WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS
P.O. BOX 11942, CHICAGO, ILL. 60611 Vol. 6, No. 6, Sept. 1, 1976 25ยข
[Front Page: No Cure from the Gods of Plague--TO HELL WITH THE CAPITALIST POLITICAL PARTIES!; DENOUNCE U.S. IMPERIALIST WAR PROVOCATIONS AGAINST PEOPLE'S KOREA!]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rubber Workers Win Victory............................................ | p. 2 |
Coal Miners' Daring Strike............................................... | p. 2 |
First Strike of Seattle Rns................................................. | p. 3 |
War on Black Youth in Detroit......................................... | p. 4 |
Persecution of Filipina Nurses in VA case........................ | p. 5 |
Chicago: Racist Attacks.................................................... | p. 6 |
Why is U.S. Imperialism Trying to Silence Malik Chaka?.............................................................................. | p. 19 |
Interview with Malik Chaka in Jail.................................. | p. 21 |
Azanian people's struggle................................................. | p. 20 |
Marxist Revolutionary Party of Congo (K)...................... | p. 21 |
Korean News Agency Statement...................................... | p. 14 |
Polish Communist Party Appeal....................................... | p. 7 |
India's " National Emergency"......................................... | p. 7 |
China's Earthquake........................................................... | p. 36 |
In Memory of Chu Teh..................................................... | p. 36 |
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: The 16-Point Decision............................................................................ | p. 10 |
"Economic Recovery" is Nonsense.................................. | p. 3 |
AGAINST OPPORTUNISM: |
|
OL's Social-Chauvinism................................................... | p.8 |
Guardian's Yellow Journalism.......................................... | p. 9 |
[Plus: UNITA DOCUMENTS ON ANGOLAN PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE and more.]
No Cure from the Gods of Plague
TO HELL WITH THE CAPITALIST POLITICAL PARTIES!
DENOUNCE U.S. IMPERIALIST WAR PROVOCATIONS AGAINST PEOPLE'S KOREA!
Rubber Workers Win Long, Tenacious Strike
COAL MINERS WAGE DARING NATIONAL STRIKE AGAINST FEDERAL COURTS
Talk of "Economic Recovery" is Nonsense
First Strike of Registered Nurses in Seattle
Bourgeoisie Declares War on Black Youth in Detroit
OUTRAGEOUS GOVERNMENT PERSECUTION OF FILIPINA NURSES AT ANN ARBOR VA HOSPITAL
GOVERNMENT ORGANIZES RACIST ATTACKS AGAINST BLACK PEOPLE ON HOUSING QUESTION IN CHICAGO
Central Committee of Communist Party of Poland Issues Appeal to Polish Workers and Labouring People
What Forced Indira Gandhi to Declare the "National Emergency"?
MEETINGS HELD TO SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE FOR PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC INDIA
MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT OR SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM
AGAINST THE REVISIONIST YELLOW JOURNALISM OF THE GUARDIAN
FOLLOW THE PATH OF THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION!
Why Is U.S. Imperialism Trying to Silence Malik Chaka?
Korean Central News Agency Statement on U.S. Provocation at Panmunjom
"Russian social imperialism has dug its own grave in Angola and the people shall bury it there."
THE RIVER CUARZA MANIFESTO OF UNITA
AZANIAN PEOPLE FIGHT ON AGAINST RACIST S. AFRICAN RULE!
THE LIBERATOR, Organ of the Marxist Revolutionary Party of the Congo (Kinshasa)
"The armed struggle according to Mao Tsetung Thought is the sole way to liberate our people"
MY JOY ON READING CHAIRMAN MAO'S TWO POEMS by Chu Teh
CHINESE PEOPLE FIGHT EARTHQUAKE BY CONTINUING THE REVOLUTION
Today the capitalist political parties, the Republicans headed by Ford and the Democrats headed by Carter, have plunged into a frenzied election campaign. They are besieging the people with talk, each promising to solve the most pressing problems of the masses. The capitalist government, they say, will eliminate unemployment, inflation, racial discrimination and war-- if only they are elected! The working people are supposed to forget that these parties are gangs of billionaires who got rich only by exploiting the labor of the workers and plundering the world and brought on all these evils in the first place!
But there can be no cure from the gods of plague. The U.S. capitalist-imperialist system is rotting alive, still deep in a severe economic crisis with financial crises rocking the state and local governments. The capitalist government is still shaken by the political crises brought about by Viet Nam, Watergate and the economic crisis. The rivalry between the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, is sharpening and leading to a new world war to re-divide the globe between them. The revolutionary struggles of the people of all countries are battering the imperialists and their running dogs. This is why the U.S. monopoly capitalists are plunged into gloom and have sent Carter and Ford rushing about, grinning like corpses, one trying to "restore confidence" and the other clumsily claiming that things are fine.
To get out of their predicament, the monopoly capitalists have launched a fascist offensive against the working and oppressed people, stepping up the exploitation and impoverishment of the working people, further suppressing the Afro-Americans and other oppressed peoples, violently attacking the masses with their armed state machine, spewing out propaganda for racial discrimination, fascism and aggressive war, and escalating war preparations rapidly. The aim of the capitalists is to shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto the workers and oppressed masses and create a quiet "home front?' so as to free their hands for an aggressive war in which the American and Soviet workers would slaughter each other and the people of other countries for the profits of the U.S. and Russian bourgeoisies.
The present election campaign is a big platform for propaganda to deceive the workers and lull them to sleep in the face of the capitalist offensive. But the masses are seeing through the big talk of the capitalist windbags. Less than 50% of the eligible voters are expected to vote in November. Realizing that the Republicans are widely discredited as fascist tools of monopoly capital as a result of the political and economic crises, a major section of the big bourgeoisie is turning to Carter and the Democrats to carry out this offensive against the masses. They have at their beck and call the huge army of sold-out labor bureaucrats. This is the reason for Carter's sudden "strength". By posing as the "party of the workers and minorities" and deceitfully promising the workers so-called "reforms" on jobs and other economic questions, Carter and the Democrats are trying to "restore confidence" of the masses in the bourgeois government. Their aim, too, is to free the hands of the U.S. imperialists to intensify their exploitation of the workers at home and to wage imperialist war abroad. The Democrats are serving the same fascist offensive of the monopoly capitalists as the Republicans, but hidden under "liberal" and even "socialist" phrases.
This growing fascism has aroused the resistance of the broad masses and stirred them into action. Braving the threat of firing, the workers are hitting back with a vigorous wave of strikes. Beginning this spring with the Teamsters' strike and the San Francisco city workers' strike, continuing with the tenacious strike of 68,000 rubber workers, the strikes of the Massachusetts state workers, the New York City hospital workers, the California cannery workers, and most recently the daring wildcat strike of 100,000 coal miners -- this strike movement is growing and developing. The capitalists are moaning that the workers are hurting "economic recovery" but the workers want to shift the burden of the capitalist economic crisis back onto the capitalists themselves. In the case of the miners' wildcat strike, the workers have made the bourgeoisie's federal courts, a key part of their state machine, the target of their attack as well as the capitalists themselves.
The working class is plunging into struggle. The Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression is rising.
The struggles of other oppressed nationalities, of the immigrant workers and of the youth and students are also growing. The situation is very promising for the working class and other oppressed people: big storms of class struggle lie ahead. Internationally, the oppressed nations and peoples of Asian, African and Latin American countries and the workers of the capitalist countries dominated by U.S. imperialism have stepped up their struggles for liberation and social revolution, and the people of the whole world are going on a counter-offensive against the two aggressive superpowers, hindering their war preparations. While gloomy for the capitalists, the situation is very promising for the cause of the workers and oppressed people.
Let the capitalists rant and rave in the present election campaign and go on a rampage of attacking the people! The workers and other oppressed people must and will reject the illusions spread by the capitalists, denounce the capitalist political parties and wage resolute revolutionary struggle against the capitalists and their fascist offensive. The working class's answer to the capitalists' election fraud must be: DON'T VOTE -- THEY'RE ALL THE SAME! RESIST GROWING FASCISM!
Let us look at the programs of the two capitalist parties and their junior partner, the revisionists.
REPUBLICANS: OPEN TOOL OF FINANCE CAPITAL
The Republicans are the open tool of finance capital in its offensive against the working masses. Discredited by the war of aggression against Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, by the Watergate scandal, the "energy" crisis and the continuing economic crisis, the Republicans are claiming through their robot Ford that under his administration America has made an "incredible comeback", that "America is at peace" and is "in the full surge of sound recovery to steady prosperity" and that "confidence has returned" (Ford's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention). This Neanderthal Ford must be living in the Stone Age! Everywhere the masses want to hang him and he talks about having regained their "confidence"! Even the Democrats can see the absurdity of this claim and are basing their propaganda on how they will "restore confidence"! Actually the Republicans talk about having "recovered" is propaganda for continuing and deepening the bourgeois offensive against the masses.
As the bourgeois economists themselves admit, far from recovering, the economy remains deep in crisis. The monopoly capitalist class and its state machine (presently headed by the Republican Ford administration) are shifting the burden of the crisis onto the workers and oppressed people. On the economic front, the monopoly capitalists are imposing intense speed-up of the labor of the employed workers, prolonged and massive unemployment, outright wage-cuts and so-called "moderate" (meager) contract settlements, galloping inflation, cutbacks in essential services, lay-offs of public sector workers, sky-rocketing taxes and utility rates, etc. Politically, the bourgeois state is attacking the workers' strike struggles with injunctions, as in the coal miners' strike, and with police attacks and federal government pressure, as in the rubber workers' strike. The Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities are hit with increased racist attacks by the state, including the government-organized fascist anti-busing movement. The immigrant workers face fresh state attacks and deportations. Propaganda for white chauvinism and for American big-nation chauvinism and calls for war preparations are the constant diet of the mass media. War production and the militarization and fascization of society is speeding up. The Republican administration is a big instrument of this attack.
HOW FORD AND THE REPUBLICANS "FIGHT" INFLATION AND BIG GOVERNMENT
In an attempt to get support from the people, Ford has draped himself in the mantle of a "fighter" against inflation and big government spending and in support of the "little tax-payer" (acceptance speech). He even promises to balance the budget in 1978 and opposes the Democrats' Humphrey-Hawkins jobs bill on the grounds that it is too expensive!
All this only shows how the capitalist politicians say one thing and do the exact opposite. Look at the past few budgets of the Ford administration. These Republican "opponents" of big government spending have created the biggest government deficits ever heard of, far outstripping those of any of their predecessors. Ford's fiscal 1975 and 76 deficits were $45 billion and $70 billion respectively, a total of $115 billion, roughly equal to the total government deficits of the previous ten years, 1965-'74 inclusive. And Ford talks with a straight face of balancing the budget! In fact, the Republicans plan to further escalate military spending, creating further deficits. Inflation is caused by printing of paper money in excess of goods actually produced and circulated. This is done to finance the government's deficits. Thus Ford's own big spending is about as far from fighting inflation as one can get. And to top it all off, these "inflation-fighters" plan big subsidies to the all-dominant oil and energy industries and the removal of controls from the prices of oil and natural gas. This is like "fighting" a fire with -- gasoline.
In fact, while prices continue to spiral, all this talk about "fighting" inflation as the "number one problem" has only one real aim: to cut the wages of the working class and thus increase the capitalists' profits. After all, every lying bourgeois economist says that the real cause of inflation is wage increases. Naturally, if wage increases cause inflation, then to "fight" inflation means to fight wage increases. So to "fight" inflation means to undermine and suppress the workers' economic struggles. And this is precisely what Ford and the Republicans are doing, with the collaboration of the big labor bureaucrats. Using high unemployment as a threat against the employed workers, by these means the monopoly capitalists have forced "moderate" wage settlements on the workers in the past two years. The capitalist state has attacked and tried to suppress every important strike this year, from the Teamsters' strike to the ongoing rubber workers' strike. Federal injunctions have been issued to suppress the Detroit area Teamsters and against the coal miners. (And while swearing opposition to a wage freeze program of controls, the Republicans will not hesitate to use one as Nixon did in 1971- 2.)
At the same time, again using unemployment as a club, the monopoly capitalists have stepped up the labor intensity of the employed workers through speed-up, which they deceptively call "productivity", at a rate unsurpassed since World War II. The result has been a big upsurge in the profits of the capitalists. In fact, this is the only thing that has "recovered" in the economy. But the workers are supposed to sit with folded arms while prices continue to spiral out of sight and profits soar. This is "fighting" inflation!
In fact, wage increases do not cause prices to rise but merely cause profits to fall. This is a fate worse than death to the monopoly capitalists, who try to avoid it by using their monopoly control of markets to jack up the prices. They call this "passing on" the wage increase, thus trying to blame the workers for their own crimes.
Other examples of the Republicans "fight" against inflation and big government spending can be seen in their wholesale cutbacks of essential government services and the resulting lay-offs of thousands of public sector workers who perform them. The Republican platform states continuing opposition to the right to strike for public employees. This is "fighting" inflation with a vengeance! In line with this are the further attacks proposed by the Republicans on so-called welfare "fraud" and the further tightening of the standards for receiving food stamps. These are also attacks on the living standards of the masses. The lovely prospect for striking workers is that they will not be able to receive either welfare or food stamps. Why? Because the government is "fighting" inflation! At the same time the Republicans stand for "incentives" for some welfare recipients to force them to accept low-wage jobs or lose their checks, also under-cutting the workers' wages. Finally, it must be mentioned that the Republicans promise a fight for state laws for the sacred "right-to-work", that is, for the right to be a scab in a union shop -- another stunning blow to that nemesis "inflation".
But the "little tax-payer" and the unemployed worker need not worry about making ends meet. President Ford is on their side. According to the Republican Platform, he is going to "support economic and tax policies to insure the necessary job-producing expansion of our economy" (i. e., finance new machinery for the capitalists to put more workers out of work). "These include hastening capital recovery through new systems of accelerated depreciation, removing the tax burden on equity financing to encourage more capital investment, ending the unfair double taxation of dividends." But to balance the budget while reducing the tax "burden" on the capitalists (O how heavy it is!) can only mean to increase the tax burden on the workers, who are already paying one-third or more of their income in taxes. All this, of course, proves that Ford is "for the little tax-payer" (acceptance speech).
REPUBLICANS' PROGRAM OF SEGREGATION FOR THE AFRO-AMERICANS AND ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANT WORKERS
The Republican Convention afforded some strange sights. One of them was Ford declaring that the Republicans would "remain the party of equal rights". What unbelievable arrogance!
The Republicans are the party which openly organized the fascist anti-busing movement to violently attack the Black people and deprive them of their right to attend integrated public schools. Today the Republican platform swears on the racist gospel of opposition to "forced busing" (as if racial discrimination were voluntary for Black people!) "to achieve racial balance", uttering piously the white chauvinist psalm about "attending schools in their own neighborhoods" and ending by calling for a campaign for a Constitutional Amendment to uphold segregation. As the examples of Louisville and Boston illustrate, such calls by the monopoly capitalist parties are merely the signal to bring out the burning cross and lynch rope. As for the immigrant workers, who are mostly from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Republicans promise to "deal more effectively" with them, i. e., deport them at a more rapid rate. First U.S. imperialism can suck dry their homelands and drive them off their lands, then it outlaws their finding jobs in the very industries which have been built partly from their sweat and blood.
A FOREIGN POLICY THAT HITLER WOULD ENVY
At the Republican Convention, Ford surveyed the world situation and declared solemnly: "America is at peace and seeks peace for all nations. Not a single American is at war anywhere on the face of this earth tonight." A few days later two U.S. aggressor troops were killed by the Korean people for aggressive acts on the sovereign territory of Korea. At the same time, the U.S. imperialists were prime movers behind the slaughter of the Palestinian and Lebanese people by the Lebanese fascists, the bloody suppression of Azanians by the South African racists, the raids on Zimbabweans and Mozambicans by the Rhodesian racists, the violent suppression of Spanish workers by the Spanish fascist monarchy, the monstrous Israeli-zionist invasion of Uganda, the invasion of East Timor by the Indonesian fascists, etc., etc. Quite a list for "America... at peace"! Meanwhile the U.S. imperialists were continuing their underground nuclear explosions as the arms race with Soviet social-imperialism steps up and the two superpowers head for war with each other. This is the "peace through strength" of the U.S. imperialist overlords: if you don't like "peace" under their hegemony, then they will use their "strength", either openly or covertly, against you. Their Soviet rivals are no different. As Ford said: "Nobody doubts our willingness to use our strength when our vital interests are at stake. "
The basic foreign policy of the Republicans is to openly serve U.S. imperialism's striving for world domination and "justify" it by claiming that it is defense of "our vital interests" (Ford's speech). By "vital interests" the Republicans mean the maximum profits the monopoly capitalists get from domination of other countries, not the genuine peace and good relations with other countries which the masses of American people are vitally interested in. Was it "defense" of the American people when the U.S. imperialists invaded Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Korea or Cambodia again in the Mayaguez incident last year? Is it the "vital interest" of the American (and Soviet) people to kill each other in an imperialist war for the profits of the U.S. and Soviet monopoly bourgeoisies?
The Republicans today are openly pledging more of the same military aggression against the peoples throughout the world, the same inter-imperialist rivalry leading toward war. The Republican platform supports the fascist regimes in China's territory of Taiwan, southern Korea, Israel, supports maintaining colonial control over the Panama Canal, threatens the oil-producing nations not to wage an embargo, calls for "sanctions against countries that aid terrorists", etc. Ford publicly praised the Israeli Zionists' terrorist raid on Uganda. The debate between Ford and Reagan was over how to prepare for inter-imperialist war with the Soviet Union, for which Ford is calling for "a strong military posture" including an "up-to-date, powerful Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines".
The Republicans' foreign policy of world domination is a key reason why they are widely exposed as the open tools of finance capital.
DEMOCRATS: MONOPOLY CAPITAL'S MAIN PARTY OF DECEPTION
But the Democrats are an even more treacherous enemy of the workers' movement and the other mass movements of the people than the Republicans. They present the same basic program as the Republicans -- stepped-up exploitation, all-round fascization and preparations for imperialist war -- with a much more deceptive mask. They have posed for the last fifty years as the "friends of labor" and as the "friends" of the Black people since the Kennedy administration. They have an army of labor bureaucrats at their command, united behind them in this election, who act as agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. Today the Democrats are monopoly capital's main political tool for deceiving the workers and oppressed masses with "pro-labor" and "socialist" rhetoric, including promises of economic "reforms", in order to push the self-same fascist program as the Republicans.
DEMOCRATS OUT TO "RESTORE CONFIDENCE" IN THE U.S. IMPERIALIST STATE MACHINE
The U.S. imperialists see that the masses are becoming awakened to the fact that the bourgeois government and the capitalist economic system are their enemy. Referring to the political crises triggered by Viet Nam, Watergate and the economic crisis, Carter stated in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention:
"There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders. "
From this a section of the monopoly capitalists has concluded that it is time to change horses, from the largely discredited Republicans to the supposedly progressive Democrats. Hence the theme of the Democratic Party in its convention and campaign is to "restore confidence" in the bourgeois government. Without this political deception, the U.S. imperialists find it extremely difficult to carry out their war preparations and will have a hard time launching world war with the Soviet social-imperialists or any other aggressive war. In his speech Carter expressed the deceitful intentions of the Democrats:
"It is now a time for healing. We want to have faith again!...It is time for the people to run the government and not the other way around."
Now here is a glaring admission: up till "now" the people have not "run the government"! But Carter, the faith-healer, will change all that...
DEMOCRATS PLAN FASCIST ATTACKS ON THE WORKERS UNDER THE GUISE OF ECONOMIC "REFORMS"
To gain the "confidence" of the workers by deception, the Democrats plan certain economic so-called "reforms", most notably the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, whose provisions have been written into the party platform. These "reforms" are supposed to convince the masses that, as Carter says, they will have begun to "run the government". But in fact, these " reforms" are actually fascist attacks on the workers and oppressed masses, aimed, like the Republicans' programs, at carrying out the capitalist offensive against the working masses.
HOW THE DEMOCRATS' "FIGHT" UNEMPLOYMENT WITH FORCED LABOR AND WAGE-CUTS
The Democrats have centered their promises of "reforms" on the question of jobs, which they call the number one problem. They declare that they are going to "Put America Back to Work". They are promoting the provisions of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, which will supposedly bring unemployment down to an-"official" three percent. The Democratic platform even boasts that the Democrats have brought about "full employment with stable prices" before and can do it again. These are sheer lies.
Far from helping the unemployed, what the Democrats' "fight" against unemployment means for the workers is forced labor and wage-cuts. This is what the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill amounts to. Instead of receiving unemployment compensation, the unemployed workers, including welfare recipients, would be compelled to accept government jobs at starvation wages close to the minimum wage. Look at the Democrats' platform. It says:
"Clearly useful public jobs are far superior to welfare and unemployment payments....We should move toward replacement of our existing inadequate and wasteful system with a simplified system of income maintenance... which includes a requirement that those able to work be provided with appropriate available jobs or job training opportunities. Those persons who are physically able to work (other than mothers with dependent children) should be required to accept appropriate available jobs or job training."
Although the Democrats do not specify the wage levels of these "public service" jobs, they could only be at the lowest wages; why else would it be necessary to force workers on welfare or compensation to take them? By forcing workers onto slave-wage jobs, on pain of losing their checks, the Democrats would force the workers to take lower-wage jobs than the ones they held before they were laid off. Thus the Democrats' program to "solve" unemployment amounts to wage-cuts for the workers, just as the Republicans' "anti-inflation" program does. Thus the big "debate" between the Democrats and the Republicans over which is the "number one" problem of the economy, jobs or inflation, really amounts to a debate over which tactic to take in increasing the exploitation of the workers -- slave-labor jobs resulting in wage-cuts, as with the Democrats, or attacks on the economic struggles of the employed workers, also resulting in wage-cuts, as in the case of the Republicans (which the Democrats, too, are planning An example of how this "encouragement" to work "benefits" the workers can be seen from the use of the funds from the CETA program of 1973 in Dearborn, Michigan. (CETA, the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, is the predecessor of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill. In Dearborn, unionized garbage workers are being replaced by non-unionized workers hired with CETA funds. The workers on the CETA program are paid about half the wages of the regular workers.
The Democrats' jobs program is thus no different from the national welfare reform proposed by Richard Nixon and known as "workfare". But when Nixon made his proposal, everyone knew he was a fascist. Now, when the Democrats make the same plans, they are held up as proof that the Democrats are the "party of the workers and minorities". Strange, indeed!
Not only this, but the monopoly capitalists want to use the Democrats to shift the burden of maintaining the army of the unemployed onto the backs of the employed workers. Presently the $3 billion in unemployment compensation that the Democrats talk about is paid for out of a tax on employers. The Democrats plan to substitute slave-wage public jobs paid out of the workers' income taxes for the existing unemployment compensation system. Thus not only does the Democrats' program of "putting America back to work" hand the capitalists a large labor force compelled to work at slave wages, but it also relieves the capitalists of paying unemployment compensation. Some trick for the "friends of labor"!
In fact, it is ridiculous to think that the monopoly capitalist government would eliminate unemployment or even reduce it significantly. Unemployment is absolutely necessary for capitalist exploitation of the workers. An army of unemployed workers causes competition among the workers for jobs and enables the capitalists to exploit the workers. (If there were a shortage of workers instead of jobs, the workers could force the capitalists to pay whatever price they wanted for the use of their labor-power and the capitalists' profits would disappear.) During economic crises like the present one, the capitalists throw millions of workers out of work to shift the burden of the crisis onto them and to increase the competition between them and the employed workers. This allows the capitalists to step up the exploitation of the remaining employed workers, who face a greater threat of firing if they resist. In fact, rather than decreasing the competition among the workers, the Democrats' jobs program would actually increase it by bringing the formerly unemployed workers, re-hired at slave wages, into conflict with the employed workers who are still working at higher wages.
The only time that unemployment has been under 4% at the "official" figures since World War II has been during the U.S. imperialist wars of aggression against Korea and Indo-China. For this reason the Democrats have become known as the party that brings the U.S. out of economic crisis by going to war. This in itself is a stark exposure of the criminal nature of the U.S. monopoly capitalist system: it cannot recover from economic crises and provide jobs for its workers without waging wars of aggression against the people of other countries. (It is also proof that the masses know that the Democrats are an imperialist party.) Thus for a large number of working-class youth, U.S. imperialism offers the "alternatives" of permanent unemployment or of acting as cannon-fodder in an aggressive war for the profits of the monopoly capitalists. And with U.S. imperialism's increasing preparations for a world war with the Soviet social- imperialists, the likelihood of such a "solution" to the crisis and unemployment is growing.
Thus the Democrats' program for "putting America back to work" amounts to slave-wage jobs forced upon the unemployed and welfare recipients;, resulting in wage-cuts and increased competition among the workers, and a future as cannon fodder in an imperialist war. This is how the Democrats "fight" unemployment.
HOW THE DEMOCRATS WILL STEP UP THE EXPLOITATION OF THE EMPLOYED WORKERS
Carter set forth the Democratic Party's philosophy on this question in his acceptance speech:
"I see clearly the value of a strong system of free enterprise based on increased productivity and adequate wages."
The call to "increase productivity" from the mouths of the capitalist politicians means to increase the exploitation of the employed workers. In order to shift the burden of the crisis onto the workers, in the past year the monopoly capitalists have greatly intensified the labor of the workers. This is the basis for the capitalists' rise in profits. Carter is calling for a further increase in labor intensity, which is already unbearable in many industries, and thus for a further increase in exploitation and -- profits.
The main tactic of the Democratic Party for carrying this out is its plan for "national economic planning". "National economic planning" means that the top union bureaucrats would sit on joint bodies with representatives of the capitalist government and the monopoly capitalists themselves to "plan" the economy. This means even tighter control by the bourgeois state over the union apparatus, with the collaboration of the union bureaucrats, in order to "coordinate" production goals and force the workers to meet them by means of speed-up, prolongation of working hours, wage-cuts, etc. This is a fascist set-up, a step in the direction of Mussolini's corporate state. What the monopoly capitalists dare not openly propose through the Republican Party they plan to institute through the "pro-labor" Democratic Party.
The purpose of the "national economic planning" apparatus would also be to more efficiently subsidize the monopoly capitalists out of the workers' tax dollars. The "national economic planning" apparatus would be empowered to make plans for the entire economy, establishing numerical goals for employment, production and purchasing power and to develop long-range policies to reach these goals. This means using the state to more efficiently finance the investments of the monopoly capitalists and guarantee them markets for the sale of their products.
This was admittedly Senator Hubert Humphrey, one of the sponsors of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill. He said that he is "very concerned about capital formation" and that "capital requirements to boost employment in the future are going to be much heavier than they were in the past and they will not be met simply by getting the economy on its feet again." Hence the "friends of labor" not only will step up the labor intensity, and therefore the exploitation, of the employed workers, but will use the workers' tax dollars to finance the monopoly capitalists to do so!
DEMOCRATS PLAN WAGE CONTROLS TO SUPPRESS THE WORKERS' STRUGGLES
And when the workers rise up in struggle against this brazen robbery (as they will do and are doing), our "liberal" "friends of labor" will be right there with fascist wage-price controls to outlaw the workers strikes and hold down their wages. The Democratic Party platform states:
"At times, direct government involvement in wage and price decisions may be required to ensure price stability. But we do not believe that such involvement requires a comprehensive system of mandatory controls at this time. It will require that business and labor must meet fair standards of wage and price change."
What does this mean? It means that if the workers do not voluntarily accept increased exploitation and what the capitalists consider to be "fair wage changes" (i.e., the minimum wage levels that the workers can be forced to swallow), then the state machine will intervene and suppress the workers. If the labor bureaucrats prove incapable of restraining the workers to "fair wage changes" and too many workers refuse to accept the so-called "fair wage changes" then "a comprehensive system of mandatory controls" will be installed. That is, the monopoly capitalist state will enforce a fascist wage freeze on the workers as it did in 1971 and '72 and as the U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian government is doing today. It is no accident that it was the Democratic Party that passed the legislation enabling Nixon to institute the wage freeze in 1971 and urged him to do so. Thus the Democratic "friends of labor" plan to attack the very right of the workers to strike for higher wages. The Democrats are doing propaganda that such controls would be necessary to keep "price stability" in the "full employment economy" they are planning to import from the heavens. In other words, the workers' wages (which they, too, claim to be the cause of "price instability") are to be suppressed while "productivity" is to be "increased".
Thus the Democrats' program of "putting America back to work" while ending die "inflationary spiral" and "increasing productivity" means stepped-up exploitation for the employed workers, a slave-labor program for the unemployed workers and fascist suppression of the workers' struggles. And it is around this fascist offensive on the working class that Leonard Woodcock and other labor bureaucrats are rallying the workers to vote for the Democrats in the November election.
THE DEMOCRATS' NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE FRAUD
The Democrats have declared themselves in favor of "National Health Insurance", while the Republicans are against it. But the Democrats' stand has nothing to do with improving the health of the masses. American health standards are falling behind those of other countries. Meanwhile, Medicare, Medicaid and the private health insurance companies have been able to raise the prices of health care many times faster than anything else. The taxpayer and the premium-payer, plus those who have no insurance, foot the bill. As a result, the profits of the health industry have soared. The Democrats' National Health Insurance plan merely aims at turning a still larger proportion of the Gross National Product over to the health monopolies than at present, resulting in still larger profits for them, with no improvement in the conditions faced by the masses. Playing cruelly on the misery of the masses, this "reform", too, is a gross deception, as well as a profitable venture for the monopoly capitalists.
DEMOCRATS' PROGRAM FOR THE BLACK PEOPLE: SEGREGATION
While the Republicans are the outright segregationist party of monopoly capital, the Democrats are just as much in favor of racial discrimination and violent repression and just as opposed to freedom and equal rights for the Afro-American people. In his acceptance speech, Carter declared that:
"It is time to honor and strengthen our families and our neighborhoods and our diverse cultures and customs." And: "We canhave an America where freedom, on the one hand, and equality, on the other hand, are mutually supportive and not in conflict, and where the dreams of our nations' first leaders are fully realized in our own day and age."
"Our nation's" first leaders, Washington and Jefferson, we may remind the "hard-working peanut farmer", were slave-owners. Here Carter is giving the familiar catchword for segregation in the U.S. today: "strengthen" "our neighborhoods", when the monopoly capitalists' racial discrimination has created segregated neighborhoods for the purpose of suppressing the Afro-American people and splitting the working class. Carter then goes on to declare that in the U.S. today "freedom" and "equality" are "in conflict". Since neither freedom nor equality exist for the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities, Carter's statement means that struggle of the Black people for freedom and equality has come into conflict with the "freedom" of the monopoly capitalists to maintain the segregationist system of racial discrimination and national oppression of the Black people. Carter's proposal is to solve this "conflict" by "realizing" the "dreams" of the slave-owners Washington and Jefferson: maintaining and strengthening the present-day system of Jim Crow slavery -- segregation. To carry this out Carter has vowed to give funds to segregated Afro-American schools in the inner cities as "an alternative to busing for racial integration" 'What Carter Would Do as President", U.S. New's and World Report, July 26, 1976)
Thus Carter proposes to develop schools on the segregationist basis of "separate but equal", which is inherently unequal, as proven by the historical experience of the Black people in the past 100 years.
Thus the Democratic Party proposes to strengthen racial discrimination and violent repression against the Black people and other oppressed nationalities. Their aim is the same as that of the Republicans: drive the Afro-Americans back towards the worst Jim Crow segregation and deepen the split in the working class so as to strengthen the monopoly capitalist rule. And under this program the Democrats are parading as "friends of the Black people". This is how Carter, in the words of his top Black flunkey, Rev. Andrew Young, "personally understands the problems of race and poverty as only a Southerner can".
DEMOCRATS PLAN ALL-ROUND DEVELOPMENT OF FASCIST RULE
To top off these fascist programs, the Democrats have pledged themselves to enforce "law and order" reminiscent of fascist Nixon. The bourgeois state and its laws are the guardian of capitalist exploitation, of racial discrimination, etc. The Republicans are well-known exponents of its "law and order". Now Carter and the Democrats are preparing for the rising tide of mass struggles which will surely greet their fascist programs. Carter arrogantly declared in his acceptance speech:
"It is time for the law to be enforced. We cannot educate children, we cannot create harmony among our people, we cannot preserve basic human freedom unless we have an orderly society.... Swift arrest and trial, fair and uniform punishment should be expected by anyone who would break our laws."
These statements are hypocritically aimed at making use of the sentiment of the masses against increasing social crime in order to support fascist state attacks on the people. If the monopoly capitalists were really interested in ending social crime, they would put a stop to the importation of heroin into the Black and white working-class communities by the CIA, the police, and the Mafia. Instead the Democrats are going to "create harmony" and "preserve basic freedoms" by unleashing the police to arrest the workers who disturb this "harmony" with strikes, or the Afro-Americans who disturb the "basic human freedom" of segregation by rebelling against racial discrimination and violent repression.
DEMOCRATS' FOREIGN POLICY: STRIVE FOR WORLD DOMNATION
Not to be outdone in aggressiveness by the Republicans, the Democrats' foreign policy serves the same basic striving of the U.S. imperialists for world domination. According to Carter's speech, the Democrats' goal is "an international framework of peace within which our own ideals gradually can become a global reality". This reveals the U.S. imperialists' desires to practice their domestic policy of capitalist exploitation, racial discrimination, etc., in other countries and suck the blood of the people of the entire world. The monopoly capitalists themselves are admitting that the difference between the Democrats' and Republicans' foreign policy would be a "change more in style than in substance". (U.S. News and World Report, July 26, 1976) Trying to appear different from Ford, Carter said recently: "I think I would be much tougher in bargaining with the Soviet Union." That is, Carter would have the same basic imperialist foreign policy as Ford -- striving for world domination through rivalry with the Soviet Union and suppression of the oppressed nations. What a lovely "choice" in November!
Look at the Democrats' platform. It lists nearly all the same focal points as the Republicans for U.S. indirect or direct aggression. Israeli attacks on the Arab and African people, China's Taiwan province, Panama, Korea,
NATO, etc.-- These indicate the irreconcilable hostility of the U.S. imperialist Democratic Party towards the oppressed nations and peoples of the Third World and towards the socialist countries. At the same time, Carter's campaign promises to cut military spending boil down to "cuts in support and staff strength in favor of building up combat elements". (U.S. News and World Report, July 26, 1976)
In light of this, how ironic that Carter recently stated:
"I would never again get militarily involved in the internal affairs of another country, unless our own security was directly threatened." If so, then let him publish U.S. imperialism's secret treaties to invade certain European countries (and others) in the event of such "threats"! In fact, Carter himself rendered his statement utterly meaningless in his next breath:
"A sharp and difficult balancing of an expression of concern on the one hand, and the interference in the electoral process of a sovereign nation on the other, would require very careful judgment."
The Democrats are an imperialist party the same as the Republicans.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: AN IMPERIALIST LABOR PARTY WITH A SOCIAL-FASCIST PROGRAM
Thus the mission laid down for the Democratic Party by its monopoly capitalist masters is to deceive the working masses with so-called "reforms" on economic questions like jobs in order to "restore confidence" in the U.S. imperialist state machine to free its hands to wage aggressive war abroad and step up exploitation at home. All this is to be done under the slogans of "labor" and "civil rights" and will be organized by the Democrats' army of labor bureaucrats and opportunist leaders from among the oppressed nationalities. But these so-called "reforms" amount to increased exploitation and fascist attacks on the workers, while for the Black people the Democrats plan increased racial discrimination and violent repression. Overall the Democrats program means stepped-up fascization and imperialist war. Thus the Democrats, like the Republicans, are a party of monopoly capital's fascist offensive against the masses. Parading under "pro-labor" and "socialist"- sounding slogans and programs, and relying on an army of labor bureaucrats, the Democrats are a virtual imperialist bourgeois labor party, pushing social-democracy which is, at heart, social-fascism (socialism in words, fascism in deeds).
REVISIONISTS CHIME IN
Chiming in with its own program of deception to serve the monopoly capitalist offensive against the masses is the revisionist "Communist" Party USA, which is also fielding candidates for president and vice-president. In a campaign speech reprinted in the July 1976 issue of Political Affairs, Gus Hall, the revisionist candidate for president, echoed Carter's call to make the "people run the government".
He said:
"But if this is to be a government of, by and for the people, we the people must begin to respond."
The revisionists are opposed to the revolutionary transformation of society, to the smashing of the capitalist state machine by the working class and the setting up of the workers' state of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They want to lull the masses to sleep with fantastic promises of what is "possible" through the existing capitalist state. They claim that by demanding various reforms, "the people" will turn the bourgeois state into a "people's government". They claim that through reforms the imperialist system can be made to provide "human welfare, not inhuman warfare". Clearly Gus Hall's whitewashing of the bourgeois state and its growing fascism is no different at heart from Carter's. Both are passionate supporters of bourgeois rule over the working class. The only difference is that Gus Hall is calling on the masses to vote for his bourgeois faction, the "Communist" Party, and not the Democrats, and that Gus Hall's party prefers to sell itself to the Russian imperialists while Carter is satisfied with the deal he is getting from U.S. imperialism. This accounts for the revisionists' nauseating chorus for "detente", echoing Brezhnev and Kissinger. At a time of great upheaval, when the superpowers are committing aggression and preparing for world war, Gus Hall is trying to lull the workers to sleep with the illusion that lasting peace is just around the corner. According to Gus Hall, "detente" is the universal panacea. He declares with a straight face:
"Detente is billions of new jobs and trade." Old-time bourgeois politicians once promised "A chicken in every pot". One can just picture Gus Hall proclaiming modestly today: "A thousand jobs for every worker!"
In fact, we have been living under so-called "detente" for at least three years now. During that time, the most severe economic crisis since the Depression of the '30's has broken out and there are now over 10 million unemployed in the U.S. This is how Gus Hall's "detente" panacea "cures" unemployment. Instead, the contention between the superpowers is heating up and leading to war, while unemployment, inflation, economic crisis in general continue and grow. The "detente" rostrum of Gus Hall and his imperialist masters is a big dose of political deception hiding the reactionary, war-mongering nature of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism as well.
Thus the two parties are, in fact, two rival gangs of capitalist robbers battling over which will control the bourgeois state apparatus and have the inside trace on the lucrative spoils of office. The revisionists are their junior partners. The masses of the people are only allowed to "choose" which gang of capitalists will use the state machine to repress, plunder and militarize them for the next four or eight years.
The capitalist political parties and state machine will never solve any of the problems facing the masses; on the contrary, the monopoly capitalists have created them. All the programs of the capitalist political parties boil down to increased exploitation, fascism and aggressive war.
For the working class and other oppressed people, there can be no cure from the gods of plague! All progressive people should take a common stand to denounce the capitalist political parties and boycott the elections: DON'T VOTE -- THEY'RE ALL THE SAME! This will be a real blow at the political deception of the capitalist parties and their election campaign. Therefore, it will also be a concrete aid to the other struggles of the working class and people against the monopoly capitalists and their growing fascism and will help to raise these struggle to a higher level. A time of great upheavals and class battles is coming. The American working class and oppressed people will carry out an anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution, violently overthrow the capitalist government and replace it by the working class organized as the ruling class, a socialist state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will liberate the working and oppressed people from capitalist-fascist slavery. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists calls upon all progressive workers and other people to resolutely denounce the capitalist political parties for their crimes against the people, to actively conduct a boycott of the bourgeois election fraud and to wage active, revolutionary struggle against growing fascism!
Workers and oppressed people: Denounce the capitalist political parties! Don't vote in the election -- all the candidates are tools of the capitalist class enemy! Resist the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto your shoulders! Actively resist this growing fascism! Oppose the war preparations of the superpowers and support the revolutionary struggles of the people of all countries! Break through the bourgeois laws, the fascist rules and regulations, the restrictions placed on your struggles by the capitalists, their state machine and the labor bureaucrats, and wage revolutionary struggle against the class enemy!
DON'T VOTE -- THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!
WAGE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AGAINST GROWING FASCISM!
DOWN WITH THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST DICTATORS!
MAKE THE WORKING CLASS THE RULING CLASS! End.
On August 18, the U.S. imperialist aggressors committed a new grave provocation against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Korean people. It began when the U.S. occupation forces sent out a group of soldiers to cut down a tree which was under the control of the north Korean side in the joint security zone of Panmimjom. When the north Korean security personnel justly protested this illegal action, the U.S. soldiers pounced on them with axes and other weapons. The Korean personnel, who were greatly outnumbered, put up a death-defying resistance to this unprovoked attack, fighting back in self-defense.
After provoking this incident under a premeditated plan, the U.S. imperialists immediately tried to put the responsibility for the incident on the north Korean side. They used this incident to step up their war hysteria and carry out further war provocations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. They dispatched the aircraft carrier Midway and other warships into Korean waters, sent forty more war-planes to south Korea and made provocative over-flights over north Korea with B-52 bombers. They issued an "order of emergency alert" to their occupation troops in south Korea and made a show of force with heavily armed troops in the joint security area where the first provocation occurred. U.S. imperialist chieftains Ford and Kissinger have been hurling threats of "retaliation", demanding that the DP DPRK "accept responsibility" for U.S. imperialism's own crime of provoking the incident on August 18.
These grave provocations are only the latest development of U.S. imperialism's massive campaign of war preparations and provocations in Korea. Recently, the U.S. occupation troops and the south Korean puppet troops have proclaimed a "war-time system" throughout south Korea. They have been conducting large-scale military maneuvers, supplying the front line units with all kinds of ammunition and bringing into south Korea large quantities of nuclear weapons, missiles, war-planes and other advanced weapons. On August 5, the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a statement condemning these war provocations which pointed out: "All facts show that after such long preparations for war, the United States is, at last, going over to the stage of direct war provocations from the stageof war preparations." While the U.S. imperialists are hysterically babbling about the "threat of invasion from the north", it is clear that it is the U.S. imperialist aggressors who are threatening an invasion of the north from the south.
In June of 1950, the U.S. imperialists invaded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in a vain attempt to seize all of the Korean peninsula as its colony and throttle People's China which had only just been liberated. The heroic Korean people under the leadership of Comrade Kim II Sung and the Korean Workers' Party, and the fraternal support of the Chinese People's Volunteers, soundly defeated the U.S. aggressors. July 27 this year marked the 23rd anniversary of the victory in Korea's Fatherland Liberation War and the signing of the armistice.
However, U.S. imperialism continues to occupy the southern part of Korea as its colony and has set up the fascist puppet Pak Jung Hi dictatorship there to do its bidding. It still maintains in south Korea over 40,000 occupation troops and huge quantities of sophisticated weaponry in complete violation of U.N. resolutions and the armistice. While there is only one Korea, the U.S. imperialists continue to conspire to create "two Koreas" and maintain the north-south division and confrontation. And as can be seen from the recent grave provocations, U.S. imperialism has not given up trying to start another war in an attempt to gobble up all of Korea.
This tense situation cannot last forever. Under the leadership of President Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers' Party, nothing can prevent the heroic Korean people from driving the U.S. aggressors out of their country. The Korean people will surely realize their national aspiration for the independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland.
If the U.S. imperialists do dare to start another war, they shall be completely defeated at the hands of the Korean people. As pointed out in the Korean Government statement: "Of course, the Korean people do not want war. But the Korean people are never afraid of war. If the enemy provokes an aggressive war at last in spite of the repeated warnings of the Korean people and the peace-loving peoples of the world, the Korean people will resolutely answer it with a just war and annihilate the aggressors to the last man." A U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Korea would also be met by the strong opposition of the American people who waged tremendous struggles against the U.S. war of aggression in Viet Nam.
The Workers' Advocate, in the name of the American working class and oppressed people, strongly condemns the recent grave provocation and all the war provocations and war hysteria of the U.S. imperialists against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The U.S. occupation forces and all their aggressive war machinery must be completely removed from Korean soil. We firmly support the just struggle of the Korean people for the independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland. End.
After persisting in struggle for over four months, the 68,000 rubber workers striking the Big Four rubber monopolies have finally won victory. The long and determined rubber workers' strike has been a big blow to the rubber capitalists who have been forced to capitulate to the workers' demands that the 1976 contract will not include another wage-cut for the workers.
Recently, tentative agreements were signed between the United Rubber Workers union and two of the Big Four, the Goodyear and Firestone rubber monopolies, which are expected to be ratified and set the pattern for the Uniroyal and B.F. Goodrich contracts. It is reported that the contracts include a $1.35 an hour wage increase and, for the first time, a cost-of-living allowance which the union estimates will raise wages another 75 cents during the three years of the contract. This contract, which was only won with great sacrifices by the workers, starts to make up for the big wage-cuts they have suffered due to years of rapid inflation and the 1973 contract, when the URW leadership treacherously collaborated with Nixon's wage controls.
The determination and steadfastness of the rubber workers who have stayed out on strike for over 130 days, defying all attempts to suppress their struggle, has been a source of inspiration to the entire workers' movement and a nightmare for the monopoly capitalists. The plan of the rubber monopolies was to starve the workers into submission, which they thought would not take long as the treacherous labor bureaucrats had refused to build up a strike fund. The monopoly capitalist state machine worked overtime to try to suppress the strike. The U.S. Labor Department acted hand-in-hand with the rubber capitalists using stalling tactics and refusing to negotiate with the strikers. Police were also sent by the capitalists to attack the strikers. But the attempts to starve the workers into submission failed miserably and it is the rubber capitalists who are sorely hurting from the length of the strike. The profits of the Big Four rubber monopolies dropped as much as 86% from the previous year, with their machinery sitting idle with no workers except a few7 inexperienced scabs and supervisory personnel to operate it. The workers, on the other hand, despite a great deal of hardship, only became even more determined to break the arrogant stand of the rubber monopolies and persist in the strike.
Trying to get out of a tight spot, the rubber capitalists attempted to split the solid unity of the 68,000 rubber workers by negotiating separate deals with individual locals. This plan, too, failed miserably and was strongly denounced by the workers.
Throughout the strike, the rubber companies have tried to keep production going at the 47 struck plants with scabs and supervisory personnel. When the workers organized mass pickets to close down production, they were repeatedly attacked by the repressive bourgeois state -- the police and the courts. The courts issued injunctions against picketing at many of the plants. In the second half of the strike alone, 40 workers have been arrested for picketing and several militant strikers have been forbidden by the courts to man picket lines. However, the rubber workers have persistently defied the police attacks and the courts and have continued mass picketing against the scabs entering the plants.
The long and determined rubber workers' strike has not only devastated the profits of the rubber monopolies and thrown the rubber industry into shambles, but it has also greatly upset the entire monopoly capitalist class. The bourgeois press has been moaning that the strike has hurt "economic recovery", i.e., hurt the capitalists' efforts to cut the wages of the whole working class. The capitalists and their friends in the workers' movement such as Leonard Woodcock of the UAW are pleading with other industrial workers to not follow' the example of the rubber workers and fight wage-cuts, claiming that the rubber workers are "exceptional" and "only making up for past losses". But what workers have not suffered from wage-cuts due to inflation and do not have to make up "for past losses"? Clearly, the rubber workers are not a "special case" but, in fact, have provided a good example of struggle for the auto workers and the other workers whose contracts are coming up.
The 15-week strike of the 68,000 rubber workers has been an important part of the developing strike movement. The steadfast determination of the rubber workers, who have bent the will of the giant Big Four rubber monopolies, is an inspiration to the entire working class and shows the great might of the American workers. As Comrade Engels pointed out: "MEN WHO ARE PREPARED TO SUFFER SO MUCH TO BREAK THE WILL OF A SINGLE OBSTINATE FACTORY OWNER WILL ONE DAY BE ABLE TO SMASH THE POWER OF THE WHOLE BOURGEOISIE. " End.
Over the last two months, U.S. coal miners waged a fierce class battle against the coal monopoly capitalists and the federal courts. The miners, whose work is extremely dangerous, demanded an end to the widespread use by the federal courts of injunctions, restraining orders, fines and jailings whenever the miners resist attacks on their working and safety conditions. What began as a walkout at a single mine in southern West Virginia, quickly developed into a powerful wildcat strike of 100,000 miners, 75% of the membership of the United Mine Workers union. The coal miners vigorously defied all the attempts of the coal capitalists, the courts and the labor bureaucrats to suppress their struggle. Their militant spirit of defiance serves as a great inspiration to the entire workers' movement.
The coal miners' strike first broke out on June 24, in Kanawha County, West Virginia. UMW Local 1759 walked out in protest when the Cedar Coal Co. (a subsidiary of American Electric Power Co.), with the backing of the federal courts, refused to implement a safety measure demanded by the miners. Previously, the local had won an arbitration decision that an outside communications job, which is key to maintaining contact between the mine and the outside, had to be a union job. However, the company then claimed that the communications job was not a full-time job, that it could be tacked on as part of the duties of another miner's job and that they would not post the job for bidding in the union. For safety reasons, the miners could not accept this and demanded that the job be full-time and be posted for bidding. When the dispute went back to arbitration over this second question, the court ruled in favor of the company. Furthermore, the company also refused to comply with the first arbitration decision which had required that the communications job be a union job. The local then demanded that the courts issue an injunction against the company, simply to force it to abide by the first arbitration decision but the federal judge threw them out of court, saying he had no time to hear their case. In response to the arrogant stand of the Cedar Coal Co. on the safety issue and the blatant intervention of the courts on behalf of the company. Local 1759 walked out.
The strike grew quickly with miners closing down 30 operations in Kanawha County when they struck in solidarity with Local 1759. Roving pickets were sent out and mass meetings were held. The strike spread to eastern Ohio, then Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, until it involved 100,000 miners in 10 states as far west as Colorado.
From an early date the main target of this powerful wildcat strike was the federal courts, a key part of the monopoly capitalists' state machine. The strikers demanded an end to the widespread use of injunctions, restraining orders, criminal charges, fines and jailings against the miners. Increasingly, the coal monopolies are making use of the federal courts to stifle all resistance of the miners to savage exploitation.
The courts have been systematically interfering in union activities in an attempt to bring "labor-peace" to the coal fields, showing their nature as instruments of the capitalists together with the police and entire governmental apparatus. It is against this stepped-up fascist suppression that the miners waged their struggle.
The coal capitalists carry out daily attacks on the working and and safety conditions of the miners. They consistently and flagrantly sabotage the union contract in their drive to squeeze even greater profits out of the coal miners.
For example, one coal company openly violated a contract provision at one of its mines, purposefully dragged out the grievance procedure and only after several months were they forced to abide by the contract. Then the same company, at another of its mines, did the exact same thing all over again.
When the miners resist these attacks and wage wildcat strikes to defend themselves, the federal courts are always right there to suppress the workers on behalf of the coal capitalists. As in this summer's strike, the courts issued injunctions, restraining orders, back-to-work commands and limits on picketing. Some locals have been forbidden from striking in the future. Local union treasuries and dues have been seized in payment for outrageous fines. Individual miners have been threatened with fines and suspensions for not obeying court orders, and local union officers and activists have been jailed for contempt of court.
It is these attacks by the coal operators and the suppression of resistance to them by the federal courts which are the cause of the miners' strike. These attacks were also the cause of last year's month-long wildcat strike, when the miners demanded an end to company sabotage of the grievance procedure and court interventions and demanded the right to strike on local issues.
The question of resisting capitalist attacks on the workers' working and safety conditions comes up particularly sharply in the coal mines. Coal mining is dirty, back-breaking work and is the most dangerous major industry in the country. Every year, hundreds of miners are killed and many thousands are severely injured in the mines (to say nothing of those who die or are crippled from black lung or other diseases from the mines). For the coal monopolies, no profits can be realized by investing money to improve the working and safety conditions of the miners. A ton of coal with or without miners' blood on it sells for the same price. The coal miners have always had to wage bitter struggles to protect their life and limb and to resist man-eating exploitation.
To resist the capitalists, the miners also have always had to fight the capitalists' government. They have had to defy congressional legislation, executive orders, the police and the national guard. In this recent wildcat, for two months the miners carried on their struggle in complete defiance of the federal courts, which attempted to suppress the strike with innumerable fascist measures.
At the Cedar Coal Co., where the strike originated, the same federal judge who claimed he didn't have time to issue an injunction against the company when it violated the courts' own arbitration, had plenty of time to grant the company an injunction "outlawing" the miners' walk-out. The judge imposed a $50,000 fine on Local 1759, with an additional $25,000 for each day the strike continued, amounting to over $300, 000. He also threatened all 213 members of the local with jail sentences and suspensions from work for "contempt of court". Similar fascist measures were initiated by the courts in other areas.
However the miners were not to be intimidated. 100,000 strong, they showed tremendous defiance and "contempt" for the courts and persisted in their strike. They refused to return to work unless there were no reprisals against any striking miner. According to reports, the strike only ended after the courts withdrew the huge fines on Local 1759 and the threats of jailing the strikers. The miners' militant defiance of the courts shatters the myth that "you can't fight the government". It is a great example for the entire working class.
The UMWA leadership worked hand-in-hand with the coal monopolies and the courts, who bitterly fought the strikers. Labor traitor Arnold Miller, president of the UMWA, used union money to buy radio time to order the miners back to work. He repeatedly moaned about the loss of "labor-peace" and that the strikers were trying to "destroy the union".
This sabotage by the union misleaders was completely rejected by the masses of workers who insisted on waging the struggle.
The coal miners' wildcat strike, which brought U.S. soft coal production practically to a standstill, was a big blow to the monopoly capitalists. The coal monopolies and capitalists in related industries such as the railroads, lost hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Presently, the U.S. imperialists are developing energy resources, including coal production, in order to prepare to wage aggressive imperialist world war with Soviet social-imperialism. The disruption of the coal industry by the miners' strike disrupted the imperialists' efforts to develop coal to prepare for war. Once again the coal industry was thrown into chaos by fierce class struggle.
The working-class movement in the U.S. is on the rise and a national strike wave is developing. The coal miners have a glorious history of struggle. They have always stood in the front ranks of the workers' movement. The coal miners' wildcat strike against the coal capitalists and the courts and their vigorous spirit of defiance are an inspiration to the entire working class. End.
The monopoly capitalists these days are full of chatter about "economic recovery", advertizing everywhere their big profits and the rise in the "gross national product" over the last several months. But this talk of "recovery" is nothing but a hoax to cover up the continuing deep economic crisis and the deterioration of the over-all situation facing the U.S. capitalist system. In fact, investigation shows that the economy is chronically ill and is getting sicker all the time.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE RISE OF THE CAPITALISTS' PROFITS AND THE SLIGHT RISE IN PRODUCTION?
The rise in the monopoly capitalists' profits, which are breaking records in auto and other industries, is a direct result of increased intensity of labor, i. e., speed-up and increased work-loads, and has nothing to do with "recovery". The capitalists are enforcing an unprecedented rate of speed-up. The American workers' productivity (output per man-hour) has increased 6% from the first quarter of 1975 to the first quarter of '76, the fastest rate of increase since World War II. Due to man-eating labor-intensity and long hours, the employed workers are turning out greater quantities of goods with no corresponding re-hiring of workers or addition of new machinery. While millions of workers are unemployed, the over-work of the employed workers has resulted in enormous profits for the monopoly capitalists.
Over the last seven months, the rate of industrial production has picked up by about 8%, while remaining well below the pre-crisis level. But instead of the "steady recovery" that the capitalists advertise, the rise in production is very precarious. Only a few industries account for most of it and even in these the increase is bound to be short-lived. In housing, auto and other industries there has been a backlog of demand built up as a result of the crisis; however, there is nothing to prevent these industries from collapsing again when this backlog is filled. While the capitalists were re-stocking their inventories this spring, many were quickly over-filled again by July, further slowing down industry. Over-all, industries are running at only 72% of their capacity as compared to the pre-crisis level of 81% in 1973, indicating the severe stagnation of the entire economy. Of particular significance is the government's forecast that in 1976 there will be a further decline in the production of the means of production, new machinery and facilities for industry. This shows that the capitalists themselves are not planning for any real recovery of industrial production.
MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT EXPLODES THE MYTH OF "RECOVERY"
Unemployment remains at levels higher than any time since the Depression of the '30s.
The myth of "economic recovery" cannot stand up to the fact that there has been no substantial reduction in the ranks of the millions of unemployed. The "official" unemployment rate is 7.8% but it is more accurately around 13% of the labor-force. The U.S. has the highest "official" unemployment rate of any industrial country in the world. Among oppressed nationality and young workers, unemployment is twice that of for the working class as a whole. Young Black workers suffer from an "official" unemployment rate of over 40% and it is still rising. The millions of unemployed have been deprived of any means of livelihood except for the few who collect measly unemployment insurance benefits. Large numbers of the jobless have been out of work for years and have given up looking.
By throwing millions of workers into the street, the monopoly capitalists increase the competition among those still working, hanging the threat of unemployment over the workers' heads. With this weapon the employers are stepping up the rate of exploitation and enforcing the increased labor intensity, which, of course, leads to even more unemployment.
GALLOPING INFLATION AND PRICE INCREASES CONTINUE
Inflation and prices continue to rise without let-up. The present 6% (official) annual rate of inflation is higher than at any time in history previous to the last four years. The capitalists' claim that inflation is "tapering off' only means that inflation is still galloping along but not quite so quickly as before.
The monopoly capitalists try to cushion the effects of the crisis on themselves by creating inflation and keeping up high monopoly prices. The federal government carries out a policy of rapidly-growing massive deficit spending for the purpose of stimulating and militarizing the economy (in the fiscal year 1976, the federal deficit was a record $70 billion, as compared to $45 billion in 1975, making a two-year total of $115 billion, roughly equal to all the deficits of the previous ten years, 1965-1974, combined). The government covers this massive deficit by printing money in excess of goods produced and circulated and in this way inflates the dollar.
While goods are stockpiled in warehouses and storage tanks for lack of demand, the monopolies use their control of entire markets to keep raising prices. The most powerful, like the oil and steel monopolies, impose the sharpest price increases, driving up the prices in other sectors. Instead of lowering the prices of cars, houses, gasoline, etc., and increasing sales, the monopolies, due to their capitalist nature, have continued to maximize profits throughout the crisis with slower sales and sky-rocketing prices.
THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT CRISIS LIES IN THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST SYSTEM
Production under monopoly capitalism is characterized by disorder and vicious struggles among the monopoly capitalists in their drive for maximum profits. This anarchy of capitalist production is the basic cause of the economic crises which continually plague the U.S. economy.
Monopoly groups, headed by the big banks, struggle among themselves and plunder the masses. Big financial houses wipe out the small banks (359 small banks are on the "trouble" list) and crush the weaker capitalists.
The monopolies in the strongest positions, such as the oil and energy monopolies throttle the weaker monopolies and extort tremendous tribute from the rest of the economy. With the help of the government campaign for "energy independence", utility rates, oil, gas and natural gas prices have been soaring, squeezing billions out of the entire society. When the oil monopolies nearly doubled the price of oil in 1973, deceptively using the oil embargo as a pretext, the whole economy was thrown into upheaval, and the market was constricted, precipitating the present over-production crisis.
THERE IS NO LACK OF "PRODUCTIVITY" BUT A CRISIS OF OVER-PRODUCTION
According to every capitalist, the bourgeois politicians and the sold-out labor leaders, the problem with the economy is that workers are not productive enough. They push increased productivity (labor intensity) as the cure-all for every economic ill. While increased productivity provides bigger profits for the capitalists, it is just the opposite of a "cure" for the economic crisis, which is a crisis of overproduction.
In a certain sense, the crisis is of too much productivity. Highly socialized production, which is controlled by a handful of rival monopolies, blindly produces for a market that cannot keep pace with the production of goods. On the one hand, the workers are ever more productive, and, on the other, capitalist exploitation makes them poor, restricting the market for the absorption of commodities, which they cannot buy. This inevitably leads to a collision, a crisis of over-production. Today, because of an over-abundance (for the restricted capitalist market) of manufactured goods, fuels, clothes and food, industries are running at 72% of their capacity and production is stagnating.
DEEP CRISIS IN FINANCES OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
The financial crisis has broken out particularly sharply in the finances of state and local governments. Since World War II, the monopoly capitalists have rapidly expanded the public sector of the economy as a safe field of investment, always guaranteed by the working masses' tax money, and as a cushion against the effects of economic crisis. The big banks and financial houses now have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in loans to the state and local governments, from which they collect high rates of tax-free interest. However, with the severe industrial crisis, the public sector has itself become a sphere of deep crisis. In New York City, Detroit, San Francisco, the State of Massachusetts, etc., the local and state governments have been carrying out countless attacks on the public sector workers, including massive lay-offs and attacks on wages, in an attempt to stabilize their finances and continue to pay out the billions of dollars of interest on the loans from the big banks. Tax rates have everywhere been increased to finance these loans. The financial crisis in the public sector further aggravates the economic crisis as a whole by further impoverishing the masses and by wreaking havoc in this formerly safe field of investment for finance capital, driving interest rates up.
CRISIS INTENSIFIED BY U.S. -SOVIET RIVALRY FOR WORLD DOMINATION
The U.S. monopoly capitalists face severe difficulties not only at home but also abroad, where their markets are shrinking and becoming less and less stable. The U.S. imperialists are desperately struggling against their rival imperialists and are trying to further subjugate the weaker nations and peoples in order to control territory, sources of raw materials and markets for the export of capital and commodities. However, the U.S. imperialists are finding the going tougher and tougher. Their ill-fated drive for world domination has itself become a cause of deepening crisis.
Presently, the U.S. imperialists are locked in a fierce rivalry with the Soviet social-imperialists for spheres of influence and strategic positions and ultimately for the re-division of the world. The two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are engaged in a wild arms race, as each tries to overpower the other, leading to a world war between them.
The U.S. monopoly capitalists are trying to shift the burden of the present crisis onto the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America and onto the weaker industrialized countries. They are stepping up the plunder of the developing countries by such means as using their control of entire markets to force down the prices of raw materials and selling, at very high prices, the surplus manufactured goods which they trade in return. But the U.S. imperialists are meeting powerful resistance to their plunder and domination. Last year, Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos militarily defeated the U.S. aggressors and drove the U.S. imperialists completely out of their countries. Many raw-material producers such as the oil- producing countries, have united together to struggle against the forcing down of the prices of their raw materials. The people throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America are rising up against the two superpowers. The powerful resistance to plunder and control is causing the U.S. imperialists great difficulties and they are preparing for further wars of aggression against the peoples.
DEEPENING GENERAL CRISIS OF WORLD CAPITALISM
The present crisis is taking place under conditions of the deepening general crisis of capitalism. All the basic contradictions in the world are intensifying, shaking the roots of the capitalist-imperialist system. Proletarian revolutions and national liberation struggles, imperialist rivalries and imperialist wars have brought about the instability and shrinking of the world capitalist market. Even in the "best" of times, industries work at under-capacity.
The reserve army of unemployed has become in a large part a permanent army of unemployed, as reflected in the ever-increasing unemployment figures and welfare rolls over the last decades. The periodic economic crises take place with greater frequency, are deeper and more prolonged. The present crisis, the sixth since World War II, broke out in the fall of 1973, before the economy had climbed out of the crisis of 1970. The present crisis is the deepest and most prolonged crisis since the Great Depression.
MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS SHIFT THE BURDEN OF THE CRISIS ONTO THE SHOULDERS OF THE WORKING CLASS AND OPPRESSED MASSES
The monopoly capitalists are trying to disentangle themselves from the deep crisis at the expense of the working masses by increasing the exploitation and impoverishment of the working population. The workers face a faster and faster pace of work and ever more hazardous working conditions. While millions of workers are unemployed or on short work weeks, others are being forced to work long hours, often times 60 or 70 hours a week. Real wages are being cut year after year as the result of spiraling price increases and the masses suffer ever more poverty. Unable to make ends meet on the husband's wages, many wives have been forced to seek work. Unemployment compensation benefits are running out and welfare and food stamp programs are being cut back. The monopoly capitalists are reaping huge profits at the expense of the working masses whose situation is becoming ever more intolerable.
THE WORKING MASSES INSIST ON STRUGGLE
The working class is heroically combating the monopoly capitalists' offensive. A powerful strike wave is developing. The determined strike of 68,000 rubber workers against the giant rubber monopolies has entered its fifth month. The wildcat strike of 100,000 coal miners was a fierce class battle aimed right at the capitalist government. The cannery workers in California and the hospital workers in New York City recently waged important strikes. There is developing resistance among the workers to speed-up and unemployment. Students are waging struggles against tuition hikes and cut-backs in education. Opposition is developing to utility rate increases, high prices and cut-backs in social services. A high tide of resistance is breaking out.
The capitalists are trying to suppress the masses with both force and deception. They tell the workers to give up the class struggle because "it will only upset recovery". Instead of waging revolutionary struggles the workers should have "confidence" in the "vitality" of the monopoly capitalist system and need not fear unemployment and hardship. They say that the workers should have faith in the Democrats and the elections while they go on the offensive against the workers and oppressed masses. But where there is oppression, there is resistance. The working masses will never accept the bourgeoisie's myths. They insist on waging the class struggle and will surely carry it through to the complete destruction of the disease-ridden capitalist system. End.
On July 12, 1976 1,800 Seattle area registered nurses (RNs) working at 15 hospitals went out on strike against the Seattle Area Hospital Council. This was a significant event in the history of health care workers in Washington, as it is the first strike ever of the RNs in this state. On August 4, 625 RNs from Seattle's Group Health Hospital and Clinics overcame a number of obstacles to join this strike. In addition technicians organized in the Retail Clerks Union (NEC) are striking at Ballard, Swedish and Providence Hospital. This strike is part of a growing wave of struggle among health-care workers, and it shows that the economic crisis is bringing into active life and struggle new sections of workers who were formerly passive.
The RNs comprise a large percentage of the health care labor force which deals with direct patient care. In addition, 99% of the RNs are women, who in addition to being exploited as workers, are doubly exploited as women workers. For example, the RNs are paid $2.00/hour below what skilled-unionized labor makes in Seattle. The capitalist employers have always promoted that women are inferior to men in order to justify using women as the cheapest source of labor. In addition, nurses more than any other female profession, have culturally been promoted as passive, subservient "angels of mercy". The health care employers would like for the nurses to believe that they are powerless against the employers, and further, that nurses, due to the "dedication-ethic" of their profession, should be subservient to the employers and never complain about their wages or working conditions, as this might interfere with the profit interests of the employers. However, the employers are now witnessing with much nail-biting and duress, that the nurses will not play the role of the subservient "angels of mercy".
The RNs are demanding on the salary front: 15% increase the 1st year, 10% the second year, 10% the 3rd year with 3% increment after the 5th and 10th anniversary and a cost-of-living clause for a 2 or 3 year contract. The RNs are also asking for increased shift-differential, increased stand-by pay, (for standing-by to come to work for emergencies), and establishing IRAs for RNs in hospitals without pensions. The Seattle Area Hospital Council is offering a 6% increase each year for three years with no cost-of-living clause. The Council's offer shows utter contempt for the nurses. A 6%-3-year offer is equivalent to "throwing a few crumbs to the dogs". The RNs wages over the past ten years have barely kept up with the cost of living. The cost of living increase over the past three years, according to the Labor Bureau of Statistics and the Wall Street Journal has been: 10.6%, 9.5% and 8.2% respectively. Thus, in order for the RNs to secure a healthy raise to help them catch up with the rest of skilled-unionized labor, the RNs would have to settle for no less than 15% and 10% with a cost-of-living clause. The cost- of-living adjustments would have to bein additionto the other salary raise, or else whatever the wage increase is, it would be eaten up in the increase of the cost of living.
The RNs are also fighting for other demands. For example, the Group Health RNs want to win appropriate fringe benefits for part-time workers. Group Health Cooperative has over the past year hired so many part-time nurses that 50% of the RNs are part-time. Some of them even work full-time but are denied full-time classification and therefore also denied all fringe benefits and overtime pay.
Employers have tried desperately to keep health care workers ignorant and confused on the extent of how the workers are used to make profit for those who own and control the health care institutions. To quote from an article in the International Journal of Health Services, "The United States health system is controlled by and run in the interests of an elite consisting of hospital and nursing home employers, an upper stratum of the medical profession, and the large corporate capitalists of the pharmaceutical, insurance and medical supply industries." The money spent on health care in the U.S. according to 1974 statistics was $104 billion. This is equivalent to the military defense budget. The health care system is one of the most lucrative and profitable. According to early 1970 statistics, drug companies earned over $600 million in profits per year and spent $1.5 billion more in advertising. Proprietary hospitals, nursing homes and medical supply companies together earned $600 million per year in profits. Both the pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, particularly the largest such as Libby, Upjohn, Johnson and Johnson, Squibb and many others have branches or subsidiaries all over the world. In regard to health insurance companies, Americans paid $29 billion according to 1973 statistics just to private insurance companies alone. Even though a good portion of this robbery is returned in health care services, the insurance companies, through short term investments make substantial profits, which is then reinvested to make more profit. Furthermore, to quote again from the International Journal of Health Services, "The major source of the high profits and incomes of the elite of the health industry lies in the labor of the nursing labor force." This means that much of the money paid by the health care consumers goes into profits for the hospitals, insurance companies, drug and medical supply companies.
How do non-profit hospitals fit into the profit- making scheme? Take Group Health as an example. Group Health is referred to as non-profit, as are many of the hospitals in the Seattle area. However, the term non-profit is a term that merely refers to a tax status. It does not mean that Group Health does not make profit. Nonprofit merely means that the profits do not go externally into dividends for individual stockholders. Instead, the profits go internally, back into Group Health for maintenance and expansion of services, high salaries for administrators, bonuses for doctors, buying land for future clinics. In regard to expansion of services, much of the profit goes into capital investment for new facilities, such as the $18 million E. Side Medical Center at Redmond, the $7 million new Progressive Care Facility on Capitol Hill, the new Federal Way clinic, and buying land for new clinics. It takes huge profit to expand such as Group Health has done since 1947 to include the main hospital in Seattle, a new hospital in Redmond and 10 clinics all over the Seattle area, and all the way to Olympia.
One argument which the employers always put forth when the nurses demand big salary increases is that it would be inflationary to the already exorbitant cost of health care. This argument is erroneous. For example at Group Health, since 1968, the premiums for 1 adult have nearly tripled from $10.75/month in 1968 to $26.71 in April, 1976. Meanwhile, nurses' salaries have not doubled or tripled, but have barely kept up with the cost of living during this time. The starting salary for a staff nurse in 1968 was $3.50/hour. In 1976, the starting salary for a staff nurse is $5. 00/hour. In other words, Group Health's perpetual premium increases cannot be blamed on an increase in nurses' wages.
The strikes of over 2400 registered nurses in Seattle are one indication of the deep and profound nature of the economic crisis now gripping the U.S. monopoly capitalist system. This crisis, which began in 1974, is the sixth since World War II and the deepest of them all. As a result, sections of the working class and other working people are now waging economic struggle against the capitalists who had not done so in the past and were previously not well-known for their militancy. Among them are office workers, teachers and other government employees, and now in Seattle, registered nurses, technicians and other health care workers.
The entire working class is going into motion. Strikes of large sectors of the working class have occurred this year. Earlier, the Teamsters Union truck drivers struck for the first time ever on a nation-wide basis. Recently, cannery workers in California threw a big scare into the bourgeoisie by walking out when the fruit was "on the vine". Meanwhile 68,000 rubber workers are persisting in their protracted strike struggle which began on April 21, 1976. Coal miners are continuing their wild-cat walk-out in West Virginia and other Eastern states fighting for the right to strike. And in New York City, 40,000 members of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees struck for 10 days against 33 private hospitals, and for 6 days against 14 private nursing homes and 10 city hospitals. 100 strikers were arrested and 100 more injured from police attacks on their picket lines, which the workers militantly resisted.
With this strike the RNs of Seattle have joined the entire working class in fighting the effects of the capitalist economic crisis, which is weighing heavily upon the shoulder of all the toilers in America. This strike, now almost two months old, is one of the longest health care strikes in the U.S. and will surely be an encouragement to health care workers around the country.
(The above article was based on reports carried in Seattle Worker, vol. 4, #3 and #4) End.
The bourgeoisie in Detroit has declared war on the Black youth. Both major bourgeois newspapers, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, are running scare stories about Black gangs, sensationalizing on cases of real or imagined violent crime, shouting themselves hoarse about how much money Detroit businesses are losing, and attempting to create hysteria. There is talk of re-starting the Nazi- like STRESS ("Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets") police squads, which specialized in ambushing and killing Afro-Americans. (The bourgeoisie admits that STRESS squads killed 22 people, 20 of them via ambush.) The mayor's office recalled 450 policemen laid off to balance the budget and has declared an absurd 10 P. M. curfew for all youths under 18 in which the police are given the right to arbitrarily decide on a case-by-case basis which adults a youngster may be out with at night. Deputy Mayor Beckham hysterically raved: "We're going to take the city back-- beginning tonight!" and "Someone's going to be hurt, beginning tonight!" Sneaking for Mayor Young, he has ordered police chief Tannian to get "results" in two or three weeks or be fired. "Liberal Democrat" Mayor Coleman Young went on prime-time TV to attack the Black youth as "young hoodlums", rave that he won't let them "take over the city", praise the police for suppressing last year's Afro-American rebellion in the Livernois area, and set forth a new plan to tax and police the people to death.
This new campaign, spearheaded at the Black youth, is aimed against the entire Afro-American people. This increased terror against the Afro-American community is part of the growing fascism of American society. The bourgeoisie hopes to subjugate the Afro-American people and deepen the split in the working class. Because of the large-scale auto production in Detroit, Detroit is marked by having many modern proletarians with a long tradition of struggle against the bourgeoisie. The auto proletariat is militant and very receptive to communist ideas. Among the workers, there is a very large percentage of militant Afro-Americans and also a significant number of Arabs.
The bourgeoisie has brought into existence this proletariat in order to labor for it in the auto factories, but it is now mortally scared that it has brought into existence its own grave-diggers. The bourgeoisie has brought the Afro-American people to Detroit to work in the hardest and lowest-paying jobs, and it is now frightened to death at the memory of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967. The bourgeoisie has repeatedly sought to divide and disrupt the working class and super exploit sections of it through the use of terror against oppressed nationalities. Last school year the capitalist government tried (and failed) to organize a large-scale fascist anti-busing movement in Detroit. Several months ago the government apparatus organized ambushes and murders of the Arab people. This campaign also failed and the Arab community stood firm. But the bourgeoisie has not given up its fascist nature, and is now once again using the government apparatus to organize a new terrorist attack on the people. The Black youths, who suffer from over 6 0% unemployment and are a very militant section of the Black people, are the target of this attack.
The government is presenting this attack on the Black youth as a "war on crime". What a joke! If the government really wanted to stop crime, why hasn't it, say, stopped organized crime and the Mafia? But there is not a chance that the police will do that. It is no secret at all that the government knows who is in the Mafia, that all sorts of revelations are printed in the daily newspapers, and yet no action is taken. Why, the government and the Mafia work together. The bourgeois newspapers even boast of how the CIA and Mafia worked hand-in-hand in a fascist attempt to assassinate a foreign head of state, Castro. And in Detroit it is well-known that the massive heroin trade, which creates a mass of people dependent on crime to satisfy their drug habit, could never be carried on without participation of the police. In fact in 1972-3 the Detroit (and Atlanta police, who finally killed Boyd and Bethune) attacked, hounded and murdered or jailed three young Afro-Americans Mark Bethune, Hayward Brown and John Boyd who dared to stand up with guns to the organized dope dealers and their police protectors in Detroit.
The present "war on crime" in Detroit is only a pretext, an excuse to cover stepped-up attacks on the Afro-American community.
All Black youth will be attacked. Even now the bourgeois press is saying that it is hard to single out and convict "gang members" of particular crimes, because so many youth are involved it is hard to tell them apart.
Thus the press promotes the white racist chorus that "all Blacks look alike". And it is widely believed in Detroit that many of the instances of "violent rampages" that the press is ranting about have been staged by the bourgeoisie for the specific purpose of inciting panic and white racism. For instance, on Sunday night, August 15, a rock concert took place downtown in Cobo Hall. The masses who attended this concert were attacked, robbed and assaulted by a large group of people who, the press asserts, were acting in an organized manner. But, strangely enough, the police just stood by and looked on. By two days later only one warrant had been issued. A number of victims planned to file charges not just against their assailants, but against police who refused to respond to requests for help. In all American cities the police have wide contacts and connections with lumpen elements, degenerate gangs, and bad elements and would have no trouble at all in bribing a bunch of them to commit outrages on the masses. If the government did not itself organize the attack at Cobo Hall, then why did the police protect the attackers? And now this staged incident is being used as the rallying cry against the Black youth.
The government has not only organized this campaign of terror against the Black community, it is also using it to infiltrate its agents into various communities and among the people. Plain clothes police and ordinary police are being saturated throughout certain Black and mixed areas. A Neighborhood Youth Corps Police Cadet Training Program has been organized to give police training to "gang" members, who are actually paid at $2.30 per hour from CETA funds, And Mayor Young has announced his intention to start recruiting a new "civilian police force". This "civilian police force" would on one hand be a center for assembling and training a new armed group very susceptible to white racism, while on the other hand it would also recruit some Black people in order to split the Afro-American community.
The government would very much like to see Black people fighting each other, rather than the racist attacks of the monopoly capitalist class, and so it is infiltrating agents into the Black community, organizing the "anti-crime" movement, using sections of Black youth against other Black youth, and intensifying contradictions among the Black people themselves. They are vilely seeking to set older Black working people, many of whom have suffered from individual theft, not to mention having their lifeblood stolen from them as they slave in the auto plants, against the Black youth.
At the same time that the bourgeoisie is launching new terrorist attacks on Black youth, it is also cutting the school system. Using as an excuse that the Detroit voters don't want to be taxed to death and have defeated a new school tax levy, the bourgeoisie is moaning about a shortage of money. The school board is closing a number of elementary schools, almost all of which were nearly 100% Black schools, putting first-graders on half-session, etc. Thus, even in the midst of the city financial crisis, the city government has the money, either from its own funds or using state or federal revenue, to terrorize the community, re-hire the police, and devise new police programs, but... as for the schools... the people are held to ransom and given the choice of being bled to death by higher and higher school taxes or seeing their children go illiterate. This shows the reactionary nature of the U.S. government apparatus, whose main function is simply to suppress the revolutionary movements of the working and oppressed people. The government works hard to corrupt the youth, promotes the heroin trade, cuts back the bourgeois school system (which at their best "teach" by drill-sergeant methods to train the youth to submit to oppression), bribes the bad elements, but... it is always ready to so- called "fight crime"... by building more police stations, courts and jails. In so far as social crime flourishes, it is the result of the degrading life under capitalism, with its overwork for the employed combined with enforced idleness for large numbers of youth, and of the corruption consciously spread among the youth by the decadent culture and by the government itself. The only way to help the youth is to lead them in the fight against the present racist attacks, against racial discrimination and capitalist exploitation, so that they take up high ideals and learn to scorn the decadent culture spread by the bourgeoisie.
This new declaration of war against the Black youth in Detroit shows that we are living in a period of great upheavals. U.S. imperialism is in decline, but in its decline it is becoming ever more vicious. Just as the German bourgeoisie in its decline turned to Hitler and mass murder to try to get themselves out of economic crisis and to destroy the revolutionary movement, so the U.S. bourgeoisie is rapidly stepping up fascism. Racist attacks on the Afro-American people are a key part of this fascist program.
The capitalist parties are all supporting this fascist program. The Republicans are relatively straight-forward about this. They are known to the masses as the party of the rich and of reaction, and they are calling for cutting wages, openly organizing the fascist anti-busing movement, and for the big stick at home and abroad. The Democrats are fascists like the Republicans, but they pretend to be "friends of the people", concerned about jobs, about the minorities, etc. Thus they are social-fascists (socialists or pro workers in words, fascists in deeds). Do you want to see what a Democratic Administration will be like? Look at Detroit! The Mayor is Coleman Young, a "liberal" Democrat, a supporter of Carter, and one of the small handful of Afro-Americans who have betrayed the Afro-American people in return for being able to scrape and bow before the Democratic Party bosses and to share in the spoils of office. No capitalist party can stop economic crisis, and Detroit is still in economic crisis and even had its city budget go into the red under Mayor Young, who has attacked the public sector workers and cut back the schools. All the capitalist parties are fascist, and under Mayor Young the city has worked hard to launch repeated attacks on the Afro-Americans and Arabs, like the newest declaration of war against the Afro-American youth. The only difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats try harder to lull the masses to sleep while they stab them in the back. The only path forward for the masses is to actively resist the fascism of the monopoly capitalist class, reject the capitalist political parties, refuse to vote in their sham presidential election, resist all racist and fascist attacks, and prepare for an anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution to eliminate the man-eating U.S. capitalist system from the earth. End.
During the past year, the monopoly capitalist government and its propaganda forces have been carrying out a hysterical campaign of persecution against two immigrant Filipina nurses, Filipina Narciso and Leona Perez, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The nurses are falsely accused of administering poison to cause the deaths of five patients and the temporary breathing failures suffered by ten others, out of a wave of 51 such incidents which occurred at the Ann Arbor Veterans' Administration Hospital last summer, where the nurses worked.
The FBI and federal courts, notorious arms of the repressive bourgeois state, have been concocting testimony, actually hypnotizing "witnesses" and literally digging up the dead in a frantic effort to blame the nurses for the deaths and near-deaths. The bourgeois press is providing the oh-so-necessary background of racist, anti-working class slanders against Filipino workers. A trial has been set for January 4, 1977, in Detroit.
This fascist persecution campaign is aimed at exonerating the VA hospital, drug companies and entire decaying health system under monopoly capitalism for the deaths and near-deaths of the patients, and instead to place the blame on two immigrant workers from the Philippines. The Filipino people in their homeland are waging a vigorous people's war of national liberation against the domination and control of U.S. imperialism and its puppet Marcos clique. The Philippines is the site of two large U.S. military bases, key to U.S. imperialism's designs to dominate Asia and prepare for war with the Soviet Union for world domination. The U.S. monopoly capitalists hope to use the case of the Filipina nurses in Ann Arbor: to kill two birds with one stone: to whitewash their decadent health care system and to create chauvinist hysteria against Filipinos among the American people in order to prepare public opinion for U.S. aggression against the Philippines to protect U.S. imperialist interests there.
But this fascist campaign is backfiring. Support for the two nurses is growing among the Filipino people in the Philippines and in the U.S. and among the rest of the American people as well. Fewer and fewer people believe the government's charges and the government has been forced to bring in a "high-powered" psychiatrist to interview the hospital staff to prepare a "psychiatric" case against the two women. When the federal judge finally reduced the women's bail, it was raised in 24 hours by Filipino and American supporters. The Filipino nurses have the sympathy and support of large numbers of oppressed workers and national minority people, who hate the U.S. imperialists and their criminal health care system.
The two nurses have been subjected to inhuman harassment by the capitalist state machine.
They have been forcibly removed from their patient-care jobs and have had their citizenship applications held back. They have been interrogated intensely by the FBI, frequently for hours at a time. From the beginning the FBI has tried to intimidate them into making false confessions. The government has invested over one million dollars in the success of this "legal" lynching and has assigned as many as 50 FBI agents at one time to make trumped-up charges, which carry a possible life sentence, stick.
Let us look at the government's fraudulent case against the nurses.
The government's most embarrassing problem has been the lack of any reasonable motive to pin the charges on the two nurses. None of the women's co-workers, friends, relatives or other acquaintances believe for a minute that they committed the "poisonings" they are charged with. Instead, they have all testified to the complete selflessness of the nurses in caring for their patients. But what the government has dreamed up as a "motive" is the most vile, Hitler-type big lie imaginable!
The government claims that the nurses' "poisoned" the patients in a protest over the gross under-staffing of the hospital by the government bureaucrats. In the spring of 1975, 57 nurses at the hospital signed a petition denouncing the under-staffing of the hospital and demanding the hiring of more nurses. The bourgeoisie has admitted the criminally bad conditions under which the nurses worked: "Conditions were especially hectic in the 11 bed intensive care unit," the Detroit Free Press confessed. "Many members of the VA hospital nursing staff were working extra shifts and giving up one weekend day each week... to keep up with the high number of patients in intensive care." Filipina Narciso and Leona Perez did not sign the petition because they feared that the government would reject their citizenship applications in retaliation, but they expressed their support for the nurses' demands to their fellow workers. But now the government is trying to turn this mass indictment of its abominable hospital conditions into an all-out attack on the Filipina nurses and other workers. The government claims that the supposed "mass murder" is the two Filipina women's contribution to the protest!
This is possible, these liars explain, because doctors and nurses come into contact with sickness and death constantly and become "hardened to the death of a patient" so that "a death to them would be just another corpse" ! What fascist logic! The protest of the masses of nurses, supported by the Filipinas, was for better conditions for both workers and patients. Now the bourgeoisie wants to turn truth on its head and accuse the Filipina nurses of killing patients to "contribute" to the protest!
There are so many other obvious contradictions in the government's trumped-up "case" against the two women that the Free Press (August 22) admits that the government is having difficulty .maintaining an air of reality around the whole thing.
For example, during the period from July 1 to August 15, 1975, there were 51 breathing failures among the VA hospital patients, eleven of whom later died. Neither of the two Filipina nurses, who worked in the intensive care ward, were even on duty for 32 of these 51 -- well over half! So the FBI, which has carried out the entire "investigation", arranged for the hospital authorities to (they claim) "feed millions of tiny bits of information" regarding the breathing failures into a computer to pick out which ones were "suspicious" and which were not. Presto! Like a magician with a deck full of aces, the FBI "determined" that 20 cases were "suspicious". No explanation is given why these are "suspicious" and the remaining attacks (the majority) are "unsuspicious". The government has charged the nurses with 15 acts. 15 or more of the 20 breathing failures the FBI labeled "suspicious" just happened to take place when the two nurses were on duty (as were a number of other nurses with a similar work schedule). Why is there no explanation of the 36 breathing attacks the nurses were not charged with? The two nurses are not even charged with half of the failures which resulted in death! Isn't it the FBI's "investigation" and the hospital's conditions that are really suspicious?
The government claims the nurses injected Pavulon (a muscle-paralyzing drug) into the intravenous solutions of the patients in the intensive care ward in order to poison and murder them. The FBI actually dug up the bodies of four dead patients in order to be able to announce the presence of Pavulon in their body tissues. Although for years there has been a positive test for the presence of Pavulon in body fluids, no one up till now has been able to develop such a test for the drug's presence in body tissues (fluids are missing from a dead body). But wonders never cease! A doctor assigned by the FBI has found such a test in a mere few months! And lo and behold -- Pavulon is indeed present (according to the FBI's doctor) in the body tissue of the four exhumed bodies! (Why the body of the fifth patient the nurses are accused of killing was not exhumed is never explained. But one body here or there makes little difference to the FBI.) May we say that the evidence on this point was just a little... doctored?
The government is also trying to base its "case" largely on "testimony" from its two "key witnesses", John McCrery Jr., a former patient in the IC ward, who was dying at the time of the attacks and is now dead, and Richard Neely, also a former patient in the IC ward, who is dying of cancer.
The FBI actually hypnotized both these "witnesses" in order to "refresh" their memories of whom they might have "seen" at their bedsides at the time of their breathing arrests. (The government first specially selected certain patients who the bourgeois press admitted, "could be susceptible to hypnosis".) Neely, who has a long medical history of memory problems, admitted that during the hypnosis session he gave a name other than that of either of the nurses and only repeated the "correct" name of Leona Perez after having been told it by the FBI interrogator. He had never said a word regarding either nurse prior to hypnosis. During the hearing at which Neely testified in April, simply repeated what the FBI had suggested to him while he was under hypnosis!
McCrery was hypnotized too and, it is admitted, changed his story several times -- at first claiming it was a man he saw at his bedside, and finally ending by saying he was foggy on the whole thing and just didn't remember. At one point he told Leona Perez that he had written her a note telling her he knew nothing at all about how he had stopped breathing. Yet, up until McCrery's death this June, the government was hell-bent on using even this as the "testimony of a key witness"!
Nurses and doctors at the VA hospital have expressed outrage that the testimony of any dying patient would be used as "evidence", let alone two who have been hypnotized by the FBI. The dying patients in IC ward are constantly pumped with pain-killers which keep them in an extremely foggy and disoriented state of mind. Many do not recognize their nurses after being in the hospital for two months. The lights are on and off at odd hours so that these patients many times literally have a hard time telling if it's day or night. These patients, who many times cannot remember such basic facts as whether or not they have had their daily medicine yet on a given day, are to be the government's "key witnesses" !
All this aside, what is so unusual about a nurse adjusting a patient's intravenous solution in the intensive care ward? Anyone knows that patients in the IC ward require constant care, nurses are in and out quite often, and IV's need to be checked extremely often. Whether or not these patients saw Filipina Narciso or Leona Perez at their bedsides is completely irrelevant. If anything, a nurse's constant presence at a patient's bedside shows only her desire to care for the needs of her patient.
These simple facts expose the complete bankruptcy of the government's charges against the two nurses.
Throughout the "investigation", the state has subjected Filipina Narciso and Leona Perez to extremely fascistic harassment and intimidation tactics. Before being released on bond this past June 30th, they had been hand-cuffed and chained together whenever they would leave the jail for court. Both nurses have been removed from their patient-care jobs at the hospitals where they work and have had their citizenship applications held back. They were imprisoned in Washtenaw County Jail from June 16 to June 30 this year. Filipina Narciso was denied bond, while Leona Perez was held on $500,000 bond -- an amount impossible to raise on any worker's pay, let alone the pay of a hospital worker. (We are supposed to consider the granting of $500,000 bond to Leona Perez as an act of "leniency" by the judge due to her pregnancy.) After many protests from the people and a formal complaint from the government of the Philippines, bond was finally lowered to the still exorbitant, sum of $7,500 each, which was raised in 24 hours by supporters of the nurses.
The FBI has harshly interrogated the nurses in closed quarters several times without permitting them to have their lawyers present, and has tried to browbeat the two women into making false confessions. Filipina Narciso was once interrogated in this nazi manner for six hours straight and denied the right to leave the room three times. The FBI told her she would either have to confess or take a lie detector test to clear herself. An FBI agent told Filipina Narciso during one of the sessions: "You are 29 years old. Before that 29 years you had a happy life... But after 29 years, there's no more. That's it. Your life is over if you don't confess." But the nurses refused to be intimidated, declaring firmly: "I didn't do it."
Many of the nurses at the VA Hospital have denounced the FBI's harassment of them during the time they were questioned by FBI agents. They have pointed out that the only desire of the FBI was to try from the very beginning to incriminate the two Filipina women. All questions centered around the two nurses. None of the facts of the matter were ever looked into. Many other Filipina nurses and at least one white nurse have resigned in protest of the FBI harassment of themselves and the two nurses.
The fact that the monopoly capitalists' government has assigned as many as 50 FBI men at one time to this frame-up and has invested over one million dollars in it show's that it is a very important case for the monopoly capitalist class. At times they have even arrogantly cast aside the cloak of their own bourgeois law's to try to prove their case. They boast with great pride that in April they threw out their own legality and, for the first time, "testimony" (Neely's hypnotic suggestions) was taken against people not even yet charged with a "crime". (The nurses' arraignment was not until June.) Even the monopoly capitalists' own courts had never before allowed "evidence" acquired under hypnosis to be admissible as testimony.
Why is the persecution of the two Filipina nurses so important to the government? It is because the monopoly capitalist class needs desperately to hide its own responsibility for the deaths and near-deaths of the VA Hospital patients and to pin the blame on Filipino workers.
Aside from its absurd case against the nurses, the government does not even claim to explain the cause of the remaining large majority of breathing failures or the majority of deaths -- most of which took place while neither of the two nurses were on duty. What, in fact, did cause the unusually large number of breathing failures -- 51 -- to take place? They were caused by the decaying system of health-care under monopoly capitalism. Many doctors and nurses at the VA Hospital believe that contamination of the intravenous solution by the drug companies was the immediate cause. Hospital workers know that whole shipments of IV solution are frequently recalled by the drug companies when their contamination is exposed and that hospitals frequently cancel contracts with one drug company and switch to others for this reason. The admitted fact of the gross under-staffing at the Ann Arbor VA Hospital means a smaller likelihood of discovering such defects in time, and is a further indication of decaying health care conditions. But to admit such a thing would be too great a self indictment of the monopoly capitalist governmental bureaucracy, drug companies and health care system. So the state machine is blaming their own crimes on the workers.
Filipino workers are arbitrarily selected as the target because they are immigrants coming from an Asian country which is waging a vigorous national liberation struggle against U.S. imperialism. Immigrant workers, the state machine wrongly assumes, will be defenseless against attack. Public opinion is prepared against them by reciting the tiresome litany of the monopoly capitalists' campaign against immigrant workers, that "illegal aliens" are "taking American jobs". The Filipinos are from an Asian country and are therefore considered "non-white" by the American bourgeoisie. So they are subjected to the systematic racial discrimination the monopoly capitalists' practice to suppress and super-exploit certain sections of the workers and people and split them from the others. This practice is being intensified in the present economic crisis in order to split the workers and weaken their resistance to the capitalists' shifting the burden of the crisis onto their backs.
But most important, the U.S. imperialist government is attacking the two nurses to threaten and prepare public opinion against the Filipino people. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Filipino people are waging a vigorous national liberation struggle against U.S. imperialism and the fascist Marcos clique and Filipinos in the U.S. widely support this struggle. This threatens U.S. imperialism in one of its crucial spheres of domination, in particular its maintenance of the Clark Air Force Base and the Subic Bay Naval Base (and 20 or so smaller bases there) as bases for U.S. imperialist aggression. The revolutionary struggles of the people of Asia, especially since the stunning victories of the people of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia has driven U.S. imperialism back considerably in the area, and while the U.S. imperialists still strive to dominate all of Asia. Contention between U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism for world domination is heating up and both are scrambling for positions for a new world war. Just as the Panama Canal is militarily crucial for U.S. imperialism, so is the Philippines.
Thus the U.S. imperialists need to create public opinion among the American people against the Filipino people, so as to make it, easier to "justify" U.S. imperialist domination of the Philippines and weaken resistance against it. So the image is created in the bourgeois press here that two modest, quiet, hard-working and upstanding young Filipina immigrant nurses are actually -- beneath this deceptively mild exterior -- evil mass murderers. As an illustration of the effects of this campaign, Filipina nurses in other parts of the country have suddenly faced suspicion from patients influenced by the bourgeois propaganda.
Thus the monopoly capitalists and their government hope to kill two birds with one stone-- blame their criminal health care system on others and prepare national chauvinist public opinion against the Filipino people. But they cannot succeed in this vicious endeavor. Filipina Narciso and Leona Perez courageously stood up to the intimidation of the government, have refused to be pressured into making false confessions and have often joked about the flimsiness of the government's concocted case against them. Support for the two nurses has developed rapidly among the Filipino and American people, who are refusing to allow the U.S. imperialist state to disunite them. 150 people packed the court-room for their arraignment in Detroit in June, to show their support. Committees have formed in many cities throughout the U.S., in Canada and in the Philippines to support them. One committee, the Narciso-Perez Legal Defense Committee, based in Ann Arbor, which is made up of many Filipino immigrants and Americans, including university students, doctors and nurses from the VA Hospital, was instrumental in raising $15,000 bail money for the two women in just 24 hours. Many people offered to post their homes as bond to gain the release of the two women from jail. The Philippine Nurses' Association of Chicago has taken up the struggle, and the nurses have gained popular support from the Filipino people in the Philippines. Two Filipino lawyers flew to Michigan from the Philippines this July to express the support of the Filipino people and to offer their help on the legal front. The extent of the support the two nurses have gained has even forced some local bourgeois papers to moan about the flimsiness of the government's case against the two.
The American workers and other progressive people will not be fooled by the bourgeois government's campaign to "legally" lynch the two Filipina nurses, Filipina Narciso and Leona Perez, and to create national chauvinist public opinion against the Filipino people. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class and its state machine are the real poisoners of the VA Hospital patients and are the common enemy of both the Filipino and American people. The two peoples will unite to defend the nurses and in the great struggle to overthrow and eliminate U.S. imperialism. End.
Frequent vicious racist attacks are being organized against Black people in a number of sections of Chicago. The most publicized and intense area for these attacks is Marquette Park. This is a matter which is being widely discussed among the working people of Chicago these days.
The bourgeois news media has given widespread publicity to certain of the racist attacks which have been organized by the Nazis and the KKK. What the bourgeois media has completely covered over and mystified is that the source of these racist attacks is none other than the monopoly capitalist class. In particular, careful investigation reveals that behind the Nazis and KKK stand the whole government including the police, Daley's machine, and the courts, etc.
Racial discrimination and violent repression against the Afro-American people is an inherent feature of U.S. monopoly capitalism. Today, on top of what already exists, the U.S. monopoly capitalists and their government are consciously organizing further vicious attacks on the Afro-American people. They are organizing a section of white working people and youth to violently attack Afro-American people in an attempt to wipe out even the limited gains made by the Afro-American people in their struggle against racial discrimination, drive the Afro- American people back into the worst features of Jim Crow and rigid segregation, and further split the American working class. Racial discrimination and violent repression against the Afro-American people is inherent in the U.S. capitalist system. However, the monopoly capitalist government has even more reason to organize these attacks at this time -- to undermine the growing resistance by the working class to the capitalists shifting the burden of economic crisis onto the workers' backs and to the monopoly capitalists' preparations for a new world war. These attacks on Afro-American people are attacks on the whole working class and the whole working class has a duty to oppose them. White working people have a special responsibility to oppose these racist attacks in order to remove the centuries-old barriers of mistrust between Black and white workers caused by the capitalists' racial discrimination and violent repression against Black people.
The largest and most widely publicized of the recent racist attacks in Chicago was on Sunday, June 6. The Nazis and KKK mobilized around 200 white youth, according to the bourgeois press, for the purpose of attacking an expected march by a Black organization into the Marquette Park area to protest racial discrimination in housing. The Black people's demonstration was canceled that day, but this racist gang marauded through the streets of the area for several hours attacking Black people passing through the area. The Nazis have been visibly active in the Marquette Park area for a number of years spreading their vile fascist trash and organizing racist attacks. Last fall they organized racist gangs twice with the announced purpose of marching into the Black community. However, fearing the mighty anger of the Afro-American people against these avowed racists and fascists, the Nazis each time allowed their brother fascists the Chicago police to stop them before they got to the Black community.
FASCIST MOVEMENT AIMS TO PREVENT THE INTEGRATION OF HOUSING
Black families moving into houses on Bell, Oakley, and Claremont have long been subject to racist attacks, including fire-bombings, windows on their homes and cars being broken, and physical attacks. Sixty or more such attacks have taken place in the last 15 months, the bourgeois press has mostly ignored them, and the police have arrested almost no one for them.
The avowed aim of the racists and fascists is to prevent Black people from buying homes in the area or even passing through the area. All kinds of racist slanders against Black people are being spread to "justify" these racist outrages against the democratic rights of Black people.
The demand for integrated housing is a democratic demand of the Afro-American people.
The working class supports this demand because it is a matter of winning what limited democratic rights are possible for the Black people and the workers as a whole under the dictatorship of the monopoly capitalist class. The development of integration in housing furthers contact among the working class of different nationalities and assists them in uniting against their common enemy -- U.S. monopoly capitalism.
Such democratic demands can only be won in a very limited way under monopoly capitalist rule because of the vicious opposition of monopoly capitalism to their implementation. To even achieve them in a limited way sustained and vigorous struggle must be waged against the bourgeoisie and its state--police, courts, laws, etc.
Besides the racist attacks by the Nazis and the KKK, other fascist organizations are organizing meetings, circulating petitions and calling demonstrations to deny Black people the democratic right to live in certain areas or to attend integrated schools. These include the "civic" associations and "home-owners" associations. These organizations have as one of their main aims opposition to the democratic rights of Black people.
One organization, the Southwest Parish and Neighborhood Federation, a "liberal" organization, called a demonstration to demand that the capitalists who own Talman Federal Savings and Loan Association support its plan to maintain segregation in the Marquette Park neighborhood. This plan is to tear down the whole area between 63rd and 75th, from Western to Bell and replace it with "townhouses, apartments, and condominiums" that would act as a "buffer zone" between the Black West Englewood neighborhood and Marquette Park. It should be noted that the area to be tom down is the area where there is now integrated housing.
Demagogic propaganda is also being developed by some of these organizations and some media that the problem is the real estate brokers and the banks because they are "panic-peddling" in the neighborhood. In fact, the real reason these racists rant and rave about "panic-peddling" and "redlining" is to oppose Black people buying homes in the neighborhood. These racists talk about defending the "stability" of certain (segregated) neighborhoods by which they mean that Black people should keep out.
The government is also calling into being the fascist and racist anti-busing movement in Chicago and the same "civic" associations and "homeowners" associations are organizing this.
ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT
The first important point to notice about the racist attacks is that the government is organizing them. One fact that shown this is the way the police allow maximum opportunity for the racists to carry out their attacks. Nazi-organized youth were allowed to rampage through the Marquette Park area all afternoons Sunday, June 6, with only a token opposition by the police. Almost no suspects have been arrested in the numerous attacks on the Black people who live on Bell, Oakley and Claremont and on their homes and property. The police patrol the area quite heavily, but somehow they never seem to be around when one of these attacks takes place. Gangs of white racists are allowed to congregate on corners all day and half the night for the purpose of attacking Black people who might pass by, but any group of three or more Afro-Americans is immediately broken up. Police and other cogs in Daley's machine went around in bars and elsewhere organizing for white racists to attack any Black people in Marquette Park on July 4. PUSH wanted to have a picnic in the park on July 4 but the city refused to give them a permit. The police have organized meetings supposedly to "improve communications". In fact these meetings are forums for racist propaganda and for the racists to organize themselves. Only people who live in the 8th police district can attend these meetings. Only a very few Afro-American families live in this area. So in fact Afro-Americans are in practice barred from these meetings. Afro-Americans involved in patrolling the neighborhood against the racist attacks have actually been thrown out of a meeting for not living in the district. Daley and the courts appear to be "unable" to close down the Nazi storefront. These same Nazis have been organizing violent attacks on the Afro-American people for at least the last 10 years. They launched violent attacks on demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1966 to oppose racial discrimination in housing. After making a big noise about how he was going to close down the Nazi storefront, Daley let them slide with just a meaningless promise not to do the very things which are fundamental purposes for their organization-- that is not to openly call for violent attacks against Black people and not to participate in such attacks. The Nazis themselves admit that this does not really hamper them. And in fact this court-ordered "promise" has not stopped the attacks on Afro-Americans, their homes and property in the area.
Another aspect of the activity of the government and particularly the police, is to attempt to suppress resistance to these attacks by Afro-Americans. The police have harassed Black people who have been patrolling the area where attacks are taking place in cars with CB radios. They have many times arrested the leaders of demonstrations by Afro-American people to protest racial discrimination and violent repression in the Marquette Park area.
A brief look into the events at the time of the marches in 1966 will show further the role of the government and press. Some of these marches took place in the very same area of the city where racist attacks are concentrated at this time. The Nazis and other fascists organized violent attacks on the marches. The police did little and made few arrests. Spokesmen for the government and other bourgeois spokesmen were rabid. The Chicago Tribune printed an editorial frenziedly attacking the marches, claiming that the marches themselves were the cause of violent racist attacks -- that the marches were violating the "peace" of the neighborhoods they went through, and calling on the Black people to throw Dr. King out of town. When asked his view of this editorial Mayor Daley said "I'm for anything that will put an end to what is happening in our city". In a further editorial the Chicago Tribune said "Time and again the effects of 'peaceful' demonstrations here and in other cities, have been to arouse false hopes among Negroes and animosities between the white and Negro people." Really! According to the Chicago Tribune to oppose racial discrimination is to raise "false hopes" and opposition to racial discrimination is itself to be blamed for racial discrimination and violent repression.
The state machine, including the police, the courts., and Daley's apparatus, tries to maintain the fiction that it is some neutral body above the conflict, trying only to maintain "peace". This flimsy mask is ripped off when we look at their actual activity. On the one hand, the state machine gives maximum opportunity for the racists to organize attacks on Afro-American people and covertly encourages this. On the other hand Afro-Americans trying to resist these attacks or protest them are harassed and arrested. In fact this situation merely proves again that the state machine is the tool of the monopoly capitalist class to enforce its rule over the working and oppressed people of America. Racial discrimination and violent repression against Afro-American people is inherent in the monopoly capitalist system, and the monopoly capitalists are the ones who benefit from the extra load of oppression which has been placed on the backs of the Afro-American people and from the splitting of the working class.
NEWS MEDIA PLAYS ITS PART
The bourgeois news media, including the newspapers., TV and radio, have gone all out to serve their monopoly capitalist masters in promoting racist attacks and covering up the role of the state machine. The bourgeois media has given wade coverage to certain of the racist attacks which have taken place. They mystify the cause of this problem. On the one hand these mouthpieces for the bourgeoisie promote racist attacks by saying that the problem for white working people in Marquette Park is that Black people are moving into the area. On the other hand they picture the Nazis and other racists as somehow isolated and independent and even opposed to the state machine and the monopoly capitalists. The press also develops the propaganda that the reason why there are racist attacks now is because of the marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the area 10 years ago. Again turning truth on its head! -- Accusing opposition to racial discrimination as itself being the cause of racial discrimination and violent repression.
The bourgeois media did particularly vicious and wide scale propaganda justifying racism in reporting the murder of a white woman during the big storm of June 13th, 1976. It is well known that one of the results of the exploitation and oppression forced onto the masses of the people by monopoly capitalism in Chicago is the formation of gangs in oppressed communities. These gangs prey on the people of their community and are often directly linked to the state machine, as when large amounts of government money was given to the leaders of the Blackstone Rangers. The reason the government gave these gangs money was to bribe them into acting as police. Bribed gangs in Afro-American communities played an important role in suppressing the Afro-American people's rebellion in 1968.
The storm presented some of these gangs with new victims and resulted in the death of a woman and the wounding of her husband. This story was given wide publicity for several days straight in all the newspapers and on radio and TV for the sole purpose of whipping up racist hysteria against the Afro-American people.
This murder clearly resulted from the exploitation and oppression caused by the monopoly capitalist class. It is the monopoly capitalists who are the cause of poverty, oppression and decay and thus are the cause of social problems such as gang attacks. This murder can in no way be counted as equivalent to the large numbers of government-organized, explicitly racist attacks which have been directed towards Afro-American people, and which the bourgeois media have largely ignored.
The bourgeois media is working hand-in- love with the police department and the whole state machine to try to shift the blame for the racist attacks away from the avowed racists onto the Black people themselves. They are frantically pushing the absurd thesis that any organized opposition to these racist attacks by Black people such as a demonstration or even a picnic in Marquette Park is an "incitement" to the Nazis and their ilk. They compare opposition to the Nazis with the Nazis and say both are "inciting racial violence". This is turning truth on its head! The government has organized and instigated the racist movement for the express purpose of attacking Black people. It is the fascist nature of racists to fly into a rage when they are opposed.
POLITICAL DECEPTION USED TO SUPPRESS RESISTANCE AGAINST RACIST ATTACKS
Various spokesmen for the government, particularly various police officials, are pushing the treacherous proposal that the solution to this problem of racist attacks is for the police to enforce the law more vigorously. The bourgeois news media as well as various "liberal" spokesmen for the monopoly capitalists are also actively promoting this. These tricksters want to cover up the fact that the entire state machine of the monopoly capitalist class is behind the racist attacks. They want us to believe that the problem is a few "crazy" racists running around independent of the government and perhaps that some individual white policemen may not have carried out their duties properly. Therefore the police department says it will give "civil rights" training to its men and step up patrols in the areas where attacks have occurred. The "liberals" say that in addition the police patrols should be integrated.
All of this is sheer demagogy and deception. The problem does not originate with a handful of "independent" racists or with some individual racist police. It comes from the conscious plan of the monopoly capitalist state machine to step up racist attacks at this time. Already under the guise of opening up "communications" the police have organized two meetings as forums for racist propaganda and for the racists to organize themselves. The "beefed-up" police patrols are cruising right by gangs of white racists and breaking up any group of 3 or more Afro-American youth. The widely trumpeted grand jury "investigations" by State's Attorney Bernard Carey are an excuse to harass organizations standing up to the racists.
No cure will come from the gods of plague.
By putting forward this deceitful slogan of relying on the police to stop racist attacks, the spokesmen for monopoly capital are trying to prevent the Afro-American people from organizing to defend themselves. A tremendous amount of deceptive propaganda is being aimed at Black people to divert them from the path of relying on themselves for defense against racist attacks. However, all these tricks are doomed to failure. Already the Afro-American people have organized themselves in a number of ways for their self-protection, and they are bound to continue learning from their experience and developing stronger and stronger defense against racist attacks.
Nationally, as pointed out in the editorial, the state machine of the monopoly capitalists is organizing a fascist mass movement to violently attack Afro-American people. The monopoly capitalists are trying to use a section of white working people as cannon fodder to attack their Afro-American class brothers. This scheme is part of the overall drive by the monopoly capitalists to impose all-round fascism on the American people. However, wherever there is oppression there is resistance. Resistance to these racist attacks is already taking place. It is bound to grow. The monopoly capitalists are picking up a rock only to drop it on their own feet. This resistance to the government-organized fascist movement against the Afro-American people is bound to grow into a revolutionary torrent which will greatly advance the revolutionary struggle of the American working class to overthrow monopoly capital and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. End.
Peking, July 8 1976 (Hsinhua) -- The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland in an appeal on June 26 to the workers and other labouring people of Poland calls on them to keep vigilance, unite as one and rely on their own forces to answer the counter-revolutionary attack of the ruling circles with revolutionary counter-attack and consolidate by new struggles the victories already won.
The appeal says. "In the past five years, the Gierek clique has made a big step in the direction of turning Poland into a semi-colony of Russian social-imperialism. The country has been brought under the imperialist yoke of debts and turned into a cheap market of international capital. Bourgeois ideology and culture occupy a dominant position in the country."
Little more than five years have elapsed since the Polish ruling clique massacred coastal workers cold-bloodedly. the appeal says. This time, it was again the workers who were the first to plunge themselves into the battle against counter-revolutionary forces in defence of the interests of the working class and all the exploited labouring people. The proletariat has achieved a brilliant victory by this militant and resolute action. The decision on price increases fell flat even before it was put into effect.
The appeal says, "In 1970, Gomulka, acting like a thief, attempted to steal 15,000 million Zlotys from the workers' pockets through price increases, only to invite a slap in the face. Now Gierek produced a bill before the proletariat to the amount of 97,000 million Zlotys at one go, with the planned rise of the cost of living exceeding 16 per cent. Despite his unique demagogy, he received not money, but a slap in the face too.
Praising the great revolutionary victory won by the Polish workers, the appeal says. "The fight has not ended but this victory is of momentous significance. It show: the great might of the proletariat and its unity in the struggle and has made the whole working class truly mi militant and revolutionary. It has unmasked the Gierek bourgeois clique - showed up Gicrek's weakness and effectively shattered his prestige among the revolutionary masses. The bourgeoisie has been forced to retreat under the pressure of the revolutionary proletariat, but it has not given up its attempt for a second try. It has declared that a new proposal on price increases will be submitted.
The appeal points out. "The economic situation in Poland under the domination of the new bourgeois dictatorship cannot be improved but will only deteriorate year by year Therefore, if the working class should believe in the demagogic propaganda of the renegades to communism and act like meek sheep, the Gierek clique would seize everything you have mercilessly. It is neither a compromise nor class reconciliation, but a life-and-death class struggle waged by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie that will determine the final victory."
It continues. "At the very outset the Polish Communist Party called on the working class to keep vigilance and unite as one in the struggle. The proletariat can be emancipated only by itself! Therefore it should first of all rely on its own forces. As to counter-revolutionary onslaughts. the working class can only and should answer them with revolutionary counter-attacks. The working class, make revolution or remain penniless!" "The class enemy will retreat only in face of power. The Gierek clique was compelled to extend the period of price-freeze for basic foodstuffs absolutely not by any concern for the interests of the working class, but by the militancy and preparedness of the proletariat to wage a resolute struggle to defend its own rights."
The appeal calls on the Polish workers and other labouring people "to safeguard with full strength the victory already won".
The appeal says: "Only by organizing themselves in a revolutionary party will the Polish proletariat be able to become a powerful force. Only in this way it will be able not only to retaliate successfully the counter-revolutionary attack of the revisionists, but also to win final victory in combating the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and grasp in its own hands the whole political power."
(Editorial of Lok Awaz, newspaper of the East Indian community in Canada, July 9, 1976.)
It is one year since the declaration of the state of "National Emergency" by the Indira Gandhi government. The whole issue behind the imposition of open terroristic dictatorship has been made very clear by the practice of the Indian revolution in this one year.
Why did Indira Gandhi declare the "National Emergency" in June of last year? Was it because she merely wanted to suppress the agents of U.S. imperialism trying to overthrow her? Or was it that she simply wanted to escalate the suppression and exploitation of the Indian people ?
Both these answers are only partly correct, and do not deal with the principal reason as to why she imposed the open terroristic dictatorship. If she had the choice, she would have preferred to merrily carry on her brutal suppression and exploitation of the Indian people in the service of foreign imperialist powers, under the mask of "democracy". The reasons she had to shed the last vestiges of the facade of "democracy" and resort to open terror was that she could no longer rule India in the old way. The armed struggle of the peasantry under the leadership of CPI(ML) was intensifying in various parts of India. The spontaneous mass struggles were developing an extremely militant stance against which Indira Gandhi had to constantly dispatch her state forces hither and thither to keep control of the situation. The revolutionary situation in India as a whole was becoming too much for Indira Gandhi.
It is in recognition of this increasing resistance to her dark rule that she declared the "National Emergency". She was forced by the march of the Indian revolution to bare the real features of the Indian state -- a state of big landlords and foreign dependent capitalists, run in the service of foreign powers. In order to continue the exploitation and suppression of the Indian people in the service of foreign imperialist powers, the Indian ruling classes had to bare their true fascist features for every one to see and impose their open terroristic dictatorship. The declaration of "National Emergency" was an open admission of the fact that Indira Gandhi could continue her tottering regime's services to foreign imperialist powers only by resorting to naked suppression.
Another factor leading to the declaration of "National Emergency" is the split within the ruling classes. One section of the ruling classes led by Jaya Prakash Narayan, representing the U.S. imperialists, was using the mass discontent of the people as a vehicle to overthrow Indira Gandhi. They wanted to reverse the trend of increasing Soviet social-imperialist domination under Indira Gandhi's regime in favour of U.S. imperialist hegemony. This split and dogfight within the ruling classes on "which master to serve?" was getting in the way of intensified repression of the people. In order to facilitate the intensified looting and plunder of India by the Soviet Union, Indira Gandhi had to settle contradictions within the ruling class as a prerequisite to escalating the suppression of the people. The rounding up of U.S. imperialist agent J. P. Narayan and others was a result of this.
The imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people under one pretext or another is designed to terrorize the broad masses of people into subjugation so that Indira Gandhi can escalate the sell-out of the land and labour of the people to the Soviet social-imperialists and other foreign powers.
To say that Indira Gandhi declared the "National Emergency" merely to suppress the agents of U.S. imperialism would be to say that the dogfight within the ruling classes moves history forward. On the contrary, it is class struggle, the struggle of the toiling oppressed people against the exploiting classes, that moves history forward. The deepening split within the ruling classes is itself a result of the advancing revolutionary struggles of the Indian people.
Until 1967, the Congress party, a party of the big landlords and foreign dependent capitalists was able to carry on without severe dogfights within 'ts ranks. As long as the revisionists of the "C" PI ("Communist" Party of India) were having their heyday obstructing the advance of the Indian revolution with the poison of "parliamentary road to socialism", the Indian ruling classes carried on their exploitation and suppression of the Indian people with the mask of "democracy" hiding their ugly features. But with the Naxalbari armed peasant uprising led by Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the resounding defeat of the "parliamentary road to socialism" and the revisionism of "C"PI, and the big stride forward taken by the Indian revolution, the split within the ruling classes became sharper. The Congress party split in 1969. In the ensuing years, the Indian revolution has marched forward along the path shown by Naxalbari, along the way, deepening the split within the ruling classes and intensifying their dogfight. The declaration of the "National Emergency" showed that this contradiction within the ruling classes had become very deep, directly as a result of the revolutionary situation in India. The increasing disorder, chaos and confusion in the camp of the enemy is a testimony to the fact that the revolutionary situation in India is advancing rapidly.
It is incorrect to say that the declaration of "National Emergency" and the imposition of open terroristic dictatorship is "giving birth" to revolutionary struggles. This is turning truth on its head. It is the widespread mass struggles and the intensified Armed Agrarian Revolution led by CPI (ML) that "gave birth" to the "National Emergency". The imposition of naked terroristic dictatorship is in turn arousing even greater resistance.
Thus, the declaration of "National Emergency" by Indira Gandhi, the agent of Soviet social-imperialism, was principally due to the advance of the revolutionary struggles of the Indian people, far beyond her control.
This is also obvious from the fact that Indira Gandhi has been incessantly strengthening her armed forces. New jails are being built.
"Stepped up" drives against communist revolutionaries are being organized. Loud propaganda for the armed suppression of people's struggles is being done in various forms, in particular through the "debate" on "constitutional amendments". In this one year Indira Gandhi has made it amply clear that the principal reason behind the declaration of the "National Emergency" is the rising tide of the revolutionary struggles of the Indian people.
In this one year, she has also found out that even this open terroristic dictatorship is not going to save her tottering rule. End.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of Indira Gandhi's declaration of a state of "national emergency", the Indian Progressive Study Group organized a number of mass meetings Boston, New York City, Ithaca and New Haven to denounce the "national emergency" and support the struggle for People's Democratic India. The Indian Revolution is receiving increasing support. 100 people attended the meeting in New York. This meeting was co-sponsored by IPSG, COUSML(New York Branch) and Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Forum (Newark). Solidarity messages were also received from the Patriotic Front of Bangladesh Nationals Abroad, the Jamaican Youth Forces for National Liberation, the Proletariat Group of the Turkish People's Liberation Front, and from Comrade Tomas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) who received a prolonged standing ovation.
[Photo: UNITA's Comrade Tomas receives protracted standing ovation as he delivers solidarity message at New York City meeting, June 26.]
A Comment on the October League's Call for "Unity of Marxist-Leninists"
In the past year, the October League (Marxist-Leninist) has issued loud calls for "unity of Marxist-Leninists". At its third congress in July 1975, Mike Klonsky, OL Chairman, declared that all the conditions for the formation of a "Marxist-Leninist Party" were then in existence. Since then, two "unity" calls have been issued by OL and affiliated groups. A "congress" to form the "party" has been announced for later this year.
What is the nature of the "party" the October League is organizing? Will this bring about the long-cherished goal of the advanced workers, the re-creation of the revolutionary Party of the U.S. proletariat?
The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists holds that Marxist-Leninists should not cooperate with the OL's "party-building" efforts. Put most briefly, the OL's "party-building" efforts are not aimed at building a revolutionary proletarian Party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and proletarian internationalism, but at building an opportunist, bourgeois party based on social-chauvinism and neo-revisionism. The October League (Marxist-Leninist) does not even include Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in its seven "basic principles of unity" around which it "calls on all Marxist-Leninists to unite in the new party" (first "unity" call, November 1975). How can one be a Marxist- Leninist and "forget" Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought?
Frightened by the growing danger of world war between the two imperialist superpowers, Klonsky and the OL leaders have openly abandoned revolution and have sought refuge on the side of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie in its war preparations against its Russian rivals.
In their red, white and blue publications, the OL leaders call upon the U.S. Marxist-Leninists and working class to direct their "main blow" at the U.S.S.R. (The Call, May 31,1976) This means that the American working class should give up the proletarian revolution against its own oppressors, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class, and instead it should unite with them to jointly direct their "main blow" at the U.S.S.R. This is nothing but counter-revolutionary social-chauvinism (socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds). By giving up revolution in the U.S. the OL gives up the main contribution of die American workers to the world revolution the soul of proletarian internationalism. Should the American and Russian workers slaughter each other for the profits of the U.S. and Soviet monopoly bourgeoisie, thereby splitting the international proletariat? By diverting the U.S. Marxist-Leninist and workers' movements towards a foreign enemy, the social-chauvinism of the OL is a big help to the U.S. imperialists in their increasingly urgent war preparations.
It especially helps the "liberal" bourgeois Carter and the "pro-labor" Democratic Party in their task of deceiving the workers in order to "restore confidence" in the U.S. government so as to free the hands of the U.S. imperialists to wage aggressive war.
The social-chauvinism of the OL leaders is by no means accidental. They oppose Mao Tsetung Thought, oppose the revolutionary role of the U.S. working class and oppose the proletarian socialist character of the U.S. revolution. They capitulate to and ally themselves with the "liberal" bourgeoisie in the U.S. in its dogfights with the "conservative" bourgeoisie. Now they are simply allying with the whole U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie against its foreign rivals.
The OL leaders, who are now calling for" unity", have a long history of splitting the revolutionary people. They have never remolded their bourgeois world outlook since the days when, as leaders of Students for a Democratic Society, they worked to split and liquidate the youth and student movement of the 1960's. The formation of the October League in 1971-2 meant that Klonsky and company merely adapted their New Leftism, itself an offspring of revisionism and social-democracy, to Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tsetung Thought in order to oppose it. They waved the Red Book to hide the fact that they were opposing the Red Book. Their bourgeois world outlook and political line placed them in sharp opposition to the interests of the proletariat and oppressed people. As a result they always worked to split the revolutionary movement. They rebuffed every effort of the genuine Marxist-Leninists, led at first by the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) and later by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, to unite the Marxist-Leninists, opposing the call "Marxist-Leninists, Unite!" first raised by us in November 1972, as well as earlier attempts at principled unity. Instead, the OL leaders took up the Khruschevite revisionist line of labeling "ultra-leftism" as "the main danger" and incessantly slandered the genuine Marxist-Leninists as "ultra-leftists" and "CIA agents". In their present "party-building" efforts, the OL has continued on the same path, arbitrarily including some groups and excluding others, while giving up all proletarian principle. For such activities, the OL leaders have won for themselves a richly deserved reputation as big right-wing sectarians and splitters.
The COUSML is firmly in favor of unity, but only unity of Marxist-Leninists based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and proletarian internationalism. Only a Party built on this basis can lead the proletarian revolution in the U.S. and make a contribution to the world revolution. The party the October League leaders are building is a party to kiss the feet of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. The question raised by the OL's calls for "unity" is: Mao Tsetung Thought or social-chauvinism?
Let us look at the social-chauvinist and neo-revisionist stand of the October League on several fundamental questions of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
I. THE OL OPPOSES MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT AND REFUSES TO LEARN FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA
The Marxist-Leninist movement in the U.S. was re-invigorated in the 1960's. In the midst of the mass struggles, the thunder of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution brought the American revolutionaries Mao Tsetung Thought, the highest development of Marxism-Leninism, the Marxism-Leninism of our era. Just as the American revolutionaries of 1917-21 had rebelled against the old-style revisionism of the Second International, took up Leninism and built the Communist Party, so the revolutionaries of the 1960's rebelled against the Khruschevite revisionists who had destroyed the Communist Party, and against all their offspring, took up Mao Tsetung Thought and the lessons of the Cultural Revolution and set out to re-create the Communist Party of the American proletariat. This was the stand taken by the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) and other genuine Marxist-Leninists right from 1969. At that time to stand up for Mao Tsetung Thought meant to go against the heavy tide of reactionary New Leftism, trotskyism, social-democracy and revisionism.
The October League was formed in 1971-72. By this time the work of ACWM(M-L) had led to many victories for Mao Tsetung Thought in the U.S. In this situation the OL "boldly" declared itself, too, a "supporter" of Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution. But instead of taking up Mao Tsetung Thought and working to build the Party, the OL leaders were only adapting their New Leftism to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, waving Chairman Mao's red flag to oppose Chairman Mao's forces.
As soon as it was formed, the OL promptly "forgot" about Mao Tsetung Thought for four years. No articles appeared in OL's press discussing its significance. The name even disappeared and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought became only Marxism-Leninism. The OL Constitution was adopted in August 1975 and stated: "The October League takes Marxism-Leninism as the theoretical basis guiding its thinking." Then the OL dumped Marxism-Leninism altogether. In November 1975, OL issued its document "Marxist-Leninists Unite to Build the New Party", which claimed to put forward "a minimal basis for unity at the present time". Out of seven "points of unity", neither Marxism-Leninism nor Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is put forward as one of the "basic principles of unity around which we call on all Marxist-Leninists to unite in the new party." What a fraud! How can Marxist-Leninists even begin to think of uniting to build the Party if the party's principal point of unity, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is not even mentioned? How is it possible to consider someone a Marxist-Leninist if they "forget" the theoretical basis of our Party?
In fact, someone must have noticed the "ommission". Suddenly, in ensuing months, the editorial columns of The Call began to insist that the party would be built "on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought". And when the second "unity call" appeared in July 1976, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought had been inserted as the first on the list of points of unity. From "forgotten" to first principle -- it seems that to Klonsky and company Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is something that flies in and out the window as the need arises to restore their neo-revisionist camouflage. For the "party" Klonsky is building, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is an optional accessory, like a tape deck in a new car.
Thus, after pledging allegiance to Mao Tsetung Thought, for years OL does not mention or deal with it at all. When they decide to call for the "party", Marxism-Leninism is "forgotten" altogether. When reminded of the "omission", it shows up again. This is a sharp exposure of OL's bourgeois eclecticism. To them, the words "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought" mean nothing; the real ideas in their heads are bourgeois ideas. How, then, can the OL leaders claim to be uniting people "on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought" ? (Second "unity" call, July 1976).
We are living in one of those times in the U.S. of which Chairman Mao wrote:
"THE CREATION AND ADVOCACY OF REVOLUTIONARY THEORY PLAYS THE PRINCIPAL AND DECISIVE ROLE IN THOSE TIMES OF WHICH LENIN SAID, 'WITHOUT REVOLUTIONARY THEORY THERE CAN BE NO REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT.' " ("On Contradiction")
But the October League leaders are trying to kick aside Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
Further evidence of the OL leaders' hostility to Mao Tsetung Thought can be seen in their disdainful attitude toward the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. The COUSML and its predecessors have always held that adherence to Mao Tsetung Thought means learning and applying to U.S. conditions the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was an important sign that Marxism-Leninism had developed to a new stage, Mao Tsetung Thought. Mao Tsetung Thought and the experience of the Cultural Revolution are not only applicable to the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat in China but also to the class struggle under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the United States. In fact, they are obligatory for U.S. Marxist-Leninists to combat revisionism and build a genuinely revolutionary Party.
What is the OL's attitude toward the Cultural Revolution? Right now, because of the anti-revisionist upsurge in China, the OL leaders are mouthing "support" for it, saying it's fine for China. But they still persist in denying the application of its lessons to the U.S. The role of the Cultural Revolution in guiding and teaching the U.S. Marxist-Leninists is nowhere mentioned in the two "unity" calls issued by the OL, although these "calls" claim to give a summation of the recent development of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. And even in their latest articles on the anti-revisionist struggle in China, the OL leaders persist in treating the Cultural Revolution as something whose lessons apply only to socialist countries. Naturally, following this logic, what application could Mao Tsetung Thought have to U.S. conditions?
Even more revealing of OL's attitude is a comparison of the statements of the OL at the time of the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1973 with their statements made recently upon the overthrow of the capitalist-roader Teng Hsiao-ping. The 1973 article was OL's main statement on the class struggle in China until recently. In it the OL opposed the Tenth Congress's characterization of the bourgeois conspirator Lin Piao as an ultra-rightist, brazenly declaring that he was an "ultra-leftist". (Printed above OL's article in The Call, October 1973 were sections of the Congress's political report, carefully excerpted to leave out the denunciation of Lin Piao as an ultra-rightist. ) The "Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China" (adopted August 28,1973) spoke of "The ultra-Rightist nature of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique". But the OL wrote:
"The Congress took place in a great spirit of unity and marked the victory of the important struggle against the anti-Party group of ultra-'leftists' led by Lin Piao.... Lin's ultra-'left' line which attacked the united front strategy against imperialism, was defeated after the Ninth Party Congress. The Tenth Congress placed the task of criticizing this ultra-'left' line and rectifying the party's style of work above all else."
The purpose of OL's trickery was to use the anti-revisionist struggle in China to label the supporters of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung Thought in the U.S., such as the COUSML and its predecessors, as "ultra-leftists". This was a big part of OL's slander campaign against the genuine Marxist-Leninists, which continues to date. Here OL was claiming that Marxist-Leninists are people of the Lin Piao type, denounced by the Communist Party of China and Chairman Mao himself. The intent of this was to discredit the U.S. Marxist-Leninists and disrupt the process of building the Marxist-Leninist Party. In fact, it amounted to opposition to Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution.
The OL itself revealed the meaning of its 1973 statements in a recent article about the current class struggle in China, written by OL members after a visit there during the present struggle against the right-deviationist attempt by the capitalist-roaders to reverse the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution in order to restore capitalism. In this article, "Class Struggle the Key Link in Chinese Revolution" (The Call, May 1, 1976), the OL wrote:
"Teng described Lin as an 'ultra-leftist'. This was a way of covering up the fact that Lin was a rightist."
Here OL has exposed itself. It, too, in its 1973 statements, called Lin Piao an "ultra-leftist" to cover up the fact that he was a rightist. Why? To attack the Cultural Revolution, just like Teng Hsiao-ping, and to brand the genuine Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. as followers of Lin Piao and as "ultra-leftists" in order to hide OL's own rightism. Thus already in 1973 OL was allied with the bourgeoisie in the Communist Party of China to reverse the correct verdicts of the Chinese Party and people against right opportunism in order to promote their own revisionist line in the United States. The OL article then continues:
"Teng also attacked the Cultural Revolution as an 'ultra-left' mistake, claiming that it harmed 'experienced cadres' of the party."
Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao also attacked the Cultural Revolution as "ultra-left" (as did Brezhnev and Gus Hall). In an identical way the OL has always attacked the followers of Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution in the U.S. as "ultra-leftists". Thus the complete unity of thinking of the OL leaders with Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping is clear. It doesn't matter how many articles the OL leaders write and circulate internationally today "supporting" the current struggle against the Chinese capitalist-roaders, nor how much they drape themselves in the mantle of the greatest "supporters" of China. They cannot hide their long-standing practice of flagrantly distorting Chairman Mao's revolutionary line on the Cultural Revolution in order to support the capitalist-roaders in China and to attack the Marxist-Leninists in the U.S.
Thus Klonsky and the OL leaders are bitterly opposed to Mao Tsetung Thought and the experience of the Cultural Revolution. Refusing to learn from and practice them, they oppose the revolutionary theory of the modern proletariat.
II. SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM IN GLARING FORM
The October League's opposition to Mao Tsetung Thought leads it, in practice, to an alliance with the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. As we shall see in the third part of this article, the OL has always opposed the revolutionary role of the proletariat and allied itself with the "liberal" bourgeoisie, to fight its dog-fights for it. Now this class capitulationist stand has led the OL leaders to open opposition to revolution and an alliance with the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie against its Russian rivals.
Klonsky and the OL leaders see the growing preparations of the two imperialist superpowers for a reactionary world war between them. At this they go pale with fright, launch vicious propaganda for the liquidation of revolution and run for cover under the protection of Uncle Sam.
On May 20, 1970, in his famous statement on the world revolution, Chairman Mao wrote:
"THE DANGER OF A NEW WORLD WAR STILL EXISTS, AND THE PEOPLE OF ALL COUNTRIES MUST GET PREPARED, BUT REVOLUTION IS THE MAIN TREND IN THE WORLD TODAY." ("People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and all their Running Dogs")
This passage was quoted in the Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Chinese Party in 1973. But in his interview in The Call May 31, 1976, Klonsky declares:
"A few years ago, it was correct to say that 'revolution is the main trend in the world today'. Now this statement is no longer fully complete or applicable to the present conditions. Today both the factors for war and revolution are developing together. By saying that both factors are developing together, we are clearly emphasizing the growing danger of a war. In this way, we take note of the changes since 1970 and help people get prepared."
Klonsky's statement is that of a frightened philistine. To him the deepening crises and turbulent conflicts of the imperialist system which lead to war do not also lead to the outbreak of revolution. Instead, he claims that the growing danger of world war has liquidated revolution as the main trend in the world. We suppose that the outbreak of the reactionary imperialist World War I also prevented revolution rather than, as Stalin teaches:
"GATHERED ALL THESE CONTRADICTIONS INTO A SINGLE KNOT AND THREW THEM ON THE SCALES, THEREBY ACCELERATING AND FACILITATING THE REVOLUTIONARY BATTLES OF THE PROLETARIAT" (Foundations of Leninism).
If Lenin had followed Klonsky's logic, he would never have led the October Revolution. In fact, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought teaches that the present era, "THE ERA OF IMPERIALISM AND THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION", (Foundations of Leninism) is an era of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions, the era in which the imperialist system is being consumed in the fires of world proletarian socialist revolution. The approach of world war means the heightening of all the contradictions of imperialism, it means the approach of revolution. As Chairman Mao has pointed out:
"THE FIRST WORLD WAR WAS FOLLOWED BY THE BIRTH OF THE SOVIET UNION WITH A POPULATION OF 200 MILLION. THE SECOND WORLD WAR WAS FOLLOWED BY THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOCIALIST CAMP WITH A COMBINED POPULATION OF 900 MILLION. IF THE IMPERIALISTS INSIST ON LAUNCHING A THIRD WORLD WAR, IT IS CERTAIN THAT SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION MORE WILL TURN TO SOCIALISM, AND THEN THERE WILL NOT BE MUCH ROOM LEFT ON EARTH FOR THE IMPERIALISTS; IT IS ALSO LIKELY THAT THE WHOLE STRUCTURE OF IMPERIALISM WILL COLLAPSE." ("On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People")
Despite the degeneration of the Soviet Union into a social-imperialist superpower since Chairman Mao made this statement in 1957, his words ring true today as well. Klonsky is dreaming of a "peaceful transition to socialism", a "revolution" without stormy conflicts, violence, bloodshed and bitter self-sacrifice. Such a "revolution" has never existed and never will. In fact there is no essential difference between Klonsky's line and that of the renegade Khrushchev, who babbled that "a single spark can start a conflagration" and demanded that the oppressed nations and peoples give up their revolutionary struggles and lay down their arms for fear of starting a world war. Both Klonsky and Khruschev denied revolution out of terror at the threat of world war, out of fear of the stormy class struggle. They are like the frightened sparrow in Chairman Mao's poem who, seeing "THE WORLD BEING TURNED UPSIDE DOWN" by the revolutionary masses, chirped:
"O I WANT TO FLIT AND FLY AWAY... TO A JEWELLED PALACE IN ELFLAND'S HILLS... THERE'LL BE PLENTY TO EAT, POTATOES PIPING HOT WITH BEEF THROWN IN." (Reprinted from Peking Review, January 2,1976) (This reference to Khruschev's goulash communism was echoed recently by OL leader Sherman Miller, who declared that revolution is "permanent bread and butter". In answering an objection that OL is not sufficiently concerned with bread and butter, Miller declared: "We are for bread and butter, too, but we are for permanent bread and butter, for revolution." (The Call, December 1975) Frightened by war, the OL wants goulash -- permanent goulash. This is Khruschevite revisionism.)
What attitude should the Marxist-Leninists take towards the growing war danger? Chairman Mao defined the attitude of Marxist-Leninists towards the possibility of world war:
"WITH REGARDS TO A WORLD WAR, THERE ARE BUT TWO POSSIBILITIES: EITHER WAR WILL GIVE RISE TO REVOLUTION, OR REVOLUTION WILL PREVENT THE WAR." (Quoted in the "Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China", adopted April 14, 1969.)
Lenin showed long ago that in the event of an imperialist war, the proletariat of an imperialist country must prepare to wage a civil war to overthrow "its own" bourgeoisie. Do Klonsky and the OL follow this Leninist line? Quite the opposite. They oppose social revolution as the means to prevent the war or to oppose the war if it comes. Frightened by the war danger, the OL leaders take refuge at the feet of the U.S. imperialists and call on the American workers to unite with the U.S. bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union. Thus the OL attempts to liquidate the cause of proletarian revolution in the U.S. and helps prepare conditions for a reactionary world war between the superpowers.
In his above-mentioned interview, Klonsky declares that the U.S. Marxist-Leninists and proletariat must direct their "main blow" at the U.S.S.R. He presents this as follows:
"Call: What does it mean for us to direct our main blow at the U.S.S.R.?
"MK: It means that through our propaganda we must work even harder to expose the aggressive imperialist nature of the Soviet Union, to show that it is a capitalist dictatorship, a fascist dictatorship of the Hitler type. Secondly, we must expose and work to smash the revisionist Communist Party USA, which is nothing but a reactionary 'fifth column' of the Soviet Union. We must intensify our exposures of this party and show it for what it is -- an imperialist party -- and not a communist party at all.
"It also means that we must firmly oppose those in the U.S. who appease or conciliate to Soviet social-imperialism and who thereby bring on the war that much sooner."
(Obviously Klonsky has given quite a bit of thought to "directing our main blow" at another imperialist powder.) And in an article on the editorial page of The Call entitled "Hinton's Folly -- A 'Neutral' U.S. Imperialism" (The Call, August 2, 1976), the OL writes:
"The correct policy is to build the international united front against imperialism headed by both superpowers. In the course of building this united front, it is also correct and essential to deal the main blow at the Soviet Union...In order to expose the Soviet Union and strengthen vigilance against it, we must deal it the main blow."
Later in both the interview and the article, Klonsky and the OL themselves admit that a reactionary inter-imperialist world war is the kind of war which is brewing. Phrases are tossed out about overthrowing one's "own" bourgeoisie, turning imperialist war into civil war, etc. Then where is the justification for the line of directing the "main blow'" at the bourgeoisie or a section of it. The October League's thesis of "independence and initiative" from, and not "relying on", the bourgeoisie under U.S. conditions simply means a reactionary alliance with one section of the monopoly bourgeoisie against another (or with the U.S. bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie of other countries). Such a struggle sacrifices the cause of the workers for the bourgeoisie's interests. Thus the OL's basic line is to tie the proletariat to the apron-strings of the bourgeoisie and liquidate its revolution altogether. Its "united front against imperialism" is therefore in fact a united front with imperialism-- either with one section of the imperialist bourgeoisie, or, at present, with the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie against the Russians.
Let us see how the OL presents this class capitulationism. In the very first issue of "The Call", in the October 1972 issue, in an article called "Should we Support McGovern?", the OL leaders called on the anti-war movement not to "rely on" the Nixon or McGovern groups of capitalist politicians and said that the people "must keep the initiative in their own hands" in order to successfully struggle against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression against Viet Nam. (At that time the ACWM(M-L) ran a campaign calling on the masses: "DON'T VOTE -- THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!", sharply opposing the entire monopoly capitalist class including the imperialist pacifism of McGovern, who was merely preparing the ground for U.S. imperialism to wage new wars.)
OL's capitulationist line was more fully revealed in the next issue of The Call. Regarding "inter-capitalist contradictions" such as those between McGovern and Nixon in the 1972 election, they quote Chairman Mao in "Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism" where he writes about seizing the opportunity to
"TURN TO GOOD ACCOUNT ALL SUCH FIGHTS, RIFTS AND CONTRADICTIONS IN THE ENEMY CAMP AND TURN THEM AGAINST OUR PRESENT MAIN ENEMY."
(OL leaves out the word "PRESENT".) The OL then adds:
"This means that at times we most certainly would participate in capitalist elections in order to utilize such rifts and fights, even at times supporting one capitalist party against another."
Thus, what OL is saying is that one of the two capitalist parties in the bourgeois elections may be the "MAIN ENEMY". OL's conclusion is based on a mechanical misapplication (and misquoting) of Chairman Mao's statements. When Chairman Mao spoke of "OUR PRESENT MAIN ENEMY", he was writing about the conditions of a semi-colonial country, China, which was then threatened with outright colonialism by the Japanese invasion. As a result, the Japanese imperialists and the clique of Chinese reactionaries allied with Japan became the "PRESENT MAIN ENEMY" or target of the Chinese people, while the other imperialists and their comprador cliques receded temporarily into a secondary position and the rifts between them and the Japanese collaborators could be utilized for the revolution. But the United States is a highly developed imperialist superpower. It is class capitulationism to declare that one section or another of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class is "THE PRESENT MAIN ENEMY" and that one can "support one capitalist party against the other". The entire monopoly capitalist class is the target of the revolution.
C. This United Front in Action: OL and Watergate
OL's basic line of alliance with one section of the U.S. monopoly bourgeoisie against another was demonstrated most clearly by their attitude to Watergate. In the Watergate crisis, OL gave the call "Dump Nixon -- Stop the Fascist Tide!" and organized for the proletariat to back the "liberal" bourgeoisie in its fight with the "conservative" bourgeoisie. They described Watergate as a big development of fascism, when in reality it was a dogfight among the bourgeoisie, in the course of which a tiny fraction of the fascist activities of the "conservative" section of the bourgeoisie (equaled by the "liberals") was revealed by the "liberals" in order to mobilize the people to support one side against the other. In fact the monopoly capitalists at the time of Watergate were faced with economic difficulties and the necessity to prepare for war with Soviet social-imperialism. Due to their crimes against the Indochinese people and against the American people's mass movements, Nixon and the open fascists were too exposed in the eyes of the masses to perform this task well. A section of monopoly capital saw the need to remove them and replace them with the "liberals" and social- democrats of the Democratic Party, masters of political deception, capable of hiding their fascism under demagogic "left" and "pro-labor" phrases so as to deceive the workers and oppressed people. This process is continuing with the recent resurgence of the Democratic Party. In addition, the monopoly capitalists wanted to end the open rift in their ranks quickly, lest the fascist character of the "liberals" be revealed by the supporters of Nixon. The line of the "liberal" bourgeoisie was that Nixon was the issue, not fascism.
The OL went blindly along with the reactionary tide of the "liberal" bourgeoisie and worked to enlist the masses to "Dump Nixon" as quickly as possible. To cover up its betrayal of the proletariat, OL babbled continuously about "independence and initiative" of the proletariat, "developing the fighting capacity" of the working class and people, not "relying on" Congress, etc., etc. Let us look more closely at this.
In the August 1973 Call, in an article "Kennedy Fronts for Wallace, Tapes will Reveal Nixon's Fascist Role", the OL admitted that the activities of Nixon against his political opponents, revealed in Watergate, represented a contradiction among the bourgeoisie. Yet the OL said these activities have created "the basis for the broadest people's movement yet" (our emphasis--ed") The OL went on to complain that "the struggle has been confined to the ranks of the politicians with the masses of people playing the role of spectators in front of their TV's, etc." The article added: "relying on Kennedy and the Democratic Party is no way to fight Watergate." So clearly OL's basic line was to fight "Watergate", i.e., one section of the bourgeoisie, and not the whole bourgeoisie, in other words, to serve the interests of the "liberal" bourgeoisie.
At its Second "Labor" Conference, in November, 1973, OL raised the slogan "Dump Nixon -- Stop the Fascist Tide!", Klonsky commented that "while maintaining their independence and initiative", "the communists cannot stand on the sidelines of this important anti-fascist struggle. " (The Call, December 1973) A Call editorial in the same issue said:
"While playing a leading role in the struggle to dump Nixon and stop the fascist offensive, the revolutionary forces have a special responsibility within this struggle. This responsibility is to fight for working class leadership and to raise the level of consciousness and fighting capacity of the masses of people."
Hence OL's concern at the time was simply that the masses were not sufficiently drawn into the bourgeoisie's fight. They went on to say:
"The real issue is the stemming of the fascist offensive which Nixon has launched against the working and oppressed people as well as his own capitalist political opponents."
Thus OL was admittedly out to defend Nixon's "capitalist political opponents", the "liberal" bourgeoisie! This is a real admission of how the OL went along with the main current among the bourgeoisie and tried to tie the proletariat to its apron-strings. In a lead article in the February 1974 Call, OL made its famous complaint that Congress stands "paralyzed". Speaking of their "Dump Nixon!" demonstrations, they wrote:
"By setting a tone of militant action and united front participation, these demonstrations will bring the question of the political struggle against Nixon's anti-people policies into the hands of the people themselves and will take the initiative out of the hands of the liberal politicians and their 'left' supporters who stand paralyzed for fear of hurting the 'unity of the nation'."
Jilted by the "liberals", the OL sings a song of unrequited love.
When Nixon was dumped in August 1974, and OL's slogan had been carried out by the bourgeoisie, the OL was put in an embarrassing position. Did "dumping" Nixon "stop the fascist tide", as the OL had claimed it would, or not? Let the OL leaders answer. On the one hand, the OL wrote (The Call, September 1974):
"The divisions within the ruling class which led to Nixon's resignation have never been over the real questions which confront the majority of the people. They fight over what is best for capitalism. Democracy exists in this country within the limits of this question and only for the capitalists themselves. It was only when Nixon was exposed for his violations of this capitalist code of ethics that the majority of the ruling class felt that he weakened their system too much to continue on as president."
And after speaking of "the rising tide of fascism" (our emphasis -- ed.), the OL leaders orate:
"Have the basic conditions of inflation, war and increasing impoverishment of the millions of poor and working people in this country changed or will they change with the departure of Nixon? No! Will Nixon's leaving mean a government assault against discrimination of minorities and for full democratic rights to all people? No!"
(Thank you for this useful information, Mr. Klonsky.) Thus, according to the OL itself, Nixon was dumped by the bourgeoisie in order to strengthen its hand. But on the other hand, the OL finds the "justification" for its line in the following:
"The resignation of Nixon did objectively weaken the capitalist offensive and therefore must be seen as a concession by the ruling class and a victory for the people's cause."
Here the OL is talking out of both sides of its mouth. Having said that "dumping" Nixon would "stop the fascist tide", they then admit that it strengthened the bourgeoisie and that the "tide" of fascism is "rising". But at the same time they claim it was a "concession" to the masses. And after Nixon's "dumping" the OL promptly forgot its admonition about the "rising tide of fascism" and has long since abandoned any talk about "stopping" any such "tide" at all. Today the bourgeoisie is flaunting the fact that the FBI and CIA are still carrying out their fascist activities, the all-round fascization of U.S. society has actually been stepped up, and all this has a more deceptive, "liberal" cover than Nixon could give it.
Thus, as soon as the "liberal" bourgeoisie had achieved its ends and gotten Nixon out, the OL stopped its "fight" against the "fascist tide" and forgot the whole affair. This exposes clearly the fact that the OL leaders were not interested in fighting the fascism of the monopoly bourgeoisie, represented in part by Nixon, but merely in doing the "liberals" bidding in "dumping" Nixon. To the OL, as to the "liberals", "fascism" meant "Nixon" and nothing else, so once Nixon was gone, fascism too was supposed to be eliminated. Chairman Mao wrote in his May 20, 1970 statement that "THE FASCIST RULE IN THE UNITED STATES WILL INEVITABLY BE DEFEATED." The OL believes this took place with the dumping of Nixon. Thus, in their eyes, not only is fascism gone, but the "liberal" bourgeoisie is an anti-fascist force!
The only difference between the OL line on Watergate ("Dump Nixon -- Stop the Fascist Tide!") and the line of the revisionist "Communist" Party USA and "Communist" League ("New Elections") (and that of the "liberal" bourgeoisie itself -- impeachment) was a difference on tactics. OL favored a more militant reformism, drawing the masses into action in the streets for the bourgeoisie, while "C"PUSA and "C"L were content to let the "liberals" carry the ball alone. Thus Watergate revealed OL's class capitulationism fully. The OL tried to use the masses just hatred for Nixon's fascism to serve the dogfights of the bourgeoisie. A correct policy would have been to utilize this hatred to expose the whole bourgeoisie, especially combating the trend of the "liberals". The COUSML alone upheld the correct line of exposing and condemning the entire monopoly bourgeoisie in Watergate, exposing the tactics of both sections.
Hence the OL's class capitulationist line on Watergate assisted the "liberal" bourgeoisie in its dogfight against its rivals and aided the overall development of fascism and war preparations by U.S. imperialism.
D. Collaborating with the "Liberal" Bourgeoisie Continues to Date
The OL's class capitulationist line has continued to the present. In its January 1976 New Year's Statement (The Call, January 1976) the OL wrote:
"The U.S. imperialist ruling class is tom by internal contradictions. All tendencies within it are reactionary and antagonistic to the interests of the workers and oppressed minorities. A definite fascist tendency within the big bourgeoisie exists and is the chief financial and political prop of the revived segregationist agitation... Revolutionaries should continue to make use of the internal contradictions between imperialist factions, strengthen their independence and initiative and take the lead in combating segregationist and other fascist moves."
Thus OL should "take the lead" away from the "liberal" bourgeoisie in a supposedly common struggle against "segregationist and other fascist moves".
Or take OL's attitude towards the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, which the June 24,1976, Workers' Advocate exposed as an attack on the working class by the "friends of labor". The Humphrey-Hawkins Bill would impose forced labor on welfare and unemployment compensation recipients at minimum wages, would prepare conditions for wage-price controls and would further fascize the trade union apparatus by bringing the labor bureaucrats into a "national economic planning" apparatus with the bourgeoisie and its state to "coordinate" production and wages, etc. But the OL regards the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill not as a fascist attack on the workers but as a mere "fraud", "an effort to sidetrack the people's anger", having "no teeth in it". The OL declares that its "National Fight Back Organization" "has relied on militant actions to demand jobs from the capitalists, rather than relying on the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill or other legislation" (May 24, 1976, The Call). (Perhaps the OL is demanding some "teeth" be added to this vicious bill...)
Thus the October League betrays the revolutionary class struggle of the U.S. working class against the monopoly capitalist class and tries to tie it to the apron-strings of one monopoly capitalist faction against another. It seems that OL's "united front against imperialism", which it defends as a united front against monopoly capitalism (since imperialism is monopoly capitalism), turns out to be merely a deceptive phrase hiding an alliance with the bourgeoisie (within which they have "independence and initiative" of course). This is class capitulationism.
* * * *
All Marxist-Leninists should resolutely uphold Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, learn from the negative example of the October League and resolutely oppose opportunism.
(Further articles on the line of the October League will appear in coming issues of TheWorkers' Advocate.) End.
PART 1
In the past year Soviet social-imperialism has opened another offensive against Mao Tsetung Thought and the international communist movement, as well as stepping up its aggression around the world. With the attempt of Russian imperialism to take over Portugal via its fifth column, the revisionist party (treacherously calling itself "Communist') of Portugal, and especially with the Soviet-Cuban invasion of Angola, international opportunism has again revealed its rotten nature, acting as the public-relations spokesmen for this Soviet aggression. Thus international opportunism has once again capitulated to the world system of imperialism (of which social-imperialism is one part). International opportunism, following the baton of Brezhnev and Kosygin, created a "debate" on which liberation organization in Angola was "socialist" and which "reactionary", refused to support the national liberation struggle of the Angolan people as a whole and in fact vilified it with the aid of slanders, rumors and gossip from the Soviet KGB rumor-mills. And today the opportunists see fit to be silent on the continuing heroic resistance of the Angolan people led by UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to the Soviet-Cuban army of occupation during the on-going SECOND ANTI-COLONIAL WAR OF THE ANGOLAN PEOPLE.
The revisionist "independent radical newsweekly" the Guardian has earned particular notoriety with its support for Soviet domination of Portugal and Angola and its repetition of Hitlerite lies against the Angolan people. The Guardian has shamelessly used all the tools of revisionist yellow journalism, relying on emotionalism, sensational lies concocted by the KGB and CIA, forged documents, saying one thing today and another tomorrow, making rabid chauvinist attacks on communists as "flunkeys", etc. The Guardian has drawn out the political implications of its stand on Angola very clearly so all can see by coupling its coverage of Angola with a campaign to "criticize" China and replace Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought by "independent radicalism". The Guardian is thus seeking to undo the gains of the last decade of revolutionary struggles in the U.S., during which the clearest and most consistent activists came to the view that only Mao Tsetung Thought can light the path forward for the American revolution. The Guardian will thus serve as a useful teacher by negative example in learning about the nature of international opportunism and revisionism. With this article The Workers' Advocate is beginning a series to take up in detail the features of the pro imperialist stand of the Guardian.
BEHIND THE "DEBATE" SUPPOSEDLY ON "CHINA!S FOREIGN POLICY" STANDS A VILE PLOT AIMED AGAINST INVINCIBLE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT
In order to attack People's China and communism, the Guardian has started a "debate" on "China's Foreign Policy", mainly centered on Angola. Imagine that! The Soviet-Cuban invaders trample Angolan soil, massacre the Angolan people with rockets, jet planes and artillery, and set up a neo-colonial government of national betrayal in Luanda. The Soviet-Cuban- MPLA neo-colonial government makes a deal with the racist and fascist Union of South Africa and promises to protect South African interests in the Cunene Dam and to hunt down Namibian freedom fighters in Southern Angola. And the issue for the Guardian is... China's (not Russia's) foreign policy! China's supposed "mistakes" and not the brutal Soviet-Cuban aggression! Why the Guardian is behaving just like the rabid American chauvinists and anti-communists who disrupt mass meetings denouncing U.S. aggression with shouts of "What about Tibet!" But this is not all. Having itself defined the subject of its attention as "China's Foreign Policy", the Guardian then refuses to discuss this question and instead promotes a stream of gossip, slanders, lies and sheer fabrications. The Guardian wishes to totally mystify what proletarian internationalism is in order to be able to present the Soviet fascist aggression as fraternal "aid" and as "internationalism". Actually the basis of China's consistent foreign policy has been repeatedly stated in public documents over the years -- but you won't find it in the pages of the Guardian. (1) The Guardian, having insisted on opening a "debate" on "China's Foreign Policy" rather than denouncing Soviet aggression, is hiding the revolutionary line of Chairman Mao on foreign affairs. This exposes the desire of the Guardian to throw mud at Mao Tsetung Thought.
"Independent Radicalism" Means Slavish Revisionism
The Guardian wishes to replace Mao Tsetung Thought with "independent radicalism". Guardian Executive Editor Irwin Silber believes in the revisionist theory of "polycentrism" (many centers, i. e. no center) and he writes of "... the absence of an agreed-upon center to the world revolutionary movement..." (2) When the politically experienced Guardian talks of "independence" it is just political deception. The Guardian says that it is "among China's foremost supporters" (3) while actually it is attacking China and Chairman Mao, and similarly it says on every masthead that it is "independent" while actually it is a public relations agent for Soviet social-imperialism and follows Khrushchovite revisionism. In today's world, there are two forces in contention. On one side are the forces of world imperialism. These forces have definite leadership and are led by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. On the other side are the forces of the world proletarian socialist revolution. These forces include the socialist countries, the proletarian movements in the capitalist and revisionist countries, and the national liberation movement of the oppressed nations. These forces also have definite leadership. The international communist movement is leading the forces of socialism, and it is led by the Communist Party of China and Chairman Mao and the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha.This movement is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. Comrade Enver Hoxha has put it very well:
"The Albanian people and all the people of the world nurture an ardent love and place deep trust in great socialist China, in her glorious Party and in Mao Tsetung, the great and beloved leader not only of the Chinese people and communists, but also the dear and respected leader of all the peoples and communists of the world. This infuriates modern revisionism which, with the Moscow renegades; at its head, and in collusion with US imperialism, is waging a fierce and diabolical struggle to oppose the peoples and China. The greatest enemy of US imperialism and of Soviet social-imperialism are the peoples of the world, with great Mao Tsetung's China at the head. The struggle is being waged between freedom and socialism on the one hand, and slavery and aggressive imperialism of the two superpowers, on the other.
"All the peoples of the world have pinned their hopes of liberation, independence and well-being on their efforts and on Mao's China.... The peoples of the world who feel and suffer on their back the oppression of the two superpowers, see and feel that Mao Tsetung, the great Marxist-Leninist, is on their side, they see socialist China stands them in good stead with sincerity and fraternal love.... Old and young should feel and realize that socialism, revolution, the liberation of the peoples make headway because great socialist China marches unswervingly along this road." (4)
The Guardian is part of the fierce and diabolical struggle that Comrade Hoxha denounces, a struggle by modern revisionism in collusion with U.S. imperialism to oppose the peoples and China. The Guardian nourishes bitter hatred against People's China and Chairman Mao, and is too much of a great-power chauvinist to even take notice of "tiny" Albania!
What does the Guardian's "independence" mean in practice? Another glance at the content of the witches' brew of lies and concoctions that the Guardian calls a "debate" on "China's Foreign Policy will be instructive. The Guardian officially opened this "debate" in its issue of May 5, 1976 with the two sides represented by W. Burchett and W. Hinton. The two positions were: capitulate to Soviet social-imperialism under the hoax that U.S. imperialism is "the main enemy" or capitulate to U.S. imperialism under the hoax that Soviet social-imperialism is "the main enemy". The Guardian promotes this "debate" because both positions are basically consistent with the Guardian's outlook. For a political prostitute like the Guardian, the only "real" debate is which imperialist power to sell out to. The two "sides" in this debate are not fundamentally contradictory, but are simply aspects of the same position of capitulation to world imperialism. It is very significant that both champions of capitulation, with which the Guardian starts its debate, advocate that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was "ultra-left". It simply never enters the minds of these revisionist slaves to take the side of freedom and socialism -- revolution is "ultra-left" and there only remains the eminently practical business of calculating whose imperialist Patron Saint offers the best deal! The essence of the campaign against China and Mao Tsetung Thought is capitulation to imperialism.
A CONSISTENT HISTORY OF REVISIONISM
The Guardian's "debate" on China has revealed its anti-communist, rotten nature to many activists. This anti-communism is of long-standing. The Guardian has always apologized for Soviet social-imperialism on all crucial issues. The Guardian has a consistent history of Khrushchovite revisionism and capitulation to U.S. imperialism. For reasons of lack of space and time, we will restrict ourselves to the period after April 29, 1967 when the Guardian re-organized itself into an "independent radical newsweekly". What role has the Guardian played since then?
During the '60's many revolutionary mass movements surged forward. There was the youth and student movement, the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression, the movement against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Viet Nam, the workers movement against capitalist exploitation, and others. But there was tremendous confusion on all fundamental questions. There was no communist party to provide proletarian leadership to the mass movements: the so-called "Communist" Party had long-since degenerated into a revisionist, bourgeois party, and the Progressive Labor Party, which was the first anti-revisionist center in the U.S., proved unable to rise to the tasks before it and degenerated into the Trotskyite sect it is today. In 1967 the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution broke out in China and brought the brilliance of Marxism- Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the whole world. The question of which path forward for the American revolution, of whether there should be a real Communist Party or not in America and whether Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought should be its theoretical foundation, was agitating the minds of the revolutionary activists. There was sharp struggle on these questions and it was not until 1969 that the First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists (the Regina Conference of May 1969) ushered in the period of applying the lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the U.S., and gave rise to the first national center for the dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), a predecessor of the COUSML.
The Guardian fought as hard as it could on the question of what path for the revolution. It promoted Castro and Castroism (Guevara-ism, Debrayism) as the new "revolutionary" theory and alternative to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. During the late '60's the Guardian printed dozens upon dozens of articles promoting Castroism. In 1967 in a "Special Issue" on Cuba and Castroism the Guardian wrote:
"For the peoples of Latin America, the capitals of the world -- of the Third World where oppression confronts aspiration -- are Havana and Hanoi." (5)
In 1968 Castro praised the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, an aggression so blatant that even most of the "pro-Soviet' revisionist parties denounced it. The Guardian lavished praise on this shameful act of Castro's and slandered the heroic Cuban people in an article entitled "Cubans proud of Fidel's Czech stand". (6) Since Castro had betrayed the Cuban people and turned Cuba into a client-state of the Soviet New Tsars, the Guardian praised him as "independent" and printed an article on Cuban-Soviet relations entitled "Cuba displays independence" in which they wrote "They (Cuba and the New Tsars of the USSR -- ed.) have created the type of relationship that is honest and mature, rejecting both slavishness and enmity." (7) So to see what "independence" means to the Guardian one need only look at Castro! Actually, of course, Castroism is not an "independent" ideology in the least. Castroism is a liberal bourgeois ideology that is utilized by the Soviet New Tsars to undermine Marxism-Leninism. Castro himself is just a miserable lackey and fawning yes-man of Soviet social-imperialism. Since Khrushchovite revisionism was getting exposed and the reformism and parliamentary cretinism of the revisionist parties was getting notorious, the New Tsars needed a militant-sounding front. The mystique of Castroism served their purposes. Castro had seized power through armed struggle (although not by people's war) and talked much about armed struggle; in this way Castro had gained prestige among many activists. Yet as Castro became a traitor to the Cuban people and betrayed the Cuban revolution, he broke relations with the Marxist-Leninists in Latin America and collaborated with all the revisionist, pro-Soviet parties that opposed armed struggle. Castro's betrayal was so thorough that he forced Che Guevara to rely on the revisionist parties in Latin America when Che Guevara started his guerrilla band in Bolivia. The revisionist parties, following their long-standing practice of "peaceful" betrayal of the people, betrayed information about Guevara to the political police and CIA, and this was the immediate reason for Guevara's tragic martyrdom. (8) Thus in promoting Castroism the Guardian was doing the dirty work for the Soviet revisionists in their campaign against Mao Tsetung Thought, China and communism.
While the Guardian enthusiastically obeyed the Soviet baton and promoted Castroism, it printed only a small handful of articles about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, refused to print the important statements of Chairman Mao, and viciously slandered Mao Tsetung Thought and People's China. Irwin Silber poured forth his hatred for communism and clearly showed the connection between following Soviet revisionism and being an American great-power chauvinist by writing the following in 1968:
"It has become almost fashionable on the left in recent years to dismiss the Chinese revolution. We know that ping-pong matches aren't won by reading the appropriate passages from The Thought of Chairman Mao. Certainly, based on the little we know of the cultural revolution in China, there seems to be a senseless deification of Chairman Mao and an attack on the individuality of the human being which is a violation of both our western and our own revolutionary sensibilities. (Yes, I think our revolution will be western, when it comes.)" (9)
This tirade trumpets forth Khrushchevite revisionism with its idle chatter about the "cult of the individual" or "senseless deification of Chairman Mao". It positively revels in fascist "western" chauvinism with its talk of our "western" sensibilities and "western" revolution and its parroting of the stock fascist line that communism is an "attack on the individuality of the human being".
But mainly the Guardian ignored the Cultural Revolution in the last 60s. In 1970 Irwin Silber published his book entitled "the cultural revolution: a marxist analysis". This book is all about the Woodstock rock concert and the bourgeois cultural counter-revolution and never mentions the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at all. And in 1973 Irwin Silber compiled and edited with Fred Silber the " Folksinger's Wordbook" (10). Irwin Silber wrote the introduction, which discusses cultural problems again without mentioning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and states: "It is for them--the doers, the carers, the militants, the singers of conscience and motion-- that we have compiled this collection". This book is full of the decadent bourgeois culture, especially its most degenerate aspects, and includes such American chauvinist favorites as "The Star Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful" and "Dixie", as well as songs of allegiance to the bourgeoisie, like "Franklin D. Roosevelt's Back Again" and "Fair and Free Elections". Thus the Guardian served its modern revisionist's campaign against Mao Tsetung Thought by negating the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and reveling in bourgeois decadence.
The Guardian Supports the New Tsars Out of Hatred for Socialism
The Guardian does not support modern Soviet revisionism because of confusion as to whether the Soviet Union is still following the path of Lenin and Stalin. There are indeed some people who still are confused about the difference between the Soviet Union of the days of Lenin and Stalin and the Soviet Union of the New Tsars and support revisionism out of misplaced loyalty, but the Guardian is not one of them. The Guardian supports the New Tsars and revisionism out of its burning hatred for communism and the legacy of Lenin and Stalin. Khrushchovite revisionism was a godsend to all sorts of hidden agents corroding the communist and progressive movements from within that allowed them to openly "bloom" and spew out their anticommunism. The Guardian has consistently attacked Stalin in the most violent language. For example: in January, 1968, the Guardian printed an article by Cedric Belfrage promoting that each country has its own road to socialism ("Czechs and Hungarians finding their own way") in which the most vulgar, fascist "jokes" about Stalin and Beria are praised. (11) In 1969 the Guardian editorialized: "...we deplore the resurrection by some of 'Comrade Stalin' as a positive figure in communist history..." (12) There are dozens of such examples. They continue to the present. In Jan. 1974 Irwin Silber reviewed a book by Solzhenitsyn and stated: "even though Solzhenitsyn himself is a reactionary mystic, I was prepared to defend 'The Gulag Archipelago' if it offered us reasonable documentation let alone punctilious proof, of the gross violations of socialist legality of the Stalin era." (13) Now, just imagine that! Irwin Silber would defend arch-fascist Solzhenitsyn, but Solzhenitsyn was too obvious. Irwin Silber goes on to say "It will not do, however, to shut our eyes to the fact that Solzhenitsyn and other reactionaries are basing themselves in part, on genuine disorders that seriously compromised the course of socialist development in the Soviet Union." The Guardian's hatred of Stalin extends to the entire socialist camp of Stalin's time. Irwin Silber summed up dozens of articles in the Guardian by stating:
"... For the most part, the 'socialism' of Eastern Europe has been imposed upon it by the geopolitical needs of the USSR rather than the seizure of power by the working class." (14)
Thus Mr. Silber is repeating the fascist lies about "Red Imperialism" and the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe. According to the Guardian's slanders, the Soviet Union was strong enough after World War II to act as an imperialist power dominating all of Eastern Europe, but today... well the Soviet Union is such a meek, weak country that to establish "a neo-colonial military outpost in West Africa bears little resemblance to anything the Kremlin could realistically hope to achieve" (15) while in Portugal "the USSR's own immediate preference is for a nonaligned Portugal" since "...their capability (to dominate Portugal -- ed.) is not the same as their hopes..." (16) According to the Guardian Stalin's supposed "crimes" were enormous, Czechoslovakia was pretty much a Soviet puppet in 1948,..., but the New Tsars are merely giving some "aid" to a truly independent and liberated Angola! Clearly the Guardian is very conscious to distinguish between the glorious communist leader Stalin and the inglorious fascist dogs Kosygin and Brezhnev. All the Guardian's whining and wringing of hands over whether capitalism has been "fully" restored or not in the Soviet Union is just so much clowning about to fool the naive and inexperienced. The Guardian supports the New Tsars precisely because it knows that the fascist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has been restored in Russia.
Despite the efforts of the Guardian, Mao Tsetung Thought gained great prestige among revolutionary activists. The work of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), the first national center for the dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, in favor of building a new Party on the basis of Mao Tsetung Thought was bearing fruit. The Call for a (Second) Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists issued in November, 1972, played a key role in showing many activists the importance of party-building. In these circumstances, the Guardian refused to do self-criticism and give up its opportunism. Instead it took up "Marxism-Leninism in order to oppose Marxism-Leninism from "within", so to speak. It thus took up Lin Piao's line of "waving Chairman Mao's banner to strike at Chairman Mao's forces". The Guardian expressed its new policy with comical brazenness as follows:
"Today, when the Guardian has opened up the question of the debilitating effects of revisionism in the ranks of the world revolutionary movement, still others have decided that 'this is the last straw'." (17)
With incredible arrogance, the Guardian pats itself on the back for "opening up" the very new question of criticizing revisionism in... don't laugh... 1972. Thus the Guardian with a sweep of the pen wipes out the history of the struggle against modern Soviet revisionism that has been raging since the late '60's and is led by the Communist Party of China and Party of Labor of Albania, to say nothing of wiping out the history of Lenin's struggle against old-style revisionism. And note carefully that the Guardian does not ally itself with the international communist movement in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces of modern Khrushchovite revisionism. On the contrary, the Guardian called for papering over the defects and imperfections of the revisionist movement, for taking up the thankless task of removing the "debilitating effects" from its revisionist movement, which it euphemistically calls the "world revolutionary movement".
How was the Guardian able to pass off this sham "Marxism-Leninism" as genuine? It was due in large part to certain national neo-revisionist organizations such as the October League. These organizations, led by certain student leaders who had made serious errors in the '60's, adapted New Leftism to Marxism-Leninism. They set "building the mass movement" against "building the party" and practiced a form of "left economism". They built alliances with the Guardian. Of course, there is nothing wrong with temporary alliances in and of themselves. The basis of the alliance is the crucial question. The basis of their alliance with the Guardian was the unprincipled policy of "unite with the bad elements to oppose the communists" which included, more specifically, "unite with the Guardian and other anti-communist riff-raff to oppose the ACWM(M-L), the dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, and the Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists. Who can forget the spectacle of their parading around in the Guardian "party-building forums" at that time! Who can forget the sorry sight of their lavishing kisses and caresses on the ultra-rightist Irwin Silber while they denounced the upholders of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as "ultra-left" and "CIA agents". Now these same worthies are morally offended by the Guardian. One of these groups, the October League (Marxist-Leninist) raises its hands to heaven and sighs that the Guardian "covers up the real character of Soviet social-imperialism" (18), a fact which the OL(M-L) apparently didn't notice until 1975. Why don't these neo-revisionist gentlemen perform a service for the whole movement, for once and expose the real history of the Guardian and its long-standing opportunism? No, they will never do that! It is their own small-group interests that led them to a falling-out with the Guardian, just as these small-group interests led them into the alliance with the Guardian. Therefore they have refused to do self-criticism and have instead attempted to mislead a number of activists and groups by concocting the view that the Guardian was progressive up until the time it broke off with their own circle. This vividly confirms that the Guardian does not suffer from some special, dread disease peculiar to itself, but instead reflects the ugly features of opportunism as a whole.
SUPPORTING THE CAPITALIST-ROADERS IN CHINA
In the course of its opportunist history, the Guardian has taken up the lines of the capitalist-roaders in China. This is no accident. Opportunism is an international bourgeois trend. The Soviet New Tsars, the Chinese capitalist-roaders, and the American opportunists are all united by their revisionist and opportunist lines and give mutual support to each other. Below we show how the Guardian has taken up the lines of Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping in its frenzied struggle against Chairman Mao's revolutionary line.
China's Khrushchov, Liu Shao-chi, was a bitter opponent of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His counter-revolutionary bourgeois headquarters was overthrown in the Cultural Revolution. The Guardian not only opposed the Cultural Revolution, as we have shown above, but praised Liu Shao-chi. In December 1967, for instance, the Guardian printed a book review that stated: "China's international isolation... threw into question, according to Schurmann and Karol, the whole Chinese foreign policy of the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as the men who formulated it--Liu Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping and especially Peng Chen. They had led the split with the Soviet Union... " (19) This is the usual bourgeois and revisionist song and dance about China being supposedly "isolated" because it refuses to capitulate to the Soviet New Tsars and about China, not the Soviet revisionists, allegedly splitting the communist movement. But look who is identified as leading China's foreign policy: Liu Shao-chi himself; Teng Hsiao-ping, who was Liu Shao-chi's chief assistant; and Peng Chen, who was criticized by name for his revisionist views and underhanded actions in the May 16,1966 Circular of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which ushered in the Cultural Revolution. Thus the article turns truth on its head and makes white into black. The article opposes the struggle against modern Soviet revisionism and supports Liu Shao-chi's line by mystifying everything and saying that Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping were criticized for leading the struggle against modern Soviet revisionism. And the article thus recommends Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping as heroes to anyone who wishes to oppose the Soviet revisionists. This support for Liu Shaochi continues to the present day. In 1973 the "Guardian Pamphlet" entitled "Unite the Many, Defeat the Few, China's revolutionary line in foreign affairs" appeared, written by Jack Smith, the Guardian's present managing editor. The Guardian still claims that this pamphlet is "generally conceded to be one of the most useful summations and explanations of China's revolutionary line in foreign affairs in the English language and one of the best exposures of the revisionist and Trotskyist slanders of China's line." (20) This pamphlet can find no one better qualified to explain the significance of Chairman Mao's work than... China's Khrushchev, Liu Shao-chi. Liu Shao-chi is approvingly quoted on pp. 6-7, part of this quote being: "Mao Tsetung's great accomplishment has been to change Marxism-Leninism from a European to an Asiatic form. Marx and Lenin were Europeans; they wrote in European languages about European histories and problems, seldom discussing Asia or China.... He (Chairman Mao -- ed.) has created a Chinese or an Asiatic form of Marxism..." This passage is a chauvinist slander of Marx and Lenin, who always paid great attention to the liberation movements of the colonial and oppressed peoples, and slanders Mao Tsetung Thought, which is presented as a revisionist "Chinese road to socialism", as "Asiatic Marxism", which certainly could be of no value in Europe or North America. The Guardian expresses its own revisionist and chauvinist line through the mouth of Liu Shao-chi. This is indeed, "one of the best (self-) exposures of the revisionist and Trotskyist slanders of China's line."
The Ultra-Rightist Guardian Praises the Ultra-Rightist Lin Piao
Lin Piao was characterized by The Political Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China as an "ultra-righist" and a "super spy" for Soviet social-imperialism. Lin Piao regarded the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as "ultra-left" and criminally tried to assassinate the great leader, Chairman Mao. We have already shown how the Guardian took up Lin Piao's line of "waving Chairman Mao's flag to strike at Chairman Mao's forces" starting in the early '70's. The Guardian, being ultra-rightist itself, enthusiastically propagated Lin Piao's theory that the "Maoists" were "ultra-left". The Soviet social-imperialist agent Wilfred Burchett wrote in the Guardian in 1971 an article entitled "Mao's Problems with Maoists". This article stated:
"It is probably difficult for the outside world to grasp that the ,Maoists', as they are called abroad, were a major problem here at the height of China's cultural revolution.
"Officially designated today as 'ultra-leftists', the 'Maoists' acted as if violence itself was the supreme expression of the 'thoughts of Chairman Mao'"
Exactly who was Burchett attacking as "ultra-left"? If there is any doubt, Burchett clears it up by always putting the phrase "thought of Mao Tsetung" in quotes to make it more ironical. Burchett was attacking Mao Tsetung Thought and its followers, both in China and elsewhere. Burchett added: "In discussions with Chinese officials on the analogy with some Maoist groups abroad, a frequent dry reaction was that perhaps they should get down to studying the 'thoughts of Chairman Mao' instead of just pinning on Mao badges." (21) Burchett further attacks Mao Tsetung Thought one week later when he writes: "To convey his ideas, Mao has fused Marxist dialectics with classical Chinese Confucian concepts of austerity, probity, social responsibility and patriotism." According to the Guardian, Chairman Mao is a Chinese Ronald Reagan and a supporter of the reactionary Confucian philosophy! In its frenzy to support Lin Piao's line that Mao Tsetung Thought is "ultra-left", the Guardian goes so far as to falsify its account of China's Tenth National Congress. In its issue of Sept. 12, 1973 it prints excerpts from The Political Report to the Tenth Congress. It leaves out the entire section "On the Victory of Smashing the Lin Piao Anti-Party clique" which refers to "the Ultra-Rightist nature of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique". In the "Guardian Viewpoint" it then states: "The main tasks of the Chinese people, the party has stated, are to combat revisionism, expose ultra-leftism and to rectify the style of work." (underlining added.) Thus the Guardian commits a gross forgery to identify the struggle against the "ultra-rightist" Lin Piao as a struggle against the "ultra-left".
The Guardian has coupled this parroting of Lin Piao's line with the most extravagant praise of Lin Piao. Jack Smith, present Managing Editor of the Guardian, wrote an article entitled "Decline and fall of Lin Piao" in which he describes Lin Piao, the super spy for the New Tsars, as "a leading exponent of the struggle in defeating revisionism within China during the 1966-69 period" and Lin Piao's policies as "in regard to foreign affairs, largely continue the tactical policy of the cultural revolution, fight both enemies (U.S. and Soviet imperialism--ed.) at the same time with equal force and spread revolution and 'Maoism' on the basis of supporting revolutionary struggles wherever and whenever they break out...." (22) What shameless praise for the ultra-rightist who plotted to assassinate Chairman Mao. The Guardian was so sorrowful over Lin Piao's downfall that the second part of Jack Smith's article states: "The Lin Piao affair, in contradiction to conventional struggles between two lines in the CCP, is an unfortunate page in Chinese history." Only a rabid agent of capitalist restoration who wished to turn China into a Soviet colony would find the downfall of Lin Piao to be "an unfortunate page in Chinese history".
The Guardian also supported Teng Hsiao-ping. Jack Smith's article, after mourning the death of Lin Piao, hurries on to give Teng Hsiao-ping's line that class struggle is over. It states: "But it is a page that has been decisively turned, a new page, with China stabilizing itself internally and exercising extraordinary influence externally, has replaced it." The Guardian re-emphasized this in its article referred to above reporting on the CPC's Tenth National Congress. The Guardian's first sentence points out: "Political stability characterizes the People's Republic of China today." (23) The Guardian has also been feverishly promoting the idea of capitulating to imperialism under the guise of receiving "aid" for the revolutionary struggle. This too is in complete agreement with Teng Hsiao-ping's line. "Red Flag", the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has recently denounced Teng Hsiao-ping's line on foreign affairs as follows: "In foreign affairs, he (Teng Hsiao-ping -- ed.) practiced capitulation and national betrayal, and vainly attempted to turn China into a colony and semi-colony of imperialism and social-imperialism." (24) The Guardian is in complete agreement with this line and has been promoting capitulation to imperialism.
CAPITULATING TO U.S. IMPERIALISM
While the Guardian is an agent of Soviet social-imperialism, it has also capitulated to U.S. imperialism. The Guardian is well-known for promoting the deceptions of the so-called "liberal bourgeoisie". We have also quoted above many examples of the American chauvinist and fascist lines which abound in the Guardian; for example, there is Irwin Silber's 1967 call for "Western" revolution, his inclusion of "America the Beautiful", "the Star-Spangled Banner" and "Dixie" in a folk-song book for activists, the Guardian's championing of the revisionist, chauvinist theory of "each country's own road to socialism", the Guardian's taking up the fascist theory of Stalin's supposed "Red Imperialism", etc. Another example, the Guardian's fascist theory of "flunkeyism", is worth noting. In a 1972 "viewpoint" the Guardian put it this way: "The U.S. left has historically come to grief as a result of blind allegiance to other parties and movements. The failure of the Communist party in this country is inextricably bound up with its flunkyist relation to the party and state leadership of the USSR. We do not propose to correct this error of the past by substituting for it a dogmatic loyalty to any other revolutionary party--whether in Peking, Havana, Pyongyang or anywhere else. " (25) Here the Guardian is giving the stock fascist line that the communists in Lenin and Stalin's time were "agents of Moscow" and today the supporters of Mao Tse-tung Thought are "agents of Peking". That the Guardian has capitulated so abjectly to the U.S. bourgeoisie is not surprising. It is simply marching instep with revisionism internationally. For example, the French "Communist" (read: revisionist) Party and Italian "Communist" Party are tried and true betrayers of the working class and followers of modern revisionism, and it is well-known that both of these parties are wringing their hands and protesting their loyalty to the big bourgeoisie of their own countries. The Italian "Communist" Party, already "compromised" many times over with revisionism, now wants a "historic compromise" with the Italian bourgeois political parties in which the big bourgeoisie will let the revisionists join the national government and share the spoils of exploiting the workers. While the French "Communist" Party, not to be outdone, at its last, 22nd Congress has written the dictatorship of the proletariat out of the Party program, ridiculed the very term "proletariat", and General Secretary Marchais asked for the prohibition of the clench-fist salute because the revisionist Party "is not the party of the raised fist, but the party of the outstretched hand" (begging the bourgeoisie for alms, no doubt). (26) Indeed Khrushchov himself set the example of representing the new bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union, while developing the "Camp David" spirit and collaborating with the supposedly "reasonable" U.S. imperialists.
Thus those who capitulate to either one of the superpowers have also abandoned the struggle against the other superpower. They are too weighed down with the terrible burden of being a traitor to the people's cause and of having deserted to the camp of imperialism. Take the question of Angola for example. The Guardian is being widely condemned for having sold-out to the Soviet New Tsars in its support of Soviet aggression in Angola. Not so widely known, however, is that the Guardian has also abandoned the struggle against U.S. imperialist interests in Angola and against the racist and fascist Union of South Africa. In fact the Guardian has become the fig-leaf hiding the new blatant imperialist acts of the U.S. imperialists, who are exploiting the Soviet neo-colonial government in Luanda for their own ends.
For example, the Guardian has shouted itself hoarse, become hysterical, and spewed forth many Hitlerite lies concerning who gets "CIA funds"-and is backed by Western funds in Angola. Does that mean that the Guardian stands for independence from U.S. imperialism? Not at all. Right now, today, right in front of everyone's eyes and boasted about in the bourgeois press, the Gulf Oil Co. is helping to finance the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA government of national betrayal in its slaughter of the Angolan people, who are fighting back heroically under the leadership of UNITA. The U.S. bourgeoisie prefers a Soviet neo-colonial government to a liberated Angola. The defeat of Portuguese colonialism was a defeat for U.S. imperialism, which was thrown out of Angola. It is only the Soviet aggression that allows the U.S. to put its dirty hand back into Angola. And the Guardian, that "great opponent" of U.S. imperialism and neocolonialism, is... silent about this funding by U.S. imperialism! Irwin Silber mumbles along about "Gulf's obligation (enforced by the MPLA) to pay royalties on its oil to the Angolan people..." (27) So U.S. imperialism has become a kindly old businessman who respects obligations, at least if his business partner squawks a little! What happened to the U.S. imperialism that had conducted total economic boycotts at various times for years against the People's Republic of China, the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Cuba, and other countries? The Guardian has become an apologist for U.S. imperialism, representing U.S. imperialist blood money as a mere commercial transaction.
Even more striking, however, is the pact signed between the neo-colonial government in Luanda and the fascist, U.S. imperialist-backed Union of South Africa. In this pact, the MPLA guarantees to respect the main South African interests in Angola, namely those in the Cunene Dam, and to deny southern Angolan bases and sanctuaries to the Namibian freedom fighters fighting against the South African occupation of Namibia ("South West Africa"). In exchange for diplomatic recognition and money, the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA government has sold out the Angolan people, betrayed the national liberation struggle in Namibia, and become the collaborator of the Union of South Africa. Cuban and South African troops now live together and jointly hunt the "rebels" in southern Angola! As is well-known, the Guardian sensationalized endlessly on the South African aggression against Angola during the civil war. The Guardian turned truth on its head, condemned UNITA for its non-existent collaboration with South Africa, and hid the real issues in Angola under a flood of emotionalism. Does that mean the Guardian is a staunch opponent of South Africa? Not at all. Today the Guardian is... silent about the notorious pact with South Africa!
Irwin Silber's Love Affair with Congress
In fact, the Guardian has united on the issue of Angola with the overwhelming majority in the U.S. imperialist Congress. On December 19, the Senate voted by 54-22 (i. e., almost 2 1/2 to one) to ban the so-called "cover aid" to the alleged "pro-U.S." forces in Angola. On January 27 the House upheld this resolution by a huge margin of 323 to 99 (i. e., well over 3 to 1). Now, Congress is a talk-shop, where corrupt politicians make speeches for the sake of fooling the common people. It is easy to pass a resolution against aid to UNITA because the U.S. imperialists have never given any aid to UNITA anyway. Thus Congress kills two birds with one stone--it further slanders UNITA and it passes itself off as "peace-loving" and humanitarian at a time when U.S. imperialism is preparing to kill hundreds of millions of people in an imperialist world war against the Soviet New Tsars for world domination. This pious declaration by Congress hides U.S. preparations for world war as well as the real facts on the U.S. imperialist "involvement" in Angola, such as: that the entire U.S. capitalist press is waging a determined campaign against UNITA; that the U.S. imperialists are the backers of the continued South African aggression against the Angolan people; and that the U.S. imperialists are already making deals with the neo-colonial government in Luanda. And what does the Guardian do in the face of this blatant attempt by the Congressional war-mongers to pass themselves off as "against war" and taking a "hands-off" stance in Angola? The Guardian praises Congress and sings songs of thanks!
The Guardian wrote in its article entitled "Congress blocks Angola policy" that: "the White House has been slapped down hard on Angola." and "the Congressional decision was a stunning setback for the Ford administration's plans to defeat progressive forces in Angola. " (28) According to the Guardian, there is a reactionary Republican president Ford and a peaceful, reasonable Congress. The Guardian goes on to praise the Congress' motives:
"The principal reason for the congressional action was to avoid another 'Vietnam-type' war in Angola and to prevent the social dislocation that would result within the U.S. were a mass anti-Angola war movement to develop." According to the Guardian, Congress is scared of two things: (A) a "Vietnam-type" war, and (B) protest by the American people. During the long years of U.S. aggression in Viet Nam, Congress was faced with: (A) the war in Viet Nam, and (B) a massive revolutionary movement of the American people against U.S. aggression in Viet Nam. But Congress never stopped the war on this account. Instead Congress (A) savagely pursued the war until the U.S. aggression was utterly defeated, and (B) committed fascist repression of the American people, combined with lying pacifist speeches from the Congressional "liberals" to soothe and deceive the people. Today U.S. imperialism is indeed worried about a "Vietnam-type" war in Angola. That war is going on right now. It is the heroic Second Anti-colonial War of the Angolan People led by UNITA and guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, a war directed against Soviet neo-colonialism. U.S. imperialism has been weakened by defeats, but any imperialist power grows more and more vicious, not less vicious, as it enters its last, desperate death-bed struggles. U.S. imperialism is replying to the liberation struggles of the African people with the same hatred as it did to those of the Indo-chinese people. So what exactly is the Guardian up to with its love songs to Congress? Irwin Silber blabs it out again as follows: "As mentioned earlier, the Pentagon's perennial crusade for larger and larger armaments expenditures clearly requires the promotion of a fear psychology. The political pressure on a Congress which, for a period of time, was beginning to reflect popular aversion to U.S. military aggression in other parts of the world has had its effect." (29) (emphasis added). What shameless boot-licking and belly- crawling before the bourgeoisie! At the very time Irwin Silber was speaking of, U.S. imperialism was: backing the fascist Phalangists in their slaughter of the Lebanese and Palestinian people in the civil war; growling at Panama over the Panama Canal; backing the racist "Rhodesian" regime to the hilt in its struggle against the Zimbabwean people; constantly making provocations in Korea; etc. But we are to believe, this is not Congress. Oh no. It is the Ford Administration and the Pentagon. The U.S. big bourgeoisie is stepping up fascization and preparing for war, but Congress "...was beginning to reflect popular aversion to U.S. military aggression..."! Why, anyone who can believe that might just as well believe that Congress is run "by, for and of the people", that the Russian Cuban army of occupation is killing and torturing Angolan patriots in order to give "fraternal aid" to the Angolan people, and that Santa Claus is going to drop down the chimney next Christmas!
The Guardian is giving the stock revisionist theory of the "two opposing power centers in Washington". Opportunists do not wish to oppose the monopoly capitalist class and its tool, the entire government apparatus, but express their desire to capitulate to the class enemy under the hoax that one section is "liberal", or "reflects the popular will" or "is opposed to the ultra-rights and fascists", etc. Oh yes, the Guardian "officially" recognizes that U.S. imperialism exists, it even styles itself as exceptionally bold when it calls U.S. imperialism the "main enemy"
... .but the Guardian says that "Congress" was "beginning to reflect" the popular will! Imagine that.. .the entire Congress (after all, the vote was 3 to 1) has begun to repudiate imperialism..
. ..if only the Pentagon would stop pressuring it! During the polemics against modern Khrushchovite revisionism in the '60's, the Chinese paper People's Daily replied to the vile attacks of the "Communist" (revisionist) Party of the USA, the party of class traitors of the Gus Hall type, as follows: "Some leaders of the CPUSA will probably say that they do not deny that U.S. imperialism is perpetrating the crimes of aggression and war in various parts of the world. When they mention these criminal activities, however, they always hasten to add that these evils are not the work of the president of the United States, but of the 'ultra-Rights', or are done by the president under the pressure of the 'ultra-Rights'.
"... These leaders of the CPUSA often speak of 'two power centers in Washington, one in the White House, the other in the Pentagon', and speak of 'the Pentagon generals and admirals and their coalition partners among the ultra- Rights, the Republican leaders and Wall Street' as forces independent of the White House. We should like to ask: Do the leaders of the CPUSA still accept the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and admit that the U.S. state apparatus is the tool of monopoly capital for class rule? And if so, how can there be a president independent of monopoly capital, how can there be a Pentagon independent of the White House, and how can there be two opposing power centres in Washington?" (30) Irwin Silber gives the same theory,except that for now he is in love with Congress rather than the president. In this way Irwin Silber denies that Congress is a tool of monopoly capital for class rule, gives credibility to the bourgeois fairy tales about Congress representing the people, and actually takes seriously the rhetoric and sophistry of the lying speeches of bourgeois politicians. Thus the Guardian prettifies the nature of U.S. imperialism in general, as well as covering up its specific crimes in Angola, and capitulates to the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. (TO BE CONTINUED)
Notes:
In the notes below, "NPC" refers to the National Publications Centre, P.O. Box 727, Adelaide Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In ordering literature from NPC, all checks and money orders should be clearly made payable to the National Publications Centre.
(1) For China's foreign policy, see: A Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China, Shanghai, 1974, available from NPC ($2.75). Also A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, 1963; the Political Reports to the Ninth and Tenth National Congresses of the Communist Party of China, etc.
(2) Guardian, Dec. 24, 1975, in "...fan the flames..." by Irwin Silber.
(3) Guardian, April 16, 1975, "Viewpoint".
(4) Comrade Enver Hoxha, Speech on Oct. 3, 1974, reprinted in The Workers' Advocate, Dec. 15, 1974.
(5) Guardian, Aug. 19, 1967, "Viewpoint".
(6) Guardian, Aug. 31, 1968. This also show's that the Guardian's "official" stand against the invasion of Czechoslovakia was from a completely revisionist standpoint and quite compatible with carrying articles praising the Soviet aggression.
(7) Guardian, Jan. 11, 1969.
(8) See The Bolivian Communist Party Replies to Fidel Castro, available from NPC (25ยข).
(9) Guardian, Oct. 19, 1968, in a film review by Irwin Silber of Edgar Snow's film "One-quarter of Humanity".
(10) Folksinger's Wordbook, 1973, Oak Publications, A Division of Embassy Music Corporation.
(11) Guardian, Jan.4, 1968
(12) Guardian, July 5, 1969, "Viewpoint".
(13) Guardian, Jan. 30, 1974. This is completely consistent with the article "Books: Svetlana reflects crisis" in the Nov. 11, 1967 Guardian which takes Svetlana Stalin's book for the truth and raves "This is not to mitigate his (Comrade J. Stalin's --ed.) crimes, which were undeniable and appalling."
(14) Guardian, Dec. 13, 1972, "...fan the flames..." by Irwin Silber. This article also talks of "socialism with a national character".
(15) Guardian, Feb. 11, 1976, "...fan the flames..." by Irwin Silber.
(16) Guardian, Aug. 20, 1975, "Guardian Viewpoint".
(17) Guardian, Oct. 18, 1972 "Viewpoint".
(18) The Call, April 1975.
(19) Guardian, Dec. 9, 1967, a book review by Leonard P. Liggio entitled "China: 'to rebel is justified' ".
(20) Guardian, April 16, 1975, "Guardian Reply to OL". Also see Guardian, May 26,1976 "Guardian view's China discussion" which also praises this pamphlet.
(21) Guardian, May 12, 1971.
(22) Guardian, Aug. 23, 1972.
(23) Guardian, Aug. 30, 1972.
(24) Hsinhua News Bulletin, July 31,1976, "'Red Flag' Article on Teng Hsiao-ping's Comprador Bourgeois Economic Ideas".
(25) Guardian, Oct. 18, 1972, "Viewpoint".
Also see Dec.24, 1975 "...fan the flames..." by Irwin Silber and numerous other references.
(26) Social-Democratic Congress of the French Revisionists, Editorial of Zeri i Popullit, organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania5 Feb. 21, 1976, available from NPC (25ยข)
(27) Guardian, July 14, 1976 "...fan the flames..."
(28) Guardian, Feb.4, 1976.
(29) Guardian, June 30, 1976 "Is the U.S. a second rate power" by Irwin Silber. A Comment on the Statement of the Communist Party of the U.S. A., "Renmin Ribao" Editorial, March 8, 1963. It was printed both in pamphlet form and in the collection "Whence, the Differences". End.
On the Tenth Anniversary of the 16-Point Decision
Mao Tsetung Thought is the Marxism-Leninism of our era. It was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that was a most important sign that Marxism-Leninism had developed to an entirely new stage, that of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was the earth-shaking event that brought Mao Tsetung Thought to the entire world and that re-invigorated the struggle of the international communist movement against modern Khrushchovite revisionism. The Workers' Advocate hails the tenth anniversary, August 8, 1966, of the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This great programmatic document, also known as the 16-Point Decision, was drawn up under the personal guidance of Chairman Mao. The Political Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out: "Policies for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were early stipulated explicitly in the Circular of May 16,1966 and the 16-Point Decision of August 1966." (1)
The 16-Point Decision shows the role of struggle on the cultural front in the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Under the hoax that culture, literature, art, science, education, etc., are "above classes" and reflect "eternal human nature", the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes use these fields to attack the working class and revolutionary forces. A fierce class struggle is waged on the cultural front. For example, in the U.S. in the 60s the youth and students opposed the bourgeois decadent educational system and rejected the bourgeois mores and culture on a mass scale. And the U.S. monopoly capitalists attacked the youth and students with the "youth culture", "drug culture" and other decadent capitalist culture. Various opportunists aided the imperialist cultural counterrevolution of the 60s by echoing the ordinary bourgeois philistine views that culture was "above classes" or by promoting the bogus Trotskyite theory of "revolutionary politics-- bourgeois culture". After the working class seizes state power, this struggle on the cultural front continues under socialism. The bourgeoisie tries to use its entrenched positions in the cultural superstructure to regain its "lost paradise". The 16-Point Decision went to the heart of the matter, pointing out: "Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavor to stage a come-back." The Cultural Revolution is in fact a great political revolution carried out under the conditions of socialism by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. The 16-Point Decision set forth the tasks of "struggle-criticism-transformation" in this revolution as follows: "At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in power taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the bourgeois reactionary academic 'authorities' and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system."
Of exceptional importance in the 16-Point Decision is its call "to boldly arouse the masses", to "trust the masses, rely on them and respect their initiative", "to make the fullest use of big-character posters and great debates to argue matters out, so that the masses can clarify the correct views, criticize the wrong views and expose all the ghosts and monsters", and to use "a system of general elections, like that of the Paris Commune, for electing members" to cultural revolutionary groups, committees and congresses. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a profound movement of hundreds of millions of people, enhancing the political consciousness of the broad masses and drawing them into political life on an unprecedented scale. Chairman Mao pointed out: "NEVER BEFORE IN ANY MASS MOVEMENT HAVE THE MASSES BEEN AROUSED SO THOROUGHLY AND ON SO BROAD A SCALE." New methods of mass revolutionary criticism, of great debates, in short of mass democracy, flourished. The Constitution of the Chinese People's Republic says: "Speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters are new forms of carrying on socialist revolution created by the masses of the people."
The question of mass democracy, of the methods and forms of arousing the masses against the exploiting classes and developing expensive democracy, is of great significance. Comrade Lenin stated: "TO DEVELOP DEMOCRACY TO THE UTMOST. TO SEEK OUT THE FORMS FOR THIS DEVELOPMENT, TO TEST THEM BY PRACTICE, AND SO FORTH -- ALL THIS IS ONE OF THE CONSTITUENT TASKS OF THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. "(2) Chairman Mao inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism. In dealing with this problem he stated in Feb. 1967, "IN THE PAST WE WAGED STRUGGLES IN RURAL AREAS, IN FACTORIES, IN THE CULTURAL FIELD, AND WE CARRIED OUT THE SOCIALIST EDUCUTION MOVEMENT. BUT ALL THIS FAILED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM BECAUSE WE DID NOT FIND A FORM, A METHOD, TO AROUSE THE BROAD MASSES TO EXPOSE OUR DARK ASPECT OPENLY, IN AN ALL-ROUND WAY AND FROM BELOW." Led by Chairman Mao, the international communist movement has found that form -- it is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!
Whether to trust the masses, rely on them and boldly arouse them or to place restrictions on them and suppress them like reactionary scholar-despots, big-Party tyrants and bureaucrats, is a fundamental question for making revolution. All the capitalist-roaders in the Party held that "the masses are backward." China's Khrushchov, the counter-revolutionary renegade Liu Shao-chi, stated during the socialist education movement "The masses, like wild horses, will provoke trouble once they are mobilized." (3) He held that "production should be put in command", that the broad masses should restrict themselves to production, and not be concerned with politics. As for the mass of cadre, Liu Shao-chi held that the communists should be "docile tools" who should uncritically obey the commands of the big Party tyrants and capitalist-roaders. The capitalist-roaders held that in order to "oppose" the imperialists and Russian social-imperialists one must imitate them and develop big bureaucracies, big imperialist-style armed forces and a big, oppressive state machine. They had no faith at all in the revolutionary initiative of the masses. One way this came up was the theory that to oppose the Khrushchovite revisionists what one needed was "expert anti-revisionists" who would " self-cultivate" themselves into becoming experts at defeating the revisionist lines. Then the "expert anti-revisionists" and the revisionist experts, both equally detached from the masses and equally living by exploiting the masses, would debate each other while the masses engage in production.
But such "anti-revisionist experts" would in fact just be a new breed of revisionists themselves. The 16-Point Decision firmly put forward: "In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves, and any method of doing things in their stead must not be used." and "Let the masses educate themselves in this great revolutionary movement and learn to distinguish between right and wrong and between correct and incorrect ways of doing things." It further added: "The masses of the workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres form the main force in this Great Cultural Revolution." And it is the Communist Party that leads the masses in the Cultural Revolution. The task for the Party leadership was to "Put daring above everything and boldly arouse the masses", to "thoroughly apply the mass line of 'from the masses, to the masses'", and to use Mao Tsetung Thought as the guide to action.
The expensive democracy of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is absolutely essential to weed out the capitalist-roaders, establish and maintain the leadership of the working class in all fields of work, and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. This shows the vast superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system. It is only under the dictatorship of the proletariat that there is real freedom for the masses, which is inseparable from exercising dictatorship against the tiny minority that comprises the exploiting classes and bad elements. While under capitalism the masses languish in subjection under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and there may be "bourgeois democracy" for the handful of bourgeois and rich.
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is universally applicable. The lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution must be applied to the practice of the American revolution. This task is particularly urgent for a number of reasons:
--The complete ascendance of Khrushchovite revisionism in the "Communist" Party of the U.S. has deprived the American working class of its Marxist-Leninist Party. It was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that led to the re-establishing of Marxist-Leninist parties in a number of countries around the world. The genuine Communist Party of the American proletariat can only be re-established on the theoretical basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
--A number of American Marxist-Leninist groups have come to grief because of the contradiction between espousing "anti-revisionist theory" and having revisionist methods of work.
For example, in 1962 the Progressive Labor Movement (which became the Progressive Labor Party in 1965) was founded as the first national anti-revisionist center in the U.S. But it reached a point where it stopped fighting revisionism and adopted the entire revisionist method and style of work, hidden under "left" phrases. It then degenerated into the Trotskyite sect it is today. It is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that has opened a path against the "anti-revisionist experts" and developed the new mass democratic method and style, of work.
---The U.S., along with the Soviet Union, has the most degenerate, racist and chauvinist culture in the world. Struggle on the cultural front was particularly sharp in the 60's, during the decadent imperialist cultural counter-revolution. The imperialists use the decadent bourgeois culture to sap the fighting spirit of the masses and corrode the revolutionary movement from within. It is only the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that gives correct orientation and direction to struggle on the cultural front against the bourgeoisie.
The Canadian Internationalists led by Comrade Hardial Bains were the first group in North America to apply the lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the concrete conditions in North America. They felt oppressed by the imperialist culture and "scholar-despots" and by the "expert anti-revisionists" and tame "house-Marxists". Therefore they warmly welcomed the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in China, where the fraternal Chinese people dealt with the same enemies. They eagerly took up the new mass-democratic methods of struggle. Following this article we reprint below the "guidelines on building mass democracy" in which the Internationalists summed up their experience in taking up the new revolutionary methods of arousing the masses. The Canadian Internationalists boldly marched forward and gave rise to the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), founded at the call of the Cultural Revolution.
The lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution have been applied in the U.S. also.
The First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists (the Regina Conference of May 1969) played an important role in introducing the Canadian Internationalists to the American activists and brought the lessons of the Cultural Revolution to the U.S. Inspired by this conference, a daring group of American Marxist-Leninists founded a predecessor of the COUSML, the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), which was the historic first national center for the dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought in the U.S. Right in the heartland of U.S. imperialism, the American communists boldly went against great-power chauvinism and the revisionist theory of "American exceptionalism" and fought as a contingent of the international communist movement led by Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China and Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania and guided by invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The ACWM(M-L) and then the COUSML have taken up the products of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution such as the mass-democratic form. Mass democracy is used both inside the revolutionary organization to sort out contradictions and among the masses to mobilize them against the class enemy. Today for example the Louisville Branch of the COUSML has organized mass democratic meetings right amidst the workers outside factory gates in order to re-lease the revolutionary initiative of the masses against the attacks of the fascist anti-busing movement. Thus the Louisville Branch practices the revolutionary working style of "from the masses, to the masses" and crystallizes the correct ideas of the masses in the course of fighting the fascist class enemy. And this is only one example of a number of historic mass democracy meetings organized in the U.S. against the monopoly capitalist class as well as its illegitimate off-spring, opportunism. Truly, today it is Mao Tsetung Thought that is showing the path forward in the American anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution.
On this tenth anniversary of the 16-Point Decision let all American Marxist-Leninists re-dedicate themselves to taking up the lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in order to rebuild a genuine Communist Party of the American proletariat.
GUIDELINES FOR BUILDING MASS DEMOCRACY (4)
1) In organizing mass democracy, our motive is to increase the political consciousness of the masses, release their initiative and unify them against the common enemy.
2) We must be fully conscious of the fact that a genuine mass democratic struggle is a strong weapon in the hands of the genuinely progressive people to expose and demolish the 'ghosts' and 'dragons' spread by various imperialist stooges, modern Soviet revisionists, trotskyists, and other reactionaries. Only by initiating mass ideological struggles for democratic rights and struggling for better living, can we unify the masses against all the anti-people forces. We must fully rely on the people and help them.
"The masses and the masses alone are the makers of world history."
3) Political consciousness of the masses and their capability to fight will not be enhanced if we keep our ideas away from the masses, have contempt for them and sneer at the thought of involving them in the solving of various problems. For this reason we must expose the anti-people forces to the masses. This cannot be done without waging mass ideological struggles amongst the masses.
4) Ideas are a great weapon which is used by the reactionaries as well as the revolutionary forces, but with different motives. The method of reactionary ideas is to enslave the masses.
The inculcation of the bourgeois world outlook is harmful to the fighting ability of the masses.
But the motive of revolutionary ideas is to serve the people, increase their vigilance against retrogressive and reactionary ideas. Once ideas are grasped by the masses, they become a material force to unify people to march forward and bring about the down-fall of the backward ruling circles. Building mass democracy is a revolutionary way of achieving the growth of revolutionary ideas amongst the people. That is why reactionaries dread the thought of having their ideas exposed to the masses. Thus, in order to expose reactionaries and their putrid, decaying ideas, it is imperative that mass ideological struggles take place.
1) In organizing mass democracy, we must first work out our ideas in our units, learn from the rich experience of other mass-struggles, the experience of other countries, e.g. the Great October Revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and then demonstrating them to the masses by closely remaining in the context of their struggles. Any forms of social chauvinism or resistance to learning from other people's and other countries' experience is to go over to the enemy and to harm the people's cause. Thus working out ideas in the context of the struggles and putting faith in the masses by raising all issues amongst the masses, is the role of building mass democracy.
2) All genuine Internationalists must put their ideas to the test of the masses. They must not be afraid that their ideas will be proven wrong or rejected by the masses. As Comrade Mao Tsetung points out, "If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people. " But without bringing our ideas to the masses we will not be able to see our shortcomings and have them corrected.
3) Mass ideological struggles are neither empty debates nor discussions of ideas which inhabit the skies. Building mass democracy means organizing the masses to solve concrete problems confronting them. Building mass democracy for its own sake is counter-revolutionary and must be opposed. All sophistry, rhetoric, un-investigated ideas, must be outlawed by mobilizing the masses against them. 'No investigation, no right to speak' must be the guideline.
4) Care should be taken to expose those who partake in mass democracy meetings only in order to glorify themselves, especially those who are loudmouthed, and who present themselves as 'experts' instead of as part of the masses. They are, at best, empirio-critics, and at worst idealist phrase-mongers. Their main motive is to 'advise' and 'criticism' and they claim themselves to be most objective. Building mass democracy means participation of the masses in the development of ideas for the sole purpose of dealing with a concrete situation. "Follow Mass-line in Everything" must be the guideline. To be detached, isolated and above the masses means to be a tyrant, and 'expert' and an anti-people force.
5) Lastly, all whispers and slanders against genuinely revolutionary organizations and the people must be brought to the mass democracy meetings. Imperialists, modern Soviet revisionists, trotskyists and various other liberal bourgeois partake in slander, character assassination and gossip as a means of furthering their political ends. We must expose them to the masses, bar them from mass meetings if they persist in those activities and draw a clear line between ourselves and the enemy. Anybody who refuses to come under the discipline of the masses must be severely dealt with. [End.]
(1) The great, historic May 16,1966 Circular of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was reprinted in the May 12,1976 issue of The Workers' Advocate.
(2) Lenin. State and Revolution, Ch. IV, Sec. 5, p. 93, Foreign Languages Press, Peking. The words underlined are in italics in the original.
(3) Quoted in Cahiers de la Chine Nouvelle, August 31, 1967.
(4) Reprinted from the 1968 document of the Internationalists entitled One Struggle, Two Enemies (U, S. imperialism; modern Soviet Revisionism), Three Guidelines (Development of Fraternal Relations; Criticism, Self Criticism; Building Mass Democracy) and Four Levels of Work (Internal Consolidation, External Consolidation; Investigation; Agitation).
(Adopted on August 8, 1966)
1. A NEW STAGE IN THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution now unfolding is a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country, a stage which is both broader and deeper.
At the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party, Comrade Mao Tsetung said: To overthrow a political power, it is always necessary first of all to create public opinion, to do work in the ideological sphere. This is true for the revolutionary class as well as for the counter-revolutionary class. This thesis of Comrade Mao Tsetung's has been proved entirely correct in practice.
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a come-back. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in power taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the bourgeois reactionary academic "authorities" and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.
2. THE MAIN CURRENT AND THE TWISTS AND TURNS
The masses of the workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres form the main force in this Great Cultural Revolution. Large numbers of revolutionary young people, previously unknown, have become courageous and daring path breakers. They are vigorous in action and intelligent. Through the media of big-character posters and great debates, they argue things out, expose and criticize thoroughly, and launch resolute attacks on the open and hidden representatives of the bourgeoisie. In such a great revolutionary movement, it is hardly avoidable that they should show shortcomings of one kind or another; however, their gen- feral revolutionary orientation has been correct from the beginning. This is the main current in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It is the general direction along which this revolution continues to advance.
Since the Cultural Revolution is a revolution, it inevitably meets with resistance. This resistance comes chiefly from those persons in power taking the capitalist road who have wormed their way into the Party. It also comes from the force of habits from the old society. At present, this resistance is still fairly strong and stubborn. But after all, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is an irresistible general trend. There is abundant evidence that such resistance will be quickly broken down once the masses become fully aroused.
Because the resistance is fairly strong, there will be reversals and even repeated reversals in this struggle. There is no harm in this. It tempers the proletariat and other working people, and especially the younger generation, teaches them lessons and gives them experience, and helps them to understand that the revolutionary road zigzags and docs not run smooth.
3. PUT DARING ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE AND BOLDLY AROUSE THE MASSES
The outcome of this Great Cultural Revolution will be determined by whether or not the Party leadership dares boldly to arouse the masses.
Currently, there are four different situations with regard to the leadership being given to the movement of Cultural Revolution by Party organizations at various levels:
(1) There is the situation in which the persons in charge of Party organizations stand in the van of the movement and dare to arouse the masses boldly. They put daring above everything else, they are dauntless communist fighters and good pupils of Chairman Mao. They advocate the big-character posters and great debates. They encourage the masses to expose every kind of ghost and monster and also to criticize the shortcomings and errors in the work of the persons in charge. This correct kind of leadership is the result of putting proletarian politics in the forefront and Mao Tsetung Thought in the lead.
(2) In many units, the persons in charge have a very poor understanding of the task of leadership in this great struggle, their leadership is far from being conscientious and effective, and they accordingly find themselves incompetent and in a weak position. They put fear above everything else, stick to outmoded ways and regulations, and are unwilling to break away from conventional practices, and move ahead. They have been taken unawares by the new order of things, the revolutionary order of the masses, with the result that their leadership lags behind the situation, lags behind the masses.
(3) In some units, the persons in charge, who made mistakes of one kind or another in the past, are even more prone to put fear above everything else, being afraid that the masses will catch them out. Actually, if they make serious self- criticism and accept the criticism of the masses, the Party and the masses will make allowances for their mistakes. But if the persons in charge don't, they will continue to make mistakes and become obstacles to the mass movement.
(4) Some units are controlled by persons taking the capitalist road who have wormed their way into the Party. Such persons in power are extremely afraid of being exposed by the masses and therefore seek every possible pretext to suppress the mass movement. They resort to such tactics as shifting the targets for attack and turning black into white in an attempt to lead the movement astray. When they find themselves very isolated and no longer able to carry on as before, they resort still more to intrigues, stabbing people in the back, spreading rumours, and blurring the distinction between revolution and counter-revolution as much as they can, all for the purpose of attacking the revolutionaries.
What the Central Committee of the Party demands of the Party committees at all levels is that they persevere in giving correct leadership, put daring above everything else, boldly arouse the masses, change the state of weakness and incompetence where it exists, encourage those comrades who have made mistakes but arc willing to correct them to cast off their mental burdens and join in the struggle, and dismiss from their leading posts all those in power taking the capitalist road and so make possible the recapture of the leadership for the proletarian revolutionaries.
4. LET THE MASSES EDUCATE THEMSELVES IN THE MOVEMENT
In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves, and any method of doing things in their stead must not be used.
Trust the masses, rely on them and respect their initiative. Cast out fear. Don't be afraid of disturbances. Chairman Mao has often told us that revolution cannot be so very refined, so gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. Let the masses educate themselves in this great revolutionary movement and learn to distinguish between right and wrong and between correct and incorrect ways of doing things.
Make the fullest use of big-character posters and great debates to argue matters out, so that the masses can clarify the correct views, criticize the wrong views and expose all the ghosts and monsters. In this way the masses will be able to raise their political consciousness t in the course of the struggle, enhance their abilities and talents, distinguish right from wrong and draw a clear line between ourselves and the enemy.
5. FIRMLY APPLY THE CLASS LINE OF THE PARTY
Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution and it is likewise a question of the first importance for the Great Cultural Revolution.
Party leadership should be good at discovering the Left and developing and strengthening the ranks of the Left: it should firmly rely on the revolutionary Left. During the movement this is the only way to isolate the most reactionary rightists thoroughly, win over the middle and unite with the great majority so that by the end of the movement we shall achieve the unity of more than 95 per cent of the cadres and more than 95 per cent of the masses.
Concentrate all forces to strike at the handful of ultra-reactionary bourgeois rightists and counter-revolutionary revisionists, and expose and criticize to the full their crimes against the Party, against socialism and against Mao Tsetung Thought so as to isolate them to the maximum.
The main target of the present movement is those Party persons in power taking the capitalist road.
The strictest care should be taken to distinguish between the anti-Party, anti socialist rightists and those who support the Party and socialism but have said or done something wrong or have written some bad articles or other works.
The strictest care should be taken to distinguish between the bourgeois reactionary scholar-tyrants and "authorities" on the one hand and people who have the ordinary bourgeois academic ideas on the other.
6. CORRECTLY HANDLE CONTRADICTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE
A strict distinction must be made between the two different types of contradictions: those among the people and those between ourselves and the enemy. Contradictions among the people must not be made into contradictions between ourselves and the enemy; nor must contradictions between ourselves and the enemy be regarded as contradictions among the people.
It is normal for the masses to hold different views. Contention between different views is unavoidable, necessary and beneficial. In the course of normal and full debate, the masses will affirm what is right, correct what is wrong and gradually reach unanimity.
The method to be used in debates is to present the facts, reason things out, and persuade through reasoning. Any method of forcing a minority holding different views to submit is impermissible. The minority should be protected, because sometimes the truth is with the minority. Even if the minority is wrong, they should still be allowed to argue their case and reserve their views.
When there is a debate, it should be conducted by reasoning, not by coercion or force.
In the course of debate, every revolutionary should be good at thinking things out for himself and should develop the communist spirit of daring to think, daring to speak and daring to act. On the premise that they have the same general orientation, revolutionary comrades should, for the sake of strengthening unity, avoid endless debate over side issues.
7. BE ON GUARD AGAINST THOSE WHO BRAND THE REVOLUTIONARY MASSES AS "COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES"
In certain schools, units, and work teams of the Cultural Revolution, some of the persons in charge have organized counterattacks against the masses who put up big-character posters criticizing them. These people have even advanced such slogans and opposition to the leaders of a unit or a work team means opposition to the Central Committee of the Party, means opposition to the Party and socialism, means counter-revolution. In this way it is inevitable that their blow-a will fall on some really revolutionary activists. This is an error on matters of orientation, an error of line, and is absolutely impermissible.
A number of persons who suffer from serious ideological errors, and particularly some of the anti-Party and anti-socialist rightists, are taking advantage of certain shortcomings and mistakes in the mass movement to spread rumours and gossip, and engage in agitation, deliberately branding some of the masses as "counterrevolutionaries". It is necessary to beware of such "pickpockets" and expose their tricks in good time.
In the course of the movement, with the exception of cases of active counterrevolutionaries where there is clear evidence of crimes such as murder, arson, poisoning, sabotage or theft of state secrets, which should be handled in accordance with the law, no measures should be taken against students at universities, colleges, middle schools and primary schools because of problems that arise in the movement. To prevent the struggle from being diverted from its main target, it is not allowed, under whatever pretext, to incite the masses or the students to struggle against each other. Even proven rightists should be dealt with on the merits of each case at a later stage of the movement.
8. THE QUESTION OF CADRES
The cadres fall roughly into the following four categories:
(1) good;
(2) comparatively good;
(3) those who have made serious mistakes but have not become anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists;
(4) the small number of anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists.
In ordinary situations, the first two categories (good and comparatively good) are the great majority.
The anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists must be fully exposed, refuted, overthrown and completely discredited and their influence eliminated. At the same time, they should be given a chance to turn over a new leaf.
9. CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARY GROUPS, COMMITTEES AND CONGRESSES
Many new things have begun to emerge in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The cultural revolutionary groups, committees and other organizational forms created by the masses in many schools and units are something new and of great historic importance.
These cultural revolutionary groups, committees and congresses are excellent new forms of organization whereby the masses educate themselves under the leadership of the Communist Party. They are an excellent bridge to keep our Party in close contact with the masses. They are organs of power of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The struggle of the proletariat against the old ideas, culture, customs and habits left over by all the exploiting classes over thousands of years will necessarily take a very, very long time. Therefore, the cultural revolutionary groups, committees and congresses should not be temporary organizations but permanent, standing mass organizations. They are suitable not only for colleges, schools and government and other organizations, but generally also for factories, mines, other enterprises, urban districts and villages.
It is necessary to institute a system of general elections, like that of the Paris Commune, for electing members, to the cultural revolutionary groups and committees and delegates to the cultural revolutionary congresses. The lists of candidates should be put forward by the revolutionary masses after full discussion, and the elections should be held after the masses have discussed the lists over and over again.
The masses are entitled at any time to criticize members of the cultural revolutionary groups and committees and delegates elected to the cultural revolutionary congresses. If these members or delegates prove incompetent, they can be replaced through election or recalled by the masses after discussion.
The cultural revolutionary groups, committees and congresses in colleges and schools should consist mainly of representatives of the revolutionary students. At the same time, they should have a certain number of representatives of the revolutionary teaching and administrative staff and workers.
10. EDUCATIONAL REFORM
In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution a most important task is to transform the old educational system and the old principles and methods of teaching.
In this Great Cultural Revolution, the phenomenon of our schools being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.
In every kind of school we must apply thoroughly the policy advanced by Comrade Mao Tsetung of education serving proletarian politics and education being combined with productive labour, so as to enable those receiving an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and to become labourers with socialist consciousness and culture.
The period of schooling should be shortened. Courses should be fewer and better. The teaching material should be thoroughly transformed, in some cases beginning with simplifying complicated material. While their main task is to study, students should also learn other things. That is to say, in addition to their studies they should also learn industrial work, farming and military affairs, and take part in the struggles of the Cultural Revolution to criticize the bourgeoisie as these struggles occur.
11. THE QUESTION OF CRITICIZING BY NAME IN THE PRESS
In the course of the mass movement of the Cultural Revolution, the criticism of bourgeois and feudal ideology should be well combined with the dissemination of the proletarian world outlook and of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought.
Criticism should be organized of typical bourgeois representatives who have wormed their way into the Party and typical bourgeois reactionary academic "authorities", and this should include criticism of various kinds of reactionary views in philosophy, history, political economy and education, in works and theories of literature and art, in theories of natural science, and in other fields.
Criticism of anyone by name in the press should be decided after discussion by the Party committee at the same level, and in some cases submitted to the Party committee at a higher level for approval.
12. POLICY TOWARDS SCIENTISTS, TECHNICIANS AND ORDINARY MEMBERS OF WORKING STAFFS
As regards scientists, technicians and ordinary members of working staffs, as long as they are patriotic, work energetically, are not against the Party and socialism, and maintain no illicit relations with any foreign country, we should in the present movement continue to apply the policy of "unity, criticism, unity". Special care should be taken of those scientists and scientific and technical personnel who have made contributions. Efforts should be made to help them gradually transform their world outlook and their style of work.
13. THE QUESTION OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR INTEGRATION WITH THE SOCIALIST EDUCATION MOVEMENT IN CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE
The cultural and educational units and leading organs of the Party and government in the large and medium cities are the points of concentration of the present Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The Great Cultural Revolution has enriched the socialist education movement in both city and countryside and raised it to a higher level. Efforts should be made to conduct these two movements in close combination. Arrangements to this effect may be made by various regions and departments in the light of the specific conditions.
The socialist education movement now going on in the countryside and in enterprises in the cities should not be upset where the original arrangements arc appropriate and the movement is going well, but should continue in accordance with the original arrangements. However, the questions that are arising in the present Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution should be put to the masses for discussion at the proper time, so as to further foster vigorously proletarian ideology and eradicate bourgeois ideology.
In some places, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is being used as the focus in order to add momentum to the socialist education movement and clean things up in the fields of politics, ideology, organization and economy. This may be done where the local Party committee thinks it appropriate.
14. GRASP REVOLUTION, PROMOTE PRODUCTION
The aim of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is to revolutionize people's ideology and as a consequence to achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results in all fields of work. If the masses are fully aroused and proper arrangements are made, it is possible to carry on both the Cultural Revolution and production without one hampering the other, while guaranteeing high quality in all our work.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a powerful motive force for the development of the social productive forces in our country. Any idea of counterposing the Great Cultural Revolution to the development of production is incorrect.
15.THE ARMED FORCES
In the armed forces, the Cultural Revolution and the socialist education movement should be carried out in accordance with the instructions of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Party and the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army.
16. MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT IS THE GUIDE TO ACTION IN THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, it is imperative to hold aloft the great red banner of Mao Tsetung Thought and put proletarian politics in command. The movement for the living study and application of Chairman Mao Tsetung's works should be carried forward among the masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers, the cadres and the intellectuals, and Mao Tsetung Thought should be taken as the guide to action in the Cultural Revolution.
In this complex Great Cultural Revolution, Party committees at all levels must study and apply Chairman Mao's works all the more conscientiously and in a living way. In particular, they must study over and over again Chairman Mao's writings on the Cultural Revolution and on the Party's methods of leadership, such as On New Democracy, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work, Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership and Methods of Work of Party Committees.
Party committees at all levels must abide by the directions given by Chairman Mao over the years, namely that they should thoroughly apply the mass line of "from the masses, to the masses" and that they should be pupils before they become teachers. They should try to avoid being one sided or narrow. They should foster materialist dialectics and oppose metaphysics and scholasticism.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is bound to achieve brilliant victory under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Tsetung.
On June 16,1976, Malik Chaka (formerly Michael C. Edwards), progressive Black journalist and active fighter for the Afro-American people, was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York City. He was returning to the U.S. from the southern part of Africa, where he had lived and worked for the last five years reporting on the African liberation struggles for numerous African and Afro-American newspapers, in order to tell the American people the truth about the national liberation war in Angola led by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The U.S. government has arrested him both as part of its systematic harassment, imprisonment and murder of militant Afro-American leaders and to protect its campaign of lies about UNITA and the Angolan people from exposure. They have moved him from jail to jail, put him in solitary confinement for over a month, forbidden journalists to talk to him, and only recently has he managed to be released on bail. The U.S. imperialists are trying to silence Malik Chaka!
What are the U.S. imperialists so scared of? For one thing, Malik Chaka has spent a long time in Angola. He has seen the Angolan civil war and the second anti-colonial war of the Angolan people against Soviet neo-colonialism first hand. He has been to the UNITA base areas and seen first-hand UNITA, the liberation movement leading the Angolan revolution. And he is resolved to bring this truth to the American people, to puncture through the lies from hack journalists who sat in bars in Luanda and Lusaka, never venturing to the battlefields or o UNITA base areas, passively absorbing the tall tales manufactured by the KGB and CIA rumor-mills, to break through the total silence the imperialist press has maintained about the official statements and actual aims of UNITA, a silence combined with the noisy propagation of the most absurd and shameless fabrications. U.S. imperialism, to hide its collusion with the Soviet-Cuban aggression against UNITA and the freedom and independence of Angola, has concocted a myth about UNITA being "pro-West".
If that is so, then why do the U.S. imperialists arrest Malik Chaka, friend of the Angolan people, staunch supporter of UNITA, and dedicated journalist? By arresting Malik Chaka, the U.S. imperialists are showing their hatred and fear of UNITA and the armed struggle that UNITA is waging and that is irresistibly leading to a truly liberated Angola.
The arrest of Malik Chaka, a long-time activist in the Afro-American movement in the '60's, shows that U.S. imperialism is still set on oppressing, enslaving and subjugating the Afro-American people, is still racist to the very core, and in fact is in the midst of organizing new attacks on the Afro-American people. Malik Chaka had been forced to leave the U.S. in December 1970 after much government persecution culminating in an attempt to kill him by police during a 2 A.M. raid on his home and the placing of a number of trumped-up charges against him in revenge for his militant and successful armed self- defense of his life. Since then there have been many public revelations concerning government harassment, frame-ups, and murders of Afro-American leaders and concerning the FBI and CIA. Many facts have been revealed concerning FBI attacks on the organization Malik Chaka worked in. Yet this does not mean that the U.S. imperialists have become sensible. On the contrary, the more the bourgeoisie boasts of its misdeeds, the more it prepares for more crimes against the people. So now the government has re-instated its discredited, 5-year old charges against Malik Chaka.
The arrest of Malik Chaka also shows the fear of the monopoly capitalist class in the face of the growing unity between the African and Afro-American peoples. The African and Afro-American peoples' struggles support each other and are an inspiration to. each other. Malik Chaka spent his time in Africa supporting the national liberation struggles of the African people and, through the medium of journalism, bringing news of these struggles back to the Afro-American people. He thus became a living embodiment of that unity between the African and Afro-American people that the U.S. imperialists are so scared of.
Malik Chaka's Background
In the 1960's, the Afro-American people all across the U.S. rose up in a great rebellion against racial discrimination and violent repression and for complete emancipation. Chairman Mao pointed out at the height of this upsurge that the struggle of Black people in the U.S. had become "A STORM NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN THE HISTORY OF THAT COUNTRY". Malik Chaka, a young Afro-American student in the '60's, came from this storm of struggle and in turn made a contribution to developing it.
He began his involvement in the struggle while a sophomore in Atlantic City (New Jersey) High School in 1962. He was elected President of the Atlantic City NAACP Youth Division and led it to a broader level of activities than it had previously undertaken. He took part in a number of protests and demonstrations.
In 1965 Malik Chaka came to Camden, New Jersey to attend Rutgers university. At Rutgers, Malik participated in the anti-racist struggle of the Black students against the reactionary administration and for increased admission of Black students. Chaka also participated vigorously in the struggles of the Afro-American community around the questions of poor housing, high unemployment and against other burning injustices.
He was one of the leaders and founders of the Black People's Unity Movement (BPUM) in Camden. BPUM led a number of struggles. It took up advocating the right to armed self-defense against racist attacks. BPUM was marked for repression by the government; BPUM was on the list of Black organizations and leaders that were targeted for harassment in the COINTEL-PRO operations. Malik Chaka became a target for persecution. He was banned more than once from Rutgers, although he was an instructor, consultant and student in good standing.
In 1970 the struggle reached a very intense level. The Mayor of Camden assumed emergency powers as a repressive measure against the Black community in late 1970. Malik Chaka gave an important speech against this. Two weeks later the police staged a 2 A.M. raid on his home with the intention of killing him. Their plans were frustrated because Malik Chaka fought back with armed self-defense and shot back at his attackers. The police wounded him and arrested him on fake charges. The Black community raised $10,000 bail for him, but the persecution continued. Finally Chaka was forced to leave the country and continue his revolutionary activities temporarily in Africa.
Thus in 1971, undaunted by the terror used against him and still facing the bogus "charges" arising out of the police raid on his house, Malik Chaka went to Africa to support the Africa liberation movements. There he became well-known for his activity on the journalistic front. He specialized in reporting on the struggles in southern Africa, and in particular the struggle of the Angolan people against Portuguese colonialism. While inside Angola, Malik Chaka became a strong supporter of UNITA, the liberation movement which has led the struggle first against Portuguese colonialism and now against Soviet neo-colonialism.
Malik Chaka decided to return to the U.S. at this time in order to tell the American people the truth about Angola, a truth which U.S. imperialism fears. U.S. imperialism is today making deals with the colonial government in Luanda. Gulf Oil Co. is paying royalties to the Luanda government of national betrayal and is thus financing the Soviet-Cuban aggression against the Angolan people. The neo-colonial government has also entered into a notorious pact with the U.S. imperialist-backed racist Union of South Africa. It thus comes as no surprise that U.S. imperialism is attacking the Angolan patriots headed by UNITA and seeking to silence the American friends of Angola, such as Malik Chaka.
All progressive people should condemn the unjust persecution of Malik Chaka. The fraternal bonds between the American and Angolan people, symbolized by Malik Chaka, will grow ever stronger. End.
[Photo: Malik Chaka, Afro-American activist and journalist and friend of the Angolan people.]
Pyongyang, August 19,1976 (Hsinhua) --The Korean Central News Agency was authorized to make public a statement today on the provocation committed by the U.S. forces in the joint security area of Panmunjom yesterday. The statement reads as follows:
As already reported, the U.S. imperialist aggressors running wild to start a new war of aggression in Korea committed a grave provocation against our side in the joint security area of Panmunjom on August 18.
Around 10 hours 45 minutes on the morning of August 18, the U.S. imperialist aggressors suddenly sent out 14 bandits carrying axes and lethal weapons to fell a tree at random in the joint security area.
The tree was planted and tended with much care by our side for a long time. Seeing the act of the enemy, four security personnel of our side went to the spot and repeatedly told the enemy that the tree must not be felled arbitrarily without a prior consultation with our side as the tree is controlled by our side.
The enemy who came with the aim of committing a provocation from the outset, far from complying with the just demand of our side, committed the unbearable insulting act of hurling invectives and spitting at the security personnel of our side and, counting on their numerical superiority, collectively pounced upon and beat the security personnel of our side and injured them by throwing an axe.
This critical situation compelled the security personnel of our side to take a step in self-defence.
The security personnel of our side put up a death-defying resistance against the enemy, throwing back the axe hurled by the enemy.
When things developed in this way, the enemy reinforced their force with more than 30 hooligans they had kept waiting in advance.
In this incident provoked by the enemy, five security personnel of our side were wounded heavily or lightly.
This is the truth of the incident. This notwithstanding, now the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys are distorting the fact to make it appear as if our side has caused the incident, carrying axes. But, this can fool no one. The axe used by the enemy when a free-for-all took place is now in our hands. It is an Austrian-made axe used in the U.S. army units.
The attempt of the U.S. imperialist aggressors to shift the responsibility onto our side after openly committing a provocation in the joint security area in broad daylight itself exposes that they had plotted this incident in a planned manner to find a pretext for starting a war.
As has already been ascertained, this is crystal clear from the fact that while this incident was taking place, the assistant security officer of the U.S. army, the U.S. duty officer and a captain of the south Korean puppet army directly commanded it, watching the scene on hill no. 3 opposite Panmunjom, having made even preparations for photographing it, and more than 100 heavily armed military personnel were waiting in three trucks behind them.
That the U.S. imperialists provoked the incident under a premeditated plan was made plain when such highest authorities of the United States as Ford and Kissinger as well as the South Korean puppet clique were all mobilized, as soon as they began the provocative act, to raise at the same time a large-scale clamour and hurl groundless slanders and calumnies against our side, sent an ultimatum-style notice to our side and issued an "order of emergency alert" to the U.S. forces occupying south Korea.
As soon as this incident occurred, we urgently called for a security officers' meeting, considering it natural to deal with it at that meeting first as it took place in the joint security area.
But the enemy was arrogant enough to refuse this just proposal of ours and came out with a demand for the convocation of a meeting of the military armistice commission, raising a frantic row of viciously slandering our side, like the thief crying "stop thief!".
We are ready to call a meeting of the military armistice commission at any time after a security officers' meeting to make clear the truth of the incident and bar the U.S. side from committing such provocative act again.
Facts make it as plain as noonday to what extent the U.S. imperialists and the Pak Jung Hi puppet clique have gone in their reckless and vicious manoeuvres to increase tension in Korea and start a new war.
The Korean Central News Agency is authorized to sternly condemn the brutal provocative outrage of the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet clique against our side as a planned criminal act deliberately committed by them to incite antagonism and hostility and heighten the tension between north and south Korea and lead the situation to the brink of war, and an unpardonable challenge to the Korean people and the world peace-loving people.
We strongly hold that the U.S. imperialist aggressors must severely punish the prime movers who planned and provoked the incident and the criminals involved in the provocative outrage, and take appropriate measures against the recurrence of similar incidents.
The U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppets must look straight at the reality and act with discretion.
If the U.S. imperialists persist in the reckless acts and provocations in Korea, they will have to bear full responsibility for all the consequences arising therefrom. End.
[Box: The Workers' Advocate has received the two important documents from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA): "The River Cuanza Manifesto" and the "Final Communique of the Conference of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee with the Participation of the Political and Military Cadres". We reproduce them here in support of the struggle of the Angolan people for genuine and total independence, which is being waged today against the Soviet-Cuban aggressor troops and the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA neo-colonial government. The armed national liberation struggle of the Angolan people led by UNITA is an important part of the of the world's people against the two superpowers and all reaction, in particular the expansionism of Soviet social-imperialism, and hinders the superpowers' war preparations.
On the facing page appears an article on the arrest by the U.S. imperialists of Malik Chaka, an Afro-American activist and journalist and friend of the Angolan people. Chaka was arrested upon his return to the U.S. from Africa to propagate the truth about UNITA and the Second Anti-Colonial War of the Angolan People. His arrest demonstrates once again that the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social- imperialists are collaborating against the interests of the Angolan people.]
The governing bodies of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) having met on the Cuanza River from May 7 to 10,1976, have carefully examined the politico-military situation created by the aggression and invasion of the country by the Soviet Union and Cuba.
President Jonas Savimbi explained to the participants at the conference the causes of our temporary defeat in urban areas and about the expansionist nature of Russian social imperialism using Cuban soldiers as cannon fodder. The conference then synthesized the interaction of the objective and subjective conditions favorable to our popular revolutionary armed struggle of resistance to foreign domination.
For 14 years the Angolan people fought to liberate the country from the Portuguese colonial domination. After the downfall of colonialism on April 25,1974, the Angolan people only hoped for peace and unity of all the sons and daughters of Angola to face the gigantic task of national reconstruction.
UNITA has vigorously pursued all possible steps to consolidate peace and national unity, without which economic national reconstruction is in fact impossible. The Angolan people and the world cannot deny the fact that all attempts at unity among the three liberation movements emanated from the governing bodies of UNITA:
1. Agreement for Reconciliation and Cooperation between UNITA and FNLA, Kinshasa 11/25/1974;
2. Agreement for Reconciliation and Cooperation between UNITA and MPLA, Luso (Angola), 12/22/1974;
3. Agreement among the three liberation movements on a common platform for negotiations with the Portuguese government, Mombasa (Kenya), 1/5/1975;
4. The Alvor Agreement between Portugal and the three liberation movements and the formation on 1/31/1975 of the Transitional (coalition) Government in Luanda;
5. With the civil war already in progress, UNITA once more managed to call for a peace conference of the three liberation movements in Nakuru (Kenya) on 6/15/1975.
The MPLA Neto faction has violated and tom to shreds all the agreements and imposed a disastrous civil war on the Angolan people and has invited the intervention of Russia and Cuba.
Whatever the passionate but false arguments of the Neto clique to justify the mortgaging of independence and freedom to Russia, history will acknowledge the truth that it was Neto who was wholly responsible for the civil war.
The present policy of the Luanda puppet regime is not just an accident of expediency. Since November 1974, Neto has been saying loudly and clearly to UNITA that he could not lose time explaining himself, and in Dar-es-Salaam he said his final objective was to copy in Angola the Russian-dominated Cuban regime with its repressive police state.
The African apologists of the Neto clique continue to try to demonstrate that Neto's "MPLA only appealed to the Cuban troops after South African troops invaded Angola, siding with UNITA." This is the foulest of lies, like so many others fabricated by these false African revolutionaries. These are the same shameless charlatans that stole 93 tons of weapons consigned UNITA by the friendly People's Republic of China in 1975. Can they explain why the MPLA-Neto and their Cuban masterminds had to negotiate with South Africa in Ochikango (on the Namibian border) in April 1976? It was of course to guarantee protection to all South African economic investments in Angola.
Our victories over the last three months are proof that the majority of the Angolan people, frustrated in their legitimate hope for freedom and independence, are still backing UNITA. This leads us to declare to the world that Russian social imperialism has dug its own grave in Angola and the people shall bury it there.
Power to the majority of the people of Angola ! TO WIN OR TO DIE, UNITED WE SHALL WIN!
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee
The Central Committee
The Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA) End.
FINAL COMMUNIQUE OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY CADRES
Held in Cuanza, Angola, May 7-10, 1976
1. Considering that the gravity of the political and military situation in the country originated with the Soviet-Cuban invasion, on the heels of the 14-year anti-colonial war;
2. Considering that the minority and puppet regime of Agostinho Neto has sold our country to foreigners to turn it into a colony again, demonstrating once more that it cannot represent the wishes of the majority of the oppressed and exploited population;
3. Considering that the Neto regime has now embarked on methods of fascist repression as shown by: the creation of repressive institutions such as the Directorate of Information and Security of Angola (DISA) which is fashioned after and manned mostly by former PIDE (the colonial Portuguese Gestapo) agents; the suppression of the justified demands of the Angolan workers now exploited by Cubans; and the intimidation and harassment of patriots who are committed to freedom and total independence;
4. Considering that the creation of the so-called "People's Tribunals" to hound, incarcerate and liquidate patriots opposed to neo-colonization by Russia and Cuba further confirms the lack of popular support for the Neto clique;
5. Considering the dilatory but unfulfillable promises Neto has been making to normalize the Benguela Railway traffic (thereby trying to establish his credibility with his foreign financial backers), having first bluffed about reopening the Railway in May, then in June, and now in September;
THE CONFERENCE HAS DECIDED:
1. To reorganize the governing body of UNITA which from now on is a POLITICAL PARTY, guided by revolutionary political principles, and with an armed force.
2. To reorganize the command of the Armed (Zaire) Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA), in order to clearly redefine the politico-military aims of our army of sons and daughters of workers and peasants to fulfill our Party's minimum programme (liquidation of the minority regime of the Luanda traitors) and then to begin the long march towards our Party's maximum programme (the installation and consolidation in Angola of a government of national unity to implement and execute our socialist economic policies).
3. To intensify the armed struggle against the regime imposed by Cuba and Russia. Dialogue is not possible with the Neto regime as long as it depends for survival on the protection of foreign troops. As long as this continues, it is impossible to establish a policy of nonalignment, Africanism and true democracy.
4. To appeal to all patriots unjustly taken to the Neto's fascist tribunals not to waiver and to continue denouncing the presence of foreign troops on which the Neto's oppressive regime depends.
5. To solemnly affirm to all countries concerned that the Benguela Railway will never be opened under the Neto regime no matter what protection is provided by the Soviet-Cuban forces. Our systematic and paralyzing attacks on the railroad are not acts of hostility to the neighboring sister nations of Zaire and Zambia, but are unavoidable in our struggle against the Soviet imperialism.
It is an unpardonable oversight to ignore that South Africa's main economic interests in Angola are in the south, and that it was to defend them that South African troops entered Angola. It was not necessary to invite them or to negotiate with them as Neto did at Ochikango.
These gentlemen who stole UNITA's arms can never state how many combat engagements have been fought by Cubans against South Africans in Angola (as would fit those who had come to expel South Africans from our country)! No, they cannot, because not ONE engagement took place. Cubans were consistently afraid to confront the South Africans. The Cuban mission was solely to kill black Angolans. Since the South Africans have withdrawn (or switched sides) after a Neto-Cuban-South African reconciliation banquet at Ochikango in April 1976, the Neto apologists cannot explain why Cubans are still in Angola.
The Neto clique, the Cuban agents, the Russian social-imperialists and their agents in Africa keep trying to forget the interaction of factors which make our fight not only possible but also ultimately victorious:
a) a vast territory which Portugal could never completely control for 500 years;
b) a population two-thirds favourable to UNITA as a result of the mobilisation and organisation of the masses;
c) an extended system of roads and railways with 43 of the main bridges destroyed, crossing as a general rule remote zones where sabotage and ambushes are easy;
d) an economy destroyed by civil war and by the massive exodus of the Portuguese;
e) a civil service that simply does not work;
f) the continued presence of a foreign army of occupation, now reinforced with 8,000 Cuban settlers, of which more than 100 families have taken possession of the Portuguese-developed farms in the rich agricultural area of Cela;
g) unemployment and complete lack of essential products in all villages, towns and cities of Angola;
h) the bourgeois character of the Luanda clique, absolutely unable to unite with the exploited and oppressed masses of the people;
i) the existence of UNITA as the vanguard of the poor farmers, the workers, the intellectuals of rural or worker origin, the small traders who aspire to a better life,, and all the patriots opposed to the presence of foreign troops in our country;
j) the existence of FALA (UNITA Armed Forces), tempered by 10 years of fighting side by side with the rural population without foreign aid, always self-reliant and always backed by the creative initiative of the exploited masses;
k) the leadership of UNITA and FALA, with deep roots among the people and rich experience in warfare conducted from the interior of the country, is equipped to make correct analyses of the situation, internal and external, and to establish a political line most realistic to guide the people of Angola to their true liberation and national independence.
RUSSIAN SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM CAN BE BEATEN
The history of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Africa, the People's Republic of China in Asia and of the Democratic People's Republic of Albania in Europe, are examples of countries that fought against those that dare call themselves Socialists but who are really imperialists against other countries they consider small or weak.
Our policy of fighting Social-imperialism by arms is the only correct line as opposed to any compromise with the Luanda regime which was given power by Cuban troops and Russian weapons.
In contrast with the opportunistic compromise of the African countries that recognised with immoral haste the Luanda regime, we maintain that the only possibility of co-existence with this Luanda regime is armed co-existence. The trend to reinforce defence in the neighbouring countries is a tacit admission by the respective governments that the Neto regime does not inspire trust. The nature of imperialism does not change and its mainspring is expansionism and defence of its flanks. If our land of Angola is today a target for conquest, deeply coveted by Russian imperialism, it should be obvious to all our neighbours that their own countries are the flanks of this theatre of conquest by Russian imperialism.
The only guarantee of peaceful co-existence in the southern half of the continent is to smash the Trojan Horse Luanda regime, which was installed in this area by the Cuban pseudo-internationalists and the Russian Expansionists. To UNITA the time of neutrality is over. Our friends are only those that in one way or another concretely back our struggle for the freedom of our people. Neutrals play into our enemies, and many of them the world over have recognized the minority regime installed in Luanda to profit quickly from the situation and defend their own interests.
There will be no peace in Angola! no economic development! no railroad traffic! no working harbours while the Luanda regime hangs on to power by means of Cuban soldiers and Russian armour and fighter planes.
In order for UNITA to eventually accept a dialogue with the minority regime in Luanda, foreign troops must be immediately and completely withdrawn from Angola; all the MPLA's official repressive agencies such as the "People's Court", the "Directorate for Information and Security" and the Neto regime's secret police fashioned after the Portuguese Gestapo (PIDE) must be dissolved; all cadres, members and supporters of UNITA as well as all the patriots jailed by the repressive Luanda regime whose only crime is to have wished for the people of Angola true freedom and independence, must be released from incarceration. They include patriots who fought the Portuguese regime and were jailed in colonial times, like comrades Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, Carlos Aniceto Vieira Dias, Gentil Viana and other members of the MPLA-Active Revolt who continue to resist in the dungeons of the Luanda regime; MPLA must accept unequivocally the principle of the formation of a government of national unity in Angola as the sole guarantee of real national reconciliation and national unity.
The analysis of the inner nature of Soviet imperialism indicates that soon we shall see on the one hand contradictions between the Russian imperialists and their hound dogs from Cuba as they dispute over the bone of the riches of our country. And on the other hand contradictions between the Russians and Cubans and the Neto clique as the Russian puppets try to present to the Angolan people a facade of independence and a false claim to being masters of their own decisions. Intelligence reports received from Luanda clearly point to the sharpening of the first contradictions between Cubans and the armed forces of MPLA, which stem mainly from the fact that Cubans are now refusing to go to war zones without running water or electricity.
The Angolan people know and the world should not forget that MPLA did not win the battles for the cities against UNITA. Any temporary military success they had achieved was won by regular forces from Cuba with weapons and money from Russia. Therefore, NETO'S GOVERNMENT DOES NOT REFLECT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE OF ANGOLA. It is a government of the will of Havana and Moscow.
The Conference thus concludes that all activities of the internal and external reactionaries and lackeys of Soviet social-imperialism against Angola not only will be defeated but MUST be defeated.
The Luanda clique has Russian money, Russian tanks, Russian planes and Cuban soldiers. But all this superiority is fleeting. The rejection of a foreign army of occupation by the enormous majority of the Angolan people and the popular and revolutionary character of our struggle will be the determinant factor in the final outcome.
To achieve our objectives within a limited period of time we appeal to our Party in general; to all members of our Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA); to all the cadres, to all the heads of the Party and mass organisations; to all Party representatives abroad; to all our compatriots, especially all patriotic forces that have refused to accept the shame of becoming the first Russian colony on the African continent:
a. to keep vigilance against the surrogate Angolans infiltrated among us and working for Russian social-imperialism;
b. to maintain vigilance against the false mediators which are in the pay of the new tsars, as the unity and reconciliation of the Angolan people must respect the principles of freedom, real democracy, Africanism and non-alignment;
c. to cooperate with us and our armed forces wherever they go in their task of cleaning our country of foreign troops and traitors. Those who have weapons, however rudimentary, should form guerrilla groups to harass the enemy until regular FALA units take over from them;
d. to sabotage all communications -- road, rail, telephone, etc. -- to accelerate the disintegration of the reactionary regime in Luanda;
e. to disturb normal working schedules, damage machinery, boycott classes, paralyse town council services in order to make the enemy feel he is sitting on top of an anthill;
f. to deny all forms of cooperation with the occupying foreign forces, feeding them only false information and denying them food and shelter;
g. to always help FALA units with information and intelligence of enemy activities, giving them food and never revealing the presence of wounded guerrilla fighters or regular army members left behind because of sickness or any other incapacity;
h. to increase yields of maize, potatoes, manioc, rice and other staples in zones away from the main lines of communication so as to feed the people and the armed forces. You should encourage the production, distribution and consumption cooperatives to utilize rationally the products of our labor;
i. to organise the "People's Militia" to protect the production zones;
j. to develop, in the bases and in the liberated zones, agricultural production, cattle raising and at the same time be thrifty in the use of resources;
k. to train efficiently the liberation forces, adapting them to the most efficient use of the weapons to fight the Social-imperialists from Cuba and Russia;
l. to complete the education of all soldiers, making them conscious of their historical duty to redeem the country, giving back to Angola and its people their honour and dignity; and to prepare all the nation for popular, generalised resistance.
Our friends must be with us now in this hour of fighting social-imperialism. UNITA and the people of Angola won't accept any more apologies in the hour of victory, as in 1974 when we saw them in the eyes of some of the people who came out first to embrace us after having humiliated and persecuted us for eight years.
We are certain we shall triumph! Those who doubt our possibilities underestimate man's creative capacity when inspired by noble, just and collective goals. Those that refuse to be counted with us, let them stay away and behind, which is better than dealing with someone who plays the double game of the opportunists. We would prefer those masters of deception and lies to remain on the side of the puppet Neto regime. We shall go our way as we have done before. We are not and have never been agents of South Africa. We have never been lackeys of American imperialism. And we also refuse to be lackeys or puppets of the Russian social-imperialism. Imperialism, wherever it comes from and wearing whatever garb, is always imperialism, alienator of peoples and their national independence.
UNITA has the courage to fight openly the Russian social-imperialism and we will surprise Africa and the world as we did in 1974 when our classical detractors grudgingly called us "the smallest force in Angola". Those who have the people on their side are never small, even when faced with the giant Russian imperialist invader. With the people you always win. Against the people you always lose.
Comrades in arms, countrymen, friends all over the world, we know that our task is hard and our road long and difficult, but we also know that our efforts will bring the day when our beloved country shall emerge from the darkness of social-imperialist oppression and we will once more live as free human beings, having the right to choose our government and our own political system. The military victories which we scored in the last two short months of popular resistance are proof that we shall win and we shall meet again our friends, our families and our countrymen in a single Angolan family. We shall be free, we shall be united, we shall be independent.
Attacks against the Russian-Cuban invaders shall continue all over the country.
Down with the Neto clique!
Down with social-imperialism!
Hail the government of National Unity in Angola!
Hail Angola truly free and independent!
Power to the Angolan majority!
Victory or death, united we shall win.
Signed: POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Jonas Savimbi (President)
Miguel Puna (Secretary General)
Ernesto Mulato (Permanent Secretary)
Antonio Dembo (Secretary)
F.A.L.A.
Samuel Chiwale, Commander
General Lt. Col. Chindondo, Chief of the General Staff
Lt. Col. Smart Chata, Commander Eastern Front
Lt. Col. Antunes Cahali, Commander Central Zone
Cuanza River, May 10, 1976
Over the last two months, the Azanian peopled rebellion against the racist apartheid regime of South Africa has become even more powerful and determined. From one end of the country to the other, the struggle of the Azanian people against white minority rule and for national liberation is surging forward.
On August 4, a fresh wave of revolt broke out in the African working-class township of Soweto outside of Johannesburg. According to press reports, over 20,000 Black people held a demonstration demanding the release of their comrades arrested during the uprising that took place in June. Defying bullets, police dogs and tear gas, the demonstrators smashed through police lines in an attempt to march on Johannesburg where their comrades are imprisoned at the police-prison complex in John Vorster Square. The fascist police opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators killing and wounding several.
But the savage terror of the racist authorities has only aroused the masses to rise up in ever greater fury. In Soweto, Alexandra, Tembisa and other working-class townships around Johannesburg, the African masses engaged the police in pitched battles for days on end. Tens of thousands of demonstrators organized concerted actions throwing up barricades, stoning the racists, overturning and burning police cars. The masses stormed police stations and government buildings, burning some of them to the ground.
The rebellion quickly spread to over 70 townships and all four provinces of South Africa. Fighting like that in Johannesburg has broken out from Pietersburg in the northeast to Cape Town in the southwest. In the townships around Cape Town, the masses staged a militant anti- government protest in solidarity with the uprising in Soweto, 800 miles away. The protest was ferociously attacked by the police who once again opened fire with automatic weapons, killing 33 unarmed demonstrators. The Azanian people in Cape Town responded to this bloody massacre with two days of fierce battles against the racist authorities.
On August 17th fierce fighting started in the industrial districts of Port Elizabeth. The Black masses stormed factories and destroyed several government buildings. A chieftain of the racist regime, Kruger, who claims he is going to "teach the Blacks their place", dispatched special police forces to Port Elizabeth where they gunned down over 40 Black people. However, the Azanian people are not to be cowed. The racists' efforts to drown the Azanian people's struggle in blood has only aroused the Black people in Port Elizabeth to rise up in ever greater fury.
In the Johannesburg area, on August 22, the African workers held a three-day general strike, practically shutting down production in South Africa's largest industrial center. Supported by Black youths and students, the workers struck in support of the rebellion. The racist authorities, who had made the absurd claim that the workers were against the apartheid struggle, lashed out desperately at the strike, massacring large numbers of people, further fueling the flames of struggle in the townships around Johannesburg.
Throughout the country the Azanian masses have been fighting valiantly, defying death, meeting reactionary violence with revolutionary violence and persevering in their struggle.
Two months ago, in mid-June, in Soweto and other working-class townships around Johannesburg, tens of thousands of Black students held protests against the mandatory use of Afrikaans in the schools (Afrikaans is the hated language of the Boer section of the colonialists), and against the apartheid regime. The racist and fascist apartheid government was thrown into total panic, and lashed out desperately killing 176 and wounding over 1,000 unarmed demonstrators. At that time the authorities claimed they had "the situation under control".
However, the racists' guns and their treacherous promises for "reform" have not intimidated the Azanian people nor confused them. The rebellion has become more determined and widespread than ever. The demonstrations are bigger and better organized and the Azanian masses are more clearly aiming their blows against the entire apartheid system and for national liberation. The racist authorities have changed their tune, now screaming that "the situation is explosive" and is "like a brush fire". Gripped with mortal fear, the government has enacted a series of "emergency measures", has jailed thousands, including hundreds of white students who demonstrated in support of the struggle, and has resorted to wholesale slaughter of the African masses. The South African racist regime is making a last-ditch effort to save its skin.
The South African racists are not the only ones panic-stricken by the recent events. The U.S. imperialists, who along with the British imperialists are the racists masters, are also in a frenzy over the situation. The white minority regimes in southern Africa are U.S. imperialism's main footholds in Africa. Economically, politically and strategically, the maintenance of the white minority regime in South Africa is extremely important to the U.S. imperialists.
Over 300 U.S. monopoly corporations have set up operations in South Africa to exploit the cheap Black labor. While the British imperialists are the biggest investors in South Africa, U.S. imperialism also profits from this through their influence over British monopoly capital. The U.S. monopoly capitalists are very intent on maintaining control of South Africa's plentiful supply of gold, diamonds and strategic metals. Strategically, the southern tip of Africa, which divides the Indian and Atlantic oceans, is vital for the control of the sea routes between the Middle East oil fields and the U.S. and Europe, especially in the event of the world war between the superpowers, which is brewing. In U.S. imperialism's rivalry with Soviet social-imperialism for world domination, southern Africa has become an area of sharp contention.
In recent months, the U.S. imperialists have been frantically trying to shore up their weakening position in southern Africa. U.S. imperialism is all of a sudden posing as a "friend of the Africans" and as "mediator" in the conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger is cooking up various "plans" hoping to bring about "detente" between the oppressed Africans and their oppressors and to make worthless "concessions" to the African majority.
After the uprising broke out last June, Kissinger met in West Germany with the chief of the racist South African regime, Vorster, to discuss what can be done to save racist rule from extinction. Frightened by the fresh wave of rebellion, Kissinger recently announced that he is going to South Africa to have further talks with his friend Vorster. However, no plots these two arch-fascists can hitch, no cheap reform schemes, no amount of face-lifting will pacify the Azanian people or prevent them from winning their complete liberation.
As the ongoing rebellion shows, the Azanian people are determined to win their liberation through struggle. They are not interested in worthless "reforms", "reconciliation" and "dialogue" with their oppressors. The 20 million African people will never allow themselves to be treated like slaves and imprisoned in the big concentration camps called "homelands", the wastelands which the Africans are forced onto in die name of "separate development". They will not tolerate the minority rule of 4 million whites. The fascist clique of Vorster and company, which practices die most brutal racial discrimination, depriving the Black people of all political, economic and social rights, will surely be completely buried by the indomitable Azanian people.
The Azanian people do not have illusions that the racist regime and its U.S. imperialist masters will change their nature. They have a great deal of experience with the savagery of South African racist rule. In March of 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) organized a campaign against the hated "pass laws" which are a key part of the apartheid system. On March 21, the PAC led a national protest which was ferociously attacked by the police who gunned down over 70 Africans in the town of Sharpeville, igniting massive upheaval throughout the country. This incident, known throughout the world as the "Sharpeville massacre", was a turning point in the Azanian people's struggle. It strengthened their resolve to meet the reactionary violence of the racists with revolutionary violence. It proved that the South African apartheid regime, like all oppressive regimes, is a paper tiger, inspiring the masses to persevere in the struggle. Since Sharpeville, under the leadership of the PAC, the Azanian people have been carrying on the armed struggle (recently, in just one week, 20 reactionary police were annihilated), determined to completely demolish the Vorster racist regime and win their complete liberation.
The ongoing powerful rebellion of the Azanian people is a great development in the anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist struggle of the African people. The American working class, which also suffers under the rule of U.S. imperialism, fully supports the heroic Azanian people valiantly fighting the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. The struggle of the Azanian people is a great inspiration to the Black people's struggle here in the U.S., as well as for the struggle of the entire working class and people against the monopoly capitalists. The Azanian people are bound to win! End.
[Photo: Azanian youth fight racist oppressors.]
(The following document is an editorial from The Liberator, organ of the Marxist Revolutionary Party of the Congo (Kinshasa), No. 4, July 1976. It is reproduced in full.)
Since the betrayal of Marxism-Leninism by the Soviet revisionists, the parliamentary way of struggle is brandished as the best means through which revolutionary forces can take political power and restore socialism. This betrayal of Marxism-Leninism is propagated today in Africa by the Revisionist Party of South Africa, which has accused our Party as being "ultra-left", in the pay of China and Albania. Along with their counter-revolutionary line revisionists have sold off the interests of the people's liberation movement.
We know that in the countries of the Third World, social contradictions are developing between the reactionary classes in power and the great masses of the people. Instead of supporting and encouraging the revolutionary movement of the revolutionary masses, modern revisionists and social-imperialists only back the governments headed by the exploiting classes. This traitorous policy of collaborating with the imperialism and the reaction has been denounced by Comrade Enver Hoxha, the great leader of the Albanian people and one of the greatest defenders of Marxism-Leninism's purity. Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out that: "Our policy complies with the interest of the peoples, not with those of the cliques and ideologies that oppress the peoples. It seeks friendship with the peoples, not with their oppressors. It is not a conjunctural policy, but a principled proletarian policy."
We Marxist-Leninists of Congo have known the counter-revolutionary role played by the Soviet revisionists against our revolutionary struggle. We will never forget that the American imperialists and the Soviet revisionists used the United Nations flag that killed Patrice Lumumba. We particularly will not forget the perfidious role played by the Soviet revisionists against our armed struggle in 1961. In this year modern revisionists took advantage of our inexperience and advised us to abandon the armed struggle, to reconcile with the reactionary government and to participate in the elections. As consequence of this theory, most of Lumumba's followers were arrested, jailed and killed. Their political parties were outlawed.
As the historical errors cannot be repeated, the Congolese revolutionaries have understood that to make the revolution one must have a Vanguard Party. And that this Party must be guided by Marxism, Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought.
The theory of Comrade Mao Tsetung on people's war is the only valid one for all the proletarian revolutionaries and for all the people who want independence and social liberation. We, the people of the Third World, we are not going to wait, as the revisionists advise, until our proletariat reaches first the level like that of capitalist countries. So that with it we go on strike, we struggle with the trade-union, we win victory in the elections and we take power through the parliamentary channel. Whoever will follow this scheme indicated by the revisionists will be a traitor to the cause of the revolution.
In our countries the peasantry constitutes more than 70% of the population. It lives in misery, exploitation and pauperism. To free this class and at the same time liberate the other exploited classes, we must start the war from the rural areas as indicated by Mao Tsetung Thought, encircle the towns from the countryside and finally liberate them. The head of this movement must be a Vanguard Party of the proletariat. This show's that our struggle is a peasant revolution under the leadership of the proletariat.
In Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Algeria and in the ex-Portuguese colonies, people have liberated themselves through armed struggle that was started from the countryside. This is a great proof of the correctness of Mao Tsetung Thought.
Actually in different rural areas of Africa,Asia and Latin America, people are making revolution. In the advanced capitalist countries, Marxist-Leninist parties have reconstituted themselves on the basis of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought.
Mao Tsetung Thought is just politically, ideologically, strategically, and is on principled ground. Politically: it indicates that before making the revolution one must have a proletarian revolutionary party that can educate the masses and mobilize them. This party must be Marxist- Leninist. Ideologically: it advises to wage a victorious struggle against the reactionary ideologies of the bourgeoisie and arm the masses with revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism. Strategically: it teaches the revolutionaries that in order to fight a powerful enemy and defeat him, it is compulsory to have a strategic line and resort to different tactics. This strategic line is a protracted war, whereas the tactics are guerrilla warfare and mobile war. These tactics enable the revolutionary forces still weak to capture weapons, use the enemy, become powerful, launch the offensive and finally win the victory. On principled ground: it is in conformity with the Marxist-Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution, the theory of taking power through violence.
As for the parliamentary struggle advocated by the modern revisionists, we consider this type of struggle as a buffoonery aimed at diverting the people from the revolution. The experience shows that whatever the form adopted by the bourgeois domination, be it fascism, monarchy or bourgeois democracy, it is always the different form of bourgeois dictatorship, it always represents the state machinery that capitalists and all reactionaries use to repress the working class and pursue their oppression. In this case, despite what modern revisionists claim, the powder is not held by the parliament. It is held by the repressive organs of the state power, namely: the armed forces, the police, the law, the prisons and the bureaucracy sumptuously paid. That is why Marx and Engels have taught that the only way leading to the emancipation of the working class and other toiling masses consists in destroying the repressive state machinery of the bourgeoisie and replacing it by the proletarian state machinery which they called: dictatorship of the proletariat. It is only through the armed struggle and not through the parliament that this dictatorship can be realised.
The parliament is but an ornament, a veil aimed at covering the capitalist dictatorship. The liberty granted by the bourgeois democracy aims at lulling the masses, paralyzing their class conscience and diverting their attention from the chair of power: the armed struggle. It is therefore an attempt to create divisions amongst the working class, dissimulate (hide) the cruel repression towards this class and set up illusions on the possibility of the parliamentary way. It is also an attempt to substitute the armed struggle by a verbal struggle; an attempt aimed at corrupting all petty-bourgeois leaders and making of them the admirers of constitutionalism and parliamentarism.
Despite his majority in the parliament Lumumba was ousted by the reactionary armed forces and killed. This is a great lesson which show's the falseness of the so-called parliamentary way and teaches that "POLITICAL POWER GROWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF THE GUN".
Our epoch being that of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, we must follow the teaching of Mao Tsetung Thought and carry the revolution through to the end. End.
(Below are reproduced excerpts of an interview conducted recently with Malik Chaka while he was in jail.)
Q.: Could you please characterize your political, not organizational but political, relationship to UNITA?
Chaka: UNITA and I have the same ideology and political line. I am a staunch supporter of UNITA. UNITA is the revolutionary leadership of the Angolan people. UNITA has creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of the Angolan revolution. They (UNITA) enjoy the overwhelming support of the Angolan workers and peasants.
Q.: How would you characterize yourself politically, would you call yourself a progressive Afro-American journalist, a supporter of African liberation struggles, or what?
Chaka: I am a Black communist. In the final analysis, national struggle is class struggle.
Q.: The defense committee stresses the reform aspect of Black People's Unity Movement and its relationship to various government programs. Could you please characterize the content of your activity in the U.S. and give some of your history in Camden?
Chaka: I came up out of the mass struggles of the '60's, that is, the struggle of Black people against racial discrimination and violent repression by the U.S. imperialists. I did work among the masses and joined the Black People's Unity Movement. Our line was to unite the many to defeat the few. The reason I worked in an all- Black organization was because the groups calling themselves Marxist-Leninist such as Progressive Labor Party were chauvinist, giving the line that "all nationalism is reactionary".
I came to Camden in 1965 to attend Rutgers University. At the time I came around there was very little mass activity going on. We formed the Camden Coalition and took up struggles around various questions such as housing, jobs, education, welfare, etc. We also invited Black speakers from SNCC, for example, Stokely Carmichael and later H. Rap Brown. This split the coalition between moderates and militants. I also participated in the struggles of Black students at Rutgers. I came to Camden in 1965 to go to Rutgers. These struggles were against the administration and for increased Black admissions for students. In all these struggles I participated on the basis of moving the masses to the left. Later in BPUM we also took up these struggles and also advocated the right to armed self-defense.
Q.: Let me please clarify something. When you say you are a Marxist-Leninist do you mean Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought?
Chaka: I support Mao Tsetung. My problem is with certain so-called followers of Mao Tsetung Thought in the U.S. such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and the October League (Marxist-Leninist) who refused to support UNITA in armed struggle against Soviet social-imperialism. What do you think of these organizations?
Q.: What are your view's on what the monopoly capitalists' state is doing to you?
Chaka: I am being incarcerated solely because of my political beliefs and political activity. This (attack on myself) is a continuation of the repression of FBl/CIA begun in the 1960's against the masses and against the rising revolutionary movements.
Q.: Could you characterize this as fascist?
Chaka: No. I do not believe we are in a fascist stage at this time.
Q.: Do you see this repression of you as related to your U.S. activity or your support for Angola or both ?
Chaka: Yes, both. The two are linked. The U.S. imperialists are afraid of the linkups between progressive people in the U.S. and abroad. They are definitely scared of the international united front against imperialism.
Q.: Would you agree that the U.S. imperialists are also afraid of the growing unity between the Afro-American people and African people ?
Chaka: Yes, very definitely.
Q.: How are you being treated in prison?
Chaka: I have been in solitary confinement for the last 31days, for 23 hours and 55 minutes a day in the cell. They give you five minutes for a shower if they want to. Also there has been some evidence that they are messing with my mail.
Q.: When will you be transferred to Camden?
Chaka: There is a bail hearing on the 11th (August) and we are trying to get it reduced. Right now they want $50,000 cash.
Q.: Is there anything I can do for you right now?
(Malik Chaka asked for literature from the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement.) End.
The Workers' Advocate was deeply grieved to learn of the unfortunate death of Comrade Chu Teh, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
Comrade Chu Teh was an outstanding proletarian revolutionary of the Chinese people and of the international communist movement. All his life he fought tirelessly for the victory of the Chinese revolution and for the victory of the bright future of communism throughout the world. Under the vase leadership of Chairman Mao, Comrade Chu Teh made immortal contributions to the Chinese Revolution.
Comrade Chu Teh made particularly outstanding contributions to the building of the people's army and the revolutionary base areas. Comrade Chu Teh was a founder and commander of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. In 1927, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, Comrade Chu Teh helped establish the first red revolutionary base in the Chingkang Mountains, the brilliant spark of the Chinese revolution, opening up the path of seizure of political power by waging people's warfare in the countryside, expanding the revolutionary base areas and surrounding the cities. Chairman Mao teaches that: "THE SEIZURE OF POWER BY ARMED FORCE, THE SETTLEMENT OF THE ISSUE BY WAR, IS THE CENTRAL TASK AND THE HIGHEST FORM OF REVOLUTION. THIS MARXIST-LENINIST PRINCIPLE OF REVOLUTION HOLDS GOOD UNIVERSALLY, FOR CHINA AND FOR ALL OTHER COUNTRIES."
In 1934, Comrade Chu Teh participated in the immortal Long March during which he waged resolute struggle against the renegade Chang Kuo-tao's efforts to split the Red Army and betray the Party. Comrade Chu Teh was the Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth Route Army during the War of Resistance Against Japan and was the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army which won nationwide victory in 1949.
Comrade Chu Teh made many other outstanding contributions to the cause of revolution. He played a leading role in the entire course of the Chinese people's New Democratic and socialist revolutions, including the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, helping to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and building China into the bastion of the world revolution, the great friend and supporter of the struggling peoples of the world. Comrade Chu Teh held many leading positions in the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People's Liberation Army and was a close comrade-in-arms of Chairman Mao. Comrade Chu Teh's death is a great loss to the Communist Party of China, to the Chinese people and to the communists and people the world over. As American Marxist-Leninists and in the name of the American working class and oppressed people we extend our deep condolences to Chairman Mao, to the Communist Party of China, to the entire Chinese people and the bereaved family.
We American Marxist-Leninists pledge to learn from the example of the heroic life of Comrade Chu Teh who firmly implemented Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line and always upheld the bright red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the revolutionary ideology of our era. We will escalate our struggle to defeat opportunism and build a truly Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the U.S. and lead the American working class and people in the great struggle against the two super-powers and the imperialist system, waging a proletarian revolution to eliminate U.S. imperialism, enemy of the people of the whole world, from the face of the earth.
The Chinese people will surely turn grief into strength. Under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party headed by Chairman Mao, they will surely continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, defeat all attempts to restore capitalism, contribute still more to the world revolution and bring the cause of communism to triumph.
ETERNAL GLORY TO COMRADE CHU TEH! End.
[Portrait of Chu Teh.]
On the day of the publication of Chairman Mao's two poems, I heard them recited and read them several times. That night I could not deep for joy and as I recited these poems many thoughts flashed through my mind, whereupon I dashed off two verses of my own. When the magazine Poetry asked me for a contribution, I gave them these.
1
When we went up the Chingkang Mountains
Our revolution found its cradle there;
A thousand rivers flowed into the ocean,
Huge billows tossed and surged;
Our great banner raised on Lohsiao
Turned half the sky red;
And our line embodied the people's will
As workers and peasants grasped political power.
Invincible the proletariat,
Firm as a rock in the rushing stream our leader;
When all seemed lost, relying upon him
We won through every danger.
The sparks scattered far and wide,
Set north, south, east and west ablaze;
Now that the flames are leaping ever higher,
Should we not think back again to those old days?
Through the rising wind and thunder
Let us whip our swift horse on;
The whole Party firmly united,
We dare to scale perilous heights.
2
The roc soars ninety thousand li
Above the sea of clouds;
Mighty is our universe
Filled with our bold resolve.
Ludicrous the sparrow in his bush,
The overlord eager to swallow up the sky;
Soon he will bite the dust,
His elfland palace ending up in smoke.
The salvos of the Cultural Revolution
Appalled the imperialists and revisionists;
Now the spring wind brings crimson showers,
Fresh shoots in sturdy profusion.
United, the old, those in their prime and the young
March towards their goal, following the Chairman's line.
Class struggle is the key link;
The key link grasped, all else falls into place.
By mastering dialectics,
Unifying our world outlook,
And acting as true Marxist-Leninists,
We shall turn the world upside down!
(February 1976) End.
On July 28, a strong earthquake struck the Tangshan-Fengnan area of China's Hopei Province and affected the Tientsin-Peking area.
The earthquake struck with deadly force, registering 8.2 on the Richter scale, the strongest quake in 12 years and the most powerful earthquake to hit a heavily populated area in decades.
Contrary to the reports of the U.S. imperialist press, an excellent situation has developed in the quake-stricken area. The masses have responded to the earthquake with revolution.
The earthquake has intensified the class struggle and has strengthened the revolutionary resolve of the masses to combat Teng Hsiao-ping's counter-revolutionary capitulationist line and prevent all attempts to restore capitalism. Declaring that "the stronger the earthquake, the greater our determination", the masses quickly organized themselves to rescue people in danger and protect the people's property and have thrown themselves into relief work.
Since the first moments after the earthquake, the people in the afflicted area felt the great concern of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China. From throughout the country, large quantities of medicines, food, clothing, building materials and other relief materials are pouring into the afflicted area. Medical teams, People's Liberation Army units, workers, technicians and scientists, have arrived from all over China.
The people in the afflicted area, calm, confident and resolute, fighting heroically against the effects of the earthquake, have won great victories. Railroads, telecommunications, electrical systems and highways have been repaired step-by-step. Production is rapidly being restored and in some plants the workers are producing more than ever. The U.S. imperialist press claimed that the huge Kailuan coal field was "destroyed" and that the 10,000 miners who were in the mines at the time of the quake were "finished". However, all but a few of the 10,000 miners returned safely from underground and within a week of the quake, production was resumed at one of the mines. In man's history of combating the effects of serious earthquakes, the Chinese people have achieved unprecedented accomplishments, which would be impossible in any capitalist country or in old semi-feudal, semi-colonial China.
Firmly upholding Chairman Mao' s revolutionary line of self-reliance, the Chinese people have refused foreign assistance in their struggle against the effects of the quake. The U.S. imperialist press is ranting and raving about this policy, accusing China of being "cold-hearted", "ruthless" and "isolationist". But why have such long-standing enemies of People's China, the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet social-imperialists and even the Chiang gang on Taiwan become so eager to give "humanitarian aid" to China? It is because they want to carry out espionage and subversion in their drive to re-enslave her. The Chinese people's firm stand of relying on their own efforts is a powerful rebuff to the two superpowers and all reactionaries and it will ensure that the relief work will be done even better.
Why is it that China has been able to accomplish miracles in fighting the effects of the earthquake? It is because of revolution. The Chinese people have been tempered in fierce class battles and in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Armed with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the Chinese people have never wavered in front of difficulties and have always triumphed over them. Through waging victorious revolution, the Chinese people have established the socialist system under the dictatorship of the proletariat which means that natural disasters are fought in such a way as to best guarantee the well-being of the masses.
The victories of the Chinese people's struggle against the earthquake, which have commanded the respect of the people of the world and are unprecedented in history, are a clear proof of the superiority of the socialist system under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under the capitalist system and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in natural disasters and calamities, like in everything else, the profits of the capitalists are always put ahead of the well-being of the working people.
This June, in the U.S., the Teton Dam in Idaho collapsed, killing eleven people and causing a billion dollars in property damages. The people in the area who could not afford insurance were left without compensation and lost everything. Furthermore, the reason for the dam break in the first place was that the capitalist contractors who built the dam, did so only to make the highest profits and in complete disregard of the elementary rules of dam-building. Federal agencies knew that the dam was unsafe as early as 1972 but kept it to themselves and let the first high-water to arrive go crashing through the dam onto the towns below.
The flash flood which roared down the Big Thompson River in Colorado this August caused severe damages, killing over 100 people and destroying several communities. However, the capitalists and the U.S. government are not interested in rebuilding the devastated area. It is predicted that it will take six months just to repair the fifteen miles of road along the river.
The destitute people have been left to fend for themselves.
The Workers' Advocate extends the sympathy and internationalist solidarity of the American working class and people to the fraternal Chinese people in their time of difficulties. Inspired by the Chinese people's heroic achievements already in overcoming the effects of the quake, we are sure that they will continue their revolutionary struggle, strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat, wipe out all the effects of the earthquake and march forward on the road of socialist revolution and socialist construction. END.