The Workers' Advocate

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UINITE! 25¢

Volume 11, Number 8

VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA

July 30, 1981

[Front page:

Reagan denounced across the country!;

POSTAL WORKERS: VOTE NO! DEFEAT THE SELL-OUT CONTRACT!;

THE BRITISH YOUTH HAVE HAD ENOUGH!;

Zionism means aggression--More Israeli crimes against Lebanon]

IN THIS ISSUE

Reagan denounced across the country!

POSTAL WORKERS: VOTE NO! DEFEAT THE SELL-OUT CONTRACT!

THE BRITISH YOUTH HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

Zionism means aggression

More Israeli crimes against Lebanon

Reagan's budget means hunger for millions

Reagan throws down a challenge to the working masses

The Democratic Party alternative and the Reagan budget:

Two Peas in a Pod

University of Washington in Seattle

No to tuition hikes and funding cutbacks!

Treacherous role of the labor bureaucrats

Reactionary bills cutting unemployment benefits in Illinois

Hard-fought strike of the coal miners stopped halfway

25,000 Massachusetts state workers:

Strike Against Payless Paydays

Vigilance against the gov't-organized racist anti-busing hysteria!

Workers shut down Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant

Chrysler workers fight against concessions!

Bronx, NY:

Police Assassins Pardoned

The honeymoon continues:

The Democrats embrace Reagan's war budget

A Space Shuttle for Imperialist War Preparations

Reagan courts South African racists

NO TO THE DIABLO CANYON NUCLEAR PLANT!

U.S. military sales to China:

A Dangerous New Phase in the Aggressive U.S.-China Alliance

SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR

Reagan is quietly expanding U.S. intervention

Third National Conference of the Communist Party (Reconstructed) of Portugal Calls for Strengthening the Party

CP of Spain (M-L):

Against unity with the revisionist and social-democratic chieftains

CP of Colombia (M-L):

'Deepen the ideological struggle against Maoist revisionism'

The Socialist International: An Imperialist Agency

CONDEMN THE ATROCITIES AGAINST THE ALBANIANS IN YUGOSLAVIA

A witness tells about the demonstrations in Kosova

Solidarity with socialist Albania in the face of the anti-Albanian hysteria of the Titoite revisionists

The Status of a Republic for Kosova is a Just Demand

A letter from a participant in the Kosova demonstrations

Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement -- Part 9

A Liquidator Goes Bankrupt

REFERENCE NOTES: A LIQUIDATOR ON "DEMOCRACY"

The truth about the relations between the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS: 1975-1981

Strikes in Jamaica

Reagan denounced across the country!

[Photo: On April 29, 20,000 angry railroad workers demonstrated in Washington, D.C. against Reagan's budget cuts in the CONRAIL and AMTRAK railway systems. Supporters of the MLP carried out widespread distribution of revolutionary literature among the railway workers at the demonstration.]

Within a few weeks after Reagan announced his budget proposals on February 18, demonstrations began to break out. These protests have come on the heels of the mass actions which denounced Reagan's escalation of U.S. imperialist intervention in El Salvador. Today the hatred for Reagan is such that wherever Reagan and his henchmen go, they are met with denunciations and protests by the masses. When Reagan went to address the NAACP convention in Denver on June 29, over 400 people turned out to denounce him. On July 1, budget director Stockman was denounced by 300 people when he visited Wilmington, Delaware. And on July 7, when Reagan attended an ostentatious Republican $250-a-plate fund-raising dinner in Chicago, over 5,000 people showed up to oppose his economic policies.

A variety of protests, involving workers, youth, retirees and unemployed, have taken place from one end of the country to the other. Those sections of the working people who were singled out for particular attack have organized rallies, demonstrations and other actions. On March 9, over 8,000 coal miners marched and rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose Reagan's proposal to cut black lung benefits. The miners also shut down the mines for two days by taking out two "memorial days,'' which are allowed by the UMW contract but rarely taken. On April 29th, 20,000 railway workers held a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to denounce cutbacks in AMTRAK and CONRAIL. Many workers wildcatted on that day to take part in the protest. Also, over the recent months, retired workers in many cities have held demonstrations against cuts in social security. The most recent of these took place on July 21 when 10,000 retirees demonstrated in Washington, D.C.

A large number of demonstrations have denounced the Reagan budget cuts as a whole. These have mobilized people from broad sections of the masses. They have taken place in Washington, D.C. and tens of other cities throughout the country, including New York; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; Sacramento, Calif.; etc. In a number of such actions, the demonstrators have also expressed opposition to the militarization and war preparations of U.S. imperialism. Among the largest of such demonstrations took place on May 3, when over 100,000 took to the streets in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Seattle; etc. These also especially denounced the U.S. intervention in El Salvador.

These are some manifestations of the growing mass movement against Reagan's economic policies. This movement is already a country-wide phenomenon. In several cities it is reported that these have been the largest demonstrations in years. They are bringing into motion a wide section of the masses, including workers, youth and students, retired workers, the unemployed, etc.

The Trade Union Bureaucrats Are Out to Sabotage the Fight Against Reaganite Reaction

The capitalists are deeply worried over the growing upsurge in the working class and popular movements. They are preparing their repressive forces to suppress the movement with an iron hand. Thus, at the end of May, Reagan's attorney general announced that the Justice Department had established an "early-warning system'' as part of plans "to guard against potential disturbances in the cities,'' a very thinly veiled euphemism for repressive measures against the masses.

On the other hand, the bourgeoisie has set into motion the "left'' wing of the Democratic Party in order to place it at the head of the mass movement in the hope of containing it so that it does not pose a serious threat to the capitalists. For this reason, Democratic Party politicians like Kennedy are hopping from one trade union convention to another posing as opponents of Reagan. They are trying hard to cover over the utter exposure of the Democratic Party in Congress where they have been competing with the Reaganites to see who can be the most reactionary.

Closely connected to the Democratic Party politicians are the sellout labor bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO. They are inviting the Democrats to speak from their platforms and pledging cooperation to help elect the Democratic Party "friends of labor'' in the 1982 Congressional elections. The labor bureaucrats are all striking a new-found pose of "militancy.'' Thus, the AFL-CIO leaders who usually shun the idea of demonstrations like the plague are found today calling for a national demonstration against Reagan's budget cuts.

But the "left-wing'' Democrats and their handmaidens, the trade union big shots, are no friends of the struggle against Reaganite reaction. Under pressure from the workers the bureaucrats are calling for one or two demonstrations simply to allow the masses to let off some steam. They are afraid that if they do not allow for a few protests, of course tied down with all kinds of restrictions, then the working masses will revolt. This is shown, for instance, when one looks at the angle from which they are criticizing the Reagan program.

For instance, Lane Kirkland, head of the AFL-CIO, recently told the convention of the Communications Workers union that the Reagan budget represents an effort "to bring back the days when our nation was a two-class society.'' (AFL-CIO News, July 11, 1981, p. 2) What nonsense! It does not take a great deal of perception to notice that the capitalist U.S. has always been and continues to be a society divided between the exploiters and the exploited, the capitalists and the workers. But the labor bureaucrats do not see a "two-class society" because they collaborate with the capitalists and do everything in their power to smash the class struggle. Thus, when the bureaucrats today see a threat of a "two-class society," they are simply expressing their fear of the class struggle which the Reagan budget cuts will sharpen.

Lane Kirkland also remarked in another speech about the Reagan budget that "at a time when the Administration seeks to strengthen the role of America in the world, it risks dividing Americans at home." He added that it was the "plain duty" of the bureaucrats "to do our best to head off the disasters we see in the making." (AFL-CIO News, April 18, 1981, p. 3) In this way, Kirkland reiterates the full agreement of the AFL-CIO hacks with the Reaganites in the crusade to shore up U.S. imperialism's worldwide empire, what he calls "strengthen(ing) the role of America in the world." And from this context, he sees Reagan's economic proposals as harmful for this purpose because they risk creating "division," that is, class struggle, at home. Clearly Kirkland is haunted by the memories of the mass upsurge of the 1960's in the U.S. which greatly undermined U.S. imperialism's aggression in Indochina. He shudders at the thought of a repeat performance.

Thus it is the prospect of class struggle and the development of the revolutionary movement which scares the boots off this loyal lackey of the capitalist bloodsuckers. These are the "disasters" he seeks to "head off." This same attitude is shared by all the labor bureaucrats. Hence these bootlicking lieutenants of the capitalist class can only be expected to do everything in their power to restrict, sabotage and liquidate the mass struggle against Reaganite reaction.

Look, for example, at the recent activities of the big shots of the railway labor unions.

Reagan's budget proposals included massive cuts in the AMTRAK and CONRAIL systems. The bureaucrats of the Railway Labor Executives Association (RLEA) themselves acknowledged that these cutbacks would cripple AMTRAK and CONRAIL, eliminating over 70,000 railway labor jobs and causing the bankruptcy of the railroad retirement fund, affecting thousands more workers. Due to the pressure of the workers, the RLEA called for a demonstration in Washington, D.C. and activities in other cities on April 29. In a letter to workers, RLEA Chairman Fred Kroll struck the "militant" pose that "It may indeed be necessary for us to call for a general strike sometime following this march in order to demonstrate how strongly you feel about these injustices...."

But despite such "fiery" words, when the day of the rally came, the RLEA bureaucrats only organized a short march from Union Station to the Capitol from where they directed the workers to lobby the capitalist politicians. They poured cold water on the sentiment of the railroad workers who shouted, "Strike! Strike!" But the real depth of their treachery was revealed less than a week later, when the bureaucrats representing most of the CONRAIL workers signed an agreement giving away $230 million in wage concessions from the CONRAIL workers! Such is the real nature of the new-found "militancy" of the trade union bureaucrats.

The working class has seen many other examples of such posturing. In 1978, UAW head Fraser was talking about the "new class war" between labor and capital in the U.S. Only a year later, he rammed massive concessions down the throats of the Chrysler workers and he is preparing to do the same to the Ford and GM workers today.

Hence the workers and broad masses cannot rely on the trade union bureaucrats in the fight against Reaganite reaction. The treachery of the labor traitors must be exposed and combated. The struggle of the working masses must be developed independent of the capitalists and their flunkeys.

Fight the Capitalist Offensive Against the Working Masses!

Workers, unemployed and retired workers! Youth!

The Reagan administration has opened up a broad assault on the livelihood of the working masses. In the midst of eight million unemployed and skyrocketing cost of living, they are axing away at compensation for the jobless, social security for the elderly and other meager social benefits for the poor. By throwing millions more into the ranks of the unemployed and by savage wage-cutting measures, they want to push down the wages of the workers even more. Starvation for the workers and poor, handouts for the wealthy, war against the peoples of the world -- this is the program of the capitalist class headed up by Reagan.

This is the program of both the capitalist parties, Republicans and Democrats. Indeed Carter paved the way for Reagan, and the Democrats in Congress have been busy "honeymooning" with Reagan. They are trying to outdo the Reaganites in preparing for war and robbing the masses. They are no opposition to Reaganite reaction at all.

The mounting opposition to Reaganite reaction can be seen in the growing mass movement against Reaganite reaction. It is seen among the thousands who have taken to the streets against Reagan's warmongering in El Salvador. And it is seen in the demonstrations and protests which are denouncing the Reagan economic policies.

This fight must be stepped up. The assault of the capitalists must be answered with strikes, demonstrations and other militant mass actions. They should be used to develop the initiative of the masses. Persistent work must be done to draw the widest masses of the exploited, the workers and the poor into the struggle.

As part of building the movement against Reaganite reaction, the workers should participate in all the actions of a mass character, including those organized by the labor bureaucrats. But the revolutionaries must work hard in these actions to imbue the masses with the spirit of class struggle, and to defeat the maneuvers of the bureaucrats to tie the masses to the coattails of the bourgeoisie.

Indispensable for the task of properly orienting the struggle is the need to develop the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. For this reason, leaflets, newspapers and other revolutionary literature should be widely distributed and read. The scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism should be studied.

And in the midst of these battles against the capitalist exploiters, the revolutionary organization of the masses must be forged. Revolutionary groups should be built in the factories, schools, communities and wherever the class struggle rages. Only through organization can the working masses build up their latent strength into a powerful fighting force.

This is the path of building the independent political movement of the working class.

Down with Reagan, Chieftain of Capitalist reaction!

Defend the livelihood of the working masses!

To hell with, the Democrats and Republicans, parties of the capitalist offensive!

Wage mass revolutionary struggle against starvation, fascism and war!

[Photo: On May 3, demonstrations in several cities denounced U.S. intervention in El Salvador and the Reagan economic program. The above photo shows a section of the MLP contingent as it marched in the 100,000-strong demonstration in Washington, D.C.]

[Photo: On June 29, when Reagan spoke to the NAACP convention in Denver, 400 people were outside to vigorously denounce his program of starvation, fascism and war. The above photo shows comrades of the Denver Branch of the MLP in the midst of the demonstration.]

[Photo: On June 18, 2,000 retired workers and others demonstrated in New York City against Reagan's savage cuts in the social security program. This was one of many such demonstrations held across the country.]

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POSTAL WORKERS: VOTE NO! DEFEAT THE SELL-OUT CONTRACT!

The Reagan government is attacking the employees of the federal government as part of its offensive against all the workers. Earlier Reagan mandated a big inflation-induced wage cut for most federal employees when he ordered a 4.8% ceiling on their wage increases. Now the United States Postal Service (USPS) is trying to foist onto the postal workers a contract that will mean wage cuts, increasing automation and speedup, and the unsafe working conditions and loss of jobs that accompany the USPS' productivity drive.

The chiefs of the two biggest postal unions, Moe Biller of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and Vincent Sombrotto of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), who represent 500,000 postal workers, have agreed to this despicable contract. For months Biller and Sombrotto have been huffing and puffing against Reaganite cuts and the anti-worker policies of the postmaster general. But when they came face to face with the government over the contract they caved in to the Reaganite offensive and sold the workers down the river. Soon this sellout contract comes up for ratification by the workers.

Postal workers! Don't stand for this treachery! Reject the sellout contract and get prepared to fight to defend your jobs and livelihood!

The 1981 Contract Continues the Sellout From 1978

In 1978, under Carter's wage control program, a sellout contract was forced on the postal workers through binding arbitration. According to incomplete reports, the proposed contract for 1981 continues the worst features of the '78 contract and in a number of cases it makes matters worse.

* Wages. Through salary and bonus increases the tentative pact provides a $2,100 raise in the postal workers' annual salary by the third year. This amounts to a 10% raise over three years or about $1.01 an hour. Also, they will get a cost-of-living increase at the rate of 14 for each 0.4 points rise in the Consumer Price Index. With this COLA formula the workers receive only about 58% of the rise in the CPI. Taken together these increases will mean that wages will actually be cut by the ever climbing inflation.

In the last three years while inflation soared up some 39%, the postal workers' wages rose only 31.9%. Thus the workers fell behind in the fight against inflation. If inflation continues to rise at the same 39% rate in the next three years, the workers' wages will rise only about 27%. Thus, even though this contract's raise is slightly higher than that of 1978, the workers' real wages will fall further and further behind.

As well, unlike in 1978, the COLA increase from the last three years will not be rolled into the base rate for most workers until another three years has passed. This means that the workers will lose money from shift differential and other benefits that are computed on the basis of the base wage rate.

* Productivity Drive. On top of this, unlike the '78 contract, at least half of the basic wage increase is in the form of an annual bonus 4 'for employees who meet productivity standards.'' (New York Times, July 22, 1981) This bonus tied to productivity means that workers will have to slave themselves to an early grave even to get their raise.

Since 1970 the Postal Service has sweated a 34% increase in productivity out of the workers. Last year alone productivity rose 5.5%. For the postal workers this has meant 60 to 70-hour weeks, unsafe conditions, and extreme on-the-job harassment as job after job is automated and each day new speedup measures, like forcing letter carriers to walk across people's lawns, are implemented. The new contract bonuses are a measure to push this productivity drive even further.

* Job Security. As a result of the productivity drive nearly 75,000 postal jobs have, been lost since 1970. Although in the last few years employment has somewhat increased, new measures are underway to further cut jobs. For example, Reagan's budget cuts $650 million from the federal subsidy to the USPS. This subsidy funds various services that are considered unprofitable such as lower rates for non-profit organizations, various services in rural areas, and six-day mail service. In March of this year the National Executive Board of the APWU passed a resolution against these cuts which it said "would inevitably and certainly mean the elimination of 40,000 postal jobs.'' As well, the nine-digit zip code is due to come into operation by February of 1982. The APWU estimates this new system will cut another 15,000 to 60,000 jobs.

Clearly job security is a big issue for the postal workers, but the union bureaucrats have refused to fight on this question. Before the 1978 contract the workers had a no-layoff clause in their contract. Even during that period thousands of jobs were cut through attrition, firings and by driving workers off their jobs through constant harassment. But in the 1978 contract this minimal protection was cut further by the arbitrator by applying the no-layoff clause only to those workers who had worked continuously for six years. The workers' demand is that at least the no-layoff clause should be fully restored in this year's contract, but Biller and Sombrotto simply dropped this demand and the 1978 contract clause remains the same.

* Overtime, Safety and Harassment. The union bureaucrats also gave up the workers' demands against mandatory overtime, for the right to refuse unsafe work and against harassment. The new contract will allow the USPS to continue to mandate at least 50-hour work weeks. The horribly unsafe conditions, which have resulted in at least 12 deaths in the last three years and an injury rate that is double the average rate for industry as a whole, will continue. As well the constant harassment, the fascist labor discipline which has led to constant firings (including 108 workers fired for their participation in the wildcat strikes against tit 1978 contract) and a backlog of over 17,000 unsettled grievances, will also continue against the workers.

New Union Bureaucrats Continue Betrayal From the Past

Because of their sellout of the workers in the 1978 contract struggle, the old heads of the APWU and the NALC were driven from their union posts. The worker elected Biller and Sombrotto because they promised to bring a change, because they promised militant mass action to defend the workers' interests. Indeed at their respective union conventions Biller and Sombrotto vowed there would be "no contract, no work!" in this year's struggle.

But when the contract expired these new union hacks violated their vows, demanded that the workers stay on the job, and then went on to sign and even to praise to the skies a tentative contract which is even worse than the '78 sellout pact for which their predecessors were driven from office. What disgusting treachery!

The fact is that Biller and Sombrotto are not at all for struggle against the capitalist wage cutting and productivity offensive headed up by the Reagan government. They have merely been posing as "militants" in order to win the workers' confidence so as to be better able to sabotage their struggle. For example, these hacks screamed bloody murder against the postmaster general's refusal to negotiate. But this was not because they opposed the USPS productivity drive and wage- cutting schemes. No, instead they wanted, in the words of Sombrotto, "to improve labor-management relations in the Postal Service -- and thus to mutually improve productivity." These union bosses are not for struggle but cooperation with the vicious job-eliminating productivity drive of the Postal Service.

Likewise, despite their claims to be fighting, these new union bosses have promised to cooperate with Reagan's program of "national recovery" and "revitalization." This program means among other things productivity drives, layoffs and wage cuts for the workers while the capitalists are given big tax breaks and handouts to "revitalize industry." But in their March 4 resolution the APWU National Executive Board pledged that they "are prepared to cooperate with the new Administration in efforts to revitalize the U.S. economy."

The workers can never defend their jobs and livelihood by cooperating with the capitalist offensive against them. Mass struggle is the answer for the attacks of the Reagan government. The postal workers must get organized for this struggle. Down with the betrayal of the union bureaucrats! Vote no to the sellout postal contract! Organize mass struggle against the wage-cutting and productivity offensive of the Reagan government!

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THE BRITISH YOUTH HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

Britain is being rocked by a wave of mass protests and street fighting of workers and youth. Starting in London and Liverpool in early July the fierce clashes between the masses and police have spread to more that 30 cities. The youth of the workers and national minorities have fought pitched battles against racist gangs and notorious British "bobbies'', erecting barricades of burning cars, laying siege to a number of police stations and injuring over 500 policemen. The government of Margaret Thatcher has answered this upsurge with savage police repression. Already one young man lays dead at the blood-soaked hands of the British police and so far more than 2500 people have been thrown into jails and hastily set up detention centers.

The fierce street fighting in Britain is a powerful manifestation of the protest of the workers and youth and especially of the national minorities. The brutal racial discrimination and attacks by police and government-organized fascist gangs have created a burning hatred and a spirit to fight back among the national minorities, the majority of whom are from the working class. The day-to-day beatings and arrests by the police and the savage capitalist exploitation that has left 2.8 million workers unemployed affects not only the national minorities but all the workers. It is notable that in many of the mass actions the black and white youth fought shoulder to shoulder against the police and fascist gangs.

This round of mass rebellions came just a few months after the April 11-12 rebellion in the London suburb of Brixton. The current rebellions are a continuation of years of struggle waged by the masses against racist and fascist attacks, police repression and poverty. The mass rebellions and the ferocious response of the British capitalists are a condemning exposure of capitalist rule in Britain. They show that behind the facade of "democracy,'' and behind the arrogant pomp and ceremony being presently displayed by the decayed British royalty, there lies the naked reality of barbarous exploitation and oppression, racism and growing fascism.

The mighty upsurge of the masses shows that the British working class and the national minorities will never accept the rotten situation imposed on them. Their revolt at home comes closely on the heels of the recent upsurge in the historic struggle of the Irish people against British colonial rule. Together they are delivering powerful blows against the crisis-ridden system of British imperialism. This is a great inspiration to the workers throughout the world. They show that the masses, rising to their feet in struggle, can shake even such a "pinnacle of capitalist stability'' as Britain to the core.

All of Britain Ablaze With Struggle

The rebellions began on July 4 in London's Southall district when youth of mainly Indian and Pakistani descent resisted the racist assaults by Hitler-worshiping youth gangs. Several hundred of these fascists, who are connected to the nazi National Front, came into the community to attend a concert by a racist band. They began shouting racist slogans and passing out literature calling for deportation of immigrants. They smashed the window of a store owned by an Indian family. Young people from the area came onto the streets to fight these racist attacks, but the police rushed to the defense of the fascists and began beating and arresting the Indian and Pakistani youth. The anti-racist youth would not be suppressed. Over 500 joined their ranks and for hours they battled the police and fascists with clubs, bricks, bottles and gasoline bombs. Before the night was over, 61 police were injured while 23 of the anti-racist youth were hurt and 23 thrown in jail.

The rebellion spread to Liverpool the next night. The anger against the enormous unemployment and miserable life, the outrage against the daily harassment and arbitrary arrests by the police reached the boiling point. Hundreds of young people poured onto the streets to fight the police. In this struggle large numbers of white youth joined with the young people of African and West Indian descent in hand- to-hand battles with the police. For three nights the rebellion continued. The young people stole many vehicles including a fire truck and a cement mixer and used them for battering rams to break through the police lines and barricades. At one point the fighters virtually drove the police out of the Toxteth district of Liverpool using gasoline bombs to keep the police from advancing. In the course of these sharp battles dozens of buildings were set ablaze and at least 240 policemen were injured.

In Manchester, too, rebellions broke out. On July 10, during the second night of fighting in that city, over 1,000 white and black youth laid siege to a police station. For an hour they trapped the police inside, barraging the building with gasoline bombs, bricks and iron pipes. The police were only able to escape after reinforcements were sent to rescue them.

By the weekend the rebellions had spread all across Britain. Through the nights of July 11 and 12 big battles took place against the police and fascists in at least 17 cities. The British government, unable to bring the rebellions under control, announced more draconian repressive measures and threatened to call out the army to crush the revolts. On July 13 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher herself went to Liverpool to plead for "law and order." But she was met by 1,000 demonstrators who threw tomatoes and wet toilet paper at her. The next day Thatcher announced that the police would begin using plastic bullets and water cannons like those used against the people of Northern Ireland.

Despite the severe repression, intense struggle continued throughout Britain for several more days. In the two-week period beginning July 4 the rebellions spread to over 30 cities. Scotland was not left untouched as street fighting broke out in the port city of Dundee. In Wales the Secretary for Wales in Thatcher's Cabinet, Nicholas Edwards, whined that there was a "huge danger" that his region would explode next.

Throughout, the British government has had nothing to offer the impoverished working masses but the iron heel of "law and order" repression. Prime Minister Thatcher has virulently condemned the fighting masses as "hooligans" and denounced their just struggle as a "spree of naked greed" and as "terrorism, criminal looting and thuggery." Besides employing new weapons, the government has unleashed police "snatch squads" to raid homes and arbitrarily arrest people in the nationality communities. Since the rebellions began, police have been sent to Northern Ireland to get trained by the blood- soaked specialists experienced in the slaughter of the Irish people. As well, special courts, which dispense with normal trial procedures like the right of appeal have been set up to process those arrested. The British Labor Party which claims to represent the working masses has consistently agreed with Thatcher's repressive measures. Laborite Leader Michael Foot, on July 14 called for suppression of "illegality" by "fair methods." On July 17 the Labor Party hacks applauded Home Secretary William Whitelaw when he declared in Parliament that "the first priority must be to end the violence on our streets and to reestablish respect for law and order." Thus the social- democratic Laborites and the Thatcherite open reactionaries agree that at all cost the struggle of the masses must be smashed. This reveals once again the real nature of capitalist democracy, under which the second the capitalists feel threatened, they dispose of their own laws and set about a frenzied effort to suppress the working masses.

After two weeks the British government believed that it had quashed the fierce rebellions and that life could proceed, business as usual. But Britain is a powder keg. On July 26 rebellions again broke out in Liverpool and have continued for several days. On the third night of fighting there, a police vehicle crushed to death 23 year old David Moore. The British rebellions have their first martyr. But the violent repression of the masses by the British government is only provoking a burning anger among the working people. In Britain the spirit of revolt is growing.

The Rebellions in Britain Herald the Mass Revolutionary Onslaught Which Will Put British Imperialism into its Grave

The scale and intensity of the mass struggle have made these the fiercest upheavals in Britain in more than fifty years. They come on the heels of the recent upsurge in the struggle of the Irish people which is inflicting heavy blows against the British colonial rule. These struggles, at home and abroad, have shaken the arrogant British bourgeoisie to the core.

The rebellions in the cities of Britain have further aggravated the deep crisis of British imperialism. Britain is one of the oldest bastions of capitalism. For centuries the lords of British capitalism held sway over vast territories of the globe.

Besides exploiting to the bone its working class at home, the bourgeoisie extracted super-profits from the sweat and toil of the brutally oppressed workers and peasants of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland and the West Indies. In the name of bringing "civilization" far and wide, the British imperialists ferociously suppressed with fire and sword the longings of the oppressed peoples for freedom and emancipation.

But it was inevitable that this vast empire would crumble, and crumble it certainly did. The oppressed peoples of the empire waged an unrelenting fight against British colonialism. Britain was forced to give up its direct colonial domination over much of its subjugated territories. Although it maintains economic exploitation through neo-colonialism in most of the former colonies, it has however lost ground to bigger predatory powers such as U.S. imperialism which established preponderance over much of the British empire after World War II.

Thus, hit hard by the anti-colonial struggles and edged out by other imperialist competitors, British imperialism was plunged into a profound crisis. Today Britain continues to be wracked by all-round crisis. Its domestic industries are declining in almost every sector. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in many decades. Inflation runs high. The current rebellions in the cities highlight the severe economic deprivation suffered by millions of the workers and youth. The housing, educational and medical facilities for the masses are becoming worse day by day. It is a telling indictment of British capitalism that the only thing that the youth of Britain can look forward to is even higher unemployment and further decay of the rotten system.

In this situation the British capitalists have nothing to offer the working masses but more impoverishing austerity policies, racist and fascist attacks, police terror and war -- against the Irish people today, against other peoples tomorrow. Besides, the British bourgeoisie is an important ally of U.S. imperialism and has hitched itself to the common NATO war chariot. Indeed militarism is a cornerstone of the policies of the British bourgeoisie to extricate itself from its crisis -- Britain spends 4.9% of its GNP on the armed forces, which is higher than any other Western European country and second only to the U.S.

These reactionary policies are common to both the Conservative and Labor parties. These two parties have alternated being in the seat of power but they have carried out the same savage capitalist measures against the masses. Despite their promises and demagogy, the crisis has only worsened over the years. They are both diehard enemies of the British people.

Propaganda has been done that the decline of British imperialism has been due to the supposed "softness" of the Labor Party. So in 1979 the British bourgeoisie installed Thatcher, the British Reagan. But this has only intensified the crisis and decline of British imperialism. The present mass upsurge shows the bankruptcy of Thatcherism. It can be predicted with certainty that Reaganism will suffer the same fiasco in the U.S.

The British working class and the toiling masses of the colonies such as North Ireland have not quietly laid down before the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. Since the late 1960's the Irish people's struggle has delivered blow after blow to which the British bourgeoisie has responded by maintaining a most brutal military occupation. The Irish people's struggle has served as an impetus to the development of the mass struggle in the heart of Britain itself. As well, recent years have also seen growing currents of working class and popular struggle against exploitation, unemployment, fascism and war preparations. The mass rebellions currently going on have shown the great power that is to be found within the ranks of the workers and youth of Britain. All the different streams of struggle are bound to merge into a powerful torrent of proletarian socialist revolution which will put British imperialism into its grave!

[Photo: A scene from the fighting in Liverpool.]

[Map: Map showing some of the cities where rebellions broke out.]

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Zionism means aggression

More Israeli crimes against Lebanon

Bleeding Lebanon is testimony to the totally barbaric nature of imperialism and its lackeys. For many years the U.S.-backed Israeli Zionists have been carrying out aggression against the people of Lebanon. For years on end the Zionists have bombed villages and the Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. They have not hesitated to send their troops into Lebanon and even at times to occupy its southern regions. Moreover, the Zionists have armed to the hilt the fascist Phalangists in their war against the Palestinian and Lebanese people. This systematic aggression has always been motivated by the dual purpose of destroying the Palestinian resistance movement and assisting reaction in suppressing the democratic Lebanese forces as well.

In recent days the Zionists have escalated their savagery to new heights. On July 17, the Israelis bombed heavily populated neighborhoods in Beirut killing 300 civilians and wounding many hundreds more. Since that time they have continued to bomb civilian targets in the towns of Damour, Sidon and Tyre and other towns and refugee camps throughout Lebanon. The Zionists have also sent in their fascist commandos to assist in the carnage. Reportedly there have been well over 1,000 casualties from the Israeli bombing and commando raids, the vast majority of which have been random civilians.

The zionist henchman Begin openly defends this policy of massacring civilians. "We shall,'' Begin arrogantly declares, "continue to attack terrorist bases and headquarters, even if they are purposefully located in the vicinity of or within civilian concentrations." In other words, if the zionist executioners suspect so-called "terrorists" in the marketplaces of Beirut, then they do not hesitate to bomb and strafe at will those unfortunate enough to go to the market. Indeed, this is the outright genocidal policy which the Zionists have always pursued. In fact, according to their racist and fascist outlook, all Palestinians or Lebanese or all Arab peoples are considered either "terrorists" or if not then at least harborers of "terrorist bases" and thus fair targets for extermination.

The recent bombing raids on Beirut and south Lebanon come soon on the heels of the so-called "Lebanese missile crisis." On April 28, Israeli jets shot down two Syrian helicopters over Lebanon. In response, Syria brought in batteries of surface-to-air anti-aircraft into eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border. In turn, the Zionists demanded the Syrians withdraw their anti-aircraft missiles, not only those deployed in eastern Lebanon but also those near the Lebanese border within Syria itself. If the Syrians refused, Begin declared that he would destroy the Syrian anti-aircraft installations on both sides of the Syrian-Lebanese border. In other words, the Israeli bandits would not tolerate any infringement on their ability to bomb and strafe the people of Lebanon wherever and whenever they liked and that they would not hesitate to go to war against Syria, too, to achieve this aim. The arrogance of the zionist aggressors knows no bounds!

Following the July 17 bombing of civilian targets in Beirut, the Reagan administration temporarily suspended the shipment of ten F-16's to Israel. War dog Haig and Reagan's other cronies made no secret of the fact that this was simply a token gesture, that there was "no change in U.S. policy towards Israel." That is to say, the Pentagon will continue to supply the zionist war machine with $2 billion of weapons a year and U.S. policy will continue to back the zionist butchers to the hilt. Nevertheless, for public consumption, the Reagan administration will make this empty gesture of withholding a few jets for a little while in order to make it appear as though U.S. imperialism were not the hand behind its zionist puppets and their genocidal war against the Palestinians and the other Arab peoples.

Of course, in Washington it is not simply the Reaganite warmongers who are on the side of the zionist executioners. Far from it! The so-called liberal, so-called "human rights" and "peace" advocates of the Democratic Party, with Ted Kennedy as their foremost representative, are equally in favor of the Israeli massacres as the Reagans, Haigs and Weinbergers. In fact, Kennedy even criticized Reagan for his public relations stunt of delaying F-16 shipments as being harmful to the interests of Israel. This is not surprising because for many years their unlimited support to the zionist murderers has been a hallmark of the Kennedyite wing of the Democratic Party and a section of its social-democratic boosters such as the "Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee" (DSOC). As the Israeli bombs sow death and destruction a- cross Lebanon, this is a further exposure of the imperialist and warmongering nature of the Democratic Party and its Kennedyite "left wing."

Presently, Reagan's envoy, Philip Habib, has manipulated a cease-fire between the Palestinians and the Zionists which has meant that the Israeli jets have temporarily stopped their murderous raids. But, as the whole world knows, neither Mr. Reagan and the U.S. imperialists nor Mr. Begin and the zionist bandits, have any intention of abandoning their permanent policy of aggression and if not tomorrow then the next day, the Israelis will commit new atrocities in Lebanon.

The zionist state of Israel is again demonstrating that it is one of the most bloodthirsty and aggressive states on earth. U.S. dollars and weapons are what makes this beast tick because for U.S. imperialism Israel provides a strategic base and weapon for digging its claws deep into the oil rich Middle East. Soviet social-imperialism also has its interests in profiting from Israel's aggression as a means to sink its claws deeper into this vital region. It is the predatory interests of these vultures that have brought about the criminal bloodletting in Lebanon.

But no matter what savagery imperialism and its zionist agents resort to, they have never been able to and never will break the fighting will of the Palestinian, the Lebanese and the other Arab peoples. Begins recent "promises" are not the first time the zionist henchmen have vowel to wipe out the Palestinian liberation forces. But the greater the savagery of the Israelis, the greater the Palestinian resistance and the resistance of their Lebanese brothers. No. It is not the Palestinians or the Arabs who are going to be destroyed by the barbaric aggression of the Israelis, but it is the reckless policy of the zionist bandits that can only hasten the demise of these bloodstained puppets of imperialism.

[Cartoon.]

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Reagan's budget means hunger for millions

Reagan throws down a challenge to the working masses

The Reagan budget for 1982 is a budget to starve the workers, make the capitalists even richer and prepare for war. It is in the final stages of being rubber-stamped by the U.S. Congress. Although various details remain to be wrapped up, the essential character of this budget has been clear right from the outset. Throughout the country, a mounting wave of mass opposition has been developing against the Reagan budget.

Above all, the Reagan budget is aimed at stepping up even further the already fever-pitch war preparations of U.S. imperialism by pouring billions of dollars more into the U.S. war machine. This carries with it the threat of reactionary wars to defend the profits of the capitalist billionaires, wars in which the sons and daughters of the American working class are to be sent off to maim and kill their fellow workers abroad.

The tremendous boost in military spending will greatly profit the weapons manufacturers while the working masses will be made to pay by bearing an ever higher burden of taxation. Besides this, the Reagan budget will also fork over, through tax breaks, handouts and interest payments, billions of dollars more into the pockets of the bankers and other capitalist bloodsuckers. These handouts are an essential part of the capitalists' "reindustrialization" drive, which is a program to automate thousands of workers out of jobs and step up the man-eating productivity drives against the employed workers.

For the working class and poor, the Reagan budget spells increasing exploitation, hunger and destitution. The increasing military spending and "reindustrialization" handouts for the monopolies will come at the expense of the working masses. Besides the working masses bearing a greater burden of taxes, big cuts are being made in various social benefits available to the impoverished masses.

At the end of June, Congress approved close to $40 billion in cuts in various non-military programs. A very large proportion of these cuts are in various forms of compensation and relief programs for the unemployed, poor workers, the elderly and the most downtrodden sections of the people generally. This is a big attack on the livelihood of these already very impoverished people who have a very difficult time making ends meet. And because the black, Mexican nationality and other oppressed nationality people make up a disproportionate number of the poor, the Reagan budget cuts will hit them especially hard.

Both the capitalist parties, the Republicans and Democrats alike, are firmly united on the need for such economic policies. In fact it was the Democratic Carter administration which initiated the current massive boosts in military spending and curtailment of social benefits. Reagan has picked up the relay stick from Carter and is running hard with it. The present cutbacks are the most extensive yet. And in the coming years the Reagan administration is promising more of the same.

Reagan Throws Down a Challenge to the Working Masses

The budget cutbacks show the savagery of the capitalist class. With each passing year the workers are being ruined by the capitalist economic crisis. Their livelihood is being pushed down steadily by skyrocketing inflation and high levels of unemployment. The tremendous increase in energy prices alone forces many of the poor to choose between eating or heating every winter. On top of this the burden of taxes is constantly on the rise to pay for more bombs, warships, prisons, etc. In the face of all this, the capitalist government is cutting back on the measly compensation for the unemployed and retired and on the relief for the destitute. What criminals the capitalists are!

Indeed the American capitalists have long been notorious for opposing any kind of social benefits for the working class and poor. For years they fought tooth and nail against the idea of providing unemployment, disability and retirement insurance for the workers. The U.S. was among the last of the big industrialized capitalist countries to implement such a system. It was only achieved by the working class as a result of tenacious mass struggle in the early 1930's.

At the same time, while granting some concessions to the masses, the capitalists have done their best to set up the social benefit programs in the most mutilated fashion possible. In general, the most minimal benefits are given and the maximum number of exceptions possible are made. Certain programs are instituted mainly to give handouts to the capitalists under the pretext of helping the poor. And in some cases, the most reactionary purposes are combined with the benefits so that they can be used to disrupt the unity and fighting capacity of the working class.

Today the capitalists are sharply cutting back even on these limited programs. This is a sign of the depth of the crisis the imperialists are caught up in. They are shifting more and more funds to the military as they try to protect their crumbling empire around the world, which is threatened by revolution and by competition from their Soviet social-imperialist rivals. As well they are pouring more money into beefing up their repressive apparatus at home to crush the revolt of the working masses here.

At the same time the budget cutbacks are also a challenge, a test to see how far they can cut back to wipe out what the workers have achieved through their struggle. They want to reduce the workers to the level of broken-down slaves. By trying to make big cuts in the social benefits all in a quick sweep, they are trying to capitalize on the shock and disorganization caused by the severe economic crisis and on the craven treachery of their labor lieutenants, the trade union bureaucrats.

But the exploiters have miscalculated. Their starvation policies are bound to aggravate the contradictions in the society even further. The protests and demonstrations occurring today herald great class battles which are in the making.

In the next sections, we examine some of the features of the impact of the cutbacks on different sections of the working masses.

Attacking the Unemployed With a Vengeance

In the April 28 speech that Reagan made to Congress to push his budget proposals, he had to acknowledge the sorry state of affairs with the American capitalist economy. Among other things, he admitted that eight million workers are unemployed. But his promise to "clean up our economic mess" and do something about unemployment was nothing but sheer demagogy. Indeed one of the most prominent features of his cutbacks is that they will increase the hardship for the unemployed and drive even more people into the ranks of the unemployed.

First, the Reagan cutbacks, already approved by Congress, include the elimination of the 13-week federal extension of unemployment benefits. Alongside this, the budget is also restricting TRA (Trade Readjustment Assistance) benefits solely to those workers receiving no other compensation. And workers receiving TRA will only receive just the amount of state unemployment benefits, not the 70% of weekly pay that they currently get. Both these cutbacks will be a big blow to the long-term unemployed, particularly those concentrated in the crisis-ridden auto, steel, textile and electrical industries.

Second, Reagan's budget will eliminate funds for most of the federally funded "jobs programs," including getting rid of more than 310,000 CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) jobs and about 80,000 youth jobs. Altogether it is estimated that the overall Reagan cutbacks will cost close to 1.25 million jobs in the private and public sector.

The cuts in the programs for the unemployed provide a graphic example of the type of social benefit programs the capitalists establish in the face of the struggle of the workers. Take, for instance, unemployment compensation. The workers fought bitterly for this in the early 1930's but the program established by the government provided for the most minimal benefits possible and allowed the states to make all kinds of exceptions. Now, after years of high levels of unemployment, the program is being wrecked even further by the federal government cutting off the extensions. In the meantime, various states are adding on new exceptions in an effort to curtail the program even more.

On the other hand, TRA provides an example of a program that was instituted in such a way as to combine some additional unemployment compensation with reactionary purposes. TRA was established in the early 1970's as a program to compensate workers for loss of jobs allegedly due to foreign competition. But these benefits were given out only to a small section of the unemployed, especially to those sections most likely to revolt, such as the auto workers. At the same time, the capitalists found TRA useful for the purpose of creating chauvinist import hysteria by blaming the economic crisis on foreign workers.

Similarly, CETA programs were set up in 1974 to fund a few jobs in the midst of millions of unemployed. It provided too few jobs, and temporary ones at that. At the same time, it was used as a means to reduce regular work forces by using low-paid trainees in place of workers who would have to be paid prevailing wages. Moreover, in 1978 Carter made CETA jobs available to private employers, thus using it as a straightforward handout to the capitalists.

But even such mutilated programs for the jobless are facing the axe today. According to the logic of the Reaganites, an assault on the social benefits for the unemployed is necessary in order "to revive the incentive to work." What this means is that the capitalists do not think that the present mass unemployment provides enough pressure to drive down wage rates for the working class as a whole. They think that driving the unemployed into utter destitution and throwing more and more into the ranks of the unemployed will heighten the competition for existing jobs in such a way as to drive down wage rates even more.

Moreover, the Reaganites intend to set up big slave-labor schemes for those who, for one reason or another, cannot slave for the capitalists at starvation wages. The federal government is giving wholesale approval to the states to set up "workfare" programs in which people will have to work at the most enslaving jobs just to be able to get welfare payments, food stamps, etc.

In addition, the government openly acknowledges that it seeks to use unemployment even more effectively as a club to increase the ranks of the imperialist armed forces. Thus Reagan's Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training recently admitted in regards to the military as a replacement for the jobs programs, "I see a potentially big role there." He added, "But for the young person who doesn't know where to turn, the military could be a natural market...." (Business Week, March 30, 1981)

In short, the Reagan budget is a budget to increase the ranks of the unemployed, to drive wages down generally, to set up slave-labor schemes on a wider and harsher scale, and to increase cannon fodder for the army from the ranks of the unemployed youth. This then is what the Reaganites mean by "reviving the incentive to work."

A Big Attack on the Poor Workers

Reagan's budget cuts will hit hard against the most downtrodden section of the masses. Among them, the poor workers will be squeezed very hard. There is a large section of the working class which is forced to slave for the capitalists at starvation wages -- making below $4-5 per hour and in many cases even less than the minimum wage. This section of the proletariat is disproportionately made up of black and other national minority workers.

Among this section, the workers making minimum wage face the prospect of big cuts in their wages in the face of soaring inflation because Reagan does not plan to increase the minimum wage in the coming year. Besides this, the administration is eliminating various compensation programs which provide the working poor with some relief to keep above complete destitution. Certain of the budget cuts are directly aimed at making such families ineligible altogether for various benefits. For instance, food stamp eligibility requirements are to be reduced to those with an income of 130% of the federal poverty level as compared to 145% today (i.e., an income of $10,933 as compared to $12,195 for a family of four). This will make a million people ineligible for food stamps. A similar lowering of the eligibility income is being made for recipients of the school lunch program.

There are other cutbacks which will hit hard at the poor. Cuts are being made in Medicaid, low-income energy assistance, day care, welfare, rental subsidies, etc. The cuts in rental subsidies, for example, will mean that those who live in subsidized housing will have to pay 30% of their income for rent as opposed to 25% today. This will affect 3.3 million households. In addition, there are cuts in other programs such as educational programs, which will lower even further the services available to the poor. The cuts in remedial education, special education, etc., will deteriorate the already scandalously inferior education for the poor in the public school system. And the cuts in student loan and grant programs and the eliminating of social security benefits for student dependents will be yet another step on the road of putting higher education out of the reach of all but the rich. Also, as a result of cuts in federal funding in other areas, many states and localities will increase taxes further, thus serving to drive up the cost of living for the poor even more.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the administration plans to use its budget cuts as a direct weapon against the ability of the workers to fight the vicious exploitation of the capitalists. Thus, from now on, the government will make striking workers ineligible for food stamps and welfare. This is nothing but strikebreaking by starving the workers.

In sum, the Reagan budget is a massive attack on the poor. A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office itself estimated that just the cuts in welfare, jobs programs, food stamps and school lunches alone will cut the incomes of 20-25 million impoverished people.

The Opening Shot in a War on the Retired Workers

With the 1982 budget proposals, the Reagan administration has also launched the first phase of a virtual war against the retired workers. The present budget removes the $122 per month minimum benefit for all recipients of social security. Currently there are three million people who receive this. In addition, $1.5 billion in cuts in Medicare will mean increased difficulties for the elderly to get adequate medical assistance. Besides this, federal retirees who receive federal retirement benefits will lose an average of $300 a year by getting only one of their two cost-of-living increases each year.

The Reaganites are not satisfied with these cuts and are screaming for more blood already. They have opened up a big barrage of calls for massive cuts in the social security system. This whole campaign vividly exposes the barbarous nature of the capitalist system. The capitalists exploit the workers to the bone and then, when they are no longer useful, cast them off. What benefits exist for the retirees were won as the result of extremely bitter struggles by the working class in the 1930's. Today close to 36 million people receive such benefits. It is common knowledge that the benefits they receive are measly and the elderly have a very hard time simply existing. Today the capitalists are threatening to cut back on this meager program even further at the expense of the working class.

For Revolutionary Struggle Against the Capitalist Offensive!

The Reagan economic program has smoothly sailed through the Congress. The Democratic Party has proved to be no opposition at all. Where the Democratic politicians have not openly joined the Reagan bandwagon, they have quibbled over the most minor details of the Reagan proposals while remaining just as enthusiastic for the Reaganite program of robbing the masses, beefing up the imperialist war machine and giving handouts to the capitalists. In sum, the 1982 Reagan budget is a bipartisan budget reflecting the common policies of monopoly capital.

As the brief survey of Reagan's economic policies has shown above, it is a big assault on the livelihood of the working masses. Although it targets for special attack the most downtrodden sections of the masses, these policies are aimed at the working class as a whole. Hence the Reagan program is bound to result in the intensification of the struggle of the working class and broad masses. Already wide sections of workers, oppressed nationalities, retired people and youth have roundly condemned the diabolical plans of the government. Demonstrations of tens of thousands have been held in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. Indeed, wherever Reagan and his henchmen go, they are met with denunciations and protests by the masses.

The development of the mass struggle is the proper answer to the capitalist program of starvation, fascism and war. Waging this struggle requires a stern fight not just against the Reaganite Republican Party but also against the attempts of the Democratic Party to try to quell the mass struggle. The struggle against Reaganite reaction can and will serve as a part of building the independent movement of the working class, separate from both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

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The Democratic Party alternative and the Reagan budget:

Two Peas in a Pod

During last year's elections, the Democratic Party came before the working masses, cap in hand, asking for votes in the name of fighting the threat of the "ultra-right" candidate, Ronald Reagan. They denounced Reagan as a warmonger, enemy of the poor and friend of the rich -- all of which are of course true.

But these epithets equally apply to the Democratic Party. During the election campaign itself, these two capitalist parties ran with identical programs of starvation, fascism and war. This was underscored after Reagan's victory by the pledges made by the Democratic Party leaders to"cooperate" and have a "honeymoon" with Reagan.

And that's exactly what they've been up to. The deliberations in Congress over the Reagan budget have seen this honeymoon in action. The Democrats and Republicans have been trying to outdo one another in who can be the more unbridled warmonger, and who can do more for the capitalist exploiters in squeezing the masses to the wall. True there have been squabbles, but these have been in the nature of family quarrels, nothing more.

The stand of the Democrats towards Reagan's policies shows once again that the only way to fight Reaganite reaction is to build the independent political movement of the working class, separate from and opposed to both the Republicans and Democrats.

The Democratic "Alternative" to Reagan's Budget

On April 8, the House Democratic Caucus issued a "Statement of Democratic economic principles" in response to the Reagan budgetary proposals. Based on this statement, the Democratic Party-controlled committees in the House of Representatives later issued "alternative" proposals on the budget. But this statement and these proposals show that the Democratic "alternative" is simply the same Reagan poison put in a different bottle.

The Democratic Party's statement begins with the tired old homilies a- bout how the Democratic Party "has been an engine of equity and progress," how "it has been the voice of working men and women," how it has protected "minorities from injustice and discrimination," and so forth. What brazen hypocrisy! They must think that the people have so short memories that they have already forgotten how the Carter administration massively cut the workers' wages; how it put hundreds of thousands into the ranks of the unemployed; how it used the fascist Taft-Hartley law against the coal miners; how it raised energy prices sky-high; and so on. Indeed the Democrats are such utterly shameless liars that even after these pious words of self-praise they go on to fully endorse the Reagan economic program!

The Democrats Completely Support Reagan's Stepped-Up War Buildup

On the question of the gargantuan military spending proposed by Reagan, the Democrats do not have the slightest quibble. In the Senate, every single Democrat, including Kennedy, the prince of liberals, voted to increase military spending according to Reagan's requests. Meanwhile, when the House Budget Committee controlled by the Democrats came out with its "alternative" budget in late April, it not only equaled Reagan's proposals but even tried to outdo him by calling for an additional billion dollars for the U.S. war machine!

Endorsing the Reaganite Cutbacks Under the Hoax of Being "Equitable"

The Democrats also endorsed the Reaganite economic policy of cuts in social programs and big tax breaks for the wealthy and the monopolies. The statement of the Democrats pointed out that there is "a national consensus" on the question of the need for such policies, and they pledged to "work with the new Administration to achieve" these goals.

However, in order to strike a pose of being different from the Reaganites, the Democrats called for the budget cutbacks to be "equitable." But this is merely the long-familiar demagogy of the Democratic Party which, under the banner of calling for "equal sacrifice" from rich and poor alike, actually implements the most savage policies of fleecing the working masses. In this context, the Democrats once again reiterated their call for wage-price controls. Here is a shining example of an "equitable" program long championed by the Democrats. As experience has repeatedly proved, this call is in reality a policy of tight controls on the workers' wages, while profits and prices are allowed to continue to soar. In general, however, this entire hoax of being "equitable" put up by the Democrats is wearing very thin because the Republicans too are dressing up all their proposals as being "equitable"!

When the issue of the budget cuts came up in Congress, the Democrats did try to strike a pose of "opposition," but their "alternative" proposals were drafted fully in the Reaganite spirit. The Reaganite cutbacks were in the main endorsed, and the differences were mainly a matter of details. The Democratic proposals endorsed 75% of the Reagan cuts. Indeed the Democrats' budget-cutting zeal met with the approval of the Reaganites. Treasury Secretary Regan termed the Democratic package "well-intentioned," while respectfully insisting on carrying through with the more complete Reagan program.

The fact that the Democrats endorsed the thrust of the Reagan cuts is not surprising in the least. After all it was the Carter administration which initiated the current trend of cutbacks in social benefits for the impoverished masses. And when the vote in the House on the budget cuts came, a number of Democrats openly joined with the Reaganites to win the day for Reagan. The fact that the rest of the Democrats voted against Reagan does not signify much other than the interest of the Democratic Party to make hay out of the situation by blaming solely the Republicans for the results of the cutbacks. Thus, before one of the votes in the House, Tip O'Neill, the leader of the Democrats in the House, remarked, "If the Republicans are unlucky enough to win today, I guess the monkey is off the Democrats' back.... They're the Reagan cuts. The deficit is going to be the Reagan deficit.... It's Reagan's inflation."

The Democrats Go on a Spree to Give Tax Breaks to the Rich

Both the Democrats and Republicans stand for shifting the burden of taxation from the rich onto the working masses under the hoax of "tax relief." Indeed on the question of tax cuts for the rich the Democrats have really gone wild to compete with the Republicans. This is a most telling exposure of this so-called party of "working men and women"!

Here too of course the Democrats have tried to cover their tracks by posing as champions of the working masses. They have focused a great deal of their public statements on their disagreements with Reagan's proposal for an across-the-board tax cut. Instead the Democrats have called for "targeted tax cuts" for those in the $20,000 to $50,000 a year range. It is interesting that these supposed champions of "working men and women" completely write off those millions and millions, the majority, who make less than $20,000! But once all the smoke is cleared away, even this "targeted cut" does not make much of a difference anyway. It only amounts to $45- $60 for someone making under $30,000. It still continues to shift the" burden of taxation away from the wealthy to the poorer sections. Thus one recent study indicates that in 1983 a taxpayer who makes less than $10,000 would find his net taxes increase 25.1% under the Republican bill and 15.3% under the Democrats'. A worker making between $15,000 and $20,000 would have his taxes increase 3.3% under the Republican bill, and 1.3% under the Democrats'. However, those with incomes more than $200,000 would find their taxes decreased by 15.1% under the Republican plan and by 12.9% under the Democratic one.

What is even more striking is what the Democrats have been planning in the realm of corporate and other taxes on the rich. Here with each passing day the Democrats and Republicans are actually competing neck and neck to see who can give bigger and bigger breaks to the wealthy. This began in March when the Democrats called for a cut in the top marginal rate on investment income from 70% to 50%. Business Week noted that this proposal had been rejected in February by Reagan "when aides convinced him that it would be politically damaging so obviously to 'do something for the rich' while he was slashing social programs right and left."

Since then, the Democratic-con - trolled House Ways and Means Committee has adopted a big package which moves towards eliminating the corporate income tax eventually and meanwhile reducing other taxes on the corporations to almost nothing. In 1978 the corporate share of the federal tax revenue stood at 14.1% No matter whether the Republican or Democratic proposals go through, the corporate share will be reduced to 7.7% by 1986.

So much for the Democrats as the party of "equity" and "justice"!

The Democrats -- Trying to Hunt With the Hound and Run With the Hare

As these few examples demonstrate, the Democrats are another monopoly capitalist party just like the Republicans. They have the same policies aimed squarely against the interests of the working masses. But the difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that the ^Democrats function as the bourgeoisie's main party for deceiving the working masses. Thus, even as they call for the most reactionary policies, the Democrats drape these policies as allegedly "pro-worker," as "reforms," etc. Hence according to the Democrats, the tax cuts for the rich, when carried out by the Reaganites, are handouts to the wealthy. But the same tax cuts, with even more additional sweeteners thrown in for the monopolies, when they are carried out by the Democrats, are allegedly to "make jobs" and to help, not the rich, oh no, but the common "working men and women." What a fraud!

The Democratic Party especially tries to promote itself as an opposition to Reagan in order to tie the indignation among the masses to its coattails. They want to make sure that the mass unrest is contained and liquidated. And they seek to use the anger among the masses as a springboard back to power.

Thus, today when a mass movement has been emerging against the Reagan economic program, the Democrats are trying to capitalize on it. They are especially using the pretext of opposing Reagan's attacks on the social security system, on which there has been a big outcry among the masses. Thus when on July 21 more than 10,000 retirees staged a demonstration in Washington, D.C. against cuts in social security, the Democratic Party pushed through a resolution in the House calling for retention of the $122 a month minimum social security benefit which Reagan is cutting. But this was a meaningless, non-binding and show resolution which even the Republicans overwhelmingly endorsed!

The Democrats' defense of social security is of course a sham. Even this resolution on the minimum benefit was merely to let the present recipients keep getting it, while cutting it off for the future. Besides, on the other cuts that Reagan has proposed, the Democrats may quibble here and there, but they too stand for big changes in the system. Indeed it was a Carter-appointed Presidential Commission on Pension Policy which put out a report last November calling for increasing the retirement age to 68, pushing early retirement up to 65, and so on. Thus today Reagan is running with the ball which the Carter administration set rolling. He has endorsed much of the call made by the Carter commission. Meanwhile the Democratic "alternative" proposals on social security currently being tossed around in Congress have endorsed this and several other aspects of the Reagan plan. Thus, as all the facts show, the Democratic "opposition" to Reagan on this question too is sheer demagogy, nothing but an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the masses.

In the final analysis, the "consensus" of the Democrats and Republicans on economic policy shows that the policy of squeezing the masses, giving handouts to the rich and preparing for war is the common bipartisan policy of monopoly capital. Hence the fight against Reaganite reaction requires opposition to the Democratic Party as well. It calls for building the independent movement of the working class.

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University of Washington in Seattle

No to tuition hikes and funding cutbacks!

Reagan's budget will bring devastating cuts in all fields of education. This will cause the further deterioration of the education system as well as increasing layoffs and wage freezes for teachers, professors and others working in the field of education and the further driving out of the schools of large numbers of the sons and daughters of the workers and poor. Undoubtedly broad mass struggles will develop against these cutbacks in the future. Below we print an article on tuition hikes and funding cutbacks at the University of Washington. This article is adapted from a leaflet produced by the Seattle Branch of the MLP on May 26, 1981.

Widespread indignation is developing among the University of Washington students and sections of its staff over the severe economic attacks being imposed on them. These attacks have come in the form of: a huge 70% increase in tuition; cuts in many programs and services available to students, including national minority and poor students; drastic reductions in financial aid; and the lack of salary increases for staff which come anywhere close to matching the inflation rate (much less compensate for tuition increases for graduate student teaching and research assistants). These attacks are already having dire effects on the education of many students and the livelihood of the staff. Many students will no longer be able to continue their education next fall. Sections of the staff, already barely making ends meet, will be driven to the wall.

These ruthless measures are part of an overall offensive against workers and other sections of the masses, which is being conducted by the state government in order to stave off fiscal crisis. The tuition increases, for example, have nothing to do with having students pay a "fair share of their education," but to help offset large reductions in federal funds which go into the state budget. Of the over $200 million which the Washington state government needs to cover the deficit, almost one-half, or $90 million, will be raised through tuition increases. The budget cutting of the state government is also directly behind the outrageous attacks against the working people, notably the ferry workers and public school teachers, who face either pay cuts or mass layoffs.

This assault on the livelihood of the masses is inextricably connected with Reagan's "Program for Economic Recovery," which is nothing but a program for shifting the economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist class onto the shoulders of the working class and oppressed people and for preparation of imperialist war.

Reagan's plans for carrying out these attacks are threefold:

First, pushing forward the already feverish pace of militarization begun under the Carter administration. This includes astronomical increases in the already gargantuan Pentagon budget, which will result in doubling military spending by 1986. This is for no other reason than to drown in blood the anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of El Salvador, the Middle East and the rest of the world, as well as to fight their equally imperialist rivals, Soviet social-imperialism, over who will receive the lion's share of the plunder of other countries. Besides the protection of U.S. imperialism's world empire, these war preparations are a tremendous source of profit to the capitalist merchants of death in the aerospace, shipbuilding, and weapons industries, etc. The rich are arming to the teeth not to "safeguard peace," but to safeguard their sacred profits through imperialist war.

Second, savagely cutting of all forms of social services. Of the $42 billion cut in such things as unemployment and disability insurance, food stamps, health care and other services, a sizeable cut in funding to all levels of education is included. This includes big cuts in the college financial aid and loan programs which is another step towards driving out of the colleges all but students from the families of the rich. There will also be cuts in the high school, elementary school and preschool programs, further deteriorating the already rotten capitalist education system and driving increasing numbers of students from the schools. These cuts bear especially heavily on the children of the poorest sections of the workers who will be deprived of an opportunity to receive any education.

Third, revamping the tax structure in order to place a heavier tax burden on the poor; in other words, a heavier burden of the military buildup as well as outright handouts to the monopolies for their "reindustrialization." Already this year, the majority of workers in the U.S. have had their total tax bill raised 8%, mainly due to a huge increase in social security taxes (and this is while proposals are floated to cut social security benefits!). For the rich, it is a different story. Under Reagan's program the corporations will pay, in 1984 alone, $30 billion less in taxes through tax write-offs on the depreciation of their equipment and factories. And this is on top of the enormous income tax cuts for the capitalists as well as various types of subsidies and other assistance given to such needy souls as the Chrysler Corporation, the oil monopolies, etc.

Reagan's "Program for Economic Recovery" is what is directly behind the drastic cutbacks in federal funds to the state and local governments. Thus the masses are fleeced twice and three times over; not only through a heavier federal tax burden, but also through various tax increases to support state and local governments. The tuition hikes and the funding cutbacks at the UW are a part of this monstrous robbery of the masses carried out by Reagan and all the capitalist politicians, Republican and Democrat alike.

These savage measures are bringing growing discontent among broad masses throughout the country. The growing ferment can be shown locally by the recent actions of the state ferry workers, and the demonstrations against U.S. imperialist warmongering, amongst other things. The youth and students have no future presented to them but to be press-ganged as cannon fodder for the Pentagon. The vicious economic attacks against the UW and other state college students are bound to bring them into further struggle.

The capitalist offensive can only be fought through taking up active struggle, in which the masses rely on their own strength and numbers. The masses can never pin their hopes on the capitalist politicians, Republican or Democrat. The bipartisan stamp of approval recently given in both the Congress and state legislature to these attacks shows this. Nor can any consolation be had in the "good faith" and "concern" of the state functionaries in the UW administration. The "concern" of the administration is shown by UW President Gerberding's response to the fact that many students would not be able to return next fall due to tuition increases and financial aid cuts: "There is a lot of truth to the saying that those who really want to make it will." (That is, "To hell with them!") And the "good faith" can be seen in his statement on the month-long struggle of the UW medical house staff who recently rejected a 15% pay hike: "I don't know who misunderstood who, but pay was never a negotiable item. The pay decision is constrained by state policy." (The Daily, UW, May 8 and 20)

But throughout the campus, the students and staff are becoming more and more clear as to the sinister program of the capitalists and many are discussing the need to resist. Already, certain sections of students and staff are in motion. To defend their livelihood and to link up with the overall struggle against the capitalist offensive, the UW students and staff must take the path of mass struggle.

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Treacherous role of the labor bureaucrats

Reactionary bills cutting unemployment benefits in Illinois

(The following article is based on a leaflet issued by the Chicago Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA on July 1, 1981.)

Several vicious anti-labor bills have recently been initiated in the Illinois legislature to outlaw strikes, to vastly decrease unemployment and workmen's compensation benefits, for "right to work," and to make brutal penalties for workers who stand up to company attacks at the work place and who support the militant strike actions of other workers. These bills are directed at assisting the monopoly capitalists on the legal front to implement their "reindustrialization" program and to force workers to submit to speedup, job combinations and murderous working conditions.

The labor bureaucrats from various unions and the Illinois Federation of Labor made a big show of organizing a rally to oppose these anti-labor bills. Yet, no sooner was news of the rally printed in the newspapers than the top labor traitor in Illinois, Gibson, head of the Illinois Federation of Labor, turned around and joined Governor Thompson and the president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce in a "summit" meeting at which they agreed to cut unemployment compensation with measures which are, in some aspects, even more severe than the bills they were "protesting" only a couple weeks previously.

This summit deal has just passed both Houses of the legislature (unanimously in the Senate). (So much for the "opposition" to attacks on labor by the "pro-labor" Democrats!) This legislation establishes as completely ineligible for unemployment compensation any worker who quits "voluntarily," is fired for "misconduct" or "refused suitable work." In other words, any worker who defends his life and livelihood on the job can be fired or called a "voluntary quit" and forced onto the street without a penny. Also, laid-off workers would be forced to wait one week before becoming eligible for any compensation, and then have a freeze imposed on the maximum possible benefits which are already very meager.

The other anti-labor bills have now been temporarily tabled or put into committees, but they are not dead.

Presently the monopoly capitalists are unleashing their "reindustrialization" program and wage-cutting schemes on workers nationwide. This has included the brutal productivity drives and speedup of workers, plant closings, layoffs, replacing workers with robots and other worker-eliminating devices. It has also meant the imposing of vicious concessions, that is, the wholesale cutting of wages,

COLA's and benefits in the face of soaring inflation. The reactionary antilabor legislation which has come up before the Illinois legislature is a part of this overall offensive. Clearly all these pieces of fascist anti-labor legislation are intended to grease the legal avenues for the monopoly capitalists to impose their reindustrialization program on the entire working class and to force the workers to pay for the economic crisis.

However, workers are not accepting this capitalist assault. Mass struggles have been breaking out against the features of the reindustrialization program. Wisconsin Steel workers organized mass pickets against the closing of their plant and the company's attempts to move out the machinery. Workers at J & L Steel in East Chicago staged a walkout against J & L's vicious productivity drive which was resulting in the loss of hundreds of workers' jobs. NIPSCO workers fought and won an eight-month strike struggle against a whole series of cuts in wages, benefits, and working conditions the public utility tried to impose on them. Chrysler workers at the Belvidere plant northwest of Chicago carried out an "unauthorized" strike recently to protest the cutting of their wages by the elimination of their COLA and to protest the company's refusal to settle a local contract since 1979. On June 2, in Springfield, Illinois 12,000 workers rallied in opposition to these reactionary anti-labor bills which have come before the state legislature.

All these struggles are manifestations of the storm brewing among the masses of workers. But the so-called "friends of labor" of the Democratic Party and the top trade union bureaucrats are trying to derail this mass struggle. For example, seeing the mass sentiment against the reactionary legislation before the Illinois state legislature, Democratic Party politicians and top trade union hacks spoke at the June 2 rally in Springfield, swearing that they too were opposed to the anti-labor legislation. But only two and a half weeks passed when Gibson, the head of the Illinois Federation of Labor, actually worked out the bill to cut unemployment compensation. And the Democratic Party joined with the Republicans to pass the bill through the Illinois legislature, even voting unanimously for it in the Senate. These hacks can't be trusted any further than you can throw them.

For the workers to defend their livelihood they must persist in organizing their mass struggle and orient this struggle onto the path independent of and against the capitalist political parties, Democrats and Republicans alike, and against their loyal lackeys in the trade union bureaucracy.

Other Anti-Labor Bills Before Illinois Legislature

The other anti-labor bills before the Illinois state legislature have been temporarily tabled or put in committees, but they are not dead. These bills include attacks on the strike movement as well as measures to further impoverish the workers.

For example, one bill would require workers to give the company a one- year notice of intention to strike including over what issues the strike would be waged. With this the company would have an entire year to work to undermine the workers' struggle. On top of this, the union involved would have to pay 10% of the total gross yearly wages of all the workers into a "community assistance fund" before striking! For example, if 1,000 workers earning $15,000 per year each went on strike, their union would have to pay $1.5 million of the workers' money to this "fund." This fund is then to be doled out to the local capitalists and the government of the community of the strike. In other words, the workers must pay the capitalists to go on strike!

House Bill 672, as well as several others, proposes to drastically cut unemployment compensation and also stipulates that a worker laid off due to lack of work as a result of a strike in a separate plant or industry, or workers who, in the militant tradition of their class, refuse to cross each others' picket lines would be ineligible for unemployment compensation. Thus, for example, the railroad workers laid off as a result of the militant coal miners' strike would be denied benefits. This is a criminal attempt to turn workers against their fighting class brothers!

With other bills the capitalist politicians have proposed to further devastate the lives of workers already ruined by the bourgeoisie's insatiable greed for profit. In House Bill 944 the capitalist politicians reveal their utter contempt for the lives of workers. This bill mocks at the devastation already suffered by those workers injured and maimed at the work places as a result of the monopoly capitalists' reckless drive for maximum profit. It declares that an injured worker, no matter if he has lost an arm, hand, leg, etc., who can still operate a machine or hold another job at equal or greater wages, will not be considered "disabled" and thus cannot receive disability benefits! Here is the capitalist logic in all its fascist barbarity! With this the rich and their political representatives are openly stating and trying sanctify with their "law" that workers are of no value aside from their labor power.

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Hard-fought strike of the coal miners stopped halfway

For two and a half months 160,000 coal miners carried out a hard-fought strike against the big coal monopolies. Through their struggle the miners blew up the capitalists' dreams of "labor peace'' in the coal fields and defeated a number of the savage take- back demands of the monopolists. But the UMWA bureaucrats sold out the miners and stopped the strike halfway. As a result the doors have been opened for even sharper attacks by the coal monopolies in the future. The coal miners must get prepared to continue the fight against the offensive of the coal monopolies and also against the UMWA bureaucrats who are disorganizing the miners and sabotaging their struggle.

Strike Upsets Capitalists' Dreams of Labor Stability

Long before the contract deadline the coal monopolies and along with them the president of the UMWA, Sam Church, proclaimed that this year there would be no coal strike, that at long last the fighting spirit of the miners would be broken and "labor peace'' would abound in the coalfields.

The coal monopolies (organized in the Bituminous Coal Operators Association) took their cue from the general capitalist take-back offensive which had imposed brutal concessions on the Chrysler workers and other workers in auto, rubber and elsewhere. The lords of coal set out a whole slew of demands including cuts in wages and benefits, work rule changes to step up productivity and worsen safety conditions, and various changes in contract language to weaken job security, disorganize the miners' movement and increase the use of non-union coal.

Sam Church and other top UMWA bureaucrats worked to pave the way for these take-backs by carrying out a broad campaign against a strike. They argued that the miners should give up their fighting traditions and instead kneel down before the monopolies and accept "labor stability.'' Church and co. promised that "labor stability'' would mean a thriving coal industry, increasing production and export of coal, and more jobs and a better life for the miners. Church pleaded "We want stability in this industry. Lord knows I don't want a strike.... We're going to work our butts off to avoid it." But the coal miners were not convinced by Church's belly-crawling lies. Long years of experience have taught the miners that nothing is won except through struggle. Thus, on March 17, ten days before the contract was due to expire, the miners blew up the capitalists' dreams of "labor peace" and "stability" when a wildcat strike erupted through the coal fields. In a short time the strike extended to seven states and brought 13,000 miners out in struggle against the monopolies' take-back demands.

This strike shook the coal capitalists. In an effort to forestall an industry-wide strike and to keep intact the main bulk of their take-back measures, the monopolists dropped a few of their outrageous demands and quickly signed a tentative contract.

The lords of coal counted on the UMWA bureaucrats to impose this sellout contract on the miners and Sam Church did all that they asked. Church pleaded that the miners should give up their fighting tradition of "no contract, no work!," stay on the job and accept the brutal take-backs of the monopolies. He even toured the coal fields preaching that his sellout was a "decent contract" and "the best we can get."

But the miners saw through this fraud. When the contract expired on March 27, the 160,000 coal miners walked out of the mines and began their industry-wide strike. Throughout the coal fields they denounced the sellout agreement, dubbed Church "sellout Sam," threw eggs at him and burned copies of the tentative contract. On March 31, in an overwhelming two to one vote, the miners rejected the sellout.

For 72 days the coal miners continued their militant, hard-fought strike. The capitalist government backed up the coal operators and sent their police to suppress the strike. Under the watchful eye of the Reagan administration, the state and local courts issued one injunction after another outlawing picketing, and veritable armies of police were dispatched to arrest the picketers and escort convoys of scab coal trucks to their destinations. But the miners defied the courts and police. They unleashed their roving pickets to shut down non-union mines throughout the eastern and mid-western coal fields. Mass pickets of hundreds of miners blockaded coal roads and shut down mines. On several occasions pitched battles were fought with the police and goons of the coal operators.

With their resolute mass actions the miners cut the shipping of coal and shut down large numbers of the nonunion mines. Although these UMWA miners accounted for only 44% of the coal produced in the U.S., it is reported that their strike shut down over 50% of all coal production. The strike caused financial losses to the coal operators and the coal transporters (mainly railroads). As well, by the end of the strike, coal stockpiles had dwindled to the extent that there was worry over shortages in Pennsylvania and utilities and steel mills throughout the country reported only a month's supply of coal left.

UMWA Bureaucrats Stop Strike Halfway

After over two months of hard struggle, at the point when by persisting in their strike the miners could have threatened the closing of utilities and major industries around the country, the top UMWA leadership signed a second sellout agreement and called a halt to the strike.

This came about when, at the end of May, the coal monopolies tried another maneuver. They dropped a couple more of their outrageous take- backs. But on several important questions for the miners the new contract continued the sellout from the contract that the miners had already rejected.

Thus, as a result of the miners' strike, the new contract retained the provision that BCOA companies must pay royalties on the coal they purchased from non-union companies. These payments were increased from $1.90 to $2.23 per ton. A series of the BCOA's productivity demands were defeated including a 45-day probation period for new hires, partial work crews, staggered weekly schedules, and mandatory overtime on Sunday. The industry-wide pension system was saved and a $95 a month pension was won for the widows of miners covered by the 1950 pension system. As well, the miners won a wage increase that will come to $3.60 an hour by the end of the 40-month contract.

While the coal operators gave into the miners on these questions, the new contract has a number of harmful provisions. There is no cost-of-living protection for wages and pensions. For the first time overtime production is allowed on 7 of the miners' 11 holidays. The provision on the right of miners to refuse unsafe work is further weakened. The contract eliminates the notorious Arbitration Review Board; but its longstanding pro-company and strikebreaking decisions are retained as the law of the coal fields, the district arbitrators are retained, and the contract specifies that both sides agreed to negotiate another mechanism to replace the ARB in the future. That is, the name of the ARB was changed, but the whole system that has been developed to suppress the miners' movement was kept intact. As well, the contract language in the "enabling" and "scope and coverage" clauses was changed to further weaken job security and open the door to wider use of non-union coal.

Even though these provisions create a dangerous situation for the miners' movement, and even though the miners' strike had a good chance of defeating a number of them, the UMWA bureaucrats went all-out to impose the new sellout contract onto the coal miners.

Sam Church again toured the coal fields claiming that the miners had won a "significant" victory. While flaunting the gains that the miners' strike had actually made, Church tried to cover up the sellout provisions of the contract. For example, Church claimed the new language in the "enabling" and "scope and coverage" clauses protected jobs. Church pointed to a contract provision that supposedly prohibits the leasing of mines and subcontracting of work if it "causes layoffs or deprives laid-off employees of work that is normally theirs." Church claimed that this was "the best way to protect union construction workers under the circumstances." But Church hid the fact that this clause actually allows leasing and subcontracting to non-union firms and offers very little job security since the coal operators can fairly easily find ways to get a- round it. On top of this, Church hid the fact that this new contract language allows the BCOA operators to use nonunion construction workers to open new mines and that the newly opened mines will not automatically be under UMWA contract. Furthermore, Church hid the truth that the new language allows the sale of mines and coal lands to companies which will no longer be required to abide by the UMWA contract. This is hardly job protection for the UMWA miners.

In short, Church and the entire UMWA bargaining council which voted unanimously in favor of the contract, sold the miners a bill of goods and stopped the strike short of defeating more of the take-back demands of the coal monopolies.

Miners Face a Sharp Struggle in the Future

Although the 1981 contract strike is over, the coal miners still face a very sharp struggle. This year's strike has revealed once again that the coal monopolies are determined to break the miners' movement and to impose on the miners further cuts in their standard of living, an increasing productivity drive, and ever worsening safety conditions. Indeed the sharpness of this struggle is shown by the fact that the miners had to fight hard for 72 days just to defeat a portion of the take-back demands of the monopolies.

With the new contract, the coal operators have opened the doors to further attacks on the miners. As a result of the new contract language for example, the coal monopolies will step up their attempts to break the miners' movement through opening new nonunion mines and subcontracting work to non-union firms. As well, even demands won by the miners in this year's contract are not settled. For example, lawsuits are presently pending before the federal courts to outlaw royalty payments on non-union coal. If these lawsuits succeed (as those lawsuits on contract language covering the sale of mines and subcontracting of work and those against the miners' right to strike over local grievances have succeeded in the past) then the miners face further struggle on this question.

With their militant contract strike, the miners have shown that they will not kneel down before the concession dictates of the monopolists but will fight them every step of the way. Even before this year's contract struggle wildcat strikes were breaking out against the coal operators' subcontracting to non-union companies, as well as against the stepped up productivity drive, against the deteriorating safety conditions, and to organize the unorganized. These struggles will undoubtedly develop further in the future.

Although the miners' contract strike was stopped short, it blew up the monopolists' dreams of "labor peace" in the coal fields and signaled a sharp fight in the future. It is an indication of the renewed struggle which is beginning among the workers in many industries against the vicious take-back offensive of the capitalist class.

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25,000 Massachusetts state workers:

Strike Against Payless Paydays

(The following article is reprinted from Boston Worker, newspaper of the Boston Branch of the MLP, USA, July 15, 1981.)

Last Friday thousands of state workers began going out on strike in protest against not getting paid. The workers who struck are not high paid officials. Like the majority of workers in this country they live hand to mouth and do not have savings to live off of. The state was taking the food off their tables and still expected them to work. Not only that, but by holding up the budget the governor and legislature forced thousands of women and children on welfare and old people on pensions to also go hungry. Even now, to keep the workers' strike from spreading, the state legislature has only passed a two- week budget. Thus, the government wants to keep the state workers captive to its budget fights so that unless another budget is passed by Thursday the state workers will face another payless payday. The state workers' strike was entirely just and they must be prepared for even bigger battles to come.

The legislature and the governor had a whole year to pass a budget, but they stalled and deliberately created this crisis in order to force through a budget that brutally attacks the state workers, the poor and the working masses in general. Some of the features being planned for the new budget are:

1) a wage freeze for state workers and MBTA workers

2) layoffs of 5,000 to 12,000 state workers

3) reduction in welfare benefits and medical aid for the poor

4) reduction of state aid to education, which, on top of Proposition 2 1/2, will mean layoffs of thousands more school teachers and devastation of the already terrible education of the youth

5) $200-$500 million in new sales and income taxes on the working masses to make up for the property tax cuts from Proposition 2 1/2.

For the working masses Proposition 2 1/2 has meant, at best, exchanging one heavy tax burden for another. But for the capitalists, with their big property holdings, it has meant enormous tax breaks.

All these attacks on the working masses are being justified by the excuse that the state must give aid to the cities in order to prevent cutbacks in "essential services" due to Proposition 2 1/2. But when we read the fine print we find that the "essential service" the governor and legislature are primarily concerned about is police "protection." In fact the state budget will force reductions in all other services except for the police and fire departments. When we see the worldwide economic crisis of capitalism, when we see how the employers and government are squeezing the working masses to the wall to maintain their profits and prepare for war, then it is very understandable why the government is so concerned to maintain a high level of police protection. They know all too well that the conditions the rich and their government are forcing upon the masses will give rise to great revolts like the revolts of the working class youth taking place in Britain right now. They are revolting against the brutal poverty and unemployment the rich have forced on them, against the racist and fascist attacks of the police and fascist thugs, and against the whole rotten capitalist system. The U.S. government wants to build up the police forces to suppress the masses and maintain the rule of the capitalists.

The strike of the state workers has been a breath of fresh air in Massachusetts. It has been the first major battle of the public sector workers against the brutal offensive against them that has been launched under the name of Proposition 2lA. It is the answer that must be given to the layoffs, cutbacks and wage freezes that the government is trying to impose. The state workers' strike is an inspiration to all the public sector workers and workers in industry who are facing similar attacks. All workers should support the struggle of the state and other public sector workers. The Reagan administration has openly stated that it wants to make an example of the public sector workers in order to help all the capitalists squeeze their workers to the wall. A militant united struggle of the workers is the only answer to the offensive of the capitalists and their government.

[Photo: Massachusetts state workers march into the Massachusetts Statehouse to protest the withholding of their paychecks by the government.]

[Photo: Mass actions against the attacks of the government by government sector workers have broken out in various parts of the country. Above photo shows a portion of the 14,000 state workers in Minnesota who began a strike on July 20 in order to win their contract demands.]

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Vigilance against the gov't-organized racist anti-busing hysteria!

[Buffalo Workers' Voice masthead.]

(The following article is based on an article in the Buffalo Workers' Voice, newspaper of the Buffalo Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, June 15, 1981.)

The notorious nazi leader Karl Hand recently announced plans to hold an anti-busing ally in September. This nazi thug is known to have personal and political ties with Mayor Griffin. Today he is participating in the government's attempt to whip up a fascist anti-busing movement.

What a thorough exposure of the "respectable" anti-busing proponents, the government officials who are as racist to the core as Karl Hand despite their thin veneer of concern for the bogus right "of blacks and whites not to be force-bused." Immediately following judge Curtin's order that Phase IIIx go into effect in September, the newspapers splashed across their pages the hysterical ravings of the local politicians against ''forced busing," ''white flight" and ''desegregation putting a strain on the school budget." Mayor Griffin expressed his unity with Karl Hand when he blurted out that he wouldn't blame anyone" if they moved to the suburbs to avoid desegregation and that ''mandatory busing will discourage many suburban families pleased with the city's redevelopment from moving downtown." Since a children in the suburbs normally take buses to school, Mayor Griffins only expressing his own racist logic.

In fact the Phase IIIx plan involves the busing of only a small number of students (3,200) compared to the 25,001 students already taking buses to school. It can only be for the purpose of trying to set in motion a fascist anti-busing movement that these government officials are spewing forth this garbage about the horrors of busing. They take their cue from the Reagan government that has declared the "Civil Rights legislation outdated" and has stepped up its anti-busing rhetoric, thereby officially calling for black people to be driven back into barbaric Jim Crow segregation.

The Government Wants to Scapegoat the Black People for the Crisis in the School System

The government is once again trying to scapegoat the black people and integration for all the problems of the school system with the hope of spurring on a fascist movement. Mayor Griffin, the Buffalo Board of Education a id other government representatives hive taken every opportunity to blame the massive school closings in recent jars and the deterioration of the schools on the "costly" integration program. Today School Superintendent Reville is moaning that "We have problem financing the school system as it is...Phase IIIx is complicating it." And Griffin is appealing the order on the basis that integration is too costly.

Of course it is not the black people nor the limited integration measures which are to blame for the deterioration of the schools. It is the government of the rich that is to blame. During the current economic crisis, the government is handing more tax money to the banks and finance capitalists while cutting back on Essential services such as funding of schools. Reagan's program includes a 25% cut in federal money to the schools. The government is scapegoating the black people and integration to shift the blame away from the government and the rich and to try to set the fascist movement in motion.

Liberals and Open Fascists Hand in Hand

It is the entire government of the rich, all the politicians, police and courts that make a united effort to organize a fascist movement. To carry this out, the government uses vicious deception. With its liberal hand, the government appears to support integration while actually setting up conditions for the other hand, the open racists and fascists, to organize a fascist movement.

Federal Judge Curtin, for example, pretends to be a great friend of the black people and a supporter of integration. However, it is the same Judge Curtin and the bourgeois court system that has dragged the suit on for nine years inviting the fascists at every step of the way to try to organize fascist motion; that has called "school closings an important means of achieving integration"; and that has formulated, scrapped and reformulated "integration plans" to arouse maximum confusion among the people. Moreover, despite the fact that the court suit is nine years old, at least 13 schools will remain segregated after Phase IIIx goes into effect.

A most recent example of how the liberal and outright fascists work hand in glove is that the same Curtin who issued the Phase IIIx order has now allowed the open racist Griffin to appeal the order with the aim of creating all kinds of confusion among the parents and of arousing debate on the "fiscal burden" of integration plans. Naturally any democratic-minded person will support any integration that may occur when a busing plan goes into effect. But the reason that these busing plans are so mutilated and most often provide little actual integration is that the government of the rich is not interested in integrating the schools, but only in creating a racist movement.

Integration Is a Democratic Right of the Black People and Other Oppressed Nationalities

The government officials have made it clear that their opposition to busing is based solely on their opposition to the democratic right of the black people to integrated education. Recently in fact, statements have begun to be made that the officials will accept "forced busing" if it leads to "quality education," but that they will always be opposed to integration. For example, School Superintendent Reville proclaimed that "busing by itself is not acceptable anywhere for the purpose of racial balance...however, if there's a better education at the end of the bus ride...parents will make allowances." This attitude is a racist, anti-working class attitude aimed at disarming the people and paving the way for a fascist anti-busing movement.

Integration is a democratic demand raised by the black people in their struggle against the barbaric system of Jim Crow segregation. During the past three decades the black people rose up against the government which through its laws, courts, jails and police, had violently imposed segregation on the black people, keeping them in an inferior position in society (jobs, housing, education, etc.) and splitting the working class along race lines. Long and bitter experience has proven that segregated education is inevitably unequal and thus for decades the black people have fought tooth and nail against it. The working class supports the fight for school integration because it is a matter of striving to win what limited democratic rights are possible for the black people and other oppressed nationalities under the capitalist system. This democratic struggle provides a wider field for the class struggle. It assists to unite the working class in its battle against the capitalist class and its government.

This is the truth that the government officials want to keep from the masses.

The Democratic Masses Must Organize to Oppose the Government's Attempt to Breathe Life Into the Fascist Anti-Busing Movement

The fact is that despite the efforts of nearly every local politician and government official, the government has to date failed to whip up any hysteria among the people against busing in Buffalo. In March, a fascist anti-busing demonstration fell flat on its face. On the other hand, the masses of people in Buffalo recently expressed their anti-racist and anti-fascist sentiment in the January 15 demonstrations and other actions against the government's racist terror campaign. And more recently at the meeting held by the Board of Education, the parents in no way took up the anti-busing hysteria.

The black people and the working masses of Buffalo must be vigilant and organize against the government's attempts to get the anti-busing movement going in Buffalo.

The reactionary program and policy of the Reagan administration is the go-ahead for all the government's fascist anti-busing elements to get into motion. To spur the fascist anti-busing forces on, Reagan's Education Secretary announced in March that he "certainly would not oppose" legislation on a constitutional amendment to prohibit federal agencies from trying to bring about busing and that busing "isolates parents from the neighborhood schools." This is an open call to oppose integrated education, while raising the bogus "neighborhood' school concept" to justify segregating black children into the worst schools.

Further the Education Secretary explains that what is needed is more "discipline" and "standard," "especially in the inner city." So not only should black children be segregated in the worst schools, but also kept in "their place" with fascist discipline, according to this official of the Reagan administration.

More recently, the attorney general has made anti-busing remarks while the House, Democrats and Republicans united, has approved a measure that would bar Justice Department funds to pay for transporting a student to a school other than the school nearest the student's home. Despite their lack of success to date in Buffalo, the anti-busing elements with Reagan behind them are bound to keep trying.

Wherever the black people and the democratic masses have actively resisted the fascist anti-busing movement it has floundered and gone on the skids. The democratic masses must prepare public opinion against the anti-busing movement in favor of integration. They must get organized for struggle against the fascist anti-busing movement and other attacks organized against the black people by the government.

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Workers shut down Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant

Chrysler workers fight against concessions!

(The following leaflet was issued by the Detroit Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA on July 3, 1981.)

In the beginning of June, the Chrysler capitalists and the UAW announced that another COLA payment had been stolen from the Chrysler workers (as mandated in the January, 1981 concessions plan). This latest robbery a- mounted to $800 per worker and is but one more step in extracting more than $17,000 in "sacrifices" from each Chrysler worker over the life of the three-year contract.

Fighting mad over this latest outrage, the workers at the Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant took matters into their own hands and staged a two-day protest against the hated concessions and, in particular, against the latest "COLA robbery." On Friday, June 12 and Monday, June 15, thousands of workers refused to report for work, forcing Chrysler to cancel the production of almost 1,300 Omni and Horizon cars.

For more than 1 1/2 years, the Chrysler workers have been viciously attacked with "concessions" being jammed down their throats by the auto billionaires, by the government and by the UAW trade union bureaucrats, led by arch-sellout Doug Fraser. The everyday experience of the Chrysler workers has shown that "concessions" have not saved a single job but have paved the way for further job elimination. Since the signing of the 1979 auto contract, six Chrysler plants have been permanently closed and several more are as good as being closed (just look at Mack Avenue Stamping and Eldon Gear and Axle). Today, more than 40,000 Chrysler workers remain on permanent layoff with little hope of ever working in an auto plant again.

At the same time, workers "lucky" enough to have jobs are driven like dogs under a vicious productivity drive. The assembly lines are sped up and jobs are constantly being combined. To enforce this productivity drive, the auto billionaires are carrying out a program of constant harassment and fascist discipline. Even while thousands of jobless auto workers are out in the streets, other workers in plants like Belvidere, Illinois and Detroit's Jefferson Assembly are forced to work mandatory overtime (nine hours a day, six or seven days' a week). And, month after month, the Chrysler workers see millions of "concessions dollars" being spent for more job-eliminating robots and computers.

Since the 1979 Chrysler contract, monopolies all across the country have been demanding "Chrysler style" concessions from the workers. This is part of the monopolists' overall wage-cutting offensive aimed at driving the workers into deeper poverty. Workers in auto parts, rubber workers, truckers, public sector workers and others have all faced wage and benefit cuts. Using the Chrysler "example" the presidents of Ford and GM are calling on their workers to be ready to make "sacrifices."

But the workers will never accept the capitalists' arrogant demands for "sacrifice and concessions." The mass struggle of the Belvidere, Illinois workers shows that the auto workers are beginning to rise in struggle against the hated concessions. And hardly a week had gone by when the workers at Chrysler's Vernor Tool and Die plant in Detroit staged a one-day wildcat strike against the contracting out of jobs.

In developing their struggle against the auto monopolies, the workers face a major obstacle -- the sabotage and treachery of Doug Fraser and the other top UAW hacks. Every step of the way, Doug Fraser and co. have aided the Chrysler capitalists in their campaign to impose concessions upon the workers. Only six months ago, when Chrysler demanded more concessions from the workers, Fraser and his boys eagerly tore up the old concessions agreement and forced new and more brutal concessions down the workers' throats. They did everything in their power to sabotage and block the workers' struggle. They sent blackmail letters to the workers' homes. They refused to hold union meetings to discuss the concessions. And during the voting they stuffed the ballot boxes.

But now, with the Belvidere and other Chrysler workers taking action to combat the concessions, Fraser sees the handwriting on the wall. This is why he has begun to make "militant" statements in order to cover over his rotten treachery. Fraser has come out to say, "Chrysler is back in the strike zone." What double talk! Doug Fraser has no intention of waging any struggle against Chrysler! Only days after Fraser and his crew made the above statement, they came out to denounce the Belvidere workers' struggle as "unauthorized and illegal." And right now, Fraser and the other hacks are plotting to extend "Chrysler style" concessions to the workers at Ford and GM. The first fruit of the betrayal was the 20% pay cut recently forced upon the Steel Division workers in the Ford Rouge complex. This sellout took place only one week after Local 600 President Mike Rinaldi made a similar "militant" statement, "We will never give concessions to Ford." This shows the auto workers can not trust the UAW hacks for a single minute!

The path of militant mass struggle of the Belvidere workers is absolutely correct! Now is the time to get organized for mass action! Forward on the path of mass struggle against the attacks of the auto billionaires!

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Bronx, NY:

Police Assassins Pardoned

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, June-July, 1981.)

On May 16, a Bronx grand jury completely exonerated two police officers of any responsibility for their brutal shooting of two Hispanic youths (innocent bystanders) in a Bronx roller disco on March 21. One of these youths was killed, the other was seriously wounded. In this typical phony "full investigation" the two police officers were found to be "correct" in their "use of deadly force" and commended for using "recommended legal procedures" in this racist crime. Dozens of eyewitnesses testified to the fact that the two police officers, Robert Visconti and James McGeough of the Bronx Task Force, completely disregarded the lives and safety of the people in the crowded roller skating rink.

On March 21, the two police officers in the typical gangster style of the NYPD, barged into the packed roller disco in the Bronx. They claimed that they were told that a youth, whom there was a complaint against was in the disco. Without warning, they fired a fusillade of 14 bullets hitting two innocent bystanders. Of these two Hispanic youths, Herbert Torres, 17 years old, was killed -- shot five times; and Juan Gonzalez, 17 years old, was seriously wounded -- shot four times.

The grand jury simply threw out the testimony of close to 40 witnesses in handing down its "not guilty" ruling, showing once again that the courts and "investigations" of the rich will never stay the hand of the fascist police, because the racist and fascist attacks are the policy of the government itself. The police murders and attacks on the black and working class youth are not a chance occurrence but an integral part of the government's growing fascism, part of the capitalist offensive against the working masses.

The two police gangsters of the Bronx Task Force were diligently carrying out the government's policy of fascist terror against the working class and people, especially the youth. Thus these police henchmen, routinely pursuing another youth, in real fascist style stormed the roller skating rink, prepared to shoot first and ask questions later. The recently declared "war on crime" simply codifies the fascist policy of the government and gives the approval beforehand for every manner of outrage carried out by the police.

The rubber-stamping of the bestial and atrocious crimes carried out by the police shows that the working class and people cannot rely on the courts of the rich for justice. The oppressed masses will never receive justice from the government, courts and the "investigations" of the rich. The masses must stand prepared to fight these racist and fascist attacks blow for blow, relying on their own strength and organization and directing this struggle squarely against the monopoly capitalist exploiters and the oppressive state machinery. Mass active resistance is the only way to fight the brutal police murders and racist attacks!

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The honeymoon continues:

The Democrats embrace Reagan's war budget

[The Buffalo Anti-Imperialist Newsletter masthead.]

(The following article is reprinted from The Buffalo Anti-Imperialist Newsletter, newsletter of the Union of Anti-Imperialist Students, June 15, 1981.)

Over the past few weeks the House of Representatives and the Senate have given their seal of approval to the Reagan administration's war budget. Billions of dollars have been slashed from programs like food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits, while the military budget soars to an all-time high of over $136 billion. This budget will pay for more weapons of mass destruction, for research and development of new weapon systems like the MX missile and the B-l bombers. Yet more money, over and above the $136 billion already approved, will go towards further beefing up U.S. imperialism's war machine in the form of money to pay military personnel and construction which is covered by separate bills. While mind-boggling sums are being spent on preparing for aggressive imperialist war, over $1 billion has been slashed from the food stamp program and similar cuts are being made from the other social programs. Meanwhile, the actual need for these programs is bound to increase in the coming years, as the masses face growing impoverishment due to unemployment and inflation. This budget is truly a budget of fierce attack on the masses, a budget to serve the rich, a budget of imperialist war.

By giving their wholehearted support to the Reagan administration, the Democrats like a herd of sheep have made good their promise to give "full cooperation" to Reagan's plans for ''national renewal." Democratic Party spokesmen have tried to blame the sheep-like behavior of the Democrats on two things. On the one hand they say that "conservative" Democrats are to blame. If this is the case why did that prince of liberals, Senator Kennedy, and in fact every single Democrat in the Senate, vote on the fourteenth of May, without a whimper of opposition, to increase military spending to another all-time high.

The Democrats would also like to blame their slavish obedience to their imperialist masters on the masses of ordinary people. Speaking about the so-called lack of organized opposition to Reaganite reaction, Tip O'Neill said that the Democrats' hands were tied: "the opposition out there has not jelled." This man must be blind drunk -- as usual. Since the day Reagan was elected the people have been showing their opposition to Reagan and his cabinet of thieves and butchers in rallies and marches all across the country. When Haig spoke recently at Syracuse University he was greeted by hundreds of angry people shouting "we need Haig like we need the plague." When Reagan spoke at the Notre Dame Commencement the people were standing outside with placards that read: "Reagan is a fascist" and "Haig is a butcher." On May 3rd, 50,000 marched in Washington to express their anger at U.S. support of the fascist regime of El Salvador.

No, Mr. "liberal" O'Neill, the masses of people do not support the Reagan administration and, unlike you and all the Democratic Party, will fight in whatever way they can, every step the Reagan administration takes in preparing for fascism at home and imperialist war abroad.

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A Space Shuttle for Imperialist War Preparations

It is reported that in September there will be another launching of the space shuttle. The following article is from The Buffalo Anti-Imperialist Newsletter, dated June 15, 1981.

On April 12, 1981 the NASA space shuttle Columbia was launched at a cost of $10 billion. U.S. imperialism has developed this space transport whose primary user will be the U.S. Defense Department. Both NASA and the government are openly bragging about the terrific benefits of the space shuttle in terms of military competition with their chief imperialist rival, the Soviet Union. Even the astronauts who flew Space (Weapons) Transport Systems-1 stressed its military applications in their numerous post-flight self-congratulatory speeches and chauvinist ravings. The space shuttle will be used to launch spy satellites and "high energy killer lasers" among other things and NASA said that the "Space Transport System could turn the heavens into a scientific laboratory, a weightless workshop and perhaps even a distant battleground."

The two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the U.S., are arming themselves to the teeth to prepare for war. Both are pouring billions of dollars into their space program trying to turn even "the heavens...into a distant battleground." Simultaneously, the superpowers carry out chauvinist campaigns, each boasting "superiority"over the other. At the time of the launching and landing of the Space Shuttle Columbia, U.S. imperialism filled the airwaves with the most disgusting chauvinist propaganda. By their account, the space shuttle was the "pride of America," the masses of people were supposed to feel like cheerleaders at a football game rooting for "our side." But this raving chauvinist propaganda was a big flop. All the frenzied arming and all their fiendish plans for war are meeting with more and more resistance and opposition from the people in the U.S. and all over the world.

Down with the war preparations of U.S. imperialism and all the imperialist powers.

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Reagan courts South African racists

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, June-July, 1981.)

On May 14, the foreign minister of the hated apartheid regime of South Africa, Roelof Botha, visited the United States and was dined and courted by Reagan and his crew in the State Department. The "friendly" talks held by these fascist chieftains demonstrates the barefaced support which the U.S. imperialist gives to the government of South Africa, a government which savagely subjugates the Azanian people under the racist system of apartheid....

It is customary that following the inauguration of every president in the White House, the various bourgeois heads of state, tyrants and fascists from far and wide, come in pilgrimages to Washington, renew their pledges of loyalty to the U.S. imperialist superpower, receive fresh orders, and are dispatched to their respective countries to accumulate more blood debts against the peoples.

Visits by the world's leading tyrants to their masters in the White House are by no means unique to the present administration. Indeed, Jimmy Carter and the Democrats welcomed this same racist dog, Roelof Botha, in 1978 in the White House. And of course, the recent visit warmed the hearts of the Democratic [Party] chiefs and the fascist and racist cutthroat gangs in the U.S.

The U.S. monopoly capitalists are no strangers to racism and fascism, either at home or abroad. The home rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class is very much permeated with violent, racist and fascist suppression of the working and oppressed masses. The government carries out this suppression itself, through its police, and through the numerous fascist cutthroats it educates, arms and instigates against the black people and other working people. And right here itself, it organizes and trains mercenary marauders who are then rented out to regimes like the South African regime.

And with the recent visit of Botha, the Washington chiefs are consolidating their plans with the apartheid regime to try to extinguish the heroic national liberation struggles of the cruelly subjugated black people of Azania. They are moving to forestall the armed liberation struggle of the black people, both by trying their old hand at massacres or by means of the "new elections" [in Namibia], by which they are reckoning to compromise the liberation fighters and rob them of the fruit of their long years of untold sacrifice and steadfast heroism in confronting the thoroughly equipped racist army in South Africa.

U.S. imperialism has heavy economic, military and political interests in South Africa, which is their principal outpost in the Southern African region. South Africa is one of the main sources of gold, diamonds and rare metals which are crucial for the U.S. aerospace industry, missiles and other weaponry. South Africa also provides the U.S. with a reliable outpost to control the sea route between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, a vital link to the Persian Gulf oil, so coveted by U.S. imperialism. And South Africa is also an outpost to launch aggression against the African countries in the region.

Thus, the visit by Botha to Washington, on the invitation of the Washington chiefs, serves their all-round racist, fascist and imperialist designs.

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NO TO THE DIABLO CANYON NUCLEAR PLANT!

The following leaflet, produced on June 11 by the San Francisco Bay area Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA, was distributed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles where, on June 14 18,000 people rallied against the U.S. imperialist nuclear weapons and nuclear energy program.

The Pacific, Gas and Electric (PG&E) moneybags are preparing to bring into production the nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo. But a powerful fight has developed against these plans and against the entire U.S. nuclear program. Especially after the near catastrophe at Three Mile Island (TMI), the mass opposition has grown and continues to arouse large numbers of people. The second anniversary of the accident at TMI was marked by a march of 10,000 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to denounce the plans to reopen TMI. And on May 19 in San Luis Obispo 1,200 people protested against Diablo and disrupted the sham hearings organized jointly by PG&E and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to whitewash and license the reactor.

[The leaflet continues by describing how the nuclear power program has been developed as part and parcel of the U.S. imperialist nuclear weapons program. It then gives a particular example of this relationship. -- ed.]

Diablo Canyon Serves the Nuclear Program of the U.S. Imperialists

Today, in preparation to launch new aggressions, the U.S. imperialists are trying to ensure a secure supply of electric power and fuel for their "defense" industries and their aggressive war machine. At a time when the plunder of foreign oil has proved vulnerable to the just liberation struggles of the world's people, and when supplies of coal have once again proven vulnerable to the strike struggles of the American coal miners, nuclear power stands out as a particularly suitable means for generating electric power without interference from the revolutionary struggles of the people. For example, Diablo Canyon is designed to operate for months without refueling and can be easily "secured" from the people in its isolated coastal position. In this way Diablo will free up liquid fuels for bombers and tanks and will fulfill its special mission of electrifying the two key centers of California's high-technology war industry -- the Silicon Valley electronics and Los Angeles Basin aerospace complexes -- while producing plutonium for the U.S. imperialists.

Producing this power at Diablo shows the total disregard of the rich billionaires and their government for the health and safety of the people. Many more deaths will result from the mining and milling of radioactive fuels. Enormous quantities of deadly waste will be produced for which there is no reliable method of storage or disposal. Diablo itself is a nuclear time bomb. The PG&E builders of this plant have been absolved from the responsibility of solving any key safety questions. Diablo Canyon rests astride a major active earthquake fault capable of a temblor (earthquake) 10 times more powerful than that for which the plant was designed. A major accident would have catastrophic results for the 45,000 residents of San Luis Obispo just 12 miles away.

PG&E and the NRC deliberately covered up this problem for years. However, in 1971 they were forced to concede that the Hosgri fault system was only 2.5 miles from the site and had been deemed capable of a magnitude 7.5 quake by the U.S. Geological Survey. The NRC and PG&E then changed their position from trying to deny this problem to trying to define this problem away. For example, they collaborated to pressure the USGS to reduce its quake magnitude estimate for the fault. An NRC staff memo states that no safety problem will be allowed to interfere with the licensing of Diablo Canyon because of the impact on ' 'the viability of continued operation of plants at other sites" and "because of the large financial loss involved and the severe impact such action would have on the nuclear industry." Such total disregard for the masses of people comes as no surprise from the U.S. imperialists who murder tens of thousands of workers every year in their mines, mills and factories and who have ravaged whole continents and committed such genocidal aggressions as in Korea and Viet Nam, Central America, Iran and other countries.

The activization of this reactor will mean additional profiteering for PG&E and automatic rate increases for millions of Californians. The government of the rich has mandated that this tribute will be gouged from the people to pay PG&E for construction cost overruns amounting to 500% or over $1.3 billion -- nearly $500 million of which will go in the form of interest payments to the big Wall Street and Montgomery Street financiers. This will ensure a 30% profit increase for PG&E for several decades to come! It is no wonder that the utilities love nuclear power. In 1973-77 the electric rates of nuclear utilities (those deriving more than 5% of their power from nuclear plants) increased at an average rate of 27% higher than their nonnuclear counterparts. The fantastic sums bled from the masses of people through their utility bills do not even include the colossal costs for disposing of the radioactive wastes nor for decommissioning the contaminated plants -- let alone the costs of such an accident as at TMI. These vast rate hikes which make the people pay for the energy program of U.S. imperialism are only one part of the soaring burden of taxation on the American working class and oppressed people. In this way the people are made to pay for all the war preparations of the rich.

At this time the U.S. imperialists are attempting to remove any and all obstacles to bringing nuclear plants on line immediately so they can bulldoze ahead with their program of frenzied war preparations.

PG&E is pushing to start up Diablo Canyon and Metropolitan Edison is clamoring to reopen TMI. As well, the new chieftain of reaction, Ronald Reagan, has brought back Joseph Hendrie to again head the NRC, the federal agency which licenses, promotes and whitewashes the nuclear industry. How shameless, for Hendrie was head of the NRC under Carter, too, at the time of the TMI incident. He earned notoriety for arrogantly covering up the crimes of Metropolitan Edison which owns the TMI power plant. As soon as he returned to office, Hendrie pledged to streamline the licensing procedure for putting more nuclear power plants into operation. True to his word, on May 19 the NRC cut two months from the licensing process to speed up licensing of a dozen new reactors.

Streamlining the licensing procedure is also aimed at wiping away many of the nominal environmental procedures and regulations which exist today and thus to further weaken a system which has already produced the TMI accident and Diablo, an accident waiting to happen, as well as innumerable other leaks and malfunctions. This elimination of safety regulations is part of the bipartisan program of reindustrialization supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

The Democratic Party and Its Flunkeys Are Enemies of the Anti-Nuclear Movement

The movement against Diablo and the nuclear program has brought new sections of the masses into struggle against the imperialist fiends. In order to tone down this struggle, to destroy its militancy and convert the movement into a pressure group for this or that special interest of the energy industry, a section of the Democratic Party and its flunkeys seek to lead the anti-nuclear movement. They want to divert the movement from fighting its real enemies, the imperialists and exploiters, and instead reconcile the movement to these fiends and have everyone vote for this or that smooth- talking imperialist political liar like Senator Kennedy or Governor Jerry Brown.

Indeed, the flunkeys of the Democratic Party do their best to eliminate slogans against the nuclear program at all. They promote that its wrong to be "anti-nuclear," to say nothing of anti-imperialist. They say hat such an approach is not "positive." What they mean by "positive" is to join with the monopolies in a chauvinist alliance to "reindustrialize," "solve the energy crisis" and help the capitalists to develop "alternate energy" sources. So while the Democrat Party as a whole follows the Carterite energy police of promoting nuclear energy and higher oil prices under the slogan of "alternative energy" the Democratic Party "liberals" try to convince the masses that "alternative energy" is the answer to nuclear energy.

This is the type of program Jerry Brown and friends promoted for the anti-nuclear movement in California. Instead of developing mass struggle, a whole program was organized which advised the government to finance alternative energy projects and to offer financial incentives to the corporations for conservation. Their greatest "accomplishment" to date is a tax credit for those who use solar power to heat their swimming pools. Allegedly with the passage of such a program, they said, there would be no need for nuclear power in California What rubbish! All the passage of this program meant is that California was getting further in step with the militarization of U.S. society by utilizing all sources of energy, including nuclear power, while conserving and stockpiling the fossil fuels for war. Such a program has in fact accelerated the nuclear power program because it was intended to stop nearly all mass struggle against it. The imminent activation of Diablo Canyon clearly show that this is true and points to the treacherous nature of the program of the Democratic Party hacks.

The Democratic Party and its flunkeys are saying: Don't fight the monopolies. Instead, give them concessions and subsidies and work with them and invent schemes to ease them into new sources of energy without harming their profits. Hogwash! The energy monopolies are swimming in untold billions of dollars in profits. There is no common interest between these billionaire exploiters and the masses. Only by stern struggle against the monopolists and imperialists can the nuclear program be fought.

Workers, young people, anti-nuclear activists! Persist in the path mass struggle against the U.S. imperialist nuclear program. Work hard to draw new sections of the masses into the anti-imperialist struggle. Put opposition to imperialism squarely in the center of the struggle the nuclear program.

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U.S. military sales to China:

A Dangerous New Phase in the Aggressive U.S.-China Alliance

Last month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig visited Beijing for three days of talks with top Chinese officials. At a June 16 press conference on the last day of the talks, Haig declared that the talks had been "unusually significant and successful,'' foreshadowing "the prospect that the Reagan administration will be marked by a major expansion of Sino-American friendship and cooperation.''

These talks were indeed unusually ominous. They foreshadow a major expansion of the U.S.-China collaboration in the military, intelligence and other spheres. This means the expansion of the aggressive and warmongering alliance between U.S. imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism in the growing inter-imperialist rivalry with Soviet social-imperialism. This means the expansion of the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance which is directed against the revolutionary struggle of the working class and oppressed peoples of the world.

The Unfolding of the Counter-Revolutionary U.S.-China Military Alliance

The smell of gunpowder hung in the air above the General Haig/Deng Xiaoping talks. It was made public knowledge that in the secret meetings behind closed doors military matters took first place on the agenda. At the banquets toasts were made by both sides to the "importance of the strategic relationship between China and the U.S.'' And the main practical fruit of the discussions were the further steps taken towards broad military cooperation between the Pentagon and the Chinese military.

General Haig went to Beijing as an arms merchant offering to initiate sales of U.S. "lethal'' weapons to the Chinese. In turn the Chinese revisionists cordially accommodated their guest by agreeing to begin purchases of what U.S. arms they can afford. According to the State Department these sales will most likely start off with antiaircraft and anti-tank weapons and extend to other types of weapons later on. Thus, the direct arming of the backward army of the new Chinese warlords by U.S. imperialism is getting rapidly underway.

During his trip, Haig also made public the fact that the U.S. CIA had set up two spy stations in northwest China to spy on Soviet missile tests and military communications. The Chinese leaders volunteered to let the CIA set up these high-technology intelligence gathering stations to replace similar stations in Iran that were shut down by the heroic Iranian revolution in 1979. State Department officials indicate that these spy stations are only an indicator of the potential cooperation which is being developed between the U.S. and Chinese intelligence agencies.

While in Beijing, Haig also promised legislation to change China's official status on the U.S. books to "k friendly country'' or "non-aligned country.'' This change will make China eligible for favorable trading and other privileges and will facilitate weapons sales and other dealings between U.S. imperialism and revisionist China.

In short, as the headline of the U.S. imperialist mouthpiece U.S. News and World Report proclaimed in triumph, Haig's trip put in place the final pieces of "An Alliance with Peking in All but Name.'' This marks a dangerous new phase in the development of the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance. Haig's trip and the Reagan administration's decision to sell "lethal'' weapons to China marks an end to the professed policy of so-called "balance'' between Chinese and Soviet social-imperialism. Nixon, Ford and Carter all pursued this fraudulent policy with the aim of maintaining a thin disguise over the warlike and aggressive alliance that they were unfolding between Washington and Beijing against the Soviet new tsars and against the people of the world.

Now arch-war dog Reagan has torn down the signboard of "balance'' and has come out openly in favor of arming Chinese social-imperialism to the teeth. This change in policy is being justified with openly warmongering code words such as that arming China is a "strategic imperative'' for U.S. imperialism, that it is part of the Reaganite strategy of building a "strategic consensus'' against the Soviet Union, and so forth. In this light, Reagan's China policy can only be seen as part and parcel of the entire Reaganite foreign policy of feverish militarism and unbridled imperialism.

The U.S.-China Alliance Is a Bloodthirsty Alliance of Bandits for Aggression and War

"Americans and Chinese," General Haig proclaimed in Beijing, "can work together to oppose efforts by other nations to achieve global or regional hegemony." In other words, U.S. imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism "can work together" to build up their military arsenals and confront the equally aggressive Soviet social-imperialism and achieve their own enslaving strategies of "global and regional hegemony." The U.S.-China alliance is an alliance between imperialist wolves for the enslavement of the peoples. It is a bloodthirsty alliance of bandits for aggression and war.

Reagan, Haig and the Pentagon strategists are playing the "China card" to the hilt. They are activating their alliance with social-imperialist China as a bulwark to protect U.S. neo-colonial slavery in Asia, Africa and elsewhere across the globe, to stave off the competitive power of Soviet social-imperialism and to suppress the liberation struggles of the peoples.

Meanwhile, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese warlords are hitching their wagon to the war chariot of U.S. imperialism with the objective of transforming China into a modern imperialist superpower and of carving out Chinese social-imperialism's own spheres of domination.

The unfolding of such a sordid counter-revolutionary alliance between these two aggressive monsters poses a great danger to the working and oppressed masses the world over. In Asia in particular, the U.S.-China alliance has today been put into action as a new bulwark of imperialist slavery and aggressive war.

U.S. imperialism's designs on the people of Asia were dealt an enormous blow by the heroic liberation wars of the Indochinese peoples. Since that time the Chinese revisionist rulers have been working hand in hand with the U.S. imperialists to repair the damage. With the aim of expanding their own Asian sphere of influence, the Chinese social-imperialists have become direct accomplices of U.S. State Department strategy and a funnel for U.S. arms, dollars and imperialist influence. According to reports, one of the principal topics of discussion during Haig's trip was the detailed coordination of the aggressive Asian strategies of U.S. imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism.

Though emerging triumphant in its glorious liberation war against U.S. aggression, Viet Nam has fallen into a conciliatory attitude towards imperialism in general and is falling prey to the designs of Soviet social-imperialism in particular. Moreover, Viet Nam has been utilized to extend Russian social-imperialist influence in Laos. It is also maintaining an occupation force in Cambodia, trampling on the freedom of the Cambodian people. Reportedly, Haig discussed with the Chinese leaders their joint strategy towards Viet Nam and Southeast Asia. The U.S. imperialists and the Chinese social- imperialists are jointly striving to strangle Viet Nam, drive out the Soviet social-imperialist influence from Indochina and place all of the Indochinese people under the U.S.-China jackboot.

U.S. official policy is to give undeclared support for the bloody border provocations which have been carried out by some 250,000 Chinese troops against Viet Nam over the last two years. On his trip, Haig also discussed with the Chinese leaders the channeling of more U.S. supplied arms and money by way of Beijing to the forces of the bloodstained despotic Chinese lackey, Pol Pot, as well as to the remnants of the fascist U.S. imperialist puppet forces, the so-called "Khmer Serei," which are fighting the Vietnamese occupiers in Cambodia. Haig also discussed further coordinating policy with Beijing towards the pro-imperialist ASEAN alliance of the Southeast Asian governments of Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The common U.S.-China policy is to beef up the fascist dictatorships in these countries and to strengthen the ASEAN alliance in order to bring pressure to bear against Viet Nam and against the liberation struggles of the other peoples of Southeast Asia.

In relation to Afghanistan, Haig's trip also marked a further activation of the U.S.-China alliance. Soviet social- imperialism has brutally invaded Afghanistan and is waging a genocidal war against the freedom-loving Afghan people. In response, both the U.S. imperialists and Chinese social- imperialists are posing as the alleged champions of Afghan freedom. They strike this pose not out of any concern for the genuine liberation of the Afghan people, but with the objective of subordinating the Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupiers to their own imperialist aims, and to strengthen neo-colonial influence over the reactionary Pakistani and other neighboring governments.

With this aim, Haig discussed with the Chinese leaders in Beijing new steps to funnel U.S. supplied guns and dollars into the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. As well, during Haig's stay in Beijing, the U.S. State Department announced a resumption in military assistance to Pakistan and a new agreement with the Pakistani government which includes some $3 billion in military "aid." Previously the Pakistanis had rejected this offer of "aid" because their ambitions ran counter to certain of their instructions from their U.S. imperialist taskmasters. Interestingly enough, according to U.S. press reports, it was only with the assistance of China and the visit of Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang to Pakistan on June 1 that the Pakistani government became convinced to go along with this new U.S. arms agreement.

These are but a few features of the workings of the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance in Asia, which, along with Soviet social-imperialism, is a principal source of the continuing bloodshed and the enormous suffering of the long-oppressed peoples of Asia.

The Taiwan Question

The imperialist and revisionist gentlemen behind the U.S.-China alliance are arch-criminals, and the alliance which these cutthroats are unfolding is based on the most cynical calculations of imperialist profit and nothing else. This fact is what is brought home by the ongoing backbiting between Washington and Beijing over the Taiwan question.

Ronald Reagan built his entire political career as a mouthpiece of rabid anti-communism. Even after fascist Nixon and other anti-communist crusaders had "seen the light" about Mao's China as a potential ally of U.S. imperialism, Reagan still clung to the jingoist rhetoric of a bitter China- hater. During his election campaign last August, Reagan condemned the so-called "betrayal" of the so-called "Republic of China" to "Red China" and promised to reestablish official relations with the fascist U.S. puppet regime in Taipei.

But now that Reagan has taken over running the affairs of the U.S. imperialist state, he has quietly dropped his threats to reestablish official relations with Taipei and is promising "a major expansion of friendship and cooperation" with Beijing.

What this demonstrates is that the aggressive U.S.-China alliance is essential for the profits and strategy of the U.S. imperialist ruling class. No matter what campaign promises, no matter whether the administration is Democrat or Republican or whether it flaunts the "human rights" and pacifist demagogy of a Carter or the anticommunist and jingoist ravings of a Reagan, the expansion of the counterrevolutionary U.S.-China alliance remains a fact.

At the same time U.S. imperialism has not given up its neo-colonial outpost on the Chinese island of Taiwan. On the contrary, it continues to prop up the Kuomintang/Chiang clique as a means of profit and as a lever to blackmail and humiliate their "friends" in Beijing. In fact, just prior to Haig's trip, the Pentagon was preparing new sophisticated fighter plane shipments to Taiwan, and Reagan's allies in the Congress were initiating a new round of debate on whether or not to reestablish official ties with Taipei.

In response, Chinese propaganda struck a pose of bitter resentment. In a June 12 People s Daily article, just two days before Haig's arrival, the Chinese leadership declared that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan stood in the way of any "further strategic relations between the two countries" and that "China has made it explicitly clear that it would refuse to buy U.S. arms than consent to a U.S. arms sale to Taiwan." On this point the People's Daily sternly warned that: "This is a principled issue and China does not barter on matters of principle."

This article was reprinted in the June 22 issue of Beijing Review, the very same issue that reported on the talks with Haig in which the Chinese agreed to U.S. arms sales! In a word, the Chinese revisionists did not simply "barter principles," but got down on their hands and knees to beg for the U.S. arms sales at the expense of the humiliating violation of the sovereignty of the Chinese people by arrogant U.S. imperialism.

Such is the beautiful "friendship and cooperation" between gangsters!

Down With the U.S.-China Aggressive Alliance! Down With All Imperialism and Social-imperialism!

Today it is the arch-reactionary Ronald Reagan and the ultra-revisionist henchman Deng Xiaoping who are feverishly pursuing the warmongering U.S.-China alliance. But this alliance has been in the making for a long time. In fact, this was not Haig's first visit to Beijing and as he put it, he has "a lot of old friends" in China. A decade ago, Haig was a top lieutenant of the Nixon administration and was part of the Kissinger and Nixon pilgrimages to Beijing in 1971 and 1972. At that time Mao Zedong shamelessly embraced these arch-fascist war criminals as Nixon's, Kissinger's and General Haig's bombs fell like rain on the heroic peoples of Indochina.

Both Mao Zedong and various strategists of U.S. imperialism had long sought a U.S.-China alliance. For decades Mao had sought such an alliance in order to realize his dreams of building up a powerful, capitalist Chinese state. By the early 1970's, Mao advanced his ultra-revisionist theory of "three worlds" which is a theory against the revolution and socialism in general and to justify a counterrevolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism in particular.

And for their part, the U.S. imperialists, including some of the most extreme anti-communists and previously rabid China-haters such as Nixon (and today Reagan), have seen in Mao's China a valuable ally for the realization of U.S. ^world hegemony. Thus, today's counter-revolutionary plotting between Haig and Deng Xiaoping is but a further realization of the path dreamed of and pioneered by Mao and Nixon before.

The Workers' Advocate adamantly condemns the U.S.-China alliance as an alliance for aggression, imperialist slavery and war. It is a counter-revolutionary alliance which is part of the dance of imperialist alliances that poses a great danger to the working class and the people of the world. The Workers' Advocate holds that the struggle against aggression and war must be directed against all imperialism. It must be directed at the destruction of the biggest assassins and hangmen of the people, directed against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, against the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance, and all imperialism.

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SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR

Reagan is quietly expanding U.S. intervention

(The following article is reprinted from the Boston Worker, newspaper of the Boston Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA, July 12, 1981.)

Ever since the Reagan administration's rabid warmongering against the people of El Salvador in February and March aroused a giant wave of protest across the U.S. and around the world, the government and capitalist news media have hushed up what the U.S. imperialists have been doing in El Salvador. However, when U.S. imperialism talks less about El Salvador, it doesn't mean that they have given up their aggression. They simply go about it more quietly to deceive the people. Reagan has, in fact, sent more U.S. military advisors to El Salvador and further increased military aid to the fascist junta which is slaughtering the people. The U.S. imperialists have also stepped up their aid to the military dictatorships in Guatemala and Honduras to suppress the revolutions which are developing in those countries and to use those governments' armies against the workers and peasants in El Salvador. In the last five months, the U.S. puppet regime in Honduras has also launched border raids against Nicaragua.

In the last 20 months, the fascist regime in El Salvador, directed by U.S. military advisors and armed with weapons of mass destruction, have murdered some 23,000 workers, peasants and other patriotic Salvadorians. Thousands more have been murdered in Guatemala and Honduras. Yet all this terrorism of the imperialists and military dictators has not been able to stop the revolutionary struggle of the brave Salvadorian people nor the movements in Guatemala and Honduras. The revolutionary workers and peasants in El Salvador have inflicted one defeat after another on the army and there are whole provinces where the army only controls the ground it stands on.

In a desperate attempt to save their empire in Central America, an empire which has been crumbling especially since the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, the U.S. imperialists are preparing even further aggression not only against El Salvador but also against the people of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The Reagan administration is once again trying to float the discredited bogeyman of the Russian and Cuban arms theory to justify more weapons, more "advisors," more troops to this region. The government is preparing for a new draft to force the American youth to fight aggressive wars in Central America and other parts of the world. This fall the government will begin training 10,000 people to man the draft boards.

No matter how much Reagan may proclaim that he is fighting against "Russian intervention" in El Salvador, it is abundantly clear that Reagan, the unabashed spokesman for the rich, is fighting to protect the empire and profits of the American billionaires and their friends, the Salvadorian oligarchy. All El Salvador is owned by an oligarchy of 14 wealthy families and the American multinational corporations. The peasants have been driven off their land 'and forced to work on coffee and cotton plantations for an income of less than $120 per year. While the peasants slave to produce coffee and cotton for export to the U.S. and Germany, three-quarters of their children suffer from malnutrition because they can not afford food. In the cities, the workers are paid about $3 per day to produce calculators for Texas Instruments and lingerie for Maiden- form and other such things, all of which are shipped out of the country to be sold at huge profits by the multinational corporations. The Salvadorian workers and peasants have risen up to overthrow this rotten system of exploitation. They are not fighting and dying by the thousands to see the U.S. imperialists replaced by the Russian social- imperialists. No! They are fighting for their freedom.

The American people remember Viet Nam and see that Reagan is escalating U.S. aggression in El Salvador in the same way Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon did in Viet Nam and Indochina. It makes the workers' blood boil to see the U.S. imperialists again preparing to send them or their sons off to slaughter their class brothers in yet another country. The Salvadorian workers and peasants are fighting the same enemy as the American workers, the same U.S. imperialists, the same monopoly capitalists who are squeezing the American workers to the wall, shooting the black people in the streets and preparing to draft the youth. We must vigorously support the Salvadorian people and fight here at home against the U.S. imperialist aggressors.

Mass Struggle Is the Only Way to Combat U.S. Aggression and War Preparations

The system of U.S. imperialism has not changed from the time of Viet Nam. Just as with Viet Nam, the imperialist intervention and aggression in Central America must be met by the development of a powerful, revolutionary mass struggle. However, in the face of this burning need, the liberal Democrats are coming forward to say, "Don't worry about demonstrations and other actions because we will stop military aid to the Salvador junta in Congress." This rhetoric is just a trick to stop the mass struggle. The "left wing" of the Democratic Party did the same thing last year with the draft registration. They told the youth, "Don't demonstrate. Lobby your Congressmen. We'll stop this in Congress." However, as soon as school let out for the summer and the youth were dispersed, this Democratic opposition collapsed. The draft registration bill passed through Congress with flying colors.

This lesson demonstrates that the Democrats do not oppose the defense of the U.S. imperialist empire. They do not oppose the imperialist aims of Reagan's policy in El Salvador and Central America. They want to use the movement to pressure Reagan to adopt a more deceptive policy, to put a Carterite "human rights" mask on the bloodstained junta. They think this would make it easier for the U.S. to dictate a "political settlement" that protects the junta and the "stability" of the U.S. imperialist empire in Central America. We must reject these pro-imperialist Democratic Party hacks and stick to the path of mass struggle against U.S. imperialism and militant solidarity with the Salvadorian people.

Workers and all progressive people: We must never forget the lessons of the genocidal war of aggression in Viet Nam! Reagan must not be given a free hand in his criminal aggression in El Salvador! Step up the mass struggle in solidarity with the brave Salvadorian workers and peasants!

[Photo: Armed revolutionaries fire on the fascist forces of the U.S.-backed junta.]

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Third National Conference of the Communist Party (Reconstructed) of Portugal Calls for Strengthening the Party

[Photo: Closing rally of the 3rd National Conference of the PC(R).]

The Communist Party (Reconstructed) of Portugal is the vanguard party of the Portuguese proletariat which stands at the forefront of the courageous struggle of the workers and broad toiling masses against the bourgeoisie. From the 18th to the 21st of June, this Party held its Third National Conference in Lisbon. The report printed below on this Conference is extracted from the editorial entitled "Unite the Whole Party to Apply the Resolutions of the Conference" which appeared in the June 25, 1981 issue of Bandeira Vermelha, Central Organ of the PC(R) of Portugal. Translated by The Workers' Advocate.

The questions debated and the resolutions adopted (already ratified by the Central Committee...) are of major importance for the immediate activity of the Party.

We attempted to draw a balance sheet of the activity of the Party since last year, at which time the Second Conference took place, and to analyze the political situation in which we live today, taking into account the changes which have occurred in the meantime.

The Third Conference had two clear objectives. Firstly, to correct the deficiencies in the activity of the Party in the sense of improving its political work in the mass struggle and to give a new incentive to its buildup -- in particular with regard to its proletarian character, the training of the militants and cadre and enlarging its ranks. Secondly, to determine, in the face of the national and international situation and taking into account the balance sheet of the political work of the Party m this last year, the tactics which the PC(R) must follow and the concrete tasks which it must take up for solution immediately.

In relation to these two objectives, two equally clear conclusions stand out: the need to give priority to the fight against manifestations of a Tightest nature which, both in the political and the Party aspects, are raising obstacles to the growth of the influence of the Party and are putting up resistance to its revolutionary line; and the need to apply the main effort of the whole collective, beginning with the Central Committee, in the political action of the masses, in particular of the working class.

With these orientations, the Party will be capable of greatly strengthening its activity and achieve the successes which it is duty-bound to attain in the present political situation.

The Third National Conference of the PC(R) of Portugal adopted three resolutions: "On the Tasks and Tactics of the Party"; "On the Activity and Strengthening of the Party"; and ''On the UDP." Below we print Part 2 of the "Resolution on the Activity and Strengthening of the Party."

2) The Party needs to develop the ideological struggle against erroneous ideas and practices, particularly against manifestations of a rightist type.

a) The Third National Conference reaffirms the correctness of the decisions taken at the Second National Conference which, guided by the resolutions of the Third Congress and taking into consideration the evolution of the political and party situation, considered the manifestations of rightism the central target of the ideological struggle.

The Conference rejects those stands which, under the pretext that it is still necessary today to fight against sectarianism, do not see the need to center the ideological struggle against rightism, disarming the Party in this way for the necessity of constant vigilance towards the dangers which may come from this direction.

b) The Third National Conference points out that side by side with the ideological manifestations of a rightist countenance which were already noted by the Second National Conference, namely the attitudes of defensive, lack of initiative, weaknesses in the work among the masses, liberalism and the slackening of party and militant life, there emerged in the course of this year rightist political positions which must be firmly combated. Such positions emerged mainly after the electoral defeats, based on the argument that, in the face of these defeats and the new situation created, the Party's activity should be turned towards the economic struggle, that once the conquests of April [the April 1974 revolution in Portugal -- ed.] would no longer be a factor for the mobilization and action of the workers, that the central thing would be the trade union front and that it would not be possible to continue to support the UDP (Popular Democratic Union), that our activity in this period of accumulation of forces could not have the aim of achieving big successes under the pretext of the objective situation being unfavorable.

c) Around the Party a firm, vigilant style of militance, one of criticism and self-criticism, of the unfolding of the ideological struggle in all the organisms, which stimulates communist vigilance and rigor in contraposition to the petty-bourgeois spirit of consensus, must be strengthened. Only such firmness and critical and self-critical spirit will allow for the struggle for the implementation of the decisions taken and for the concretization of political initiatives.

d) The entire Party from the CC to the cells must unfold a persistent and permanent struggle to develop the spirit of initiative and quick and decided response to the political developments, with the aim of launching the Party in the mass actions, combating weariness and complacency, strengthening the PC(R) as a political party which intervenes in all aspects of the national and international political life.

For this, special attention must be paid to fighting the ominous tendency towards lowering the work of leadership by the leading organs. A revolutionary party which does not feed itself permanently on politics will naturally tend to turn in on itself [i.e., shut itself off from the masses, become a sect -- tr.] its leading organs will tend to fall into routine and complacency. Responding to the political issues and to the economic struggles and the struggles for demands, and preparing and unfolding mass action constitutes thus the essence of what the Party must be as a transforming force active in the class struggle.

e) In the struggle against the manifestations of rightism the Party must always keep in mind the point that one can't combat opportunism without simultaneously combating sectarianism and vice versa.

The positions continue to be verified in resistance to going to the masses with the Party's politics and in shutting oneself in a restricted circle of blind and practicist activity.

At the present moment [there are]... tendencies towards abandonment of revolutionary work in the trade unions and principally in the CGTP [the revisionist trade union center -- ed.].

The Third National Conference rejects such positions and points out that they must be firmly combated.

f) The struggle against the erroneous manifestations must be translated in the whole Party into the raising of its ideological and political level, the perfecting of its militant qualities and making the cells the center of gravity of party activity. The permanent preoccupation with the life and aspirations of the masses, the quick response to their problems, the fulfilling of the statutory duties, namely the regular functioning as a party collective, the regular payment of dues and the systematic collection of funds, the distribution of and payment for the party press, are essential questions for raising the Party's capacity for action and for asserting itself.

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CP of Spain (M-L):

Against unity with the revisionist and social-democratic chieftains

The Third National Conference of the Communist Party (Reconstructed) of Portugal ended with a closing rally which was addressed by representatives of the sister Marxist-Leninist parties which attended the Conference. Below we publish an extract from the speech given by Comrade Raul Marco, representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist). Translated by The Workers' Advocate from Vanguardia Obrera, organ of the CC of the CP of Spain (M-L), July 3-16, 1981.

The unity and cohesion between the Marxist-Leninist parties, which has always been vital, acquires today a much greater importance and to that, to strengthen it, develop it, and consolidate it, we must not begrudge any effort. It is necessary to mutually support ourselves, to learn from one another, in order to be able to confront in the best conditions the ferocious beasts that are Yankee and Russian imperialism and their aggressive blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which are preparing a new imperialist war that can only be made to fail by the worker and popular unity, the true anti-fascist unity, as much nationally as internationally, which the Marxist-Leninists should persist in forging with all our might and in the forefront of which we must place ourselves.

We think that the tactics and the forms of action to go about forging this united worker, popular and anti-fascist front, can and must be very varied in accordance with the specific conditions and possibilities of each country and each party.

Also we think (and we base ourselves on the international experience of many years) that this unity is not possible without isolating and fighting to the maximum degree possible the revisionist leaders of different hues, such as the "Eurocommunists," Maoists, Khrushchovites, or however they call themselves.

All of them, together with the social- democratic chieftains, are accomplices and lackeys of their respective reactionary governments and go at the rear of one or the other imperialism.

Some harbor illusions about a possible unity with the revisionist chieftains. We think that this is an error which can lead directly to the swamp of opportunism. And if we must well avoid the sectarianism that isolates us from the people, we must also combat with intransigence the opportunism that would lead us to distort our Marxist-Leninist principles.

The Marxist-Leninists of the world say that, nowadays, one cannot combat imperialism basing oneself on another imperialism. And furthermore, we say that whatever concessions to the revisionist chieftains, conscious or unconscious, play into the hands of one or the other superpower or the two at once.

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CP of Colombia (M-L):

'Deepen the ideological struggle against Maoist revisionism'

The Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) is valiantly leading the workers and peasants of Colombia in struggle against the bourgeoisie and U.S. imperialism. Recently the Central Committee of this Party held an important meeting. Below we print excerpts from an article on this meeting which appeared in Bandeira Vermelha, Central Organ of the Communist Party (Reconstructed) of Portugal, June 18, 1981. Translated by The Workers' Advocate.

As we have reported at the opportune time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) recently held its 2nd Plenary Meeting, at which it took up in detail the evolution of the situation inside the country and internationally. It is precisely from the resolution dedicated to the international situation that we take lengthy excerpts, in particular from the chapter entitled "The World Revolutionary Development and the Marxist-Leninist Movement.'' The editors are responsible for the subtitles.

Drawing Lines of Demarcation With Revisionism

The Marxist-Leninist movement and the various parties which constitute it -- underlines the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the CC of the CP of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist) -- strengthen themselves in the class battles; in the struggle against reaction and imperialism; in the uncompromising struggle against opportunism and modern revisionism and, in particular, in the last few years against Chinese revisionism. In the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement, essentially, lines of demarcation were drawn against Maoist revisionism. At the present time the struggle is turned more towards eradicating the practical and theoretical manifestations that still survive inside the revolutionary political movement. In the case of Latin America, the necessity is clear for a deeper and more organized work of those Marxist-Leninist parties which, calling themselves "Marxist-Leninist,'' strive to keep that variant of revisionism alive within the revolutionary movement.

The Marxist-Leninists fight revisionism in any of its variants from the trenches of the communist doctrine. For this reason, the principled struggle against all types of revisionism leads and must lead to the ideological and political strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist parties, of the international communist movement and of proletarian internationalism. Any abandonment of this line, or any error or vacillation in this direction, must be exposed by all the parties, and in general by the international communist movement.

In this struggle against Maoist revisionism one cannot lose sight of the stand of "neutrality'' taken by some parties; our stand with respect to them is based on the position defined by the 11th Congress of the CP of Colombia (M-L) which, in this respect underlined:

''We consider the 'neutral' positions with respect to the current struggle between Marxists and revisionists to be negative. Those who persist in such 'neutral' stands, under the cover of tactical considerations, will fall hopelessly into opportunism. Those who negate the need for ideological struggle, who weaken it or put if off indefinitely, hold, in practice, an anti-Marxist position.''

This situation shows the necessity of persisting in and deepening the ideological-political struggle against Maoist revisionism, with the purpose of clarifying its deadly consequences. The^struggle against Maoism, as a variant of revisionism, must lead us inevitably to a new stage of the struggle against revisionism as a whole and especially against its principal and most dangerous agent, Khrushchovite revisionism.

The struggle to eradicate the theoretical and practical influence of Maoism had positive consequences in relation to the role each party must play in the revolutionary process of its own country and, in particular, in relation to the strengthening of the relations between the Marxist-Leninist parties, which are basic conditions in order to advance with ever more firm steps over more solid ground in the unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement.

Going Over to a Higher Level of Unity

Later on, the document of the Colombian comrades proceeds: The irreplaceable responsibility of the Marxist-Leninist movement, its obligatory commitments and tasks, place in the forefront the necessity for the Marxist- Leninist parties of strengthening themselves, and very specially, of working decidedly for the consolidation of the unity of the international communist movement, taking steps in various directions, in order to correctly resolve the differences which exist and to attain an identity of views on the most important aspects, for it is imperative to advance united in the complex and difficult situation which the world is going through today.

The necessity of introducing changes of forms and methods in the relations between brother parties, in the bilateral meetings, places itself before us. In general, the conditions are maturing for passing from the phase of simple exchanging of information between the parties, on to the phase of discussion of general and particular problems of common interest, of the political divergences and of joint internationalist actions and tasks unfolded on the basis of the principles which unite us.

... Our Party, conscious of the great responsibility acquired in the work for the unity of the international communist movement, will continue to unfold the greatest efforts to increase its information, to strengthen its ties and relations with the brother parties, guided by the policy outlined by our 11th Congress....

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The Socialist International: An Imperialist Agency

[Lucha masthead.]

The following article has been reprinted from the May 1981 issue of Lucha, organ of our fraternal comrades the Partido Comunista del Trabajo (the Communist Party of Labor). The PCT is the Marxist-Leninist party of the working class of the Dominican Republic. Translation from the Spanish by The Workers' Advocate.

Since the formation of the first socialist parties in Europe, called social- democratic, and specifically, since the creation of the First International, founded by Marx and Engels;in 1864, the bourgeoisie started a hard and malicious work to try to put this important organization of the world proletariat under its control.

Marx and Engels fought implacably against the trade union chiefs who, like those of England, had sold themselves to the bourgeoisie, taking the seed of opportunism to the bosom of the workers' movement and to the First International.

The Second International, founded by Engels in 1889 and whose existence lasted to 1914, succumbed, smashed by the weight and the influence of the opportunists. Lenin decreed the bankruptcy of the Second International, pointing out that "in fact it plays the role of lackey of the international bourgeoisie. It is a true yellow international."

The ideological degeneration of most of the social-democratic parties, among which was the German party, the strongest and most influential of the Second International, made these parties place themselves by the side of their government and their bourgeoisie, during and after the first imperialist world war of 1914.

Lenin exposed and fought against the betrayal and the opportunism of the leaders of the Second International, maintaining a systematic struggle against these chauvinists and social-patriots, establishing that it was impossible to fight against and defeat the imperialists, if one didn't fight and defeat the opportunists.

After the triumph of the proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917 and the establishment of the first socialist state in the world, led by Lenin and Stalin, in various countries there emerged a series of new communist parties, with which the Third International was formed in 1919, led by Lenin and Stalin.

Lenin established that this communist international picked up the ''fruits of the work of the Second International, and had cast away the corrupt, opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois part, and had started to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat."

The Third International represented and defended for several years the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and under its revolutionary leadership the communist movement achieved an unprecedented development.

The remnants of the Second International formed by various opportunist and revisionist parties, allied to the imperialist bourgeoisie, kept manifesting their reactionary and opportunist features and waiting for the appropriate moment to make a comeback.

The International of Willy Brandt and Pena Gomez

The Socialist International of which the PRD is part of and Pena Gomez is its representative for Latin American and the Caribbean [the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) is the ruling party in the Dominican Republic and Pena Gomez is the Secretary General of the PRD] is the international organization representing the old and degenerate Second International. It was reorganized by the bourgeoisie after the Second World War.

Taking as its basis the social-democratic parties which had become instruments in the service of the Western European capitalist states, imperialism formed the Socialist International, making of it an important political and ideological apparatus at the service of the bourgeoisie and monopoly capital.

The reactionary character of this Anti-Communist International is shown in those countries where social-democratic parties govern [or have governed in the past], such as Germany, Sweden, England, France, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and others where the working class and people are repressed and exploited with all the cruelty of the capitalist regime.

The Socialist International is a platform and an instrument of the capitalists of Western Europe, which even though it has as its ideological banner anti-communism and the fight against the dictatorship of the proletariat and scientific socialism, as a means of confusing the workers the Socialist International feigns to "fight'' for the "revolution" and for what it calls "democratic socialism." But this is a vulgar lie and deception since in practice, the parties of the Socialist International have shown themselves to be the enemies of the revolution and the liberation of the peoples.

The ideological and political stand of the Socialist International is in essence reactionary and capitalist, based on the opportunist positions advanced by the traitors to socialism of the Second International who like MacDonald, Kautsky, Hyndman, preached class conciliation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and defended the idea that the main method of struggle was the parliamentary one and not the revolutionary violence and that the proletariat could peacefully coexist with the bourgeoisie.

The leaders of the Socialist International like Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, Pena Gomez and other social-democratic leaders preach the alleged well-being and progress of the states governed by the social-democratic parties, even though the truth is different. The truth is that in Germany, governed by [the Social-Democratic Party of] Willy Brandt, and that Pena Gomez puts so much as an example in our country, is a society which suffers the same ills and phenomena of the rest of the imperialist states, independently of whether the German social-democratic ideologues argue to the contrary.

The same thing happens in England, in France, in Portugal, in our country and in all the countries which have been governed by social-democratic parties that have established the so-called "democratic socialism."

This "democratic socialism" is a "theory" which the imperialist bourgeoisie opposes to scientific socialism, to the real socialism, the one which is led by the communist party and the working class and which follows the correct and invincible theory of Marxism-Leninism and which guarantees freedom, progress and well-being to the workers and the people; which is maintained and enjoyed when the proletariat has succeeded in taking hold of the state power and in maintaining it with the application of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the benefit of the workers and against the capitalist class displaced from power, building socialism and communism, the only social system which guarantees the freedom of man from exploitation, misery and the injustices which capitalism and its different hypocritical forms, like that which has the mask of the name of democratic socialism and that the Socialist International represents, breed.

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CONDEMN THE ATROCITIES AGAINST THE ALBANIANS IN YUGOSLAVIA

Over the past five months, the Yugoslav government has continued its atrocities against the Albanian population of Kosova and the other Albanian regions of Yugoslavia. In March and April, students and working people took to the streets in massive protests of the terrible discrimination which is imposed on the Albanian population. The Yugoslav authorities responded to these just protests with troops and tanks. In cold blood police and soldiers gunned down many hundreds of demonstrators including small school children.

Since that time the Albanian students and the working people in the cities as well as the peasants in the countryside have persisted in their struggle in the face of a brutal reign of terror. Thousands have been imprisoned, tortured and kidnapped. The authorities have demanded that all the masses leave their doors unlocked to allow for searches by the occupying troops at any time of day or night. The Prishtina University has been closed and many other measures have been taken against the struggle of the Albanian people for their rights.

The Bloodshed in Kosova Is a Result of the Chauvinist Policy of the Yugoslav Revisionist Ruling Clique

In 1913 the long-oppressed nation of Albania was partitioned by the imperialist and chauvinist powers. A major portion of the territory of Albania was incorporated into what was later named Yugoslavia. However, the Albanian population in Yugoslavia never reconciled themselves to this situation where their freedom and national rights were ruthlessly trampled upon by the various Yugoslav monarchs, landlords and capitalists.

During the Second World War the Albanians in Yugoslavia threw themselves into the anti-fascist liberation war against the German occupiers. Fifty thousand Albanian partisans from Kosova fought shoulder to shoulder with their Yugoslav brother. The Albanians shed their blood hoping that with liberation from Nazi-fascism they would also realize their national freedom including the right to self-determination for the future workers' and peasants' republic of Kosova. Indeed, during the war, Josef Broz Tito and the other leaders of the Yugoslav liberation war promised the right of self- determination for the Albanians, that is up to and including the right to succession from Yugoslavia, just as they promised the other nations of Yugoslavia. As late as 1946 Tito repeated this pledge to the Albanians and spoke also of the unification of the Albanian regions in Yugoslavia with liberated Albania.

But the Yugoslav revisionist leaders were insincere. Following liberation they cast to the winds all their promises to the Albanian population. Despite the reality that the Albanian nationality is the third largest in Yugoslavia (presently with a population of over two million), and despite the fact that they constitute the overwhelming majority over a large territory bordering with the People's Republic of Albania (today the People's Socialist Republic), the Albanians were denied all the national rights which were achieved by the other nations. Instead, in the interest of the great-Serb chauvinists, Kosova was made a district within the Serbian republic and the rest of the Albanian regions were divided up between the republics of Macedonia and Montenegro.

Ever since, the Titoite renegades have pursued a genocidal policy of oppression against the Albanians. Tens of thousands were forcibly deported to Turkey. They have ruthlessly attempted to exterminate the Albanian language and national customs. A systematic policy of extreme economic discrimination practiced by the Yugoslav chauvinist leaders has meant that the incomes of the impoverished Albanian workers and peasants a- mount to only a small fraction of the incomes of the exploited toilers in the other regions of capitalist Yugoslavia. In this desperate situation many tens of thousands of Albanian economic emigrants have been forced from their homes to seek work in Western Europe and North America.

In 1968, the workers, peasants and students of Kosova rose up in struggle against this intolerable oppression. They demanded the improvement of their miserable livelihood, and they demanded language and cultural rights, the right to fly the Albanian flag, etc. The Albanian population also loudly and strongly voiced their demand for the right to self-determination and the status of a republic for Kosova within the Yugoslav federation. That is they demanded that Kosova enjoy equal rights with the other national republics of federal Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav ruling clique put down the 1968 revolts with bloody massacres. At the same time they granted a number of concessions regarding the Albanian language and culture, and they made Kosova an "autonomous region.'' Nevertheless the national oppression of the Albanians continued in force, and the Titoite rulers rejected out of hand the just demand for the status of a republic for Kosova.

Now, in 1981, the Albanian population in Yugoslavia has once again taken to the streets in protest of their miserable condition, in protest against the brutal national oppression which they suffer, and for the realization of the status of a republic for Kosova within the Yugoslav Federation. And once again the Yugoslav revisionists have responded to these just demands with tanks, troops and massacres.

The Yugoslav Revisionists Are Playing Into the Strategy of Imperialism and Social-Imperialism

For many years the Yugoslav revisionists have tried to portray their policy as "independent'' and "non-aligned.'' But these boastful claims have always been only so much demagogy to hide their actual dependence on imperialism, and betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and socialism. So too, with their present onslaught against the Albanians in Kosova, the Yugoslav revisionists are playing into the game of the imperialists and social-imperialists.

The U.S. imperialists along with the West German, British and other imperialists of the West on the one hand, and the Soviet social-imperialists along with Bulgaria and other Warsaw Pact allies on the other hand, are actively plotting against the peoples of Yugoslavia. The imperialist predators of both the East and West have deeply penetrated the economic, political and military structures of "non-aligned" Yugoslavia. And imperialism and social-imperialism are actively taking advantage of the acute political crisis which is shaking the Yugoslav Federation, a crisis reflected in the growing Strife among the various nationalities, to strengthen their positions and fish in troubled waters.

In this light it can be seen that the brutal chauvinist oppression of the Albanians and the denial of the right to self-determination to Kosova can only aggravate the situation. The atrocities against the Albanians cannot but play into the hands of the imperialist and social-imperialist wolves who are drooling over the prospect of the further incitement of strife among the nationalities in Yugoslavia so as to more easily gobble up the Yugoslav peoples.

A Condemnation of the Titoite Revisionist Paradise

Titoite Yugoslavia has the dubious distinction of being the first country in which the modern revisionist traitors to Marxism-Leninism came to power. Soon after liberation at the conclusion of World War II, the Tito clique declared that it was charting an allegedly third road between the imperialist camp and the socialist camp. In fact the Titoites betrayed socialism and emerged as a dangerous Trojan horse of the U.S. and other imperialists within the international communist and revolutionary movements.

Tito and his cohorts rejected the scientific socialism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Instead they advocated the revisionist idea of a "national" or "specific socialism." They rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat as allegedly inherently 4 'bureaucratic" and "inhumane" and in its stead the Titoites advanced the liberal, social-democratic and anarchist concepts of "self-administration socialism." These bourgeois concepts are beloved to the international bourgeoisie such that in U.S. universities the "Yugoslav model" is studied extensively for its application to problems of labor- management relations and other aspects of U.S. monopoly capitalist society.

For the toiling masses Titoite Yugoslavia is a country of brutal exploitation and oppression. The Yugoslav capitalists and kulaks, in conjunction with the foreign imperialist corporations, mercilessly suck the blood of the workers and peasants. Revisionist Yugoslavia is also a land of ruthless national oppression where the Serbian chieftains and the other chauvinist clans ride roughshod over the other nationalities.

The recent events in Kosova shed a great deal of light on these realities of the Yugoslav "paradise." They are another powerful condemnation of Titoite Yugoslavia where the revisionist ruling clique does not hesitate to bring out tanks and machine guns and resort to fascist massacres against the just protests of the oppressed masses.

The Workers' Advocate joins with the revolutionary and progressive forces the world over in vehemently condemning the ongoing atrocities of the Yugoslav authorities against the Albanians in Kosova. We support the just demand for the status of a republic for Kosova and the right of the Albanian people in Yugoslavia to self-determination. We salute the Albanian students and working people in Yugoslavia who are fighting bravely for their rights in the face of the barbarism of the Titoite revisionist regime.

[Map.]

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A witness tells about the demonstrations in Kosova

On June 6, Zeri i Popullit, organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, published the diary of an Italian student, taken from the journal Expresso. This is a summary of the notes of this diary which describe the bloody events the author experienced in person.

Prishtina. On the night of March 11, reads the diary, the students of the University had decided to organize a demonstration, based chiefly on three demands: the right to attend higher school, the problem of textbooks, and living conditions.

The granting of rights to Kosova students to pursue higher studies is still far more restrictive than in other universities of the country. The studies in the auditoriums of Prishtina are at the lowest level.

Even though lessons are given in Albanian, there are no textbooks in that language. Higher taxes have to be paid, when possible, to get these books from Tirana.

The third point which brought the students out in demonstrations, that is, their low living standards and unemployment -- 80% of the postgraduates cannot find jobs, and many of them have emigrated to Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden -- is a problem concerning the whole population of Kosova. Last winter was long and bitter, but above everything, it was difficult, because daily foodstuffs, such as oil, sugar, tea, butter, milk, as well as fuel for heating, or detergents for washing clothes, were very difficult to find. Thus, at midday on March 12, the cafeteria at the University was blocked, and the students swarmed out into the streets shouting, "Bread, bread!"

The police did not hesitate, and regardless of the intervention of several professors, attacked the line of demonstrators with many tear gas bombs. The students replied with stones. The demonstration was dispersed under the pressure of the police, but leaving the young people angry and astonished.

On March 26, in Prishtina, several thousands of students came out in the streets waving a big Albanian national flag, the red flag with the black two- headed eagle and the star of the partisan. The flag of Kosova, an officially recognized district, is exactly the same, but the police intervene with force, encircle the students, and stop the line of demonstrators. The young people shout, "Release our comrades from prison, we don't want an autonomous district. Long live the Republic of Kosova!" A crowd unites with the demonstrators. A column of people is formed which tries to reach the center of the city where official festivities are being held. It seems as though the police have been informed beforehand. Suddenly, detachments flown out from Belgrade appear in Prishtina. Hundreds of tear gas bombs are thrown into the crowd, and many explosions are heard which steadily increase.

It took five days for the astonishment and utter hatred for the police and those who sent them to disseminate throughout the city. The concern for the countless citizens who have been arrested is also mounting, because of the danger that they may never come out of prison again, as occurred in 1968. Thus on April 1, after holding discussions all morning, the building workers of the Dardania building sites on the outskirts of the city decided to organize a march to demand the release of the students. The crowds swelled in number as soon as the movement began. Ordinary people, passersby, others who left their houses and came out into the streets, joined the workers. Apart from the release of the arrested students, higher wages for the workers and again the creation of the autonomous Republic of Kosova are demanded. Seeing that the police were not intervening, women with their children, and even unaccompanied children who wanted to take part in this big game, joined the crowd.

In the final account, the motives behind the manifestation are in the hearts of all. Now there are about 15,000 demonstrators in this crowd. Suddenly the police attack again with tear gas bombs. Some are hit, and others are trampled underfoot by those who try to get away. Many of the wounded are carried off by the crowd by hand. Regardless of this, the demonstrators decide to remain cool headed, and confronted with their passive resistance, the police withdraw. After reaching the street, the crowd completely occupies it. The number of demonstrators has now reached 30-40,000.

Now masters of the center, says the diary, they transform the demonstration into a kind of revolutionary festivity. At 8:15 the police resume their attack, leaving many wounded on the ground. Then the people start picking up stones, and steadily retreating, they begin to smash everything in their tracks. The demonstration disperses towards dark, but a silent agreement exists for it to begin again the next day. The determination of the demonstrators has been learned throughout the whole city, and on the morning of April 2 the streets once again fill up with groups waving the Albanian flag. The tanks are brought in at 11:00. Four military aircraft fly low over the rooftops and streets to create panic. The reinforced police forces try to stop different groups of demonstrators from uniting, but on that morning the whole city is out on the streets. No one has gone to work! The demonstrators surge forth with indignation. At midday two tanks are burnt. The police reply to the petrol bottles of the demonstrators with bullets. Eight people are killed including two children. More tanks and armored vehicles are called out from Macedonia, and the airport is occupied by paratroopers, but the demonstration is not dispersed. The participants reunite after every attack. Trucks loaded with bread come from the bread factory near the city for those who have now become fighters. The women carry bandages and lemons for protection against the gas. The crowd accepts the truth-of its strength and begins to repeat in loud voices the ancient Albanian saying: "There is no wedding without meat!," which means every festivity demands its own sacrifice. There is a great deal of blood shed in the streets. Now the demonstrators are also armed. Whoever has a rifle takes it with him into the streets and uses it. Prishtina now has been encircled, and the dawn of April 3 finds the demonstrators exhausted.

It is said that the revolt spread even to the most remote villages, but no more is known. It is said that 300 people have been killed. Official sources say 12, but the Austrian newspaper (name) will write that several immigrants from Kosova have estimated at least 1,000. Whoever can abandons the city which is now militarily occupied, says the Italian student, concluding his diary published in the journal Expresso.

(Broadcast by Radio Tirana from the People s Socialist Republic of Albania, June 6, 1981. Transcribed by PCDN.)

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Solidarity with socialist Albania in the face of the anti-Albanian hysteria of the Titoite revisionists

The Yugoslav revisionists have launched a rabid and frenzied crusade against socialist Albania. They are shouting from the rooftops that the People's Socialist Republic of Albania is allegedly the one responsible for the massive protests of the Albanian population. in Yugoslavia. In this way the Belgrade chieftains are trying to cover up the fact that it is their own chauvinist persecution of the Albanians that has given rise to these demonstrations and which is responsible for the massacres of the demonstrators in Kosova and the other Albanian regions of Yugoslavia. Thus the Yugoslav revisionists have created a grave and dangerous situation in Yugoslav-Albanian relations.

Socialist Albania's Principled Stand

The Yugoslav propaganda machine is churning out the most outrageous slanders and attacks against the PSRA. The Titoite chieftains are attacking socialist Albania as "nationalist," "chauvinist," "counter-revolutionary," etc., etc. According to their crude lies, the Party of Labor of Albania is allegedly "interfering in Yugoslavia's internal affairs," "making territorial claims," posing "a threat to the Yugoslav Federation," and so on and so forth.

But these monstrous slanders against the PSRA can fool no one. They can neither wash the blood off the hands of the Yugoslav authorities who are continuing their atrocities against the people of Kosova, nor can they stain the principled, proletarian internationalist stand of socialist Albania.

The Party of Labor of Albania has always been and will always be a most implacable opponent of Yugoslav revisionism. While the Titoites curse at allegedly "dogmatic" Marxism-Leninism and at the so-called "Stalinist hell" of socialist Albania, the PLA too has the right to carry on its principled ideological struggle against Titoite revisionism and to expose the truth about the Yugoslav revisionist "paradise." The PLA also has every right to speak its mind about the situation facing its over two million Albanian brothers living in Yugoslavia. These things are only natural. In no way do they contradict the stated desire of the PLA for maintaining normal Yugoslav - Albanian relations and the close trade and cultural ties which have developed in recent years.

In regard to Kosova the PLA has reiterated many times over its open, principled and Marxist-Leninist stand. The PLA has not interfered with any other country's internal affairs. Nor has it made any territorial claims against Yugoslavia or anyone else. Nor has the PLA done anything to endanger the Yugoslav Federation. On the contrary, the PLA has repeatedly expressed its stand that: "We do not wish the disintegration, but we wish the stability of the Yugoslav Federation, we want good neighborliness and not enmity with Yugoslavia." (Albanian Telegraphic Agency News Bulletin, June 12, 1981)

So why then all the poisonous venom spewing from Belgrade?

The Titoite chieftains are raging against socialist Albania simply because it has expressed its solidarity with its Albanian brothers in Yugoslavia and because it has condemned the Yugoslav ruling clique's atrocities against them.

The Yugoslav propaganda paints Albania as a chauvinist monster working to tear apart the Yugoslav Federation simply because the PLA has supported the demands of the people of Kosova for a just and principled resolution of the national problem in relation to the

Albanian population in Yugoslavia. In particular it has supported the demand for the right to self-determination and the status of a federal republic for Kosova within Yugoslavia.

It matters little to the Titoite chieftains that in the past Tito himself advocated this same demand. It matters little to the Belgrade rulers that granting the right to self-determination and the status of a republic to Kosova is a necessary step to strengthen the fraternity among the Yugoslav peoples. And it matters little to the Yugoslav revisionists that it is their own anti-Marxist- Leninist and flagrantly chauvinist policy which is the source of the national strife among the nationalities of Yugoslavia. Rather what matters to the Belgrade chiefs is their rabid anti-Albanian hysteria to whitewash their own crimes and nothing else.

The Yugoslav Revisionists Are Desperately Trying to Whip Up an Anti-Albanian Hysteria

The Yugoslav revisionists have proceeded to create a bad situation in Yugoslav-Albanian relations, and both domestically and internationally they are trying to stir up an anti-Albanian hysteria. The Yugoslav side has unilaterally cut off cultural and other agreements between the two countries. Belgrade has let it be known that they have place Albanian diplomatic missions around the world under their surveillance. And Yugoslav officials are giving crazed speeches calling for the destruction of what they like to condemn as the "Stalinist regime" of socialist Albania.

On May 23, Yugoslav personnel, with obvious motives, set off two explosives on the terrace of the Yugoslav embassy in Tirana. Careful investigation by Albanian experts in the presence of the Yugoslav officials showed that the explosives could not have been thrown into the embassy, but had to be detonated from within. Nevertheless, Yugoslav propaganda made a futile effort to portray these explosions, which they themselves had orchestrated, as terrorist bombs hurled at the embassy by a criminal from Kosova who was supposedly being harbored by the Albanian government. Such is the nature of the desperate and criminal methods which the Yugoslav chieftains are resorting to.

The Titoite ruling clique has also been working to incite Greek reaction against socialist Albania. For this purpose the Yugoslav secret police, in conjunction with Greek reactionaries in the U.S., produced a map which they distributed in New York and Washington and other American cities. This "map" depicts portions of Greece as part of a so-called "big-Albania." The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug declared that this "map" supposedly provided "evidence" of so- called "Albanian expansionism" and "proof" that the PSRA not only maintains "territorial claims" against Yugoslavia but against Greece as well. This despite the fact that even the Greek reactionaries in the past have not attempted to falsely accuse socialist Albania of such a thing. With such vile cloak-and-dagger methods of intrigue and conspiracy the Yugoslav plotters are striving to create a tense situation for the PSRA.

The Yugoslav Revisionists Are Drawing Their Swords in Vain Against Socialist Albania

In a word, the Yugoslav revisionists have drawn their swords against socialist Albania. It must not be forgotten however, that this is not the first time that they have done such a thing. Nor will this be the first time that socialist Albania will successfully turn back the dangerous provocations of the Yugoslav chieftains.

The courageous Albanian working class and people, with their Party of Labor as their steadfast Marxist-Leninist vanguard, are afraid of no one. The new socialist life which they are successfully building has been won and defended in the fire of heroic struggles against the internal and external enemies. In their national liberation war, the Albanian people liberated their country from the Nazi-fascist yoke through their own efforts. At the end of the war they successfully smashed the plots of U.S. and British imperialism to enslave new Albania. Soon after liberation, the Albanian people faced the extremely dangerous conspiracy of the Titoite traitors to socialism who attempted to annex Albania. But their plots were smashed to bits by the vigilant struggle of the PLA and the Albanian people. Later, after the Khrushchovite renegades had seized power in the Soviet Union, the frenzied efforts of the Soviet revisionists to bring Albania to its knees were similarly defeated through courageous and bitter struggle. Likewise, in recent years, the Chinese revisionists too have suffered fiasco in their attempts to trifle with socialist Albania.

The imperialists, capitalists and revisionists the world over see in socialist Albania a mortal enemy and together they maintain a savage imperialist- revisionist encirclement against the PSRA. This is because Albania is a solid bulwark against U.S imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction. This is because Albania is building a genuinely socialist society under the dictatorship of the proletariat, a new society which spells the doom of the capitalist system of exploitation and the tyrannical rule of the bourgeoisie. And this is because Albania holds aloft the revolutionary banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and wages a consistent and principled struggle against all bourgeois and revisionist opponents of Marxism-Leninism.

The outrageous provocations which the Yugoslav revisionists are launching against the PSRA carry with them the danger of a further activation of the imperialist-revisionist encirclement of socialist Albania. But the heroic Party of Labor and working class and people of Albania have never hesitated before difficulties or the threats of their enemies and will as always continue to march triumphantly forward on the Marxist-Leninist road.

The Defense of Socialist Albania Is the Duty of the Working Class of All Countries

In the face of powerful enemies socialist Albania has always found its source of strength in its own working class and people who are highly mobilized, organized and made conscious by their Marxist-Leninist communist party, the PLA. At the same time, socialist Albania has always found strength in the support and sympathy which it enjoys from the Marxist-Leninists, revolutionaries, class conscious workers and progressive people all over the globe.

In Albania the new socialist society is being built, a new world without exploitation of man by man. The workers and downtrodden masses everywhere dream of this new world. They have laid down countless martyrs in the struggle to achieve this new world. Today the PSRA stands forth as the only land of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat against the entire capitalist-revisionist world. However, the PSRA does not stand alone but with the Marxist-Leninist communists and the revolutionary proletariat of all countries who see the socialist victories of the Albanian communists and working class as their own victories and who consider the defense of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat in Albania to be their sacred proletarian internationalist duty.

The Workers' Advocate, the voice of the MLP,USA the vanguard party of the U.S. proletariat, adamantly condemns the criminal attacks of the Yugoslav revisionists against socialist Albania. We express our proletarian internationalist solidarity with the heroic working class and people of the PSRA and their glorious Party of Labor with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head who have accomplished miracles in their socialist revolution.

Defend Socialist Albania!

[Photo: Albanian youth gather in front of the Palace of the Pioneers in Tirana. In Albania cultural, educational, athletic and social activities are the right of all the youth with all costs being paid by the state. The Albanian youth look toward the future with socialist militance and optimism.]

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The Status of a Republic for Kosova is a Just Demand

[Zeri i Popullit masthead.]

One after the other, the political staffs of Yugoslavia, from the lowest to the highest instances, from the regions and republics up to the Federation, from the basic organizations to the Central Committee of the LCY [League of Communists of Yugoslavia -- ed.], met and discussed the events in Kosova. Everywhere there were curses against the people and youth of Kosova, threats, abuse, insults! A wave of great-Serb and anti-Albanian chauvinism is sweeping Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav leaders are competing with one another in oratory to cover up the real causes of the demonstrations and revolts of the Albanian population of Kosova, to conceal the monstrous massacres and barbarities of the Serb armies, to denigrate the Albanians of Kosova. They are all rushing to be the first to propose the most draconian measures, to present the most oppressive and inhuman plans against the Albanians.

We are said to have interfered because we publicly condemned the massacres that were perpetrated in Kosova, because we told the truth about thousands of people being killed, wounded and arrested there! Did the Yugoslav leaders expect us to send them our congratulations on these crimes and atrocities? We are said to have interfered because we said in our articles that the people of Kosova have the right to demand the status of a Federal Republic. But this is a legitimate demand, a demand of the people of Kosova, which we have not invented.

In recent days, the Yugoslav leaders have had a great deal to say about this question, but nobody has explained why Kosova cannot be a republic. One after the other, they merely repeat that the demand of Kosova to become a Federal Republic is allegedly reactionary, counter-revolutionary, chauvinistic, etc. This stand is not only utterly baseless but also in complete and open contradiction with the wartime programmatic stands of the CPY on the national question and with many statements of the top personalities of the Yugoslav party and state, But let us refer to documents.

A Few Facts of History About the Treatment of the National Problem of the Albanians of Yugoslavia

At the London Conference of Ambassadors of the Great Powers, in 1913, Albania was partitioned. Despite the many protests through diplomatic channels and the armed opposition of the Albanian people, a large part of its north-eastern territory, Kosova and other Albanian-inhabited regions were annexed to the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro.

The Peace Conference of Versailles, in 1919, ignoring the just demands of the Albanian people, reconfirmed the partitioning of the Albanian territories, as was decided by the imperialist powers in London, and left them to the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, which it created.

For a long time the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had condemned the national oppression of the Albanians who "were enslaved and earmarked for extermination" by the "nationalist policy of the great-Serb hegemonists," as Tito wrote in the newspaper Proletar. For some time it has also upheld the thesis that the peoples which made up the Kingdom of Yugoslavia must be granted the right of self-determination up to secession....

In "The Theses on the National Question in Kosova and Metohia," presented by Mosa Pijade, one of the main leaders of the CPY, at the 5th National Conference held in Zagreb in October 1940, we read, "The solution of the national question here (in Kosova -- ed.) can be achieved with the formation of the free workers and peasants' republic of Kosova through the revolutionary overthrow of the imperialist fascist regime of the 'great-Serb' bourgeoisie...."

Thus the Communist Party of Yugoslavia recognized the right of the people of Kosova, like the other peoples of Yugoslavia, to self-determination up to secession, the right to have their own republic. The people of Kosova would win these rights by taking part in the Anti-fascist Liberation War. And the Albanians of Kosova took part in the war, making their valuable contribution to the liberation of Kosova and the peoples of Yugoslavia.

By the end of 1944,...there were more than 50,000 fighters in the partisan brigades and other detachments in Kosova. During this war, thousands of Albanian partisans laid down their lives for freedom and national rights....

When Yugoslavia was liberated, the Albanians of Kosova and the other regions expected that, in return for the contribution they made in the war against the occupiers, for the blood of thousands of fighters who fell on the battlefields, and for the countless sacrifices of the whole people, they would be given political freedoms and national rights on an equal footing with the other peoples of Yugoslavia.

But instead of this, in February 1945 a military administration was established in Kosova. At this time, while most of the Kosova brigades were fighting in Croatia and Slovenia for the liberation of the whole of Yugoslavia, the Serb-Montenegrin 52nd and 46th Divisions, the Macedonian 50th Division and others poured into Kosova. Thousands of Albanians accused of various crimes were killed and massacred. Thousands of others were sent to the front under the pretext of military mobilization.

While the military administration ruled and made the law in Kosova, the whole of Kosova had been put on the auction block of Belgrade. The first variant which the Yugoslav leadership discussed was the division of Kosova among three Republics -- Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia. Thus a further partitioning of the Albanian regions, similar to that decided by the Yugoslav Kingdom, was being designed. At a meeting of the CC of the CPY held at the beginning of 1945, Miladin Popovic strongly opposed this proposal. He declared that this proposal was openly contrary to the aspirations and rights of the Albanians of Kosova, rights which they had won with the blood they had shed and the contribution they had made during the National Liberation War.

Next it was discussed that Kosova should remain an autonomous unit, neither separate nor dependent on the Federation, but annexed by one of three Republics: Serbia, Macedonia or Montenegro. Finally it was decided that Kosova should be annexed by the Republic of Serbia. (Kosova 2, 1973, pp. 76-78.)...

Only one variant was not discussed in Belgrade at the time -- that Kosova also could be united with Albania. Had the people of Kosova not expressed this wish at the Bujan meeting? Were not Albania and Yugoslavia two allied states that had fought and shed blood together?

The status of Kosova was decided under the dictate of the great-Serb chauvinist ideology, which was inherited from the Yugoslav Kingdom and preserved in post-war Yugoslavia. This emerged also from what Tito said to Comrade Enver Hoxha in 1946, that "Kosova and the other legions inhabited by Albanians belong to Albania and we shall return them to you, but not now, because the great-Serb reaction would not accept such a thing." (Central Archives of the PL A, File "Visit of the Albanian delegation to Yugoslavia," 1946.)...

What Tito concealed, the great-Serb chauvinist Rankovic declared openly, with no kid gloves. Speaking about the question of the annexation of Kosova by Serbia at the extraordinary meeting of the Anti-fascist Convention of Serbia in April 1945, he stated that this annexation "is the best answer to those who trumpet about the danger of the partitioning of the 'Serbian' territory, who make the accusation that the National Liberation War will weaken the Serbs in the interests of the Croats and the others." (Borba, April 8,1945.)...

The people of Kosova neither requested nor decided that Kosova should be annexed to the Republic of Serbia. This decision was taken by the top forums of Serbia in an arbitrary manner. This emerges clearly from the documents of that time....

What, then, did Kosova gain from all that struggle it waged and all the blood it shed? In the new Yugoslavia it was not even granted the rights of an autonomous region, as was done with Vojvodina, but was reduced to the status of an "oblast" of Federal Serbia. Kosova remained in this status up till 1968.

The people of Kosova did not reconcile themselves to this situation and persisted in demanding their rights. In 1968, on the occasion of the discussion of amendments to the Constitution, the Albanians of Kosova once again raised the question of their national rights and put forward their demand of the status of a republic for Kosova. This demand was presented openly and publicly at the meetings of political activists held in the communes of Prishtina, Gjilan, etc. The Kosova press of October 1968 said that in a number of meetings in "several communes demands for a republic, the right of self-determination, etc....have been expressed." (Rilindja, September 8,1968 and October 6,1968)

A delegation of the Communist League of Kosova-Metohia also presented this demand to Tito at the beginning of November 1968. Tito opposed this lawful demand of the Albanians of Kosova and refused it, saying that "the republic is not the only factor which solves all the problems." (Rilindja, November 4, 1968.) It was clear that the Yugoslav leadership did not intend to give the Albanians of Kosova the status of a republic.

That is why massive demonstrations, in which Albanian youth and citizens took part, broke out in November 1968 in various cities of Kosova. They demanded that they be given the national rights for which they had fought and shed their blood, such as the right to keep their national flag, the right of two languages (Albanian and Serbian), the establishment of an Albanian university, the right of self-determination and the status of a republic. The demonstrations were violently suppressed by the police forces.

After the demonstrations, the Yugoslav leadership agreed to the Albanians' demand for bilinguality and the national flag, and established the University of Prishtina. However, the demand for the republic was rejected. Although the autonomous region was given certain wider competences after the sanctioning of the amendments to the Constitution, Kosova remained, as always, under the tutelage of Serbia.

From what has been said, it emerges that the demand of the Albanians of Kosova for the status of a Federal Republic, for the recognition of their national rights, is not a new problem that emerged for the first time in the demonstrations of Prishtina and other cities, and is not a problem stirred up by socialist Albania. The people of Kosova have always fought for these rights. But they have been systematically denied them, starting from the second meeting of the AVNOJ of November 29, 1943, which treated the Albanians of Kosova and other regions of Yugoslavia as national minorities, destined to live under the umbrella of other republics, while the right to sovereignty and the formation of a republic was recognized to others, such as Montenegro and Macedonia. As it turns out from the above-cited documents, the Serb bourgeoisie and Serb chauvinism have always been obstacles to the full recognition of the national rights of the people of Kosova. Precisely because the just demands of the people of Kosova, such as the demand for the republic, are not to the liking of this bourgeoisie, they are called irredentist, counter-revolutionary, chauvinist, etc....

The Policy of the Albanian State Does Not Endanger But Defends the SFR of Yugoslavia

The ideological contradictions between socialist Albania and self-administrative Yugoslavia are well known. The ideological polemic between us is not a development of recent times. We Albanian communists have felt, feel and will feel it our permanent duty to defend Marxism-Leninism. We have fought against revisionist-opportunist-reformist theories and views of whatever hue and will continue to do so. This is our right, just as it is the right of all the anti-Marxists and the different parties of the bourgeoisie to fight us, and in this direction they do not hang back.

We have the full right to defend our system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Others have the right to defend their systems. The ideological struggle resulting from this is natural and inevitable.

The Yugoslav leaders claim that they do not wage this sort of struggle against us. This is not true and never has been. We wage the ideological struggle and we say so, whereas they wage it, but don't say so.

They claim that such an ideological struggle weakens the state, commercial and cultural relations between Albania and Yugoslavia. We assert and observe that they have not been weakened. On the contrary, they have strengthened, and this is due not only to their will, but also to ours. Neither the Yugoslavs nor we have made ideological concessions to each other, but we have agreed on matters of common interest and have disagreed over those questions on which we can never be reconciled....

We oppose the present foreign and internal policy of Yugoslavia, because we think it is fraught with dangers for Yugoslavia itself and for Albania, for the Balkans and Europe, regardless of the pretentious claims about "self-administration" and talk about an "independent," "non-aligned" policy, etc. Every government and every individual who understands politics and follows the situations that develop in the world, can see the dangers of this course of the Yugoslav policy. This policy has exposed Yugoslavia to the greedy ambitions and possible aggression of American imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. This threat is the outcome of this short-sighted policy which also causes the instability within Yugoslavia....

Every government and every individual who understands politics and follows the situations that develop in the world, can see the dangers of this course of the Yugoslav policy. This policy has exposed Yugoslavia to the greedy ambitions and possible aggression of American imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. This threat is the outcome of this short-sighted policy which also causes the instability within Yugoslavia....

It is not hard for anyone to guess what would happen if socialist Albania were to open its doors to Soviet, American and other capitalist countries' capital, to the hordes of hippy tourists, what would happen if Albania were to open the ports of Saranda, Vlora, Durres and Shengjin to the Soviet warships, as Yugoslavia does with its ports. If this were done, not only the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, but also the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Republic of Greece, and the whole of the Balkans and Europe would be endangered.

This we have not done and never will. Neither the Soviets nor anybody will see our ports, even through binoculars. In order to enter the Albanian ports, any enemy will have to do so over our dead bodies.

Because it pursues a principled, correct and unwavering policy, because it sticks to its course consistently and with determination, Albania is an important factor of peace, stability, security and defense in the Balkans and Europe, as has been its tradition throughout its long history....

Messrs. Yugoslav leaders, forget your morbid passions for a moment and think with cool heads: Does this policy of the Albanian state endanger or defend the Socialist Federal Republic pf Yugoslavia?

We have declared and we declare again officially and publicly that if the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is attacked, we Albanians of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania will fight shoulder to shoulder with the peoples of Yugoslavia. Does this undermine or defend the Yugoslav Federation?...

Why, Messrs. Yugoslav leaders, do you distort our declarations and try to put in our mouth things we have not said? We have declared and we declare again that we have not raised and are not raising territorial claims. Why do you accuse us of being chauvinists, inciters of irridentism, and nationalists? Of course, by leveling such unfounded and preposterous accusations against us, you want to conceal something grave and unjust on your part.

We do not have the slightest interest in weakening the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On the contrary, we want it strengthened, but not at the expense of the Albanians of Kosova. The weakening of the Federation is to the liking of the revisionist aggressor Soviet Union and the Bulgarian revisionist leadership. This truth we state openly, while you are afraid to do so....

The Albanian Nation Is One; It Has the One History, Culture and Language

... The Yugoslav leadership forgets that the Albanian nation is one, irrespective of the fact that one part lives in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the other in three parts of the Federal Yugoslavia. It has the one history, culture and language, has its common heroes, poets, painters, musicians and artists. This is its great heritage, which it preserves, cultivates and develops. These are the main features of a nation.

Do the Yugoslavs think that these features of the Albanian nationality should die out, should be described as signs and phenomena of "an outdated romantic nationalism and a reprehensible chauvinism?" ...

Calm must be restored in Kosova, but the removal of a certain Mahmut Bakalli (grocer) and the promotion of a Mahmut Cakalli (jackal) will not calm it. Kosova will return to calm if the state of siege is lifted, the Serbian army and punitive police are withdrawn, if the situation is normalized, the innocent prisoners with whom the jails are full are released, and if the bodies of those killed in demonstrations are returned to their families, because this is a sacred and humanitarian matter. You must study the demand of the people of Kosova for a Republic carefully and fairly, must solve its economic problems correctly. This is the only way to restore calm in Kosova, only in this way will it be a friend of the other republics, within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The demand of Kosova to be granted the status of a Federal Republic is a just one. It has deserved it because of the struggles it has waged together with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against fascism....

We feel it our duty to tell you these truths in a friendly spirit. Reject them if you wish, attach any epithet you care to use to us. Let the progressive world judge both us and you.

The peoples of Yugoslavia and the Albanian people want friendship with one another, but the friendship must be established on sound foundations.

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A letter from a participant in the Kosova demonstrations

(The following article is reprinted from Albanian Telegraphic Agency News Bulletin, June 14,1981.)

It is almost three months since Kosova has been living under a curfew. Everybody, not only foreign but also native, that comes in or goes out is subjected to a strict police control. The Serbian army and militia are distributed everywhere in the region. The special troops of the UDB and secret military police, made up of former parent- less children reared in orphanages and trained in particular to exercise terror, chase and persecute the Albanians. The whole of Kosova is under unprecedented terror. While continuing the savage oppression, the great-Serb chauvinists do their utmost to isolate Kosova from the world so that the crimes they perpetrate should not be learned from it. Despite this there are patriots who, even in grave conditions, find ways to inform public opinion abroad on what has happened and is happening in Kosova.

Recently Radio Tirana has received a letter from a listener abroad. The letter had been sent to him from a comrade, a participant at the demonstrations in Prishtina.

The full text of the letter follows:

"If you want to ask about me, I fail to say that I am well, not only me but no one in the whole region of Kosova. Two to three months have gone by that I have not written to you, but the reason has been this. I could not mail a letter to you because they are checked and read. Now I found the opportunity to write to you about everything that has happened here.

"Kosova, as you know, is one of the most backward regions and, at the same time, life is very expensive. The wages of the workers are among the lowest in Yugoslavia. This situation has continued for years, but on March 1, the patience came to an end and the Albanians rose. At 7:00 a.m. on this day the students raised their heads, and more than 3,000 people filled the streets and began to ask for their rights, freedom, work for the workers, treatment for the students, etc. The demonstration lasted for about three hours. The police who came in to disperse the demonstrators immediately passed onto the offensive against them, and their clashes with the students were fierce. The next day the arrests began. Thus, this job continued for several days and uninterruptedly led to March 26, when the demonstrating students were also joined by the workers. During the demonstration of this day the same slogans and requests were again shouted out. The policemen undertook actions, killed and maimed several people. Again arrests, and thousands of students were thrown into prisons. The participation of the Albanians in the demonstrations of this day was larger. Now, how could the rest continue their lessons without their comrades; therefore they took the decision: either death or victory. This brought about April 2. The entire people of Kosova rose on their feet, an event that you rarely experience in life. You cannot believe this. How can a whole people from 12 to 75 years of age, pupils of elementary, middle schools, university students and workers rise on their feet? All of them carrying flags in their hands, with Albanian songs on their lips, came out to ask for their rights.

"For a moment, to tell the truth, I was embarrassed and did not want to believe my eyes. I remained looking for about half an hour, but unexpectedly, a girl's voice called to us, 'Hi, what are you doing; come on, this is a struggle for all.' This call aroused great emotions in me and I myself did not understand how I found myself among the demonstrators. When thousands of people rushed into the streets of Prishtina like a river, children came out of the houses of Albanians and brought bread, water, biscuits to the demonstrators. Children not more than eight to ten years of age distributed bread and water among the demonstrators. Each of the demonstrators cut a mouthful of bread and then handed it over to his comrade. So did they act with the water; sip after sip, it was passed from hand to hand. In such a way we remained in the street until half past seven in the evening, cheering and singing songs. At half past seven, numerous military and police forces appeared. They came in from Belgrade and Zagreb. These forces rushed us and, together with them, tear gas bombs were hurled at us. At the same time, the Serbs began to shoot at us from the windows. The policemen hit mercilessly and sent to jail everybody they caught. There were thousands of tanks, policemen and soldiers engaged. These forces put Prishtina under an iron encirclement. Seven persons were killed during the first day. Calamity arose on the second day, not only in Prishtina, but throughout Kosova, in Podujeva, Vucitern, Ferizaj, Suhareka, etc.

"Is there any history that can describe such events, the people killed that day by the tanks and machine guns-of the Serbs? This was a real struggle. Is there any people where a child of 12 years of age, carrying a flag in his hand, jumps onto the tank and waves the flag? Where is it seen that children of 10 years of age, under the boots of policemen, shout: 'Long live Kosova!'? Where is it seen that children oppose policemen armed head to foot, throwing mud and dust at their eyes? This day cannot be forgotten.

"Peasants, too, rose to their feet and went to the defense of Pudojeva and other cities. During this day about 300 people were killed. The figure of nine persons was a mere lie.

"So far, I had not known myself of what a people I was a son of. Prior to these events I was thinking about again coming there, whereas now, even if you gave me the world, I would not move from here. I prefer to stay here even on bread and cheese. Now I learned for what I must die. The homeland is above everything. It was so bad of us to come there and we nearly lost our Albanian language, customs and traditions.

"Come see the situation yourself. Come to see your homeland. Come here to write about the Albanian flag, about the martyrs, and render glorious songs to them. In short, come here and life will have another meaning to you when you do something for the homeland.... Well, come to see how the martyrs fought against the guns.... Come and join our struggle. If the Yugoslavs do not grant us our rights, all Kosova will keep on fighting.... How can we stay in the face of thousands of prisoners and hundreds of people killed? Perhaps at this moment we are rather grieved, but we are stronger than ever, because apart from our courage, we now have our convictions."

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Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement -- Part 9

A Liquidator Goes Bankrupt

Barry Weisberg's so-called "CPUSA/ML" is a handful of social-democrats pretending to be Marxist-Leninists. Its predecessor, the MLOC, was a fervent admirer of the "three worlders,'' while the "CPUSA/ML" trails in the wake of the liquidators. It whines that U.S. imperialism is all- powerful and can stave off its crisis via "reindustrialization'' and achieve an "unrivalled position'' for "the next 10- 20 years," that the revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist forces in the U.S. are negligible, and hence there is nothing to be done but to turn tail and hide behind the "liberals" in the Democratic Party. After all, Weisberg and co. say with imploring eyes, "The liberal or social democratic donor base" can "call upon something under one million supporters." (Unite!, January 15, 1981, p. 2) And so they have put forward the plan of merging with all the liberal-labor politicians, especially with the other social-democrats, the pro-Soviet revisionists, the labor bureaucrats and some unglued Maoists, in short, with the whole loose informal "left-wing" of the Democratic Party. This loose union they have christened the "Democratic Front."

Where does liquidationism lead? Well, today the "CPUSA/ML" has announced that the "Central Committee of the CPUSA/ML has decided to temporarily suspend publication of Unite! We anticipate resuming publication in early 1982." (Letter from the distribution department of Unite!) The reason -- they have gone bankrupt. They write: "In addition to the ideological, political, and organizational assaults upon the Party, the deepening economic crisis has sharply affected the material resources of the Party...." ("Report on the 8th Meeting of the Central Committee," Unite!, July, 1, 1981, p. 2, col. 5) Therefore the CC decided to suspend Unite!, the newspaper of the "CPUSA/ML." Why are they scrapping their paper? They say it is in order to "pay more attention to the actual program and organization of the democratic front." (Ibid., col. 4)

In fact, this is not just a financial question. On the contrary, it is another sign of the utter ideological, political and organizational bankruptcy of these miserable social-democratic impostors. By abandoning their own journal Unite!, they show their total demoralization. They are dropping even the pretext of maintaining the slightest independence from the Democratic Party marsh. This is a paper organization which is too weak to even maintain the existence of its paper. It is too bankrupt to even publish a four-page tabloid in a few dozen copies every two weeks.

It is also notable that they are ceasing publication of Unite! after having been crushed by the forces of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. They complain piteously of the "wide range of attacks" (Ibid., col. 5) on them. True enough. There will never be peaceful coexistence between Marxism-Leninism and social-democracy. Our Party has publicly branded "CPUSA/ML" as social-democrats and liquidators. Each new step of theirs confirms this assessment then times over. Meanwhile, ideologically bankrupt, the social-democratic "CPUSA/ML" prefers to whine about "attacks" rather than to make the slightest attempt to answer them.

The junking of Unite! also marks another milestone in the policy of "retreat" declared by the CC of the "CPUSA/ML" at its second meeting in June 1979. The MLOC was never much of anything to begin with. But after the formation of the "CPUSA/ ML" in December 1978, they blew a- part into a dozen pieces. Then they declared the policy of "retreat." They admitted to themselves that in each locality (of which there are only two left) "The distribution of Unite! can be measured in dozens" and that even the "distribution of free materials has dwindled to an all-time low." (Organize!, a journal of "CPUSA/ML," September 1979, pp. 24, 13) As the "retreat" continued, things became even worse. Splits continued and they admitted in November 1980 that "Since the split in the Party one year ago, various aspects of the Party's work have been curtailed...." (Report from the 6th Session of the CC, Unite!, Nov. 1, 1980) The 8th Meeting of the CC has now thrown aside Unite! altogether. God only knows what the 9th Meeting will do. Although there is almost no one left in this "party," they are still lacking in any internal unity or united activity. Their only common point is their worship of the liberals and the social-democrats.

Why don't they just disband altogether? This question immediately comes to mind. They themselves admit that their party is a sick joke. In the only issue of their theoretical journal since the "CPUSA/ML" was founded, their chairman, Mr. Weisberg, declares the "...lack of a nation-wide Marxist-Leninist center...." (Class Against Class, Jan. 1980, p. 21) In his recent pamphlet, Mr. Weisberg renounces any claim to the "CPUSA/ ML" being a party by declaring that "...from the end of the 1930's until the present, a truly revolutionary, nationwide political party...has not existed in the U.S." (The Fascist Menace in the U.S. and How to Fight It, Barry Weisberg, p. 40) The 8th Meeting of the CC is still wondering if the "CPUSA/ML" will ever get around to "establish(ing) the foundations of the Party...." (Unite!, July 1, 1980) Here we have a "party" which is not a "nation-wide Marxist-Leninist center," is not a "truly revolutionary, nation-wide political party" and has no foundations.

Thus it is crystal clear that the only reason the "CPUSA/ML" calls itself a "party" is simply as a cynical wrecking maneuver. They call themselves a "party" solely in order to infiltrate into the Marxist-Leninist movement, simply in order to disguise social- democracy as communism. Meanwhile, in front of the "liberal or social-democratic donor base," they change colors and swear up and down that there is no party, there is no center, there is no role for revolutionary Marxism-Leninism.

Once Again the "Pre-Party Situation"

The junking of Unite! is also the logical outcome of the liquidationist strategy of this social-democratic sect. The MLOC/ "CPUSA(ML)" started its existence, it will be recalled, by advocating that a "pre-party situation" existed in the U.S. Now once again they are in a fit of the blues about the possibilities of a party. They are advocating in effect that the party will someday emerge spontaneously from the "Democratic Front." Their pretext for liquidating their press is for the purpose of paying "special attention...to the democratic front." They are "suspend(ing) publication of Unite!, while expanding its propaganda and other work along lines suggested above [i.e., for the "Democratic Front" --ed.]." (Ibid., col. 4,5)

And what if their liberal-labor liquidators' party doesn't emerge from the "Democratic Front" but instead drowns in the marsh? Well, so what, it isn't of that much value to them anyway. The main role Mr. Weisberg sees for a party would be to "form national alliances" with the social-democratic and opportunist parties. (The Fascist Menace, p. 40) Indeed, Weisberg's new pamphlet on The Fascist Menaceis really very instructive. Here the chairman of an alleged "communist party" writes on how to fight fascism. Yet he omits all mention of his own "party," the "CPUSA/ML." Even the blurb on the author, designed to inflate Mr. Weisberg to heroic dimensions, fails to mention that he has any connection with the "CPUSA/ML." Indeed,, what need to mention such things, when even the signboard of Marxism-Leninism might detract from wheelings and dealings needed for cavorting in the far more important "liberal or social-democratic donor base"?

The "CPUSA/ML" is following slavishly in the footsteps of the archaeologist for the Democratic Party, Browder. It was Browder who step by step liquidated the once-revolutionary CPUS A in favor of paying more attention to playing footsy with the Democratic Party hacks, labor bureaucrats and opportunists. Browder's liquidationism led to the outright dissolution of the CPUSA in 1944, and its replacement, for one year, by a mere "educational association." Never thoroughly repudiated, Browderism again dragged down the reconstituted CPUSA. Of course, liquidatingUnite!, a social-democratic rag, is not equivalent to liquidating a communist party. But the ideological position being put forward by Mr. Weisberg and co. to apologize for their nakedness is that of sleazy Browderism. They are denigrating the very idea of the genuine communist party and advocating that Marxist-Leninists should give up party-building and instead slosh into the marsh. They go so far as to brazenly deny the very existence of the forces of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism with their shouting that there is no "nation-wide Marxist-Leninist center."

The "Democratic Front"

The 8th Meeting of the CC of the "CPUSA/ML" thus liquidated Unite! for the sake of going all-out to build up the "left-wing" of the Democratic Party, the "Democratic Front." And how is this "Democratic Front" to be built up? Mr. Weisberg looks back longingly at the legacy of the arch-revisionist Browder and suggests: "What is most needed today is a movement which works to achieve support from labor and farm organizations, from church, community, and minority organizations, and from progressive national political organizations of all types, involving militant leaders from all sections of the people's movement." (The Fascist Menace, p. 41) In short, labor bureaucrats, priests, liberal businessmen, Democratic Party hacks, etc., all must unite. Mr. Weisberg is very careful not to characterize what groups he would unite with or to give a concrete assessment of the state of these organizations, but hides behind general terms such as "labor organizations" and "minority organizations." This is the usual method of the opportunist to slur over the sharp struggle between the revolutionaries and the class traitors that goes on in the mass movements and to prettify the slavish followers of the bourgeoisie as "labor leaders" and "minority leaders." Browder would be proud of his present-day disciples. Indeed, Weisberg's program is the same Browderite program which liquidated the once-revolutionary CPUSA, the program which the present-day pro-Soviet revisionists, the "C"PUSA of Gus Hall, have been following for decades.

Still, in case anyone has missed the point, Mr. Weisberg is quick to add that: "The democratic front would not exclude, in principle, reformist or even revisionist organizations such as those now at the heel of the Soviet Union and China." (Ibid., p. 42) Bravo, Mr. Weisberg! We wrote in The Workers' Advocate of November 30,1980, an article entitled "The 'United Labor Front' of the MLOC/'CPUSA(ML)' Means Unity With the Khrushchovite 'C'PUSA and All the Social-Democrats." In The Workers' Advocate of May 20, 1980 we showed that you are still defending unity with the "three worlders" as well. And now, sure enough, the "CPUSA/ML" admits this is just what they want.

But don't think that Mr. Weisberg is an opportunist, oh no, for he would insist that "The membership of any organization [in the "Democratic Front" -- ed.] would be determined on the basis of its actual unity with the program of the front, as evidenced by its actions." (Ibid.) On the other hand, he must think that all readers have very poor memories, for two pages earlier he has told us that the "program and tactics" of the front will be determined by what is "mutually acceptable" to "the many existing groups and organizations." (Ibid., p. 40) Thus the revisionists would be firmly judged against a very harsh standard -- a program that has been chosen in advance on the basis of being "mutually acceptable" to all the different currents of opportunism, pro-Chinese, pro-Soviet and social-democratic. What a farce! But from behind this facade of circular reasoning one can catch a glimpse of Mr. Weisberg's ideological stand. He holds that the revisionists have not deserted to the bourgeoisie and are not fighting against the class interests of the proletariat and the. toiling masses. Oh no, he holds that instead the revisionists and social-democrats may well be, "as evidenced by (their) actions," staunch defenders of the immediate interests of the masses, although the "CPUSA/ML" will grant that the opportunists and revisionists may perhaps fail to make it all the way to the ultimate goal. (We would say: all the way to socialism, but as we shall see later on in this article, it is rather questionable whether what the "CPUSA/ML" describes as its goal is socialism.)

What all this means in practice has been revealed in a front-page article in the July issue of The Call, newspaper of the "CPML," those rabid pro-Chinese liquidators and advocates of "directing the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism." This article, subtitled "Black Marxists Meet in Detroit," reports favorably on the presence of the Weisberg sect at this meeting held on June 20, 1981. This was a meeting of liquidators and social-democrats hiding under the cover of flagrant cultural nationalism. It put forward the liquidator slogan that the problem was to eliminate sectarianism, that is, to eliminate any revolutionary or Marxist-Leninist character of the movement. According to The Call, "...the participants also summed up the sectarianism which has characterized both the nationalist and Marxist-Leninist movements in the past ten years and which has taken its toll on organizations and individuals. People felt that the very fact that such a meeting could be held, after years of internecine and factional struggle, was itself a rejection of this sectarianism."

Why, reading such a passage one easily forgets whether one is reading The Call, organ of a sect of "three worlder" liquidators, or Unite!, organ of a sect of social-democratic liquidators, so close in spirit and so identical in tone are these Tweedledees and Tweedledums. What an excellent exposition The Call gives of what is in effect Unite!'s "Democratic Front"! Indeed, The Call follows up this passage by immediately putting forward the Weisberg sect as the spokesman for The Call's point of view. The Call states: "Earl Rose, member of the CPUSA(ML) formerly MLOC, stated that though a great many differences exist between the various groups and individuals, especially on questions of political line, the conditions clearly call for unity, at the very least, on a minimum program." This apparently was the unanimous opinion of the meeting, for The Call goes on to say that the meeting "...appoint(ed) W. JeanPierre [a Call writer -- ed.] to write a draft minimum program for the group." The very fact that The Call speaks of the presence of the Weisberg sect, and so favorably at that, shows that the liquidators have accepted Weisberg and company as one of their own. Moreover, they agree in practice on the plan for the "Democratic Front," although they all call it by a different name.

Indeed, it is notable that The Call claims that the participants of the meeting agreed "to fight for four strategic goals" including "unity of all Marxist-Leninists." This shows that underneath all the "CPUSA/ML's" chatter about tactics and united and popular fronts, in fact they are taking part in cabals of liquidators designed to unite them as "Marxist-Leninists" or, to be more precise, to unite the liquidators against the Marxist-Leninists. The "CPUSA/ML" and its predecessor the MLOC before it have long been seeking such a platform of unity with the "three worlders" such as the "CPML." Even after the MLOC was forced to say a few words against the "three worlds" theory in late 1977, they continued to seek unity with the "CPML." In March 1978 they issued their infamous "open letter" in which they called for everyone,"three worlders" and anti-"three worlders" alike, to come together for the sake of building a common "Marxist-Leninist" party. But, alas!, such all-encompassing unity escaped them at that time. Now, with the "Democratic Front," the "CPUSA/ML" believes they finally found the long-sought form to unite with the "three worlders." However, the "CPUSA/ML" has not been standing still all these years. Now they are more open about seeking unity with the pro-Soviet revisionists, trotskyites and other opportunists as well.

Thus here we have Mr. Weisberg's "Democratic Front" in action. It is unity with the liquidators, the "three worlders," the social-democrats and the cultural nationalists on a platform of opposing "sectarianism." This meeting is an example of what the 8th Meeting of the CC of the "CPUSA/ ML" referred to as follows: "Several major attempts to unify the fighting forces in our country are occurring over the next several months. The Party will continue and expand its efforts toward establishing the unity of action of all those who fight against reaction, racism, fascism and war, who can be united for progress, equality, democracy, and peace. This is the course of struggle toward socialist revolution today." (Unite!, July 1, 1981, p. 2)

But, Mr. Weisberg assures us, at least "...no alliance would be sought with any section of either the Democratic or Republican Parties, or any other capitalist political party.... " This is just another one of Mr. Weisberg's little jokes, just like his "party," the "CPUSA/ML," which is not a "nation-wide Marxist-Leninist center." It is quite clear that this "Democratic Front" not only necessitates unity with the capitalist parties, but it is nothing but another name for the already existing "left" wing of the Democratic Party. Unity with the Democratic Party hacks and the labor bureaucrats is an example of that "mutually acceptable program and tactics" that already exists among the different opportunist and revisionist currents. This is why the "CPUSA/ML" so bitterly opposed the resolution put forward by our Party and other anti-imperialist groups at the National Anti-Draft Conference of February, 1981 for condemning "the warmongering, aggression and war preparations of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.'' (See "Why the 'CPUSA/ML' Liquidators Consider the 'Left' the Main Danger," The Workers' Advocate,May 20, 1981) Unite! went into a frenzy over this resolution, denouncing it repeatedly as ultra-leftism and trotskyism. (Unite!, March 1 and March 15, 1981) Unite! held that such a resolution would hinder "seek(ing) to unite all those who could be united." ("1,000 Attend Anti-Draft Conference," Unite!, March 1,1981, p. 4)

It is to the "Democratic Front" that the "CPUSA/ML" has dedicated all their efforts. When Unite! was being published, every issue supported this Browderite campaign of unity with the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. Now when the "CPUSA/ML" has thrown aside this smelly old rag, it is being thrown aside for the sake of continuing the work of wading through this same Browderite swamp. As the 8th Meeting of the CC of the "CPUSA/ ML" "ruled": the central organ may come and go, the pretense of being a "party" may come and go, but social- democracy and Browderite liquidationism will be the constant policy, the end-all and be-all, of this group of social-democratic impostors.

For Revolutionary Vigilance Against Social-Democracy

Unite!, as its last gasp, states "we are well aware that the enemies of the party will consider this step to represent our demise." No, not at all. True, you may well collapse. But you -- or some other social-democratic impostor, the particular personality matters little -- may tomorrow get a grant from the liberals or from a social-democratic foundation. Whether or not you live or die, the social-democratic trend is deep-rooted and will not die out so easily. It would be premature for us to announce the end of attempts at social- democratic infiltration of the Marxist- Leninist movement.

No, what we do declare is -- you are utterly disgraced. Your wretchedness is exposed to all. And we declare that we will keep a sharp eye out for you or any other social-democratic impostor. The revolutionary Marxist-Leninists have crushed you once. That is what you admit by closing down your paper. If you manage to start publishing again, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists will crush you yet again.

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REFERENCE NOTES: A LIQUIDATOR ON "DEMOCRACY"

In the article "A Liquidator Goes Bankrupt," we have seen that the social-democratic "CPUSA/ML" is presently carrying out its Browderite liquidationist program of unity with the "left wing" of the Democratic Party under the slogan of building the "Democratic Front." Over the years, the MLOC/"CPUSA(ML)" has made a lot of fuss about "program." Today naturally they are shouting about the "program" of the "Democratic Front." According to them, it is lack of a "program" that is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the opportunist coalitions, a weakness that they set themselves the task of rectifying.

So what is the program of their "Democratic Front"? The 8th Meeting of the CC of the "CPUSA/ML," the one which junked Unite!, expressed the desire to "pay more attention" to this question. The "CPUSA/ML" is looking for that "mutually acceptable" program that will magically unite, or at least be acceptable to, that "liberal, social democratic or revisionist Left" that the "CPUSA/ML" regards as the real opposition to the "organized Right." As Mr. Weisberg says: "The organized Right in the U.S. is several times larger than the liberal, social democratic or revisionist Left, let alone the Marxist-Leninists." ("The Fascist Menace in the Oval Office," Unite!, Jan. 15, 1981, p. 2) The "CPUSA/ ML" constantly lectures that this reformist, revisionist and liberal stew doesn't go far enough, but that generally speaking it is on the side of the people. Hence they urge the need to build a "Democratic Front" out of this stew.

Actually, Mr. Weisberg and company have already made great progress towards formulating their program, at least in general outline. It is nothing but Browderite worship of American "democracy." Surely everyone in the liberal-labor marsh will agree with "democracy," even the "reformist" labor bureaucrats, the liberals, the revisionists and trotskyites of all stripes and so forth. The "CPUSA/ML" will unite with them all in defense of what it calls "the alleged ideals of dollar democracy" (Unite!, July 1, 1981, p. 1), while preserving for itself the role of going farther than the liberals, of going on to the ultimate goal, that is, of painting up socialism itself as simply "complete, universal and unlimited democracy."

Our Party, following the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, places a high value on the struggle over the questions of democracy. Such struggle is one of the streams of revolt that must be merged into the socialist revolution. Such struggles as those against fascism, against racial discrimination and against reaction are struggles of great power, struggles that are a component part of and subordinate to the class struggle as a whole.

But Mr. Weisberg and company have replaced the Marxist-Leninist teachings on democracy with the Browderite worship of American democracy. The "CPUSA/ML" uses "democracy" as the excuse to chop down the Marxist-Leninist program, to abandon the class struggle and the revolution, to promote reforms as everything and to oppose the independent political movement of the proletariat. This means in fact to betray the struggle for democracy and to turn it into its opposite, into prettification of the growing reaction of the bourgeoisie. And this is just what the "CP USA/ML" does when it uses the slogan of "democracy" as the pretext for its unity with the "left wing" of that diehard imperialist, anti-democratic, racist and warmongering party, the Democratic Party.

Elaborating on this theme of defense of "dollar democracy" as the burning issue of the day, Mr. Weisberg himself declared, in the last issue of Unite! prior to its suspension, that "What is at stake this Fourth of July is the very institution of dollar democracy itself." (Unite!, July 1, 1981) How does Mr. Weisberg propose to defend this "dollar democracy"? Why he says, speaking indirectly but clearly, "From many directions the existing democratic state is under attack. The majority of people find national elections of so little consequence that they refrain from voting." With this sermon, Mr. Weisberg admits that the "CPUSA/ML's" own "No Vote November 4th" campaign was a cynical fraud, a fake signboard behind which the "CPUSA/ML" was actually seeking unity with the "left wing" of the Democratic Party, for now the "CP USA/ML" openly denounces all those that didn't vote as attacking "the existing democratic state." Now if they did vote, whom were they supposed to vote for? Obviously not for Reagan and the Reaganites. So it is clear what Mr. Weisberg has on his mind. His idea of a struggle for democracy is voting for the Democratic Party hacks.

Here Mr. Weisberg is simply showing off his training at the Institute for Policy Studies, a social-democratic foundation. For this program of "democracy" is exactly the theme song of social-democracy, from the "Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee" whose goal is to push on the Democratic Party until it reaches the "consistent" democracy of "socialism," to the partisans of "economic democracy," who say that the problem is simply to extend that wonderful American "dollar democracy" until it becomes "economic democracy." They tell the workers: don't wage the class struggle, but strive for "participation" in deciding where the cutbacks will be made. Don't fight the savage "reindustrialization" program of the bourgeoisie, but "participate" in administrating it. Don't fight the growing fascization of the rich and of both political parties, but worship American "democracy" and strive to "extend" it to the economic front.

Socialism According to Weisberg

Mr. Weisberg has taken up this revisionist and Browderite worship of American "democracy" in order to have a common "program" with the liberal-labor marsh. He claims, of course, that he goes beyond this marsh. But where to? What is Mr. Weisberg's conception of "socialism"? He writes: "Our struggle for complete, universal and unlimited democracy in which there exists direct popular legislation by the working people. This can only occur on the basis of the social ownership of the means of production. This is a road to a new tomorrow. It is a socialist road." (Ibid., p. 44)

So, according to Mr. Weisberg, socialism is "unlimited democracy" and "direct popular legislation." Bravo, Mr. Weisberg! You have shown yet again that Weisberg-ism is nothing but unlimited liberalism which obscures the real substance and significance of socialism and seeks to throw dust in the eyes of the masses.

To begin with, there is no such thing as "unlimited democracy." This is the song of the liberals to oppose the class struggle and smear the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat which they allege to be "undemocratic." Every state apparatus is a machine for the rule of one class over another. Until the abolition of classes and the subsequent abolition of the state itself, the state apparatus remains the apparatus for the rule of one class over the other. Who will rule? The working class or the bourgeoisie? The exploited or the exploiters? This is the fundamental question of the class struggle and of socialism.

Socialism is thus not "complete, universal and unlimited democracy," but the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the rule of the working class, which leads all the toiling masses to suppress the capitalists and build a new life. It is of necessity a proletarian democracy, a democracy for the overwhelming majority of the population, the toilers. It represents a tremendous extension of democracy, for capitalist society is at best a bourgeois democracy when it is not a straightforward despotism. And bourgeois democracy is a democracy for an insignificant handful of exploiters and an iron rule, a dictatorship, over the exploited, the overwhelming majority of the population. Proletarian democracy, however, is democracy for the overwhelming majority of the population, the working masses, and a dictatorship over the handful of former exploiters. But socialism is not an "unlimited democracy," for the former exploiters will use every means to undermine socialism, to subvert it, to drown it in blood. As Lenin teaches: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle -- bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative -- against the forces and the traditions of the old society. " ("Left-Wing"Communism, an Infantile Disorder, Ch. V) Therefore socialism cannot grant equality to the forces of the old society, but must suppress them in a revolutionary fashion.

Furthermore, socialism cannot be obtained by simply instituting "unlimited democracy," by simply extending bourgeois democracy to its furthest limits. Revolutionary socialism has long ago proved that universal, unlimited suffrage, including initiatives, referendums and other means of "direct popular suffrage," does not take one beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy. Even under universal suffrage the bourgeoisie retains one thousand and one ways of deceiving the masses, of suppressing them, of in practice driving them out of affairs of state, of bribing or buying up governments wholesale, and so forth. The bourgeoisie may allow the Congress to be turned into an impotent talkshop for the purpose of fooling the common people, but behind the scenes the government is in fact nothing but an executive committee of the capitalist class, a coalition of the most powerful monopolies. If by chance the working masses break through the one thousand and one restrictions that are inevitable in any bourgeois democracy and win via elections some results that worry the bourgeoisie, the election can be set aside and the country drenched in blood, as happened in Chile, Indonesia and elsewhere. Lenin. denouncing the social-democratic lies about the wonder-working powers of "pure" democracy by the renegade Kautsky, wrote that: "The learned Mr. Kautsky has forgotten -- accidentally forgotten, probably...a 'trifle':namely, that the ruling party in a bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to another bourgeois party, while on all serious, profound and fundamental issues the proletariat gets martial law or pogroms, instead of the protection of the minority.The more highly developed a democracy is, the more imminent are pogroms or civil war in connection with any profound divergence which is dangerous to the bourgeoisie."(Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, chapter entitled "Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy," emphasis as in the original) This too is why the socialist revolution, and not the unlimited extension of democracy, is the strategy of the proletariat.

Thus "complete, universal and unlimited democracy" is neither socialism nor does it lead to socialism. It is nothing but a utopian fraud. Nor is Mr. Weisberg's pet scheme, "direct popular legislation," a particularly socialist method. Perhaps Mr. Weisberg would care to recall the Soviets of.the genuine socialism of the Soviet Union of the days of Lenin and Stalin, the socialism that is a model for all Marxist-Leninists, or the people's councils in the present-day genuine socialism of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, that valiant bastion of world revolution, that beacon of socialism, surrounded by enemies but standing up to fight in the interests of the working masses the world over. The Soviets and the people's councils are genuine instruments of the will of the popular masses. They are not talk-shop bodies but working bodies that combine legislative and executive functions. But they do not function by "direct popular legislation" nor would such methods be an improvement. This is a well-known feature of the socialist system. Hence the question arises: what type of "socialism" is Mr. Weisberg thinking of?

Indeed, what are the examples of this "socialism" that Mr. Weisberg is calling for. In the blurb on the author in the pamphlet The Fascist Menace, it says that "...he [Weisberg] has travelled throughout the United States and many parts of the world. He has met with representatives of socialist governments...." Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism says that there is only one genuine socialist country in the world today, socialist Albania. Yet Mr. Weisberg has talked to "representatives of socialist governments...." Indeed, to our knowledge Mr. Weisberg has not traveled to Albania and furthermore he speaks of several socialist governments. So please tell us, dear social-democratic liquidator, what countries do you regard as socialist? Oh, so sorry, your paper has closed down and so you can't answer such embarrassing questions. Oh well, a "party" without an organ does have its advantages, doesn't it!!

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The truth about the relations between the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)

From the introduction to the series begun in the June 30, 1981 Special Issue of 'The Workers' Advocate'

For over a decade, from May 1969 to December 1979, the predecessors of the MLP,USA, first the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist- Leninist) and then the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (COUSML), maintained a close fraternal relationship with the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). On December 5, 1979, three weeks before the Founding Congress of the MLP,USA, the leadership of CPC(M-L) without warning trampled these longstanding ties into the mud with two brutal letters. In these letters, the leadership of CPC(M-L), in the most savage language, laid down the ultimatum that they would have no further relations with the COUSML or the soon-to-be-founded MLP,USA unless the leadership of our Party was overthrown and every disagreement or difference of views between the two Parties was resolved immediately and without hesitation in favor of the leadership of CPC(M-L). Since then, the leadership of CPC(M-L) has been going all-out to strangle our Party. Heedless of the damage done to the interests of the revolution and of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, they have been carrying out straightforward wrecking activity with the aim of destroying the MLP,USA.

The immediate issues which lay behind this declaration of war by the leadership of CPC(M-L) against our Party are twofold. First of all, the leadership of CPC(M-L) is demanding a "special relationship" with our Party in which all criticism of them is banned as allegedly the work of "agent-provocateurs" and in which our Party is supposed to submit unconditionally to their dictate. They are angry because our Party insists that it is the norms dictated by Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, and not any sort of "special relationship," that governs relations between fraternal contingents of the international Marxist-Leninist movement. They denounce these norms, especially those of equality, independence, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, consultation and cooperation, and criticism and self-criticism as "archaic," "formalist," "centrist" and "sources of national and social-chauvinism."

Secondly, the leadership of CPC(M-L) is opposed to our Party's carrying the struggle against Chinese revisionism through to the end and to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism in general. They demand that our Party give up its open polemic against "our own" domestic opportunism and in particular advocate that to fight the centrists means to disrupt the "unity of the Marxist-Leninists." They are infuriated by our Party's vigorous leadership of the movement against social-chauvinism in the U.S. of the 1976-1980 period and by our Party's being founded under the Leninist slogan "Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists." Trying to be derisive, they call our Party "the theoreticians of the 'movement' and of 'ideological struggle.' " With their permanent crusade against "ideological struggle" and their opposition to the "without and against" slogan, they have in fact come out against the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism.

Interconnected with these two issues is the polycentrist and factional concept advocated by the leadership of CPC(M-L) according to which the genuine Marxist-Leninists around the world are divided into two different trends, with the leadership of CPC (M-L) being the center and leadership of a trend of their own. Their attempt to bludgeon our Party into submission is part of their demand for a "special relationship" with those parties or organizations that they regard as part of their "trend."

The differences between the MLP, USA and the CPC(M-L) should have been sorted out according to the methods provided for in the Marxist-Leninist norms and not by severing the relations between the two Parties. The MLP,USA condemns this hostile activity by the leadership of CPC(M-L) as unprincipled splitting and wrecking activity. It is unprincipled: for it serves to split the ranks of the international Marxist-Leninist movement in the face of the class enemies and the opportunists; for it is in violation of every applicable Marxist-Leninist norm of relations between parties to say nothing of elementary honesty and revolutionary morality; because it is carried out in the dark by means of slander, blackmail, provocation and lies; and because the leadership of CPC (M-L) does not dare to avow its real motives but instead constantly shifts and turns.

This does not mean however that the differences between the MLP,USA and the CPC(M-L) are minor or unimportant. On the contrary. The demands by the leadership of CPC(M-L) for a "special relationship" and for an end to the spirited struggle against opportunism would be fatal to our Party if we accepted them in the slightest. As well, these demands are manifestations of a whole series or system of Maoist and liquidationist blunders by the leadership of CPC (M-L). The CPC(M-L) is a Marxist-Leninist party which is committing deviations. A deviation is something that can be corrected. But just as long as these Maoist and liquidationist deviations are not corrected, just so long will these deviations continue to pose a great danger to the CPC(M-L). Our Party holds that the Marxist-Leninist norms governing relations between parties are not just for show or for minor ceremonial uses, but are precisely designed in order to deal with the major questions of principle and the life and death issues.

Our Party has fought consistently to solve these serious problems in the channels provided for by the existence of fraternal relations. Even after the leadership of CPC(M-L) unilaterally broke off these relations, we refused to be provoked. We gave the leadership of CPC(M-L) ample time to reconsider its stand, reestablish relations and begin the process of resolving the differences away from the eyes and ears of the class enemy. Instead they made the split public. Thus eventually we could no longer call them a fraternal party in our press. But we still refrained from directly mentioning the name "CPC(M-L)" in the ensuing polemical exchange between the two Parties which they inaugurated with full-scale polemics in the organ of the CC of CPC(M-L), People Canada Daily News, in June 1980 and with their continual verbal agitation.

Despite our efforts, today the war of the leadership of CPC(M-L) against our Party remains a fact. With their shameful letters of December 5, 1979, with their frenzied war on our Party, with their attempts to build up an anti-party network in the U.S. and with their all-round wrecking activity, the leadership of CPC(M-L) has taken upon itself the full responsibility for the creation and maintenance of that split. In such a situation, it is not only the right of the MLP,USA, but also its solemn revolutionary duty, to speak out to the Marxist-Leninists, revolutionary activists and class conscious proletarians of the U.S. and the world and clarify the issues at stake. Therefore the Central Committee of the MLP, USA, in order to execute its responsibility to defend the integrity of the Party, to defend the interests of the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and worldwide, to continue our tradition of rendering wholehearted proletarian internationalist assistance to the CPC(M-L), and to shoulder its responsibility to international Marxism-Leninism as a whole, has decided to make public the truth about the relations between the CPC(M-L) and the MLP,USA. Starting with this special issue, The Workers Advocate will publish a series of materials, documents and commentaries that will establish the facts of the matter and bring to the fore the issues of principle involved. In this issue, we begin the reprinting of the relevant correspondence. This article has been written to serve as an introduction to this correspondence.

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CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS: 1975-1981

The series "The Truth About the Relations Between the MLP, USA and the CPC(M-L)'' contains important correspondence from the crucial period from November 1979 to June 1980. This correspondence discusses the last several years of relations between our Party (by which we refer not just to the MLP, USA but also to its predecessors, the ACWM(M-L) and the COUSML) and the CPC(M-L). For ease in studying this correspondence, we provide a chronology of some of the events leading up to the public split and the savage war of CPC(M-L) against our Party. This chronology is incomplete and leaves out many letters and discussions referred to in the correspondence. It is not designed to be comprehensive, but instead simply to provide a framework in which the reader can place the various events referred to in the correspondence and thus get a sense of their timing and order.

Latter half of 1975

This period marks the successful conclusion of a period of struggle against factionalist deviators inside the COUSML, first against the anarcho-syndicalist deviation, then against the reformist deviators. As a result, there is a big strengthening of the work of the COUSML on all fronts, political, theoretical and organizational. Among other things, the party concept is strengthened in the COUSML and the work of the Party committees on all levels is enhanced. There is a dramatic improvement in the work of the higher Party committees. They meet more frequently, function more collectively and provide a powerful centralized guidance for all the work. From this time on, the higher Party committees succeed in preventing any violation of the organizational integrity of the COUSML. As well, from this time on all deviationist errors are nipped in the bud before they can crystallize into full-blown factions.

This period also marks the beginning of a new series of problems in the fraternal relations with CPC(M-L) that continue right up to CPC(M-L)'s unilateral breaking off of relations on December 5, 1979. Major problems existed in these relations from the very start in 1969, but a new phase begins in late 1975. The insistence of the National Committee and the National Executive Committee of the COUSML on the organizational integrity of the COUSML comes into conflict with the concepts of the leadership of the CPC(M-L) on their "special relationship" with COUSML. This manifests itself in various problems that arise in the practical relations between the two Parties. The NC and NEC of the COUSML seek to resolve these problems according to the standards of revolutionary professionalism and the norms dictated by Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. But the leadership of CPC(M-L) constantly works to aggravate and inflame the differences. The problems are never resolved. At a certain stage, ideological differences become intertwined with the problems of practical relations. Finally, on December 5, 1979, the CC of the CPC(M-L) brutally declares that it has "no more patience" and "this time your defeat will be final" and breaks off all relations with the COUSML.

There is a direct connection between the beginning of a new series of problems in the latter part of 1975 in the relations with CPC(M-L) and the victory of the COUSML over the factionalists. All the major factional disruptions in the ACWM(M-L) and COUSML found their external source in the influence of the leadership of CPC(M-L). The clearing out of the factionalists marks the removal of those elements who, wittingly or unwittingly, comprised the agencies on which the leadership of CPC(M-L) placed their hopes in their attempts to impose their dictate on our Party. The repudiation of their deviations is a casting off of errors fostered by the leadership of CPC(M-L). Although this is not realized at this time by the COUSML leadership, it is of course realized by the top leadership of CPC(M-L). As well, the reinforcement of the party concept and of party norms throughout the COUSML is both alien to the conception of the leadership of CPC(M-L) and directly blocks their attempts at violating the organizational integrity of the COUSML. Hence the leadership of CPC(M-L) begins a new series of attempts to shake the solidity of the COUSML leadership, to discredit it in the eyes of the COUSML membership, and to probe for divisions in order to foster new agencies.

March 13,1976

When a representative of the COUSML leadership points out the unnecessary problems caused by the CPC(M-L) leadership's use of "middleman" methods in contacting the COUSML, a representative of the CPC(M-L) leadership refuses to hear him out and denounces the COUSML leadership for "formalism." This begins a constant stream of denunciations of the COUSML leadership for "formalism" for the alleged sin of insisting on the proper observance of the Marxist-Leninist norms in relations between parties and in particular for the sin of insisting that the organizational integrity of the COUSML must be respected.

Over a period of years, the leadership of CPC(M-L) continues to develop new pseudo-theories directed against the norms. For example, in January 1978 a representative of CPC(M-L) charges that "...formality is wrong....it is now coming up internationally to use this business of non-interference in other parties to develop national and social chauvinism." He goes on to charge that elements in the COUSML leadership "were using this formality to promote social chauvinism." Later on, the leadership of CPC(M-L) calls respect for the norms "centrism." They pose as big fighters against "centrism," but they find the "source of centrism" in the defense of the Marxist-Leninist norms governing relations between parties, especially those of equality, independence, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, etc.

The use of "middlemen' ' is how the NEC of the COUSML refers in early 1976 to certain methods of the leadership of CPC(M-L) designed to circumvent the authority of the Party committees of the COUSML. Instead of directly contacting the appropriate Party body of the COUSML or authorized contact or delegate of these bodies, the CPC(M-L) leadership instead casually discusses any matter it wishes with any member of the COUSML that it chooses. In early 1976 they particularly concentrate on a comrade who had been expelled from the National Committee of the COUSML. After such discus ions, the leadership of CPC(M-L) then regards the matter as settled and expects the COUSML comrade to convey the instructions of the CPC(M-L) leadership to the COUSML. Similarly, the CPC(M-L) leadership holds that any delegate from the COUSML is automatically authorized to immediately decide on any question, no matter how serious, and that there is no need for the delegate to consult the higher Party committees of the COUSML and submit to their decisions.

In this way, the NEC of the COUSML is repeatedly faced with a series of ultimatums from the leadership of CPC(M-L). The most trivial and routine questions are made complicated and difficult while it is impossible to develop any practical working relations at all on most issues. At the same time, the leadership of CPC(M-L) avoids any obligations at all because they can and do say that the "middlemen" had misunderstood the words of the CPC(M-L) leadership. As well, with these methods the CPC(M-L) leadership puts great pressure on various COUSML comrades, whom they want to work on one by one, in order to compromise them and turn them into agencies of the CPC (M-L) leadership.

The NEC of the COUSML steadfastly refuses to accept these methods and these so-called "agreements." The NEC steadfastly defends the organizational integrity of the COUSML, submits all major matters to the decision of the NC and prevents any encroachment on the authority of the Party committees by the "middleman" methods. This question is never resolved with the leadership of CPC(M-L). In the discussions of May 1979, the leadership of CPC(M-L) is still lecturing that: "The theory of 'everything through the Central Committee' is wrong." In their letter of December 5, 1979 to the NEC of the COUSML, the CC of the CPC (M-L) displays great irritation over the NEC's refusal to allow casual agreements with delegates to replace the authority of the appropriate Party committees.

Late 1976 to January 1977

The leadership of CPC(M-L) incites an artificial contradiction with the COUSML over work among the East Indian nationality circles in the U.S. To use the expression of the CPC(M-L) leadership itself, they "freeze" relations with the COUSML. This is a savage act of political blackmail against the COUSML. The leadership of CPC(M-L) thus without warning temporarily suspends the fraternal relations with the COUSML, cancels their obligations to the COUSML and tries to use the question of continuing relations as blackmail to make the COUSML leadership bow down to arbitrary dictate from the CPC(M-L) leadership. However, faced with the principled and courageous stand of the COUSML leadership, the CPC(M-L) leadership has to back down on the "freezing" of relations.

The CPC(M-L) leadership continues to make use of this method of brinksmanship repeatedly. Again and again they put the relations with the COUSML in doubt, threaten either openly or by implication the breaking off of all relations, escalate the pressure to the highest degree -- and then temporarily back down in the face of the unyielding stand of the NC and NEC of the COUSML.

In the case of the "freezing" of relations, the action of the CPC(M-L) leadership is so arbitrary that the NEC of the COUSML can not at that time even figure out what alleged "differences" are being raised. However, time would provide the answer. The revolutionary work of the COUSML had been gaining respect among various newly formed progressive East Indian circles in the U.S. and relations were beginning to develop. This had worried the leadership of CPC(M-L) who does not want these circles to develop any connection with the COUSML and instead wants to subjugate them to an unprincipled "special relationship" with the top leadership of CPC(M-L). Hence the CPC(M-L) leadership does its best to create unprincipled splits and antagonisms inside the East Indian circles in the U.S. with the purpose of isolating and forcing out those East Indian activists who were closest to the COUSML. Then, in early 1977 at the time of the Third Congress of the CPC(M-L), the leadership of CPC(M-L) poses as the savior who had "solved" the contradictions by laying down the anti-Marxist- Leninist and chauvinist theory, the theory with more in common to the anti-communism of the trade union hacks than to anything else, that activists could work with the East Indian circles or with the COUSML but not with both.

January 1977

At the suggestion of the leadership of CPC(M-L), it is agreed by both sides that: "A problem exists between the two organizations which is recognized by both."

The leadership of CPC(M-L) continually asserts that there were political differences between the COUSML and the CPC(M-L), without, however, ever explaining what these differences were supposed to consist of. In fact, time has proven that there are indeed major ideological and political differences between CPC(M-L) and our Party. But the leadership of CPC(M-L) talks of differences not in order to study them or attempt to resolve them, but simply as a means of putting pressure on the COUSML. As well, the CPC(M-L) leadership claims that it was wrong to work out the problems in the practical, working relations between the COUSML and CPC(M-L) as just that, problems in the practical relations, because that would allegedly be the practice of capitalist executives meeting in a boardroom while communists should allegedly only deal with the underlying political line. Thus the CPC(M-L) leadership in effect claims that the norms don't apply when there are "differences" between the Parties -- while if there aren't any differences, the norms are allegedly a harmful formality.

Monday, August 8, 1977

The leadership of CPC(M-L) communicates over the telephone via a messenger to the NEC of COUSML that: "You are acting like a bunch of U.S. imperialist gangsters. The type of relations you have with us in the future is up to you." This is in response to the NEC of COUSML's insistence on carrying out a meeting of the delegations of the two Parties to sort out the problems in the fraternal relations, a meeting that had been agreed on by both Parties.

This message is a shocking provocation. The leadership of CPC(M-L) has defended this message to this day, both in numerous discussions and in the letters of September 9, 1977 and December 5, 1979. In fact, in the letter of the CC of the CPC(M-L) to the NC of the COUSML of December 5. 1979, the CC of the CPC(M-L) boasts that this message was an attempt to split the leadership of COUSML. They wrote:

"More than two years ago, we communicated to COUSML that, 'some of you are behaving like imperialist gangsters.' We are firmly convinced that Joseph Green is one such individual. Such individuals have no place in the ranks of the genuine Marxist-Leninists, let alone in any kind of leadership position."

September 9, 1977

The leadership of CPC(M-L) sends the NEC of the COUSML a shameful letter which defends the telephone message of August 8 and actually taunts the NEC of COUSML to break relations, stating: "We say to you: If we consider our fraternal comrades with whom we have shared weal and woe for so many years as 'imperialist gangsters," and you believe that this is what we do, then for what reason do you want to maintain fraternal relations with us?" As well, the leadership of CPC(M-L) uses the occasion to unilaterally cancel the agreement for a meeting of delegations to sort out the problems in the fraternal relations, stating that: "It is our view that considering the state of relations between us, a meeting of the delegations of the fraternal parties will be of no use whatsoever--" Thus once a- gain the leadership of CPC(M-L) brings brutal pressure to bear on the COUSML leadership and puts the relations between the two Parties into doubt.

November 5, 1977

The NEC of CPC(M-L) writes a letter in reply to comradely criticism from the NEC of COUSML which says in part: "It is our decision to not receive any such notes in the future and return the ones already received. It is our decision not to reply to the provocations against our Party." Thus the leadership of CPC(M-L) stresses that they are opposed to receiving letters from COUSML that disagree with the leadership of the CPC(M-L) and that they will not consider ("reply to") any views different from theirs.

In fact the leadership of CPC(M-L) flaunted the Maoist theory that any fraternal criticism is a "polemic" or a "provocation." Naturally such an attitude on their part could not but aggravate the situation. How are relations to be conducted and problems to be resolved when letters and fraternal criticism are denounced as "provocations"?

January 12, 1978

The NEC of CPC(M-L) writes to the NEC of COUSML. This, letter still opposes a meeting of delegations of the two Parties, but it praises the movement against social-chauvinism in strong terms: "We also take this occasion to congratulate the comrades on the good work they are carrying out on the ideological front against 'C'P(M-L). We consider the movement initiated against the rabid U.S. social chauvinism a valuable and necessary contribution to the entire Marxist-Leninist communist movement."

But by the very next month, the leadership of CPC(M-L) begins to change its mind. Later on they state that they could not understand what the movement against social- chauvinism was. Eventually they publicly denounce our Party as "the theoreticians of the 'movement' and of 'ideological struggle.'" These zigzags show that the leadership of CPC(M-L) does not have a principled stand in the struggle against revisionism but judges on the basis of the pragmatic interests of the moment. Faced with fierce pressure from the "three worlders" in 1977, they support for a time time COUSML's struggle against social-chauvinism and "three worlds-ism." But by 1978 they pass over to trying to force the COUSML to tone down the struggle and engage in "unity" maneuvers with various opportunist forces and particularly certain centrists and professional conciliators of social-chauvinism.

February 10, 1978

The article "How to Advance the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism" is published in The Workers' Advocate. This article is the prelude to the open polemical struggle against the conciliators of social-chauvinism. While it does not attack them by name, i.e., it does not mention the MLOC or the "RCP,USA" by name, it sets the orientation and program for the assault on them and identifies conciliation as a major obstacle for the movement against social-chauvinism. Right from the start of the movement against social-chauvinism, the COUSML regarded the struggle against the conciliators as an integral part of the overall struggle. But at first the COUSML waged this struggle through constantly intensifying the struggle against the open social-chauvinists and through exposing the roots of the social-chauvinist betrayal in neo-revisionism, the basic ideology of both the open social-chauvinists and the conciliators. Now the COUSML decides that the time is ripe for the open polemic against the conciliators.

Upon the appearance of this article, the leadership of CPC(M-L) begins to turn against the movement against social-chauvinism. In their letters of December 5, 1979, the CC of CPC(M-L) characterizes this article as follows: "...propaganda was carried out on the one hand calling for the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in the USA while, on the other hand, without exhausting the full possibilities of the opportunity of building the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninists, hidden attacks are launched against others."

The leadership of CPC(M-L) had been consulted ahead of time prior to the NC meeting that took the decision to openly attack the MLOC and the "RCP,USA," and they had a- greed with this plan. Nevertheless, the leadership of CPC (M-L) now opposes the polemics against the MLOC and the "RCP,USA." They begin by putting forth a nondescript array of strange, wild objections ostensibly simply to individual points. Thus with regard to the pamphlet Why Did the 'RCP,USA' Split?, they object to Stalin's idea that a temporary "anti-fascist coalition" existed between the Soviet Union and the other Allied powers in World War II and they also object to the use of the Leninist concept that "war is the continuation of politics by other, i.e..violent, means." With regard to the polemic against the MLOC, they object to the term "idealist anti-revisionism." But step by step they go from opposition to individual points to opposition to any polemic at all against the conciliators of social-chauvinism (centrists) and then to denunciation of the entire movement against social-chauvinism itself.

March 4, 1978

As a result of the steadfast stand of the NC and NEC of the COUSML in favor of a meeting of the delegations of the two Parties to sort out the problems in the fraternal relations, the CPC(M-L) leadership finally agrees once again to hold such a meeting. Once again they renege on this agreement. Their behavior during this meeting, which lasts only a few minutes, proves that their agreement in words to the proposal to hold this meeting was nothing but a cynical maneuver.

The meeting takes place on March 4, 1978. The leadership of the CPC(M-L) walks out. They admit at the beginning of this meeting that they are unprepared for it and then walk out demonstratively a few minutes later. They then announce via a letter to the COUSML delegation at the meeting that an "extremely grave situation...has arisen in the fraternal relations between our two organizations" and that "Until this issue is properly settled in the true proletarian internationalist spirit, it is impossible to proceed to conclude work on any other front." On this basis, they unilaterally cancel the work to prepare a joint statement of the CPC(M-L) and the COUSML, although such a joint statement had been agreed to by the two sides at the specific request of the leadership of CPC(M-L).

Thus once again the leadership of CPC(M-L) goes to the brink of a split and puts all the relations in doubt. Indeed, how bad must the relations be when it is "impossible to proceed to conclude work on any other front."

As well, the leadership of CPC(M-L) had now declared itself against both discussions between delegations of the two Parties and against letters as methods of sorting out the problems in the relations. They had demonstrated that they refused to listen to either verbal or written views different from theirs and especially to criticism. This left very few channels of communication open to the NC and NEC of COUSML. Only by combining steadfast adherence to principle with the utmost in flexibility and patience is the COUSML leadership able to maintain any relations at all with the CPC(M-L).

1978

As 1978 continues, the leadership of CPC(M-L) further develops its opposition to the struggle against the conciliators of social-chauvinism. The press of CPC(M-L) gives no public support at all to COUSML's polemics against the conciliators, such as Why Did the 'RCP, USA' Split? and Reply to the Open Letter of the MLOC. In general, public support for the COUSML weakens in the press of CPC (M-L).

Early September 1978

In these discussions the leadership of CPC(M-L) refuses to talk to the comrades from the NEC of the COUSML who have traveled to Canada as part of a larger delegation from the leadership of COUSML. This delegation had gone to Canada at the invitation of the leadership of CPC(M-L) which had asked for further discussion on the situation in the international Marxist-Leninist movement and also on tactics against MLOC. The CPC(M-L) leadership however, vilely making use of certain possibilities open to them due to their position as the host for the discussions, succeeds in refusing to talk to certain COUSML comrades. This is another big provocation by the leadership of CPC(M-L) and a mark of utter disrespect for the organizational integrity of the COUSML.

With this provocation, the CPC(M-L) leadership continues its probing here or there looking for the possibilities of a split. These schemes are frustrated by the iron unity of the COUSML delegation and by its insistence on meeting together as a whole to discuss each stage of the short-lived discussions. Faced with this unity, the CPC(M-L) leadership once again puts the fraternal relations into doubt and states: "...it seems relations have sunk to the lowest level. Only the most formal relations can exist."

March 1979

At the invitation of the NEC of COUSML, the leadership of CPC(M-L) sends a comrade to attend the COUSML internal conference held under the slogan "Build the Marxist- Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists." The CPC(M-L) comrade holds discussions with members of the conference committee on the analysis of the conference and expressed enthusiasm with the conference.

May 1979

A representative of CPC(M-L) delivers a solidarity message at a May Day meeting of the COUSML held in Chicago. This message enthusiastically endorses the planned founding of the MLP,USA. However, when asked if this message could be printed in The Workers' Advocate, the representative of CPC(M-L) at first agrees but then says that he wishes to take the message back to Canada for editing prior to publication. The COUSML never sees this message again. Every time the COUSML leadership inquires, it is told that the message had been "lost" or "misplaced" but would be sent in a few days. In the discussions of August 1-2, 1979, the CPC(M-L) leadership again promises to provide this message and again fails to do so.

Later in 1979

The CPC(M-L) withdraws support from the campaign to found the MLP,USA. As was their custom, the CPC(M-L) leadership does not even notify the COUSML leadership of their change of heart, to say nothing of explaining their reasons. Instead the leadership of CPC(M-L) simply lets its failure to uphold its obligations towards the COUSML become apparent in practice.

It should be noted that mutual support between fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties is not a matter of charity but of proletarian internationalism. It is a question of fighting side by side in the common struggle, a question of the solid class unity of the different national contingents of the one worldwide proletarian army. Indeed the CPC(M-L) and COUSML had a long history of fraternal relations. It was supposed to be the established practice for the two Parties, to give public political support for each other. The COUSML for its part always enthusiastically supported the CPC(M-L) in the most vigorous and openhearted manner. Nevertheless, mutual support and cooperation had not developed to the extent it should have or in a proper fashion due to the erroneous concepts of the leadership of CPC(M-L) who only gave support to the COUSML when they felt it served some pragmatic interest of theirs of the moment and who repeatedly used their "support" as a means of pressure.

The COUSML had every right to expect vigorous support from the fraternal CPC(M-L) for the founding of the MLP, USA. But this support is withdrawn. It is withdrawn because the leadership of CPC(M-L) is once again using the question of support as a means of putting pressure upon the COUSML. This is stressed in the letters of the CC of the CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979. They state that they will not support the founding of the MLP,USA unless the COUSML leadership agrees to immediately end the so- called "provocation" of its differences with the CC of the CPC(M-L), that is, not until the COUSML leadership agrees to unconditionally submit to the dictate of the leadership of CPC(M-L).

July 17, 1979

Implementing the decision of the NC, the NEC of COUSML writes the NEC of CPC(M-L) a letter requesting support in People 's Canada Daily News, the organ of the CC of the CPC(M-L), for the campaign to found the MLP, USA.

August 1-2, 1979

After receiving the COUSML's letter of July 17, the CPC (M-L) leadership insists that the COUSML send a delegation for an urgent meeting to discuss the question. In these discussions, the representative of the CPC(M-L) informs the COUSML for the first time of the objections of the CPC (M-L) leadership to the "without and against" slogan. In fact, he gives this slogan as the reason for CPG(M-L)'s lack of support for the campaign to found the MLP,USA, stating: "We agree with a lot that is in your document [i.e., the Call of the NC of the COUSML entitled "Build the Marxist- Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists" -- ed.]. But if we disagree with this main slogan, it means that we disagree with the whole pamphlet. The mistakes from the past should be corrected."

No agreement is reached on the "without and against" slogan. Nevertheless the representative of CPC(M-L), seeing the firm stand of the COUSML delegation, makes yet another zigzag and hypocritically says that the CPC(M-L) will support in the press the campaign to found the MLP, USA. As well, on his own initiative, he states that PCDN will reprint a COUSML article denouncing the MLOC/"CPUSA (ML)" in order to make clear to everyone their attitude to this group. For this purpose, PCDN reprints the article "A Holy Alliance of the 'Three Worldists' with the Pope" which describes the MLOC/"CPUSA(ML)" in passing as "a sect of professional conciliators of the social-chauvinists" and as "social-democratic scribblers."

Early August 1979

The PCDN issue dated August 1, 1979, which appears not on August 1 but sometime after the discussions of August 1-2 between the COUSML and CPC(M-L), carries the article: Brother Marxist-Leninist Party to Be Founded in the U.S. in the Near Future. The article states that the coming founding of the MLP,USA will be "a great step forward for the proletarian movement for emancipation in the U.S. and that "the vigorous all-sided work for over 10 years" of the COUSML and the ACWM(M-L) before it had "now created the conditions to found the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S." It also praises the COUSML for having "firmly unmasked the so-called 'Marxist-Leninist' parties which have been founded since 1973, each one of them aligned to definite opportunist positions in the U.S. and internationally."

This is the only article in PCDN to name the MLP,USA. Nevertheless this article is sufficient to show the complete hypocrisy of the various innocent-sounding pretexts that the leadership of CPC(M-L) has used to hide its savage war to strangle the MLP,USA, such as that it doesn't know "what this organization is" (Letter of January 19, 1980), this organization which it has hailed in advance as its "brother Marxist-Leninist party.''

The subsequent wrecking activity of the leadership of CPC(M-L) against the MLP,USA proves the hypocritical nature of the article in the August 1 PCDN. Moreover, the article itself is a cynical maneuver in violation of the agreement from the discussions of August 1-2. The article is in fact a covert polemic against the plan for the founding of the MLP,USA put forth at the March 1979 internal conference and carefully avoided mentioning the campaign to found the MLP,USA.

Late October to early November 1979

In discussions with the leadership of CPC(M-L), the delegate of the COUSML learns that CPC(M-L) had in early September sold the rights to the English translation of Palacios' book Chile: An Attempt at "Historic Compromise'' to the "RCP,USA" (Banner Press) for $1,000. CPC(M-L) also threw in the negatives. The leadership of CPC(M-L) says that this transaction was a mistake, but on very narrow grounds, such as the low price. In the letters of the CC of the CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979, they are still complaining of the low price, talking of the sale of the rights "for a song."

November 17-18,1979

The 7th Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPC(M- L) takes place on November 17-18. Its Communique appears in the PCDN of December 3. The 7th Plenum identifies Mao Zedong Thought as essentially petty-bourgeois ultra-leftism and presents rightism as the way of "overcoming the adverse influence of 'Mao Zedong Thought' on the Party." For example, it criticizes the parliamentary cretinists of the official Khrushchovite party in Canada, Kashtan's "Communist Party of Canada," for not making enough use of parliament.

December 1,1979

The NEC of the COUSML sends the NEC of the CPC(M- L) a letter, whose draft was read and unanimously approved by the NC of the COUSML, protesting the sale of the English translation of Palacios' book to the "RCP,USA." This letter contains principled, constructive and fraternal criticism. It goes into the ideological issues involved and explains the COUSML's tactics on certain issues regarding the struggle against the conciliators or centrists.

December 5,1979

The CC of the CPC(M-L) sends letters to the NC and NEC of the COUSML in reply to the letter of December 1. These letters are brutal, savage letters that attack the leadership of COUSML as "agent-provocateurs." They demand a split in the leadership of COUSML and the elimination of any disagreement whatsoever with the leadership of CPC(M-L) as a prerequisite for continuing fraternal relations. These letters are wild and incoherent. They do not elaborate on any ideological issue, but instead throw as many insults as possible at the leadership of the COUSML. It is impossible to describe them: they have to be read. One of the main purposes of these letters is to sabotage the Preparatory Conference for the Founding of the MLP,USA and prevent the Founding Congress of the MLP,USA from taking place.

The letters of December 5 are the key documents in which the leadership of CPC(M-L) declares war upon the COUSML and the soon-to-be-founded MLP,USA. They illustrate the ugly meaning of the demand by the leadership of CPC(M-L) for a "special relationship" with our Party. For example, what does it mean to demand the overthrow of the leadership of another party, as these letters do? It will be recalled that the revisionist class traitor Khrushchov broke off relations with the Party of Labor of Albania by calling for the overthrow of the Albanian leadership at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU and by uttering such unspeakable filth as that the Albanians had allegedly sold out to imperialism. The letters of December 5 of the CC of the CPC (M-L) similarly demand the overthrow of the leadership of our Party. Filled with filth, these letters denounce the comrades of our Party as allegedly "agent-provocateurs," "imperialist gangsters," "agents of the blackest reaction," etc. With these letters, by claiming the right to make and break the leadership of another party, by seeking to discredit and ruin anyone who didn't tamely and unquestioningly submit to one's baton, by in effect dividing parties into mother and daughter parties, the CC of CPC(M-L) was following the foul example of the Khrushchovite revisionists.

December 1979, immediately after the successful conclusion of the Preparatory Conference

The NC of the COUSML reads the two letters from the CC of the CPC(M-L), gives a just characterization of them, decides that it is the CC of the MLP,USA that should deal with them, and decides to maintain public solidarity with the CPC(M-L).

January 1,1980

The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA is founded! At the Founding Congress the delegates unanimously adopt an extremely warm and fraternal resolution sending the ardent revolutionary greetings of the MLP,USA to the CPC(M-L).

The first week of January, 1980

PCDN carries the major New Year's speeches of the CPC(M-L) which sum up the decade of the 70's and set the orientation for the 80's. These speeches present blatant liquidationist theses. They ridicule party-building and the upholding of the party norms, vehemently oppose the struggle against opportunism, reduce the criticism of Mao Zedong Thought to meaningless generalities and trivialities and present it essentially as ultra-leftism, and put forward very rightist positions on a series of important political issues. They also blame the errors of the leadership of the CPC (M-L) on allegedly having "had a very large heart for the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement" and attack the Party of Labor of Albania and the "American party" for allegedly interfering in CPC(M-L)'s affairs. Together with the 7th Plenum, these speeches mark the open flaunting of the liquidationist deviation by the leadership of CPC(M-L).

January-March 1980

The press of CPC(M-L) is silent about the founding and existence of the MLP,USA. Given the previous close fraternal relations that existed for over a decade, this silence comes very close to a public declaration of a split. It means that the£PC(M-L) has gone far down the road of bringing the rupture into the open before the eyes and ears of the class enemy.

February 4, 1980

The NEC of the MLP,USA receives two letters from the CPC(M-L) via internal channels. Both are addressed to the COUSML and both are backdated. The letter dated January 19, 1980 announces in a smart-aleck way, as a supposed answer to some alleged literature request, that "neither the National Publications Centre, nor any of the Institutions associated with CPC(M-L) will have anything whatsoever to do with any 'Marxist-Leninist Party, USA' until such a time as it is clarified what this organization is, what are its relations to COUSML and whether this 'Marxist-Leninist Party, USA' is interested in establishing relations with us, or merely in receiving literature." This letter also strongly endorses the previous letters of December 5, 1979.

The other letter is dated December 15, 1979. It is a cover letter for the letter of the CC of the CPC(M-L) to the CC of the RCP of Chile, which is also enclosed.

February 1980

The Second Plenum of the CC of the MLP,USA examines the letters of the CC of CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979 and the relations with CPC(M-L). It decides, among other things, to write the CC of the CPC(M-L) a letter, which ultimately becomes the letter of the CC of the MLP,USA of June 16, 1980.

March 30,1980

The CC of the MLP,USA sends a delegation to the Internationalist Rally held on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the CPC(M-L). This principled and mature stand of our CC is an obstacle to the path of unprincipled splitting being followed by the leadership of CPC(M- L) and helps show who is for Marxist-Leninist unity and who is deviating from this stand.

The leadership of CPC(M-L) reacts to the MLP,USA delegation in a frenzy. They boycott the delegation and refuse to let it speak at the rally, thus consummating the public split with the MLP,USA. In the months following the Internationalist Rally, the leadership of CPC(M-L) step by step increases its efforts to organize an anti-party network of wreckers in the U.S.

At the Internationalist Rally, the chairman of the CPC(M- L) gives a major speech, entitled "The Road of the Party," to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the CPC(M-L). This speech continues the liquidationist orientation from the New Year's speeches. It is reprinted in pamphlet form as the first issue of CPC(M-L)'s new theoretical journal, which is also called The Road of the Party.

Latter part of April to May 1980

Because the leadership of CPC(M-L) has now made their breaking off of relations with our Party public and has shown that they were persisting in splitting activity, the MLP,USA holds party-wide discussion of the hostile actions and deviationist stands of the leadership of CPC(M-L). All the militants of our Party are fully informed of the situation and shown all relevant correspondence, including the letter of the NEC of COUSML of December 1, 1979, the letters of the CC of CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979 and the preliminary draft of the letter of the CC of MLP,USA of June 16, 1980. With a single voice, the militants of the MLP,USA condemn the hostile and unprincipled actions of the leadership of CPC(M-L) and approve the preliminary draft letter to the CC of the CPC(M-L).

May-June 1980

The wrecking activity of the leadership of CPC(M-L) in the U.S. is now in full swing. They order those elements who they have contact with to break off with the MLP,USA. Agents of the leadership of CPC(M-L) seek out militants and sympathizers of the MLP,USA to ask them whether they "love CPC(M-L)." Unable to find a single crack in the unity of the MLP,USA, the leadership of CPC(M-L) relies on a handful of non-party elements, most of whom they have cultivated for years, who in effect form a loose anti-party network. This network has no unity, no internal cohesion, and no common views. It exists simply to carry out wrecking activities and circulate slanders on the instructions of the top leadership of CPC(M-L). There is a series of pilgrimages to Canada by these elements.

Although their efforts to build up the rudiments of a second party lead to repeated fiascos for the leadership of CPC (M-L), still these attempts are an extremely serious matter that show how far they have strayed from proletarian internationalism. They are trampling on all the standards of revolutionary morality. Anything goes, no matter what harm is done to the revolution, to the working class movement and to the prestige of communism, just so long as it is directed against the MLP,USA. These activities by the leadership of CPC(M-L) show that they are stubbornly refusing to resolve the contradiction with our Party according to the norms laid down by Marxism-Leninism but instead are seeking to destroy our Party at all costs and to replace it with a subservient organization of yes men.

May 29,1980

The CC of the CPC(M-L) writes a letter Jo the CC of the MLP,USA that reiterates the foul slanders and brutal ultimatums of the letters of December 5, 1979. Although the letter condemns our Party on the basis of the CC of CPC(M- L)'s alleged analysis of the "Call of the NC of the COUSML" of May 12, 1979 and the Communique of the Founding Congress of the MLP,USA, it gives no analysis of these documents or any other matter but instead just flings as much mud as it can.

This letter insistently demands in the strongest language that the MLP,USA stop displaying public solidarity with the CPC(M-L) and stop referring to CPC(M-L) as a "fraternal party." Thus it demands that the public split be made even bigger. It stresses that "our Party [CPC(M-L) -- ed.] would not establish any fraternal relations of friendship and co-operation with a Party based on this Call [the "Call of the NC of the COUSML" entitled "Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social Chauvinists and Against the Social- Chauvinists" -- ed.]" and that "It is our conviction that a Party whose Founding Congress has issued such a Communique... is not a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party. Hence, there can be no relations established with such a Party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism."

This letter is full of filth and lies, like the letters of December 5,1979. It is another example of the grossest hypocrisy, accusing our Party of all the methods being used against us by the leadership of CPC(M-L) itself, such as "using the method of gossips and rumours, innuendo and insinuation, provocation and incitement and blackmail and pressure and gross and flagrant interference." It is written at a time when the leadership of CPC(M-L) is in the midst of a new round of frenzied efforts to organize an anti-party network in the U.S. Using the method of brazen hypocrisy, they therefore accuse our Party of "gross interference in their [CPC(M-L)'s -- ed.] internal affairs." Examples of this "interference" are "want(ing) to settle the outstanding matters between CPC(M-L) and COUSML," maintaining solidarity with CPC(M-L) in the press such as hailing the tenth anniversary of the founding of CPC(M-L), and rebuffing the wrecking activities organized by the leadership of CPC(M-L) inside the U.S. This "interference" in CPC (M-L)'s "internal affairs" is allegedly "carried out by the cadre of the MLP,USA from coast-to-coast in the U.S.A." In brief, the CC of the CPC(M-L) defines the entire question of the relations between COUSML and CPC(M-L) and the question of the party in the U.S. generally as CPC(M-L)'s "internal affairs." There can hardly be a more brazen expression of the demand for a "special relationship."

The honesty and sincerity of this letter can be judged from its smart-aleck claim that "the fact that COUSML saw fit to not reply to the letter of the CC of CPC(M-L) of December 5, 1979 before its dissolution shows that it must have considered our criticism and repudiation...to be correct and just."

As well, in this letter the CC of the CPC(M-L) tries to hide their wrecking activities in the U.S. behind the claim that they have nothing to do with the U.S. Oh no, they have merely received reports about the U.S. from a Marxist-Leninist organization of a country outside the Americas and from its "supporters in the U.S." Naturally we have not to this day received a copy of these alleged reports and "documented facts" from either the CC of the CPC(M-L) or the other organization referred to. But the CC of the CPC(M-L) shows in this letter that they claim the right to speak for others and that they were doing their best to provoke contradictions among the Marxist-Leninists of other countries. From the very first sentence, the letter flaunts this international factional activity of the leadership of CPC(M-L).

June 9, 14, 27, and 28, 1980

The organ of the CC of the CPC(M-L), PCDN, begins front page polemics against the MLP,USA. These articles identify our Party as the "theoreticians of the 'movement' and of 'ideological struggle'" and say that they are talking of a party whose founding was preceded by a movement against social-chauvinism. These polemics are incoherent and devoid of any scientific value. Their main content is denunciation of the struggle against opportunism in particular and of the ideological struggle in general. They call the MLP,USA a new current of revisionism, just discovered, a current characterized by its practice of opposing all the other revisionist currents including the Maoists, Soviet revisionists, etc. They call our Party the class enemy, an enemy of international communism and so forth.

In July the CC of the CPC(M-L) reprints these articles in their theoretical journal, The Road of the Party. Although this issue is labeled "Vol. 1 #5," it is in fact the only other issue of this journal to appear other than the first issue.

These articles do not however explicitly mention the name of the MLP,USA. This is not from any reasons of moderation, as the leadership of CPC(M-L) is waging an all-out war on our Party. But they can not avow their real motives for their war on our Party in public nor defend their demand for a "special relationship." They make use of not mentioning our name to avoid raising the questions of principle and instead to substitute as many slanderous innuendoes and diversions as possible. The articles try to incite people against the MLP,USA by making systematic use of the method of attributing to our Party the actions and stands of groups having no connection with the MLP,USA in the slightest.

June 16, 1980

The CC of the MLP,USA sends a letter to the CC of the CPC(M-L) replying to their savage letters of December 5, 1979. This letter was written and sent prior to the MLP,USA receiving the June 1980 polemics in PCDN. This letter refutes the slanderous lies of the leadership of CPC(M-L) and opposes their deviationist stands, but at the same time sets forth a plan for the restoration of relations between the two Parties. The leadership of CPC(M-L) never replies to this letter.

In the process of delivering this letter, the CC of MLP, USA discovers that the CPC(M-L) has unilaterally cut the internal channels of communication between the two Parties.

July 1980

The polemics in PCDN, the public severance of relations with our Party by the leadership of CPC(M-L), their wrecking activities in the U.S. and the promotion of harmful, deviationist ideas in the CPC(M-L)'s press make it necessary for the MLP, USA to clarify its stand in public on the questions of principle. The Workers ' Advocate begins a series of articles entitled "Against Mao Zedong Thought!" For the time being, the CPC(M-L) isn't named explicitly in order to give the CC of the CPC(M-L) time to read and study the letter of June 16, 1980 and to reconsider their stand.

May 1981

In the year following their receipt of the letter of June 16, 1980, the leadership of CPC(M-L) continues to escalate their wrecking activities against the MLP,USA and to persist in their liquidationist and Maoist deviations. By. May 1981 things have reached the point that several American yes men of CPC(M-L) attend a few anti-imperialist demonstrations, not however for the purpose of denouncing U.S. imperialism, but solely to hand out anti-party literature to the supporters of the MLP,USA. These statements write down the lies and filth which the leadership of CPC(M-L) is circulating verbally through the anti-party network but is too ashamed to sign their own name to.

June 30,1981

The Workers' Advocate begins publication of the series "The Truth About the Relations Between the MLP,USA and the CPC(M-L)."

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Strikes in Jamaica

(The following article is reprinted from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group, June-July, 1981.)

Since the Seaga administration took office, the powerful outbursts of strikes and protests by the Jamaican people have been continuing. Well over fifty strikes have been launched, involving thousands of workers in virtually every sector of the economy. The working class and people of Jamaica are demonstrating mass outrage and indignation against the systematic and savage onslaughts on their livelihood, orchestrated today by Seaga and the JLP (Jamaica Labor Party). Under Seaga's program of "National Recovery," a ruthless drive is being carried forward to increase the profits of the foreign and local rich and to starve and oppress the masses of town and country. Seaga and his gang hope to rescue imperialism from the all-sided crisis that is gripping the Jamaican economy by making the people pay for the crisis, for the handouts and rewards to the capitalists, and for the further penetration of imperialism into the economy.

The strikes and protests by the working class and people of Jamaica are expressions of the strong determination of the masses to oppose the vicious attacks and measures being taken by Seaga and the JLP. The Jamaican people are demonstrating that they will not stand idly by in the face of these attacks on their livelihood. They are seeing the government's promised "deliverance" for what it really is -- massive wage cuts and price increases, productivity drives and layoffs and increased political repression. They are refusing to starve their families for the sake of profits for the rich. The wrath of the workers has been felt in every major industry, from the industrial and manufacturing sectors, to the agricultural sector, to the public service sector. The following are some of the strikes and other actions taken over the last couple of months:

- A massive strike of over 15,000 sugar workers hit the sugar industry, resulting in the closing down of 7 of the 12 sugar estates. Workers (most of whom were making under $30 [Jamaican] a week) struck for better wages and against the savage exploitation and slave conditions that exist on the estates.

- Workers at Housecraft Manufacturing Co. Ltd. went on strike for over 10 weeks, in protest against capitalist productivity drives and speedups and non-payment of bonuses.

- 480 airport workers went on strike.

- Over 600 non-academic university workers staged a two-day strike.

- 296 junior doctors instituted a work- to-rule policy in opposition to the government's 9% wage increase proposal.

- Trade unions representing the over 100,000 workers in the public sector rejected the government's wage increase offer of $29 per week over two years (i.e., $15 per week this year, $14 per week next year).

- Cigarette Company of Jamaica production workers refused to cross the picket lines of striking supervisory and middle management staff, shutting down production.

- Over 100 workers at Caledonia Motors on strike.

- 500 workers at Marold of Jamaica went on a four-week strike.

- Striking workers at Soya Products clashed with the police and other strikebreakers sent by the government to violently attack the workers and break their strike.

- Keans Industries plant shut down by plant workers.

The present strikes and protests by the Jamaican people are a continuation of the strikes and protests that the people have been waging for the past eight years against the PNP (People's National Party) administration of Michael Manley. [Manley is a social-democratic demagogue. His administration tried to paint the brutal imperialist domination of Jamaica as "progress," "non-alignment" and "democratic socialism." Seaga who replaced Manley is an open, self-avowed reactionary and lackey of U.S. imperialism. -- ed.] Under Manley, the Jamaican economy was steered into the complete bondage of the U.S. imperialist financiers. He too loyally axed away at the workers' wages; broad masses of the people were subjected to poverty and starvation, and tens of thousands were thrown on the bread lines. The heroic protests of the working class and people such as the demonstrations against price increases in January 1979, and the workers' struggles against exploitation in the work places were met with savage repression by the PNP regime. Fascist strikebreaking and Hitlerite legislation such as the Labor Relations and Industrial Disputes Act and the Suppression of Crimes Act were imposed on the backs of the people, while the police and the Jamaica Defense Force (JDF) were repeatedly marshaled out against the workers to provide the'"stable investment climate" that Manley's imperialist backers demanded.

Today, this very same fascist legislation has been adopted and is being used by the Seaga administration to suppress the working class and people. Seaga and his JLP cohorts have announced a "master plan" for the extension, rearming and modernization of the security forces. The aim of this plan is to restore "good order" and stop "the growth of indiscipline" that has "destroyed the work ethic." But the beefing up and strengthening of the repressive forces is for the sole purpose of protecting the vast fortunes of the local and foreign moneybags. Seaga is already recognized as an unashamed servant and flunkey of U.S. imperialism and is despised by the broad masses of the people as a fascist and slave-driving wage cutter. The people of Jamaica are rising up against the attacks of the Seaga government, just as they did when the same attacks were carried out by the Manley administration. The working class and people of Jamaica must continue their resolute struggle against exploitation and oppression, and against imperialism and its local flunkeys, the JLP and the PNP.

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