Vol. 19, No. 2
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25ยข February 1, 1989
[Front page:
Workers, link arms for the fight against racism!;
Bush is in, the fight is on!;
Step up the defense of abortion rights!]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Demonstrations defend right to abortion: Chicago, Boston, Detroit, S.F., New York, Buffalo............................................................ | 2 |
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| Strikes and Workplace News |
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| UAW 'opposition' covers up sellout; Strike at Detroit incinerator; lumber strike; L.A. teachers rally..................................................................................... | 3 |
| Unemployment statistics lie................................................................................. | 11 |
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| U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of Central America! |
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| Guerrilla actions in El Salvador; Death-squad 'democracy'; FMLN offers Bush a deal........................................................................................................... | 4 |
| Contragate cover-up continues with Ollie North................................................. | 5 |
| MLPN vs. right-wing demonstration in Nicaragua............................................. | 5 |
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| Down with Racism! |
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| Black ghettos erupt in Miami; Black establishment and M.L. King Day............ | 6 |
| 4,500 confront racists in Atlanta ......................................................................... | 7 |
| Students denounce racist skinheads in Olympia.................................................. | 7 |
| Class boycott at Temple U................................................................................... | 7 |
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| Death to Apartheid in South Africa! |
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| Students rally against South African consulate.................................................... | 7 |
| Why's Boesak speaking at Berkeley.................................................................... | 11 |
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| Defend prisoner-activist Alberto Aranda............................................................. | 8 |
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| Support the Palestinian Uprising! |
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| Palestinian uprising defies Israeli terror; The price of repression, economic crisis..................................................................................................................... | 9 |
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| For Workers' Socialism, Not Revisionist State Capitalism! |
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| Racism and corruption run wild in China............................................................ | 10 |
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| Condemn massacre of political prisoners in Iran................................................. | 10 |
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| The World in Struggle |
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| Strike wave in Korea; General strike in Haiti; Mexican government to assault oil workers........................................................................................................... | 12 |
Workers, link arms for the fight against racism!
Step up the defense of abortion rights!
Step up the defense of abortion rights!
Strikes and workplace news
U.S. imperialism, get out of Central America!
DOWN WITH RACISM!
40-year jail term for prison activism
Condemn the persecution of Alberto Aranda!
Palestinian uprising defies stepped-up Israeli terror
Fruits of capitalism
Racism and corruption run wild in China
Condemn massacre of political prisoners in Iran!
Why doesn't Boesak support anti-apartheid movement in Berkeley?
Official unemployment statistics drop -- yet unemployment grows
The World in Struggle
New wave of workers' struggle in S. Korea
Haitian workers protest military regime
Crisis deepens in Mexico
PRI government prepares to assault oil workers
1989 has opened with a new wave of struggle against racism. In Miami, the black ghettos erupted in several nights of pitched battles against the racist violence of the police. In Atlanta, black youth burst through police barricades to get their hands on a gang of white supremacists. And in cities across the country, black people watched and seethed against an oppression too long fostered by the capitalist government, too long tolerated by the "respectable" black leaders.
The Fight Against Racism Is a Fight Against the Rich
The contrasts in January were too stark to be mistaken. Rich people dancing in lavish Super Bowl festivities -- a few miles away, racist persecution and mass impoverishment in the Overtown and Liberty City ghettos. President George Bush basking in a $30 million inauguration orgy -- a few days before, the same Bush crying that there's no money to restore cuts in social programs, or provide jobs for the unemployed, or relieve the impoverishment that has grown like a cancer in the black community.
The rich capitalists on one side, gorging themselves off the profits exploited from labor, drawing extra wealth off the cheap labor provided by racism against blacks, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities. The workers and poor on the other side, driven down by the capitalist assault, split up by racism. White workers are supposed to blame their misery on black people. Black workers are supposed to blame their hunger on Latino immigrants. Meanwhile the capitalists -- who stand behind the racist system, who profit from it -- stroll undisturbed to the bank.
The fight against racism must be waged as a class struggle. A struggle against the capitalist ruling class. A struggle in which workers from all nationalities link arms for the common good.
The Fight Against Racism Must Also Target the Black Establishment
There were other dramatic contrasts in January, as well. The black police chief of Miami defending police brutality against black masses. The black mayor of Atlanta sending police against black people to defend white racist hoodlums. The black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson reaching out the hand of friendship to Bush, the chief of the government that has helped push a third of the black people below the official poverty line and helped drive black income down to half of that of whites.
The growing gulf between rich and poor has also emerged inside the black community. The black uppercrust are being given seats at the banquet table of the white ruling class.
Workers, Build the Movement Against Racism
The fight against racism is not just a struggle of the black people, or of the other oppressed nationalities. It is a struggle of the entire working class.
Just as racism is a weapon used by the capitalists to divide up the working class by race and nationality, the struggle against racism is a weapon to unite workers to stand together against the exploiting class. Newspapers and leaflets that tell the truth about our racist rulers and that spread the news of struggle against racism should be spread widely on the job and in the communities. Workers of every nationality should be drawn into the mass actions that break out here and there against racist terror and discrimination. And organization must be built up to forge the masses into a powerful force.
The struggles waged in January showed the potential power of the masses when they rise together in common struggle. But to realize that power a conscious and organized political movement must be built up all across the country.
Workers of all nationalities, link arms for the fight against racism. Class conscious workers, unite to build the revolutionary organization needed to carry this struggle to victory.
The Bush presidency has begun.
Another four years of the capitalist offensive is looming. More cuts in social programs. More profiteering for the rich. More Reaganism.
The capitalist press is in raptures over the inauguration of the new administration. The most trite phrases from Bush's lips are paraded as great wisdom. Why, he is for a "kinder, gentler" America. What profundity! What humanitarianism! He says the purpose of government is "to protect" the people. What a deep thinker! One can only shake one's head at whether the newspaper editors and columnists have totally lost their minds. Are these newspapers perhaps the enchained, corrupt tool of an absolute dictator?
But no, there is no law enforcing toadyism to Bush. The joy of the press reflects the fact that it is a capitalist press, chained more tightly to Bush and Reaganism by the interest of the dollar than it could be by any law or any censor. The joy of the press reflects the raptures of the rich for four more years of wage cutting and speedup, four more years of militarism and chauvinism, four more years of removing all rights of the people -- from the right to abortion to any protection from the growing police state measures of the last few years.
Another Honeymoon?
The Democrats in Congress have already promised a new honeymoon for Bush. Forgiven is Bush's denunciation of the "L word" in the election. Forgiven is his raving that the bourgeois liberals are allegedly not part of the capitalist mainstream. All was forgiven just days after the elections. The liberals parade him as better than Reagan and a good man to work with. All they want from him is the chance to sit together and talk and a pledge from him to raise taxes. Liberal Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, for example, says the Democratic Party should support Bush's budgetary ''flexible freeze" on social programs -- if only Bush agrees that, if the federal budget deficit continues, taxes will be raised. (New York Times, Jan. 18)
Eight years of Congressional honeymoon with Reagan are to be followed by a new honeymoon with Bush. They will quibble with Bush, but they won't fight him. As Senator Inouye, chairman of the Senate committee that was supposedly investigating Reagan and Bush's Iran-contra scandal, said about this investigation, they don't want to bring down a president. They don't want Reagan or Bush to be forced out like Nixon was. (See the article inside on the contragate cover-up.)
This is not because the liberal Democrats are being overwhelmed by conservative Democrats. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action recently released its latest survey of Congressional voting records. It declares that the voting record of the last House of Representatives was the most liberal since it started keeping records, and the last Senate the second most liberal since 1975. This may seem astonishing, given the more and more rightist proposals discussed in Congress. But today's liberal politicians hail these plans. It is the liberals who have declared the honeymoon, first with Reagan and now with Bush.
Greet Bush With Struggle
But the working class cannot afford a honeymoon with Bush. Bush is the chieftain of our enemy. He is the bearer of the capitalist whip. He is the bearer of racism, who campaigned by trying to scare the country by what would happen if a black man was paroled from prison. And he is the backer of the religious fanatics of the anti-abortion movement. Since the liberals want to work with Bush, only one conclusion can be had. The working class and progressive masses, the oppressed nationalities and all anti-racist fighters, need to organize without the liberals. We must organize against Bush and all his millionaire friends and liberal honeymoon partners. We must organize an independent political movement of the working class. Not capitalist liberalism, but the class struggle and socialism must be our banners.
Since the press is in love with Bush, it follows that we must build up our own working class press. We must cast ridicule and shame upon the toadies of the newspapers and TV networks and build up the working class alternative, from leaflets to pamphlets, from newspapers to the study of Marxist-Leninist books.
No honeymoon for Bush. In this issue of The Workers' Advocate we report on a number of the struggles that are already breaking out this year. There is the movement against Bush's anti-abortion fanatics. There are the anti-racist struggles, from the rebellion in Miami to demonstrators against white supremacists. And there are the scattered economic skirmishes of the working class.
Greet Bush with working class struggle and organization. Oppose the minority of capitalist moneybags with the struggle of the working millions!
January 22 was the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade that provided constitutional protection to the right to choice on abortion.
The right-wing anti-abortion crusade held its annual rallies against the Supreme Court decision and again tried to blockade abortion clinics. But they did not succeed in having the day all to themselves. Their reactionary displays were answered by militant opposition. Demonstrations in defense of women's rights were organized across the country.
No to the Drive to Turn Back the Clock!
The 1973 decision took place in the wake of the tumultuous mass struggle of the 1960's, when millions went into action in defense of their rights and against oppression.
But over the last 16 years, there have been repeated attempts to chip away at abortion rights. Many states have taken away funding for poor women to get abortions. And more and more hysteria has been built up to abolish the right to choice altogether. The Reagan administration boosted the right-wing anti-abortion movement, which now has the blessing of Bush and Quayle. They also have the endorsement of the Catholic Church and of Protestant zealots like Falwell and the Moral Majority.
In the Reagan years we have seen an escalation of attacks on women's rights by the anti-abortion fanatics. Some of them have bombed abortion clinics. Others, like those in Operation Rescue, took up the "brave" task of harassing pregnant women at abortion clinics.
The Supreme Court has now decided that this spring it will consider allowing Missouri to enforce a law that for all practical purposes outlaws abortion in that state. This would open the door to a wave of government restrictions across the country on women's rights to abortion. Thus, there is a real danger of a major reversal of abortion rights.
The anti-abortion forces with their noisy publicity stunts, and with the support of the media, want to make it appear that they have the majority on their side. They are working to make it look as if a Supreme Court reversal would only be giving in to the democratic will of the people.
However, opinion polls continue to show that a strong majority of the people support the right to choice. But opinion registered in polls is not enough to defend women's rights. A mass struggle must be waged.
January Actions Spur Movement
This January's actions were another step in building up such a movement. Last year, the first attempts by the antiabortion fanatics to block clinics were answered by pro-choice actions in a number of places. These renewed stirrings of the movement have spread wider and drawn in new forces. Activists have kept up a militant spirit. It is a success for the movement that the anti-abortion forces have not been allowed a monopoly over the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade this year.
Inside we carry several reports on the January events, which included several types of actions. There were pro-choice demonstrations, such as the one which drew 800 in downtown Chicago, another of 350 in San Francisco, and those held at several clinics in Boston. There were counter-demonstrations at pro-life rallies, such as one which drew 150 in Detroit. And there was continued defense of clinics from the thugs of Operation Rescue -- in New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and elsewhere.
Who's coming out to these demonstrations? The actions included people who were active in the 60's and 70's, and they are also drawing in young people, both women and men, who are just getting active. The activity on this issue has sparked interest on many college campuses. The pro-choice demonstrations also drew in people who may not personally believe in abortion but who recognize the importance of defending the right of women to choose.
The crowds at the marches and pickets were enthusiastic and spirited. Activists were eager to refute the lies of the anti-abortion movement and willing to stand up to the fanatics. There was a widespread recognition of the need for active struggle against the right-wing assault.
The January events show that the attacks on abortion are giving rise to new sections of people who want to fight. The time is right for wider mobilization. It is necessary to go among the working people and youth in the factories, schools and communities. The time is right to build up militant actions against the right-wing attempt to turn the clock backwards.
NOW Leaders Promote Dead End for Movement
However, building up the pro-choice movement requires breaking out of the stranglehold that the leaders of NOW (National Organization of Women) and other groups close to the bourgeois establishment want to impose on the movement.
NOW appears as a prominent voice of the pro-choice movement. It has wide influence and it is sponsoring the upcoming April 9 march for women's rights in Washington, D.C. But in reality, the NOW leaders are playing an undermining role. Their policy saps the strength of the movement that is emerging. The harmful role being taken by NOW could again be seen in the January pro-choice events.
NOW was among those who gave the call for January 22 actions. But in many places, NOW did not lift a finger to mobilize for mass actions. In some places where they called events they tried to channel them along the perspective of lobbying Congress and voting Democratic. NOW leaders have especially been upset at actions in defense of abortion clinics. They say, don't bother fighting Operation Rescue, it will only puff them up.
Everywhere the NOW leaders oppose confrontations with the right-wing fanatics. Even in some places where, lest the movement leave them behind, they have been pulled into demonstrations at clinics, they oppose militant struggle. Like their policy of lobbying the bourgeois politicians, they say, let the police handle things.
But the police are the arm of the same capitalist state which is chipping away at the rights of the people. True, in various places the police have eventually arrested anti-abortionists who blockade clinics. But the police role overall has been negative. In many places, they allow the anti-abortionists to succeed in shutting down the clinics before they intervene. Or else, they display more hostility towards pro-choice defenders of clinics than they do with the right-wing blockaders. They allow the right-wingers to create havoc, while making sure that pro-choice protests are kept away. Thus the police role actually tends to help out the anti-abortionists.
So what's the end result of NOW's do-nothing attitude? It means allowing the anti-abortion forces maximum publicity. Not confronting Operation Rescue means allowing their lies to spread, it means allowing them to get away with their crusade against women. And indeed, day by day, the anti-abortion fanatics have become more frenzied and aggressive. A militant mobilization is essential to put them in their place.
NOW's policy is a dangerous path for the movement. Activists have to overcome it. What we need is a mass struggle. One that is based on the working people, not on begging politicians and police. One that can stand up to the right wing. One which mobilizes the strength of ordinary women and men against the Reaganite zealots.
To build up such a movement most effectively, the connection must also be drawn between attacks on women's rights and the entire capitalist offensive on the workers and poor. In the final analysis, that's what the anti-abortion movement is part of -- a class offensive of the rich against the rights of working men and women.
[Photo: Demonstrators in San Francisco oppose right-wing anti-abortion crusade.]
[Photo: 800 march in Chicago defending women's right to abortion.]
Chicago
Downtown Chicago at noon on Saturday, January 21. Eight hundred protesters turned out for a pro-choice rally at the State of Illinois Building. Participants included men as well as women. There were contingents of students from many college campuses.
The rally included skits against bogus pregnancy clinics run by anti-abortionists and against the Supreme Court preparing to overturn abortion rights. The crowd joined in with loud booing against "right to lifers'' and the court justices.
The demonstration then marched over to Michigan Avenue where the anti-abortionists have a bogus pregnancy center. Here there was another rally with several speeches. One was given by a woman who had gone to see what the center was like, posing as a pregnant woman. She reported they tell women wild scare stories about abortion. She referred to it as a "right to lie'' clinic.
The march returned back to the State building. It stuck together and to the dismay of the police, did not allow traffic to break up the ranks of the protesters. Slogans were shouted all the way.
A dozen or so anti-abortionists showed up to disrupt the march. They held up pictures of dead fetuses and had a loudspeaker with a baby crying. They made a few attempts to enter into the pro-choice crowd, but they were repeatedly rebuffed. During these forays, demonstrators shouted "Right to life, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die!'' At one point, a right winger tried to get the police to arrest a black man. When the police moved in on him, demonstrators surrounded the cops, shouting "let him go.'' Eventually, the activist was allowed to go free.
The MLP enthusiastically took part with a contingent. The Party carried placards in English as well as Spanish. Earlier, an edition of Chicago Workers' Voice was put out to mobilize for the January 21 action. Copies of these were distributed at the rally itself.
Boston
Pro-choice rallies were called on January 21 at four different locations which were in the vicinity of abortion clinics.
Altogether 200 people showed up at the four locations. Rallies at Park St. and Coolidge Corner were militant, with slogans and picket signs. This was in conditions of extremely cold temperatures. Operation Rescue did not come out this day to attack clinics.
The Boston Branch of the MLP mobilized for these actions with a leaflet the week before. Thirteen hundred were distributed citywide. The Party sent forces to all the rally sites.
The next day, the Catholic Church organized a "right-to-life" rally of 1,300 at Faneuil Hall. It was addressed by Mayor Flynn, showing the support of the city government for the right-wing crusade. Fifty people held a counter-demonstration outside.
NOW had called the January 21 rallies, but they actually did minimal work to mobilize. When Operation Rescue first appeared in the fall, NOW had counseled that pro-choice forces should stay away. But large numbers of demonstrators turned out to confront the anti-abortion fanatics. As a result of this mass sentiment, NOW leaders have shifted their tactics. Now they will call actions, but they work to keep the turnout small. And they still give the line of no confrontation with the right-wingers, and instead urge activists to cheer on the police from across the street.
Detroit
On Saturday, January 21, Operation Rescue tried a blockade at a local clinic. About 150 showed up. But a pro-choice demonstration of about 80 people militantly confronted them. Fearing a bigger clash, the police arrested several dozen anti-abortionists. But the clinic was kept open mainly because of the pro-choice presence. Activists helped to escort patients through the blockade.
The next day, there was a counter-demonstration downtown against a "right-to-life'' rally. One hundred fifty people took part in a vigorous picket line for two hours. They chanted many slogans, including "Back alleys no more, abortion rights for workers and poor,'' and "Right-to-life who you kid- din', pro-war and anti-women.'' MLP took part in the demonstration. They also passed out many picket signs which declared "Down with the reactionary anti-abortion crusade'' and "Women's place is in the struggle.''
City Councilman Kelley spoke at the "pro-life'' rally. He urged the police to stop the pro-choice demonstrators from using bullhorns -- which the police dutifully carried out. But, slogan shouting went on anyway.
San Francisco
On January 22nd, 350 people including a contingent of the MLP marched in San Francisco. They made stops at an abortion clinic and a bogus pregnancy center.
In the march someone brought the sign ''Abort Bush in the first trimester!" As in other cities, ''Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate" was one of the popular slogans.
Earlier in the week there had been a confrontation with Operation Rescue at a local abortion clinic. Pro-choice activists had trailed them from their prayer meeting with 20 cars of activists. At the clinic, they were about to overpower the right-wingers when the clinic director stepped out and said she didn't want any confrontation. The demonstrators were asked to get away and leave things in the hands of the police.
While this was agreed to, some activists were furious about it. They felt that they could have easily defeated Operation Rescue. As it turned out, the police took ages to deal with them and treated them with kid gloves. This was in stark contrast to the well-known brutality of the San Francisco police towards progressive activists.
New York
On January 13, Operation Rescue blockaded a clinic early in the morning. At their prayer meeting they had been blessed by Cardinal O'Connor of New York.
The New York police also helped out. They took their time clearing away the anti-abortion blockade. Access was secured three hours after the blockade began. The police also helped the "right-to-lifers" by pushing pro-choice demonstrators away. The blockaders were allowed in front of the building, while pro-choice people were told to go across the street or face arrest. Then they were pushed even further down the block.
The next day, Operation Rescue attacked six Manhattan clinics, three of which were invaded. There were counter-demonstrations at all sites.
A pro-choice rally was also organized outside an Operation Rescue meeting that evening at St. Patrick's cathedral. A hundred people turned out.
Buffalo
Four hundred fifty people attended a pro-choice rally in downtown Buffalo, including a good number of college students. After a brief rally, there was a march around the Federal Building. The crowd was in good spirits. ''Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate" was the favorite slogan. MLP activists attended and distributed copies of The Workers' Advocate.
[Graphic.]
Nearly 1,000 workers from auto plants and other work places packed a meeting to denounce the policies of the top leaders of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Detroit on January 8. The large turnout is an indication of the anger that is growing among the rank and file against the UAW sellouts. Unfortunately, that anger was not galvanized into independent rank-and-file action because "loyal opposition" bureaucrats were in control of the meeting.
The principal speaker was Jerry Tucker, the newly-elected director of the UAW's Region 5. For some time Tucker has led the "New Directions" movement which postures as a militant opposition to the top UAW leaders. But his speech showed that he really wants to limit the fight against the top UAW hacks and to preserve their policy of cooperation with the capitalist bosses.
Tucker actually denounced the fight against the top UAW hacks. He complained, for example, "I don't want to see us lose additional strength by having a huge internal battle that is unnecessary." But the strength of the workers is being weakened by the sellout of the UAW bureaucrats. Strength will only come from a big fight against them, by organizing an independent movement of the rank and file.
He also made it clear that he is opposed to the mass struggle of the workers and favors instead a policy of "cooperation" with the capitalist bosses. He declared, "I'm not forecasting the need to not cooperate, and I'm not calling out the bomb tossers and the barricades and the brickbats, as quite often I'm accused of.... When someone says these guys would take us back to the 40's and the 50's, well, it was business unionism as usual for the greater period of that time." At another point, he argued, "I'm personally not suggesting...that what we're talking about is some kind of constant confrontational posture. I'm walking in GM plants and before I go into the shop I meet with management, the same at Ford, and the same at Chrysler."
Obviously this stand explains why Tucker opposed the strike of St. Louis Chrysler workers in October and tried to sabotage the rallies against "team concept" at the GM plant in St. Louis. He meets with the bosses first, and apparently does their bidding.
But if this is Tucker's stand, what's his difference with the top UAW leadership? Tucker said that he is "opposed to jointness with a capital J." And he explained that meant he was critical of the top UAW leadership for submerging the union into the "lower level of the corporate agenda and not into the upper tier where the plans are made and investment decisions are decided upon."
In other words, Tucker is just demanding an "upper tier" of cooperation with the capitalists' concessions and layoff drive. He wants, it seems, simply more seats on the corporate boards. But such "upper tier" positions have never helped the rank and file. The workers must fight if they are to save jobs or beat back the concessions offensive. Tucker, and the other bureaucrats in the "New Directions" opposition, are hindering rather than helping that fight.
Workers twice walked off their jobs in January protesting dangerously unhealthy conditions at the notorious trash incinerator in Detroit, Michigan. When completed, this $438 million pet project of Mayor Coleman Young will be the world's largest, and probably most polluting, trash incinerator. It is expected to spew out huge amounts of toxic emissions, including dioxins and other carcinogens, when it reaches full operation in May 1989.
On January 10, some 50 construction workers walked off the job after several became ill from their exposure to toxic ash at the site. A week later, 40 electricians struck for two days after 15 workers were sent to a medical clinic complaining of rashes, coughing and tightness of breath. They had been working in the same ash area which sparked the walkout the previous week.
The almost completed plant has been sporadically burning trash since December 8 to test the new facility. About 2,000 tons of ash have been produced so far from the burning of 14,000 tons of garbage. But Mayor Coleman Young's officials have never tested the ash for toxic contamination. They have simply lied repeatedly that the ash is safe and meets all of the limited requirements of the state and federal governments.
But one of the strikers took an ash sample for testing. The results showed the ash should be classified as a toxic hazardous waste. The ash contained metal levels way above limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It contained mercury levels 7.5 times the EPA limits, cadmium levels 39 times EPA standards, lead 85 times EPA regulations, as well as other high levels of dangerous elements such as arsenic and nickel.
And where is all this toxic ash ending up? Mayor Young's government has been disregarding the safety of people. Instead of sending the ash to a toxic waste dump, it has been transported to a landfill in Sumpter township. Detroit officials complain that sending the ash to a hazardous waste dump would cost too much money. At a recent township meeting, a crowd of angry people who live in the township denounced the city managers for accepting the ash without knowing what hazards it contained.
The Detroit trash incinerator has been the target of numerous protests for its poisoning and also for its connection to apartheid. Combustion Engineering company is notorious for its operation in South Africa. Nevertheless, the Young administration hired Combustion Engineering to build the trash plant at a huge profit, the bill to be paid by Detroit taxpayers.
Now, it appears that the construction workers are the first victims of the toxic pollution produced by the new facility. Who will be next? The strikes and protests must be built up against the poisoning and capitalist profiteering.
On January 11, nearly 5,000 workers struck lumber mills in southern Oregon and northern California owned by Roseburg Forest Products. The workers were enraged by a company decision to immediately impose a one-dollar-an-hour wage cut.
Last summer, workers at other lumber companies in the Pacific Northwest staged strikes which resulted in the partial restoration of cuts imposed by the last lumber contract. Roseburg is the last major lumber company to negotiate in the current round of contract bargaining.
The Roseburg workers have resisted wage cutting in the past and it appears the lumber capitalists now want to bring them to their knees. Because the Roseburg workers refused an outright wage cut in the last contract (accepting a wage freeze instead), they now earn wages above the industry average. The capitalists are demanding concessions which would bring the Roseburg workers back into line.
While the workers want to fight, their union leaders have offered a compromise -- a four-year wage freeze which would bring down these workers' pay to the industry average by 1992. But even this sellout is apparently not enough for the capitalists. They continue to demand an outright pay cut.
[Photo.]
Three thousand teachers marched on the Los Angeles school district headquarters January 11, disrupting rush hour traffic.
The teachers are demanding a pay increase of 12% a year and an end to unpaid extra work such as supervising recess. They held up picket signs and shouted, "Chop salaries at the top." Earlier the 22,000 member teachers union had rejected an offer of 17.4% over three years.
The teachers have also been boycotting their extra duties and refusing to do certain paper work.
Supporters of the MLP joined the January 11 rally and distributed leaflets to the protesting teachers.
[Graphic.]
On December 20, anti-government guerrillas in El Salvador launched a daring daylight attack on the Ilopango air force base on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador. Rebel forces shelled Ilopango, the largest air base in the country, with mortars, destroying a barracks and a fuel dump. Some 30 government troops were killed or wounded in the assault.
Three days later in the capital, guerrillas attacked the headquarters of the Salvadoran joint chiefs of staff, which also houses U.S. military advisers. The military compound was hit with homemade rockets. Thirteen army officers were wounded.
These guerrilla actions are bad news for the death-squad regime. They show that the regime is vulnerable to attack anywhere the guerrillas choose. The future of the Salvadoran workers and peasants lies in the further development of the armed struggle, along with the mass protests and strikes. The revolutionary action of the masses is the only thing that can put the fascist tyranny in its grave.
The White House and State Department love to talk about how "democracy" is supposedly flourishing in El Salvador. But the truth is that the terror of the armed forces and the death squads has never subsided. In fact terror is on the rise. According to some estimates, death-squad executions have doubled over the past year.
Political Repression Flourishes
In December alone, the full range of political repression was on display. Four new death squads announced themselves, one pledging to "totally exterminate" all anti-government groups. A new wave of right-wing bombings included the dynamiting of a building at the University of El Salvador which has been a hotbed of anti-government activity. A professor involved in protest at the university was shot to death following a sit-in at the Presidential Palace.
Arrests of government opponents are also growing. On December 24, for instance, the leader of a union local and her husband, an activist in the Movement for Bread, Land, Work and Liberty (MPTL), were apprehended by government security forces in a pre-dawn raid.
Sham Elections
In the midst of such terror, the Salvadoran rulers are organizing presidential elections to be held in March. But under these conditions, the elections will be a fraud.
A reformist opposition, the Convergencia Democratica led by Guillermo Ungo and Ruben Zamora, is running against the main ruling class parties, the Christian Democrats and the openly fascist ARENA party. Though this campaign aims at reconciling the masses with the government, Ungo and Zamora have recently appeared on death-squad hit lists.
Even the Christian Democrats, themselves a ruling class party, face terror from ARENA. For example, on December 12, the ARENA mayor of the San Salvador suburb of Soyapango and his police killed one Christian Democrat activist conducting a voter registration drive and abducted another.
Still, the U.S. government considers the coming elections as the height of the democratic process.
White House Hypocrisy
Of course, once in a while even the State Department acknowledges some wrongdoing. Currently it is upset because the Salvadoran courts have dropped the case against a man who collaborated with ARENA leader Roberto D'Aubuisson in the 1980 assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The U.S. government is even talking about withholding aid to El Salvador.
But this is all for show. Tens of thousands of government opponents have been killed in the last eight years. And in the same time the U.S. has sent $3 billion to aid the regime. All the White House really wants is for the Salvadoran rulers to make a few token gestures so it can justify continuing money and arms for the Salvadoran tyranny.
For some time, there has been debate in the Salvadoran left and in the solidarity movement in the U.S. over the orientation for the struggle. Reformist leaders of the parties of the FDR, such as Ungo and Zamora, have organized the Convergencia Democratica to run in the ruling class elections and have denounced the idea of a revolutionary victory. They will not campaign in the elections in support of the revolution. Instead they stand for a deal, bartering away the armed struggle and the social demands of the workers and peasants in order to win friends in the U.S. Congress and a few seats in a Salvadoran ruling class government.
The FMLN has continued the armed struggle, but its leadership has also sought a deal with the Latin American bourgeoisie, the American Congress, and the Salvadoran oligarchy. Now it has taken a further step. It has been reported in the press that it has offered to recognize the legitimacy of the outcome of the presidential elections to be held under the rule of the death-squad regime, provided certain conditions were met. Apparently it left vague what this recognition would amount to.
Up to now, the FMLN has denounced the Salvadoran elections as a farce. And for good reason. These were elections where any candidate who irritated the oligarchy could expect to have the vote total make a nice inscription for his or her tombstone. These were elections held under the conditions of death-, squad terror. And after the elections, the civilian government remains more or less a figurehead while the army and the death squads held real power.
Why has the FMLN changed its mind? Does it believe that the workers and peasants could really take power through the present elections?
Yet the FMLN doesn't even intend to put up its own candidates for the election, but simply to support those of the Convergencia Democratica. And the Convergencia Democratica itself doesn't pretend it can win.
So when the FMLN talks of recognizing the legitimacy of the elections, it is talking of giving legitimacy to the victory of one of the parties of the oligarchy. This is not just participating in the elections, but promoting them and legitimizing Reagan/Bush-style "democracy."
And what does the FMLN ask in exchange?
We have not yet been able to obtain the FMLN's formal statement, which was released just as we prepared this issue of The Workers' Advocate for publication. But it has been reported that it asks for such things as a postponement of the elections, scheduled for mid- March, for six months; for the Christian-Democratic figurehead Duarte to remain as president until the elections; for exiles to be given the right to vote.
These conditions are hardly sufficient to convert the elections into a true democracy. Elections have been held under the rule of Duarte before, back when the Christian-Democratic party wasn't a broken reed as today, and these elections were nothing but farces. Duarte can't even stop ARENA and the death squads from killing Christian- Democratic campaign workers. Such FMLN/FDR spokesmen as Arnoldo Ramos previously spoke of Duarte as a "declining power" and put forward the amazing perspective of coming to terms with "the real powers in the country, the armed forces and ARENA..." (See "Where is the Salvadoran revolution going?" in the January issue of The Workers' Advocate.) But apparently this "declining power" is to be the shield against ARENA and the death squads.
It appears that a major point of the FMLN proposal is to make an overture to Bush and see what he is willing to do. The FMLN/FDR spokesman Ramos had already vowed that "We do not represent a threat to the U.S., and we are expressing our willingness to be very serious about negotiations." This presumably is another step in pursuing the fantasy that the American bourgeoisie can be won over to be reasonable and abandon imperialism in El Salvador.
So far, the Salvadoran ruling class parties, ARENA and the Christian Democrats too, have rejected the FMLN proposal. But that doesn't mean that these proposals are of no harm. The pursuit of these fantasies replaces the propagation of realistic revolutionary strategy. And were a class collaborationist deal to come about between the FMLN/FDR, the Salvadoran tyranny and the White House, the dangers facing the people would be immense.
The investigation into the Iran-contra scandal continues to be a farce. On January 13, federal district judge Gesell dismissed without trial the main criminal charges against Iran-contra defendant, Colonel Oliver North.
North was the point man of the Reagan-Bush administration for organizing a secret aid network for the bloodthirsty contras waging war against Nicaragua. North broke any law that got in his way. The dismissed charges were those related to North's plot to use funds from secret U.S. government arms sales to Iran for contra aid.
Thus North has been let completely off the hook for building a secret, illegal network of support for the contra murderers and terrorists. North may still face charges of lying to Congress about his activities and of enriching himself in the name of aiding the contras. But already the "back-door pardon'' from the Reagan administration has meant that North has gotten away with murder.
Too Much Evidence -- So the Charges Are Dropped!
The main charges against North were dropped not because there was a lack of evidence against North. The problem was too much evidence! Too much evidence against not only North, but against Reagan, Bush and other top officials.
North's lawyers planned to introduce numerous classified documents which they said would show that North's actions were approved at the top levels of the Reagan-Bush government. Indeed from testimony already given at the congressional hearings, it is clear that both Reagan and Bush were involved in the Iran-contra scandal.
Moreover, the secret documents would have revealed many other crimes of U.S. imperialism. For example, North's lawyers were going to show how North routinely got approval from his higher-ups for all sorts of dirty deeds. It is also reported that the documents reveal the names of various government officials in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Venezuela and elsewhere who are paid CIA "assets'' who carry out intelligence gathering and other operations.
Fearing exposure, the Reagan-Bush administration refused to release the classified documents, hiding behind the banner of protecting "national security." Soon after, Judge Gesell, at the request of special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, ordered the main charges dismissed on the grounds that without the withheld documents, North could not adequately defend himself.
Walsh himself was more concerned about keeping government crimes in the dark than for prosecuting North. Just imagine! The people in various countries might find out which politician was actually a lying CIA spy. Can't have that. This would strike at the very foundations of the "free world," free for CIA agents, not for workers and peasants.
The administration and the courts have been so concerned to hide the crimes of U.S. imperialism that they have not only dropped the most serious charges against North, but a week and a half earlier, charges were dropped in another Iran-contra case involving 11 defendants accused of selling $2 billion of U.S. weapons to Iran. Like North, these defendants threatened to prove their actions were officially sanctioned.
One Long Cover-Up
Thus the cover-up of the Iran-contra scandal continues.
First Reagan investigated himself through the Tower Commission which he himself appointed. Senator Tower has now been rewarded for his services by being nominated as Bush's Secretary of Defense.
Then there were the congressional hearings. These produced some revelations, but both the House and the Senate investigating committees let the administration big shots off the hook.
Now, to protect top officials, even the few resulting criminal investigations are being chopped to pieces. And there is talk that the administration's decision not to release the classified documents might result in the dismissal of the remaining charges against North.
The Democrats Assist the Cover-Up
How have the Democrats reacted to the dismissal of the important charges against Reagan's "national hero"? Are they up in arms over this travesty of justice? Not really.
The attitude of Representative Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), leader of the House Iran-contra committee, is typical. He said he "cannot judge" if Reagan was right to withhold the documents. (New York Times, Jan. 6, 1989, p. 10) In other words, Hamilton too considers hiding government spy activities and CIA conspiracies more important than prosecuting right-wing criminals. Hamilton also volunteered that charges against North were "vague." Perhaps instead of pretending to investigate Col. North, Hamilton should have joined the North defense team.
Confessions of a Democrat
This attitude of the Democrats is nothing new. They have been whitewashing the Reagan administration's role in the contragate scandal from the beginning.
A good example is the stand of Senator Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate contragate investigation. A year ago he confessed that the investigation's "first priority was to make sure that we did not get into Reagan bashing." Inouye's sentiments were recently further clarified by a member of the Iran-contra committee staff under Inouye. The investigator states: "There was a conscious decision by both the Senate and the investigating committees that they did not want to bring down the entire government. Dan Inouye specifically told the staff that he had served on the Watergate committee and he didn't want to destroy another president." So much for these fakers who solicit votes as big fighters against the right-wing criminals Nixon, Reagan and North but who consciously want to protect these fiends from the consequences of their crimes.
The investigator concluded that, as a result of Senator Inouye's attitude, "the institutional government, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the career CIA -- walked." (See Lars-Erik Nelson in the Detroit Free Press of Jan. 10.)
So the Democrats never had any intention of getting to the bottom of the scandal.
Why?
For all their quibbling with Reagan and Bush, the Democrats agree with conducting an aggressive, imperialist foreign policy, complete with CIA dirty tricks, bribing of foreign government officials, and supplying secret armies. They hold that, as a first principle, no investigation should harm these sacred institutions of U.S. domination. No crime is bad enough to justify disturbing this worldwide apparatus, both the official ones and the secret operations. It was OK to give some mild pinpricks to North, but the Democrats did not want to discredit the CIA, the Pentagon, the presidency, etc.
How the Capitalist Government Really Works
The Republicans and Democrats are trying to sweep the Iran-contra scandal under the rug. But in so doing they are providing a valuable exposure of the true workings of the capitalist government. They are demonstrating that the government can turn loose right-wing killers like North -- and then rescue them from legal problems simply by claiming "national security" considerations. They are showing that the top government officials and their war and spy machine can commit any atrocity and get away with it.
This is the true nature of American "democracy" and "law and order."
[Photo: 1,000 protest Oliver North speaking at Boston College November 2.]
On Sunday, January 15, the pro-contra and pro-capitalist right-wing parties, along with their revisionist tagalongs, marched in Managua. They used the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the murder by the Somoza forces of Pedro Chamorro, a member of the bourgeois opposition to the Somoza dictatorship which was overthrown in 1979.
This demonstration was part of the activity by the right wing that is called for by the Arias "peace" plan. The Arias plan calls for the U.S. government and other countries to give up overemphasis on the contras and instead work harder to reverse the Nicaraguan revolution from inside the country. In this case, the American Congress and European politicians prodded the various forces of the opposition to work together. As the Los Angeles Times, which loved the march, pointed out in a front page article on January 16: "In recent months, visiting U.S. congressmen and European political leaders have urged anti-Sandinista groups to work together. Opposition leaders said they met for several weeks before overcoming differences about who would march where and who would deliver the six main speeches." This was part of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie's, and foreign imperialism's, preparations for the Nicaraguan elections of November 1990.
The demonstration flopped, drawing far less people than a previous attempt on the tenth anniversary of Chamorro's death.
Meanwhile the Sandinistas, who have pledged that they would greet the Arias plan with stepped up ideological work, countered the demonstration by organizing a competing baseball game.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua deflated the attempts of the right wing to pose as the saviors of the people against economic crisis. They put out a leaflet opposing the right wing as enemies of the working class and opposing the path of collaboration and privileges for the right wing set forward by the Sandinistas. It can be noted that the bourgeois press, in reporting that all the opposition parties supported the January 15 march, does not count the MLPN as an anti-Sandinista opposition group. For imperialism, only the bourgeois (right-wing) and petty-bourgeois (revisionist and Sandinista) forces count. The talk of democracy and rights is not supposed to apply to the working class and its party, the MLPN, which is only supposed to receive kicks and blows in the ideal American-style "democracy."
Communique of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua
On the eleventh anniversary of the assassination of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the Sandinistas, the right-wing parties, and the agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers' movement are all competing to see who can get the most use out of this leader of the bourgeoisie.
The fight that Chamorro waged against the Somozist dictatorship won sympathy among different sectors of the people, mainly because of the hatred and rejection of the people for the Somoza dictatorship. But in the 11 years since his death, the people have seen how those close to Chamorro, and his religious associates, have extended their hands to his murderers. His wife, Violeta Barrios, cordially met with Colonel Bermudez in the Camino Real and later received him in the office that Chamorro had at La Prensa. The eldest son, Pedro Chamorro Barrios, formed part of the counterrevolutionary leadership composed mainly of ex-Somoza National Guardsmen.
So it is not really the anniversary of the death of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro that the bourgeoisie is celebrating. They are just staging a political maneuver aimed at manipulating the masses and trying to improve their correlation of forces for the negotiations they are carrying on with Sandinism.
The Group of 14 Parties [uniting the various right-wing parties and also the revisionist CP and SP], which includes the Sacasa Coordinator [an ultra-right-wing grouping], as well as the Sacasa Coordinator in its own name, and the CPT [a trade union confederation] are calling for a march in which the least important thing is the anniversary of the death of Chamorro. This shows right from the start the contradictions which have surfaced between the organizers of the event. Each right-wing party is fighting to promote itself in its eagerness to win favors from U.S. imperialism.
The march will be headed up by Violeta Barrios and the [group of] mothers of the ex-Somoza National Guardsmen, called "January 22," who will be there with their placards demanding amnesty for all the guardsmen and political assassins, including amnesty for Pedro Joaquin's own murderers. It is easy to see, then, the manipulation of this date (January 22) and the demagogy of the celebration. For years the Sandinistas and the right wing have been competing in this manipulation, making it even more obvious that one as much as the other is trying to prepare itself better to cement the social pact whose basics have been set down since Puntarenas [the place where there were negotiations to form the first coalition government between the Sandinistas and the bourgeoisie, with a representative of then U.S. President Carter participating in the talks]. The Group of the 14 and the CPT are trying to make this social pact revolve around constitutional reforms which will in no way change the bourgeois character of the constitution.
Our people have taken harsh blows from the anti-worker measures of the government, which have drastically raised the cost of living while simultaneously freezing wages, and which have thrown thousands of workers out of work in a massive layoff called "consolidation."
This situation poses a struggle where it falls to the lot of the working class to liberate itself through the organization of its forces independent of Sandinism, which is the one applying these measures, and independent of the bourgeoisie and reaction, which are the principal beneficiaries of these measures.
In this context the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua calls on the workers and the people to not let themselves be used either by the Sandinistas or the right wing. This march is not our march; it is the bourgeoisie's march, even though it is full of pretty-sounding slogans. In essence the slogans do not differentiate themselves from those of Sandinism. We are already wise to this demagogy.
Our fight is legitimate and is just. Our fight is against the economic policy of the government, for the right to work and for a decent wage, and this we must win with our own forces.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua calls on you to not participate in this reactionary march which is nothing more than another attempt to concretize the understanding between Sandinism and the Group of 14, which includes the Sacasa Coordinator, to continue riding on the backs of the workers.
We are not demanding constitutional reforms. We are demanding a new constitution which expresses the real interests of the people, which clearly provides that the economic policy will be to satisfy the needs of the masses, unlike the present one where the Sandinistas and the right wing collaborate.
For the struggle of the working class!
The emancipation of the working class is the work of the working class itself!
Managua, January 13,1989
(Translated by "The Workers' Advocate.")
On January 16, Martin Luther King Day, Miami police showed the true state of racial "equality and justice'' in capitalist America. They murdered in cold blood an unarmed black motorcyclist and his passenger for an alleged traffic violation.
Such wanton police brutality is an everyday fact of life for the black masses in Miami and other cities across the U.S. But this time the people replied with collective rage.
The Oppressed Feel Their Own Strength
An angry crowd gathered soon after the shooting. They surrounded the policemen, shouting "You no-good killers!'' Police reinforcements were rushed to the scene. And Miami's Mayor Xavier Suarez also showed up to try to quiet the disturbance with promises of a "full investigation.''
But the masses had heard these lies before and wouldn't be quieted. They pelted the mayor with rocks and bottles. Policemen in full riot gear set upon the masses. And they fought back with rocks and bottles and firebombs.
Over the next two days the street battles spread through Overtown and into Liberty City and Coconut Grove. Miami's black ghettos were in flames.
The fighting was intense. For example, on Northwest 20th Street a crowd of about 200 people pushed the police back, block by block. The pitched battle included rock throwing, the burning of a car, and a 15-minute gun battle with a sniper. With each retreat by the police, crowds poured into the street and celebrated.
The main battles were against the police. But the masses also took their wrath out on various local businessmen. Food and other goods were looted. Some 22 stores were burned to the ground. They also threw rocks and bottles at reporters from the capitalist news media, chased many out of the area, and burned a number of the reporters' cars.
The oppressed masses also refused to put up with the preaching of "restraint" and "violence helps no one" by the so-called "responsible" black leaders who came into the area. An angry crowd actually chased one delegation of such leaders out of the neighborhood.
More than 1,000 city, county and state police were dispatched to put down the fighting. Some 150 blocks were cordoned off. Tear gas was fired into crowds, as police detachments tried to disperse the fighters. Squadrons of 30 policemen in six squad cars with shotguns poked through the car windows, cruised through the ghettos, grabbing isolated individuals in an effort to clear the streets. Helicopters were employed and armored police wagons. Yet, still it took them two days, the killing of another black man, the wounding of at least seven more, and the arrest of nearly 400 people to suppress the fighting masses.
Who Was the Target of the Mass Anger?
In the wake of the street battles, the loyal capitalist "news" media has tried its best to confuse the issue. Quoting black politicians and other "respectable" black leaders, they claim the outburst was an expression of black anger against Latin American immigrants! After all, they say, blacks are competing with the immigrants for minimum wage jobs in Miami. Why shouldn't they hate them? What garbage!
In the first place, the masses rose against the racist terror of the police. They are angry not just at this latest racist murder, in which a Latino cop pulled the trigger. They have run out of patience with the daily police brutality in the neighborhoods, carried out by white, Latino and black cops. The masses do suffer from the crime in the community, but many say they suffer more from the police "drug" raids which are used time and again to harass and jail ordinary people. They are sick and tired of the police sweeps to drive homeless people off the streets. And they are fed up with the racist murders.
It was just last December that eight cops beat to death a Puerto Rican man while he lay handcuffed. And this, after a decade of promises to reform the police department. Back in 1980 several Miami police were acquitted of beating to death a black motorcyclist, who typically enough had been accused of a traffic violation. The masses in Liberty City also rose up then, and the police suppression left 18 dead and 400 injured. In 1982 another uprising occurred after police shot and killed an unarmed man outside a video arcade in Overtown. In 1984, Overtown and Liberty City erupted again when the racist cop was acquitted of the 1982 murder.
Having seen the police murder people at will, and then go scot-free time and again, it is little wonder that the latest police murder ignited the tinderbox of smoldering anger.
Pent-Up Anger Against the Rich
The masses also rose up in anger against their impoverishment. There are estimates that average household income in Overtown is only $7,907 a year. That means many people are far worse off. At least 55% of the workers are unemployed, according to city officials. And understated figures by the city government estimates there are 10,000 homeless people in Miami, and on any night as many as half of these are living out on the streets of Overtown. The demand most often voiced by the masses during the fighting in Overtown was for homes.
Meanwhile a few blocks away the rich frolic in luxury hotels and flaunt there ill-gotten wealth as if to torment the homeless and hungry. It's the anger against the rich that led the masses to burn various businesses and to attack fancy cars outside the Miami Arena on the edge of Overtown, forcing the cancellation of a professional basketball game.
It is true that the capitalist system forces blacks in Miami to compete with Latin American immigrants for low-paying jobs. It is also true that Miami's black entrepreneurs and politicians are squabbling with Cuban and other Latino businessmen and politicians over which of them will get city contracts and grants. And some of the black upper crust's prejudices may have gained some influence among the masses.
But it is also a fact that the black workers and poor of Overtown did not go on a rampage attacking the oppressed immigrants in Miami's Latino ghettos. No, they targeted the police and the rich. The capitalist news media is spreading the story of an anti-Latino uprising because they are trying to help pit poor blacks against poor Latinos so the rich are let off the hook.
The Lesson of Miami -- Get Organized!
The fierce battles in Miami provide a glimpse of the potential power of the struggle of the working masses. In "normal" times the oppressed are ground down one by one, unable to stand alone against the exploitation and racism of the capitalist system. But even the sporadic and spontaneous rebellions in recent years, such as in Shreveport, Louisiana or Perth Amboy, New Jersey or now in Miami, strain the resources of the state to suppress them. This is a "secret" well known, and feared, by the capitalist ruling class.
Still these were only spontaneous outbursts, quickly isolated and suppressed. Without organization, pent-up anger of the masses explodes in such spontaneous outbursts instead of more organized forms. Without organization the struggle cannot be sustained and carried forward in a conscious direction against the capitalists and the sellouts who serve them. With organization, the working masses can turn the world upside down.
In this dying capitalist society every city is becoming a potential Miami. Class conscious revolutionaries! Go deep among the discontented. Turn their rage into fuel for an organized revolutionary struggle. Bring them the hope of socialism -- a life free of poverty and racism. Teach them to build their own organizations of struggle. Give them a taste of the comradeship of struggle for the common good.
The ugly, dog-eat-dog jungle of capitalism is doomed. The new world of cooperation will emerge from the heroism of the downtrodden masses. Their hard work, joined with the science of Marxism-Leninism, will attend its birth.
[Photo: Miami youth hurls object at police as fires of revolt burn in background.]
Along with heavy police repression, each successive uprising in Miami has brought a flurry of promises of reforms by the lying politicians. Each police murder is followed by an "investigation by a blue ribbon commission" -- and then, after things have cooled down, an acquittal of the police. Mayor Suarez has now appointed such a committee of five policemen, five civilians of the Overtown Advisory Committee, and an "independent" member. The killer cop has been put on paid vacation. And the masses are supposed to sit on their hands and wait for the inevitable whitewash.
But the black masses have seen this trick too many times. That's why they ran the mayor out of Overtown. And that's why the mayor is talking of further reforms, of putting more black policemen in the ghettos, and of pouring some money into the economic "development" of Overtown.
These promises are about as empty as his others. There is already a black police chief, Perry Anderson, and the recent years of continued police brutality have shown that he's changed nothing. How could it, when the very basis of his job is to protect the rich against the poor?
And as far as economic "development" goes, there are plans not to help the masses but, instead, to gentrify Overtown and drive the poor out into another ghetto. For example, the city has already begun its "Overtown-Park West Project" which will eventually produce 1,975 condominium and town house units selling for between $48,000 and $80,000 each. Maybe some of the black upper crust will benefit, but this is hardly any help for the thousands of homeless in the Overtown streets.
There is no hope for the masses in the reforms promised by the capitalist politicians. The hope of the masses is in united, organized struggle for their own class interests.
This is the fourth year that Martin Luther King Day has been a federal holiday. And big, official events were held in many cities. But, despite the desire of the masses for change, few of these were protests against racism. Instead, the respectable black leaders made these into testimonials for reconciliation with the racists. Indeed, accommodation with the Bush administration became a major theme of this year's commemorations.
Bush Hypocrisy
George Bush himself seized on Martin Luther King Day to make a show of sympathy for the black masses. But his "kinder and gentler" words were hardly an antidote for the last eight years of vicious racism.
The night before Bush spoke, Reagan again issued a crude broadside essentially claiming that racism is no longer a problem in the U.S. -- that racism is just an exaggerated myth created by a handful of black charlatans. But it has been under the Reagan government that black income has plummeted so that today an average black family's income is only 56% of a white family's, the lowest since the late 1960's. It has been under Reagan that discrimination in housing, schools and jobs has grown. It has been under Reagan that racist gang terror and police shootings have spread. Reagan can't see the racism, because he has been one of its chief sponsors.
But did George Bush denounce Reagan's racism? Not a chance. He simply issued "gentler" words. People should "Remember the moral stain of segregation," he said. As if segregation is only some dim memory from long ago. As if he, as vice-president in the Reagan administration, had no responsibility for offering the tax breaks to segregationist academies or trying to overturn measures for integration of jobs.
Bush offered "kinder" words. People should follow the model of Martin Luther King, he said, so "that bigotry and indifference to disadvantage will find no safe home on our shores.... This must be our mission together. It will, I promise, be my mission as President of the United States." But does his "mission" include restoring the funding that the Reagan/Bush government cut from social programs for the "disadvantaged"? No, Bush did not offer a single cent.
Bush failed to utter a word of criticism for the vicious racism of the Reagan government, a government in which he was vice-president for eight long years. Bush failed to criticize his own racist election campaign or apologize for his recruiting of campaign staff from nazi organizations. Bush failed to promise a single concrete measure to relieve the heavy oppression weighing down on the black working people today. He offered, instead, only silver-tongued generalities.
This is hardly a signal of "greater responsiveness" to blacks. Rather, it is a sign of Bush's openness to hypocrisy, of his desire to cover up for racism rather than to oppose it.
Black Misleaders Cry 'Give Bush a Chance'
Still, the black establishment rushed to praise Bush.
The nearly 500 black Republicans, who crowded into the Washington Hilton where Bush spoke, cheered him.
Arthur Flemming, the "moderate" black Republican who Reagan fired from being chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1981, lauded Bush's actions as being "positive."
And the liberal black leaders attached to the Democratic Party held out their hands in friendship.
Coretta Scott King actually invited Lee Atwater, the director of Bush's election campaign, to speak from Martin Luther King's pulpit at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Atwater is credited with creating the racist TV ads using pictures of Willie Horton to suggest that liberals are too soft on black killers. But such racism is to be forgotten. King had just met with Bush in Washington and found him to be more "open" to blacks. So she gave the racist Atwater the pulpit the night before Martin Luther King Day to show her desire for accommodation with Bush.
Jesse Jackson spoke from the same pulpit the next day and offered the same accommodation. While criticizing Reagan, Jackson argued that Bush "must be given the opportunity..." And he declared that, "If Mr. Bush can follow Dr. King's example, he'll be a leader of hope. If he enforces the civil rights laws and reaches out across ancient barriers, there is hope."
Earlier, Jackson had also made the trek to Bush's office and found "common ground" with Bush's policies. Jackson let it be known that he considered it "inappropriate" for a member of the "loyal opposition" to join the Bush administration. (This is to say, he wasn't offered a post.) But Jackson privately promoted the idea of a "bipartisan commission" on drugs or education on which, he says, he'd gladly serve. (Newsweek, Dec. 19)
Meanwhile, in Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young also put out his hand to Bush. In his Martin Luther King Day address, Young criticized Reagan. But he went on to call for a honeymoon with Reagan's vice-president. At a news conference that evening Young repeated his view. "George Bush said he wanted to be president of all the people and I think he deserves at least a chance to be taken at his word and I intend to do just that....I'll be meeting with some of his people this week when I'm in Washington." (Detroit News, Jan. 17)
Black Upper Crust Selling Out the Masses
Why are all these black leaders so eager to give Bush a chance? They are not so gullible as to fall for his hypocrisy. They know full well that Bush has no solutions for the unemployment, impoverishment, and homelessness that has hit the black masses especially hard. They know that when Bush whines about the budget deficit he is calling for cuts in the social programs that had some benefit for the masses, the same as Reagan. They know that Bush's Willie Horton ads were no fluke. Along with his appeals on drugs and crime, the racist ads show that Bush stands for more police repression against the poor and working masses -- repression that strikes especially hard in the ghettos of Miami and other big cities.
The "respectable" black leaders know all of this, but they are promoting Bush anyway. That's because these leaders do not represent the interests of the black masses, of the majority of black people who are found in the ranks of the workers, the unemployed and impoverished. Rather, these leaders represent the black upper crust, the black bourgeoisie and rising petty bourgeoisie, that have actually found some benefit under the Reagan administration.
For example, a study last October by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that while the income for the black masses has plummeted during the Reagan years, the income of the black upper strata actually grew. The report stated "the income gap between the lower and upper-income black families is now the widest ever." (Chicago Sun Times, Oct. 18) From 1978 to 1987, the average income of the poorest fifth of black families plunged 24%, from $5,022 to $3,837, after adjusting for inflation. For the top fifth of black families, average income grew from $51,858 in 1978 to $55,107 in 1987, after adjusting for inflation.
Of course compared to the rich white ruling class, the black upper crust is still making only peanuts. But the fact that this strata has seen its income grow during the Reagan years accounts for why it does not hate Reagan with the same vehemence as the black masses. It accounts for why the black establishment is interested in an accommodation with Bush.
When Bush says he'll follow the course of Martin Luther King, he is not talking about helping the black masses fight racism. And the big shot black leaders know it.
The white ruling class prefers King above other black leaders from the 1960's precisely because at every point King tried to tone down the mass struggle, and he preached turning the other cheek, passive nonviolence, and reliance on the Democratic Party bigwigs for salvation.
The black bourgeoisie prefers King because he opened up for them more black business franchises, more minority contracts with the government, more seats on corporate boards and in government offices.
When the black bourgeoisie hears Bush lauding King, they know he means no good for the black masses. But they hope he may be offering them a few crumbs, a few new positions.
The black masses will get no help from the black bourgeois leaders. They must organize themselves for struggle. They must unite with the workers of every nationality and build a powerful movement against racism and against the capitalist ruling class that has so long thrived off the racist oppression.
Can white racists march undisturbed through the streets of Atlanta?
Last July they tried, but they were chased off by a counter-demonstration of anti-racists. They tried again in January, but 4,500 people came out to fight them.
Democratic Party Defends Racists' 'Right' to March
Last July 17, about 125 Klansmen, skinheads and other racists attempted to march at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democratic Party OK'd the march. And the city government of the liberal black Democrat, Andrew Young, gave them a permit and police protection.
But hundreds of anti-racists showed up to stop the racists. They fought with the police and tried to push through the police lines to get their hands on the racists. The police rushed the white supremacists to a holding area. Their march was canceled, and they were whisked out of town, for their own protection. Atlanta's Democratic officials promised the racists that they would be given another opportunity to march.
The racists decided to take them up on the promise in January. A white supremacist group, known as the Nationalist Movement, called for a march on January 21 to protest Martin Luther King Day.
The Andrew Young administration gave the racists a permit to march. And Georgia state officials gave the racists a permit to rally on Capital Hill.
Fearing a repeat of the July fiasco, the government went all out to provide protection for the racists. Over 2,000 troops from the National Guard, the Atlanta police, the state police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia Building Authority were called out to defend the racists. They were dressed in riot gear, with helmets and batons. And they were headed up by a convoy of four police cars, 12 motorcycles, and four paddy wagons.
Seven lone racists showed up to march that day. Three skinheads and four members of the Nationalist Movement. Members of the Ku Klux Klan failed to show. Nevertheless the military apparatus of the government was mobilized to defend the racists' right to march, no matter how many anti-racist heads they beat.
Thousands Turn Out to Oppose the Racists
The black masses were not frightened off by this huge show of government force.
At mid-morning on the 21st, about 1,000 counter-demonstrators gathered at Woodruff Park to protest the march. Speeches were given and anti-racist chants rang through the park. At noon, three racists walked by to shout at the counter-demonstrators. But the racists were quickly denounced as young activists surrounded them. The police had to rush in to save the racists.
Eventually the racists began their one mile march with huge buffers of police and national guardsmen on all sides. Thousands of people lined the march route shouting slogans such as: "Ku Klux Klan -- scum of the land!'' "The cops and the Klan go hand in hand!'' "Go away KKK!'' "Down with the hoods, down with the sheets, sweep the Klan off the streets!"
Besides the cordon of nearly a thousand troops around the racists, police barricades, and at some places chain link fences, had been set up to hold back the anti-racist protesters. Despite this massive military protection, when the white supremacists' march turned a corner from Peachtree Street to Central Avenue, the anti-racists succeeded in breaking through the barricades. They then outflanked the police by rushing through a construction site, and attacked the racists with bricks, rocks, bottles and cans.
Again, when the march reached the site of last year's Democratic Party Convention, young people surged through a parking lot and attacked the racists. One policeman was downed by a rock. Several other times the counter-demonstrators were able to break through the barricades to attack the racists and their police escort.
Towards the end of the march, Andrew Young's black Public Safety Commissioner, George Napper, attempted to disperse scores of black youth who were denouncing the racists. The youth shouted down this flunkey with the chant: "Napper and the Klan go hand in hand." Then 200 policemen, many on horses, surged into the crowd and attacked the youth with clubs. Two anti-racists were hospitalized with head injuries and at least 31 were arrested. But 13 policemen also sustained injuries.
Did the racists prove they could march in Atlanta? Well, they made it to the end of the march route, but they could hardly claim a victory. Each racist had the protection of some 300 policemen, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money. But still the masses were able to break through at points to battle the racists and their police guard.
What was proved in Atlanta is that the government at all levels will go to any extent and expense to protect and defend racists. Even if that government is headed by the black bourgeoisie, by the Andrew Youngs, the racists are defended. Obviously, the black bourgeoisie has sold out to the rich capitalists and racists who run this country.
But the masses of black, working and poor people of Atlanta have had their say too. They will never tolerate the racists. And they have gotten a lesson that the fight against racism requires a battle against the government and against the black bourgeoisie who serves it.
[Photo: Thousands pour into streets of Atlanta to denounce racists.]
[Photo: Massive police protection given to seven white supremacists in Atlanta.]
Students rallied against the racist skinheads at Evergreen State College on January 12. Evergreen is located in Olympia, the state capital of Washington. It is estimated that over a third of the students, faculty and staff participated in the protest.
The demonstration was part of the movement that has arisen since a black Ethiopian man was beaten to death with baseball bats by members of a racist skinhead gang, known as the "East Side White Pride," in Portland, Oregon. The students called for the campus protest one week after another black man was shot to death December 10 by a racist gang of skinheads in Reno, Nevada.
The students also protested the rise of bigotry on the campus. Racist and anti-gay letters have been sent around threatening various groups, and there has been a string of break-ins at the offices and homes of progressive students.
Students at Temple University in Philadelphia boycotted class January 16 to protest the racism of the administration. School officials had refused to cancel classes on Martin Luther King Day, despite repeated demands of the students. About 150 students also attended a rally that day in support of the class boycott.
Some students made Martin Luther King Day into a time to build support for the black people's movement against the racist system of apartheid in South Africa.
About 25 high school and junior high school students sat in at the South African consulate in posh Beverly Hills, California. Another 1,000 people marched in a picket line outside the consulate to support the sit-in.
Supporters of the MLP took part in the picket line. They distributed The Workers' Advocate and leaflets on a torchlight march organized by the Campaign Against Apartheid at Berkeley. They report that the picket line was lively, with many slogans shouted against South African apartheid.
[Photo: Marchers in Los Angeles protest apartheid on M.L. King Day.]
For some time, we have been reporting on the reign of terror in the Texas prisons. In opposition to the brutality and racism of the Texas authorities, the prisoners have organized many protests, and the politically conscious section of the prisoners have organized Prisoners United for Revolutionary Education (PURE). Desperately trying to stamp out resistance to their brutality, the Texas authorities have now sentenced Alberto Aranda, one of the leaders of PURE, to an additional 40 years of jail time for his prison activism.
Overcoming the savage conditions in the Texas prisons, Alberto Aranda became politically conscious while in jail. He not only took up activity on prison issues, but he linked up the oppression inside prison with the class struggle in society as a whole. Organized activity of the oppressed is, for the Texas jailers, the biggest crime of all.
The pretense for the unbelievably long sentence against Aranda was a prison protest during which inmates threw commode water upon various guards. This was one of a series of acts of resistance by which the Texas prisoners try to defend themselves from the miserable conditions imposed on them. This is hardly an unusual event in the prisons. Even for the Texas authorities. They dropped the charges against all other participants in this action. But they went after Aranda in order to crush the politically conscious section of the prisoner movement.
Aranda was charged with throwing an unknown liquid upon a guard, Peter Miles. In the original prison disciplinary hearings, the guard himself identified the liquid and said it "was no big deal...something you get used to....'' But in order to frame up Aranda, this case was taken to the state courts. But since throwing water could only be a third class misdemeanor at worst, punishable only by a fine, Peter Miles and the Texas court system had a sudden lapse of memory. The water became an "unknown liquid,'' presumably conjuring up images of deadly acid or dangerous poisons. Miles testified to the serious injuries he had allegedly sustained. While even real assaults on TDC guards have only been punished by two-year terms, the throwing of this mysterious liquid was to be punished by decades of imprisonment. Aranda, whose original jail sentence was coming to an end, was not to be released but kept in jail indefinitely.
The trial was marked by one irregularity after another.
The jury was packed with Texas prison employees. Aranda was saddled by the court with a hostile or indifferent lawyer who didn't even inform him that the case was going to trial; and when Aranda was finally allowed to represent himself, he was presented with a surprise trial with only one day to prepare his case. The court refused to allow Aranda to put into evidence the record of the prison proceedings which identified the liquid in Peter Miles' own words. Miles himself couldn't remember what treatment he had for his allegedly serious injuries or what doctor or nurse had treated him. And so on.
But as Aranda himself pointed out in a December letter to his comrades, he was not convicted because of various irregularities. On the contrary, these irregularities took place because "The political prisoners in Texas represent the evolution of rebels without causes into a transformed element of the surplus-labor pool -- in the spirit of Comrade George Jackson who was assassinated by other prison fascists, WHO THOUGHT THEY COULD KILL GEORGE JACKSON, but whose capitalist masters WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT HE NOW LIVES IN THOUSANDS OF PRISONERS!!" And he pointed out that "My case was an example as the prosecutor made it out to be to the jury of his [the prosecutor's] peers, but it is also an example of the prisoners' struggle inside the guts of their capitalist beast."
Aranda's case is now on appeal.
The bourgeoisie likes to talk about how their attempt to "rehabilitate" prisoners has failed. They say this to justify their gross inhumanity in running concentration camps that they call "correctional institutions." But in fact, when prisoners rise out of the petty and stultifying environment of social crime and take up high ideals, then the prison authorities really come down hard. Their aim is not "rehabilitation" but maintaining a savage instrument of ruling class dictatorship over the masses. Simple justice and humanity require defense of the prison activists.
But furthermore, all people who stand up for justice, all who fight for the interests of the proletariat, must be prepared to face persecution by the ruling class and imprisonment. Strikers, demonstrators, people who open their homes to Salvadoran refugees, people who won't sit still for racist taunts, and rebellious youth all find themselves facing the police and jails. The struggle inside the prisons is thus of even more interest to all progressive people.
Down with the persecution of prisoner activist Comrade Alberto Aranda!
Long live the prisoners' movement!
(Additional information on Aranda's case, and his complete letter, can be found in the January 15 issue of the Workers' AdvocateSupplement. Letters of support can be sent to Alberto Aranda #300823 Ellis I Unit Huntsville, TX 77343.)
In the last month Israel stepped up its terrorism against the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, frenziedly trying to suppress the Palestinian intifada (uprising). But the latest storm trooper methods produced even more spirited demonstrations against them.
"Rubber" Bullets and Death Squads
One of the Israelis' latest atrocities against the Palestinians is the introduction of a new weapon, the "rubber" bullet. This is a solid steel round projectile, the size of a marble, covered by a thin coating of rubber. These projectiles are fired 20 at a time from a canister mounted on the end of a rifle. The Israeli military thinks that such a weapon will encourage their soldiers to shoot more freely at Palestinians.
These projectiles travel at a low velocity, and when fired from a distance are supposed to be nonlethal. But Israeli soldiers don't bother measuring distances when they open fire on demonstrators. And they invariably aim at protesters' heads and chests, despite the official lie that they only aim at feet and legs. The result: in the middle of January almost every day produced another death among Palestinian teenagers from the rubber bullets.
January also brought more confirmation of the activity of Israeli death squads. A Palestinian named Kayed Mohammed Tmaizi was assassinated in the West Bank village of Idna. Tmaizi used to work for the Israeli occupiers as an informant, but stopped after the intifada began. He had been under increasing pressure from the authorities to resume his old job, but he refused. Finally, on January 9, Tmaizi was gunned down by a group of men who then hid out in the home of a known collaborator in the village. The authorities were informed, but did nothing to apprehend the murderers. The killers were later picked up by a car with Israeli license plates and driven away.
Israel also continued to put large sections of the occupied territories under curfew.
Despite all these measures, the demonstrations and protests of the Palestinians grew bolder. Israel already has a year's experience to prove that the Palestinian uprising cannot be suppressed with armed violence. But that doesn't stop them from trying. On January 17 Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced a new series of "get tough" measures to crush the demonstrations.
Rabin's New Policy: Increased State Terrorism...
Rabin's new policy is a wider, terrorist assault on the entire Palestinian population.
Soldiers are now authorized to fire plastic bullets at anyone who is engaged in "disruptive" activity. Previously only officers were authorized to fire the plastic bullets (which have killed many demonstrators), and supposedly they were only authorized to fire when their lives were endangered. Now many more soldiers are authorized to fire, and they can do so whenever they see Palestinians engaged in "disruptive" acts -- setting up roadblocks, burning tires, etc. -- whether it threatens them or not.
Rabin's new order also brings with it new penalties for demonstrators. Those accused of throwing stones now face much stiffer jail sentences. Their parents can also be fined. Soldiers are authorized to confiscate the cars or other possessions of demonstrators, and to seal up or demolish the homes of stone throwers. Rabin also encouraged the army to close schools suspected of being gathering points for demonstrators.
The army was quick to implement Rabin's new policy. On January 17 they demolished three houses, sealed up five others, and closed a number of high schools. Three days later Israel ordered the closing of every single school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Every day, more houses of Palestinians are blown up.
But like other repressive measures, Rabin's "get tough" policy also produced new, massive demonstrations. The occupied territories were shut down by a general strike on January 18-19. Soldiers fired on demonstrators, upping their monthly "kill" of Palestinian teenagers to a near-record high, but they were unable to stop the mass outpouring of anger.
...And a "Peace" Plan!
At the same time, Rabin tried to undermine support for the intifada by launching his own personal "peace" plan. Rabin has reportedly been meeting with some sellout Palestinians, trying to come to some arrangement on how to crush the uprising. Rabin has now given an open call for his plan, which calls for elections to be held in the occupied territories a few months after demonstrations cease.
These elections would be for do-nothing municipal councils, and only sellout collaborators would be allowed to run. Their only function would be to ride herd on the local populace, to keep it pacified, while Israeli settlements continued grabbing up all the region's land and resources.
Rabin's offer is pathetic. Nonetheless it is of interest because, reportedly, he has enlisted some Palestinians in his cause.
No Trading Away of the Struggle
In early January a somewhat similar sellout plan was publicly proposed by a prominent Palestinian, the mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij. Freij proposed that Palestinians give up the intifada if Israel first released its prisoners and eased up on repression. After being criticized by other Palestinian leaders, Freij gave up the plan. But the publicity it was given, coming at the same time as Rabin's "peace" offer, shows the importance of standing up against liberal and reformist political forces within the Palestinian movement.
The uprising has created a new strength among the Palestinians. It has struck real blows at the Israeli occupation. It is the only serious weapon in the hands of the Palestinian people. But some prominent Palestinian leaders are willing to give it up for some empty promises from the Israeli oppressors. That would be a disaster.
For now, the national-reformist leaders of the PLO still claim to be for the continuation of the intifada. That is good, but unfortunately this does not mean they want to advance the popular uprising into a force for the defeat of Israeli zionist oppression. While the West Bank "moderates" want to trade the intifada for some mirage of "local control," the reformists of the PLO want to use the uprising to merely pressure the Israeli regime into negotiations that would include the PLO. This was the meaning of Arafat's splashy diplomatic maneuverings at the end of last year.
Palestinian militants have to be vigilant. They cannot allow their struggle to be bartered away for meaningless crumbs. They must step up their work, not only to keep the intifada going, but to make it part of a revolutionary program that can win real liberation for the masses.
[Photos: Palestinian women confront brutality of Israeli soldiers; Palestinian children demonstrate in Gaza.]
Israel's inability to crush the Palestinian intifada is pushing its ruling class deeper and deeper into crisis. More and more isolated internationally, its image tarnished worse than ever, Israel is now going into economic crisis.
A New Austerity Drive
In late 1987, shortly before the intifada began, economists were hailing Israel's "miracle" economy, in which the gross domestic product grew by over 5% in 1987. But today, barely a year later, the Israeli economy is in serious trouble; the gross domestic product grew by just 1% in 1988. Today inflation is at 17% and rising. Unemployment is at 7.2% and also growing. And the government is in a budget crisis.
Israel gets subsidized by three billion dollars in U.S. aid each year. It also receives financial support from its rich supporters abroad. But these subsidies have not allowed Israel to escape from the laws of capitalism.
And like other capitalist countries, Israel's solution to economic crisis is to make the working people pay. On January 1 the government cut subsidies on food and gasoline, major articles of consumption for the masses. Overnight the price of milk, eggs, chicken, bread, and gasoline went up between 12 and 26%.
Finance Minister Shimon Peres announced a new budget with large cuts in spending for education and health care. As part of the plan, Peres plans to lay off thousands of government workers, cut cost-of-living increases in wages and benefits, charge fees for secondary schools, increase tuition for universities, and charge for use of the national health plan.
Too Much Socialism in Israel?
The U.S. media is attributing Israel's economic problems to "too much socialism." Supposedly the Israeli government does too much for its citizens, providing them with free health care, education, easy jobs with big benefits, etc.
The campaign against "too much socialism" in Israel is a typical Reaganite-style campaign against the capitalist welfare state. It is part of the propaganda in favor of cutbacks in social benefits and government regulations.
Is Israel a socialist country? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Socialism means rule by the working class. But Israel is ruled by a class of wealthy capitalists, just like other capitalist countries.
The workers are exploited for the profits of the wealthy few. Many of the workers in Israel, being Palestinians from the occupied territories, have no rights at all. They come in each day to slave away at low wages for the Israeli exploiters. Even Palestinians who live inside Israel, although they are citizens, are discriminated against.
Within the Jewish community, the Israeli ruling class works hard to maintain solidarity of rich and poor alike. In Israel all Jews have certain privileges over the Palestinians. And there does exist an aristocracy of labor provided with cushy jobs and big benefits. Among others, this includes the bureaucrat leaders of the Histadrut, the country's trade union federation. The Histadrut itself owns some of the country's largest corporations, and the Histadrut bureaucrats are tied into the leadership of the Labor Party, one of Israel's two major parties.
But none of this means that the ordinary workers are in the same boat as the Israeli capitalists.
Crisis Impelled by the Intifada
The Israeli economic crisis is in part due to the impact of the worldwide economic crisis. But in Israel's case the present troubles are being impelled by the Palestinian uprising.
In the first place, the uprising has cut deeply into Israeli exploitation of low-paid labor from the occupied territories. The constant strikes have cut off Israeli capital's supply of construction laborers, textile workers, service workers, etc. from the West Bank and Gaza. The massive call-up of Israeli reservists into the army also cut short the labor supply.
Israel suffered a 30% drop in tourism, a major industry, in the last year; this is directly due to the uprising. Israeli merchants also suffered a drop in sales to the occupied territories of $600 million (a one-third drop), as Palestinians refused to buy Israeli goods.
Israel's frenzy to suppress the Palestinians involved untold millions of dollars in increased military expenditures.
Possibilities of Economic Struggles
Israel's economic crisis is already creating cracks within Israeli society. The jump in prices for food, health, and education will be felt by all working class families and may give rise to struggle in the future. Some of the Labor Party's own cabinet ministers put up a display of protest against Peres' austerity budget. But of course, they didn't stop supporting the government. No, all they are concerned about is to head off the prospect of struggle by making it appear that worries over austerity are being heard within the ruling establishment.
Were struggles to break out against austerity, they would help break down the idea that rich and working class Jews have the same interests. They can serve as an opening to demonstrate that there are common interests between the Jewish workers and the Palestinian toilers. They can serve as a means for revolutionaries to agitate among the Jewish masses against the oppression of the Palestinians.
Recent race riots in China forcefully illustrated the degeneration taking place in that country, as capitalism runs amok through a society which had once seen big revolutionary changes.
China has had 10 years of the perestroika now being promoted by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union as the salvation to the economic ills of state capitalism. And China provides a graphic example of what perestroika means -- intense class polarization and the revival of narrow nationalism, racism, and all sorts of backward practices.
Ugly Racism Against African Students
Demonstrations against black African students in China swept through a number of cities the last week of December.
The demonstrations were set off by an incident at a party in Nanjing where a security guard refused to admit two African men who were accompanied by Chinese women as their dates. The incident set off a racist riot by Chinese youth which forced African students from the local university to seek refuge in a railway station. Police came to supposedly protect the Africans, but while guarding them, beat and tortured a number of the students.
The racist demonstrations spread to nearby cities. Hundreds of young Chinese marched in streets chanting against "black devils" and urging people to "beat the blacks."
There was an effort in the U.S. bourgeois press coverage to excuse the Chinese race riots as understandable resentment against the supposedly pampered lifestyle of foreign students in China. For some in the capitalist media, this may have been because of their own bigotry. But it probably has more to do with the fact that the U.S. media wants to prettify present-day China because U.S. imperialism has an alliance with it.
It's true that the African students enjoy some privileges compared to the average Chinese student. But so do foreign students who are white, from Europe and America; and no one demonstrated against them. No, the ugly fact remains that these were straightforward racist demonstrations.
As for the poor conditions facing Chinese students, the way to deal with them isn't by racist attacks against foreign students over some marginal benefits they have. It is by launching struggles against the Chinese officials and capitalists who are the real beneficiaries of privilege and inequality. Two years ago, Chinese students organized major protests against their bad conditions. It is possible that such struggles were about to emerge again, and reactionary elements worked to divert the Chinese students away from the government towards the African students.
The racist riots in China are the product of the revival of capitalist ideas which promotes the stand of "everyone for themselves." They are the product of the revival of reactionary Chinese nationalism against "outsiders." They are also the result of the fawning attitude Chinese leaders have adopted towards Western capitalism. The "open door" policy towards the West doesn't mean that the Chinese people are introduced to the progressive traditions of anti-racist struggle in the West but to the worst types of bigotry produced by the racist establishment in the U.S. and Europe.
The Ugly Results of Capitalism
Underlying the revival of reactionary ideas is the full-scale turn to private capitalism being promoted by the Chinese leaders. China's pretensions to socialism are rapidly being dropped, as the government introduces bankruptcy, unemployment, and stock market speculation. Industrial enterprises are being put onto a strict profit-making regime, and government economists are now drafting plans to privatize all state- owned companies. Greed, the piling up of personal wealth, is promoted as the greatest good in Chinese society.
As a result, the Chinese economy today is subject to all the ills of capitalism. Recent news reports from China give additional details of these problems.
* Today food prices are soaring in the cities. Inflation is over 40% and rising.
* There is a desperate nationwide shortage of steel, but steel-making enterprises are hoarding it instead of selling it, because they hope to make a killing off the rising prices. Meanwhile the steel enterprises are jumping into the home-building industry, because there is greater profit to be made in building homes for rich foreigners than in producing steel.
* The shortages and rising prices produce bank runs and an urban lifestyle of standing in lines, hoarding, black marketeering, and panic buying. The cities are besieged by millions of poor peasants, forced off the land by the development of capitalist agriculture. They come looking for work. The lucky ones get slave-labor jobs in sweatshops. Others are left to fend for themselves. Unemployment is rampant and the crime rate is soaring.
* Child labor, the scourge of pre-revolutionary China and eliminated for decades, is now making a comeback. Many young children work 14-15 hours a day in urban sweatshops.
* Private capitalism brings with it the revival of backward customs and practices. Arranged marriages, outlawed for decades, are now making a comeback. It is reported that in one city 86% of the children under age 14 are already engaged.
* The Chinese peasantry, when it was mobilized into collective agriculture, had made progress in ensuring a certain basic security for themselves and their children. Backward customs from old times -- such as preferring male children because they were the only ones who would provide security for the peasants in old age -- began to die out. But the dismantling of the communes in favor of dog-eat-dog competition has brought back the old crap. Buying and selling male babies is a flourishing trade in the countryside; peasants striving to get ahead in a competitive capitalist framework buy babies to use as farm laborers. Meanwhile females are denigrated as useless and turned out of schools. Female infanticide has also been reported.
Every so often, the Chinese authorities run exhortation campaigns calling on the masses to give up "feudal ideas." But these campaigns are like religious sermons. They solve nothing because they do not deal with the economic foundations of backward customs, which are not to be found in the feudal societies of the past but in the present capitalist policies which the Chinese leaders so enthusiastically promote.
The Chinese Communist Party Has Decayed into a Den of Thieves
The ruling party of China still gives lip service to the label of communism and claims to be Marxist. But it is no longer communist or proletarian. The truth is that it doesn't follow the ideas of Marx or Lenin but those of Rockefeller and Donald Trump. The party has degenerated into a nest of corruption. While capitalism is driving the masses deeper into impoverishment, Communist Party leaders are having the time of their lives. Things have gotten so bad that recently the State Council was forced to draft a special banquet tax, to try and discourage officials from indulging in so much carousing.
These corrupt revisionists had better enjoy things while they can. The Chinese workers and poor have a militant revolutionary tradition, and it is only a matter of time before they rise up again. They will build an anti-revisionist Communist Party to overthrow and replace the revisionist party. Already strikes are becoming commonplace, and in the countryside peasants often assault tax collectors and besiege police stations. And it is common talk among the masses that the revisionist leaders are no better than the old-style corrupt Kuomintang leaders.
[Photo: Chicago protest against executions in Iran.]
Last month, a demonstration was held in downtown Chicago against executions of political prisoners by Khomeini's regime in Iran. Prisoners belonging to many groups of the Iranian left are being executed and protests have been organized abroad by various groups. This protest in Chicago was organized by supporters of an Iranian reformist group and unfortunately did not take a militant stand.
In December, 80 people held a demonstration in Los Angeles, organized by supporters of the Communist Party of Iran. It was well greeted by passers-by. It supported revolution in Iran against the Islamic Republic.
Supporters of the MLP took part in both demonstrations. Comrades expressed solidarity with the Iranian toilers and saluted the struggle of the revolutionary communists of the CP of Iran.
Since the Iran-Iraq cease-fire, the Iranian regime has turned its wrath onto thousands of political prisoners. There are reports that the regime wants to execute every imprisoned leftist in the country. Meanwhile, it is also being reported that the Iranian regime is opening up its links with the bourgeois liberal and monarchist opposition forces abroad. The Iranian regime wants to restore harmony among the capitalist factions, while desperately trying to stave off a challenge from the popular movement.
One does not find the Western powers raising much of a stink about the terror in Khomeini's jails today. Why? Because imperialism is rebuilding its bridges with the Iranian regime. Imperialism winks at the latest suppression of the left.
On January 19, the Reverend Allan Boesak, a major figure in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, spoke at the University of California in Berkeley. Boesak was an invited guest of the university administration.
What's going on here? The UC Berkeley administration has a reputation for opposition to the campus anti-apartheid movement. For years now, it has been the target of activists who demand that UC divest from corporations which invest in South Africa. The response of the administration has been, while making a pretense of divestment, to increase its investment in companies doing business in South Africa from $4.3 billion to $5.6 billion. And they have launched repeated repressive attacks on anti-apartheid demonstrations. So why has Allan Boesak been invited to speak at an administration-organized event?
It's because the university has launched a new maneuver to derail the anti-apartheid movement. It is pretending to be a friend of the people of South Africa through petty gestures. Boesak is one of a number of speakers invited by UC from South Africa. The school administration has also allowed a few token admission slots to black students from South Africa.
Students from the UC campus attended Boesak's speech hoping to hear some support for the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. They hoped for some condemnation of the university's attempt to suppress the movement. But Boesak had nothing of the kind to say.
The Campaign Against Apartheid (CAA) protested the attempt to give legitimacy to the UC administration. During the question period, CAA activists asked Boesak if he realized he was being used as a tool for UC's maneuvers against the movement. Boesak did not answer.
Why did Allan Boesak agree to speak at a UC platform, giving legitimacy to UC's maneuvers? It's because Boesak represents a reformist trend within the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Boesak is a leader of the United Democratic Front. These reformist leaders are not interested in a revolutionary struggle against apartheid -- they are only interested in pressuring the racist regime to make some halfway concessions to the black people. Thus abroad, they see more importance in currying favor with the bourgeois establishment than in standing arm in arm with the masses who are fighting in solidarity with the black South African people.
[Photo: Activists put up an anti-apartheid display and literature table at UC Berkeley, January 19.]
The Reagan/Bush government keeps telling us we never had it so good. Why, unemployment has dropped to a 10 year low -- just look at the official statistics they say. But statistics can be made to lie. And the official statistics from the government of such notorious liars as Reagan and Bush do just that.
A comparison between official statistics and a recent study of the "chronically unemployed" in the Detroit metropolitan area gives an indication of how some of the lies are cooked up.
The Metropolitan Affairs Corporation studied unemployment in the Detroit metropolitan area for 1979 to 1986. The study shows that chronic unemployment grew by 44% in this period, and that in 1986 the actual number of unemployed persons was over twice as big as the official statistics claimed.
The study shows that 324,000 of the jobless had simply given up looking for jobs because they didn't exist or because they couldn't deal with problems of childcare, transportation, or necessary education. Between 1979 and 1986 the number of these workers had increased by 100,000, nearly 31%. The study concludes that many of these workers apparently "slipped through" the tabulations of the government because they had given up looking for jobs.
Whether you want to claim some unemployed "slipped through" the count, or point out the obvious fact that the government is lying, the fact remains that unemployment is high and as oppressive as ever.
[Graphic.]
[Photo: Hyundai workers in S. Korea protest goon squad attacks against their strike.]
Workers have carried out a number of industrial actions in South Korea recently. Strikes have been called in heavy industry and have also spread to IBM, Motorola, and other multinational corporations in the electronics industry.
The latest actions are part of the ongoing struggle to organize unions in South Korean factories. In 1987, during the massive popular upheaval against former dictator Chun Doo Hwan, workers' strikes forced some employers to recognize unions elected by them. Since then workers have succeeded in gaining recognition for unions at many additional places, and they have also wrested significant wage gains from the capitalists. But the capitalists have by no means given up their resistance to the workers' struggles.
Hyundai Organizes Goon Squads
South Korea's largest industrial conglomerate, the Hyundai group, is at the center of the latest actions. Hyundai's auto subsidiary, Hyundai Motors, was shut down for 23 days by strikes in 1988. And its shipbuilding subsidiary, Hyundai Heavy Industries, was closed for 70 days by strikes.
The latest strike at Hyundai's giant shipyard in Ulsan began on December 12. Most of the yard's 22,000 workers walked out demanding shorter weekend hours, higher bonuses, and a better pension plan.
About half of the workers returned to work in early January, but the strike went on. Then, on January 11th, 30 thugs attacked a union meeting. Wielding baseball bats and iron bars, the thugs seriously injured a number of union leaders.
The next day 10,000 workers demonstrated through the streets of Ulsan against this attack.
Meanwhile, a similar attack took place at Hyundai Engine & Machinery, also in Ulsan. Police arrested the managing director of Hyundai E&M, who admitted that he planned and paid for the assault on the union meeting. Hyundai makes a practice of employing professional gangsters in its plants to spy on and violently attack union activists.
After the arrest of the Hyundai executive, Hyundai announced the closing of both plants, locking out all their employees. Workers are continuing the struggle in Ulsan. On January 15, some 20,000 people, both workers and their supporters, demonstrated in Ulsan.
Workers Battle Against "Save the Company" Squads
Workers in many other large plants are facing similar violent union-busting activity. South Korean managers have developed anti-union forces in their plants called "Save the Company'' squads. These goon squads have been used by Samsung Shipbuilding, which has been hit by a series of industrial actions, as workers demand the dissolution of a pro-company union there.
The present government makes a show of being neutral in these industrial disputes, and in the recent case at Hyundai even went so far as to arrest the company executive who organized the goon squad. But in fact the police and government intelligence agents are directly involved in planning anti-union attacks. At Motorola's South Korea subsidiary, for example, riot police joined with the local Save the Company squad in a joint assault on union militants December 30, after the militants occupied some of the company's offices.
South Korea today is not ruled by the dictator Chun Doo Hwan, but by the elected civilian government of Roh Tae Woo. But every inch of progress that the Korean workers have made has come, not from the generosity of bourgeois democracy, but from the self-sacrificing struggle of the workers and young people. Since capitalism continues, the workers remain heavily exploited. It is only the path of struggle that can improve the conditions of the working class. And by advancing that struggle towards socialism, the workers will end exploitation.
Haiti was shut down by a general strike on January 17. Businesses and public transport closed, and schools stood empty as the toilers protested the military government of Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril.
Avril declared the strike illegal and sent soldiers into the neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince urging people on the street to go to work. He sent out a fleet of government buses to take people to work. Nonetheless the strike continued, shutting down commerce throughout the nation.
The strike occurred exactly one year after the fraudulent elections engineered by Avril's predecessor, Gen. Henri Namphy. Avril came to power after a soldiers' coup toppled Namphy. Avril is continuing the military dictatorship and he has refused to purge the government of the Tonton Macoutes and other Duvalieriest elements that flourished under Namphy.
In January, the Mexican government launched an attack on the leadership of the oil workers' union. It arrested the union head, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, in a military assault on his house early in the morning. Soldiers blew off the door of his house with a bazooka and dragged him out of bed. A number of Hernandez' associates were also arrested.
This was a major political event in Mexico. It is another sign that Mexico has become gripped in crisis. New clashes between the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) regime and the workers are in the making. In preparation for this, the ruling capitalists have to change some of the long-standing methods of their system of rule.
For decades there has been a cozy relationship between the ruling PRI party and the corrupt trade union bureaucrats of the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers). As head of the oil workers' union, Hernandez held an especially powerful position within the CTM establishment.
CTM bureaucrats, like Hernandez, have helped the PRI control the working class. They have sabotaged the workers' struggle and acted as vicious thugs against militant and revolutionary workers. In return, the union bureaucrats have been rewarded with fat salaries and privileges. In the oil industry, for example, the union bosses were even allowed by the state-run oil monopoly, Pemex, to sub-contract to private firms. The bureaucrats collected big fees from these operations.
Why is the PRI government now turning on some of its flunkies?
Opening Shot in Privatization Drive
The new government of Carlos Salinas believes that Mexico's economic woes are so bad that the capitalists can no longer afford the relatively higher wages and better conditions for the state sector workers. As well, some of the privileges for the union bureaucrats, who have cushy positions and enforce labor stability for the PRI, have to go. They believe that certain union bureaucrats are obstacles in the way of the measures needed to restructure Mexican industry along more profitable lines.
As economics minister in the last government, Salinas tried to cut back on lucrative contracts granted by Pemex to the oil union bureaucrats. Salinas has also been the major advocate of privatization, in which the government breaks up and sells off nationalized enterprises. Now that Salinas is president, Pemex is rumored to be next on the privatization chopping block. Privatization is meant to open the way to deep Cuts in the jobs, wages and working conditions of the oil workers.
For some time Salinas' policies have been seen as threatening by the oil union bureaucrats. The union chief Hernandez has been dead set against privatization -- not so much because it would worsen the conditions of the rank-and-file workers -- but because it would disrupt the union bureaucrats' corrupt share of Mexico's major export industry.
During the presidential election Hernandez told supporters to vote for Cardenas, the major opposition candidate, even though the CTM bureaucrats publicly vowed allegiance to Salinas. After Salinas took office, he and Hernandez began maneuvering against one another. On January 9, Hernandez filed charges of corruption against the government's former head of Pemex, trying to blame him for the oil industry's problems. The next day Salinas sent the army against Hernandez.
The Capitalist Crisis Is Deepening
This falling out between the PRI and some of the most important CTM bureaucrats shows the depth of the economic crisis in Mexico.
The world glut in oil and consequent drop in oil prices have cut deeply into Mexico's export earnings. Combined with the foreign debt crisis, this is driving the government into a frenzy of privatizations, mass layoffs, and reduction of wages through inflation, currency devaluation, and outright wage cuts.
In this situation the ruling class is forced to shift its methods of rule. The regime will not give up having pliant trade unions to control the workers; but it does want to reduce the role of the union bureaucracy within the political and economic system.
Mexican and foreign capitalists are crowing over Salinas' "coup,'' saying it leaves him free now to reorganize the unions, privatize large chunks of the economy including Pemex, and invite in foreign capital. They are rubbing their hands in glee that a new offensive against workers' jobs and working conditions is ready to be launched.
But this is a dangerous gamble for the government. For now, the government has replaced the arrested union leaders with others who are willing to be even more loyal to it. But how long will these hacks be able to keep down the inevitable revolt?
Salinas' assault on the union bureaucrats is, in the final analysis, the opening shot in a campaign against the oil workers themselves. As this campaign develops, the oil workers will be impelled into the struggle against the capitalist offensive. And in the course of that struggle, the workers will rebel against the CTM bureaucrats and build their own fighting organizations.
[Photo: Hyundai workers in S. Korea protest goon squad attacks against their strike.]
Workers have carried out a number of industrial actions in South Korea recently. Strikes have been called in heavy industry and have also spread to IBM, Motorola, and other multinational corporations in the electronics industry.
The latest actions are part of the ongoing struggle to organize unions in South Korean factories. In 1987, during the massive popular upheaval against former dictator Chun Doo Hwan, workers' strikes forced some employers to recognize unions elected by them. Since then workers have succeeded in gaining recognition for unions at many additional places, and they have also wrested significant wage gains from the capitalists. But the capitalists have by no means given up their resistance to the workers' struggles.
Hyundai Organizes Goon Squads
South Korea's largest industrial conglomerate, the Hyundai group, is at the center of the latest actions. Hyundai's auto subsidiary, Hyundai Motors, was shut down for 23 days by strikes in 1988. And its shipbuilding subsidiary, Hyundai Heavy Industries, was closed for 70 days by strikes.
The latest strike at Hyundai's giant shipyard in Ulsan began on December 12. Most of the yard's 22,000 workers walked out demanding shorter weekend hours, higher bonuses, and a better pension plan.
About half of the workers returned to work in early January, but the strike went on. Then, on January 11th, 30 thugs attacked a union meeting. Wielding baseball bats and iron bars, the thugs seriously injured a number of union leaders.
The next day 10,000 workers demonstrated through the streets of Ulsan against this attack.
Meanwhile, a similar attack took place at Hyundai Engine & Machinery, also in Ulsan. Police arrested the managing director of Hyundai E&M, who admitted that he planned and paid for the assault on the union meeting. Hyundai makes a practice of employing professional gangsters in its plants to spy on and violently attack union activists.
After the arrest of the Hyundai executive, Hyundai announced the closing of both plants, locking out all their employees. Workers are continuing the struggle in Ulsan. On January 15, some 20,000 people, both workers and their supporters, demonstrated in Ulsan.
Workers Battle Against "Save the Company" Squads
Workers in many other large plants are facing similar violent union-busting activity. South Korean managers have developed anti-union forces in their plants called "Save the Company'' squads. These goon squads have been used by Samsung Shipbuilding, which has been hit by a series of industrial actions, as workers demand the dissolution of a pro-company union there.
The present government makes a show of being neutral in these industrial disputes, and in the recent case at Hyundai even went so far as to arrest the company executive who organized the goon squad. But in fact the police and government intelligence agents are directly involved in planning anti-union attacks. At Motorola's South Korea subsidiary, for example, riot police joined with the local Save the Company squad in a joint assault on union militants December 30, after the militants occupied some of the company's offices.
South Korea today is not ruled by the dictator Chun Doo Hwan, but by the elected civilian government of Roh Tae Woo. But every inch of progress that the Korean workers have made has come, not from the generosity of bourgeois democracy, but from the self-sacrificing struggle of the workers and young people. Since capitalism continues, the workers remain heavily exploited. It is only the path of struggle that can improve the conditions of the working class. And by advancing that struggle towards socialism, the workers will end exploitation.
Haiti was shut down by a general strike on January 17. Businesses and public transport closed, and schools stood empty as the toilers protested the military government of Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril.
Avril declared the strike illegal and sent soldiers into the neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince urging people on the street to go to work. He sent out a fleet of government buses to take people to work. Nonetheless the strike continued, shutting down commerce throughout the nation.
The strike occurred exactly one year after the fraudulent elections engineered by Avril's predecessor, Gen. Henri Namphy. Avril came to power after a soldiers' coup toppled Namphy. Avril is continuing the military dictatorship and he has refused to purge the government of the Tonton Macoutes and other Duvalieriest elements that flourished under Namphy.
In January, the Mexican government launched an attack on the leadership of the oil workers' union. It arrested the union head, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, in a military assault on his house early in the morning. Soldiers blew off the door of his house with a bazooka and dragged him out of bed. A number of Hernandez' associates were also arrested.
This was a major political event in Mexico. It is another sign that Mexico has become gripped in crisis. New clashes between the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) regime and the workers are in the making. In preparation for this, the ruling capitalists have to change some of the long-standing methods of their system of rule.
For decades there has been a cozy relationship between the ruling PRI party and the corrupt trade union bureaucrats of the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers). As head of the oil workers' union, Hernandez held an especially powerful position within the CTM establishment.
CTM bureaucrats, like Hernandez, have helped the PRI control the working class. They have sabotaged the workers' struggle and acted as vicious thugs against militant and revolutionary workers. In return, the union bureaucrats have been rewarded with fat salaries and privileges. In the oil industry, for example, the union bosses were even allowed by the state-run oil monopoly, Pemex, to sub-contract to private firms. The bureaucrats collected big fees from these operations.
Why is the PRI government now turning on some of its flunkies?
Opening Shot in Privatization Drive
The new government of Carlos Salinas believes that Mexico's economic woes are so bad that the capitalists can no longer afford the relatively higher wages and better conditions for the state sector workers. As well, some of the privileges for the union bureaucrats, who have cushy positions and enforce labor stability for the PRI, have to go. They believe that certain union bureaucrats are obstacles in the way of the measures needed to restructure Mexican industry along more profitable lines.
As economics minister in the last government, Salinas tried to cut back on lucrative contracts granted by Pemex to the oil union bureaucrats. Salinas has also been the major advocate of privatization, in which the government breaks up and sells off nationalized enterprises. Now that Salinas is president, Pemex is rumored to be next on the privatization chopping block. Privatization is meant to open the way to deep Cuts in the jobs, wages and working conditions of the oil workers.
For some time Salinas' policies have been seen as threatening by the oil union bureaucrats. The union chief Hernandez has been dead set against privatization -- not so much because it would worsen the conditions of the rank-and-file workers -- but because it would disrupt the union bureaucrats' corrupt share of Mexico's major export industry.
During the presidential election Hernandez told supporters to vote for Cardenas, the major opposition candidate, even though the CTM bureaucrats publicly vowed allegiance to Salinas. After Salinas took office, he and Hernandez began maneuvering against one another. On January 9, Hernandez filed charges of corruption against the government's former head of Pemex, trying to blame him for the oil industry's problems. The next day Salinas sent the army against Hernandez.
The Capitalist Crisis Is Deepening
This falling out between the PRI and some of the most important CTM bureaucrats shows the depth of the economic crisis in Mexico.
The world glut in oil and consequent drop in oil prices have cut deeply into Mexico's export earnings. Combined with the foreign debt crisis, this is driving the government into a frenzy of privatizations, mass layoffs, and reduction of wages through inflation, currency devaluation, and outright wage cuts.
In this situation the ruling class is forced to shift its methods of rule. The regime will not give up having pliant trade unions to control the workers; but it does want to reduce the role of the union bureaucracy within the political and economic system.
Mexican and foreign capitalists are crowing over Salinas' "coup,'' saying it leaves him free now to reorganize the unions, privatize large chunks of the economy including Pemex, and invite in foreign capital. They are rubbing their hands in glee that a new offensive against workers' jobs and working conditions is ready to be launched.
But this is a dangerous gamble for the government. For now, the government has replaced the arrested union leaders with others who are willing to be even more loyal to it. But how long will these hacks be able to keep down the inevitable revolt?
Salinas' assault on the union bureaucrats is, in the final analysis, the opening shot in a campaign against the oil workers themselves. As this campaign develops, the oil workers will be impelled into the struggle against the capitalist offensive. And in the course of that struggle, the workers will rebel against the CTM bureaucrats and build their own fighting organizations.