Vol. 1, No. 3 - November, 1969
Newspaper of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
PO 5221, Cleveland, Ohio, tel. 861-6949
The proletariat is the greatest class in the history of mankind. It is the most powerful revolutionary class ideologically, politically and in strength. It can and must unite the overwhelming majority of people around itself so as to isolate the handful of enemies to the maximum and attack them.
PEOPLE'S VICTORY IN VIETNAM AIDS U.S. WORKERS
Puppet Show Election Brings No Real Change
U.S. Workers Fight for Their Rights
People's War Expose Bankrupt Peace Movement
[Graphic.]
On Nov. 3 Richard Nixon, chief flunkey of the American monopoly capitalist ruling class, gave a speech which many people thought said nothing new. In fact the speech is very important for what it reveals to the working and oppressed people of our country. There are two main lessons we can draw from his speech:
1) Nixon has admitted that the policy of the imperialist ruling circles--to gain control of Vietnam in order to exploit its cheap labor--has failed and he has been forced to announce the unilateral withdrawal of all American troops. While hoping somehow to keep his foot in the door, he has made the main preparations for getting out. This defeat came mainly at the hands of the working people of Vietnam, led by a Communist Party and uniting around them the vast majority of the Vietnamese people, who successfully carried out a policy of prolonged People's War to isolate and defeat a foreign aggressor and its native pawns.
2) The blood of the American youths who died in Vietnam is not on the hands of the Vietnamese but is on the hands of the tiny minority of rich American corporation owners who control American political, economic, military and cultural life. It was these parasites who sent U.S. troops to Vietnam in the first place, who escalated the war, bleeding dry the working people of both Vietnam and the U.S., and who used their wealth to teach the lie that working people should kill each other while the bourgeoisie profits. Half the world's people are directly oppressed and exploited by these leeches, so for any section of the world's people to defeat them is not a bad thing for American workers; it is a good thing. American working and oppressed people will never throw off the heavy weight of our own oppression until we see that we and the rest of the world's working people are oppressed or threatened by the same imperialists and what we must learn the lessons of the Vietnamese people's struggles, and unite together to isolate and defeat our own ruling class.
It follows from this that workers, students and oppressed Black and Brown people should denounce the "peace movement's" narrow debate with Nixon over how fast to withdraw troops. Instead, we must build a genuine movement against the cause of war and our own oppression -- imperialism -- and in support of oppressed people's struggles everywhere. The "peace movement" will never make this call, for it is led by petty-bourgeois (middle-class) careerists who are racist, anti-working class and anti-communist. They never fully support working people's (or students') just struggles and will always turn against us, especially when we defend ourselves with justified violence. Right now they represent a "loyal opposition" to Nixon, promoted by the imperialists themselves (look at all the Senators supporting the Moratorium). The imperialists are using the "peace movement" to cool the wrath of oppressed Americans and prevent the excellent class "division" and struggle here from turning toward revolution.
Real anti-imperialists and Communists in the U.S. must truly serve the people by building struggles against working people's own oppression, and by demonstrating support for the Vietnamese, Palestinian and Indian people's struggles, among others,as the leading struggles of the world's oppressed. To this end, the American Communist Workers' Movement is calling for an anti-imperialist march and conference in Cleveland early in 1970, and is calling on people in other areas to do the same.
LONG LIVE THE VICTORY OF PEOPLE'S WAR
Imperialism is actually weak, but Nixon's speech threw up the usual smokescreen of lies and deceptions to hide its weakness from the working and oppressed people. In fact, the entire course of the Vietnam Was has been marked by lying hypocrisy from the imperialists attempting to conceal the decay of their own policy on the one hand, and the vigorous growing tide of people's resistance to them, in Vietnam and at home, on the other.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. corporation owners and their government saw Vietnam as a rich source of cheap raw materials and labor and a good market to dump their goods on. President Eisenhower emphasized the tin and tungsten that could be cheaply robbed from the area. The weakening of the French colonial empire during the war provided the opening they needed.
After the French were defeated by the Vietnamese People's Army at Dien Bien Phu in the U.S. stepped in openly and installed and paid for the fascist Diem government in the South and sent him military and CIA advisors. All this was cloaked by President Kennedy under the screen of assisting native "patriots" to fight "foreign" Communist "aggression" while in fact the aggressors were foreign, and the Communists were the native patriots.
The struggle thus provoked was so intense that the imperialists were forced to draft American working class youth to prop up the dying Saigon regime. This outright invasion further united the Vietnamese around the National Liberation Front.
The fighting that followed showed the absolute advantage of a People's Army conducting a just war with the people's support, against an imperialist army conducting an unjust war against the people's opposition. This phase of the war was marked by McNamara's repeated assurances of coming victory and Johnson's repeated escalations.
The U.S. was defeated in this phase of the war by the time of the Tet offensive, which shattered the Saigon puppet forces and severely confined the U.S. troops. By this time, the imperialists were strategically defeated too, because no further escalations were open to them (nuclear weapons would only have provoked a worldwide anti-imperialist war). But the imperialists tried to snatch a victory from defeat by deceiving the American people as to the "strength" of the U.S. position and by turning to the negotiating table. Nixon's Nov. 3 speech laid to rest this final phase of the war, admitting that his "strength" amounted to replacing U.S. troops with the least reliable army in the world (Saigon puppets) and that all attempts to get the Vietnamese Communist.leadership to sell out under the table at Paris had failed.
A final aspect of Nixon's defeat should be noted by American working and oppressed people. His claims of "strength," his denial of the actual strength of People's War, and his claims that a disruptive "minority" of Americans caused the defeat--all of these are attempts to slander the strength and justice of the common cause of oppressed Vietnamese and American people and to remove the blame for the slaughter from his own head and the heads of the monopoly capitalist ruling class. This scapegoating of the people also sets the stage for the future growth of naked fascism, which will pretend to defend the nation from those who have supposedly stabbed it in the back (the struggling oppressed people) while hiding the role of the imperialists. WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE WITH THE OPPRESSED NATIONS!
The Western capitalist countries, led by the United States, gained their industrialization and the great wealth owned by their ruling classes by a policy of double robbery of the fruits of the labor of their own working classes (and slaves) and of the workers and peasants of the semi-colonial and colonial countries. Giving up only a few more crumbs to the working people at home, the Imperialists brought nation after nation under their bondage, and met with the resistance of the world's people, first successfully led by the Bolshevik Revolution (which has degenerated into a dark fascist state) and now by the Chinese People's Republic, which has resisted all degeneration, which has become the main bastion of world revolution, and is personally led by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the leader of the progressive current of mankind.
All over the world national liberation struggles against imperialist aggression and domination have arisen and these are the storm centers of world revolution. This means that the decisive fights are shaping up there (Vietnam, Palestine, India) and that the imperialists will be increasingly trying to line up U.S. working people to fight against our brothers in the oppressed nations--not for our own benefit but to benefit the tiny monopoly capitalist ruling class. If American working people ignore our own true interests and fail to join with the world's oppressed peoples against our own rulers, we will always be caught in the bag of fighting for our own oppressors.
In this issue of The Workers' Advocate we print the text of a talk given by a member of the Case Reserve Student Movement on People's War. We are proud to announce to working people that we have formed a student movement on that campus that strongly stands up for the working class and racially oppressed people and fights imperialism on the cultural front.
In the talk, the student comrade points to three things the monopoly capitalists have tried to rob from the working class and its allies in the U.S. The first is initiative to solve our problems through mass struggle. To remedy this, the American Communist Workers' Movement is struggling to create mass organizations of working and oppressed people to independently fight our own oppression, and to bring existing organizations, like unions, under the control of the rank and file.
The second thing is organization. To remedy this, the ACWM, in addition to relying on the masses to take initiative, is calling for the most politically conscious workers and revolutionary intellectuals to take steps toward forming a militant Communist Party, based on using Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought as a guide to solving the problems of building a movement under American conditions. Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought is the most advanced summing up of the experience in struggle of the world's working and oppressed people and has equal validity for the American people.
Finally, our student comrade pointed to internationalism or solidarity with the world's working and oppressed peoples as the third thing the imperialists have tried to rob from the American working class. It is in line with this spirit of proletarian internationalism that The Workers' Advocate prints in this issue several articles on the national and racial division fostered among working and oppressed people by the monopoly capitalists.
Several of these articles contain strong attacks on the opportunist misleadership being offered to the American people in the movement against the war and the movement against racial discrimination. As Chairman Mao points out, "Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution." The American Communist Workers' Movement is not interested in attacking the sincere masses of people who, lacking an alternative, have supported the "peace movement" of the capitalist political candidates. Instead, we are struggling to create the alternative and condemning the misleaders who get in the way.
What is the alternative? The alternative is to organize a nationwide movement against the cause of war and our own oppression -- imperialism -- a movement which goes deep among the masses and at the same time supports the storms of People's War now rising everywhere against the U.S. imperialists and their native pawns. The only way to carry out this struggle fully is, in contrast to the ''peace movement" misleaders and liberal politicians, to rely fully on the initiative and leadership of the most oppressed Americans, the workers, especially those who are racially discriminated against. It means mobilizing our whole people around them, into a massive united front of organizations and individuals, led the most advanced workers organized into a militant Communist Party, capable of using the weapon of People's War to overthrow our own monopoly capitalist class. For the working class oppressed peoples it means, in the words of the great leader Chairman Mao Tse-tung, "maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts."
The American Communist Workers' Movement holds that when American working people study the revolutionary mass movements throughout the world, and study especially the scientific summing-up of these struggles given in the works of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, they will be filled with revolutionary enthusiasm, will fight to the finish along side the world's people against the monopoly capitalist parasites, and will eagerly join in following the bright red sun of Mao Tse-tung Thought.
Recognizing the need for united action and for thorough' discussion and development of ideas, the ACWM is calling for an anti-imperialist march in Cleveland early in 1970, supporting People's War in Vietnam, Palestine and India, and a conference at about the same time to sum up our work and draw guidelines for the anti-imperialist movement. While important, neither of these activities will take precedence in our work over deep among the working people and serving their interests, or of spreading widely revolutionary literature and The Workers' Advocate. All workers and revolutionary people are invited to join us in these activities.
[Graphic: Victory! to the American Working Class!]
The corporation owners of Cleveland, Ohio, have just finished putting on another one of their puppet shows for the working class, the Mayor's election. While Stokes and Perk battled it out on the front stage, the corporation owners, united in their basic class interest, played puppeteer in the background, determined that nothing would change.
Why do they put on this show every two years, where the real problems of the working class are not discussed and where workers are actively discouraged from building independent political organizations? If they don't want anything to change, why do they put on a pretense of "discussion" and democracy"? Because if they didn't, they would have to institute the open dictatorship of the rich against the working class (fascism), and they know that workers would never stand for it. Working-class people have always been the staunchest fighters against the economic and political rule of the corporation owners, and this makes it necessary for the owners to put on a false front of "democracy" in politics, to pretend that issues are discussed and problems solved.
USE FALSE ISSUES
However, it would be too dangerous to discuss the real issues facing workers, like the ways we are made to work harder in return for less wages, or how the owners use their control of the government to keep the working class people exploited. The ruling class must create false issues for "discussion", issues that only lead to confusion and division among working class people instead of the clarity and unity that we need in order to solve our problems. In this election the main false issue that was raised was race.
The decadent, anti-people idea that "race" is a real issue dividing working class people rests, first, on the exploitation of all working class people, and, second, on the oppression of all black people just for being born black. The corporation owners are following the policy of divide and rule. By viciously discriminating against black people and by promoting the lie that black people are "inferior" and deserve to be discriminated against, the corporation owners are attempting to get the people fighting among themselves. With the people divided, the monopoly capitalists can continue their exploitation and oppression of all working people.
PERK: A BLATANTLY RACIST CAMPAIGN
Perk ran a blatantly racist campaign. Concentrating his campaign mainly in the districts where "white" people live, he was quoted at a meeting at St. Mary Romanian Orthodox Church as saying: "Some people think it's all right for Carl Stokes' supporters (black people) to vote for him 100%, and yet some people question it if Ralph Perk's supporters ("white" people) vote for him 100%. What's wrong with that?" This shows that his statements about being a mayor of "all the people" are pure nonsense.
Also, Perk made a lot of noise about"law and order." Wherever there is oppression there is going to be violence, on the one hand because oppressed people sometimes take their frustration out on each other, on the other hand because the more organized oppressed people become, the more violently they will attack their oppressors. In America today it is the working class (especially black workers) which is the most oppressed, and it is the black people who are the best organized against oppression. Therefore, Perk's call for "law and order" is a blatantly racist, anti-working class attempt to blame oppressed people for their oppression instead of blaming the oppressor, the monopoly corporation owners.
Then, on election day, the police and firemen went out to I400 polling places, supposedly to challenge voter on the "Vote 19" issue. This was exposed as a vicious lie when it was revealed that they only went to polling places in the black ghetto and that most of them carried their pistols with them. In fact they were sent out in an attempt to intimidate black people and keep them from voting. If this was not true, why didn't they spread themselves out evenly over all the voting districts of Cleveland?
Also, when Perk made his concession speech on election night, many people in the audience shouted out racial slurs. If they were not organized by Perk's stooges on a racist basis, then where did they come from? It's for certain that they didn't just drop out of the sky!
Finally, it was reported that Perk's campaigners were canvassing the Near West Side, and that if anyone said they were for Stokes, the canvasser would immediately take down their name and address. This kind of sneaky tactic could also only be aimed at intimidating pro-Stokes voters.
STOKES: TOOL OF THE RULING CLASS
Stokes promotes racist and anti-working class ideas in a more subtle way. He comes out sounding just like Perk on the "law and order" issue and as mayor is hiring 500 more policemen. But the most important way he promotes racism is by pretending to be the candidate of the "poor and downtrodden." Speaking at the Emanuel Baptist Church, Stokes said, "I've always been poor. As long as I am mayor, I will stay poor." He also said that government should help the poor, not the rich, by making sure that the rich do not take anything more away from the poor.
In support of his claim as a friend of the poor and downtrodden, Stokes cites the things he has done during his administration, like hiring more police and building day care centers and swimming pools. Yet none of the things Stokes has done have attacked the main problems faced by working class people: exploitation of wage labor and control of the government by the monopoly corporation owners. In fact, Stokes himself is a mere tool of big business in Cleveland:
1) When workers in the city water dept, went on strike to fight for the survival of their union, Stokes did everything he could to make them go back to work, including organizing the other unions of city workers to scab on the water workers. The head of the water works dept, is Ben Stefanski, head of a large savings and loan association and a major Stokes campaign contributor. Stokes stuck with Stefanski instead of aiding the workers (many of whom were Black). Stokes also helped to sell out the St. Luke's hospital workers in 1967.
2) Stokes has been billed as the man who can keep rebellions from happening in the Black ghetto by bringing in federal money. Yet the conditions of the vast majority of black people are worse than ever, with unemployment rising, housing falling apart, police repression increasing, etc.
3) Stokes vigorously supported the repression of Ahmed Evans and his followers, when they responded to police harassment and intimidation with armed force. Stokes and his bosses are scared silly of any oppressed people who dare to reply to the counter-revolutionary violence of the police with revolutionary violence. The ruling class will go to any lengths necessary to suppress anyone who dares to attack their ultimate weapon (the police and the army) for keeping the people in their oppressed place, even if they have to ignore all of the laws they have created, as they did in the case of Ahmed.
4) Last year Stokes was run for the board of trustees of Cleveland Trust Bank by billionaire Cyrus Eaton. Eaton would never do this for a friend of the poor and downtrodden," since Cleveland Trust is one of the biggest exploiters in town!
5) Stokes was instrumental in getting cheap land for Cleveland banks to build a downtown investment center for which working people in Cleveland paid $2 million in tax money.
The racist propagandists play up the idea that black people are getting all kinds of booty from federal aid money at the expense of the "taxpayer." Stokes says he is giving black people and poor people a special deal through tax money, and in fact does continue the government's policy of making the working class pay. Yet the vast majority of black people have never benefited from any of this money. So Stokes is promoting racism by helping to create the image that the racists play so much in their propaganda, that black people are making it on white working people's tax money.
Since working people are forced to pay exorbitant taxes, the racists use this as a means of dividing "white" from black workers. This is meant to deny workers the right to solidarity with all members of their class (both at home and internationally) and with other oppressed sections of the population. In fact, white workers must support the just struggle of all black people against racial discrimination and violent repression as a basis for winning the trust of black people in the struggle against our common oppressor.
STOKES ELECTED: NO CHANGE IN SIGHT
The fact that Stokes was elected will make little difference in the real conditions in the lives of Cleveland workers, black people, and the oppressed national minorities. More federal money will come in to pay the salaries of middle class professionals. Black people might get a little relief from the police. A few fancy speeches will be made about "helping the poor and the downtrodden." But all of these things will only be done in order to strengthen the control by the monopoly corporation owners of the government and to protect exploitation and oppression of the vast majority by the tiny minority.
POLITICIANS FIGHT WORKING CLASS ASSOCIATIONS
Besides doing everything they can to introduce divisions among the working class people, the politicians do everything they can to prevent independent organizations led and controlled by working class people.
On the one hand, while in office they help the corporation owners to prevent the development of strong rank-and-file controlled unions. Stokes' activities during the water works and St. Luke's hospital strikes are two examples of this. Also, they use the laws to repress strong political organizations of the working class, like the Communist Party (before it sold out), the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
On the other hand, they run the election campaigns in a manner such as to ensure control of organizations by "professional" politicians. If workers ran their own political party, they would bring out the real problems and attack the real enemy. Therefore, the Republican and Democratic parties promote slick lawyers and Madison Avenue ad men, ministers, social workers and junior business executives to organize their campaigns. These people build their careers by hiding the truth, confusing issues and slandering the working class. In fact, capitalist political organizations are always built on the basis of who does the best job of lining the pockets of the rich. Every worker has seen the trained herd of career-seeking, image-minded parasites who lead these organizations.
WORKERS MUST ORGANIZE INDEPENDENTLY
This farcical campaign for mayor only goes to prove in a thorough-going manner that workers cannot depend upon the Republican and Democratic parties or the government in this country to serve their interests. These institutions do not exist to put an end to exploitation and oppression by the monopoly capitalist class; they exist to protect it. In fact, these organizations are directly controlled, through wealth and patronage, by the corporation owners. Only by organizing to overthrow the monopoly corporation owners and their governmental machinery, can the working and oppressed people gain freedom.
[Two cartoons.]
On March 29, 1969, Local of the Building Service and Maintenance Union and Lutheran Hospital had an election to determine if Local 47 would represent the non-professional workers at the hospital.
The hospital, acting according to its interests, had told the employees that they didn't need a union. One of the psychological tricks that the hospital used to fight the union was to order new uniforms for women employees, and then to invite them up to the beautiful nurse's lounge, where they had never been allowed to go, the object being to imply "if you vote union, you won't get to see this beautiful room again." The hospital also served cake and cookies.
Since most under-paid employees are women from lower-classes, this made an impression on some. 'The hospital obviously figured that the people were very simple and couldn't see through this trick.
Another trick the hospital used was to have Director Goerring (any relation to Hermann Goerring, the German Nazi leader?) lend money to workers saying "you can depend on the hospital when you have problems, but if you join the union you will have a long and costly strike." This was typical of the hospital's patronizing attitude.
An argument that the hospital used against the union was to claim that hospital costs have gone up by 50% in the last ten years and blame it on the so-called high price of unskilled labor. When I went to work: at Lutheran the starting wages for men were $1.80 and for women $1.60. When I left last November, the union scare had made the hospital raise them 20 cents an hour. I asked workers who had been there for ten years if their wages had gone up by 50% and they said nowhere near that much. Even if they had gone up by 50%, how much would that mean they were making in the first place?
Because the supervisors voted, Local 47 immediately declared the election null and void regardless of the outcome. On March 30 the hospital declared itself the winner and even sponsored a contest among employees to guess its majority of votes, if they were ever counted.
Recently the hospital announced the vote count and claimed a wide victory. But the young workers where the union had its biggest success, still want to carry on the struggle.
(This article is by a former employee of Lutheran Hospital on the Near West Side of Cleveland. Lutheran is well known for its bad treatment of the poor workers in the neighborhood and for its under-payment of its employees.)
[Cartoon.]
General Electric is notorious for many things -- collaboration with the Nazi force in 1940, price-fixing, exploiting its workers and suppressing their right to organize into unions.
Recently GE has provoked a nationwide strike and also a wildcat strike in Cleveland. The General Electric nationwide strike has had a great deal of attention focused on it but one of the fiercest centers of struggle in the country is in Mountpelier and Burlington, Vermont. A Workers' Advocate reporter on the scene talked to the strikers and sent in the following report.
There are two General Electric plants involved, the one in Mountpelier and the one in Burlington. The strikers in Mountpelier feel that the main issues are wages and fringe benefits, especially the retirement plan. Last year a worker was retired from the Mountpelier plant and, because of a loophole in the y contract, the company wormed its way out of paying any retirement benefits. The workers said that if they let GE get away with such a sneaky, underhanded trick once, anyone could have it happen to him. This kind of action is comparable to other, more open forms of violence that companies have taken against working class people in the past such as beating the wives of strikers (GM Flint Strike), having the police shoot down unarmed strikers in cold blood (Republic Steel) and the daily police violence against Black and Brown people in the communities.
In the GE Burlington plant there is no union. When the nation-wide GE strike started, a union organizer from Schenectady, New York, and his companion came to Burlington to organize so that the people there could win the same benefits and protection that have been won elsewhere. Many of the workers walked out on strike in sympathy with the workers in the rest of the country, and as a result the union organizers were thrown in jail on a technicality and a very high bail was set. Burlington is a company town. The city council, the local radio stations and the newspaper have all come out against the strike. They have slandered the workers saying that there is no reason to strike, as though the working people of GE would just walk out the door and lose many hundreds of dollars in wages for no reason.
There have been militant attempts by the workers to keep scabs out of the plant, and police have had to cone and escort scab trucks through the plant gates past the courageous workers who, as usual, must fight both big business and government in order to win their rights. General Electric is going for an injunction against the strikers who feel that the company will probably get it from the local government it controls. Also the state government has threatened to call in the National Guard in an effort to scare the workers into ending their strike without gaining any concessions from the company.
General Electric is well known for tactics such as those listed above. For instance, in Schenectady, New York, in 1961). (where the company is the biggest employer), GE threatened to move almost all of its plants out of the city unless workers accepted its offer of putting piecework workers on day work. This would have resulted in an average loss of $60 per week in wages for the workers. Such a move would have thrown thousands of people out of work and would have made Schenectady into a ghost town and started a depression there as bad as in the 1930's.
GE's reactionary policies provoked a wildcat strike in Cleveland before the national strike. Workers on the small night shift at the Lamp Plant on E. 115th St. led a walkout over the company's refusal to let the union determine shift preference. The company was hiring new women and placing them on the day shift (a shift most people prefer) with no regard at all for the seniority of the women who wanted to transfer to days.
The workers of the first and second shift showed solidarity with the walkout by honoring the picket line and for several days production was stopped.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the union for that plant, was against the strike and it constantly tried to confuse and divide the workers by going among them before each shift, telling them that they should go back to work for one reason or another. But the women knew that if they did not stick together, the company would know they were weak and could walk all over them. The strikers and their supporters picketed 24 hours a day through cold weather and rain. GE refused even to meet with the workers until they returned to work. So after several days of picketing, and loss of production to GE, both sides agreed to meet, with the union representing the striking workers. The result was that the women would go back to work and GE will discuss the grievance. As you can probably guess, since the workers gave up the power and the togetherness they had, GE has been able to do what they had been doing before the strike. A number of workers who struck were suspended-- not all at the same time or for the same length of time. Not only that, but the company also sent out letters of reprimand with indefinite probations. Some militant workers are fighting these illegal probations through the courts. The main reason the company and union get away with jointly oppressing the workers is that the militant workers haven't yet formed a consciously organized leading group to carry on the struggle. They must put into practice Chairman Mao's principle of "maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts."
At present this plant is working while other GE workers strike. This is just a local example of how the division of workers into different unions with the same employer hurts the working class. This weakness, coupled with the existence of many unorganized GE workers, shows that the right to organize militant, worker-controlled industrial unions is still a key question for the working class.
[Cartoon.]
Reprinted from the Lincoln Student
The workers were fed up with GM because it controlled every aspect of their lives including the government. In December, 1936, the workers of General Motors fought the corporation in the great sit-down strike that lasted 44 days and ended in victory for the workers and recognizing of the UAW. A sit-down strike is when the workers stop production and stay in the factory to lock out the scabs. The scabs are the workers against unionization. They would work when the rest of the workers were on strike. The strike was centered in Flint, Michigan. Spontaneously workers went on strike all over the country. A speed-up was the final straw that brought about the strike. Many workers were killed and injured, but unionization was won. Their wives and children helped in many ways -- they did everything from bringing them food to actually defending them against the police.
The Communist Party recognized the workers right-to-organize and played a major role in gaining it. This was and still is an essential step toward the victory of the working class. The C.P. organized by thoroughly integrating and becoming one with the workers on the factory level and having vigorous discussion of ideas. This is called grass roots organizing. The C.P. has since ceased to live and organize among the working class.
Why don't they teach us this in the schools? In schools they teach that individuals make history and that the people have little or no part. This is, of course, completely wrong. The masses alone make history. If they taught students this, they could, through studying together with present conditions, present a picture of what to do now to further the struggle of working people.
Ho Chi Minh is dead.
The large capitalists, who want to be the bosses of the world, and their two-bit flunkies cheer; after all, to them he was a criminal. His "crimes" were many and horrible.
What were his "crimes"? A few examples will suffice.
Crime -- he was a peasant and a worker, and fought for the rights of working people.
Crime -- he fought for the freedom of his homeland against all foreign powers.
Crime -- he fought racism, cried out loudly against the crimes being committed against the Afro-Americans in the U.S. (see Ho Chi Minh On Revolution, Signet Publishers) and against the racism being used against his own people.
Crime -- he believed the working and oppressed people should run the government and own the factories, fields, and mines. That the world belonged to the working and oppressed people and not the rich and their yes-men.
Ho Chi Minh was truly a great "criminal" to the large capitalists and their flunkies. We, whom they view as his fellow criminals, rededicate ourselves to the things Ho fought for all his life. We rededicate ourselves to the struggle for a Peoples' Republic of America where the workers and the oppressed millions run the government and own the factories, fields, and mines.
As Chairman Mao wrote:
"All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather."
[Graphic.]
A member of the Case Reserve Student Movement gave the following talk at a recent public meeting:
The U.S. is the world's major imperialist power and the center of world reaction. Its ruling class depends upon the exploitation of the vast majority of Americans on the one hand, and upon the oppression and exploitation of half the world's people on the other hand. Because of these facts, storms of People's War are taking place in many areas of the world and will shortly take place within the United States. Tonight we want to discuss the Trotskyite peace movement or anti-war movement in a country where People's War is inevitable.
Historically, peace movements have failed miserably, just as the current one is failing. These liberal and pacifist movements have always ended up objectively serving the interest of the ruling classes which oppress people with war -- for the reason that they do not develop analysis of the cause of war and do not show the difference between a just war and an unjust war. Further, just as they have in the U.S., anti-war movements help propagate the idealist notion that opinions, ideas, and "human nature" rule the world instead of material forces representing class interests. Subjectivity, romanticism, and lack of clear thinking are characteristic of the YSA-SMC leadership of this anti-war movement, as opposed to objective analysis and principled unity with the progressive forces who are genuinely opposed to the cause of war which is U.S. monopoly capitalism.
The Peace march on Washington and the Moratorium serve to put the question of the war on an idealistic level and to keep people passive and depressed. Self-burning on the Pentagon steps, romantic suicides against the war, sentimental candlelight marches, and finally this depressing "March Against Death" are the logical results of this whole subjective approach which is nothing more than action without analysis. What it comes down to is that the U.S. imperialist warmongers have nothing to fear from action without analysis. In fact they love to see this nonsense of anti-conscious activity promoted by the Trotskyites and pacifists so that they can temporarily run amuck in every part of the world and continue to suppress people at home.
But there is no question that People's War in the U.S. is inevitable and that it will succeed in smashing the ruling circles who want to suppress the American people and who are intending to unleash a fascist military state upon the people. People's War is inevitable because our society rests above all on the class exploitation and oppression of 90% of the American people.
The main form of class exploitation is the theft of wage-labor and control of production by a tiny handful of parasites, the large corporation owners. Everything else in the society, all the institutions and political arrangements, the entire culture promoted in the U.S., corresponds to this class exploitation. In particular, the Universities serve the ruling class in the class struggle against working people in the cultural sphere, the realm of ideas, as well as in direct military research. The Universities promote racist and anti-working class ideas, anti-people and anti-communist ideologies, under the guise of an educational system which consistently insinuates that "underdeveloped countries cannot look after themselves," "working people are a negligible factor in the population," "people who are uneducated are stupid," and so on. All in all, the Universities perpetuate the vicious anti-people ideas in students -- ideas which are seeds of fascism and which obscure the fundamental issue: that imperialism, U.S. imperialism in the main, is the root cause of people's problems.
One of the chief lies carried out in the university is that working people benefit under monopoly capitalism. The truth is that working people sell their labor to monopoly capitalists, pay rents to them, borrow money from them, are suppressed by their political state, and are forced to fight against other oppressed people in the armies of their own oppressors. A good example right here in Cleveland is the water-workers -- mainly black workers -- who recently went out on strike to prevent the Stokes administration from breaking up their already weakened union. The Stokes administration, like previous bureaucracies, represents monopoly capital in Cleveland. Workers report it steals 1/5 of their wages by shortchanging their paychecks, carries out a suppressive policy in the working class communities in conjunction with real estate and business, and works consistently with the corrupt Democratic machine nationwide. (Need it be said that opposition candidate Ralph Perk is no alternative?)
Stokes is a man who had the gall to come on campus and say that government is for the little man,the marginal people, the old people, since it was clear that those with money and political punch didn't need government. In fact it is the corporation owners who need the bourgeois political state and its police, jails, etc. to protect themselves from the wrath of the people, these "little people" like the city workers. The corporation owners are also in league with the bought-off labor bureaucrats to suppress the rank and file militancy of working people. The betrayal of working people by these labor fakers and company union leaders is a consistent feature in labor history and was repeated once again in the water worker strike when the international union leaders came in.
Another lie carried out by the ruling class propagandists is the lie of the affluent society or middle class. In fact, half of all American families have an average estate of $1500 -- that is, they have no security except their labor power, a car, and the clothes on their backs. The great trick of bourgeois economics has been to quietly switch to income rather than wealth as the measure of poverty and affluence. The tremendous onslaught of postwar sociology promoted in the universities and the Poverty Program has been oriented toward distorting our consciousness of reality and toward discouraging real investigation among the masses of people. This propaganda is the source of all the anti-working class notions and anti-people, anti-communist ideas which literally clog the minds of the petty bourgeoisie. These ideas should be vigorously opposed whenever they appear.
In fact, working people do not benefit under this system we have in the U.S. The highest stage of capitalism -- namely imperialism -- has tried to erode away the three major conditions for the working class' solving its problems. First, it has diminished class initiative, that is, being able to control things affecting it by waging mass struggles. A good example is the housing problem, where whole communities of working people have been wiped out one by one in monopoly capital's urban renewal expansions. In Cleveland's Near West Side, a working class community is in the process of trying to defend itself from being destroyed by the Catholic Church's Lourdes Academy -- the Catholic Church being one of the largest corporate and ideological forces against working people.
Working people have also lost the initiative in producing goods which won't be perverted by capitalism. Excessive consumer goods, continual wastage and planned obsolescence, militarism, and the corrupt commodity-culture reflect capitalism in its final stage. Through its own inner contradictions, capitalism is forced to overproduce and to promote a degenerate, nauseating life style, to promote consumption as the highest goal-- especially for a group of exemplary degenerates and parasites, the ruling class itself. Historically, the ruling class has nurtured a large class of bureaucrats, experts, hack professionals and politicians to help suppress the initiative of working people. Social work professionals are a good example.
Secondly, working people under monopoly capitalism have partially lost their right to organize and associate in order to carry their class struggle into open form against the.cause of their problems, ultimately against the political state. The ruling class has promoted less intense forms of class struggle such as anti-communist labor unions, and has allied with all opportunists, traitors, goons, Trotskyites, and labor fakers to deflect the wrath of working people. A whole morass of anti-working class labor legislation has been enacted in order to buffer the class struggle. However, working people are rising up constantly to defend themselves in day to day struggle, and presently black workers are in the vanguard.
Third, international solidarity and solidarity across racial lines of working people has been diminished due to the evil nature of imperialism. Racism, created and accentuated by imperialism, is a big weapon used against working people. Racist attitudes didn't fall out of the sky, are not innate in the mind, but have historically been propagated by exploiting classes and their allies, the labor bureaucrats. National chauvinism and hate for foreign working and oppressed people is propagated feverishly by the monopoly capitalists. In conjunction with this lack of class solidarity, the revisionist Communist Party at one time went so far as to dissolve itself in solidarity with Roosevelt and the monopoly capitalists during World War II. A recent example of true proletarian internationalism was the offer by the workers' government of N. Vietnam to release some U.S. war prisoners in exchange for the release of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.
Presently the U.S. ruling circles want to continue in their expansionist designs and their plans to exploit the whole world. They have troops in 60 countries and have been attacking the Vietnamese people for a long time. Wherever the U.S. has gone it has made alliances with the local reactionaries and fascists, has set up puppet governments, and has been a force hostile to the vast majority of people. The masses of the world's people have learned through bloody experience not to rely on the kindness of their oppressors and are now engaged in struggle against U.S. imperialism and all forces of reaction. People's War is now being kindled in India and Palestine due to the exploitation and suppression dealt out by U.S. imperialism and its accomplice Soviet social imperialism.
War is the product of imperialism and the system of exploitation of man by man. The contradictions of imperialism -- need to exploit the masses, expand markets, and control resources -- inevitably result in the ruling classes using military power against the people. Lenin correctly saw that "war is always and everywhere begun by the ruling and oppressing classes." There is no question that this is the right description of the liberation struggles being waged now in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In light of these facts let us look at the anti-war movement led by Trotskyites and pacifists. Its purpose is none other than to ally with sectors of monopoly capital to obscure the nature of imperialism and class struggle and to suppress people's initiative to investigate, organize, and defeat their enemies. The notorious misleaders in this movement are calling on people to passively beg Nixon to stop the war. They fail to take scientific ideas to the people--that war is caused by exploitation and that war under imperialism is inevitable. Their demonstrations, aimed at mobilizing subjective opinion, are not based on concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and are thoroughly counter-revolutionary.
These agents of imperialism play upon some of the worst aspects of passive, compartmentalized, and idealized imperialist culture. Teachers, politicians, and bogus authorities of all kinds have told us that we live in the "free world" and are free to express ourselves in whatever innocuous way we choose. At the same time, we are encouraged to do our own compartmentalized thing and leave analysis of the real world to those who are paid to mystify reality and subvert investigation. The essence of the pro-imperialist peace movement is bureaucratic leadership without analysis, around a single issue. The moratorium speakers, for instance, had little to say about the world except to comment on Nixon's own bureaucracy, the plans for next month's demonstration, and "public opinion." The mobilization committees could easily be replaced by a tape recorder. Placed in a passive role, most students are bored frustrated and depressed. More importantly, they are discouraged from active investigation of the war and from building the rea] alternative of defeating U.S. imperialism.
The sole function of these Trotskyite and pacifist misleaders is to mystify the world, feed on imperialism, and build their own careers. Yet while these petty bourgeois bureaucrats are promoting subjectivity, pessimism and idealism about the war, U.S. working people and oppressed people all over the world are building joyful and vigorous struggles of liberation against imperialism.
The bogus idealist view of history is that ideas or opinions are primary, as opposed to the scientific view that material forces change the world. Our ideas have to correspond to the objective laws of development in the world before they can be a correct guide to action, before they can lead us to success in defeating our enemy. The fact that the Trotskyites are putting q a candidate for mayor on a socialist slate without mobilizing the working class is enough in itself to show the utter bankruptcy and opportunism growing out of the idealist view of the world.
Internationally the activities of Trotskyites have been similarly harmful. In the Soviet Union Trotsky began as a petty bourgeois Menshevik and ended leading a group of counter-revolutionaries and paid agents of imperialism and fascism. Long ago Trotskyism was characterized by Lenin as a deviation from Marxism representing left opportunism--that is, giving in to imperialism under a cloak of revolutionary phrase-mongering. In Spain the renegade Trotskyites helped the fascists break down the Popular Front. In China under Chen Tu-hsiu they gave up armed struggle, gave in weakly to Chiang Kai-shek, and were rightly expelled from the Chinese Communist Party. In India the Trotskyite Ranadive clique opposed the People's War in 1948, gave up any thought of armed struggle, and became another bourgeois party, by 1964, in league with the Russian bourgeois dictatorship. Now in fact People's War in India is beginning to accomplish the agrarian revolution, the main task of the new democratic revolution. It is led by the year-old Marxist-Leninist Party, which thoroughly repudiates Trotskyism and wholeheartedly applies Mao Tse-tung Thought, the most advanced formulation of Marxism-Leninism.
In the U.S. the leading Trotskyite was James Cannon, who tried to organize a disruptive faction within the CPUSA and was expelled in 1928. The Trotskyites engaged in wrecking activities in the Socialist Party for a while, then formed Socialist Workers Party in 1938. An example of their misleading activities was during WW II (the anti-fascist war) when they called for the overthrow of both USSR and USA, to the great delight of Hitler. They always ally objectively with the fascists.
Today here on campus the Trotskyites are engaged in opportunist politics once again, doing propaganda against working people and for the imperialist system. The essence of Trotskyism is anti-communism; it makes revolutionary posturing a basis for the advancement of policies which invariably serve the interests of reaction.
The form that Trotskyism takes in the U.S. at the present time is anti-war demonstrations. These misleaders call demonstrations against the war rather than against U.S. imperialism, the cause of war. In so doing they are objectively supporting imperialism by focusing people on a single issue (an issue, incidentally, which is fading fast since the Vietnamese people's war against U.S. aggression is nearing successful completion) and by keeping people's minds off the fact that the U.S. exploits over half the world and is mobilizing forces to suppress struggles brewing elsewhere as well as at home. Thus the effect of these misleaders is to blur class struggle at home and the nature of imperialism around the world. Their function is to keep people at the level of passive demonstrating and "mourning" as opposed to active investigation, conscious action, and vigorous hailing for the victories of people's war.
What is the alternative to this approach? How can the American people rise up to smash the cause of war, the imperialist ruling class? The answer follows from our analysis. We said that monopoly capitalism had eroded three conditions away from working people: (l) class initiative in waging struggles to control their lives; (2) the organization to concentrate their ideas and help them carry out their struggle--a militant Communist Party; and (3) solidarity across racial lines and with working people in other countries. When these three conditions are restored fully to the working class, we will have the basis for People's War in the U.S.
Initiative means waging mass democratic struggles over concrete problems in factories, communities and schools. Association means a Communist Party to lead the struggles and defend the people, a Party built primarily of working people, and with a clear proletarian world outlook. Solidarity with working people throughout the world means spreading the spirit of proletarian internationalism and exposing the corruption, exploitation, and racism represented by the American flag. These are the three preconditions for successful rising of the working class and for a successful defense against the upcoming American fascism.
How is it that People's War can and will succeed in defeating the armed forces of imperialism in the continental U.S.? First of all, we should realize that the bourgeois armies which exist today are very small armies compared to the masses of people. Secondly, these armies rely on technology rather than political consciousness, and they have to occupy an area in order to control it. Thirdly, bourgeois armies always become fascist armies which oppress and live off the people. The weakness and inherent contradictions of imperialism are reflected-in the weakness of its armies. The high mental illness and desertion rates are only the external tokens of the internal collapse of the U.S. army. As opposed to this, a People's Army depends on the masses for its support, it integrates with and defends the people, and it is above all a political army.
The tactics of People's War vary according to the conditions in which it is being waged, but the general principles are Politics ruling the gun^ Self-reliance, and Concentrate a superior force to defeat an inferior force. The People's Army is ideologically strong and therefore militarily invincible in the final analysis.
People's War is opposed to the left adventurist, liberal bourgeois line of Castro and Guevara who put technique before politics and who do not rely upon the revolutionary masses. Their "new left" line is practiced in the US by the SDS Weatherman group whose method of work is fighting the people, using fascist tactics such as picking fights to build up support for their actions, and which holds, in the words of Mark Rudd, that "the time for ideological struggle is over." Any time action-without-analysis is carried forward, it inevitably plays into the hands of the imperialist and soon-to-be fascist ruling class. The leaders inevitably end up having contempt for the people and isolating themselves from the masses.
Given the excellent revolutionary condition in the U.S. and in the whole world, what is the role of progressive students and other progressive petty-bourgeois intellectuals? Our role above all is to do propaganda against imperialism, promote the scientific ideas of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought, and fight slanderous anti-working class notions. At all times we should wage ideological struggles in mass democracy meetings as a way of mobilizing students against imperialism and exposing the bankruptcy of pro-imperialist ideas.
The Case Reserve Student Movement calls upon students to investigate the real world and to study the laws of its development. We call on students to support the NLF and the Palestinian struggle, and to carry out analysis of the wars of liberation developing throughout the world. Students should also investigate and support working class struggles such as the water workers' fight against the Stokes administration. Finally, it is up to students to wage day-to-day struggle against their own oppression under imperialist culture by exposing incorrect ideas and supporting black students against racist attacks and slanderers. Students should join with CRSM in revealing the depth of corruption in this system, writing articles on day-to-day events, setting up study groups to develop real ideas, and helping build up progressive public support for the anti-imperialist forces and for the American Communist Workers Movement in particular.
Let us take heart! Let us have none of-this corrosive pessimism and detachment handed out by the counter-revolutionaries and their anti-war movement. We are not subjectively against all Death and War -- in fact we definitely favor the death of all imperialists and fascists and we support People's War against their oppressors! Our purpose in going to Washington in November is not to participate in subjective mourning but to do active political work in struggling for our ideas and to march under militant anti-imperialist banners.