hadbeen stationed to suppress the slavocracy defeated in the Civil Warand defend the rights of the emancipated black slaves. At the sametime, federal troops-includingtroops withdrawn from the Southwere sent to break a strike by thousands of rail workers, the first national strike in this country.

The Republicans nominatedAbraham Lincoln, a moderate, forthe 1860 presidential election, seeing him as able to win more votesthan a more radical candidate. Lincoln did not call to immediatelyState militia fires on striking rail workers in Baltimore. Great Rail Strike of 1877signaled emergence of American labor movement. end slavery where it existed butmerely opposed its extension. But theSouthern slavocracy opposed any constraints on the slave system. FollowingLincoln's election, eleven states secededfrom the Union to form the ConfederateStates of America, which guaranteed the"right" to own slaves in its constitution.

The fight for black liberation is central to the fight of the working class inthe U.S. to smash this capitalist systemof exploitation, oppression and miseryand to create a truly egalitarian socialistsociety. We call to finish the Civil Warthrough a socialist revolution whichplaces the working class in power. Aswe wrote in the International Communist League's Declaration of Principles(Spartacist [English-language edition]No. 54, Spring 1998):"The U.S. black question is defined bythe particular history of the United States:slavery, the Civil War defeat of the Southern slavocracy by Northern industrialcapitalism and the bourgeoisie's betrayalof Radical Reconstruction's'promise ofequality, leading to the racist segregationof black people 'despite the economic'integration of black toilers into the proletariat at the bottom. The forcible segregation of blacks, integral to American capitalism, has been resisted by the blackmasses whenever a perceived possibilityfor such struggle has been felt. Hence ourprogram for the U.S. is revolutionaryintegrationism-the full integration ofblacks into an egalitarian, socialist America-and our program of 'black liberationthrough socialist revolution'."Ubrary of Congress

6

An "Irrepressible Conflict"In the years after its founding, theAmerican republic was divided betweentwo social systems, slavery and capitalism. In the fight for independence fromBritain, the first American Revolutiondrew on the ideas and even some of theinstitutions of the parliamentary side ofthe English Civil War of the mid-17thcentury, such as the right of citizens tobear arms, as codified in the SecondAmendment to the U.S. Constitution. Inthe 19th century, the developing Northern systemof large-scale industrial capitalism required "free" wage labor to

exploit-this is how the capitalist classmakes its profits-as well as a mobileand somewhat literate working class. Inorder to grow, capitalism needed to createan expanding home market for the goodsthat it produced.On the other hand, the South was ruledby a narrow slavocracy, and most productive labor was done by enslaved blackswho were legally nothing more than chattel-property. The Southern plantationeconomy was based on growing great

amounts of cotton to sell to the world capitalist market, primarily the British textilemills. At the same time, the slave systemwas based on very primitive and inefficient agricultural production. So the slaveowners continually wanted to expandtheir system to virgin soil which had notbeen depleted by cotton farming and toincrease the highly profitable slave trade.The inherent conflict between thesetwo social systems gave.,rise to a series ofclashes over whether new territory in theWest would be slave or free. The inevitable battle was always delayed throughsome sort of "compromise," in which the

Northern bourgeoisie allowed the slavocracy to remain dominant in the weakfederal government: for example, theMissouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state; or theCompromise of 1850, which admittedCalifornia as a free state while enacting afugitive slave law, enabling slaveownersto pursue escaped slaves throughout thecountry.In the 1850s, this "irrepressible conflict" reached a boiling point. An indica-

The North did not go to war specifically to emancipate the slaves but to suppress the Confederacy and restore theUnion. Nonetheless, it was clear from thebeginning that the war was about slavery.Karl Marx, who followed Americandevelopments closely, wrote at the time:"The whole movement was and is based,as one sees, on the slave question. Not inthe sense of whether the slaves within theexisting slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but rather whetherthe 20 million free men of the Northshould submit any longer to an oligarchyof 300,000 slaveholders."- Karl Marx, "The North

A m e r ~ c a n Civil War" (1861)As Frederick Douglass had argued fromthe start of the war, whatever the intent ofthe Union leadership, the North wouldhave to emancipate the slaves in order towin the war. Thus on 1 January 1863,

Thomas NasI

Union Army in Southwas instrumental indefending rights offreed s l a v e ~ . ThomasNast cartoon depictsmurderous KKK,which was given freerein by withdrawal oflast federal troops inCompromise of 1877.

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IBIOFeUR f!!OlcTollnas! To&nas! 8( ;. O J l . ~ L l f D _

THREE YEAIr SERYICE!1&1TLIl1 LIEITIDBm_ RadicalabolitionistFrederickDouglasscampaigned forblacks to join

Union Army.Black troopshelped turn tideof war againstslavocracy

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lliLiiaiiiimiD~ u : r ~ I : 1 I f ' ~ \ f i i ~ f , u l u V IJU[OOfmOISMPIIIT lIUII&Iiiiiiiii:Ums IIIID.il lmliilfLiiiIiAviTii!iiSi.AVii,,'-((Wiiiiririrli"fli. .. CUi.-iimiis-iil,iUDsrWE APPEAL TO YOUr- ~ ~ r -

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, ordering that slaves in the Confederacy (but not in Union slave statessuch as Maryland) be freed, and soonafter authorized the enlistment of blacksoldiers. Some 180,000 black t roopsemancipated slaves in the South and freeblacks in the North such as the heroic"Massachusetts 54th" led by RobertGould S h a w ~ e m o n s t r a t e d before theeyes of the nation the courage and commitment of black soldiers and helped tumthe war's tide.Reconstruction and theCompromise of 1877

The Civil War was the shaping event ofAmerican history-the last great bourgeois revolution, the second AmericanRevolution-finally and firmly establishing the rule of the bourgeoisie throughoutthe U.S., with a strong central government and a national political economy.After the war, the question of what to dowith the South was debated heatedly. Thequestion of the freedman was central:would he become a full, enfranchised citizen, or would he be confined to secondclass status, not slave but not free.Lincoln wanted to assimilate the Southback into the Union as quickly and painlessly as possible. But the defeated slavocracy would have none of it and actedas though it hadn't lost the war, sendingformer Confederate leaders to Congressand enacting "Black Codes" which allbut re-enslaved blacks. When Lincolnwas assassinated less than a week afterthe South surrendered in 1865, the former slaveowners were encouraged by hissuccessor, Andrew Johnson, who threwhis lot in with white supremacy duringthe brief period known as PresidentialReconstruction.

In response, the policies of radicalslike Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner attained great influence within theRepublican Party, the main party of theNorthern bourgeoisie. The central goalof Radical Reconstruction-carried outon the ground by the freedmen andsympathetic whites who were slanderously labeled "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags"-was to reconstruct the South ona bourgeois-democratic basis, with theintegration of blacks (who comprised themajority in much of the South) into capitalist society. With the 14th Amendmentgranting citizenship to "all persons bornor naturalized in the United States" andthe 15th Amendment extending the rightto vote to all men, black Americans wentfrom being chattel to citizens. What madethis possible were the federal troops,many of them black, stationed in theSouth to suppress resistance by the former slavocracy-which was organized inthe Democratic Party-and its Ku KluxKlan terrorist auxiliary.Blacks not only voted at rates as highas 90 percent but were elected to state andnational offices in large numbers. Morethan 600 blacks, mainly ex-slaves, servedas legislators. Millions of freedmen,aided by the Freedmen's Bureau butlargely through their own initiative,learned to read, a right denied under20 NOVEMBER 1998

the slave system. Some became skiIIedtradesmen and professionals. Poor whitesalso benefited. Massive public spendingon education created some of the first realpublic schools in the South, for whites aswell as blacks. While women-bothblack and white-were denied the vote,they began to participate in civil societyin great numbers.For Reconstruction to succeed wouldhave required not just the defeat of theplantation class, but that the plantationsbe seized and redistributed to those whotoiled on them, the freedmen. In 1865, theUnion government promised freedmen 40acres each to farm. In fact, many plantations, including the family plantation offormer Confederate' president JeffersonDavis in Mississippi, were already beingrun collectively by the former slaves asthe landowners fled after the war. But aswe wrote in a founding document of theSpartacist League in 1966, "Black andRed-Class Struggle Road to NegroFreedom": "Capitalist and slave alikestood to gain from the suppression of theplanter aristocracy but beyond that had nofurther common interests."

The American bourgeoisie was notinterested in a thoroughgoing social reconstruction of the South. Northern capitalists looked at the devastated South andsaw an opportunity not for building a radical democracy but for exploiting Southern resources, and the freedmen, profitably. Dividing the plantations into smallplots would not have facilitated this.Rather the aim was to restart Southernagriculture, which meant getting theagricultural workforce-blacks-to workagain, to the advantage of the landowningclass, now dominated by mercantile interests with ties to the Northern capitalists.Such demands as "land to the tiller" arenot anti-capitalist per se-they are in factthe quintessence of the bourgeois revolution. But especially after the 1871 ParisCommune-the first, short-lived exampleof what Marx called the' "dictatorship ofthe proletariat"-the bourgeoisie saw theexpropriation and redistribution of privateproperty as a threat. In return for havingRepublican Rutherford Hayes declaredthe winner of the 1876 presidential election, the Republicans agreed to pull thelast troops out of the South in yet another"compromise," the Compromise of 1877.This final compromise was largely justa codification of the actual defeat ofReconstruction several years earlier.

The post-Reconstruction periodcalled "Redemption" by racists-wasmarked by a political counterrevolutionaimed at black people and enforced byKlan terrorists. Blacks were disenfranchised and brutally exploited in the formof sharecropping and tenancy, whilebeing driven out of the skilled trades. JimCrow segregation was formally codifiedin Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 SupremeCourt ruling which gave the officialstamp of approval to "separate but equal."I want to underscore the point that during Reconstruction the general thrust of_black struggle was toward integration andequality in American society. In fact, itwas only after the defeat of Reconstruc-

tion and the consolidation of Jim Crowsegregation over the next 20 years thatthe accommodat ion sm of Booker T.Washington and, later, utopian separatistschemes gained prominence.The Birth of the AmericanLabor Movement

As I mentioned earlier, the Civil Warlaid the basis for a national economy inthe United States, based on industrialcapital ism and "free" wage labor. Integralto the development of this capitalist system were the railways. In 1850, therewere only 2,201 miles of track in use; in1877, over 79,000 miles. The concentration of railways in the North helped theUnion win the Civil War. The extensionof the railways throughout the West unified the country. And the convergence ofrailways here in Chicago made this citythe epicenter of American capitalist development in that period. Railway baronsamassed huge profits in the "Gilded Age"of the late 1800s, which was marked byrampant speculation. It was the presidentof the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas A.Scott, who actually drew up the Compromise of 1877 in order to guarantee thedevelopment of a Texas Pacific Railroad.A unified capitalist system also laidthe basis for a unified working class.There is a famous quote by Marx in thefirst volume of Capital:

"In the United States of North America,every independent movement of theworkers was paralysed so long as slaverydisfigured a part of the Republic. Labourcannot emancipate itself in the whiteskin where in the black it is branded. Butout of the death of slavery a )lew life atonce arose. The first fruit of the CivilWar was the eight hours' agitation, thatran with the seven-leagued boots of thelocomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California."Expanding on Marx's understanding,American Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser,who first laid out the perspective of revolutionary integration, wrote in his 1955document "For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question" (reprinted inMarxist Bulletin No.5 [Revised]):

-- . , . , . . . . ~ C O . _ I 3 1 1 G 1 ' O . _ " / \ : > 1 I . N Y ' O I I . $1 (32 pages)

"There were, of course, labor strugglesduring the pre-Civil War period, But theywere dwarfed in importance besidethe anti-slavery struggle, because thenational question for the American people had not yet been solved ....'The whole future of the working classdepended, not so much upon organizational achievements against the capitalists, as upon the solution to the questionof the slave power ruling the land,"This is the fundamental reason for thebelated character of the development ofthe stable labor movement in the U.S."The expansion of railway transport ledto one of the first working-class movements in the U.S. based on industrial

unions-made up of all workers in anindustry-as opposed to craft unionswhich organize each skilled trade separately. Railwaymen were extremelyexploited, as the rail magnates continually sought to increase profits and dividends at the expense of the workers. Theelimination of safety equipment wascommon, and workers who had run tra inshundreds of miles were forced to pay fortheir return trips.

Speculation and overdevelopment bythe railroad barons, who engaged in whatwere literally wars-pitched battleswith their competitors, helped precipitatethe depression of 1873, which untilthe 1930s was referred to as the "GreatDepression." Many railway lines wereplaced under court management whentheir owners defaulted. As unemploymentsoared and wages were slashed, railroadworkers struck and began to organize inthe industrial Trainmen's Union, a movestrongly opposed by the capitalists, whosought to destroy any form of unionism.In May 1877, representatives of fourlarge railroad companies met and conspired to slash wages by a further 10 percent, and other railway companies soonfollowed suit. In mid-June, workers onthe Baltimore & Ohio line walked out,demanding the restoration of their pastwage rate. For more than a month, thestrike spread throughout the U.S. andeven to Canada. Increasingly, federaltroops were used to break the strike; thecontinued on page 8

K e y ~ m e n t s a r i d a r t i ~ 1955-1978

$1.50 (72 pages)Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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1877 ...(continued from page 7)bourgeoisie deemed the National Guardunreliable in a confrontation with strikers. As a pretext to call in the troops, mailcars were attached to the struck trains,and the strikers were then charged withobstructing the mail. In Pittsburgh, troopskilled ten. workers and wounded eleven,causing'angry strikers to burn the railroad's property, including 39 buildingsand 1,200 freight cars.Ip Chicago, militants called a generalstrike, which was prevented only by thethreat of bloody state repression. One ofthe strike leaders there was Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier whohad become a staunch Republican duringReconstruction in Texas. After beingdriven out of the South by racists as a socalled "scalawag," he joined the socialistmovement here in Chicago. In 1886, Parsons was a leader of the Haymarket strikewhich fought for an eight-hour day. Hewas framed up by the police and hangedfor his role in that strike, which is commemorated by May Day, the internationallabor holiday.In St. Louis, the strikers' executivecommittee, led by members of the Workingmen's Party of the United States(WPUS-American section of Marx'sFirst International), essentially ran thecity and established what was called the"St. Louis Commune." As Philip S. Fonerwrote in his book The Great Labor Uprising of J877 (1977):"The executive committee ruled the city.Nearly all the manufacturing establishments in SI. Louis had been closed. Sixtyfactories were shut down.... Such economic activities as continued did so onlywith the permission of the executivecommittee."Only the threat of state repression endedthe St. Louis general strike.

By August, the rail strike had beencrushed, largely without any economicgains. But it was apparent that the U.S.was no longer the same. The rail strikegave birth to the modern American labormovement. It was the first major striketo face the use of government troops andthe first to see the major use of strikebreaking court injunctions. It illuminatedthe class nature of the state-what Marxand Engels called the "committee formanaging the common affairs of thewhole bourgeoisie"-as an armed forcewhich safeguarded the property, profitsand class rule of the bourgeoisie. Thearmories today present in most major cities are a result of this strike-or moreprecisely, of the bourgeoisie's fear generated by this strike.Racism: Poison toClass Struggle

Above all, the strike signified that theAmerican working class had entered thescene as a force in itself. Especially sinceit came only six years after the ParisCommune, the capitalist class saw in therail strike the spectre of "Red Revolution"coming to America. The American prole-

tariat had not become what Marx called a"classjOr itself'-consciously strugglingfor its own class rule-but it had achievedsome sort of critical mass. In a letter toFriedrich Engels in London during thestrike, Marx stated:"This, the first outbreak against the associated capital oligarchy that has arisensince the Civil War, will, of course, besuppressed, but may well provide a pointof departure for the constitution of aserious workers' party in the UnitedStates. There are two favourable circumstances on top of that. The policy of thenew President will tum the negroes, justas the big expropriations of land (exactlyof the fertile land) for the benefit of theRailway, Mining, etc., companies willtum the peasants of the West-whosegrumblings is already plainly audibleinto militant allies of the workers."Engels replied with a letter expressing his"delight" at the level of struggle attainedby the American working class: "The waythey throw themselves into the movementhas no equivalent on this side of theocean."The first Marxist party in the U.S.what later became the Socialist LaborParty (SLP) led by Daniel De Leon-diddevelop out of the intervention of theWorkingmen's Party into the strike. But

the SLP remained essentially a smallpropaganda group. A "serious workers'party" was not founded in the U.S., eitherthen or since. There are a number of reasons why the American working class has

Haymarket martyrs framed up andhanged in Chicago, 1887, for leadingstruggle for eight-hour day.never achieved even a rudimentary levelof political consciousness, including theavailability of land and large-scale immigration. But the main reason lies in thedefeat of Reconstruction and the way inwhich the American capitalists, abettedby the trade-union tops, have succeededin using racist poison to divide the working class.The militant alliance projected byMarx never happened, largely becausethe labor leaders-including the "Marxists"-did not attempt to find a bridge tothe freedmen. This is clear in the case ofWilliam Sylvis, leader of the NationalLabor Union (NLU), which was foundedin 1866 as one of the first national unionfederations in the U.S. and was affiliated

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Blacks won right to vote underReconstruction, were elected tostate and national office.with the First International for a while.As Michael Goldfield put it in his recentbook, The Color ofPolitics (1997):"Though Sylvis was among the whiteleaders who spoke in favor of admissionof Blacks to labor unions and supportedequal pay for equal work, he was especially obtuse about the importance ofthe struggles of southern freedmen. He

never indicated any sympathy for theirdemands in the South for land, education, and the vote. He denounced theFreedmen's Bureau as 'a huge swindle'and called for its closing."In 1869, the National Colored LaborUnion (NCLU) was formed and its leaders sought joint work with the NLU. Butthe issue of Reconstruction kept the twoapart. While blacks supported the Republican Party, white labor leaders and immigrant workers supported the Democrats.In 1863, Irish workers in New York Cityhad staged draft riots against the CivilWar and carried out a pogrom againstblacks. Yet Irish immigrants were themselves despised by the predominantlyProtestant bourgeoisie and were later targeted by the virulently anti-CatholicKKK.At the time of the 1877 rail strike, therewere not many blacks in the industrialworking class, which was centered in theMidwest and Northeast and composedlargely of immigrant workers. Instead,most blacks lived in the South andworked in agriculture, usually as eithersharecroppers or tenant farmers. In St.Louis, where the strike was strongest andthe WPUS largely controlled the leadership, the strike leaders at first welcomedthe participation of blacks. But as thestrike continued and the media attackedthe strikers as combatting not only economic but racial inequality, the Workingmen's Party eschewed black participation. One WPUS leader recalled that blackworkers, whom he disgustingly called"n-----s," "sent word that they wanted tojoin our party. We replied that we wantednothing to do with them." In order to discourage black participation, the WPUSeven stopped calling strike rallies.While avowed Marxists and other veterans of the Revolutions of 1848 inEurope played a prominent role in theCivil War and the fight against slavery,racist hostility to blacks figured heavilyin the early American socialist movement. For example, several leaders of theSocialist Party in the early 1900s wereviciously racist. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded by SamuelGompers pushed lily-white craft unionism. Even Socialist leader Eugene Debs,a railway union leader who was one of thebest of the early American socialists onthe black question, argued: "We havenothing special to offer the Negro, and wecannot make separate appeals to all theraces." The prominent exception to thisoutlook was the syndicalist IndustrialWorkers of the World, which fought forintegrated labor struggle and opposedanti-Chinese racism. But it was not untilthe young Communist Party examinedthe black question in the early 1920s, atRussian Bolshevik leader v.1. Lenin'surging, that American Marxists activelytook up the fight for black liberation as

part of the fight for communism.Until the substantial entry of blacksinto the industrial workforce duringWorld War I, anti-immigrant and antiCatholic racism were the chief weaponsof the capitalist rulers in dividing andholding back the working class. Inthe 1870s, almost all labor leadersincluding the NLU and NCLU-pushedanti-Asian bigotry. The year 1877 alsomarked an increase in anti-Chinese andanti-Japanese racism on the West Coast,as strike support rallies in San Franciscodegenerated into pogroms against Chinese immigrants, many of whom hadhelped build the railroads. This wasfollowed by the Chinese Exclusion Actof 1882. AFL leader Gompers and theright wing of the Socialist Party were alsovirulent opponents of Chinese immigration. Today as well, the pro-capitalistunion bureaucrats, with their anti-immigrant racism together with appeals forprotectionist measures against workers inJapan, Mexico and elsewhere, exude poisonous chauvinism. Meanwhile, pettybourgeois black nationalist demagogueslike Louis Farrakhan spew vile racist diatribes against Korean and Arab shopkeepers, Jews and others. We opposechauvinist protectionism and call for fullcitizenship rights for all immigrants.Labor's fight is international-workers ofthe world unite!For Black Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!

The legacy of the betrayal of Reconstruction is that blacks in the U.S. constitu te a specially oppressed race-color caste,segregated at the bottom of this society.At the same time, unlike the Reconstruction era, blacks are today overwhelminglypart of the proletariat. During WorldWar I, blacks began to move to Northernand Midwestern cities and became industrial workers. Today, even the South isincreasingly urban and industrialized, afactor which contributed to the development of the civil rights movement of the1950s which led to the end of formal JimCrow segregation. Black workers are notonly integrated into the American economy but form a strategic component ofthe multiracial proletariat, especially inkey sectors like auto and transit. So thatthe question is posed even more starkly:union rights and black rights will eitheradvance together or fall back separately.The combination of economic militancy and political backwardness hasbeen characteristic of the American working class since i877. The history of theAmerican workers movement is one ofthe bloodiest in the world. Yet the U.S.remains the only industrialized country inthe world where the workers have not hadtheir own independent political partyreflecting in some way the conflictinginterests of labor and capital. The chiefobstacle to the development of such consciousness is the trade-union bureaucracy,which chains the working class to theDemocratic Party. We fight to forge a revolutionary workers party which champions the cause of all the oppressed, modeled on the Bolshevik Party of Lenin andTrotsky which led the workers of Russiato state power in October 1917. Breakwith the Democrats-Fora workers partythat fights for socialist revolution!Key to the fight for socialist revolutionis the understanding that black oppressionis the cornerstone of American capitalism. The American bourgeoisie has veryconsciously used racism and racial oppression to divide the working class andto derail militancy. The struggle for blackequality is a driving force in the fightagainst racist American capitalism. Butcomplete social and political equality canonly be realized in an egalitarian socialistsociety in which those who labor rule.Achieving that goal requires the buildingof a revolutionary vanguard party whichcan lead the multiracial working class ina third American Revolution, a proletarianrevolution. For black liberation throughsocialist revoluti on!_

WORKERS VANGUARD

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 701 - 20 November 1998

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Philippines ...(continued from page 5)

Shortly before the ouster of Marcos,the Sisonites' "National DemocraticFront" demanded: "Unite all anti-imperialist forces to overthrow the US-Marcosdictatorship and work for the establishment of a coalition government based ona truly democratic system of representation." The CPP's class collaborationismwas also reflected in conciliation towardthe church, serving to reinforce the reactionary socja1 values of the bourgeoisie.Before the recent elections, the Sisonitecontrolled KMU union federation invitedEstrada and other bourgeois presidential wannabes to a May Day demonstration in downtown Manila. While mostdid not show up, the Sisonites provideda platform for a candidate connected tothe sinister Catholic rightist Opus Deiorganization.

Philippine Airlines Strike Knifed

Lenin on the State andRevolutionParticularly under the impact of capitalist counterrevolution in the USSR andimperialist triumphalism over the "death

of communism," the CPP's congenitalopportunism has led to an escalating proliferation of cliquist splits. One such, theSANLAKAS breakaway headed by Filemon Lagman, openly joined an Estradarally at Manila's Rizal Park to cheer forLagman's brother Edcel, who was running for senator on the Estrada ticket.Another, the Proletarian RevolutionaryMovement (PRK), emerged as a "left"split from the CPP in the early 1990s.The PRK claims to be the authentic"Marxist-Leninist" organization in thePhilippines and polemicizes against themultiple strains of reformism and "twostage revolution" peddled by the Sisonites. But while correctly placing Estradain the camp of the class enemy, the PRKnonetheless urged that his capitalistregime be "pressured" to carry out itspromises to the impoverished masses.

Thus do these "Marxist-Leninists" reject the Leninist understanding of thestate. The bourgeois state is not a "neutral" agency which can be pressured toact in the interests of the masses. Rather,as Lenin stressed in The State and Revo-lution, "the state is an organ of classrule," consisting at its core of armed bodies of men-the military, the police, theprison system. The capitalist state is aninstrument of repression against workers and the oppressed which must besmashed through socialist revolution andreplaced by a workers state. The PRK'srevisionist view of the state is reflectedas well in its characterization of China,Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba as "statecapitalist" regimes. The PRK's refusalto militarily defend these states anditscheering for the "democratic" counterrevolutions which destroyed the SovietUnion and the East European deformedworkers states represent a capitulationto "democratic" imperialism and thePhilippines' own anti-Communist bour-

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Marking a bitter defeat for thecountry's combative labor. movement,in early October the Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA)returned to work under vicious unionbusting terms. This ended a strikewhich had crippled Asia's oldest airlineand one of the country's top corporations for months. Under intense pressure from the government of "Erap"Estrada, the union accepted a dealwhich its members had rejected onlythree weeks earlier, signing away theright to strike and all collective bargaining rights for the next ten years.Billionaire Philippine Airlines (PAL)owner and Estrada backer Lucio Tanhas already threatened mass layoffs. Aspayoff for pushing through this deal,PALEA president Alex Barrientosexpects to get one of the seats beinggiven to the union on the PAL board ofdirectors. The union also gets 20 percent ownership of the airline, thusdirectly subordinating the interests ofPAL workers to company profitability.The strike was the first major test ofthe Estrada regime's resolve in imposing crushing austerity on the workingmasses on behalf of the imperialistsand the International Monetary Fund.Beginning with a walkout by the pilotsunion in June, the strike spread the nextmonth to the 8,000-strong PALEAground crew union just as the new government took office. Week after week,the strikers tenaciously held out against

geolSle. Indeed, the Philippines is keyto the U.S. drive against the Chinesedeformed workers state.In the "Declaration of Principles andSome Elements of Program" (Sparta-cist [English-language edition] No. 54,Spring 1998) adopted at the Third International Conference of the ICL earlierthis year, we assert:"The proletariat must give unconditionalmilitary defense against imperialism tothe deformed workers states in China,Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. Ourposition flows from the proletarian classcharacter of these states, embodied inthe collectivized property relationsnationalized property, planned economy,monopoly of foreign trade and banking, etc.-established by social revolutions that destroyed capitalism. Despitethe bureaucratic deformations of thesestates, our defense of them against theclass enemy is unconditional, Le., it doesnot depend on the prior overthrow ofthe Stalinist bureaucracies, nor does itdepend upon the circumstances andimmediate causes of the conflict."

For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!Yet another organization, Liga SosyaIista (LS), recently emerged around asplit from the Lagmanite student groupand the newspaper Progresibo. The LS

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20 NOVEMBER 1998

Tan's threats of mass firings and redbaiting tirades by Estrada and the bourgeois media against union militants.But strike militancy alone was notenough to defeat PAL and its protectorsin the state apparatus. What directlypaved the way for the defeat of thestrike was the class collaboration sm ofthe PALEA tops, who looked toEstrada as an ally against Tan. WhenTan shut down the airline on September23 after the strikers rejected his terms,the PALEA tops appealed directly toEstrada. As the Far Eastern EconomicReview (8 October) reported:"His three-month-old government, theywere certain, wouldn't dare let thenational flag-carrier close. That woulddisrupt air travel throughout the archipelago. But Estrada had other ideas.Just four days after PAL's closure,Cathay Pacific Airways agreed to takeover PAL flights from Manila to themajor cities of Cebu and Davao. Unionleaders promptly asked Estrada tointercede; they would accept Tan's ultimatum after all."

Betrayed by their leadership, workersvoted for the deal on October 2, butnot without militant opposition. In aconfrontation between Barrientos andenraged PALEA militants who tookover the union hall, a member ofBarrientos' bodyguard drew his pistolon union members. Barrientos had longtried to keep PALEA members fromwalking off the job in support of thepilots. Several PALEA officials opposedthe sellout. But they also look to the

bolted the Lagmanite organization inJuly after spending months as an opposition to "Stalinist and sectarian policies"and "the continuing drift of its politics ... oward the right" (Progresibo,July/August 1998). Describing itself asa "pre-party formation of the workingclass," LS argues for "an open socialist formation" to "regroup the growingnumber of socialists and politically conscious individuals from the mass movement." It attacks Lagman as a Stalinistand even cites Trotsky favorably. Yet LSremains buried in the liberal coalitionAKBAYAN, a motley assortment of disillusioned ex-Stalinists, left nationalistsand "Christian socialists" which calls forvague "pro-people social and economicreforms." And the same issue'of Progre-sibo features a front-page headline reading, "Progressives Close Ranks: Extendthe Gains of the Elections!" What is thisif not a programmatic commitment tochaining the working class to the cart ofthe bourgeoisie?Indeed, Sonny Melencio, now leaderof LS, openly defended class collaboration in a January 1997 speech to a conference of the Australian DemocraticSocialist Party (DSP). The DSP itselfis a thoroughly reformist outfit whichincludes in its leadership the likes ofMax Lane, who served in the Australianembassy in Indonesia under Labor Partyrule. Formerly linked up with JackBarnes' U.S. Socialist Workers Party, theDSP reformists joined with the Barnesites in the 1980s in explicitly renouncingTrotsky's theory of permanent revolution, going on to act as press agentsfor "human rights" imperialism and forpetty-bourgeois nationalists like the Indonesian PRD. In his speech to the DSP,Melencio raised the question of "whetheror not to include the bourgeois liberalforces in a broad front, form an electoralbloc with them and support them in elec- .tions." He continued:"Lenin's 'Left Wing' Communism-An Infantile Disorder argues preciselyfor such a tactic in order to advancethe class struggle and for the partyto carry out an alliance (includingan electoral bloc) with the bourgeois liberals in order to defeat a more reactionary target, and in order to expose thebankruptcy of the liberal line to themasses."

Estrada regime, vowing to challenge theagreement in the courts, which farfrom being "neutral" are a key component of the brutally repressive capitalist state.Among those opposing the agreementwas Filemon "Popoy" Lagman, leaderof the leftist SANLAKAS group, whowas one of the targets of the redbaitingcampaign. But Lagman also helped sowillusions in Estrada among workers,joining an Estrada election rally. Andwhen the Lagmanites' Konsume coalition, which included striking PALEAmembers, staged a demonstration during Estrada's "State of the Nation"address, a spokesman explained: "Whatwe are looking for is an ally insideMalacafiang [the presidential palace].What we are asking is that the Presidentgive meaning to his slogan, Erap para saMahirap [Erap for the poor]" (Philippines Inquirer, 24 July).What unites the union bureaucratsand "leftists" like Lagman is theirnationalist embrace of their "own" exploiters, who are seen as allies againstthe imperialist overlords. But the "national bourgeoisie" in such countries ofbelated development is tied by a million strings to the imperialists. Key tothe mobilization of the proletariat atthe head of all the impoverished andoppressed is first and foremost the political independence of the working classfrom all wings of the Philippine bourgeoisie and its state.

This is a gross falsification of Leninand Leninism in the service of bourgeoisliberalism. Lenin argued against ultraleftists who refused on principle to workin reformist-led trade unions or to standCommunist candidates in parliamentaryelections. It was not Lenin's Bolsheviksbut the Mensheviks who promoted political blocs with the liberal bourgeoisieand Lenin opposed them down the line.When the Mensheviks consummatedtheir political appetites by entering thebou!'geois Provisional Government afterthe February Revolution of 1917, Leninwaged an indefatigable campaign ofopposition and exposure against theseclass traitors, counterposing the fight forworkers rule: "All power to the Soviets!"It was this uncompromising struggleagainst bourgeois coalitionism whichdirectly prepared the victory of the October Revolution.And it was the Stalinist embrace ofMenshevik class collaboration whichprepared defeat after bloody defeat forthe international proletariat and led ultimately to the final undoing of the October Revolution. In the Philippines andthroughout Southeast Asia, it is necessary to forge Leninist vanguard partiesrooted in proletarian internationalismand armed with the Trotskyist program

of permanent revolution. Socialist revolution in the backward countries wouldnecessarily have to link up with thestruggles of the working people in Indonesia, South Korea and elsewhere in theregion-and would act as a powerfulimpetus for proletarian political revolution in China and for socialist revolutionin Japan, Asia's economic powerhouse.The millions of Filipino toilers who areto be found throughout Asia, the U.S. andelsewhere can serve as a living li