The Workers' Advocate

WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Vol. 6, No.1 Dec. 15, 1975 25¢

NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS P.O. BOX 11942, CHICAGO, ILL. 60611

[Front page:

DENOUNCE SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM FOR PROVOKING CIVIL WAR IN ANGOLA!;

SINCE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: TWO DECADES OF GLORIOUS AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE]

CONTENTS

DENOUNCE SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM FOR PROVOKING CIVIL WAR IN ANGOLA!

SINCE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: TWO DECADES OF GLORIOUS AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

ZIONISM IS RACISM AND FASCISM IN SERVICE OF IMPERIALISM

HAIL THE 31st ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF ALBANIA!

U.S. IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF CANADA!

PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE!

Statement of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) released on November, 1975

CHAIRMAN MAO'S TWO STATEMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

DETROIT AFRO-AMERICANS REBEL!

LOUISVILLE: THE PROBLEM ISN'T BUSING; IT IS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION BY THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS

DENOUNCE SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM FOR PROVOKING CIVIL WAR IN ANGOLA!

The five-centuries-old Portuguese colonial rule in Angola came to an end on November 11,1975, and Angola became an independent sovereign country. This is a great victory won by the Angolan people who, with the support of the peoples of Africa and the whole world, persisted in a heroic struggle, and particularly in an armed national liberation struggle since the 1960's, against Portuguese colonialism until victory. It is a strong blow against imperialism, colonialism and the hegemonism of the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, who are the enemies of the people of the whole world, including the American people. In the name of the American working class, The Workers' Advocate warmly hails the victory of the Angolan people.

But unfortunately it has not been possible to form a united national government in Angola and, instead, a situation of civil war has developed. This is entirely the result of the interference of the two superpowers in the internal affairs of Angola. The differences among the three Angolan liberation organizations could have been reconciled peacefully. But the two superpowers, and particularly the undisguised expansion and brazen interference by the Soviet social-imperialists (socialists in words, imperialists in deeds), provoked a split among the liberation organizations. The Soviet Union has sent in large quantities of arms to support one liberation organization alone, while slandering and attacking the other two organizations, thus provoking the civil war in Angola. Bythisimperialist meddling in Angola, the Soviet social-imperialists seek to grab the fruits of the Angolan people's national liberation struggle and bring Angola under Soviet domination. This superpower meddling in Angola is being denounced worldwide, particularly by the leaders of many African states, by the Organization of African Unity and by the Government of the People's Republic of China. The Angolan people, who have been tempered in protracted armed struggle, will surely see through the Soviet social-imperialist plot and close their ranks to safeguard their national independence against superpower interference.

PORTUGUESE COLONIAL PLUNDER

The Portuguese colonialists first established a foothold in what is now Angola in the late 15th century. Portugal at first made state-to-state overtures to the Angolan coastal peoples in order to have access to this part of Africa, which they knew to be a rich source of natural wealth. But in the 16th century, the Portuguese subjected the Angolan people to enslavement and a slave trade that was to last for three centuries. In order to carry out this brutal practice, Portugal had to wage numerous aggressive military campaigns to crush the resistance of the Angolan peoples. It was not until the suppression of the Kongo Kingdom in 1665 and of the Nbongo Kingdom in 1680 that the Portuguese definitely gained the upper hand. Many millions of Africans were torn from their native land in order to labor as chattel slaves in the New World plantations of the conquerors, including 3 1/2 million shipped from Angola to Brazil alone. Angola, of all the African countries, suffered the most from the slave trade. By the time the slave trade outlived its economic usefulness and was finally abolished in the late 18th century, Angola had become depopulated. Today, with an area of almost twice the size of Texas, much of it fertile and most of it having a relatively moderate climate, there are only six million inhabitants.

At the dawn of the 20th century, with the rise of imperialism and the resulting increased rivalry among the colonial powers, the Portuguese colonialists, backed by British imperialism, decided to try to occupy the Angolan interior. Their goal was to increase their exploitation of the vast natural resources of the country. Prior to the 20th century only a handful of white settlers lived in the interior -- because of the fierce resistance of the native population. During the period of penetration of the interior, in the course of which the Portuguese carried out violent "pacification" campaigns like the U.S. later carried on in Viet Nam, the Angolan people waged major uprisings against the Portuguese forces in 1890, 1904, 1907 and 1913. The main lesson learned by the Angolan tribal states during the expansionist drives of the Portuguese was that it was only through unity that the people of Angola would be able to drive the colonialist aggressors out of their country. The intensification of oppression and exploitation by the Portuguese colonialists continued from the 1920's to the 1940's, including many more "pacification" campaigns.

At the end of the second world war, U.S. imperialism emerged as a superpower, gained control of Portugal, replacing Britain, and thus gained access to Portugal's Angolan colony as well. The U.S. imperialists began to plunder the raw materials of Angola in earnest, extracting oil, copper, industrial diamonds, iron ore, coffee and other riches. The resistance of the Angolan people to the Portuguese colonialists and their masters, the U.S. imperialists, was very intense at this point, but the unity of the people which was vital for defeating the aggressors still was not achieved. To preserve the status quo, the Portuguese colonialists and the white minority in Angola continued to use massive military and police force against the Angolan people and many bloody confrontations took place.

THE WAR OF NATIONAL LIBERATION

The present armed national liberation struggle for the complete independence of Angola dates from 1961. In response to massive police arrests, a number of Angolan patriots boldly attacked the prison of Luanda to free the prisoners. The attack was defeated and in retaliation the Portuguese colonialists massacred thousands of Angolans. A month later the peasants rose against the white settlers in the north and liberated a large territory. This resistance lost its initiative because it was insufficiently armed, badly directed by leaders operating from abroad, and torn by divisions between nationalist organizations. But the war of national liberation had begun. The Portuguese were able to reorganize, and U.S. imperialist-dominated NATO furnished Portugal with all the sophisticated weapons. The Portuguese colonialists carried out massive bombardments of the civilian population, arrests tortures, summary executions. The Portuguese in Angola employed over 80,000 troops and used the same methods which their U.S. imperialist masters used in Viet Nam. The Portuguese settlers also built links with the white minority rulers of "South Africa" (Azania) and "Rhodesia" (Zimbabwe).

In the course of the struggle, three Angolan liberation organizations emerged: the People's Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA), founded in 1956-58 and led by Augustinho Neto; the Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA), founded in 1960-61 and led by Holden Roberto; and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), founded in 1966 and led by Jonas Savimbi. The three organizations have participated in and made contributions to the armed national liberation struggle. All three have won recognition and support from the Organization of African Unity. Although differences exist among them for historical, regional and tribal reasons, their major objective of opposing Portuguese colonial rule and striving to win the independence of Angola is in common.

UNITA, the youngest of the liberation organizations, has played an outstanding role in the liberation struggle. In 1966, after years of trying to organize the independence struggle from abroad, certain exiled leaders returned to Angola and organized themselves among the people, giving birth to UNITA. They adopted the policies of 1) living among the people and never retreating from Angolan soil, 2) applying the revolutionary line of developing a protracted people's war, establishing revolutionary base areas, 3) practicing self-reliance and rejecting assistance from any imperialist power, and 4) giving repeated calls to other liberation organizations to transfer their bases of operation, located abroad, to Angola and to unite to fight the enemy until victory was achieved. Starting with twelve people in 1966, UNITA's self-reliance and arduous struggle won it increasing support in the countryside and in the cities. UNITA liberated entire regions of the country with large populations and initiated the political, economic, social and cultural transformation of the liberated regions. Prior to the April 25,1974 coup in Portugal, the liberal bourgeois press and the pro-Soviet press tried to dismiss UNITA as an "insignificant, ultra-radical, fascist, Maoist movement" which had "little political strength inside Angola". As a result of the military takeover of the Portuguese government by the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement these lies were all exposed. The new Portuguese regime considered UNITA's presence inside Angola so significant a menace that UNITA was approached for talks along with FRELIMO of Mozambique and PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau. It was at these talks that UNITA laid down its conditions which would have to be met for a ceasefire -- namely 1) Angola must become totally independent, 2) no federation with Portugal, 3) negotiations must be held with all three Angolan liberation movements and not just one, and 4) the political prisoners must be released. Since the liberal bourgeois and pro-Soviet press could no longer deny UNITA's popular base of support or its support from the Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity, these same reactionary press organs were quick to re-label UNITA a "moderate or reactionary movement in possible collaboration with the Portuguese". Slanders against UNITA have intensified in the past year and a half in order to hold back for yet a longer time the true facts of the Angolan situation. The pro-Soviet press set itself the task of driving the liberation organizations further apart by falsely attacking UNITA while supporting MPLA, expecting that UNITA would erroneously respond by establishing MPLA as the enemy rather than the Portuguese colonialists. Instead, during the latter half of 1974 UNITA escalated its efforts to unite the liberation organizations in order to emancipate Angola from Portuguese colonialism. With the assistance of the OAU and African countries the Angolan liberation organizations temporarily overcame their differences and united.

ANGOLAN INDEPENDENCE

The three liberation movements met from January 3 to 5,1975, in Mombasa, Kenya. A declaration and a joint communique were issued. The declaration of principles called for building a "just and democratic society in Angola" and for safeguarding "the territorial integrity of Angola". The joint communique said: "The meeting evolved in an atmosphere of mutual and perfect understanding". "The three delegations analyzed all problems related to the decolonization process" and "agreed on a common political platform". "The three liberation movements decided that from now on they will cooperate in all spheres and especially in that of decolonization, for defense of territorial integrity as well as for national reconstruction". The communique said: "the three liberation movements declare as of today their readiness to initiate immediate negotiations with the Portuguese government". On that basis the three liberation organizations held a series of talks with the Portuguese government. On January 15,1975, in Alvor, Portugal, the Angolan Independence Agreement was signed. In the Agreement the Portuguese government recognized the three liberation organizations as the "sole representatives of the Angolan people" and recognized the Angolan people's right to independence. The Agreement recognized the territorial integrity of Angola and provided that independence would be proclaimed on November 11,1975. Prior to independence a transitional government, composed of members of the three liberation organizations and the Portuguese government, would exercise power.

This Agreement was a major victory for the Angolan people after 14 years of armed national liberation struggle. This victory was also a great encouragement to the fighting people in the neighboring countries of Zimbabwe, Namibia ("South West Africa") and Azania. The next struggle the Angolan people had to wage was to bring about the implementation of the Agreement and to strengthen their unity. Some steps were taken in this direction, such as the meeting of the three liberation organizations in Nakuru, Kenya, from June 16-21,1975, at which they signed the Nakuru Agreement. The three organizations pointed out in this agreement that they, "aware of the grave situation in which the country finds itself and of the national interests which must necessarily be put above any political and ideological divergencies, solemnly affirm to renounce the use of force as a way to solve problems and to solve problems and to honor all obligations resulting from the conclusion of the accord". But unfortunately no really effective unity was built between the organizations. Instead, a condition of civil war began to develop between the organizations even before independence was proclaimed. When the Portuguese colonialists finally lowered their flag in Luanda, Angola's capital city, on November 10,1975, they simply left Angola without formally handing their remaining "authority" over, because no Angolan coalition government had been formed and a situation of civil war existed in the country.

SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISTS PROVOKE CIVIL WAR

Soon after the three Angolan organizations signed the Nakuru Agreement, the Soviet social- imperialists stirred up armed conflict between the organizations. To realize their aim of replacing the influence of U. S. imperialism in Angola and to control Angola themselves, the Soviet social-imperialists resorted to the most despicable tactics of sowing dissension among the liberation organizations to the point of creating a civil war in Angola. The Soviet social-imperialists and the pro-Soviet press perniciously incited one liberation organization against the others by labeling one organization "revolutionary" and the other two "counter-revolutionary" and "neo-colonialists". This completely disregarded both the O.A.U.'s equal treatment of the three organizations as well as the agreements reached among the three organizations themselves. The Soviet Union is exerting its influence strongly on one of the liberation organizations, while U.S. imperialism, also fishing in troubled waters, is directly and indirectly courting another.

Even more criminal is that since the Nakuru agreement was signed, the Soviet social-imperialists escalated their shipment of heavy arms to one of the Angolan liberation organizations in order to whip up civil war. They shipped in such weapons as tanks, armored cars, rockets, and rocket launchers which they never supplied to the Angolan people during their struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. Soviet warships in the Lobito Harbor were reported to have launched rockets against the armed forces of one of Angola's liberation organizations. Soviet military personnel are reported to be planning certain military operations, directly involving themselves in the civil war there. Tank crews, fighter pilots and at least 3,000 Cuban troops are among the Soviet-bloc forces which have been sent to Angola. The Cuban armed forces in Angola are there as puppets to serve the interests of Soviet social-imperialism, just as U.S. imperialism used south Korea and Thai puppets in Viet Nam. Since October the Soviet social-imperialists have markedly increased their military intervention in Angola. They are carrying on "escalation" in Angola just as the U.S. imperialists carried on "escalation" in Viet Nam, and inevitably they will suffer the same crushing defeat that U.S. imperialism met.

Unidade Popular, organ of the Central Committee of The Communist Party of Portugal (Marxist-Leninist) in a recent article denounced the Soviet social-imperialists for provoking a civil war war in Angola and undermining its independence. It said:"The current situation in Angola is characterized by the existence of a civil war provoked by Soviet social-imperialism," and "this superpower has done its utmost to undermine the unity of the three liberation organizations. " The article pointed out that just as the Angolan people joyously greeted independence from Portugal, "at this juncture, Soviet social-imperialism launched a powerful offensive in Angola with the purpose of provoking a civil war and fishing in waters stained with the blood of African patriots." The article further pointed out that while claiming to be a "natural ally" of the peoples fighting for liberation and a "supporter" of the resolutions of the Organization of African Unity, the Soviet social-imperialists have resorted to every trick and scheme to create a split among the three organizations which are internationally recognized and regarded as legitimate representatives of the Angolan people by the Organization of African Unity. They support one of the organizations unilaterally. The article pointed out that the recent shipment of heavy arms by the Soviet Union to one of the organizations consists of "sophisticated weapons which have never been given to the African patriots in the long struggle against Portuguese colonialism." The article said that "the despicable purpose of their (Soviet Union's) action is to control (Angola)." (Peking Review, Nov. 28, 1975)

Soviet social-imperialism is taking this precipitous military action in an attempt to overcome U.S. imperialist influence in southern Africa and establish the region as a Soviet garrison for the whole South Atlantic region. The South Atlantic is a strategic area, a center for many trading routes, and a valuable asset in the superpowers' designs for world hegemony. The Soviet Union, not content with its maritime superiority in the Indian Ocean, is contending with the U.S. imperialists for re-division of the areas of southern Africa and the surrounding seas. At present the center of the contention in this region is Angola, where the two superpowers, most notably the Soviet Union, have interfered repeatedly in the affairs of the Angolan people, creating the conditions for a full-scale civil war.

Soviet social-imperialism is supported in its endeavor to grab colonies and spheres of influence by those elements in the United States and elsewhere who support only one liberation organization and not the entire Angolan people's national liberation struggle. These people, newspapers, organizations, etc., are saying that the American working class and people should support one liberation organization because it is "revolutionary" while they claim that the other two are "counter-revolutionary". In fact, to support only one liberation organization is to fall prey to the social-imperialist trick of working to split the Angolan people. To adopt this stand is to help Soviet social-imperialism attack and undermine the independence struggle of the Angolan people and seize Angola as its colony. To adopt this stand is to oppose one superpower (U.S. imperialism) but not the other, helping the Soviet social-imperialists in their contention for world hegemony against U.S. imperialism and thus contributing to Soviet preparation for a new world war. It is the two superpowers who are the cause of all the trouble in the world, and it is their defeat which all the peoples of the world are struggling for. It is the two superpowers whose frantic contention for world hegemony is leading the world into another world war. To take the side of one superpower against the other sabotages the struggle of the peoples of the world against them, increases their contention, encourages them to stir up trouble and commit aggression throughout the world and contributes to the development of another world war. This stand is terribly mistaken, and goes against the interests of the whole world's people as well as the interests of the Angolan people. It should be strongly opposed.

APPEALS TO STOP THE CIVIL WAR

Great efforts of mediation to help the three Angolan liberation organizations resolve their differences, stop the civil war and establish a government of national unity have been made by many leaders of African states and by the O.A.U. in particular. They have also opposed Soviet interference in Angola. The scheming of Soviet social-imperialism for "new colonization of Africa under a socialist banner" was denounced at the 12th O.A.U. summit conference last July. The O.A.U.'s Angolan Conciliation Commission issued a report to the O.A.U. prior to independence proposing that the three liberation movements immediately cease their civil war and form a government of national union. The report stated "There is varying evidence as to the intensity of foreign interference in the internal affairs of Angola through the supply of arms and (or) personnel". It recommended that "no member states (of the O.A.U.) should recognize any liberation movement in the event of the latter declaring unilateral independence". Since the O.A.U. Summit Conference last July, the Soviet government delivered several intimidating messages to the President of the O.A.U. and to other African leaders in a vain effort to make them reverse their just stand of working for a government of national unity in Angola. The O.A.U. president has categorically rejected the Soviet dictates and has firmly adhered to the correct O.A.U. stand that the three Angolan liberation organizations should cease fighting and unite. Most recently the Central African Foreign Ministers' Conference, which ended on November 19th, condemned foreign intervention in Angola. The communique on Angola issued by the Conference declared: "All foreign intervention in Angola, no matter where it comes from, can only complicate the situation in that country". It said, "In view of this situation, the conference strongly condemned all aggression against the fraternal Angolan people and asked all those interfering in Angola's internal affairs to refrain from doing so hereafter so that the sovereign Angolan people may settle their problems by themselves".

On November 15,1975, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China issued a statement which concluded as follows:

"(The) just stand of the O.A.U. is in full conformity with the interests of the people of Angola and all Africa. It is highly appreciated and resolutely supported by the Chinese government.

"The Chinese Government and people have always deeply sympathized with and firmly supported the Angolan people in their just struggle for national independence against Portuguese colonialism and sincerely hope that the three Angolan liberation organizations, setting story be the interests of the Angolan nation and the whole situation, will unite themselves, remove their differences, oppose the common enemies, expel superpower meddling and interference and work together to establish a united, unified and truly independent Angola with national concord".

The Workers' Advocate hails the valiant fighting spirit of the Angolan people and supports the entirely just stand of the O.A.U., of the leaders of many African states and of the Government of the People's Republic of China in calling for the unity of the Angolan people against superpower interference. The Workers' Advocate condemns the vicious contention of the two superpowers over Angola, denounces Soviet social-imperialism for provoking civil war in Angola in order to serve its own hegemonistic ends, and calls upon American workers, oppressed nationalities and all progressive people to strongly support the struggle of the Angolan people for the total independence of Angola. -- end --

[Photo: The leaders of the three Angolan liberation organizations. (1. to r.): Augustinho Neto, MPLA; Holden Roberto, FNLA; Jonas Savimbi, UNITA. The victorious centuries-long struggle of the Angolan people against Portuguese colonialism teaches the necessity of unity. But the Soviet social-imperialists have provoked a bloody civil war in an attempt to turn Angola into a Soviet base- in Africa.]

[Photo: Dr. Jonas Savimbi of UNITA with a captured Cuban soldier. Just as U.S. imperialism used South Korean and Taiwanese puppet troops in Viet Nam, so the Soviet social-imperialists have sent over 3,000 Cuban puppet troops to massacre the Angolan people.]

[Photo: Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola, under the leadership of UNITA, undergoing training. Militarily starting with bows and arrows, UNITA built a peoples army fully armed and equipped with NATO weapons captured from Portuguese soldiers.]

[Map of southern Africa showing location of Angola.]

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SINCE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: TWO DECADES OF GLORIOUS AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

December 5, 1975, was the 20th anniversary of the launching of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a boycott of the segregated buses of Montgomery, Alabama, by the Afro-American people of that city, which began on December 5, 1955. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the first large-scale, organized mass struggle for freedom and equal rights by the Black masses since World War II. It was a protracted struggle, lasting 381 days, during which the Black people of Montgomery persisted in a dauntless fight until they won victory. The Montgomery Bus Boycott greatly inspired the Black people and other oppressed people in the United States and throughout the world. It marked the opening of one of the most heroic periods in the entire 450-year-long struggle of the Black people in the U.S. against slavery, racial discrimination and violent repression, the period of the civil rights movement and the great Black rebellions of the 1960's. The Afro-American struggle played an increasingly important part in the world proletarian revolution. Chairman Mao Tsetung, leader of the Chinese and world's people, pointed out that in 1968 the Afro-American struggle became "A STORM SUCH AS HAS NEVER TAKEN PLACE BEFORE IN THE HISTORY OF THAT COUNTRY (the United States)." ("Statement by Comrade Mao Tsetung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle against Violent Repression," April 16, 1968).

Thus, on the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it is important for progressive workers and other oppressed people throughout the U.S. to review and re-examine the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the two great decades of struggle which followed it, in order to hasten the process of merging the Afro-American struggle with the American workers' movement and bringing about the downfall of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class, and in this way doing our part in the world revolution.

The tremendous mass struggles of the Afro-American people of the last twenty years were caused by the most barbarous practice of racial discrimination, violent repression and class exploitation carried against them by the monopoly capitalist class and its stooges. What were the conditions facing the Black people at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Chairman Mao has summed them up briefly as follows:

"THERE ARE MORE THAN 19 MILLION AFRO-AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES, OR ABOUT 11 PER CENT OF THE TOTAL POPULATION. THEY ARE ENSLAVED, OPPRESSED AND DISCRIMINATED AGAINST -- SUCH IS THEIR POSITION IN SOCIETY. THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY ARE DEPRIVED OF THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE. IN GENERAL, ONLY THE MOST BACKBREAKING AND DESPISED JOBS ARE OPEN TO THEM. THEIR AVERAGE WAGES ARE BARELY A THIRD OR A HALF THOSE OF THE WHITE PEOPLE. THE PROPORTION OF UNEMPLOYMENT AMONG THE AFRO-AMERICANS IS THE HIGHEST. IN MANY STATES THEY ARE FORBIDDEN TO GO TO THE SAME SCHOOL, EAT AT THE SAME TABLE, OR TRAVEL IN THE SAME SECTION OF A BUS OR TRAIN AS THE WHITE PEOPLE. AFRO-AMERICANS ARE OFTEN ARRESTED, BEATEN UP OR MURDERED AT WILL BY THE U.S. AUTHORITIES AT VARIOUS LEVELS AND BY MEMBERS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN AND OTHER RACISTS. ABOUT HALF THE AFRO- AMERICANS ARE CONCENTRATED IN ELEVEN SOUTHERN STATES, WHERE THE DISCRIMINATION AND PERSECUTION THEY SUFFER ARE ESPECIALLY SHOCKING. " ("Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in their Just Struggle against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism, August 8, 1963.)

Thus the Afro-Americans were (as they still are) subjected to both class and national exploitation and oppression. They were (and are) segregated by a barbarous system of racial discrimination, ground down under a double load of poverty by class exploitation, and subjected to violent repression by the armed state machine (government) of the monopoly capitalist class. Such was their condition in 1955.

At the same time, however, certain new conditions were developing which prepared the ground for the tremendous struggles of the Afro-Americans against their oppression. Many Blacks were drawn into industry in the North during World War II. Industry and mechanization of agriculture were developing rapidly in the South. As a result, Blacks were becoming modern proletarians at a rapid rate, partially breaking out of the isolation of the semi-feudal, semi-slave plantation system of the South. These new conditions placed the question more squarely before the Afro-Americans: if they could sell their labor-power the same as whites, why weren't their conditions of employment and of life in general equal to those of white people? These new conditions also increased the Afro-Americans' consciousness of class exploitation and intensified their desire for complete emancipation from both class and national oppression.

Afro-Americans had gained important political experience in the previous years. Many had participated in revolutionary political struggles and in trade union struggles in the working-class movement led by the Communist Party in the 1930's. Many Black men had fought in the antifascist World War II and returned home determined to fight for freedom in the United States as well. At the same time, the oppressed nations and peoples of the vast Third World --Asia, Africa and Latin America -- were rising up and liberating themselves from the oppression of colonialism and imperialism, and their example aroused the Black people in the U.S. The liberation of many Black nations in Africa especially inspired the Black masses in the U.S. to to fight for their emancipation. In Korea (and later in Viet Nam) Blacks saw with their own eyes how a small nation could defeat a big, how a colonized people could defeat the U.S. imperialists' military machine. The monopoly capitalists' myth that colored peoples are "inferior" to the white U.S. imperialists was dealt a crushing blow. Thus, after long suppression, the Black people's resistance was bound to break out in a great explosion.

Montgomery, Alabama, in particular, was the "cradle of the Confederacy", the very spot where in 1861, as Karl Marx pointed out, "AN OLIGARCHY OF 300,000 SLAVEHOLDERS DARED TO INSCRIBE, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE ANNALS OF THE WORLD, 'SLAVERY' ON THE BANNER OF ARMED REVOLT." ("Address of the International Workingmen's Association to Abraham Lincoln, 1865.) Here, as the Afro-Americans entered the 90th year since their partial emancipation by the Civil War, conditions were especially shocking. Segregation of the buses stood out as a symbol of the degrading Jim Crow system. Afro-Americans were forced to sit in the back of the buses while whites sat in a privileged section in front. In the area in between, both Blacks and whites sat. But once the white section was filled, and if the unreserved section in between was filled, then every time an additional white would enter the bus a Black person in the unreserved section was required to rise and give up his seat to the white. Not only this, but Blacks were forced to enter the bus by the back door, although they had to pay at the front. This meant they had to get on at the front, pay the driver, get off, and re-enter the bus at the rear door. Often the bus driver would wait until the Black had paid and gotten off and then would pull away before he could enter the rear door, leaving him without a ride and without his fare. When the Black people resisted these humiliations, they were arrested and jailed. In addition, Blacks were frequently called insulting names. These conditions made the Afro-Americans' blood boil. By 1955 resistance was rapidly breaking out.

On December 1, 1955, a Black woman seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, refused to rise when ordered to give a white a seat in the unreserved section. Four days later, on December 5, 1955, the Black masses rose up in struggle and waged an organized boycott of the buses. Over 50,000 Afro-Americans participated in the campaign, which lasted over a year. It was nearly 100 per cent effective. Masses of Black people marched proudly on foot to and from work, sometimes as much as twelve miles each way, or organized car and taxi pools. They defied the dual tactics of the authorities who tried to suppress the struggle with a combination of political deception and violent repression. When the Afro-Americans rejected tricks designed to make them give up their struggle before victory, the white capitalist authorities unleashed several fascist terror campaigns against them, including mass arrests, bombings of the homes of leaders, and gunfire. Unintimidated, the masses showed that they were ready to defend themselves and persisted in struggle until they won victory. At first their demands were very moderate, not even requiring the complete elimination of bus segregation. Nevertheless, the authorities could not accommodate even the most limited demands of bourgeois democracy and practiced large-scale violence against the Black masses. This was a sharp exposure of the hollowness of so-called "democracy" in the United States. Finally, after 381 days of struggle, with the support of the oppressed people throughout the world who continually sent expressions of their sympathy, the Black people of Montgomery won victory and completely eliminated the humiliating bus segregation. What an exposure of "democratic" U.S. imperialism! The oppressed Afro-Americans had to fight for 381 days, braving fascist terror, simply to get the right to sit equally on the city buses, eliminating only the smallest part of the edifice of systematic racial discrimination practiced by the monopoly capitalist class against the Black people! As Lenin once wrote: "SHAME ON AMERICA FOR THE PLIGHT OF THE NEGROES!" ("Russians and Negroes", Collected Works, Vol. 18,pp.543- 44)

Thus the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first large-scale, organized mass struggle by the Black people for freedom and equal rights since World War II, ended in a complete victory. This struggle had an electrifying effect on Afro-Americans and progressive whites throughout the country, and also on the world's people, and the Afro-American movement entered a period of glorious militant struggle.

TWO DECADES OF GLORIOUS AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

The two decades of glorious Afro-American struggle stretching from 1955 to the present provide many vivid examples to the working class and oppressed people of death-defying heroism and courageous tit-for-tat struggle and offer rich historical lessons for the proletarian revolution in the United States. First we will review the history itself and then sum up its accomplishments and derive lessons from it.

It was not until 1960 that the Afro-American struggle burst forth on a national scale. Yet late in the 1950's several important struggles took place. In 1957, the Black people of Little Rock, Arkansas, waged a fierce struggle against the barring of their children from public schools. The monopoly capitalist authorities used the National Guard, their armed state machine, against them, creating the Little Rock incident which shocked the world and exposed the barbaric nature of the home rule of U.S. imperialism over the Afro-American people. In 1957, '58 and '59 civil rights marches of 35,000, 10,000 and 26,000 people were held in Washington. In 1957, the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, under the leadership of Robert Williams, began to arm itself in self-defense against the racists. Robert Williams stated: "The Negro in the South cannot expect justice in the courts. He must convict his attacker on the spot. He must meet violence with violence... " In 1959, a mass movement broke out in Fayette County, Tennessee, against the denial of the Blacks' right to register and vote, and the following year the Black masses of the area successfully resisted the violent attacks of the racists with guns.

It was in 1960 that the Afro-American struggle broke out on a national scale. Southern Black youth and students and adults, with tremendous courage, held sit-in demonstrations against racial segregation of local restaurants, shops and other public places in more than twenty states.

In 1961, the Black people launched the "freedom rides" to desegregate interstate buses in many southern states and met with violent repression. Large-scale mass movements against segregation broke out in many southern cities and were violently attacked by the local authorities. Militant Afro-Americans demonstrated at the United Nations headquarters in New York against the U.S. imperialists' assassination of the great African patriot and revolutionary, Patrice Lumumba, thus showing the support of the Afro-Americans for the liberation movement of the African people. As Malcolm X later stated: "You can't understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don't understand what is going on in the Congo... The same interests are at stake". On August 27, 1961, the authorities mounted a violent attack on the armed Black masses of Monroe, North Carolina, who waged a tit-for-tat struggle in self-defense. In 1962, Blacks in Mississippi fought for the equal right to enroll in colleges and met with bloody suppression by the state authorities at the University of Mississippi.

In 1963, the Black masses started their struggle early in April in Birmingham, Alabama, launching a massive campaign. Defying brute force by the authorities, who used police dogs, clubs and high-pressure water hoses and made mass arrests, thousands of unarmed Blacks carried on week after week of demonstrations against the Jim Crow system. When the authorities went so far as to bomb the Blacks' headquarters and the home of a Black leader, over 2,500 Afro-American masses rose up in a violent rebellion on May 11 which deeply shook the ruling authorities. Only this violent rebellion resulted in the winning of the demands of the Birmingham campaign.

During 1963, the brutal fascist suppression of the Black people by the monopoly capitalists reached a new peak. On June 12, Mr. Medgar Evers, a Black leader in Mississippi, was assassinated by a white racist thug, who was later acquitted of the crime. On September 15, the racists murdered four young Black girls by bombing a church in Birmingham. During 1963, the Black people waged their struggle with unprecedented heroism and intensity and it reached a fully nationwide scale. It won the support of people of various strata throughout the country. Vigorous mass struggles took place in Savannah, Georgia; Cambridge, Maryland; Danville, Virginia; Jackson, Mississippi; Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina; and Orangeburg, South Carolina. 200,000 Blacks and progressive whites demonstrated in Detroit. Large-scale boycotts of segregated northern schools were held in Boston and Chicago. A massive rent strike broke out in New York. And in August, over 250,000 Blacks and their supporters from throughout the country held a March on Washington protesting racial discrimination and violent repression and demanding freedom and equal rights. According to the minimized statistics provided by the capitalist authorities, in 1963 the Black people held over 10,000 demonstrations and met with over 5,000 arrests, reflecting both the power of the movement and the reactionary resistance to it by the monopoly capitalist authorities. On August 8, 1963, Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, released his first "Statement Supporting the Afro- Americans in their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. imperialism", which was warmly received by the Afro-American people. Chairman Mao pointed out that : "THE SPEEDY DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRUGGLE OF THE AFRO-AMERICANS IS A MANIFESTATION OF SHARPENING CLASS STRUGGLE AND SHARPENING NATIONAL STRUGGLE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES; IT HAS BEEN CAUSING INCREASING ANXIETY AMONG U.S. RULING CIRCLES. "

In 1964, while the demonstrations and boycotts for freedom and equal rights continued to break out, the Black masses began to launch frequent violent rebellions against the racial discrimination and violent repression practiced by the monopoly capitalists. Black people saw that the civil rights movement had failed so far to change the basic condition of the Black people, that only a few of their most minimal demands had been won and that often these were taken away again immediately. Outraged by the fascist atrocities committed against them by U.S. imperialism, the Black masses launched rebellion after rebellion in the cities. They met the state machine's violent repression, carried out by police, National Guard and federal troops, with violent resistance, first with sticks, bricks and bottles, then with firebombs and finally with rifles on a mass scale. In this series of uprisings, the Black masses were profoundly inspired by the successes of the Vietnamese people, particularly in 1965 and after, in resisting and defeating the barbarous aggression of the "mighty" U.S. military machine by means of revolutionary people's war. At the same time, the Afro-American people's struggle was a powerful support to the struggle of the Vietnamese and world's people against U.S. imperialism.

During 1964, there were school boycotts in New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and Boston. At the same time, Blacks in Mississippi and other southern states, defying semi-feudal racist terror by the authorities and the Ku Klux Klan, waged massive campaigns for the right to register and vote. The rural Black masses had carried on armed resistance to suppression of their struggles for several years, as in the cases of Fayette County, Tenn., and Amite, Pike and McComb Counties, Mississippi, leading up to the formation of an armed defense organization, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1965. The masses in Cambridge, Maryland, a southern city, had been forced to arm themselves and wage an armed struggle in self-defense in 1963, and in a vain attempt to suppress them the authorities maintained a state of martial law in that city for over a year. But in the summer of 1964 the massive Black rebellions broke out. Preceded by the Birmingham rebellion of 1963, rebellions broke out in 1964 in Jacksonville, Florida, in March and, spread to Harlem and Brooklyn, N.Y., in July, then to Rochester, N.Y.; Jersey City, Paterson and Keansburg, N. J.; Dixmoor (near Chicago) and Philadelphia, answering the hundreds of years of barbaric suppression with active resistance. In Harlem, following the brutal murder of a Black youth by a white policeman, the Black masses fought heroically with the armed state machine for six days and nights. During this rebellion, the masses indignantly rejected the leadership of opportunists who counseled passive resistance and declared themselves militantly in favor of armed self-defense. As Malcolm X, the uncompromising Black leader based in Harlem, who stood for armed, active resistance to violent repression, stated in a letter to the Organization of African Unity (which was delivered to the OAU delegates one day before the Harlem Rebellion broke out); "We no longer endorse patience and turning-the-other cheek. We assert the right of self-defense by any means necessary, and reserve the right of maximum retaliation against our racist oppressors, no matter what the odds against us are. " In 1964, influenced by the appeal of Malcolm X, African nations criticized the U.S. imperialist practice of racial discrimination against the Black people at the U.N. General Assembly session, reflecting the growing worldwide support for the Afro-American struggle.

In 1963 and '64, under pressure of the Black masses, progressive white people and world public opinion, the U.S. ruling authorities turned to using dual tactics to suppress the Afro-American struggle. On the one hand, they continued to directly suppress the Blacks with violence. The police in every locality violently attacked the protesting Black masses. FBI agents, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover and his boss Robert Kennedy, organized the Klan to carry out beatings, lynchings and murders of Blacks and civil rights activists. In 1962, the Kennedy Administration even went so far as to conspire with Ross Barnett, Governor of Mississippi, to permit him to "stand in the schoolhouse door" during the struggle of Blacks to enter the University of Mississippi and arouse the racists to the maximum and then by pre-arrangement Barnett would "give in" to "federal force" so that the Kennedy administration would appear to be the defenders of the Black people. (See Look Magazine, December 31,1962) In 1963 and '64, in all major cities, the police departments, in collaboration with the Pentagon and the highest levels of the national monopoly capitalist state machine (government), drew up plans for the violent repression of the Black masses in the cities and put these plans into practice against the ensuing Black rebellions. In Cleveland, a helicopter armed with a.50 cal. machine gun was readied (and later used); in Detroit, city and Michigan state authorities worked out "Operation Sundown" for the same purpose. On the other hand, at the same time as it connived at and carried out violent repression, the monopoly capitalist government practiced political deception by posing as the "protectors of the civil rights of the Negroes". The latter tactic was represented, for example, by President Kennedy's "support" for the Freedom March on Washington in 1963, when his real purpose was to divest it of all militancy and tie the Black masses to the path of passive resistance, and for this purpose no Black leader advocating active resistance was allowed to speak.

An example of the combination of repression and deception in one event is the above-mentioned trickery carried out by the Kennedy Administration at the University of Mississippi in 1962. As the rebellions burst out, the monopoly capitalists stepped up both their deception and violent repression of the Black masses.

In 1965, the resistance of the Black masses to violent repression intensified. The glorious rebellion of the Black people in the Watts district of Los Angeles broke out, in which over 7,000 Blacks fought with rifles and other weapons for six days and nights against more than 13,000 National Guardsmen sent by the monopoly capitalists, setting a militant example for the rest of the country. That year rebellions also broke out in Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Meanwhile, a peaceful mass march of Blacks in Selma, Alabama, was violently attacked by the authorities and the Klan, creating a national incident. It was in 1965 that the U.S. imperialists assassinated in cold blood the most uncompromising Black leader, Malcolm X, a fearless fighter who consistently advocated armed self-defense, promoted solidarity between the Afro-American, African and world's people in the struggle against U.S. imperialism, and in the last year of his life called for all the oppressed and exploited people in the United States to take up the revolutionary struggle to destroy imperialism, capitalism and their product, racism.

1966 saw still wider discrediting of the path of passive resistance and nonviolence. James Meredith was shot down by a white racist while he carried out a freedom march in Mississippi. Rev. Martin Luther King, the leading exponent of nonviolence, failed to divert the Black masses in Chicago's West Side from the path of violent rebellion back onto the path of passive resistance. During 1965, rebellions broke out in Chicago; the Hough area of Cleveland; Brooklyn; Dayton, Ohio; Lansing and Benton Harbor, Mich.; Omaha, Nebraska; and Waukegan, Ill., reaching a total of at least 38 large and medium-sized cities.

But it was in 1967 that the Black masses began to show the full strength of the immense revolutionary force latent among them. In 1967, rebellions broke out in over 90 cities, spreading from coast to coast and from Minnesota in the north to Florida in the South. The most powerful struggles of the whole decade took place in Newark, N.J., from July 13-19 and in Detroit from July 23 to 29. In the Detroit Rebellion, the Black masses, with the participation of some whites, fought with a ferocity never known before in their history, making widespread use of rifle attacks. For several days they held at bay 20,000 police, National Guardsmen and federal troops who were using machine guns, tanks and helicopters. In the Detroit Rebellion, 43 people were killed, 30 of them by the armed forces of the state. Over 7,200 people were arrested, nearly 10% of whom were white, and 80% of whom were employed workers. The Detroit and Newark rebellions, among others, scared the monopoly capitalists to death. They hastily assembled their Kerner Commission to compose a program for reformist legislation aimed at political deception of the Black masses while basically leaving their demands for an end to racial discrimination, an improvement in housing, jobs, education, wages and an end to police repression unfulfilled.

In April 1968, in an attempt to halt the Afro-American struggle by means of naked terror, the U.S. monopoly capitalists assassinated Martin Luther King. Far from being cowed by this, immediately the Black masses indignantly rose up in the most massive wave of rebellions and protests as yet seen. Chairman Mao immediately issued his second statement in support of the Afro-American people, in which he pointed out the significance of these events, stating; "SOME DAYS AGO, MARTIN LUTHER KING, THE AFRO-AMERICAN CLERGYMAN, WAS SUDDENLY ASSASSINATED BY THE U.S. IMPERIALISTS. MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS AN EXPONENT OF NON-VIOLENCE. NEVERTHELESS, THE U.S. IMPERIALISTS DID NOT ON THAT ACCOUNT SHOW ANY TOLERANCE TOWARDS HIM, BUT USED COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE AND KILLED HIM IN COLD BLOOD. THIS HAS TAUGHT THE BROAD MASSES OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES A PROFOUND LESSON. IT HAS TOUCHED OFF A NEW STORM IN THEIR STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLENT REPRESSION SWEEPING WELL OVER A HUNDRED CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES, A STORM SUCH AS HAS NEVER TAKEN PLACE BEFORE IN THE HISTORY OF THAT COUNTRY. IT SHOWS THAT AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL REVOLUTIONARY FORCE IS LATENT IN THE MORE THAN TWENTY MILLION BLACK AMERICANS. THE STORM OF AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE TAKING PLACE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES IS A STRIKING MANIFESTATION OF THE COMPREHENSIVE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS NOW GRIPPING U.S. IMPERIALISM. IT IS DEALING A TELLING BLOW TO U.S. IMPERIALISM, WHICH IS BESET WITH DIFFICULTIES AT HOME AND ABROAD."

Chairman Mao further pointed out the world significance of this struggle: "IT IS A TREMENDOUS SUPPORT AND INSPIRATION TO THE STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM AND TO THE STRUGGLE OF THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM."

In 1969, still another wave of rebellions took place. This year saw the beginning of the prolonged armed resistance of the Black people of Cairo, Ill., against white racist attacks, a struggle which lasted continuously for more than a year.

In 1970, the U.S. imperialists invaded Cambodia and murdered the Afro-American and white masses who were protesting this and other injustices at home. Chairman Mao issued a statement supporting the struggle of the people of the world against U.S. imperialism on May 20, 1970, which said; "WHILE MASSACRING THE PEOPLE IN OTHER COUNTRIES, U.S. IMPERIALISM IS SLAUGHTERING THE WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE IN ITS OWN COUNTRY. NIXON'S FASCIST ATROCITIES HAVE KINDLED THE RAGING FLAMES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. THE CHINESE PEOPLE FIRMLY SUPPORT THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. I AM CONVINCED THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO ARE FIGHTING VALIANTLY WILL ULTIMATELY WIN VICTORY AND THAT THE FASCIST RULE IN THE UNITED STATES WILL INEVITABLY BE DEFEATED." Enraged at aggression abroad and slaughter at home, the American people, including the Afro- Americans, waged an unprecedentedly large mass struggle against the U.S. imperialists.

By 1970 the Black rebellions had spread to a huge number of medium-sized and small cities and towns and the monopoly capitalist news media had clamped a news blackout on them, so frightened were they of the Black masses' resistance.

Starting in 1968 and continuing to develop in the years since, Black workers, who comprise the vast majority of Black people, began to organize in nearly all major industries to defend themselves against racial discrimination and capitalist exploitation at the place of work by the monopoly capitalists with the help of their labor lieutenants, the heads of the major unions. In Detroit, in May 1968, 4000 Black workers walked off their jobs at Chrysler's Dodge Main plant and shut it down in protest against racial discrimination and capitalist exploitation. Other struggles soon followed in Detroit and elsewhere.

In 1970 and '71 rebellions broke out in many major prisons, the majority of whose population is Black due to racial discrimination and violent repression. In August 1971, the U.S. imperialist authorities murdered Comrade George Jackson, a Black communist who militantly resisted their fascist rule in prison and who called for the study of Mao Tsetung Thought. "Equip yourself with the Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung)," he wrote in prison. "There is no other way to regain your senses. " In September, 1971, the prisoners at Attica State Prison in New York state heroically rose up in arms and seized political power in the prison and ruled the prison for five days until the monopoly capitalist authorities, directed by Nelson Rockefeller, drowned the rebellion in blood. During 1969-70-71 the monopoly capitalists carried out assassination of many militant Black fighters such as Fred Hampton, a leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, and many other members of the Black Panther Party.

During 1971 and thereafter, the mass struggles of the Afro-Americans subsided. But during 1972 and '73, advanced Afro-American workers, students and youth, summing up the lessons of their struggle, increasingly took up the study and dissemination of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the only revolutionary ideology of our era, in order to find a guiding light for struggle. Seeing themselves as part of the vanguard of the U.S. proletariat, they took up the task of building a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party together with other genuine Marxist-Leninists in order to lead the working class and oppressed people in the U.S., including the Afro-Americans, in overthrowing the monopoly capitalist class. This trend, which had been developing strength since China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 spread Mao Tsetung Thought widely throughout the world, resulted in ever-increasing numbers of Afro-Americans recognizing the necessity of proletarian revolution in order to bring about the complete emancipation of the Black people and the entire working class and oppressed people. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1973, workers at several major auto plants in Detroit, spearheaded by the Black workers, carried out powerful "wildcat" strikes despite the attempts of the United Auto Workers union leadership to suppress their struggles.

While the Afro-American movement had subsided by 1974, in the summer of 1975 a new wave of smaller-scale rebellions and struggles broke out as the monopoly began again to step up their repression of the Afro-American masses as part of shifting the burden of their economic crisis onto the shoulders of the workers, especially the Black workers and masses. In Detroit; Elyria, Ohio; Wilmington, Delaware; Buffalo, N.Y.; New York City and Los Angeles, the Black masses rose up to protest a racist attack and in some cases fight the capitalist state machine whose police and National Guard were sent to suppress them. At the same time, Afro-Americans in Boston and Louisville, KY. , resisted the racist attacks of the fascist anti-busing movement.

THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF TWO DECADES OF AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

Such is the history, briefly recounted, of the Afro-American struggle in the past twenty years. What are its accomplishments, and what lessons can be drawn from this momentous movement? First, the question of accomplishments.

Today, in so-called "commemoration" of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the U.S. monopoly capitalists in their news media are mocking the significance of the Black people's struggles against such forms of social segregation as Jim Crow buses, lunch counters, drinking fountains, etc. The typical line of the bourgeoisie runs as follows: "What good is it for Blacks to be able to eat in the same restaurant as whites when many Blacks can't even afford the price of a meal?" As if the man-eating monopoly capitalists cared one bit about the economic emancipation of the Black people! Of course the struggle against social segregation did not bring the complete emancipation of the Afro-Americans. But the wide-scale elimination of such medieval outrages is one of the main accomplishments of the past 20 years of struggle. According to the monopoly capitalists, it wouldn't matter to Blacks or anyone if society reverted to outright "white-only" bus seating, bathrooms, restaurants, drinking fountains, etc.! Clearly the monopoly capitalists are revealing their desires to re-enslave the Black people when they make such propaganda.

One of the principle positive results of the recent Afro-American struggle is that the Black people threw off some of the most humiliating aspects of their oppression and lifted their heads with full dignity and pride as they heroically fought to a standstill an enemy -- U.S. imperialism -- as bloodthirsty as the world has ever seen. This struggle and resulting dignity not only galvanized the black people to great achievements and prepared the Black workers to act as an advanced contingent in the cause of the American proletariat, but it also won the Black people wide admiration and respect by the ordinary masses in social and political life, both in the United States and throughout the world. Today the rebellious working-class and student youth of all races and nationalities in the U.S. look to great Black heroes such as Malcolm X and George Jackson for inspiration. Despite the fact that the struggles of the Black people did not yet reach their goal of complete emancipation, yet an extremely important advance was made against the barbarous, semi-feudal, semi-slave Jim Crow system of racial segregation in social life. Comrade Stalin, speaking of a similar situation in China, pointed out the importance of such victories for the cause of the proletarian revolution (and thus, in this case, for the complete emancipation of the Black people), as follows: "THE PROLETARIAT CANNOT BE A LEADING FORCE IF DURING STRIKES ITS SONS ARE FLOGGED AND TORTURED BY THE AGENTS OF IMPERIALISM. THESE MEDIEVAL OUTRAGES MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS, IN ORDER TO HEIGHTEN THE SENSE OF POWER AND DIGNITY AMONG THE CHINESE PROLETARIANS, AND TO MAKE THEM CAPABLE OF LEADING THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT. " ("Prospects of Revolution in China", from On the Opposition, p. 514) Similarly, the Black workers could not fully play their role as part of the leading and main force of the U.S. revolution -- the proletariat -- had they not waged militant resistance to the medieval outrages perpetrated by U.S. imperialism.

But the monopoly capitalists' sophistry: "What good is it to be able to eat in the same restaurant when you can't afford the price of a meal?" has a grain of truth to it, without which it wouldn't fool anybody. That is the fact that, despite heroic struggles, the basic economic, political, and even social position of the Black people has not changed. Yet, while mocking the importance of the struggle against Jim Crow segregation, the monopoly capitalist hypocrites also claim that the Black people have made "great progress" in the past twenty years. This betrays their racist, white supremacist nature, no matter how much they claim to support "civil rights". Considering the present condition of the Black people to be "great progress" is proof that the monopoly capitalists will never stop seeing and treating Black people as an "inferior race", since this "great progress" has meant no real narrowing of the difference between the conditions of the oppressed Black and white masses, a difference created by the monopoly capitalists' inherent practice of racial discrimination.

Let us look at the facts. First, on the economic front, just as Chairman Mao pointed out in 1963, due to racial discrimination Black workers still occupy the most backbreaking and despised jobs, where they are viciously super-exploited by the monopoly capitalist employers. In 1973, while comprising 11 per cent of the civilian labor force Blacks made up only 5. 7 per cent of all white-collar workers. Among blue-collar workers, they comprised 19 per cent of all non-farm laborers, 20.8 per cent of all construction workers (overwhelmingly in laborer jobs), 20.4 per cent of all manufacturing workers (overwhelmingly in the dirtiest, hardest and most dangerous positions), 19.1 per cent of all service workers, 37.6 per cent of all private household workers, 27.8 per cent of cleaning service workers and 22.1 per cent of all health service workers (in the hospitals, for example, making up the bulk of the nurse's aides, dietary, laundry and housekeeping workers who have the most difficult conditions of work). The average income of Black families, as a result of this super-exploitation, remains about one-half that of whites (a ratio of 58 per cent of whites in 1973), just as Chairman Mao pointed out in 1963. Black women, who as workers are the most oppressed and exploited of all U.S. workers, were the heads of 23.7 per cent of Black families in 1965 and of 34 per cent in 1973, while white women were heads of only 9 per cent and 9. 9 per cent of white families in the same period, a still further indication of the harsh oppression of the Afro-Americans. Also due to continued racial discrimination, Black unemployment has remained twice that of whites. In 1960 the minimized "official" figures were 10. 2 per cent for Blacks and 4. 9 per cent for whites; in 1970, they were 8. 2 per cent for Blacks and 4. 5 per cent for whites; and today, as Black workers receive the heaviest burden of layoffs in the present economic crisis, the Black rate is 14.3 per cent while for whites it is 8.2 per cent (figures for second quarter of 1975). Thus the basic economic position of the Black people, which is to furnish workers for the lowest rungs of the proletariat, where they remain due to the racial discrimination inherent in monopoly capitalism, has not changed.

On the political front, though many Blacks have registered to vote and the number of Black elected officials reached 2,625 in 1973, this has also meant no basic change in the status of the Black people. Since violent repression alone could not suppress the Black people's struggle, the monopoly capitalists shifted to a certain amount of political deception. The election of Black officials is an example of this. It illustrates the fact that winning the just demand for the right to vote, and then participating in the capitalist elections, does not affect the fundamental question of which class, the working class or the capitalist classholds political power, and cannot bring about the emancipation of the Black people, no matter how much the capitalists praise it as the pinnacle of "democratic freedom". In fact, these Black elected officials have joined and become part of the state (government) machinery of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class, which uses its state for the purpose of suppressing the working class and oppressed people, including the Afro-Americans Americans, at home, in order to carry on its exploitation of them, and to further its imperialist designs abroad. No amount of elections of individuals to this machine, whose main instrument is the armed bodies of men such as the Army, Navy National Guard, FBI, police, etc., can change its class nature. It is an instrument of the monopoly capitalists and cannot be used to liberate the Black people or any of the working and oppressed people. Furthermore, it is evident that the arrests, beatings, and murders of the Afro-Americans by the capitalist authorities, cited by Chairman Mao in 1963, have continued at a high rate, though Black resistance has escalated. Thus the basic political position of Afro-Americans, as part of the exploited working masses oppressed by the U.S. monopoly capitalist state machine, has also not changed.

Further, on the front of social conditions, though many aspects of social segregation have been destroyed, some of the most important ones have changed little or not at all. For example, even though there has been some school desegregation in the South, in 1970 The New York Times reported that two-thirds of the Black children in the south still attend all-Black or mostly-Black schools. At the same time, school segregation in the north is actually on the increase. In 1967, 70 per cent of Black students in the north attended 90-100 per cent Black schools and this figure was expected to reach 80 per cent by this year. Even the elimination of a few aspects of social segregation has required tremendous sacrifice and the shedding of blood. Finally, one need only mention housing segregation, which everyone knows has not only continued to exist on an extremely wide scale but has actually been increasing.

Thus, despite such heroic struggles, the economic, political and social position of the Afro-Americans in U.S. society remains basically the same as it was in 1955. This is clear proof of the correctness of the analysis made of the Afro-American's status by Comrade V. I. Lenin, great leader and teacher of the workers and oppressed people of the world, in 1913. He wrote:

"THE NEGROES WERE THE LAST TO BE FREED FROM SLAVERY, AND THEY STILL BEAR, MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, THE CRUEL MARKS OF SLAVERY -- EVEN IN ADVANCED COUNTRIES -- FOR CAPITALISM HAS NO 'ROOM' FOR OTHER THAN LEGAL EMANCIPATION, AND EVEN THE LATTER IT CURTAILS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY." ("Russians and Negroes", Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 543-44)

The resistance of the Afro-Americans to their oppression will certainly grow. But clearly only a proletarian socialist revolution which overthrows the monopoly capitalist class and eliminates the capitalist system can change the basic condition of the Black people and bring them complete emancipation. A people who have created such storms of struggle to force the monopoly capitalists to meet their most modest demands will surely play a great role in bringing about the downfall of the entire monopoly capitalist class. Thus the struggle of the Afro-American people has not yet reached its objective and must continue.

LESSONS OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

Several extremely important lessons can be drawn from the past twenty years of history of Afro-American struggle.

The first is that the Afro-American people, like the rest of the oppressed and exploited people in the U.S., cannot achieve their emancipation by appealing nonviolently, through passive resistance, to the so-called "conscience" of their supposedly "reasonable" and "liberal" oppressors -- the monopoly capitalists. The fact that the force and violence practiced by the monopoly capitalists to suppress the Black people must be opposed by force and violence gradually became clear in the course of struggle in the 1960's. The violent repression utilized by the bourgeoisie against even the slightest protest of the Black people, culminating in massive murders and in the cold-blooded assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and others taught the Black people, as Chairman Mao said, "A PROFOUND LESSON", one which they will not easily forget.

A second lesson is that the U.S. government and the state machine at all levels is no "friend of the Black people", no matter how "liberal" the President or someone else seems to sound. From the most "liberal" Kennedy to the most fascist Nixon and Ford, the monopoly capitalist presidents inevitably played their roles as the deceivers and hangmen of the Black people. This is determined by the inherent nature of the state machine as an instrument of the economically dominant class, the monopoly capitalist class, to preserve and strengthen its system of exploitation and therefore its wealth and social position. In fact, it is this very state machine which the monopoly capitalists use to carry out the dual tactics of deception and repression. As mentioned earlier, the Kennedy administration was a past master at political deception. From Kennedy to Johnson ("He signed the Civil Rights Bill") to Nixon with "Black capitalism", to Ford-- they all necessarily followed the same path of political deception. At the same time, each one stepped up the armed suppression of the Afro-Americans and of the working people as a whole. Today, the monopoly capitalists are feverishly arming their state machine in preparation for a war to redivide the world with the other superpower, Soviet social-imperialism, and at home they are developing fascism to suppress the masses and have a secure home base from which to fight a world war. They are frantically shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers shoulders. In all this, the sharpest attacks are directed at the Black people, and especially the Black workers. To think that this state machine, this government, the guardian of the capitalist system, can serve the Black people is to think, as Malcolm X once said, that a chicken can produce a duck egg.

A third lesson is that the Afro-American struggle is a revolutionary struggle. Conforming to Comrade Lenin's analysis, the basic condition of Black people has not changed for the better during these great struggles. This teaches that these struggles must be directed at the basis of the system which is practicing racial discrimination and violent repression against the Black people -- that is, against monopoly capitalism itself. The monopoly capitalist class is a man-eating class and will never give up its super-exploitation of the Black working people, enforced by racial discrimination and violent repression, until its doom. Chairman Mao pointed out:

"RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES IS A PRODUCT OF THE COLONIALIST AND IMPERIALIST SYSTEM. THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE BLACK MASSES IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE U.S. RULING CIRCLES IS A CLASS CONTRADICTION. ONLY BY OVERTHROWING THE REACTIONARY RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS AND DESTROYING THE COLONIALIST AND IMPERIALIST SYSTEM CAN THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES WIN COMPLETE EMANCIPATION."

Instead of believing that they can "take over" political power "bit-by-bit" and thereby emancipate themselves, the Black people, together with the entire working class and oppressed people, must smash the state machine of the monopoly capitalists in a violent proletarian revolution and replace it with a government of armed workers. This means replacing the present dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the rule of a tiny handful of parasites over the people, with a dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the immense majority of the people over the exploiting handful. This dictatorship, and it alone, can and will give real democracy to the working people, including the Afro-Americans, for the first time, while forcefully suppressing the exploiting capitalists, depriving them of their wealth and power, taking away the means of production (factories, mines, big farms) which formerly were their "private property" and placing these in the hands of the whole of society so that production can be carried on for the benefit of the masses. Only then, when the working class has political power, will it be possible to bring about the complete economic, political and social emancipation of the Black people, together with the entire working class and oppressed people.

A fourth lesson of the Afro-American struggle is that the Afro-American people do not stand alone against the monopoly capitalists and their state. First, they have powerful allies inside the United States. In 1963, Chairman Mao pointed out:

"IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, NATIONAL STRUGGLE IS A MATTER OF CLASS STRUGGLE. AMONG THE WHITES IN THE UNITED STATES IT IS ONLY THE REACTIONARY RULING CIRCLES WHO OPPRESS THE BLACK PEOPLE. THEY CAN IN NO WAY REPRESENT THE WORKERS, FARMERS, REVOLUTIONARY INTELLECTUALS AND OTHER ENLIGHTENED PERSONS WHO COMPRISE THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THE WHITE PEOPLE."

And in 1968, he pointed out:

"THE BLACK MASSES AND THE MASSES OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES SHARE COMMON INTERESTS AND HAVE COMMON OBJECTIVES TO STRUGGLE FOR. THEREFORE, THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE IS WINNING SYMPATHY AND SUPPORT FROM INCREASING NUMBERS OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE AND PROGRESSIVES IN THE UNITED STATES. THE STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES IS BOUND TO MERGE WITH THE AMERICAN WORKERS' MOVEMENT, AND THIS WILL EVENTUALLY END THE CRIMINAL RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS."

In the 1960's the Afro-American struggle broke through the gloom and confusion created by the anti-communist hysteria unleashed by U.S. imperialism during the McCarthy period, the "Cold War" and the Korean War, which was aided and abetted by the degeneration of the Communist Party USA from a revolutionary party and leader of resistance to the bourgeoisie into a revisionist, capitalist party and a tool of the monopoly capitalists. The Afro-American struggle aroused a whole generation of white youth and students, inspired the other oppressed nationalities and invigorated the entire working-class struggle. Along with the struggle of the broad masses of the American people against U.S. imperialist aggression against Viet Nam, for which the Afro- American struggle was also a spark, the Black people's struggle created excellent conditions in which the cause of proletarian revolution in the United States could once again be revived.

Not only do Afro-Americans have powerful revolutionary allies inside the U.S., but they have friends all over the world. Malcolm X recognized this as he worked so hard to unite the Afro-American people's struggle with the African and entire Third World people's struggle. He said; "We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era.... It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter. " (Malcolm X Speaks, p. 217) In fact, the Afro-American struggle plays a crucial role in the world proletarian revolution. Chairman Mao pointed this out in 1963:

"I AM FIRMLY CONVINCED THAT, WITH THE SUPPORT OF MORE THAN 90 PER CENT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, THE AFRO-AMERICANS WILL BE VICTORIOUS IN THEIR JUST STRUGGLE. THE EVIL SYSTEM OF COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM AROSE AND THROVE WITH THE ENSLAVEMENT OF NEGROES AND THE TRADE IN NEGROES, AND IT WILL SURELY COME TO ITS END WITH THE COMPLETE EMANCIPATION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE. "

A fifth and most important lesson of the Afro-American struggle is that no matter how heroic, daring and inspired the Black people's struggle has been, no matter how powerfully they took up arms against their oppressor, the struggle failed as yet to achieve its objectives because the Black people, together with the entire working class and oppressed people of the U.S., lacked a revolutionary party armed with a revolutionary theory which could merge the Black people's struggle with the American workers' movement and lead them to victory. Chairman Mao teaches:

"IF THERE IS TO BE REVOLUTION, THERE MUST BE A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. WITHOUT A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY, WITHOUT A PARTY BUILT ON THE MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY AND IN THE MARXIST-LENINIST REVOLUTIONARY STYLE, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LEAD THE WORKING CLASS AND THE BROAD MASSES OF THE PEOPLE IN DEFEATING IMPERIALISM AND ITS RUNNING DOGS."

Since the Communist Party USA betrayed the working class and degenerated from a revolutionary proletarian party into a revisionist, capitalist party, the working class and the Afro-American people have lacked such a Party. The revisionist CPUSA never gave revolutionary direction to the recent Afro-American struggles. Instead it attempted to impose reformism on them and itself became part of the political deception of the monopoly capitalist class, a better defender of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself. Today, without a revolutionary party armed with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the revolutionary masses, including the Afro-Americans, will continue to be without a guiding light and a general staff to lead their struggle to victory. Building such a party is the foremost task of all Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries, no matter what nationality.

In the situation of today, when the monopoly capitalists are developing fascism and preparing for a world war with the other superpower, and are frantically shifting the burden of their economic crisis onto the backs of the workers, the attacks on the Black people are increasing. They are taking the form of violent police attacks, lynch-mob actions by the fascist anti-busing movement, racist propaganda, etc. The purpose of these attacks is to intensify the oppression of the Afro-Americans and thereby further divide the working class and oppressed people and undermine their struggles. The goal of the monopoly capitalists is to impose outright fascism on the people at home, shift the whole burden of the economic crisis onto the working people and prepare for world war. Under these conditions, it is imperative for workers of all nationalities and all revolutionary and progressive people to unite and struggle against the attacks on the Black people, as well as to resist the monopoly capitalists on every front. Such a struggle is necessary to unite the working class and oppressed people for proletarian revolution, which alone can emancipate the working class and oppressed nationalities including the Afro-American people. -- end --

[Photo: Black and white students hold a sit-in against racial discrimination in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960's.]

[Photo: A student is arrested at a sit-in for the right to eat at public lunch counters.]

[Photo: Chairman Mao Tsetung receives Afro-American leader Mr. Robert Williams and Mrs. Williams (October 1, 1963).]

[Photo: Malcolm X, militant leader of the Afro-American people, advocated armed self-defense against violent repression, unity between the Afro-American and world's people, and revolution. Assassinated by the U.S. imperialists.]

[Photo: Black, Puerto Rican and white prisoners took over Attica Prison for five days in a heroic rebellion in September 1971.]

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ZIONISM IS RACISM AND FASCISM IN SERVICE OF IMPERIALISM

Since the U.N. resolution condemning Zionism as racism was overwhelmingly passed on November 10,1975, the Zionists and their U.S. imperialist masters have become extremely alarmed. World public opinion is increasingly turning against the fascist state of Israel, and the Zionists, and their U.S. imperialist masters, have launched a frenzied propaganda campaign to defend Zionism and oppose the just struggle of the Palestinian people for the liberation of their homeland. The Zionists and their imperialist backers are shrieking that to be against Israel and to support the Palestinian people is to be "anti-Semitic". They are sending up a big smokescreen, shouting that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism, that Israel is a great democratic state, and that they will never negotiate with Palestinian "terrorists", all in order to hide the real nature of Zionism and of U.S. imperialist aggression in the Middle East. Zionism, in truth, is racism and fascism in service of imperialism.

PART I - TO 1948

Zionism in its very essence is racist. Zionism is not part of the "ancient Jewish heritage". It was founded at the end of the 19th century as concocted Jewish bourgeois nationalism. It emerged as a political movement to transform Judaism from a religion into a nation. Because of the severe discrimination against the Jews at the time by the reactionary regimes of Europe and in particular Tsarist Russia, the Jews sought solutions to their problem. Two lines arose. One line was led by the progressive section of the Jewish working class, which united closely with the European working class and participated in the working class socialist and communist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. A second line was led by the Jewish bourgeoisie and reactionary sections of the petty bourgeoisie, which united with the European imperialists and developed the Zionist movement to found a Jewish settler colony closely linked to imperialist interests.

Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, held the view in common with the anti-semites, that Jews, regardless of what country they lived in, were alien parasites who took jobs from the non-Jewish population, etc., and should not participate in the struggles of the working masses of those countries. In fact, Herzl believed that the non-Jewish European people were "inevitably" anti-Jewish. Thus he promoted the racist doctrine that the cause of the discrimination against the Jews lay notin the ruling classes of the European countries and the capitalist system itself, but rather in the masses of non-Jewish people. Jews and non-Jews, according to Herzl, would never be able to live together in harmony and participate together in the struggles of the working people in their respective countries. Herzl declared, therefore, that Jews must set themselves apart from the nations in which they lived and should work to establish their own "Jewish state". These views are exactly the same as those advocated by the anti-semites, such as the German nazis, against the Jews and are thorough-going racist views.

Lenin said in 1903 "THE IDEA OF A JEWISH NATIONALITY RUNS COUNTER TO THE INTERESTS OF A JEWISH PROLETARIAT FOR IT FOSTERS AMONG THEM DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY A SPIRIT HOSTILE TO ASSIMILATION, THE SPIRIT OF THE GHETTO." That is precisely the spirit Herzl promoted. Herzl, in his book The Jewish State (1895), developed his plan for the colonization of this Jewish state based on a straightforward racist and fascist program of gathering in the Jews, ethnically defined, from wherever they might live into this "Jewish state" and the pushing out of as many as possible of the non-Jews resident in that area in order to make room for the imported Jews. Only a racist and lackey of imperialism would have such a plan, which cared nothing for the fate or rights of other peoples.

Right from its birth, Zionism was opposed by the great majority of Jews, including by many Jewish organizations and prominent intellectuals, and especially by communists. Zionism was never synonymous with Judaism, as the Zionists would have one believe. Also right from the beginning Zionism sought for its chief political support from imperialism and reaction. Herzl at different times approached directly or wrote to the following imperialists and reactionaries: Tsarist minister Von Pleve (who was at the time conducting pogroms against Russian Jews), the Ottoman Turks, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the Italian imperialists, the Rothschilds (a family of powerful finance capitalists in Britain), and Cecil Rhodes (the notorious British colonialist and "founder" of the racist state of "Rhodesia"). When Herzl held talks with Von Pleve he explained that it was in the Tsar's interest to support the Zionist plan of Jewish colonization of Palestine since this would rid Russia of her "Jewish problem", and since so many Jews were involved in the growing socialist movement this would be of particular benefit to the Tsar's government by getting rid of them. To the Rothschilds Herzl wrote: "you may claim high credit from your government if you strengthen English influence east of the Mediterranean by a great colonization of our people (Jews) at a middle point of Egyptian and Indo-Asian interests." To the colonialist Cecil Rhodes Herzl wrote: "Please give me a statement saying you have examined my program and found it appropriate. And why do I come to you, Mr. Rhodes?, you will ask. Because my program is a colonial program".

Since the Zionist program clearly was a colonialist program, since the Zionists were eager to please any imperialist master who would assist them to realize their plans, and since their plans for a Zionist settler state could serve the British imperialists very well, Cecil Rhodes gave his support. With his support the Zionists succeeded in obtaining the support of the British government for their plans. Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader, wrote on his negotiations with the British imperialists: "For a long time we have pointed out to the English... that a Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard for England, particularly where it concerns the Suez Canal".

In his book Birth of Israel, Weizmann wrote: "We (the Zionists ) had entrusted the destiny of our nation and of Zionism to the Foreign Office (of the British) and to the Imperial War cabinet in the hope that the problem would be seen in the light of imperialist interests". The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which was a British "declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations", announced the alliance between the British imperialists and the Zionists. It stated the British government's intention to establish a "Jewish state" in Palestine. The British imperialists intended to use Zionism as a tool to assist it in striving to dominate the Middle East.

British imperialists and Zionist finance capitalists worked hand-in-glove to provide capital and send Jewish immigrants to Palestine. The British Rothschild family, one of the largest banking houses in Europe, financed many of the early settlements. The Jewish National Fund, created to finance Zionist settlements, was also subscribed to by wealthy Jewish businessmen and capitalists. Jewish immigration raised the Jewish population of Palestine from about 60,000 in 1917 to almost 500,000 by 1948. Right from the start it was clear that the Zionist objective of a "Jewish state" would require not only Jewish immigration but the expulsion of the Palestinian Arab population. But the Palestinian people did not passively sit by as the imperialists and Zionists prepared the conditions for usurping their homeland. Beginning from the time of the Balfour Declaration, in 1917, but especially after the League of Nations "recognized" a role for the World Zionist Organization within Palestine in 1922, the Palestinians responded with demonstrations, rallies and protest movements. Each time the Palestinian masses' protest surged forward the British imperialists set up their commissions of "investigation", while they continued their fascist activities with the Zionists. From 1936 to 1939 the Palestinians staged a 6- month mass general strike and then took armed actions against British imperialism and Zionism in the cities and in the countryside. The Zionists organized their own terrorist organizations, which were supported by the British imperialists who assisted them with funds, arms and training, to carry out indiscriminate bombings and shootings against the Palestinians, hoping to terrorize them into submission or to drive them off their land but world public opinion was rising against Zionism. In February, 1942, the Zionists sank one of their own ships, killing all 769 Jewish immigrants aboard, in a desperate attempt to gain international support.

In Europe, the Zionists had a good working relationship with the German nazis. Both promoted the view that the Jews and the rest of the German people were inherently unable to live together in harmony. The nazis did this to divide the people, blame the economic crisis on the Jews, use the Jews as slave labor in concentration camps and slaughter them. The Zionists collaborated in order to save their own skins and to encourage emigration to Palestine. They never fought the nazi anti-semitism and never rescued ordinary Jews from the nazis. Zionists instead collaborated by compiling lists of Jewish people and their property for the nazis. In 1938 two Zionists were permitted to set up an agency for immigration to Palestine with the support of Eichmann, Hitler's chief organizer of the execution of Europe's Jews. In 1938 people in the U.S. and Britain sought to have their governments accept Jewish refugees but this rescue of Jews was blocked by the Zionists! Ben Gurion wrote, in his letter to the Zionist Executive -- December 7, 1938 "Britain is trying to separate the issue of the refugees from that of Palestine. It is assisted by anti-zionist Jews. Zionism is endangered. If Jews will have to choose between the refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps, and assisting a national museum in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channeled into saving Jews from various countries. Zionism will be struck off the agenda... " Due to the influence of Zionists in the United States and Britain, Jewish refugees were not offered asylum in the United States or Britain. One should not forget the Zionist Rudolf Kastner's collaboration with the nazis. In 1943 he withheld from 800,000 Hungarian Jews the knowledge that they were being shipped to an extermination camp. He told them that they were going to be resettled in a new village. This was done with the full knowledge and approval of the Zionist agencies in Palestine including Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. In return for his treachery Kastner and 108 Zionist families were allowed to leave Europe and go to Palestine. History has shown that it was the Zionists who collaborated with fascism because they are fascists themselves. History has also shown that without the problem of anti-semitism, Zionism could not exist as a "solution", and for that reason also Zionism collaborates with and even promotes anti-semitism.

Towards the end of World War II, as the U.S. imperialists were clearly emerging as the strongest imperialist power, the Zionists began offering their services to the U.S. imperialists in return for their support. Ben Gurion wrote: "For my part, I no more doubted that the center of gravity of our political task had passed from Great Britain to the U.S., which was assured of the leading place in the world as a great power." The U.S. imperialists readily allied themselves with the Zionists. With the active participation of U.S. and British mercenaries and the encouragement of the British authorities the Zionist forces launched a war of annexation against the Arab population of Palestine which had been disarmed by the British. During 1947-48 the Zionists carried on terrorist activities of bombings, shootings, massacres of unarmed villagers and obliterating over 500 Arab villages in order to forcibly evict the Palestinian Arab population from their homeland. In April, 1948, Zionist troops murdered 254 innocent men, women and children in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in order to force the Palestinian Arabs to flee for their lives. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun (a Zionist terrorist gang) who was responsible for this massacre, said: "The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory of Deir Yassin." Begin is presently the head of the second largest political party in Israel and he has served in the Israeli cabinet. (The Zionist terrorist gangs such as the Irgun had their origin in a gang of Zionist "brown shirts" led by Herzl's disciple Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky's "brown shirts" were of course modeled after the Hitlerite "brown shirts". Their slogan was "Germany for Hitler, Italy for Mussolini and Palestine for us".

The U.S. imperialists, with the collusion of the British and other imperialists and by pressuring the countries that they dominated, forced a resolution on the Partition of Palestine through the United Nations General Assembly granting the Zionist settlers, who made up 6% of the population, 54% of the land of Palestine. No sooner had this partitioning taken place (without the approval of any Asian or African country with the exception of the racist Union of South Africa), than the Zionists continued their aggression against the Palestinian people, grabbing 81% of the total area of Palestine and uprooting a million Arabs. In May, 1948, the Zionists declared the formation of the state of Israel and were immediately recognized by the U.S. imperialists. The U.S. imperialists wanted Israel as a foothold in the Middle East as a base for attacking all the Arab peoples who were struggling against the imperialists' domination of their countries and as a strategic base in U.S. imperialism's drive for world domination. The Zionists, led by Chaim Weizmann, thanked U.S. imperialist chieftain Truman: "The responsibilities of leadership which were taken up by the American government under your inspiration made possible the creation of the Jewish state". The U.S. sponsored the admission of Israel to the U.N. and in May, 1949, Israel was admitted on the condition that it would compensate the Palestinian Arab refugees for property lost and would permit refugees wishing to return to do so. Israel has treated this and most succeeding U.N. Resolutions on the Middle East as mere scraps of paper.

Thus the pre-1948 history of Zionism shows it to be thoroughly racist and fascist in its ideology and practice, first a collaborator with the anti-Jewish genocide of the nazis and then a practitioner of genocide itself as in the case of the Deir Yassin massacre against the Palestinians. Given this early history, it is not surprising that the United Nations today would pass a resolution denouncing Zionism as racism; what is surprising (though it can be explained by the many years of U.S. imperialist domination of the U.N.) is that such a resolution was not passed 27 years ago!

PART II -- SINCE 1948

The establishment of the state of Israel did not change the character of Zionism. Since Zionism has exercised state power it has more fully developed and more fully revealed its character as racist, fascist and a servant of imperialism.

The Zionist regime in Israel is a racist regime which proclaims the Jewish people as the "chosen" people and denies the non-Jewish people the right to live side by side with the Jewish people on an equal footing. There are various degrees of discrimination. Non-European Jewish settlers are "of course" not considered by the Zionists to be on the same level as those from European stock, although they are considerably better than Arabs. The resemblance between the system of racial discrimination in effect in Israel and the apartheid system of South Africa has been recognized by almost everyone -- as demonstrated by the vote in the General Assembly labeling Zionism as racism. The South African racists also recognized this. The Afrikaner racist newspaper Die Transvaler wrote, after the Suez war in 1956, "Is there any real difference between the way that the people of Israel are trying to maintain themselves amid non-Jewish peoples and the way the Afrikaner is trying to remain what he is?" Racist and discriminatory legislation which deny the Arabs the rights enjoyed by Jews are a basic feature of the Zionist state. Systematic persecution of the Arabs has taken many forms including: expropriation of land, desecration or destruction of Arab mosques, churches, shrines and cemeteries, restriction of movement, etc.

To suppress any sign of political resistance to Zionist exploitation, expropriation and oppression and to try to suppress the eleven-year-long armed national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people the Zionists have established a fascist rule over the country. There is military rule over Arab districts and constant terrorization of the Arab population by police and army raids. There exists a fascist code of legislation which is titled "Defense Regulations (emergency) 1945" which was drawn up and used by the British in Palestine towards the end of the British rule. The articles of this code were labeled by topZionist leaders at that time as "worse than the nazi laws" and "official terrorism". Yet since then the Israeli Zionists have harassed, jailed without trial, tortured, and expelled tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs under this fascist legislation.

The role of Israeli Zionism as a servant of imperialism has been exposed again and again. It supported the Secret Army Organization in Algeria, the Thieu regime in South Viet Nam and the European settler colonialists in the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Azania and Namibia. It has consistently opposed the just demands of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and others at U. N. conferences on raw materials, population, food and the law of the sea. This represents the carrying out in practice of basic Zionist theory. Thus, at every turn, Zionism has opposed the just anti-imperialist struggle of the people of the world and has supported the imperialists. Herzl's disciple Jabotinsky wrote the following in the early thirties: "One thing is clear: communism incites and must incite the people of the Orient, and this it can do only in the name of their national liberation... Every success of communism be it anywhere -- in a remote corner of the world, in Mexico or in Tibet, is a substantial loss for the establishment of a Jewish Palestine. Every defeat of communism is a substantial gain for Zionism". Zionism has upheld the imperialist policy of "civilizing the Orient" for over seventy years and has earned the praise of the imperialists and the deep hatred of the people of the world in the process.

Zionism is expansionism. The expansionist state of Israel has in this fashion done faithful service for the imperialists in assisting them to combat the rise of the Arab people's struggles for national independence. Thus in 1956, when Egypt justly nationalized the Suez Canal (formerly controlled by European imperialists), a joint force of British and French imperialists and Israeli Zionists invaded Egypt and attempted unsuccessfully to regain control of the canal. From 1956 to 1967 the Zionists carried out numerous aggressive activities against the neighboring Arab countries. In 1967 they a launched a major war of aggression against the neighboring Arab states and occupied much of their territory. The Zionists were able to seize the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the entire West Bank of the Jordan (a part of Palestine) from Jordan. In this war the Zionists were backed to the hilt by the U.S. imperialists, while the Arab countries were lulled to sleep prior to the war by the false promises of the Soviet social-imperialists. Since 1967 the Israeli Zionists have been singing the old European imperialist tune of "we need secure frontiers" to justify annexations and aggression. This is in line with the basic Zionist outlook. Ben Gurion had declared back in 1950 concerning the territory grabbed by the Zionists in the 1948 war: "This is not the true map of Israel. We must fight ardently, by conquest and by diplomacy, to establish the empire of Israel which must cover the totality of territory between the Nile and the Euphrates". In October 1973, the Zionists launched a further war of aggression against the neighboring Arab countries. They were repulsed and suffered heavy losses, which shattered the myth of the so-called "invincible" Zionist army. The Arab victories in October convinced the U.S. imperialists that the Zionists needed a long period of recuperation before attempting further aggressions.

Since the October 1973 war the two superpowers have re-imposed a state of "no war, no peace" to serve their own interests. During the war and afterward the U.S. imperialists continued their support for the Zionists by supplying them with billions of dollars of war materials. The other superpower, Soviet social-imperialism, has also aided the Zionists by supplying Israel with precious manpower. On October 8, 1973, the third day of the October war, the Soviet Union dispatched 500 Jews to Israel. At one critical point in the October War the Soviet Union withheld a promised arms shipment from the Arabs. Soviet social-imperialism has pretended to support the Arab peoples' struggles against Zionism and has supplied them with certain weaponry. But its basic aim has been to use this to make the Arab countries dependent upon the Soviet Union and thus develop influence for itself in the Middle East. The Soviet Union seeks to exercise control over the oil resources of the Middle East and use that control to dominate Europe, the focus of the contention between the superpowers, which is dependent upon Arab oil resources.

It is in the interests of both the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists to maintain a state of "no war, no peace" in the Middle East. They cannot allow a war to be fought through to the end because the Arab countries would wipe out the Zionist state of Israel. If this occurred neither would be able to use their supplying of arms and "aid" as a lever to interfere in the internal affairs of the Arab countries and contend for spheres of influence. The maintenance of the state of "no war, no peace", with war and peace kept "under control" facilitates the contention of the two superpowers for spheres of influence and allows them to keep selling munitions in order to reap fabulous profits, alleviate their own economic difficulties and test their new weapons. So, while the U.S. imperialists keep sending billions of dollars of military and other aid to Israel to directly boost the Israeli Zionists, the Soviet social-imperialists uses tricks and maneuvers to indirectly assist the Zionists and to undermine the Arab peoples' struggle. Both superpowers have stressed that they would guarantee the so-called "security" of Israel. Arab public opinion is increasingly seeing that the Soviet Union's role has been treacherous indeed. On the question of the national rights of the Palestinian people, the U.S. imperialists have so far refused to recognize them, while the Soviet social-imperialists have merely promised to give "resolute" support to the Palestinian people's struggle for regaining their national rights, while actually stressing on many occasions the need to guarantee the so-called "security" of Israel. Another perfidious maneuver of this false "friend" of the Arab and Palestinian people was made just after the October 1973 war. At that time many Third World countries severed their diplomatic relations with Israel thus landing Zionism in unprecedented isolation. Precisely at that time the Soviet social-imperialists, motivated by their need to contend for hegemony in the Middle East, made frequent contacts with the Israeli Zionists, extending from covert flirtation to open exchanges and from unofficial to official contacts and even secret talks between the foreignministers.These experiences are enabling the Arab peoples to realize that the struggle against Israeli Zionism must be closely linked with the struggle against superpower hegemonism, meddling, intervention and contention throughout the Middle East and that both superpowers are the deadly enemies of the Palestinian people.

Since the Israeli Zionists, with full support from U.S. imperialism, uprooted by mass terror and military force one and a half million Palestinian people in 1948, (and about another million since then) the central question in the Middle East (a part from the question of superpower meddling) has been the restoration of the national rights of the Palestinian people to their homeland. The Zionists mistakenly believed in 1948 that with the expulsion of the Palestinians and the armed occupation of their homeland by Zionist armed forces the Palestinian problem would somehow disappear. Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader, said in 1948, "It was a miraculous cleansing of the land; the miraculous simplification of Israel's task". But, alas for the dreams of the Zionists, despite the large-scale expulsions, the Palestinian people struggle against their condition of being defeated refugees from their homeland, and took up armed struggle against Zionist aggression to regain their homeland.

On January 1, 1965, Al Fatah fired the first shot of the Palestinian people's war of national liberation against imperialism and Zionism. From that day the Palestinian people seized their destiny into their own hands. After the June 1967 war of aggression by the Israeli Zionists the armed struggle of the Palestinian people has forged ahead vigorously. Today the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian guerillas are united in the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is leading the armed national liberation struggle on a high scale and which is recognized by the Palestinian people and the vast majority of the countries and people of the world as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. As Yassar Arafat, Chairman of the P.L.O. said in his historic speech to the U.N. General Assembly on November 13, 1974, "The Palestine Liberation Organization has earned its legitimacy because of the sacrifice inherent in its pioneering role, and also because of its dedicated leadership of the struggle. It has also been granted this legitimacy by the Palestinian masses, which in harmony with it have chosen it to lead the struggle according to its directives."

There is no place in Israeli-occupied territory beyond the reach of the Palestinian guerillas and the Israeli forces have not seen a calm in the Israeli-occupied land since the 1967 war. The Palestinian guerrillas launch thousands of attacks inside Israel every year, destroying hundreds of Israeli military positions, wiping out Israeli patrols, blowing up pipelines and other targets and subjecting even Israeli cities to guerrilla attacks. The Palestinian guerrillas also do political education work among the masses, help the peasants in production and organize the masses for military training.

To suppress the armed struggle of the Palestinian people U.S. imperialism has increased its arms supply to the Israeli aggressor troops. U.S. imperialism, at the same time, looks for agents in the Arab countries who could be used against the Palestinians and has concocted one Middle East "plan", scheme, "settlement" after another in a vain effort to liquidate the question of the restoration of the national rights of the Palestinian people. U.S. imperialism has never recognized these rights and has never recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian nation. Soviet social-imperialism, for its part, has always worked hand-in-glove with U.S. imperialism against the Palestinian people. During the 1960's it viciously echoed the U.S. imperialist slanders of the Palestinian people's armed struggle as "terrorist operations", thus revealing its fear and hatred of the Palestinian armed struggle. In the 1970's the Soviet social-imperialists have changed their tactics and hypocritically pretend to "support" the Palestinian people's armed struggle. The purpose of this has been to get control of Palestinian armed forces and use them as "chips" in its dirty deals and contention with U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, so as to realize its criminal plot of stamping out the Palestinian armed struggle and dividing up the Middle East with U.S. imperialism. During the last session of U.N. General Assembly Soviet social-imperialism once again demonstrated its stand. First it sanctimoniously declared its readiness to give resolute support to the Palestinian people's struggle for regaining their national rights, but in the twinkling of an eye, it issued a joint statement with U.S. imperialism, altering the "national rights" of the Palestinian people into their "legitimate interests". Also it his openly stressed on many occasions the need to guarantee the so-called "security" of Israel. Thus both superpowers have proven themselves to be deadly enemies of the Palestinian people.

The recent adoption of several U.N. General Assembly resolutions which support the national rights of the Palestinian people and condemn Zionism as a form of racism are a great victory for the Palestinian people and all people struggling for liberation. The votes in the U.N. reveal the alignment of forces internationally on the question of the Middle East. The great majority of nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America fully supported the Palestinian people and recognized that the Palestinian national liberation struggle is an integral part of the struggles of the nations of the Third World against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, hegemonism and racism. U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism fought hard in the U.N. against the resolutions but only mustered a handful of supporters, mostly from western countries. Soviet social-imperialism and Soviet-bloc states voted for the resolutions supporting the Palestinian people but indicated clearly that they still supported the existence of the state of Israel, thus again revealing their sham support and real treachery to the cause of the Arab people.

Thus the present situation in the Middle East is that the struggle of the Palestinian and other Arab people against Israeli Zionism and superpower hegemonism is moving forward with support of the vast majority of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The racist and fascist Israeli Zionists are bound to meet the same end as all the puppets of imperialism and reaction. It is only a matter of time before the heroic Palestinian people, who have picked up arms and seized their destiny in their own hands, will win victory and join the group of independent nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. -- end --

[Map of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories]

[Photo: On the ruins of the camp of Nabatiyeh destroyed by aircraft of the Zionist terrorists, the Fedayeen reaffirm their will to resist and continue the fight until victory by hoisting the Palestinian national flag. Under their national flag, the Palestinian people are struggling heroically to defeat Zionism. As in the past, their dauntless spirit remains an inspiration to the entire Arab people. Soon the Palestinian national flag will fly proudly over all liberated areas of Palestine.]

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HAIL THE 31st ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF ALBANIA!

The Workers' Advocate wishes to express its warm congratulations to the Party of Labor of Albania and its great leader, Comrade Enver Hoxha, and to the Government and people of the People's Republic of Albania on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the liberation of Albania.

The Albanian people are a heroic people with a glorious tradition of struggle. For centuries the Albanian people fought for independence and a national existence. Liberation was achieved on November 29,1944, when the Albanian people, led by the Party of Labor of Albania (then called the Communist Party of Albania), finally defeated the Italian and the German fascist invaders as well as the Albanian reactionary ruling classes. As a result of this victory, the People's Republic of Albania was formed. This victory was the result of a heroic, protracted National Liberation War in which the small Albanian people sacrificed 28,000 martyrs to defeat fascism. This victory was the contribution of Albanian people to the world-wide antifascist war. It became a link in the world proletarian revolution, as it weakened the position of imperialism and strengthened the forces of socialism. The national independence of Albania and social liberation for the Albanian people were insured by the victory in the National Liberation War.

In the thirty-one years since liberation, under the correct leadership of the Albanian Party of Labor headed by the great Marxist-Leninist Enver Hoxha, the Albanian people have won great victories in socialist revolution and socialist construction. Albania has emerged from centuries-long backwardness and is building a developed socialist economy with modern industry and collectivized agriculture. Socialist industrialization enables Albania today to produce in only four days the entire value of Albania's industrial production in the year 1938. This progress has been achieved in the face of massive military, economic and ideological pressure from capitalism and revisionism, which have tried to drive Albania backward into capitalism and to turn Albania into a colony. The Albanian people have had to advance with the pick in one hand and the rifle in the other. Today they are continuously strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat and opposing any "liberalization" of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would only be in the interests of the bourgeoisie and foreign imperialism. Under the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania, the Albanian people are carrying forward the struggle against bourgeois, revisionist, feudal, patriarchal, religious, petty-bourgeois and other alien ideologies in various fields. The Party has brought about a revolution in education and culture, wiping out the darkness of the old regime. The emancipation of women, who now enjoy equal rights and are becoming a major force in all sectors of life, is an outstanding victory of Albania's socialist era.

One of the most glorious achievements of the Party of Labor of Albania has been its struggle to safeguard the principles of Marxism-Leninism against the onslaught of modern revisionism. The Party of Labor of Albania, led by Comrade Enver Hoxha, and the Communist Party of China, led by Chairman Mao Tsetung, have fought shoulder-to-shoulder against modern revisionism headed by the Khrushchevite revisionists and have led the International Communist Movement in thoroughly exposing the betrayal of all revolutionary principles by the modern revisionists. The Khrushchevite revisionists have done all they can to turn the Party of Labor of Albania away from its Marxist-Leninist course and to subjugate it, in order to restore capitalism in Albania and to turn it into a Soviet social-imperialist colony. All the attempts of the revisionists were foiled. In the struggle against modern revisionism the Party of Labor of Albania and the Albanian people made important contributions and were ideologically tempered and further strengthened their revolutionary unity and vigilance. They won the respect of the people of the world for their revolutionary spirit of daring to fight. The Party of Labor of Albania today continues to fight modern revisionism, firmly supports the revolutionary struggles of the people of the world and firmly opposes imperialism, hegemonism, and the preparations for world war of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.

As a result of the successful construction of socialism, of the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the courageous struggle waged against imperialism and revisionism, of their solidarity with the revolutionary movements and as a result of their correct and principled foreign policy, the Party of Labor of Albania and the Albanian people have won great prestige from the people of the world. We hail the anniversary of Albania's liberation and wish the Party of Labor of Albania, headed by Comrade Enver Hoxha, and the Government and people of the People's Republic of Albania new and greater successes in the future. -- end --

[Oil painting by Guri Madhi: Enver Hoxha, at the meeting of the General Staff of the N.L. Army]

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U.S. IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF CANADA!

The American working class must oppose the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada in order to insure the unity of the American and Canadian people in the struggle against the two superpowers.

Canada is a country dominated by U.S. imperialism. By 1970, total assets held in Canada by foreign imperialists amounted to $48.8 billion. Since 1970, the value of foreign-held assets has risen sharply. 75% of these assets are held by the U.S. imperialists. 41 out of the 60 largest "Canadian" corporations are foreign-owned. Among the basic industries, the percentages of foreign-ownership and control are as follows: energy (petroleum, natural gas, etc.) 99.9%; motor vehicles parts 95.7%; rubber industry 95%; chemicals 83%; transportation equipment industry 71.9%; electrical manufacturing 65.7%; pulp and paper 43.2%; etc. Taking all manufacturing industry together, foreign ownership and control is 59.5%. Indeed, the U.S. has almost twice as much private long-term direct investment in Canada as in all of Latin America combined. (1)

In fact Canada has never had an independent economic system. It has always been totally dominated and plundered by foreign colonialism and imperialism, originally French and then English colonialism and imperialism, and now mainly by U.S. imperialism. Presently the domination of the Canadian economy by foreign imperialism is characterized by the large-scale importation of capital, manufactured goods (especially machinery) and the export of raw materials. Things have come to such a state that 1/6 of the land area of Quebec is to be flooded in the James Bay project to provide power for the U.S. as well as to provide billions of dollars of interest payments to New York bankers.

There are a handful of people who close their eyes to reality and argue that because Canada has "modern industry" (although it has no independent economy), it cannot be dominated by another capitalist country. These people are profoundly mistaken. And, shameful to relate, prominent among these people are American great-power chauvinists. They are making it easier for the imperialists and their henchmen to plunder Canada.. Comrade Lenin refuted the view that imperialism does not strive to dominate highly industrialized regions, a view which whitewashes imperialism, as follows:

"The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialized regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because 1) the fact that the world is already divided up obliges those contemplating a re-division to reach out for every kind of territory, and 2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony, i. e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. " (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, p. 109, Foreign Language Press, Peking)

Today it is the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, who are furiously colluding and contending to redivide the world. They plunder and dominate entire countries, assassinate foreign leaders, provoke civil wars and are all the time frantically arming and leading the world towards a new world war, more terrible than the last. They are the main enemies of the world's people. Canada is a part of the world, is still ruled by the sell-out monopoly capitalist class, and is caught in the clutches of U.S. imperialism.

The Canadian people are thus oppressed and strangled by U.S. imperialism as well as by the Canadian monopoly capitalists, who are continuing to sell out the land and labor of the Canadian people to foreign, mainly U.S. imperialists. But where there is oppression, there is resistance. The Canadian people have long struggled against both foreign domination and the monopoly capitalist system as a whole. And today the Canadian proletariat cherishes its own party, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), to lead the struggle against the U.S. domination of Canada and the monopoly capitalist system itself. Unlike the situation in the U.S., where the Marxist-Leninists are divided and consequently the working class is leaderless, in Canada the Marxist-Leninists have in the main united into one party, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). This party is a fighting party, having been tempered by over 2,000 arrests and having led struggles on many fronts, political, economic, cultural, theoretical, electoral, etc. All that is honest and alive in Canada today is rallying around this party. And conversely all that is moribund and corrupt, from the Canadian monopoly capitalist class to the agents of the CIA's Operation Chaos, from the Trudeau government of national betrayal to the New Democratic Party social-democratic traitors to the working class, from the socialist sectarians to the U.S. imperialist state machines, has united into a holy alliance to oppose and destroy the Party so as to liquidate the leadership of the Canadian people's struggle.

There are historical bonds of friendship between the Canadian and American people as well as a significant interchange of population between the two countries. We American people are also oppressed by the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Sharing a common enemy with the Canadian people, we must support the anti-imperialist struggle in Canada. American workers, oppressed nationalities and all progressive people, it is up to us to support our class brothers in Canada! By supporting the struggle against U.S. imperialism in Canada, we will help speed the day of reckoning for the handful of profit-bloated finance capitalists that oppress us here at home. By supporting the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), we express our solidarity with the Canadian proletariat.

Today the CPC(M-L) is preparing for its 3rd Congress at a time when the Canadian government has declared war on the working class. Conditions for a new and larger resistance movement of the working class in Canada are maturing. The Workers' Advocate enthusiastically regards it as its proletarian duty to publicize an important document, "Prepare for Struggle", which was released by CPC(M-L) November 1, in preparation for the 3rd Congress, (it is reprinted below). A veritable conspiracy of silence has existed in the United States concerning the anti-imperialist struggle in Canada in general and concerning the CPC(M-L) in particular. The Workers' Advocate calls on all upright Marxist-Leninists and progressive people to stand up for principles, go against all past sectarianism and opportunism, and join with us in supporting the fraternal Canadian people.

DENOUNCE THE U.S. IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OF CANADA!

HAIL THE UPCOMING 3RD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST- LENINIST) !

ORGANIZE AGAINST THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS, COMMON ENEMY OF THE CANADIAN AND AMERICAN PEOPLE!

(1) The government of Trudeau has declared war on the working and oppressed people through its "wages and prices restraint" program announced on October 13, 1975. The opposition to this war against the working and oppressed people has been immediate, universal and wide-spread.

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PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE!

Statement of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) released on November, 1975

TO: ALL THE MEMBERS, CANDIDATE MEMBERS, SUPPORTERS, FRIENDS, SYMPATHISERS OF THE PARTY AND TO ALL UNITS, BRANCHES AND COMMITTEES OF THE PARTY.

ALL MILITANT WORKERS (ORGANIZED OR UNORGANIZED).

ALL FIGHTERS AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OF CANADA, AGAINST THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST SYSTEM, THE TWO SUPERPOWERS AND ALL REACTIONARIES.

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) issues this public call to you for the purposes of ADVANCING THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, BUILDING THE UNITED FRONT AND BUILDING THE PARTY IN IN THE COURSE OF ADVANCING THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT AND BUILDING THE UNITED FRONT. This call is specifically intended to bring a high tide in the communist agitation and propaganda in the working class and to unite all those who can be united against the main enemy. It is issued on the basis that:

1. The government of Trudeau has declared war on the working and oppressed people through its "wages and prices restraint" programme announced on October 13, 1975. The opposition to this war against the working and oppressed people has been immediate, universal and wide-spread.

2. This declaration of war by the Trudeau government is the latest and most desperate attempt by the government to shift the burden of the economic crisis of monopoly capitalism and U.S. imperialism onto the backs of the Canadian people.

3. The cause of this economic crisis is two-fold:

a) Internal cause: monopoly capitalism

b) External cause: U.S. imperialist domination of Canada and the contention of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism for world hegemony.

4) The two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, are furiously contending for world hegemony, for re-division of the world into their own spheres of influence, and they are a source of a new world war.

5) The declaration of war by Trudeau on the Canadian people is to create internal conditions to

a) further increase the exploitation and sellout of the land and labour of the Canadian people to U.S. imperialism, in the main, and other imperialist powers;

b) support the U.S. imperialists' contention with Soviet social-imperialism and its war preparations and aggressions;

c) sort out contradictions within the Canadian monopoly capitalist class; and

d) further fascisize the state and viciously attack the basic democratic rights of the Canadian people.

6. The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of the capitalist and revisionist countries and the struggle of the oppressed nations and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America against old and new colonialism and the hegemonism of the two superpowers constitute the decisive force in the world anti-imperialist socialist revolution. The struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against old and new colonialism and against the hegemonism of the two superpowers comprise the motive force of world anti-imperialist socialist revolution.

7.We are living in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. The distinctive features of this era are that a) a weak nation can defeat a strong, a small nation can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their country; and b) either revolution will prevent war or war will give rise to revolution.

8. The People's Republic of China is the great bastion of world anti-imperialist socialist revolution. The two superpowers see in the People's Republic of China their mortal enemy. Chairman Mao Tsetung is not only the leader of the people of China but he is also the leader of the people of the world. The Chinese people, together with the people of the world will certainly put an end to imperialism, social imperialism and all reactionaries in the not too distant future.

9. The struggle of the Canadian people against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, and against the monopoly capitalist system is part and parcel of the world anti-imperialist socialist revolution. The struggle of the working and oppressed people of Canada against the "wages and prices restraint" programme and other such measures which are designed to further shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the Canadian people is an important part of the struggle against U.S. imperialist domination of Canada, against the monopoly capitalist system in Canada, against the two superpowers and against all reactionaries.

10. At this time, when on the world scale factors both for revolution and for war are increasing and the situation is developing in the direction favourable for the people, it is the most opportune time to build the Party in the course of advancing the resistance movement against the U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian state and building the united front against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, and to vigorously carry the struggle against opportunism, on the theoretical and all other fronts, through to the end.

11. The U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian state is attacking the vast majority of the Canadian people:

- it denies the hereditary rights to the nations and tribes of Native people.

- it denies the national rights to the Quebec people

- it denies basic democratic rights to the immigrants

- it has launched a war against all sections of the working people through its ''wages and prices restraint" and other such programmes

- it viciously exploits and represses the working people

- it discriminates against the women workers

- it blocks the youth of this country from all sides and spiritually and otherwise decimates them

- it serves U.S. imperialism, in the main, and other imperialist powers

- it spreads decadence and devastates the people spiritually

12. The main contradiction between U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, on one hand, and the Canadian people on the other is sharpening daily. The declaration of war by the Trudeau government against the working and oppressed people of this country is, in one stroke, a programme of war against the Canadian people and in support of U.S. imperialism.

13. The Canadian proletariat has a long history of revolutionary struggle. The Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, the political organizer and leader of the proletariat, was established in 1921. Despite the treacheries and betrayals of the proletariat by the modern revisionists, the proletariat carried on its struggle against its enemies. Modern revisionism suffered a grave setback when the Communist Party was re-established on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-MaoTsetung Thought in March, 1970.

14. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working class movement, through its active class collaboration, is attempting to paralyse, suffocate and kill the working-class movement. This opportunism must be opposed in the course of the revolutionary struggle.

15. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the Marxism-Leninism of our era and the theoretical foundation of our Party. This theory is not only a radical rupture with all the theories which the imperialists and social-imperialists promote, but it is also their direct opposite and is in the service of the international proletariat. This theory is absolutely necessary and is a decisive factor in the development of the revolutionary movement in this country. The Internationalists, a youth and student organization in the 1960's, vigorously disseminated Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought all over the country at the call of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and assisted in the preparation of the material conditions to re-establish the Party.

16. A caricature of CPC(M-L) and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought has emerged during 1972-1975 to carry out dirty work for imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction and it has adopted the main opportunist positions on all important questions of state and revolution. Struggle against opportunism of this variety and other forms is absolutely necessary and fundamental in order to carry on the revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism, against the monopoly capitalist system, against the two superpowers and against all reactionaries.

17. The basic programme of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist- Leninist) is to complete the anti-imperialist socialist revolution whereby the revolutionary step towards the total overthrow of the bourgeoisie and all exploiting classes is resolutely taken and dictatorship of the proletariat in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is established and the historic era of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat is inaugurated, leading to the final victory of socialism over capitalism. The ultimate aim of the Party is the realization of communism.

18. In order to build the Party, to develop the resistance movement against the U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian state and its government, to build the united front against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys -- that is, to prepare for revolution and against war -- it is absolutely necessary that the Party carry on discussion on the programme of the Party in the open.

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all the members, candidate members, supporters, friends and sympathisers, all units, branches and committees of the Party all the militant workers (organized or unorganized), all the fighters against U.S. imperialism, the monopoly capitalist system, the two superpowers and all reactionaries to actively participate in the preparatory work of the Party for convening of the Third Congress. All comrades and friends who are already close to the Party and all those who have a deep urge to participate in the anti-imperialist socialist revolution but have not joined the Party should contact the National Executive Committee of CPC(M-L) through various public offices (B.C., Ontario, Quebec), by coming to meetings organized by the Party, or by contacting the comrades selling the Party's literature, or (if other channels do not work) through writing directly to the National Executive Committee of CPC(M-L). All those who want to take up the cause of communism as the mission of their lives will be organized into local Preparatory, Committees for the Third Congress whose main tasks will be to:

1) Study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought

2) Discuss the draft documents of the Preparatory Committee of the Third Congress of CPC(M-L)

3) Organize public discussions on the draft resolutions and distribute literature of the Party

4) Participate actively in the resistance movement of the working class and mobilize advanced elements of the proletariat into Party work and

5) Assist the local Party secretary in the study and investigation of the area.

PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE!

ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE IN THE PREPARATORY WORK OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE PARTY!

LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-LENINIST)!

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT!

DEATH TO U.S. IMPERIALISM, SOVIET SOCIAL IMPERIALISM AND ALL REACTION!

DOWN WITH U.S. IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OF CANADA! OVERTHROW THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM! -- end --

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CHAIRMAN MAO'S TWO STATEMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

[Photo: Chairman Mao Tsetung made his statement of Aug. 8,1963 in support of the Afro-American struggle when receiving a group of visitors from Africa.]

STATEMENT SUPPORTING THE AFRO-AMERICANS IN THEIR JUST STRUGGLE AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION BY U.S. IMPERIALISM

August 8, 1963

An Afro-American leader now taking refuge in Cuba, Mr. Robert Williams, the former President of the Monroe, North Carolina, Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, has twice this year asked me for a statement in support of the Afro-Americans' struggle against racial discrimination. On behalf of the Chinese people, I wish to take this opportunity to express our resolute support for the Afro-Americans in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.

There are more than 19 million Afro-Americans in the United States, or about 11 per cent of the total population. They are enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against -- such is their position in society. The overwhelming majority are deprived of their right to vote. In general, only the most backbreaking and despised jobs are open to them. Their average wages are barely a third or a half those of the white people. The proportion of unemployment among the Afro-Americans is the highest. In many states they are forbidden to go to the same school, eat at the same table, or travel in the same section of a bus or train as the white people. Afro-Americans are often arrested, beaten up or murdered at will by the U.S. authorities at various levels and by members of the Ku Klux Klan and other racists. About half the Afro-Americans are concentrated in eleven southern states, where the discrimination and persecution they suffer are especially shocking.

The Afro-Americans are awakening and their resistance is growing stronger and stronger. Recent years have witnessed a continuous expansion of their mass struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.

In 1957 the black people in Little Rock, Arkansas, waged a fierce struggle against the barring of their children from public schools. The authorities used armed force against them, creating the Little Rock incident which shocked the world.

In 1960 Negroes in more than twenty states held "sit-in" demonstrations protesting against racial segregation in local restaurants, shops and other public places.

In 1961 the Negroes launched the "freedom riders" campaign to oppose racial segregation in public transportation, a campaign which rapidly spread to many states.

In 1962 the Negroes in Mississippi fought for the equal right to enroll in colleges and met with bloody suppression by the authorities.

This year, the American Negroes started their struggle early in April in Birmingham, Alabama. Unarmed and bare-handed Negro people were arrested en masse and most barbarously suppressed merely for holding meetings and parades against racial discrimination. On June 12 Mr. Medgar Evers, a leader of the Negro people in Mississippi, was murdered in cold blood. Defying brutality and violence, the indignant black masses waged their struggle even more heroically and quickly won the support of Negroes and other people of various strata throughout the United States. A gigantic and vigorous nation-wide struggle is going on in nearly every city and state, and the struggle is mounting. American Negro organizations have decided to start a "freedom march" on Washington on August 28, in which 250,000 people will take part.

The speedy development of the struggle of the Afro-Americans is a manifestation of sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle within the United States; it has been causing increasing anxiety among U.S. ruling circles. The Kennedy Administration is insidiously using dual tactics. On the one hand, it continues to connive at and take part in discrimination against Negroes and their persecution, and it even sends troops to suppress them. On the other hand, in the attempt to numb the fighting will of the black people and deceive the masses of the country, the Kennedy Administration is parading as an advocate of "the defense of human rights" and "the protection of the civil rights of Negroes", calling upon the black people to exercise "restraint" and proposing the "civil rights legislation" to Congress. But more and more Afro-Americans are seeing through these tactics of the Kennedy Administration. The fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists against the black people have exposed the true nature of so-called American democracy and freedom and revealed the inner link between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. government at home and its policies of aggression abroad.

I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the black people in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 per cent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the Afro-Americans will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people. ---end --

STATEMENT BY COMRADE MAO TSE-TUNG, CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA, IN SUPPORT OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLENT REPRESSION (April 16, 1968)

Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro-American clergyman, was suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an exponent of non-violence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance towards him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of the black people in the United States a profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million black Americans.

The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism. It is dealing a telling blow to U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.

The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous support and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the black people in the United States.

Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the black masses in the United States and U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.

In 1963, in my "Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism" I said that "the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people". I still maintain this view.

At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The struggle of the black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals of every country and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and against its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off. --end--

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DETROIT AFRO-AMERICANS REBEL!

The following article is reproduced from the August 13th, 1975, issue of Detroit Worker, newspaper of the Detroit Branch of COUSML. It gives an account and an analysis of the struggle of the Black people of the Livernois--Chalfonte area of Detroit against racist attacks and violent police repression on July 28-30.

At about 8:00 p.m. July 28, a white racist bar owner, Andrew Chinarian, shot and killed in cold blood an 18-year-old Afro-American worker, Obie Wynn, in the parking lot of Chinarian's bar on Livernois on Detroit's Northwest side. In response to this fascist atrocity, the Black people of the area rose up in a massive struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression. With the demand for vengeance against the racist on their lips, knowing from bitter experience that the capitalist government would protect rather than punish the racist murderer, the Black people tried to mete out justice to Chinarian themselves, ransacked Chinarian's bar, denounced the freeing of Chinarian by the courts, denounced Mayor Young and his squadrons of Black "peacekeepers" for supporting the racist and the police, and for two nights straight fought vigorously against the hundreds of police who were called out to protect the racist and his property.

In the course of the struggle all the enemies of the Black people -- white racist civilians, the fascist police, the Black opportunists, the courts, the city government, the state government, the local and national news media and the monopoly capitalists themselves, who boss the whole apparatus -- jumped out in a hysterical and violent campaign in support of the racist murder and against the Black people's struggle. Unintimidated, the Black masses waged a heroic and persistent struggle against the racists and won the support of wider and wider circles of the working people as a whole. The powerful struggle of the Black people deeply shook the ruling capitalist authorities.

WHAT IS THE REAL STORY OF THE MURDER OF OBIE WYNN?

According to many people who live in the neighborhood, in the early evening of Monday, July 28, Obie Wynn, a young black worker laid off from his job at an animal hospital, left Viceroy Market at 14812 Livernois, crossed the street and walked along Livernois with two younger friends to Bob Bolton's Bar, owned by Andrew Chinarian.

Chinarian's bar is a white racist establishment in a Black working-class neighborhood, having a peephole and buzzer system in the door to keep Blacks out. Chinarian himself had been involved in previous shooting incidents, in one case having shot at and missed a Black youth in another area, and had often brandished guns in the neighborhood. Chinarian had frequently threatened the black youth of the neighborhood, telling them he was "going to shoot one of you" and had caused such friction that the young people took down a basketball net they had set up and used in an alley near his bar, hoping that this would prevent a conflict with him. Chinarian is a crony of the white racist police who declared that he "knew every cop in the city."

When Obie Wynn and his friends reached Chinarian's bar, Obie leaned back on one of the fenders of Chinarian's car to talk with his friends. Chinarian and three other white men came out of the bar heavily armed, two of them with shotguns. They pointed their guns at the three youths and said they would shoot Obie in the head. Obie attempted to leave by cutting through Chinarian's parking lot. Chinarian then shot Obie in the back of the head with a pistol from from 100 feet away, shooting three times, while the other white men held guns on the remaining youths. After shooting Obie, the white racists dragged his body into the back alley and beat him with their gun butts. They then fled into the bar and locked themselves in for protection.

According to the capitalist news media, Chinarian first said that he found Obie tampering with his car with a coat hanger and shot him from the front when he saw "something glittering" in Obie's hand. The police claimed to have "identified" the object as a screwdriver. But this was revealed as the worn-out "glittering object in the hand" cover story always used by the racists to "justify" their slaughter of Black people. Although the police claim that they have 30 witnesses who say they saw both the coat hanger and the screwdriver in Obie's hands, the Homicide division has had to admit that it cannot come up with either one. Moreover, the coroner's report established that Obie was shot from behind, and when this report was made public, the police department, colluding with Chinarian, said that he had changed his story to admit that he shot Obie from behind. This admission by itself completely refutes Chinarian's original story of being "threatened" with a "glittering object": only the white racist authorities could expect the working class to believe this tale of the existence of a superhuman Black, Obie Wynn, who could threaten Chinarian with a screwdriver from across a parking lot, while Obie's back was turned and he was going in the other direction. But the fascist Chinarian, to whom a Black man's life means nothing, could only shoot Obie Wynn in cold blood. This shooting had nothing whatsoever to do with stealing a car or "threatening" with a "glittering object"; it was, as one neighbor said an outright "racial murder" and nothing else.

This is the real story of the fascist murder of Obie Wynn.

THE BLACK MASSES ANSWER THE RACIST ATTACKS

Withing minutes of the murder, the Black people of the neighborhood gathered and furiously attempted to take revenge on Chinarian and his property, knowing that the police would only attempt to save the racist and place him in the hands of the courts which would never punish him. According to the capitalist press, 300 people gathered in 30 minutes. The police, alerted that a white capitalist was under attack, arrived immediately to protect Chinarian and his property. The police surrounded the bar, but the Black people put up such a struggle with rocks and bottles that the police were unable to take Chinarian and his cohorts out of the bar for over four hours and even then they had to disguise him and use a barrage of tear gas to take him out the back way. Facts show that the Black people aimed their struggle at the fascist Chinarian and his property and at the police and capitalist officials and opportunists who came to protect Chinarian and made every effort to make Chinarian pay his debt to the Black people in blood. Facts also show that the police department, the armed instrument of the monopoly capitalist class, and the state machine as a whole, aimed [Missing words in the original.--Ed.] tage of the situation. According to the FreePressAugust 3, police command officers told Young that the choice in how to respond to the murder of Obie Wynn was "either gas or shooting" the Black masses. Young collaborated fully with the police in drawing up plans for suppression of the masses, concentrating especially on preparing a force of "peacekeepers" to soften up the masses for the police attacks. Even the decision, attributed to Young, not to use guns was only taken out of fear that bloody suppression would be answered by a massive rebellion. Young summed up the operations of the state machine to defend Chinarian and his property in the words: "I am proud of the Detroit Police Department".

The stand of the courts is well illustrated by a comparison of their treatment of Chinarian who admittedly killed a Black worker (they released him three times and only charged a higher bond under pressure of the rebellion of the masses), with their treatment of the Black youths who are charged with the killing of the white worker Tende (whom they are holding without bond and in one case without evidence), or with their treatment of the Black men who shot rats (who were held overnight on a higher bail than Chinarian's).

Thus it is clear that the state machine at all levels acts, as Comrade Lenin, the great teacher and leader of the international proletariat, teaches, as "AN ORGAN OF CLASS RULE, AN ORGAN FOR THE OPPRESSION OF ONE CLASS BY ANOTHER..." -- in this case, it acts as an organ for the oppression of the Black masses as part of the working class and oppressed people suppressed and exploited by the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. The officials of the state machine, whether Black or white, are the enemies of the Black people and of all the working class and oppressed people of the U.S.

In Detroit, the recent rebellion again made clear what the Black people had learned in the Kercheval struggle in 1966, in the great rebellion of 1967, in the Algiers Motel incident, in the struggle against the fascist STRESS squad and in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of daily brutal, fascist attacks on the Black people by the Detroit police department, fully supported by the city, state and national government and the monopoly capitalist class -- that the present government and the class which it serves will never serve the Black people. If it was ever going to do so, it would have done so by now, after such a history of struggle. Instead, today, in 1975, it takes a two-day rebellion by hundreds of Afro-Americans to make the monopoly capitalist state machine set even an ordinary bail bond for a white racist murderer. By its very nature, the government is a tool of the monopoly capitalists to suppress the workers and oppressed masses. The only possible conclusion is that for the Black people to win complete emancipation, the entire government and the class it serves must be overthrown.

THE ROLE OF THE CAPITALIST NEWS MEDIA IN SLANDERING THE BLACK PEOPLE AND SUPPORTING THE RACIST ATTACKS

The news media, too, revealed its complete monopoly capitalist class nature in support of the racist murder. It, too, never denounced the murder of Obie Wynn, while it had nothing but praise for the "restraint" of the police who were suppressing the Black people and nothing but slander for the "rampaging" Black masses who were demanding justice. It cried crocodile tears over the death of Marian Pysyko, but would never stop pointing at Obie Wynn's "police record", something which nearly every young Black man has as a result of police attacks. The news media never pointed out that Tende would never have been killed had it not been for the murder of Obie Wynn and had it not been for the systematic racial discrimination and violent repression experienced by the Black people as a whole. Both Obie Wynn and Marian Pysyko are victims of this system perpetrated by the monopoly capitalist ruling class. Their blood is on the hands of the monopoly capitalists and their stooges, not on the hands of the Black masses. But the capitalist news media and Mayor Young used the Tende incident to "justify" the fascist police suppression of the Black people's struggle and in particular the revenge arrests of the three Black youths charged with Tende's murder.

The two daily bourgeois newspapers came out openly in support of the police repression of the Black people's struggle. While never denouncing Chinarian, they both made frenzied attacks on the struggle of the Black people to mete out justice to the racist. An editorial in the July 30 Free Press , the "liberal" bourgeois paper, after giving lip-service to "social problems", then stated: "None of that, though, can justify the wanton mob action of Monday night and Tuesday. It has to be stopped, by persuasion if possible but by use of the full weight of the law if required." The News , the openly fascist bourgeois paper, commented in an editorial July 31: "But Detroit would take a long step toward achieving greater racial harmony if those leaders would demand the same vigorous pursuit and prosecution of the young men responsible for Marian Pysyko's death." Thus both bourgeois newspapers excused the racist murderer, "justified" the violent suppression of the Black masses and incited the fascist forces to further attacks on the Black people.

A most blatant example of the sham "justification" of, and incitement to, racial discrimination and violent repression by the press has been the columns of Lou Gordon, the supposed "champion" of the little man against the monopolies. In recent columns Gordon has declared that Obie Wynn, not Chinarian and the monopoly capitalist state machine, was "responsible" for the rebellion. He also supported the ultra-fascist call of Ron Sexton, the President of the Detroit Police Officers' Association, to "shoot to kill" the Black people and complained that the raising of Chinarian's bond under mass pressure was "Mob justice! Street justice!"

Yes, Mr. Gordon, "street Justice" is the only way that Black people and all oppressed people in the U.S. have ever gotten anything. And "street justice" is just the answer that the Black people and white working people have for the racists and their defenders, the paid mouthpieces of the monopoly capitalist system, yourself included.

THE ROLE OF THE CAPITALISTS' OPPORTUNIST AGENTS IN DECEIVING AND SUPPRESSING THE BLACK PEOPLE

While the monopoly capitalist authorities relied mainly on fascist force to suppress the Black masses, they also depended heavily on deception. Young worked closely with the monopoly capitalist foundation "New Detroit" to mobilize a host of 200 opportunist "peacekeepers" to soften up the Black people for attack and to go into other neighborhoods (including Chicano and white areas) to prevent the rebellion from spreading. Made up mainly of "civil rights leaders", Black trade union bureaucrats and youth misleaders, this force worked hand-in hand with the police to disperse the crowds and suppress the struggle. They walked ahead of the police attacks, telling the people to go home, and when the police attacked they hid behind the police lines. For this criminal betrayal, these opportunists were vigorously denounced by the Black masses and showered with bricks and bottles. While some officials praised the "success" of these "volunteers", in fact they failed miserably in every case to disperse the crowds and stop the struggle.

THE REAL CAUSE AND SOLUTION TO RACIST ATTACKS

The struggle of the Black people of the Livernois-Chalfonte area against racist attacks is a struggle directed against the racial discrimination and violent repression practiced by the monopoly capitalist class against the Black people as an oppressed nationality. It is part of the Black people's 450-year-long history of struggle against enslavement and class and national oppression in this country. In the past two years, as the monopoly capitalist system plunges deeper and deeper into economic crisis and the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, step up their contention for world domination and prepare for a new world war, the U.S. monopoly capitalists have increased their attacks on the Black people. As the monopoly capitalists shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class, they push an especially heavy load onto the Black people, whose unemployment totals are twice those for white workers. At the same time, the monopoly capitalists step up political attacks against the Black people as the leading edge of their campaign to develop fascism in the U.S. Recently the capitalists have mobilized the fascist anti-busing movement, as in Boston and elsewhere, and launched "legal" lynchings, as in the Joan Little case, aimed at depriving the Black people of all rights and reducing them again to slaves. The resistance of the Black people of the Livernois-Chalfonte area to racist attacks is resistance to the growing fascism the monopoly capitalists are imposing on the entire working class and oppressed people in the U.S. Every blow struck by the Black people against racial discrimination and violent repression is a blow struck against the exploitation and oppression of all working and oppressed people in the U.S.

Racial discrimination is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The struggle against it is a revolutionary struggle. It cannot be eliminated without the elimination of its source, the monopoly capitalist class. A tremendous revolutionary force is latent in the more than 20 million Afro-Americans. As Chairman Mao Tsetung, leader of the communists and the people of the whole world, pointed out in his "Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression" in 1968,

"THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE BLACK MASSES IN THE UNITED STATES AND U.S. RULING CIRCLES IS A CLASS CONTRADICTION. ONLY BY OVERTHROWING THE REACTIONARY RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS AND DESTROYING THE COLONIALIST AND IMPERIALIST SYSTEM CAN THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES WIN COMPLETE EMANCIPATION. THE BLACK MASSES AND THE MASSES OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES SHARE COMMON INTERESTS AND HAVE COMMON OBJECTIVES TO STRUGGLE FOR." For such a heroic people the future is bright. As Chairman Mao Teaches: "THE STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES IS BOUND TO MERGE WITH THE AMERICAN WORKERS'MOVEMENT, AND THIS WILL EVENTUALLY END THE CRIMINAL RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS."

All workers and oppressed people in the U.S. should support the Black people's just struggle. It is a most powerful struggle against our common enemy, the monopoly capitalist class. Workers and oppressed people in the Detroit area should oppose all the slanders of the Black people and their struggle, resolutely defend them and take a vigorous part in the struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression. The struggle of the Black people of the Livernois-Chalfonte area has shown that the way to oppose racist attacks and violent repression is tit-for-tat struggle. The blood debt owed by Andrew Chinarian and his monopoly capitalist masters will certainly be paid in blood.

DEATH TO THE FASCIST MURDERER OF Obie Wynn!

LONG LIVE THE HEROIC STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION BY THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS! -end-

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LOUISVILLE: THE PROBLEM ISN'T BUSING; IT IS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION BY THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS

The following article is reproduced from the September 10,1975 issue of Louisville Red Banner, newspaper of the Louisville Branch of COUSML. This edition of the paper was issued during the height of the racist hysteria created by the monopoly capitalists' fascist anti-busing movement and was distributed among the workers to oppose this fascist movement and to give support to the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression.

Recent events have fully exposed that the so-called "anti-busing" movement is a racist and fascist movement. Under the demagogic cries of "stop busing", "quality education", and "constitutional rights", the anti-busing movement has embraced the Hitlerite ideology of racial superiority of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. In a rally on August 24th, anti-busing forces attacked and beat unconscious a black youth on the River City Mall. On September 4th and 5th, they stoned and tried to stop school buses filled with black children, and, on the night of September 5th, wantonly beat people and burned homes. For all of their claims to be a popular movement, they have exposed their true ugly racist and anti-people features.

Afro-Americans, workers, and other progressive and democratic people who have seen through the "anti-busing" rhetoric are making up their minds to fight this fascist movement. Already on August 30th there was a demonstration of some two hundred against the fascists. Meetings and rallies are being held around the city, and resistance against fascist thugs around the schools has already begun.

Faced with these initial stirrings of revolutionary and democratic people, and in order to hoodwink them and numb their fighting spirit, the monopoly capitalists and their government have raised a deafening noise about "law and order", "safety and security", and "restraint and peace". They have called in the National Guard and have instituted various new rules and regulations. But despite their facade of opposition to the "anti-busing" movement, the experience of the last few weeks in Louisville has exposed the fascist designs of the monopoly capitalist government as well.

For example, the leading monopoly capitalist spokesmen, from Mayor Sloan and Judge Hogg to Judge Strong and right up to President Ford, have come out with strong public statements against busing, in order to support the "anti-busing" movement. Typical is Ford's statement of August 30th, "Forced busing by the courts is not the way to achieve quality education". Up to this point, everyone thought busing was supposed to achieve EQUALITY of education, that its purpose is to end the degradation of the quality of education of black people due to racial discrimination, of which one form is segregation. But, in any case, Ford is still wrong. As far as the working class is concerned, education should serve to teach children to look into and understand our society in order to change it. Racial segregation distorts childrens' understanding of the world, while black and white children studying and struggling together helps to unite the working class in its struggle against capital. To this extent, busing is is a way to improve the quality of education. Statements such as Ford's only confuse the issue and mobilize support for the fascist "anti-busing" movement.

A second example is President Ford's statement, also parroted by state and local officials, "I as president and all who serve with me will enforce the law. We will make sure any court order is followed." Yet on August 24th in Louisville, the police stood by and allowed fascists to maraud up the River City Mall and attack a black youth. The police then "enforced the law" by arresting a panhandler. On September 3rd, Gordon ordered no demonstrations of over 100 people except at the Fairgrounds, and on September 4th a large anti-busing rally was held downtown. The police waited until it had broken up and then arrested a few stragglers. Later that day, when anti-busers stopped a school bus full of black children, the police stood idly by. But when the bus driver got out to chase the fascists away, the police rushed up and forced him back on the bus. Even after stricter laws were adopted on September 6th, the KKK was allowed to spread their venom in rallies in the county, while the police closed down Shawnee Park in the black community and arrested ordinary shoppers in downtown Louisville. Such is the fulfillment of the President's grand promises. While instituting more fascist rules and regulations and terrorizing ordinary citizens, the government is giving the fascists every opportunity to get organized and is trying to deceive ordinary people into not getting organized to fight fascism.

The monopoly capitalists and their government are resorting to dual tactics. On the one hand they are savagely repressing the Afro-American people, the workers, and other sections of the society. On the other hand they are using political deception to lull the people into passivity. The assurances of Gordon, Sloan, etc., that they will organize and carry out a busing plan that will end racial discrimination in education is such a deception. While it is perfectly just to fight for busing as a part of the struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and for full emancipation, no one should have any illusions that the monopoly capitalists, or their government or courts, have any real intentions of ending racial discrimination. In fact, they are floating the fascist anti-busing movement to intensify the exploitation and oppression of the Afro-American people. Racism is inherent in the imperialist system. The Afro-American people and the working class, in order to emancipate themselves, must overthrow the reactionary rule of the monopoly capitalist class and end the system of exploitation of man by man once and for all.

Busing is not the problem. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is faced with a deepening crisis on the economic, political, social, and other fronts. The brilliant victories of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people in defeating U.S. Imperialism in Southeast Asia, and the all-around development of the struggle of the third world peoples against colonialism, imperialism, and superpower hegemonism have severely set back their imperialist designs for world domination. Furthermore, the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, are fiercely contending for world hegemony and this is leading to another world war.

In the United States the awakening working class is in strike after strike, buffeting the capitalists' plans to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers' shoulders, the Afro-American people are opening up fresh struggles, and various sections of the people are being set in motion against the oppression of monopoly capital. In 1946, Mao Tsetung pointed out: "To start a war, the U.S. reactionaries must first attack the American people. They are already attacking the American people -- oppressing the workers and democratic circles in the United States politically and economically and preparing to impose fascism there. The people of the United States should stand up and resist the attacks of the U.S. reactionaries. I believe they will."

All fair minded people should disassociate themselves from the fascist anti-busing movement and join the revolutionary and democratic people who are standing up to [Missing words in the original.--Ed.]

SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, VIOLENT REPRESSION AND FOR FULL EMANCIPATION!

GET ORGANIZED TO FIGHT FASCISM! -- end --

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