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. 7, no. 2, May 12,1977 25ยข
[Front page:
Carter's Energy Program: Fake Shortage to Impose Sky-Rocketing Prices and Stockpile for War;
ROOTS: Political Deception to Smash the Afro-American Struggle and Revive Dead Cultural Nationalism;
CARTER'S "HUMAN RIGHTS" CAMPAIGN: PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR BETWEEN IMPERIALIST SLAVE-OWNERS;
Imperialist Rivalry of the Two Superpowers Lies Behind the Fighting in Zaire]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Criminals Attack Black Youth for "Crime"...................... | p. 2 |
Woodcock's "MIA" Mission............................................. | p. 2 |
Plight of AFL-CIO's Electoral Strategy............................ | p. 2 |
Seattle "Magnet" Schemes............................................... | p. 3 |
Fascist Anti-Busing Movement in Cleveland................... | p. 3 |
8th Anniversary of Founding of American Communist Workers Movement (M-L)............................................... | p. 4 |
Salute to 3rd Congress of Communist Party of Canada (M-L)................................................................................ | p. 6 |
Founding of Canadian People's Defense Committee....... | p. 7 |
CPC(M-L) on the International Situation......................... | p. 7 |
Chairman Mao's May 20th Statement.............................. | p.11 |
From Comrade Hoxha's 7th Congress Rept..................... | p.11 |
Glory to Brazilian Comrades-in-Arms............................. | p. 8 |
Message from Resistance in Chile................................... | p. 8 |
Fighting Spirit of Palestinian People................................ | p. 8 |
46th Anniv. of the Spanish Republic................................ | p. 9 |
Castro, Soviet Puppet, Grovels......................................... | p. 9 |
Rwanda: Revolution in Heart of Africa........................... | p. 9 |
Against War of Extermination in Ethiopia....................... | p.12 |
First Congress of Eritrean Fighters.................................. | p.12 |
Fraud of "Elections" in India............................................ | p.12 |
Boston India Conference.................................................. | p.13 |
Down With Two Year Skills Test at CUNY...................... | p.13 |
Oppose Bourgeois Educational System............................ | p.13 |
The Workers' Advocate subscription rates....................... | p. 9 |
[Banner at page bottom: Some Notes on the October League's Draft Program for a Social-ChauvinistParty (see page 4)]
Carter's Energy Program: Fake Shortage to Impose Sky-Rocketing Prices and Stockpile for War
ROOTS: Political Deception to Smash the Afro-American Struggle and Revive Dead Cultural Nationalism
CARTER'S "HUMAN RIGHTS" CAMPAIGN: PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR BETWEEN IMPERIALIST SLAVE-OWNERS
HAIL MAY 1st, INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY!
Imperialist Rivalry of the Two Superpowers Lies Behind the Fighting in Zaire
World's Biggest Criminals Attack Black Youth for "Crime"
Labor Traitor Woodcock's "MIA Mission" to Indochina Serves Aggressive U.S. Imperialism
Bankrupt Once Again! The Sad Plight of the AFL-CIO's Electoral Strategy
Seattle School Board Up to No Good- Segregationist Schemes Lie Behind "Magnet Programs"
Government Organizes Fascist Anti-busing Movement in Cleveland
Statement on the Formation of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists
Hail the Formation of the Canadian People's Defense Committee!
MESSAGE OF CPC(M-L) TO THE CANADIAN PROLETARIAT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
Eternal Glory to Brazilian Comrades-in-Arms!
Message from the Front Ranks of the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Chile
Reactionary Attacks Will Never Crush the Fighting Spirit of the Palestinian People!
Hail the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the Spanish Republic!
Fidel Castro, the Soviet Revisionist Puppet, Grovels Before U.S. Imperialism
Rwanda: Revolution in the Very Heart of Africa
Hail the 7th Anniversary of Chairman Mao Tsetung's Solemn Statement of May 20,1970 !
Firmly Oppose and Denounce the Fascistic War of Extermination Against the Ethiopian People
THE FRAUD OF THE "ELECTIONS" IN INDIA WILL NOT STOP THE ARMED AGRARIAN REVOLUTION
Hail the First Congress of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front!
Militant Conference on Indian State and Revolution Held in Boston
DOWN WITH THE "TWO-YEAR SKILLS" TEST!
Necessity for Change Discussion Group: Oppose the Bourgeois Education System
Some Notes on the October League's Draft Program for a Social-Chauvinist Party
On April 20th, President Carter announced his "comprehensive long-range energy program", Claiming hysterically that world energy resources are "running out" and that the U.S. is facing an "impending catastrophe" on the front of energy, Carter called upon the American people to make "painful sacrifices" in order to "conserve energy" in the face of this alleged shortage. Trying to frighten the people into accepting his plan, Carter called for them to wage the "moral equivalent of war" to serve his program. But hidden under the guise of this fake "shortage", Carter's energy program is nothing but a vicious plan of the monopoly capitalist government to fleece the people by driving up fuel prices still higher and imposing heavy taxes on gasoline, cars, etc. The aim of Carter's program is to make the people bear the burden of the capitalists' economic crisis and to stockpile energy resources for imperialist war. It is a savage program to suck more blood from the working people to provide maximum profits for the billionaire oil monopolists and the big bourgeoisie as a whole.
Jimmy Carter is carrying out the very programs Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford dreamed of but were unable to implement. In enforcing the oil monopolies' savage plunder of the people, Carter and the Democrats have the advantage of having at their disposal their sold-out army of labor bureaucrats and their deceptive image as the so-called "party of the workers and minorities". But Carter's energy program tears this image to shreds. It simply bears out the fact that the Democrats were placed in office by the capitalists to do the work of Nixon under a more clever mask: to launch a fascist offensive against the people, shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto their backs and prepare for war.
THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF ENERGY RESOURCES WHATSOEVER
Carter is resorting to the Hitlerite big lie technique in his efforts to impose his energy program. To pass off his program, Carter is raising the bogey that there allegedly is an impending collapse of energy resources in the U.S. and the entire world. According to Carter: "The oil and gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out" and "we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade". To give this big lie some credibility, Carter ordered a secret CIA investigation of world energy resources. This CIA study supposedly discovered that "early in the 1980's the world will be demanding more oil than it can produce".
What nonsense! This is hysteria-mongering, pure and simple. Facts show that there is no material shortage of energy in the U.S. whatsoever, let alonethe world.
The first flaw in Carter's big lie is his use of the term "proven reserves". "Proven reserves" refers to the amount of already located oil which the oil monopolies will produce under "present economic conditions" (at existing prices) and with existing technology. "Proven reserves" is only the oil which is in the capitalists' immediate production plans. While U.S. oil fields have produced several tens of billions of barrels of crude oil in the past 50 years or so, in 1925 there were considered to be only five billion barrels of "proven reserves"; in 1945, 20 billion barrels; in 1964, 30 billion; and in 1974, there were 34 billion barrels of "proven reserves". Thus, since WW II, despite sky-rocketing energy usage, "proven reserves" have continually been put at between 10 and 20 years' supply. When the oil monopolies launch a drive to raise prices, they report smaller "proven reserves" (all reserve figures are provided by the oil capitalists themselves) and then create panic on the question.
[Chart:
HOW MANY YEARS WILL U.S. ENERGY RESOURCES LAST?
Even if the U.S. imported no oil whatsoever, its energy resources would last at least:
|
Petroleum | Petroleum & Shale oil | Natural Gas | Coal | Uranium |
Minimum Estimate | 50 | 60 | 70 | 400 | 1850 |
Maximum Estimate | 85 | 220 | 2500 | 800 | -- |
Clearly, the U.S. is swimming in oil. Importing at the present level would almost double these figures for oil. The wasteful U.S. monopoly capitalist system will be overthrown long before there is any material shortage of energy resources. The table is figured at present U.S. consumption levels and only with presently forseeable technology. Figures are from government and industry sources. Details are at end of article, on page 18.]
Carter's claim that there is only ten years of natural gas "reserves" covers over the actual existence of an ample supply. For instance, the monopolists' American Gas Association and the government's Energy Research and Development Agency estimate that there are between 1,000 and 2,500 years of "inferred reserves" of natural gas if gas prices are doubled (Wall St. Journal, Apr. 27,1977). In other words, at the present price of $1.44 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas, the gas reserves will be used up by the end of the next decade, but if gas prices are simply raised to $3. 00, then there is enough gas to last for another 25 centuries!! Thisshows that Carter's alleged "shortage" is a matter of monopoly capitalist economics, not a lack of physical reserves.
Carter's playing with the term "proven reserves" is nothing but a cheap trick to fleece the people. A further look at the government's own statistics, the same statistics cited by the White House, gives the lie to Carter's horror stories of "running out " of energy resources.
-- There are 19-25 years of petroleum "reserves" in the U.S. at the present rate of production. If "recoverable resources" are included (i.e., if prices continue to increase and known technology is introduced), then there is an 80-100-year supply of petroleum in U.S. oil fields.
-- "Proven reserves" of natural gas are sufficient for another 20-28 years at the present extraction rate and for another 65 years if "recoverable resources" are included. As noted, this latter figure has been "updated" by the federal Energy Research and Development Agency to between 1,000 and 2,500 years!
-- The world's largest coal deposits are in the U.S., amounting to reserves for up to 800 years at the present rate of production.
-- The U.S. has large uranium deposits and other natural resources for the production of energy, vast shale oil deposits, etc.
(Source: U.S. Geological Survey, March 1974; U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1975; Project Independence Report, 1974).
In the United States, by the time there is an actual material shortage of these energy resources, the monopoly capitalist dictators will have long since been overthrown. Under the rule of the working class and the socialist system there can readily be conversion to other sources of energy. Furthermore, as for Carter's hoax that the entire world will "use up" its oil within thirteen years, the United Nations has just released a report that there is sufficient oil in the world for at least 100 years and thus ample time exists to convert to other energy resources.
Clearly, Carter, the saintly preacher of "trust" and "honesty in government", has been caught with his pants down in a big lie in his efforts to impose his energy program on the people.
OIL MONOPOLIES ENGINEER FAKE SHORTAGES TO DRIVE UP PRICES
According to the Carter administration, last winter's disastrous natural gas "shortage" taught the people a lesson: that there really is an energy shortage and that the working masses must make greater sacrifices to the rich to solve it. But, in fact, all that the natural gas "shortage" showed was that the entire society is being strangled by a handful of billionaire oil kings like Rockefeller, who forced the people to the wall during the coldest winter of the century.
The big oil monopolies (Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, etc.), which monopolize the entire energy industry including the production of natural gas, held the entire society to ransom, outright refusing to supply natural gas so as to force up prices and reap maximum capitalist profits. Cut-backs in gas supplies brought severe hardships to the people. President Carter ordered thermostats turned down while the people suffered in cold homes, places of work and schools. Numbers of people were frozen to death. Martial law-type "emergencies" were declared in eleven states. At one point, nearly three million workers were laid off and schools for several million children were shut down. Outrageous heating bills placed an unbearable burden on the people. Carter, the Congress and the Federal Power Commission bureaucrats fell all over themselves to jack up natural gas prices and enforce the oil monopolies' savage dictate: Pay or freeze! By the end of the "natural gas crisis", under Carter's emergency gas bill, in places "new gas" at the wellhead was selling for over $3.25 per thousand cubic feet, over twice the pre-"shortage" price of $1.44.
The natural gas "shortage" was a fraud, a fake shortage engineered by the capitalist monopolies and the government. Even without the bitter cold winter, a deliberately created "shortage" would have occurred. Before the winter began, the oil monopolies broke contracts on 750 billion cubic feet of gas to the pipeline companies and utilities, approximately one- half of the amount that allegedly came up short in the winter. There are numerous reports in the capitalist press of the gas producers, Shell, Texaco, Gulf and so-called independents, capping wells and hoarding trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Even the spokesmen for the gas producers and pipeline companies and big shots in the government do not deny that the "shortage" was a hoax caused by the monopoly oil speculators keeping the gas off the market to drive up the prices and maximize profits.
In the fall of 1973, the oil monopolies carried out similar blackmail, engineering a phoney "oil shortage". While oil storage facilities were overflowing, they withheld the oil from the market. Prices for gasoline, heating oil, etc., nearly doubled and electricity bills soared. Atthe time, the bourgeoisie blamed this robbery on the Arab oil boycott waged in support of the Palestinian and Arab people's just war against the U.S.-Israeli aggressors.
Neither was the "gas shortage" some freak of the weather, nor was the "oil shortage" caused by the Arab people's struggle. They were among the numerous artificial shortages engineered by the capitalist monopolies over the last few years such as the "meat shortage", the "paper shortage", the "sugar shortage" and now the "citrus fruit shortage" and the "coffee shortage", all to drive up prices and inflate the profits of the capitalist monopolies.
A handful of oil billionaires have used their control of the energy sector to throttle the population, create shortages and engage in an orgy of price-hiking. Fuel prices have been sky-rocketing at twice the rate of prices as a whole, driving up prices throughout the economy. The profits of the ten largest oil monopolies increased by 67% between 1972 and 1975 alone, despite the conditions of severe economic crisis which has shaken the capitalist-revisionist world and is the worst since the Depression. The oil monopolies are plundering the people in their efforts to come through this crisis with their profits untouched.
The government, which is the armed state machine of the rich, its main instrument to suppress the working masses and enforce their exploitation, has been implementing the oil monopolies' plunder and blackmail to the hilt. Carter has pledged to his capitalist masters that his administration and the monopolists "will work cooperatively" to exploit the people.
Despite all his "populist" demagogy about preventing "profiteering" by the oil speculators, and for "fair... equal sacrifices... from every class of people, and every interest group", Carter has now advanced an elaborate plan for stepped-up "profiteering" by the class of big monopolists and "painful sacrifices" by the working class and oppressed people, In fact, Carter's sole "solution" to the "energy crisis" is to jack up fuel prices and bleed the people with heavy taxes on oil, gasoline and automobiles; to use the state as an instrument to make the people pay for the consequences of the capitalist economic crisis. This is the heart of Carter's energy program.
IMPERIALIST OIL MONOPOLIES STEP UP IMPORTS TO CONTROL OIL ABROAD
Carter and the capitalist propagandists are making a big fuss about growing oil imports, citing the fact that by next year the U.S. is expected to import fully one-half of its petroleum needs. The Carter administration is making a big hue and cry about "dependence on imported oil" and the need for conservation allegedly to curtail oil imports. However, the imperialist oil monopolies are stepping up imports for definite purposes and neither they nor the government are about to cut them back. Large quantities of oil from the Middle East and Africa are being placed on the U.S. market for the purpose of keeping this oil out of the hands of rivals and keep intact the monopoly positions of the U.S. imperialist oil magnates in these areas.
In pursuit of maximum profits, the imperialist oil monopolies attempt to seize the sources of oil on a world scale. Comrade Lenin pointed out: "The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist combines of the big capitalists. These monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist combines exert efforts to make it impossible for their rivals to compete; with them by buying up, for example, iron ore fields, oil fields, etc....The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate is the struggle for the acquisition of colonies." (Imperialism, theHighest Stage of Capitalism)
The U.S. multinational oil companies buy up, and control both directly and indirectly, the oil production of, in some cases, whole countries, in the Middle East, other parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Canada, etc. The U.S. imperialist plunderers covet these sources of oil as much to keep them out of the hands of their rivals, the other imperialist powers, as anything else.
While in name most of the oil-exporting countries have nationalized their oil production, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, etc., still keep many of their monopoly privileges over these countries' oil resources, such as long-term contracts to buy up a certain percentage of a country's total production at a lower price, development contracts, etc. It is to keep these positions intact that the oil monopolies have been stepping up imports. The outbreak of the world capitalist economic crisis in 1973-74 restricted the U.S. imperialist oil speculators' markets, most significantly their major markets in Europe and Japan. The oil monopolies have been putting the surplus oil created by the economic crisis onto the U.S. market, keeping their contracts and privileges intact and the sources of oil out of the hands of their competition, the Soviet social-imperialists in particular. It is no accident that in drawing up the CIA's "bombshell report" on world oil supplies, CIA Director Admiral Stanfield Turner admits that the threat of the Russian imperialists buying further into Middle East oil,.importing up to five million barrels a day within eight years, is "crucial to (the CIA's) analysis" of the severity of the imperialists' energy crisis.
Carter uses the hoax of limiting consumption and curtailing imports to "justify" imposing heavy taxes and soaring prices for petroleum products. However, the high rate of imports in recent years is determined by the U.S. oil monopolies' efforts to monopolize world oil, not by domestic consumption, nor by the production capabilities of the U.S. oil fields. In fact, U.S. oil consumption has leveled off with the economic crisis and U.S. oil and natural gas productioncapacity is being rapidly developed. The last few years of unprecedented oil imports have also been years of rapid exploration and development of U.S. oil fields. The U.S. imperialists are developing oil and gas potential, and hoarding domestic reserves. At the same time, in their scramble for the domination of world oil, they are importing oil on a massive scale. Despite all of his noise on the question of imports, Carter's energy program has nothing to do with "curtailing" this imperialist policy.
U.S. IMPERIALISM IS FACED WITH SEVERE DIFFICULTIES ON THE ENERGY FRONT
Despite having abundant energy resources at home and an ample supply of oil for the U, S, market, the U.S. monopoly capitalists are faced with constantly growing difficulties on the energy front, a severe energy crisis. Imperialism being what it is, the high profits in overseas oil investments and the rivalry with other imperialist powers for world domination absolutely require U.S. imperialism to maintain and increase its exploitation of foreign oil. Control of oil resources is an important lever for U.S. imperialism in bringing other imperialist powers of Europe and Japan to heel and in subjugating oppressed nations. Therefore U.S. imperialism can never give up its scramble for world energy resources. But this aggressive policy has provoked fierce resistance from the people of the countries subjected to this plunder, while inter-imperialist rivalry over oil is intensifying. This threatens the monopoly positions of the U.S. oil monopolies on a world scale and their most lucrative fields of investment. In addition, the drive for world oil resources causes a ballooning outflow of dollars from the U.S. for oil imports, threatening the U.S. economy which is already deep in crisis. In 1967, the U.S. purchased $38 billion of oil, a 500 per cent increase over 1973. During the past three months, the U.S. registered record trade deficits as a result of $10 billion of expenditures for oil imports. As shown above, U.S. imperialism frenziedly steps up oil imports in order to control world markets, yet this leads it into the problem of lacking self-sufficiency for waging war. Thus U.S. imperialism is caught in its own contradictions, its drive for world oil monopoly causing an energy crisis in the midst of a country that is literally overflowing with oil and energy resources.
How do the U.S. imperialists deal with these contradictions? Not by giving up foreign exploitation and developing domestic production. Compelled by their drive for maximum profits, they will always engage in wild schemes of plunder abroad and push the masses to the wall at home to pay for the dollar outflows and stockpiling, etc., until these contradictions reach a breaking point and revolution breaks out. In the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, production costs are lowest and profits are highest. Consequently, over the past 25 years, the U.S. oil corporations have not put their capital into the development of domestic resources but export it for the purpose of the plunder and control of the oil resources of other countries. In 1975, U.S. oil speculators had over $34. 8 billion of direct investments in petroleum operations abroad, a ten-fold increase from the $ 3.4 billion in 1950. This was fourth of total U.S. direct investments overseas. In Asia, Africa and Latin America these investments provide the oil magnates with tremendous super-profits, averaging an annual rate of return of 52.1 per cent from 1970 through 1975! Imperialism would not be imperialism if it did not simultaneously bleed the masses at home to death and engage in wild plunder abroad.
However, U.S. imperialism and its enslaving designs are up against severe difficulties everywhere. The revolutionary forces of the proletariat and oppressed peoples are besieging the forces of slavery and reaction led by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism on all the continents. In the Middle East, where the main issue is the superpowers' endeavors to seize the oil resources, for which they prop up their puppet state of Israel to attack the Arab people, the U.S. - Soviet intrigues have failed to extinguish the flames of the Palestinian revolution and the other national liberation movements. The major oil-exporting countries, which have been plundered for decades by the imperialist powers, have united into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and have dealt heavy blows at U.S. imperialist robbery of their natural wealth. Inter-imperialist rivalries are sharpening, particularly between the United States and the Soviet Union but also between the U.S. and the imperialists of Europe and Japan, for conquest of economic territory, spheres of investment, markets and sources of raw materials.
As the drive for seizure of oil resources intensifies, and as the U.S. imperialists' hold on these resources is further endangered by the forces of revolution and by inter-imperialist rivalries, the energy crisis becomes ever more acute. The billionaire oil monopolists' policy of imperialist plunder and control of other countries' resources has become caught up in its own contradictions, resulting in profound difficulties for the big bourgeoisie. The energy crisis is part of the over-all crisis gripping the U.S. monopoly capitalist system, weakening its financial, economic and strategic positions. This is the reason for Carter's war cries of "national catastrophe" as U.S. imperialism's "independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained".
However, even the bourgeoisie admits that none of the measures Carter is attempting to implement will "solve the energy crisis". Monopoly capitalism's very existence is based on the sucking of the blood of the people at home and abroad. It is absolutely parasitic and decadent, capitalism at its highest stage, the stage of capitalism in decay. Carter's energy program is designed solely to suck more blood from the people and to make them pay for the economic and energy crises the imperialists have brought about.
WAR-MONGERS STOCKPILE OIL FOR WAR
The U.S. imperialist war-mongers are stockpiling oil for war. To escape their deep all-round crisis, the U.S. imperialists are preparing for war against the world's people and against their rival slave- masters, the Soviet social-imperialists, for the re-division of the globe. To wage war, the U.S. imperialist military machine requires large, secure strategic supplies of oil and other fuels.
To prepare for war and shore up their difficulties on the energy front, the imperialists are investing huge sums of capital for the development of energy resources at home. Oil and gas exploration and development are booming. From 1971 to the present, the number of oil and gas drilling rigs in operation in the U.S. has more than doubled (947 rigs in 1971 to 1,906 in April, 1977). Record numbers of natural gas wells have been drilled during the last four years in a row and the total number of all wells drilled in 1976 was 40% above the number drilled in 1970. However, in this period, 1970 through 1976, U.S. crude oil production, actual extraction, has dropped by 17%. Furthermore, oil imports have increased by 75% in the same period, from 26% of total consumption to over 42% in 1976. Therefore, while the U.S. imperialists are frantically developing domestic oil and gas potential, at the same time they are capping wells, hoarding reserves and stepping up imports so as to maintain their control of oil abroad and stockpile oil and gas for war.
Stockpiling for war is an important part of Carter's energy plan: to "protect ourselves from uncertain supplies... reduce...vulnerability in potentially devastating embargoes... and develop a strategic petroleum reserve." Under Carter's plan, the state will further stimulate the hoarding of oil and gas reserves through tax policy, pricing regulations, etc. The federal government will fork over more billions of tax dollars to the monopolists for the development of energy resources, technology for coal gasification, nuclear power, etc. And by 1985, the government will have built a $17 billion strategic underground petroleum stockpile of one billion barrels, enough to last over six months in an "emergency situation".Of course, here again, the people will be made to pay, bled white with soaring fuel prices and high taxes, for the war-mongers' plans to marshal energy resources for war.
RESIST THIS FRAUD AND PLUNDER!
No bombardment of lies by the smooth-talking Carter administration and the big bourgeoisie can hide the fact that the cause of the energy crisis can only be found in the U.S. capitalist monopolies' drive for maximum profits and the enslaving, warmongering policy of U.S. imperialism.
The vicious propaganda campaign that the energy crisis is caused by the "wasteful habits" of the American working class and people is only an attempt to blame the people for the imperialists' own crimes. The U.S. imperialists, who have laid waste entire nations, who ravage the natural resources at home and abroad and pollute the entire globe in their pursuit of maximum profits, are attempting to force a "conservation program" on the working people. What a fraud! Carter's "conservation" scheme, with its complex system of price hikes, massive taxation, and laws and regulations, is only a scheme for the stepped-up plunder of the masses.
The American working class and people have no interest in making "painful sacrifices" for the profits of the rich, to pay for their economic crisis, and will never submit to their fraud and plunder. The only path open for the toiling masses is to rise up in revolutionary mass struggle against the government and the big monopolies, make the rich moneybags bear the burden of the economic crisis and sabotage their plans for imperialist war through organizing an antifascist proletarian socialist revolution.
As long as the monopoly capitalists such as the oil billionaires like Rockefeller maintain their rule over U.S. society, as long as the armed state machine of the capitalists continues to crush the people, the life of the working people will become increasingly difficult. The working class and oppressed people will face ever-increasing impoverishment at the hands of the exploiters. They will be subject to the burden of all the deepening crises of the imperialist system, such as economic crisis, energy crisis and imperialist system, such as economic crisis, energy crisis and imperialist war. Only with revolution, only under the dictatorship of the proletariat can the vast energy resources of the country be seized away from the handful of rich and be developed in a planned way to serve the needs of the majority of the population in a socialist system.
*****
Note for table on page 1. Except for the maximum estimate of natural gas, by the American Gas Association, estimates are based on the 1974 data of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Atomic Energy Commission. All assume the present rate of consumption. These capitalist figures show that the U.S. is swimming in energy resources but otherwise they are quite speculative. They do not take into account skyrocketing prices or revolutions in technology or revolution in the social system (the overthrow of capitalism) - all of which will dramatically increase energy resources. And socialism will also eliminate capitalist waste of energy and other resources. At present, the U.S. imports 42% of its oil. But the table on page one is based on how long oil resources would last if there were no imports at all. All figures are rounded off.
The TV and book versions of Roots by Alex Haley have been widely promoted by the capitalist news media as telling the true "story" of the Black people in the United States. The bourgeoisie is showering praise on Roots. The Senate, whose members are top political representatives of the monopoly capitalist class, voted unanimously to commend Roots. Sequels to the TV production and book are being prepared by the monopoly corporations, while other TV shows, movies and books are rolling off the assembly line right and left, all claiming to tell the "story" of the Black people.
What is all this fuss about? Have the monopoly capitalists, the rich exploiters who rule our country through their armed state machine (government), suddenly become "concerned" to tell the true story of the Black people? Have the bloodsuckers whose ancestors enslaved the Africans and brought them here in chains, who clamp the Black people today in a vice of racial discrimination and violent repression, brutally exploit the working class and commit countless wars of aggression against the people of the world--have these American Hitlers, the Rockefellers, Nixons, Fords and Carters, suddenly put down their butcher knives and become friends of the Afro-Americans?
No--on the contrary. Hidden behind Alex Haley's tracing of his ancestry back to Africa, concealed under the deceptive cover of an "exposure" of slavery, the monopoly capitalists are promoting the real message and aim of Roots. This message amounts to telling the Black people not to fight the bourgeois government under the hoax that white people in general, not the Anglo-American bourgeoisie and its government, are the enemy of the Afro-Americans. The whole purpose of this line is to take the heat of the Afro-American struggle off the government and the bourgeoisie and turn it against the white workers, splitting the working class and disrupting the revolutionary struggle. It aims at suppressing the class war of the poor against the rich by promoting a race war between Blacks and whites.
This is the line of bourgeois Black cultural nationalism,which went bankrupt in the 1960's and is being revived again today by Haley and his masters, the big bourgeoisie and its state, headed by Jimmy Carter. Their purpose is to sow the spirit of splittism and capitulation in the Afro-American movement. This line and Roots aims at dividing the working masses by inciting the Blacks against the white workers, undermining the Black people's struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and for complete emancipation, prettifying slavery and the capitalist system and government which were and are responsible for the oppression of the Black people, and thus to prevent united revolutionary struggle of the Black and white masses against the government of the bourgeoisie. Just at a time when the government is organizing racist and fascist mass movements through the mass media and directly to attack the Black people on the questions of busing and crime, the government is now giving its line on what the Afro-American movement should do. And this line is a line of betrayal, capitulation and defeat.
Roots is part of the whole "human rights" barrage of liberal and social-democratic political deception coming from the Carter administration, a campaign aimed at preparing public opinion for the all-round fascization of the government and the whole society by monopoly capital. While placing a few "Black faces in 'high places" and swearing undying devotion to "civil rights" for Black people, the Carter administration is working hard to undermine and liquidate the Afro-American movement from within. During his campaign for office, Carter reassured the white fascists of his basic stand by raising the Hitlerite racist slogan "ethnic purity". Now he promotes the line of cultural nationalism represented by Roots in order to smash the struggle of the Black people against racial discrimination and violent repression. Roots is the government's Sermon on the Mount which it hopes will "inspire" the liquidation of the Afro-American struggle and split the workers' movement, the main targets of the fascism of the big bourgeoisie.
While exposing a few of the most extreme abuses of chattel slavery and showing the actual ancestry of one Black family, Roots sneaks in the real message of the monopoly capitalists to the Black people. That message amounts to:
1. Slandering the Black masses. Portraying them as people who capitulate to the oppressors, who bow down rather than fight. Depicting the few acts of resistance shown as acts of isolated individuals, not of the masses. In this way, Roots hides the Black people's real history of heroic mass revolutionary struggle, claiming instead that the memory of Africa, not resistance to oppression, is salvation for the Afro-Americans.
2. Inciting the Black masses against the white working people by hiding the division of whites into oppressor and oppressed classes and blaming whites in general for the persecution of the Afro-Americans. ThusRoots takes the heat off the bourgeoisie while hiding the real history of united Black and white revolutionary struggle against slavery and capitalism embodied in the Marxist movement, the Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, the Reconstruction Struggles, and so forth.
3. Prettifying slavery, capitalism and the bourgeois government. Exposing a few "outmoded" aspects of the oppression of the chattel slave system such as whipping, rape of women and outright selling of people, while concealing the economic exploitationand political oppression suffered in common by the slaves under chattel slavery and by the workers under capitalist wage-slavery today. Further prettifying capitalism by hiding the vicious, semi-slave national oppression, the racial discrimination and violent repression, imposed on the Black people by the monopoly capitalist government after their emancipation from chattel slavery. To hide all this, Roots claims that President Lincoln freed the slaves and that after the Civil War Blacks were "free at last".
This is the real message of Roots. It amounts to a furious attack on the common revolutionary cause of the Black people and the entire working class. It is servile praise for the enemy of the entire people, the Anglo-American big bourgeoisie and its government.
The message promoted by Roots to the Black people is not new. In the 1960's, at the height of the Afro- American struggles, the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie used the ill-gotten riches it plundered throughout the world to finance an army of cultural nationalists, poverty pimps and opportunists of all stripes to push the cultural nationalist line to disrupt the Afro-American movement. Alex Haley, a Black bourgeois descendent of the favored house slaves and a "lifer" in the U.S. military, is the latest star to emerge from this sell-out stratum among the Black people.
In the 60's, the Afro-American people waged a great movement of revolutionary mass struggle against the bourgeoisie, such as has never been seen before in the history of our country. Advancing from sit-ins to mass marches to massive armed rebellions, the heroic struggle of the Afro-Americans against racial discrimination and violent repression thoroughly terrified the "powerful" U.S. government. This struggle destroyed some of the most vicious features of Jim Crow segregation used to suppress the Black people and keep the Black and white masses divided. It re-invigorated and inspired the class struggle of the entire working class, youth and students and all oppressed people in the U.S. against the rule of the reactionary monopoly bourgeoisie. The Afro-American struggle aimed squarely at the rich and their government.
But in hopes of liquidating this struggle, the Black traitors and their monopoly capitalist masters pushed the line given by the Kerner Commission, set up by the government in 1968, the line of cultural nationalism. This line held that Black people should give up their struggle against the government and the rich because their real problem was not its program of racial discrimination and violent repression but was "white racism" among the white working people. The government of the Anglo-American bourgeoisie and the capitalist system was not to blame; the white workers were to be the target of the Black people. Blacks could only find salvation by reviving outmoded forms of African culture and "African-ness", by wearing dashikis and learning Swahili, rather than following the real road the African people were traveling, the road of revolutionary struggle against the common enemy of the world's people, U.S. imperialism. With this as a justification, the opportunists tried to undermine the Afro-American struggle with the capitulationist slogan of "Black Capitalism", the slogan of Richard Nixon. Thus cultural nationalism opposed the armed mass resistance to the violent attacks of the bourgeois state practiced by the Black people in the great rebellions of 1963-70, opposed the developing revolutionary unity between the oppressed Black and white masses and prettified the capitalist government and capitalist system.
Today the Black masses are becoming increasingly impoverished due to the ongoing economic crisis. Racist attacks by the police and government-organized fascist anti-busing movement are intensifying. This threatens to provoke a new upsurge in the Afro-American struggle. Consequently, the Roots extravaganza has been produced by the bourgeoisie to push cultural nationalism to liquidate the struggle, just as the opportunists of the 60's worked to liquidate the struggles of that time.
The monopoly capitalists sorely need such a weapon against the Black masses as Roots. The world capitalist system is deep in crisis -- economic, political, military, cultural. The big bourgeoisie in the U.S. is shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the masses through increased exploitation. This takes the form of massive unemployment, runaway inflation, escalating taxes, intensified labor, longer hours, etc., a burden falling especially heavily on the super-exploited Afro-American workers. To escape from its crisis and keep its profits intact, the bourgeoisie is preparing for aggressive war against its main imperialist rival, Soviet social-imperialism, and against the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The U.S. imperialists aim at grabbing markets, sources of raw materials and strategic territory in order to achieve world domination. To launch a war the bourgeoisie must first attack the American people. It must divide and suppress the workers' struggles against the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis, the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression, etc. To suppress the masses, the bourgeoisie is rapidly fascizing its armed state machine (government, including the armed forces, police, courts, jails, etc.) while covering this up with the political deception of the Carter administration. The bourgeoisie is stepping up its direct attacks on the broad masses and organizing fascist mass movements among the people so as to split and weaken them. In hopes of driving the Blacks back to the most backward Jim Crow segregation, the government has organized the fascist anti-busing movement. Centered in Boston and Louisville, this movement incites the white working masses to oppose the democratic right of the Blacks to attend integrated public schools, to physically attack the Black people and thus to split the masses and drown the cause of united struggle against the bourgeoisie in racism, white chauvinism and blood. But the Afro-Americans and progressive whites have stood up to this vicious movement, dealing it serious set-backs.
While trying new ways to revive the anti-busing movement, the monopoly capitalists headed by Carter have turned to other means to attack the Afro-Americans. Lately a big hysteria has been whipped up in Detroit (in which a major role has been played by Carter's close crony, the Black mayor Coleman Young) and nationally over the question of crime supposedly committed by Black youth, in hopes of inciting not only the white masses but also the older Afro-American workers against the most volatile section of the Black revolutionary masses, the youth. And now the monopoly bourgeoisie has produced the Roots extravaganza, aiming at disrupting the Afro-American movement from within.
Roots and the barrage of propaganda about it has been developed in a most cunning way by the bourgeoisie. By tracing the actual ancestry of one Black family back to Africa and by exposing a few of the most flagrant abuses of the system of chattel slavery which was overthrown over 100 years ago, Roots gives the impression to some that it does tell the true "story" of the Black people. The long suffering of the Black people as an oppressed slave class and then as an oppressed nationality, their heritage slandered and denied, their ancestry obliterated, their extreme physical oppression and exploitation, has given the Black masses a burning desire to investigate, bring to light, proudly uphold and defend their true history before the whole world. But it is just this desire that the monopoly capitalists deceptively feed upon to gain popularity for Roots. Without tracing the Blacks' ancestry, without exposing a few abuses of chattel slavery, Roots would never have caught the attention of the Black people and would never have been able to parasitize on the desire of the Afro-Americans to stand up for their true history. "Our" monopoly capitalist rulers are not only bloodthirsty wolves but are also crafty foxes. They know that to catch something they must put out a little bait. That is what the exposures by Roots are -- bait. Once you are caught, the real message of Roots is slipped in without your noticing it. This is the method used by all the social-democratic TV shows, movies and books produced by the monopoly capitalists -- show a little of the oppression of the masses in order to arouse their anger, then distort the nature of their struggle in order to mislead and smash it.
Let us look at the message of Roots more closely to see how it attempts this feat.
THE BLACK MASSES ARE FIGHTERS, NOT CAPITULATORS!
Does Roots, as Alex Haley claimed in an interview with Time Magazine, February 14, 1977, tell "all of our (Black people's -- ed.) stories"? No! The Black masses and their genuine leaders were and are fighters, not the capitulators portrayed in Roots. While Haley has traced the lineage of his family, he has concocted various crucial incidents for the TV version of the book which portray gross capitulation by Blacks in the face of the enemy. Haley portrays the Africans as not fighting the slave-catchers; Kunta Kinte as capitulating under a whipping to adopt the slave name "Toby"; a broken Fanta pleading for Kunta Kinte not to run away from slavery and then betraying him; Kunta Kinte as an older man capitulating to the pressure of his wife Bell not to flee to freedom but to remain a slave in order to preserve his family; Chicken George agreeing with Kizzy not to kill the slave master Tom Moore when she tells him Moore is his father; Kizzy, who was sold from her parents and raped by Moore, persuading Chicken George not to kill him; Chicken George's son, Tom, betraying the struggle against the Klan night-riders by going to the sheriff for "help" against the will of the other Blacks; and Tom refusing to whip the leader of the Klan after the Blacks have captured him. At nearly every crucial point, the Black people are shown as capitulators in the face of the oppressor. Especially disgusting is the role Haley gives to Black women, who are made the strongest promoters of capitulation. According to Roots , the Black masses did not fight for their freedom.
This blatant promotion of capitulation can't be defended by claiming that it actually happened and that Haley is merely giving a "true" "historical" account. In fact, all of the major incidents of capitulation mentioned did not even occur in the book (which is also lacking in militancy) but were deliberately created for the television version (Kunta Kinte's whipping, Fanta's very existence, Bell's persuasion, Chicken George's failure to kill Moore, Tom's reliance on the sheriff, Tom's failure to whip the Klansman). This shows that Haley was not even recording the actual history of his own family but arbitrarily created these incidents of capitulation in order to slander the Black people on the widest scale possible, before a TV audience of many millions.
Haley's picture of alleged Black capitulation is the grossest of slanders. Let us compare it to a few examples from the real history of the Afro-American people. A stark contrast to Kunta Kinte's capitulation to the demand to use a slave name is the stand of the 35 slaves and free Blacks who led the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy of 9000 slaves to revolt in 1822 and were caught and hanged. They went to their deaths with the greatest heroism, uttering not a word. One of them, Peter Poyas, set the tone, saying: "Do not open your lips. Die silent as you see me do." This is the fighting attitude which has always characterized the Black masses and their genuine leaders. Examples of this stand abound throughout history and were commonplace in the heroic I960's. It will suffice to mention the martyr's deaths of Malcolm X, the great uncompromising Afro-American fighter, of Jonathan Jackson gun in hand, of Bobbie Hutton who also took up arms, of George Jackson, the indomitable fighter inside the fascist prisons, who sacrificed his own life to prevent a massacre of his fellow inmates, of Fred Hampton, assassinated by the Chicago police, and many others. If they were alive today, they would spit on Roots. Should their memory be dishonored by believing the anti-Black slanders of Roots? No! The Black masses are not capitulators. They were and are, first and foremost, fighters against oppression, against racial discrimination and violent repression, against the bourgeoisie and all reaction.
It is not surprising that Alex Haley is the mouthpiece for the monopoly capitalists' cultural nationalist line of capitulation. As Malcolm X himself pointed out, the house slaves and their present-day Uncle Tom counter-parts, who receive favored treatment from their masters, have always been used by the master to control the Black masses and undermine their struggles. Haley's bourgeois cultural nationalist line that all "toubobs" (whites) are bad isolates the Afro-Americans from the over 150 million white working masses who face the same enemy. In this way presenting the Afro-American cause as hopeless, the cultural nationalist line necessarily leads straight to capitulation to the government and the bourgeoisie.
Contrary to the picture presented in Roots, not only did the Black masses fight, but they fought as masses, they fought revolutionary mass struggle against their oppressors. Malcolm X expressed the sentiment of the Afro-American masses for revolutionary mass struggle as follows: "...you and I don't want anybody to keep us from getting out of control. We want to get out of control. We want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn't belong there." (Malcolm X Speaks, p. 118)
But according to Haley, the highest forms of struggle Blacks used were purely individual attempts to run (Kunta Kinte, Noah), to buy one's freedom (Chicken George's attempts, which failed), an individual fight (Tom) with a Confederate army deserter, and a bloodless, trick getaway from the plantation and the Klan after emancipation in order to settle on their own land (and this entire trick getaway and the Klan itself did not appear in the book but were concocted for the TV version).
This, too, is a gross slander on the Black people and their history. In reality, things were quite different. The African people fought many wars against the slave-traders. In America, the slaves, free Blacks and progressive whites organized an extensive Underground Railroad through which they collectively brought about the escape of thousands of slaves from chattel slavery. The greatest leader of this mass activity was the valiant Black woman Harriet Tubman, who personally led 300 slaves through the greatest danger out of slavery. The greatest omission in the TV version, barely referred to in the book, was the role of the massive Slave Revolts which constantly shook the South. Only Nat Turner's Rebellion is mentioned in the TV version, and it is distorted into a question of Blacks massacring whites, not slaves killing their oppressors. Major slave revolts the size of the Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser Revolts took place in 1672, 1687, 1710, 1722, 1730 and 1741. In the decade of 1850-1860, just prior to the Civil War, the rebellions reached a peak and the terrified slave owners and their lackeys turned the South into a garrison against them. But this decade is passed over in silence in the TV production, with Chicken George spending it in England.
Roots gives Blacks no role whatsoever in the Civil War; they watch passively as the Confederate soldiers ride by. In reality, despite restrictions by the Northern bourgeoisie on joining the Union Army, Blacks participated vigorously on all fronts of the struggle, not only as heroic fighters in the Army, but as guerrilla fighters in the South itself. In North Carolina, Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee Indian (mixed Indian and Black) led a band of fighters including escaped slaves which attacked some of the most "powerful" plantations in the South and fought the Confederate Army independently of the Union Army during the Civil War. But according to Roots, it was "Massa Lincoln" who freed the slaves! This is a vicious insult to the Black people. Contrary to Roots, in reality the Black slaves were their own liberators.
Finally, Roots passes over the Reconstruction period in total silence. From 1865 to 1876 the freed slaves, together with the working whites, carried out repeated powerful mass revolutionary struggles for land and democratic rights. They were only defeated in 1876, after which the semi-slave share-cropping system was imposed on the Blacks (and many whites). But in Roots Chicken George's family never fights for land but in- gloriously accepts the share-cropping system immediately after the War is over and finally runs away from the struggle to become "free at last" on land they have purchased in Tennessee.
The Black people's heritage of revolutionary mass struggle, arbitrarily kicked aside by Alex Haley, is one of the most glorious accomplishments of the entire history of revolutionary movements in the U.S. and the world. It includes not only the examples mentioned, not only the many struggles in the 20th century against Jim Crow segregation and lynchings, but, most outstandingly, the 20 years from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the present, including the Civil Rights Movement and the heroic Black Rebellions of the I960's. But nowhere in the entire book or TV production of Roots, this so-called "story" of the Black people, are the great struggles of the past 20 years even mentioned. The bourgeoisie wants desperately to forget them and to have the masses forget them too. But this history of struggle is the true history of the Black people -- a magnificent epic of revolutionary mass struggle. It is only by means of such struggle, by forcibly defending themselves and giving tit-for-tat against all odds, that the Afro-Americans have "survived" and have moved history forward to the present, when they stand at the threshold of complete emancipation. This true emancipation will be accomplished by the struggle of the revolutionary Black masses together with the entire working class and oppressed people of the U.S., in an anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution, a revolution to overthrow the monopoly capitalist state machine and capitalist system and replace them with the rule of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will end all oppression of nationalities and will provide, for the first time, genuine democracy for the working masses. Then, the Black people will accomplish their own complete liberation.
Against this glorious history and this revolutionary perspective, Alex Haley's Roots promotes a gross slander of the Black people. Roots goes so far as to promote the old racist catchwords and stereotypes of Blacks repudiated by the masses in the I960's. Roots is filled with the use of the foulest slave term for Black people, a term massively rejected by Blacks and progressive whites but now being revived by Black traitors like Haley and their big bourgeois masters. In the same vein, here is how Haley writes about the Black slaves in his book. Kunta Kinte says: "These black ones seemed to have no concern in their lives beyond pleasing the toubob (whites -- ed.) with his lashing whip. It sickened him to think how these black ones jumped about their work whenever they saw a toubob, and how, if that toubob spoke a word to them, they rushed to do whatever he told them to. Kunta couldn't fathom what had happened to so destroy their minds that they acted like goats and monkeys. Perhaps it was because they had been born in this place rather than in Africa..." (page 186). Thus Kunta Kinte, himself a capitulator according to Haley's "story", is made to slander the Black slaves in terms which few white racists today would dare utter in public!
Thus, on all the most important points, Roots is just the opposite of the true "story" of the Black people. It is a slander and distortion of the Black people and their heroic history. While Haley has gained fame by the fact that he helped write Malcolm X's Autobiography and has traced his own family back to Africa, the lessons he draws from this are just the opposite of those Malcolm X drew. For example, Haley's family preserved the tradition by word of mouth of the memory of their forbearer Kunta Kinte, the African "who called a guitar ko, who called a river Kamby-Bolongo and who told of how he was surprised and captured while he was cutting some wood to make his little brother a drum". The fact that this tiny shred of the history of Haley's family was all that survived the slave system is itself a penetrating exposure of the barbaric nature of that creation of Anglo-American capitalism. But rather than use this fact as a weapon to expose the criminal nature of the oppressors, Haley instead uses it to spin a tale of capitulation and opposition to mass struggle. Malcolm X, however, was no capitulator and he loved mass struggle. About Afro-American history, he pointedly refuted the viewpoint of people like Haley, saying, "We need to be taught about people who fought, who bled for freedom and made others bleed." (MalcolmX on Afro-American History, p. 68) These words, not the slanders of Roots, touch on the true story of the Black people.
UNITY AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY IS THE REAL TRADITION OF THE BLACK AND WHITE WORKING MASSES
Is the story of Roots really the "story" of the Black people in another regard -- the question of unity with the rest of the working class and other oppressed sections of the people against common enemies? No. Contrary to the picture presented in Roots, the exploited and oppressed sections of the white population, the workers, small farmers and others, vigorously participated in revolutionary movements against slavery and capitalism. But in Roots no class distinction is drawn in the white population, so poor whites and slave-owners are painted with the same brush. The lower classes of whites are either portrayed as racist degenerates or as cast-off individuals who have nothing to do with the white working population and with revolutionary struggle by the Black and white masses. This, again, is the bourgeois cultural nationalist line of splitting the Black and white masses in order to induce Blacks to capitulate to the bourgeoisie.
In the TV version, most of the poor whites are portrayed as slobbering idiots at the cockfights, while one, Tom Moore, has become a slave-owner. In the book, Haley gives a graphic and disgusting description of a poor white family in which the "lazy" husband lies under a tree sleeping with his flea-bitten hound dogs and drinking corn liquor, etc., etc. -- a picture even more backward than the class stereotypes presented on the TV show Hee-Haw! Two poor whites, George and Martha, are presented sympathetically, but they are portrayed as freaks and exceptions, utterly cut off from the rest of the white population (in George's speech to the slaves at the burial of his daughter, he says that the slaves are the "only friends" he has ever had). These poor whites are not portrayed as representatives of an oppressed social class, the southern white small farmers who fought slavery militantly.
In a crucial incident in the TV version, Haley's promotion of a split between Blacks and poor whites is clear. The ex-slaves are discussing how to oppose the Klan night-riders. The question of uniting with the poor white George is linked to Tom's line of capitulating to the state machine (going to the sheriff), so that anyone who wants to unite with George must also agree to betray the struggle by going to the sheriff with Tom. At the same time the Blacks who want to fight the night-riders and oppose the state are also presented as the opponents of uniting with the poor whites. So the impression is created that to unite with the poor whites necessarily means to betray the struggle rather than strengthen it, and Tom does in fact betray the struggle by running to the sheriff. Then the poor white Martha is given the lines which certain liberals love to spout today in moralistic "criticism" of Roots: "but not all white people are bad...." Haley's message is loud and clear: to unite with the poor whites means to betray the struggle, yet it is "morally" right to do so because "not all whites are bad", so the uncompromising Blacks are "wrong" for opposing collaboration with the enemy state machine. This completely distorts the real basis of unity between oppressed Blacks and whites and liquidates the struggle against the state of the oppressors. It turns unity from a question of fighting a common enemy into a liberal question of guilt and "morality" divorced from struggle, smashing any real possibility of unity and leading directly to capitulation.
In real history, what took place was quite the opposite. Those who fought the slave-owners and the capitalists united with each other on that basis and that basis alone. They united to wage revolutionary mass struggles against their common enemies. The small farmers in the South opposed secession so vigorously that it had to be carried out as a virtual armed coup d'etat in most southern states. In many mountain areas as far south as Alabama the Union flag was flown and defended with arms throughout the War, and escaped slaves and Union soldiers were conducted through the mountains to the North. Hundreds of thousands of white farmers from the North and Northwest volunteered to fight so as to prevent the slave-owners from conquering the country and reducing all the laborers to the status of chattel slaves. John Brown, the Abolitionist martyr, and his men gloriously took up arms and killed the enemy to free the slaves, sacrificing their lives.
Joseph Weydemeyer and the Marxists taught the proletariat to recognize that its struggle for socialism and the emancipation of all mankind required it to defeat the slave power before it could take on capital as a whole. The working class heroically marched into battle en masse and gave up its lives by the hundreds of thousands to smash the slave-owners. Entire trade unions enlisted at once and were converted into regiments.
It is this tradition of fighting mass revolutionary struggle, Black and white working masses side by side against the common enemies, which brought about the great historical advance of the overthrow of chattel slavery and the development of the modern U.S. proletariat, the grave-digger of the capitalist system. This is the real revolutionary tradition of the Black and white masses, the real "story" of the relationship between the two. Only when the Black and white masses united on a revolutionary basis were these great deeds accomplished. This tradition continued through the Reconstruction struggles, the workers' struggles of the 1930's and the Afro-American and youth and student struggles of the 1960's, to the present. But Roots completely denies this tradition. None of it is mentioned, and the two non-racist whites in Roots are lone isolated individuals.
Since Haley denies the existence of classes and class struggle among whites (and generally) and portrays whites collectively as the enemy of Blacks, what basis is left in Roots' "story" for unity between the oppressed whites and Blacks? Nothing but liberal guilt and supposed opposition to "white racism" detached from class struggle as advocated by the Kerner Commission Report. This shows the close link between white liberalism and Black cultural nationalism, which together oppose the revolutionary struggle of the Black and white masses. But this attempt to falsify history in order to wash away classes and class struggle is always a pitfall for those who try it. The history of the U.S. is a history of class struggles. The U.S. proletariat is a profoundly revolutionary class, of which the Black workers are a crucial part. The other oppressed white masses also face a common enemy with the Black people. All attempts to prevent united revolutionary mass struggle against the rich and for political power will certainly fail. As Chairman Mao, the great teacher and leader of the world's people, declared in 1968: " THE BLACK MASSES AND THE MASSES OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES SHARE COMMON INTERESTS AND HAVE COMMON OBJECTIVES TO STRUGGLE FOR THE STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES IS BOUND TO MERGE WITH THE AMERICAN WORKERS' MOVEMENT, AND THIS WILL EVENTUALLY END THE CRIMINAL RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS." It is the fear of Haley and his masters of just such a revolution which leads them to slander the white working people in addition to the Blacks, in hopes of splitting the two and preventing the revolution. They hope to use Roots to incite the Black masses to attack the whites, while using the anti-busing and anti-crime hysteria to incite the whites against the Blacks. But these attempts to roll history backward will inevitably fail. By the efforts of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists and the masses of workers and oppressed people, splits will be overcome and revolutionary fighting unity will be forged through a struggle which will end in the complete defeat of the bourgeoisie and the emancipation of all oppressed mankind.
Malcolm X clearly opposed the splittist cultural nationalist line of people like Haley in the last year of his life. Speaking on a radio show January 19, 1965, he said: "I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think that it will be based upon the color of the skin, as Elijah Muhammad had taught it." (Malcolm X Speaks, p. 216)
ROOTS PRETTIFIES SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM AND HIDES THE NATIONAL OPPRESSION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE
Hand in hand with slandering the Black and white masses, Roots actually prettifies chattel slavery and the capitalist system and government and hides the present-day national oppression of the Black people. This, too, is a big service by Haley to his monopoly capitalist masters.
Roots criticizes certain aspects of the system of chattel slavery. The kidnapping of the African people, the trade in human beings, the whipping and later the mutilation of Kunta Kinte, the selling-off of Kizzy, the rape of Black women and the obliteration of the lineage of Afro-Americans are exposed to arouse the hatred of the people for oppression. But these particular forms of oppression were needed only to maintain the system of chattel slavery, and now that this system has been overthrown for 100 years, it is no problem for the monopoly capitalists of today to loudly condemn these "outmoded" practices while carrying on essentially the same things in more hidden forms. When the Black people broke free from chattel slavery, this did not mean that their full emancipation was achieved. New forms of slavery were imposed on them, more sophisticated than before. Those who remained on the land in the former slave-owning areas of the Deep South were compelled, after the defeat of Reconstruction, to labor as semi-slave, semi-feudal share-croppers, handing over half or more of their crops to the landlords and tied to the land by a chain of debt. Those Blacks who left the land, especially in the 20th century, were generally compelled to labor as capitalist wage-slaves, selling their labor-power to the capitalists in return for the barest of subsistence, and became part of the modern proletariat together with the workers of other nationalities. Because of their recent past as chattel slaves and due to the continuing national oppression of the Black people, the Black workers have always been restricted to the lowest layers of the proletariat, the most back-breaking and despised jobs. While the slaves and the workers, before the Civil War, were oppressed by the state of the slave-owners and capitalists, after the Civil War the former slaves and the Black and white workers and small farmers continued to be oppressed by the state of the capitalists. This state became increasingly reactionary as capitalism developed into monopoly capitalism. It practiced the most vicious racial discrimination and violent repression against the Afro-Americans throughout the U.S.
Thus, after the defeat of chattel slavery, slavery in an open form, the Afro-Americans remained enslaved by more hidden forms of slavery, share-cropping and wage-slavery and increasingly oppressed by the U.S. state.
But while Roots exposes "outmoded" aspects of the oppression of chattel slavery, no longer needed by capitalism, it hides the basic status of the Afro-Americans as exploited and oppressed under both slavery and capitalism. In Roots the main characters are the favored house slaves and craftsmen, not field slaves, yet it was the brutal exploitation of the labor of the field slaves which was the foundation on which the entire slave system rested. Under the capitalism of the present, the labor of the vast majority of the former slaves is still exploited, though in a hidden form. Proletarians who own nothing but their hands, the Black workers of today are brutally exploited by the capitalists, as are the white workers. But by ignoring this exploitation common both to the chattel slave system and the capitalist system of wage-slavery, Roots conceals the nature of both slavery and capitalism as systems of exploitation and thus hides the present enslavement of the Black workers and the entire working class.
According to Roots, slavery was caused by some bad white people. But in fact, there would never have been the system of chattel slavery of the Blacks in the U.S. if it had not been for the capitalist system. It was growing capitalism's need to rapidly accumulate wealth in order to build up the factory system in England and America which drove the capitalists to kidnap and enslave the Africans. Thus Anglo-American capitalism is, in a sense, both the mother and the child of the slave system. This shows that to remove the source of the oppression of the Afro-Americans, capitalism must be overthrown. But the bourgeoisie today desperately needs to hide the facts of capitalist exploitation from the Black workers by means of propaganda like Roots, because to expose it would lead them to just such revolutionary conclusions.
The capitalist government, too, is prettified by Roots. According to Roots, it was"Massa Lincoln", the head of the bourgeois state, who freed the slaves, not the masses of slaves themselves. In fact, Lincoln did all he could to preserve slavery until the struggle of the masses forced him to formally proclaim emancipation. Emancipation of the slaves from chattel slavery was won by them and the white working masses on the battlefield, against the wishes of the bourgeois and its government. And once the Civil War was over and Reconstruction defeated, it was this same bourgeois government, whose reactionary character became more and more pronounced as competitive capitalism developed into monopoly capitalism, that increased its oppression of the Black and white working people and drove the Blacks into semi-slavery in the South, forged them into an oppressed nation and imposed a bestial system of racial discrimination and violent repression upon the Afro-Americans wherever they resided in the U.S., a system which continues to the present. But this continuing national oppression of the Black people is also hidden by Roots, and the monopoly capitalist government, which must be overthrown if Blacks are to win complete emancipation, is shamelessly prettified. With chattel slavery out of the way, Haley, the Black bourgeois, has found heaven at last. Out of the mouth of one of Chicken George's family, when they reach their new land in Tennessee, Haley expressed his view of the present condition of the Black people: "Free at last!"
Not only does Roots hide the fact of the exploitation of the slaves and workers and prettifies the capitalist state, but it even minimizes the brutality of those aspects of chattel slavery that it does expose. For example, while the poor whites are generally portrayed as no good, it seems that the slave traders and slave-owners have a "good" side to them. The Yankee ship captain feels "moral compunctions" at trading in slaves (though he does not refuse to rape one). One slave-trader is a "kindly" doctor who treats Kunta Kinte's mutilated foot, buys him, makes him a house slave and lets his daughter grow up with Kizzy (though he does not hesitate to sell Kizzy the moment she violates his rules). The brutality of the slaves' living conditions is also minimized. For example, with the exception of the sale of Kizzy, the main characters are able to keep their families together, which was not the case with the masses of field slaves. All the major characters in Roots are house slaves or craftsmen. The housing they live in is better than that which is imposed on many Blacks in the South (and North) today. It is even implied that the slaves lived better than the poor whites, since the poor white George comes to live with the slaves because he is starving. All this is shameless prettification of slavery.
In sharp contrast to Haley's love for American capitalism and so-called "democracy", Malcolm X had this to say about what it has to offer the Afro-Americans: "You tell me what kind of country this is. Why should we do the dirtiest jobs for the lowest pay? Why should we do the hardest work for the lowest pay? Why should we pay the most money for the worst kind of food and the most money for the worst kind of place to live in? I'm telling you we do it because we live in one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this earth. It's the system that is rotten; we have a rotten system. It's a system of exploitation, a political and economic system of exploitation, of. outright humiliation, degradation, discrimination -- all of the negative things that you can run into, you are worse than some of the things that they practiced in Germany against the Jews." (By Any Means Necessary, p. 47) Malcolm X's burning hatred for capitalism and its so-called "democratic" state are a sharp exposure of the capitulationist cultural nationalist line of Alex Haley.
As for Haley's prettification of slavery itself, with all the glorification of beatings of Blacks and use of the slave term for Black people, Roots actually amounts to a declaration that the monopoly capitalists, headed by the "faith-healer" of monopoly capitalism, Jimmy Carter, are proud to have been slave-owners. They are so proud of it they are even using the fact in their world-wide program of political deception to serve the aggressive activities of U.S. imperialism. "Look at us", the American monopoly capitalists are shouting to the world through Alex Haley and Roots, "We once enslaved the Blacks, we whipped them, we raped them, we called them names, we did this, we did that -- but it wasn't so bad. Look -- they survived. And now that we have Jimmy Carter, whose 'roots' trace back to the slave-owners, but who 'understands' Black people, now that we have a Black, Andrew Young, in the U.N., our nose is clean and the U.S. is going to clean up the morals of the rest of the world...!!
It is entirely fitting that one of the two most reactionary aggressive imperialist powers the world has ever known, U.S. imperialism (the other being the New Tsars of the Kremlin), should be arrogant enough in the last decades of its life to boast to the whole world of how it revived the ultra-reactionary system of chattel slavery, a system which had gone extinct in the West with the fall of the Roman Empire, and brag of how it had enslaved the African people. Let the bourgeoisie boast about its cut-throat nature! As our fallen teacher, Chairman Mao, has pointed out: "THE EVIL SYSTEM OF COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM AROSE AND THROVE ON THE ENSLAVEMENT OF NEGROES AND THE TRADE IN NEGROES, AND IT WILL SURELY COME TO AN END WITH THE COMPLETE EMANCIPATION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE". That emancipation, the common emancipation of the revolutionary proletariat and all oppressed masses, is not far off!
The U.S. monopoly capitalists will certainly regret having so massively staged Roots, with all its slander of the people and praise for the enemy, because the revolutionary masses are using this opportunity to discuss the real history of the Black people and the real nature of American "freedom" and "democracy". The fascist anti-busing movement gave rise to a militant upsurge of Afro-American struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state, causing it to hesitate in pursuing that particular tactic of fascist suppression. So, too, the production of the Roots extravaganza has made the more politically conscious Afro-Americans and other progressive people extremely angry and will result in a still deeper repudiation of the bourgeois cultural nationalist line of splits and capitulation and lead to a wide-scale wave of hatred for the Anglo-American bourgeoisie and its state and a still more militant upsurge of the Afro-American struggle, with all its inspiring effects on the workers' movement. Let the big bourgeoisie and its state rant and rave and slander the Black and white masses! It is only putting a rope around its own neck. End.
In recent months, President Carter has been preaching loudly about "human rights" throughout the world, claiming that the United States represents "freedom" and "democracy" for the peoples and has a "historic birthright" to spread its blessings to the less fortunate. These sermons by Carter have made some people believe that aggressive U.S. imperialism has laid down its butcher knife and become a messiah of peace against the Russian devils.
But Carter's "human rights" campaign is not what it seems. In reality, it is a fraud contrived for the sinister purpose of stepping up U.S. imperialist preparations for a world war between the two biggest imperialist slave-owners on earth, the United States and the Soviet Union, to re-divide the world between them, a war still more terrible than the last two. Carter's "human rights" campaign is also aimed at justifying U.S. aggression and plunder against the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. All this aggressive activity is now being justified by Carter in the same terms which U.S. imperialism used to justify its barbarous aggression against Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos -- defense of "freedom", "democracy" and "human rights", the slogans under which the U.S. government has carried out its crusade to dominate the whole world since 1945.
In the short time he has been in office, Carter has already taken a war-mongering, aggressive stance reminiscent of the Cold War, exposing the falseness of his pious words about peace. This reflects the fact that the great economic and all-round crisis gripping the capitalist-revisionist world is causing the contention between the two superpowers for world domination to heat up, as each attempts to escape the crisis through conquest of markets, spheres of influence and sources of raw materials. This is the cause of the policy of the Carter administration, and the war being prepared by both superpowers would be a continuation of the aggressive policy of both sides by military means.
The most notable feature of the extremely adventurous stance of the Carter administration is its close combination of the two methods or tactics customarily used by U.S. imperialism to prepare for war. One is outright attacks on its rivals, at present focused on the propaganda front with Carter's support for Soviet "dissidents", outright attacks on the revolutionary peoples and an open arms build-up. The other method or tactic used by the U.S. imperialist Carter is the method of imperialist pacifism, of painting a false picture of a "peaceful" and "democratic" U.S. imperialism in order to disarm its opponents and mobilize allies, both hiding and serving U.S. war preparations. Carter's "human rights" campaign cunningly combines elements of both methods, sometimes appearing "soft", sometimes appearing "hard", all to serve the same end -- increased preparations for war to acquire more slaves for the American rich.
The adventurous, war-mongering stance of U.S. imperialism is exhibited by Carter's "human rights" attacks on the Soviet Union. Carter is carrying the battle between robbers into his enemy's camp. Seizing on the fact that the New Tsars of the Kremlin have overthrown the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, restored capitalism and exercise a fascist dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie there, Carter is hypocritically denouncing repression in the Soviet Union. His letter to the leading Russian "dissident", Sakarov, and his interview with another, Bukovsky, underlined the fact that the U.S. imperialists are on a propaganda offensive against the Soviet social-imperialists (socialists in words, imperialists in deeds). The purpose of this "human rights" offensive is to cover up the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism, hide the rapid fascization of the reactionary U.S. imperialist state, and portray the Russians as the only devils in the eyes of the world. While Russia is indeed an aggressive, war-mongering superpower, we are expected to believe that the U.S. is something different, a "democratic", "peace-loving" and "humane" superpower. In reality, both superpowers are equally dangerous, equally the enemies of the peoples of the world, equally the instigators of aggressive war and equally the targets of the peoples' revolutionary struggles. Carter's pretty picture of the U.S. is meant to disarm the peoples at home and abroad in the face of U.S. fascism and aggression. But the peoples will never forget that it was U.S. imperialism which attacked Korea, slaughtered the people of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, intervened in the Congo, strangled the Dominican revolution, set the MiddleEast ablaze, organized fascist coups in Indonesia, Chile and Argentina and massacred the Black and white people in the U.S., to name only a few of its crimes, all committed in the name of "democracy" and "human rights".
A graphic example of the adventurous policy of the U.S. imperialist Carter administration was the recent meeting of the SALT negotiations on arms "limitations" and events since then. The Carter administration went to the negotiations with a package deal it knew beforehand world never be accepted by the New Tsars, who have their own aggressive designs. The Carter administration demanded that the Russians make cuts in their heavy missiles much bigger than the U.S. In order to parade the U.S. as the champions of disarmament, the Americans offered to stop the development of the Cruise missile, a weapon against which the Russians presently have no defense. But this was only bait, as it was well-known beforehand that the Russians would not accept such a package. In fact, the U.S. imperialists' real plan was to create an incident justifying their own escalation of the arms race. And now, once the Russians rejected Carter's package deal with its "disarmament" label as a roadblock to their own designs for world domination, Carter has announced a new escalation in arms development, including going forward on the Cruise missile and the B-l bomber.
This policy of open war preparations is also exhibited in the wide-scale discussion in the bourgeois press of all kinds of exotic weapons of mass slaughter, from the concussion bomb to germ warfare, a discussion aimed at creating an atmosphere of hysteria and impotence in the face of war preparations.
Comrade Stalin, a great leader of the international proletariat, graphically described the war preparations of the imperialist powers at his time in termswhich vividly illustrate the world scene today as well: "THE BOURGEOIS STATES ARE FURIOUSLY ARMING AND REARMING. WHAT FOR? NOT FOR FRIENDLY CHATS, OF COURSE, BUT FOR WAR. AND THE IMPERIALISTS NEED WAR, FOR IT IS THE ONLY MEANS BY WHICH TO REDIVIDE THE WORLD, TO REDIVIDE MARKETS, SOURCES OF RAW MATERIALS AND SPHERES FOR THE INVESTMENT OF CAPITAL." ("Political Report of the Central Committee to the 10th Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)", 1930)
Thus the Carter "human rights" campaign is part and parcel of the direct escalation of open war preparations and war-mongering by U.S. imperialism.
Portraying U.S. imperialism as "peaceful" and "democratic" is also imperialist pacifism, the other method of U.S. imperialism in its war preparations, the method of political deception to hide and aid war preparations. Comrade Stalin described imperialist pacifism as follows: "IMPERIALIST PACIFISM IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE PREPARATION OF WAR AND FOR DISGUISING THIS PREPARATION BY HYPOCRITICAL TALK OF PEACE." (Results of the July Plenum of the Central Committee, C.P.S.U.(B.)", 1928) Carter's "human rights" campaign is a massive effort at disguising the war preparations of U.S. imperialism with hypocritical talk of "peace" and "freedom" and is itself an instrument in the preparation of war. While craftily pretending to support and aid the aspirations of the oppressed peoples for freedom and independence, the Carter administration in this campaign is aiming at prettifying U.S. imperialism in order to control and exploit the American people and other peoples and hitch them to the aggressive Yankee war chariot. It is aimed at "restoring confidence" among the peoples of the world in U.S. imperialism, that is, at creating illusions about this rapacious enemy of the peoples. In the 1960's and 70's U.S. imperialism exposed its aggressive fangs before the whole world in Viet Nam and revealed its inner reactionary nature in its suppression of the Afro-Americans and in the Watergate scandal. Its ability to deceive the peoples at home and abroad was sharply reduced. Now Carter is attempting to restore those illusions, undermine the peoples' revolutionary struggles, and thus give U.S. imperialism a free hand at aggression.
Since his inauguration in January, Carter has made a number of foreign policy gestures designed to "prove" that he stands for the "human rights" of the oppressed peoples. But in every case a little analysis shows that these activities are new snares for the peoples, aimed at liquidating their revolutionary struggles, freeing the hands of U.S. imperialism to wage war and mobilizing allies for that war.
One notable "human rights" gesture by Carter was his appointment of the Black, Andrew Young, as Ambassador to the U.N. This was aimed at convincing both the Afro-American and African people that U.S. imperialism is their friend, and that U.S. imperialism has a "democratic" foreign policy. As Young said, "Jimmy Carter ran for two years on a candidacy of open foreign policy. There really is a significant change, and I am reflecting it." Young immediately made a trip to Africa and has made loud statements against racism in general and calling for "majority rule" in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Namibia (Southwest Africa) and Azania (South Africa). A short while ago the U.S. announced that it was going to comply with U.N. sanctions against the racist regime of Rhodesia and cut off imports of Rhodesian chrome. All this is meant to portray U.S. imperialism as a fighter for the "human lights" of the African people and to mobilize the African countries and peoples into the U.S.'s "anti-Soviet social-imperialist front" to oppose the Russian influence in Africa, thus serving to prepare alliances and bases in Africa for the possible inter-imperialist war.
A closer look will reveal the deceptive nature of these activities. As for the question of chrome, for years U.S. imperialism flagrantly violated the sanctions imposed by the majority of the nations in the U.N. (as does Russia). Now the U.S. suddenly reverses itself, appearing to strike a blow for majority rule in Zimbabwe. But reading the fine print in the bourgeois press one finds out that the U.S. specialty steel industry, which was formerly dependent on the high-grade Rhodesian chrome, has recently developed new processes which allow it to utilize low-grade chrome available from South Africa, Turkey, the Philippines and Brazil, for the same purposes which once required Rhodesian chrome. So this "dramatic gesture" proves to be a cheap trick.
As for the role of Young, his advocacy of "majority rule" for southern Africa conceals the real aim of U.S. imperialism: infiltrate the liberation movements before the inevitable overthrow of the white racist regimes so as to bring cliques of black sellouts to power who will barter their people's land and labor to the U.S. monopoly corporations and impose regimes of neo-colonial slavery upon the peoples who are fighting for freedom. Young has pointed out that U.S. imperialism's plan is to train a large army of such lackeys in corporate managerial and technical expertise and use them to control the economic lifelines of these countries. He opposes the revolutionary overthrow of the racist regime of South Africa, declaring it impossible and calling for "a slow bringing down of that government", which can only mean the replacement of white colonialists with black neo-colonialists, since a revolution is necessary to smash the reactionary state machines in the countries of southern Africa and bring the patriotic and working masses to power. Young declared his confidence that U.S. imperialism world succeed in imposing neo-colonialism on southern Africa: "There isn't a rebel group in southern Africa who won't turn to the U.S. when it gets into power.... In order for these countries to survive, they are going to have to sell to the West, and they are going to have to ask the West for capital and technology." Thus Andrew Young's own statements reveal that the "human rights" program of the U.S. imperialist Carter administration only stands for a new form of slavery for the African people, a slavery which would tie them by a thousand financial, economic, political and military neo-colonial links to the war chariot of U.S. imperialism.
Take another example, Carter's statement "supporting" a homeland for the Palestinians. The legitimate homeland of the Palestinians is the entire state of Israel (except for occupied parts of Syria and Egypt). The Palestinians, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, have consistently declared that they will fight on until the complete liberation of all of their homeland, which they have every right to possess and govern. On March 17 Carter said, "There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years." But on the following day, Carter said that the creation of the state of Israel was one of the finest acts in the world of nations. And only ten days before his "homeland" statement, Carter had declared to the world that the state of Israel should have "defensible borders", a statement not only justifying the existence of the racist and fascist Israeli state, but doing so in a more aggressive tone than even the U.S. policy-makers had done formerly (the U.S. had always held to the language of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that these borders should be "secure and recognized"). Thus Carter's real stand on Palestine is similar to that on southern Africa: offer the deception of a "homeland" (like the offer of supposed "majority rule") as bait to deceive the peoples that the U.S. has become peaceful and democratic, and in reality deny the basic rights of the peoples, in this case the basic right of the Palestinian people to their entire homeland. And in this case the still more warlike policy of the Carter administration is shown in its declaration about "defensible borders", a virtual go-ahead signal to its heavily-armed lackey regime in Israel.
Other examples of the imperialist pacifism of the U.S. imperialist Carter administration can be given. The Woodcock MIA mission to Viet Nam was aimed at concealing the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism and selling its aggressive policies to the workers at home. The appointment of a triple amputee Viet Nam veteran to head the Veterans' Administration, the pardon of draft evaders and the offer to upgrade general and undesirable discharges including those of some deserters in the Viet Nam war are designed to prettify the main component of the aggressive U.S. imperialist state machine, the armed forces. Now that a professional military core has been created by the phase of the all-volunteer army, the aim of the government is to pave the way for a new draft so that millions of American working class youth can be conscripted to be cannon fodder in U.S. imperialism's
Another set of events, the revelations of secret CIA payments, revealed Carter's claims to run an "open", "democratic" foreign policy as mere verbiage designed to hide the brutal, corrupt imperialist connections of master and lackey collaborating against the peoples. This "revealed" the already well-known fact that many heads of reactionary foreign governments, notably the feudal monarch Hussein of Jordan, the social-fascist Willy Brandt of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mobutu of the Congo (Kinshasa), and others received CIA payments for years in return for serving U.S. imperialism's aggressive aims in their countries. When these connections were exposed, Carter declared February 23rd that he approved the secret CIA payments and did not find "anything illegal or improper" in them.
Perhaps the pinnacle of Carter's "human rights" campaign so far was his speech before the U. N. General Assembly March 17. There he declared that "the United States has a historic birthright" to demand adherence to "human rights". He also declared: "No member of the United Nations can claim that mistreatment of its citizens is solely its own business. Equally, no member can avoid its responsibilities to review and to speak when torture or unwarranted deprivation of freedom occurs in any part of the world." Since the majority of the fascist dictatorships in the world, where savage repression and torture rage against the peoples, were installed by the U.S. imperialists and their agents (Iran, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Israel, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, to name only a few), it is clear that the "human rights" Carter is talking about are not the genuine independence and democracy the oppressed peoples are striving for. In this light, Carter's U.N. speech is an aggressive declaration of U.S. imperialism's intentions to intervene whenever and wherever the "human rights" of its agents, the torturers of the peoples, are interfered with by the revolutionary struggles of the peoples.
These are some examples of the imperialist pacifism of the Carter administration. Imperialist pacifism prepares for war and simultaneously hides those preparations. Thus the "contradictions" and "debates" which certain social-chauvinists posing as Marxist-Leninists claim are raging in the U.S. ruling circles over whether to "appease" Russia or to "oppose" the looming war by contending more sharply against the Russians are a concoction of their opportunist brains. As Carter's SALT tactics show, the appointment of Warnke did not at all mean that U.S. imperialism was relaxing its contention with Soviet social-imperialism. In fact, the "human rights" campaign shows that this contention is heating up and is leading towards war, and the Carter administration is simply carrying out', this objective need of U.S. imperialism. All the pacifist gestures which these social-chauvinists interpret, as capitulation to the "most dangerous enemy" Russia are in reality maneuvers in the U.S. imperialist war preparations which find their counter-part in equally aggressive maneuvers from the Russian slave-owners. These escalating war preparations, preparations for,, an imperialist reactionary war, are the issue facing the masses. But the social-chauvinists (and big bourgeois ideologists, as can be seen in the news media every day) wish to divert the proletariat away from this burning issue into a debate over which bourgeois, politician serves these war preparations better, and thus to tie the masses to the U.S. imperialist war chariot. This criminal activity of the social-chauvinists is part and parcel,of the war preparations of U.S. imperialism, which they are serving in the same manner as the arch-revisionist Earl Browder served the aggressive designs of U.S. imperialism in the 1940's by liquidating the Communist Party USA and singing the praises of the U.S. imperialist warmongers.
As Comrade Enver Hoxha, leader of the international Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement, pointed out in his historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania November 1, 1976: "NEVER BEFORE HAS THE WORLD BEEN SUBJECTED TO SUCH A CAMPAIGN OF PROPAGANDA AND DIPLOMATIC DIVERSION AS THIS THE IMPERIALISTS, AND THE SOCIAL-IMPERIALISTS ARE ENGAGED IN AT PRESENT, WHICH IS INTENDED TO PRETTIFY THE HEGEMONIC AND EXPANSIONIST POLICY OF THE SUPERPOWERS, TO JUSTIFY THEIR AGGRESSIONS AND TO CONCEAL THEIR WAR PREPARATIONS." The American proletariat and oppressed people must oppose and denounce the "human rights" deception of the U.S. imperialist Carter administration and oppose the war preparations of U.S. imperialism. Either revolution will prevent the war plotted by U.S. imperialism and its main rival, Soviet social-imperialism, or the war will give rise to revolution which will sweep away the war-mongering U.S. imperialists and their government. End.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
The following leaflet was issued by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists for May 1st, International Workers Day:
Comrade Workers,
May 1st is International Workers' Day, the day of international working-class solidarity. It is the day when the millions and millions of proletarians of the entire world raise their mighty fist at once and declare that they will liberate themselves and all mankind from exploitation and slavery and that the mortal enemy of all who labor, bloodthirsty Capital, will inevitably be drowned in an ocean of class war. May 1st is a holiday of proletarian internationalism, when the workers of all countries review the ranks of the army of Labor and plan how to overthrow their exploiters and oppressors. On May 1st, the workers celebrate the victories of the common cause of the workers, oppressed nations and peoples of the world, with militant red banners inscribed "Workers of the World, Unite!", the color of the blood shed in the class war by the glorious martyrs of our cause.
May 1st, 1977, is taking place at a time when the world of Labor and socialism, the forces of revolution, are vigorously on the march and the forces of Capital, reaction and counter-revolution are in disarray everywhere. Socialist Albania and China stand forth as bastions of world revolution. There the proletariat exercises its dictatorship over the exploiters and genuine democracy exists for the people. Like a beacon, the socialist countries light up the bright future of the proletariat and oppressed peoples. The working class of the capitalist and revisionist countries, including the U.S. and Russia (where capitalism has been restored and the path of great Lenin and Stalin betrayed by the revisionist traitors to communism), is fighting powerful strike battles, resisting the violent attacks of the police sent by the governments to guard the "rights" of wealth. In Spain, armed clashes are constantly taking place between the proletarian fighters led by the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist) and the fascist monarchy. The peoples of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America have formed a broad front of battle against U.S.-led western imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction, including the reactionary bourgeoisie and feudal landlords in their own countries. Revolutionary armed struggles are raging from Columbia and Brazil in South America, to Angola, Azania, Namibia and Zimbabwe in Africa, to India, Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines in Asia. The great victories of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian peoples over U.S. imperialism continue to show that a small nation can defeat a big through struggle. After the death in September of the great leader and teacher of the international proletariat and oppressed peoples, Chairman Mao Tsetung, Comrade Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania, boldly stepped forward to shoulder responsibility to lead the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement. His historic REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE PARTY OF LABOUR OF ALBANIA, delivered November 1-2, charted out the course for the Marxist-Leninists of every country to lead the revolution to victory, to independence and freedom, socialism and communism. The Report eliminated the possibility that various counter-revolutionary theories world have influence in the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement following Chairman Mao's death. Comrade Enver Hoxha boldly declared: "THE WORLD IS AT A STAGE WHEN THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL LIBERATION OF THE PEOPLES IS NOT JUST AN ASPIRATION AND A FUTURE PROSPECT, BUT A PROBLEM TAKEN UP FOR SOLUTION."
The American working class is participating vigorously in this world-wide struggle. A protracted upsurge of the workers' movement including hard-fought strikes is taking place, heralding a far larger storm to come. Revolutionary workers are taking up the task of building the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party to lead the revolution to victory. The Afro-American people have given the first wave of the government-organized fascist anti-busing movement a good thrashing. Faced with the people's struggles at home and abroad, the U.S. bourgeoisie is plunged into gloom and is resorting to increasing fascization to save itself.
The forces of world reaction led by the two imperialist superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, are gripped by a deep all-round crisis. They are preparing for world war to re-divide the globe to escape their crisis. The election of the Democratic Carter administration is a big part of U.S. imperialism's offensive against the workers and its drive towards war. Elected as the candidate of the so-called "party of the workers and minorities", Carter is using political deception and executing the Democrats' program of unprecedented fleecing of the masses on energy prices, deeper enslavement of the workers through tightening control of the trade unions by the government and stepped-up war-mongering hidden by pious proclamations of Christian "love" and American "freedom" and "democracy", the banners under which U.S. imperialism slaughtered the Vietnamese people. The masses should beware! Carter speaks in terms of pacifism and "democracy", but under this guise the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie is stepping up its exploitation and plunder of the people, its tyrannical fascization, its Hitlerite war-mongering.
Comrade Workers,
The U.S. monopoly capitalist exploiters have thrown down the challenge to us. Will we continue to be slaves, or will we rise in revolution, overthrow their government, seize political power, and smash the bloody rule of capitalism to smithereens? Organizing the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution is the practical problem facing the proletariat and oppressed masses in the U.S. today.
There is only one thing preventing us from fulfilling our great historical mission. Opportunism and revisionism have deprived us of our organization, our revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party, without which we cannot close our ranks and defeat our enemies, without which the revolutionary movement is left leaderless and without a general staff. The revisionist traitors to the proletariat, the followers of Browderite and Khruschevite revisionism, have turned the once-revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A. into a bourgeois, reformist, social-fascist party, and enemy of the working class. Revisionism and opportunism corroded the Party from within. Undaunted, in the 1960's and 70's, young Marxist-Leninists in the U.S., inspired by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, rose at the call of Chairman Mao and Comrade Enver Hoxha. They began to fight revisionism and sought to re-constitute a genuine Communist Party. But today, right in the midst of those claiming to be against revisionism and for the proletariat, open social-chauvinism has come forth. Social-chauvinism is socialism in words, but big- power national chauvinism and jingoism in deeds. It is the biggest symptom of that opportunism that keeps the Marxist-Leninist ranks divided. The "New Left" leaders of the 60's, who made serious mistakes and liquidated the student movement, have become the quiet, "respectable" social-chauvinists of the 70's, waving the red-white-and-blue and aiming their "main blow" at Soviet social-imperialism. Their social-chauvinism is nothing but a refined, polished version of the crude jingoism pushed by all the top labor bureaucrats and trade union big-wigs, by all the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. To unite the working class, social-chauvinism must be denounced. Some of its fundamental features are as follows:
1. The social-chauvinists hold that the American working class should not prepare immediately for revolution against the U.S. monopoly capitalists and their state machine. Instead, they say, the proletariat should support the war preparations of the U.S. imperialists against their Soviet rivals under the hoax that the Russian imperialists are "more aggressive" than the Americans and that the American proletariat should therefore direct its "main blow" at Russia, just as Carter, Ford and the bourgeois state and mass media call for on a daily basis. This is the essence of social-chauvinism: abandoning revolution, capitulating to the enemy class and becoming pawns in the international power politics of aggressive U.S. imperialism. This is a betrayal of the proletariat. For the U.S. working class, the enemy, first and foremost, is at home. For us, practicing proletarian internationalism means overthrowing the government of "our own" bourgeoisie. The war plotted by the two superpowers will be an unjust war on both sides, a war between slave-owners for more slaves. In such a war, it doesn't matter which side is "more aggressive", who is the "main danger" or the "main source of war", who fires the first shot or on whose territory the war is fought. All these cries raised by the opportunists and social-chauvinists hide the class character of the war. Anyone who hides the task of fighting "our own" bourgeois government is a traitor to the working class. The American workers must fight this attempt to force them to slaughter the workers of other countries to win world domination for U.S. imperialism.
2. The social-chauvinists promote the opportunist theory of "Three Worlds" as the "great strategic concept" of world revolution. This theory denies that world imperialism uses neo-colonial regimes of the reactionary bourgeoisie and feudal landlords as bases for its domination and presents all the governments of the Asian, African and Latin American countries, without exception, as fighters against imperialism. For example, it is well known that the majority of the people of Latin America live under military-fascist and dictatorial regimes propped up by U.S. imperialism, but social-chauvinism hides the nature of these reactionaries claiming that these governments are standing up to imperialism! Social-chauvinism claims that throughout the world the lackeys of imperialism, people no different from the Diem's, Thieu's, Ky's and Lon Nol's overthrown by the Indochinese peoples, are liberation heroes. Thus this theory glorifies the U.S. imperialist neo-colonial empire in Asia, Africa and Latin America and denies revolution on a world scale. It goes directly against the theory of new-democratic revolution in the oppressed nations developed by Chairman Mao. Under the hoax that "the entire Third World is objectively progressive" this theory apologizes for the aggression of U.S. imperialism in Asia, Africa and Latin America where it operates not only directly but indirectly through its lackeys, the reactionary bourgeoisie and big landlords, to control and plunder the oppressed peoples. This apology for neo-colonialism is a criminal betrayal of the proletarian internationalist duty of the U.S. proletariat to support the national liberation struggles against "our own" imperialist bourgeoisie, a duty which was executed with honor by the American people in the great struggles against the U.S. war of aggression against Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos in the 60's and early 70's.
Comrade Workers,
May 1st is a holiday of proletarian internationalism. It is a day when workers all around the world rededicate themselves to revolution against their "own" oppressors and smash up chauvinism of all types, whether it be the crude jingoism of the capitalists and labor traitors or the refined, pseudo-Marxist jingoism of the social-chauvinists. Comrade Lenin pointed out: "THERE IS ONE, AND ONLY ONE, KIND OF REAL INTERNATIONALISM, AND THAT IS --WORKING WHOLEHEARTEDLY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AND THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE IN ONE'S OWN COUNTRY, AND SUPPORTING (BY PROPAGANDA, SYMPATHY, AND MATERIAL AID) THIS STRUGGLE, THIS, AND ONLY THIS, LINE, IN EVERY COUNTRY WITHOUT EXCEPTION." It is up to us to uproot all opportunism and erroneous theories and unite our ranks onto an invincible force. It is up to us to resist the attacks of the capitalists, wage the resistance movement against fascism and organize the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution. Forward under the bright red banner of revolution, communism and freedom! Workers of the world, unite!
DOWN WITH THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST DICTATORS!
MARXIST-LENINISTS, UNITE IN STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM!
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION IN THE U.S. IS OUR SACRED INTERNATIONALIST DUTY!
COLSELY FOLLOW COMRADE ENVER HOXHA, LEADER OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!
DEATH TO U.S. IMPERIALISM, SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM AND ALL REACTION -- REVOLUTION IS THE MAIN TREND IN THE WORLD TODAY!
Inside the Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire), fighting has been raging between on one side an invasion force of Katangese mercenaries and Soviet-Cuban -MPLA troops stationed in Angola, and on the other side troops of the army of the U.S.-dominated neo-colonial Kinshasa government. This fighting is an inevitable outcome of the contention of the two superpowers. There is not one area of the globe where the two superpowers are not contending. In Africa, the inter-imperialist rivalry between the two superpowers has escalated in recent months with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young visiting southern Africa in the first week in February. Cuban Premier Fidel Castro toured Africa from mid-March to April 3 to act as an advance man for Soviet social-imperialism. Soviet President Podgomy toured Africa from March 22, leaving the same day as Castro, April 3. Moreover, on April 4, the same day that Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) broke relations with Cuba, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat went to Washington to hold discussions with U.S. President Carter. While they are contending, the two superpowers also collude to drown in blood the revolutionary struggles of the people of Africa and the world.
The Soviet social-imperialists, with their base in Angola, and the U.S. imperialists, with their bases in Zimbabwe, Azania and Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) itself both consider the country as extremely important for concrete, real reasons. In the first place, Congo-Kinshasa is extremely rich in resources which both the imperialist superpowers wish to plunder. Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) is the biggest producer of cobalt and diamonds in the world. It is amongst the top producers of uranium, copper, tin and lithium. Besides these, the country is rich in manganese, iron, zinc, gold, tungsten, silver, platinum, tantalum, bauxite and petroleum as well as many agricultural products. The U.S. imperialists, eager to keep Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) in their clutches, are propping up the most barbaric, medieval and feudal state of Mobutu. The U.S. imperialists, with over $1 billion invested in Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) are determined to maintain their stranglehold over the country. Not only do the U.S. imperialists uphold and defend the reactionary regime of Mobutu to exploit the people of Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) but they also use the government in Kinshasa as a base for reaction in south and central Africa. A large number of paratroopers from such countries as Chad, Burundi, Rwanda, Gabon and the Central African Republic are being trained by Belgian, American and Israeli officers at bases at Kamina and Kitana in Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire).
The U.S. imperialists have increased their military "aid" to Mobutu by over 700% since 1975. Military "aid" in 1975 was $3. 8 million, in 1976, it was $29. 5 million, in 1977, it will be $30. 5 million and next year it will increase again to $32. 5 million.
Using Angola as their base, the Soviet social-imperialists have reportedly organized a Cuban-led force of between 3000 and 5000 troops to invade Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) in an attempt to expand their own sphere of influence in Africa. The troop s who have invaded Congo-Kinshasa (Zaire) are Katangese mercenaries. They served as gendarmes for the Belgians, as Portuguese mercenaries and later as mercenaries for the MPLA in Angola. Their history is that they were Congolese secessionists in the 1960's and they are remembered throughout Africa for their role in the assassination of the African patriot, Patrice Lumumba.
While the two superpowers are viciously contending for hegemony in Congo-Kinshasa, they are both united in their eager desire to crush the revolutionary struggle of the genuine forces of liberation, independence and freedom of Congo-Kinshasa. These forces of genuine liberation, independence and freedom, led by the Revolutionary Marxist Party of Congo-Kinshasa, have waged a most heroic and determined struggle against the traitorous Mobutu regime. Mobutu established his sellout regime by murdering the African patriot, Patrice Lumumba, at the instigation of the U.S. imperialists. The U.S. imperialists had Lumumba assassinated because he refused to become their agent and vowed that he would never sell out his country for American bribes. It is no accident that the main fighting has been going on in Katanga province (Shaba) where the Revolutionary Marxist Party has units, and which, next to the northeast, is the base of the forces of liberation, independence and freedom.
While claiming innocence and pretending to be "true friends" of the African people, the Soviet social-imperialists have their hands dripping with the blood of the African revolutionaries. They collaborated with U.S. imperialism in the horrid assassination of Patrice Lumumba. On July 13, 1960, the Soviet Union joined the U.S. imperialists in voting for the U.S. Security Council resolution to dispatch troops to the Congo. These troops headed by the arch-U.S. imperialist flunkey, General Dextraze of Canada, butchered the Congolese, revolutionaries. The Soviet Union provided these troops with means of transportation and carried on an uninterrupted stream of propaganda about the U.N. troops "helping the government of the Congolese Republic to defend the independence and sovereignty of the country". It was this U.N. invasion which resulted in the victory of Mobutu and the subsequent murder of Patrice Lumumba.
Summing up the bitter lessons of the Soviet revisionist betrayal, the Revolutionary Marxist Party has stated: "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, the modern revisionists took advantage of our inexperience and advised us to abandon the armed struggle, to reconcile ourselves with the reactionary government and to participate in the elections. As a consequence of this theory, most of Lumumba's followers were arrested, jailed and killed. Their political parties were outlawed."(The Liberator, organ of the Marxist Revolutionary Party of the Congo (Kinshasa), No. 4, July 1976)
The American proletariat must not support U.S. imperialism and its schemes to protect the U.S. neo-colonial bases from "theft" by the Soviet social-imperialists. Nor should the American proletariat support placing the Congo-Kinshasa under the Soviet neo-colonial yoke. The line of supporting one or the other superpower under the hoax of "liberating" the Congo-Kinshasa from the clutches of the other superpower is a betrayal of the interests of the world's people. Both superpowers are the main enemy of the people of the world and have nothing but plunder, exploitation and disaster on the agenda for the African people and the people of the world. The proletariat must support the genuine forces of liberation, independence and freedom which are fighting the reactionary bourgeoisie which is the base of the two superpowers to plunder Congo-Kinshasa. These forces are the forces led by the Revolutionary Marxist Party who, upholding the banner of people's war, maintain: "For us, the revolutionaries, the essential points in the war are: the support of the people, the just character of the war, the high fighting spirit, the sense of sacrifice, the consciousness of the cause for which we fight and the support which this cause enjoys from the majority of the people both inside and outside the country."
(Who Will Win in Congo-Kinshasa? (Montreal: Norman Bethune Institute, 1976), p. 25) End.
Across the U.S. the monopoly capitalist ruling class has been raising its "anti-crime" hysteria to a fever pitch. According to the bourgeoisie, it is the people who are the cause of crime. In Detroit, which the bourgeoisie labels "Murder City", as in many other cities, the Black youth are singled out for blame and are made the target of a virtual war by the city government.
Can it be that the biggest of criminals, the U.S. monopoly capitalists, are against crime and are organizing a campaign to eliminate it? No, for it is they themselves who are the chief organizers of crime and their evil system of monopoly capitalism which is the source of crime today. Neither are the monopoly capitalists and their government interested in eliminating social crime, nor are they capable of it.
Under the guise of being "anti-crime", the big bourgeoisie has organized a fascist campaign of attack on the American people. This campaign is especially aimed at inciting the white masses against Blacks, and at further fascizing the bourgeois state machine, rapidly expanding the repressive apparatus of police, jails, courts, laws, etc., for use in suppressing the struggles of the masses. The first target of this campaign is the Black youth.
In Detroit, a city with many modern proletarians who have a long history of struggle against the bourgeoisie, with a numerous auto proletariat which is militant and very receptive to communist ideas, and where a big percentage of workers are militant Afro-Americans, the bourgeoisie has their fascist "anti-crime" campaign under full steam.
The Afro-American youth in Detroit are being savagely attacked by the capitalists' police and government. Their life is that of living under a police state. Since last August, the police have been wantonly locking up Black youths by the hundreds, under the "emergency" curfew, under which all youth under 18 must be off the street by 10 p.m. In the first five weeks of the curfew, the police made 626 curfew violation arrests. Among these, the 17-year-olds, who are tried as adults, have been sentenced to jail or put on as much as a year's probation with heavy fines and even sentenced to forced unpaid labor -- for walking down the street after 10 p.m.!
The police are terrorizing the Afro-American community throughout the city. They habitually murder the Afro-Americans whose lives mean nothing to them. A typical example was the recent murder by two undercover police of a 22-year-old Black man who was walking his wife to the bus stop. The plainclothes police jumped out of an unmarked car and, at point-blank range, shot and killed the unarmed Black man. The excuse for this cold-blooded murder was that the man failed to take his hand out of his pocket when ordered to!
The police direct much of their attacks at the Black youth gangs, A special "gang squad" specializes in infiltration of the gangs, at inciting one gang to fight another, concocting heavy charges against the more respected gang leaders, and thereby trying to bring the gangs under their control to use as government tools to attack the people. The youths thus charged are held for months before their trials; then, in several cases, juries have found the police evidence to be too flimsy even to convict. While blaming the youth for being gang members, the bourgeoisie has itself encouraged the formation of criminal youth gangs and incited them to crime and gang wars with tales of "daring daylight raids on downtown businesses", lists of reputed gang members, etc., not to mention the constant glorification of crime which goes on in movies and television.
These police attacks are not the result of some bad policy of some city officials, nor of a "few bad cops" The monopoly capitalist oppressors know quite well that the Black youth, who in Detroit suffer from over 60% unemployment, are a very militant section of the people. They shudder at the memory of the massive Detroit Rebellion of 1967 in which the young Black people were a driving force. This rebellion was part of the national storm of the Black people's struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression which shook the monopoly capitalist system to its foundations. The reason for the police attacks on the Black youth is the monopoly capitalists mortal terror of the revolutionary masses and fear of their own approaching overthrow. To prevent revolutionary struggle from breaking out, the bourgeoisie must isolate the Black youth among the Black people and incite the white masses against the Afro-Americans.
Since last August, after the so-called "Cobo Hall rampage" (a terrorist attack on the masses at a rock concert which is widely believed in Detroit to have been staged by the police and their masters), the bourgeoisie in Detroit has been running a hysterical propaganda campaign spearheaded against the Black youth.. The purpose of this campaign is to whip up white racism and panic about crime and thus gain support for the fascist "anti-crime" campaign. After the Cobo Hall incident, "liberal" Black Mayor Coleman Young declared the city to be in a "crime crisis" and raved that he wouldn't let Black "youth gangs" "take over the city". Deputy Mayor Wm. Beckham echoed him, saying, "Starting tonight, somebody's going to get hurt". Ever since, the whole league of bourgeois, the big capitalists, the politicians, the police, the capitalist news media, lawyers, judges, some labor bureaucrats and others, have raised a deafening howl, slandering and attacking the Black youth as "young hoodlums", "criminals", "thousands of dangerous punks", "kid gangsters", and so on. Right after the Cobo Hall incident, the Mayor formed the Ad Hoc Committee on Youth Crime, enlisting the top UAW and other labor bureaucrats to collaborate with the city government and the biggest financiers and auto monopolists to support the government attack on the Black youth. The suburban police departments have concocted the lie that Black youth gangs from Detroit are going to invade the suburbs. Some have screamed that they will shoot Black youths from Detroit on the spot if they catch them committing a crime in "their" towns. Others have declared that they will lock up young Blacks from Detroit if they so much as spit on "their" suburban sidewalks.
The aim of all this poisonous propaganda is to vilify the Black youth in the eyes of the American people, to incite oppressed whites against the heavily oppressed Blacks, to split the older Black people from the young Black people, to split the masses of workers from the Black youth so as to be able to brutally attack both. The monopoly capitalists have every interest in making a deep split in the ever-more powerful working-class movement, which alone can smash the bourgeoisie, and for this goal they are carrying out their "anti-crime" campaign.
RAPID FASCIZATION OF THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST STATE
Under the guise of "fighting crime" the monopoly capitalists are further fascizing their state machine; the police, prisons, courts, huge bureaucracy, etc., their machinery for suppressing the working class and people. Riding on the wave of hysterical "anti-Black youth gang" propaganda put out by their media, the bourgeoisie has been stumbling over itself, rushing to institute new fascist laws, measures and plans to use against the people.
In just six months they have taken such measures in Michigan as:
-- The Detroit Police Department has been reorganized and further centralized. Many police "squads" have been established or reestablished including a "gang squad", a "tactical services section", and an undercover "squad" for the city buses, etc. There is more extensive use of undercover police. The notorious, heavily-armed, four-man cruisers (known as "The Big Four") have been brought back, etc. Civilian employees have been added to release more police onto the streets.
--Detroit Mayor Young has recalled all 1,000 laid-off police.
-- A 1,000-man armed volunteer civilian police corps is being set up to supplement the force of the regular police and to increase police infiltration of the communities.
-- More prisons are being built or have been planned in the Detroit area.
-- The Michigan State Legislature is re-writing the state's "criminal code", "toughening" the laws.
An example of the new fascist "anti-crime" laws which are being instituted is Michigan's new "gun law". According to the law, a person who commits a felony while using or carrying a gun will get a mandatory prison term of two years, with no possibility of parole, over and above the prison sentence for the felony itself. For second offenders there is five years and for third-time convictions there is a mandatory ten years without parole. Prison officials say that with the "gun law" a "small tidal wave" of new prisoners is being thrown into the already overflowing prisons.
Of course, the armed racists and fascists, the rich, the Mafiosos and the police will not be charged with breaking this law. The monopoly capitalists have not built the prisons for themselves and their friends. Take, for example, the court conviction of the racist murderer, Andrew Chinarian. Chinarian murdered in cold blood (shot in the back of the head at 100 feet) Anthony Obie Wynn, a young Black worker who was talking with friends in the parking lot of Chinarian's bar. (It was this racist murder which sparked the heroic Livemois rebellion of 1975, in which the Afro-American people rose up and fought against the racist attacks and violent repression from which they suffer.) The capitalists' courts convicted Chinarian of "reckless use of a firearm" for his crime for which the masses wanted to make him pay with his blood. While the racist murderers go scot-free, the capitalists have imposed the new "gun law" to lock up more thousands of young people to rot in their concentration camps.
This new "gun law" is aimed at those who take up armed self-defense against the armed racists, fascists and police. It is a step in the direction of the "liberals'" program of "gun control" -- a plan to take arms out of the hands of the oppressed people and have all the guns pointed at the unarmed people by the reactionaries and their state.
"LIBERAL" BLACK MAYOR YOUNG STEPS UP FASCIZATION
The police regime in Detroit is a good example of a government run by the "liberal Democrats" and Carterites. The city is a center for big-wigs in the Democratic Party. The Mayor, Coleman Young, is a big Carter supporter and a vice-chairman of the Democratic Party. The Deputy Mayor, Wm. Beckham, and the Budget Director, Dennis Green, have been taken to Washington as appointees to the staffs of two of Carter's Cabinet members.
It is this "liberal" administration in Detroit whichcould further develop fascism in the name of opposing it. In 1973, he campaigned on the platform of "opposition" to "police brutality" and the STRESS squad ("Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets", a police, squad which specialized in ambushing and murdering Black people). That was when the masses were vigorously fighting against the fascist STRESS squad attacks. But Young never opposed the state attacks on the Black people. He "opposed" STRESS because as a thoroughly exposed terrorist, racist murder squad it was arousing a storm of opposition among the masse? to the state and so wasn't working efficiently enough for his monopoly capitalist masters. According to him, the problem with STRESS is that the city is facing too many damage suits as a result of it, having already paid out $1 million and facing $40 million in pending suits.
Now, Young, the "savior of the Black people", the "crusader against STRESS", has appointed James Bannon, the mastermind of STRESS, to the number two post in the Police Dept. Bannon was the top commander of STRESS and led it in fascist murders of 22 people, 20 of whom were killed by ambush. It was this same Bannon who commanded the police suppression of the Livemois Rebellion. Mayor Young has reintroduced STRESS but simply left off the name. Today, the murders, harassment and brutalization of the Afro-Americans and all the working masses by the police continues unabated.
The people of Detroit are being policed and taxed to death. Detroit's huge police budget (which nearly doubled from 1970 to 1975, from $80 million to $156 million, and now costs well over $100 per capita per year) makes up over 35% of the total city budget. This threw city finances into crisis. The expansion and fascization of the police apparatus by the "liberals" in recent years has placed a heavy economic burden on the working people.
THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS THE SOURCE OF CRIME
The monopoly capitalists and their government are not interested in eliminating crime. In fact, they themselves are the biggest of criminals and are the source of social crime. Internationally, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the two most savage enemies of the world's people, carry out wanton plunder and blackmail and slaughter millions in bloody wars of aggression (the crimes of the U.S. aggressors in Korea and Indochina are unparalleled in history). At home, the rich cruelly exploit and slaughter the working class and people. They suppress the working people by every means, including armed force, assassinations, etc. It is the capitalist government which organized the fascist anti-busing movement and other racist attacks on the Black people. The monopoly bourgeoisie pushes its reactionary decadent culture, featuring drugs, anti-woman chauvinism and every type of anti-people ideology in order to stupify the masses and keep them enslaved and incite them to crime. It is common knowledge that the drug trade, prostitution and so on are headed by the police and the Mafia and the capitalists themselves.
In Detroit, immediately after the 1967 Rebellion heroin was brought into the Black community on a massive scale, a feat which would be impossible without the help of the police. The Mafioso chieftains are known by name to anyone who reads the newspapers, they go scot-free while Black youth languish in jails for months without trials. And when a story leaked out last year that a federal Grand Jury was looking into police involvement in the drug trade, even though this was only a most formal investigation, suddenly a Deputy Chief of Police (a best friend of Mayor Young's) went on an "educational leave" with full pay and a bodyguard. He recently completely resigned just as this Grand Jury was scheduled to report its findings so as not to "embarrass" the rest of the administration. And another Deputy Chief of Police committed suicide rather than testify before this Grand Jury. Crime in Detroit, as in the rest of the U.S., starts right at the top of the government, in the White House, the state houses and city halls.
Furthermore, it is monopoly capitalism which drives the young people to social crime. Under capitalism the youth are blocked from all sides. They are economically exploited, suffer extreme unemployment, are politically deprived of any voice and are culturally and spiritually besieged, The only future the young people have under capitalism is the path of social revolution. To divert the youth from taking up revolution, the capitalists push them into countless dead-end roads. They are bombarded with the capitalists' own criminal mentality and pushed into crime, then are viciously attacked as "criminals''. The burden of these vicious attacks falls especially heavily on the Black youth. And now the bourgeoisie is trying to whip up a racist and fascist mass movement against the Black people, and Black youth in particular, accusing them of being the cause of crime!
But the sons and daughters of the American working class, of the Afro-Americans and other oppressed people, are not criminals. They yearn to take the bright road of revolution and to live for high ideals. This fascist "anti-crime" campaign will never succeed in turning the masses against them. The young people and the entire working class and oppressed masses will certainly get organized for anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution. Only such a revolution, which overthrows the monopoly capitalist system and not the capitalists' fascist "anti-crime" campaign, can eliminate social crime. End.
When Leonard Woodcock headed the White House Commission on Missing in Action and traveled to Viet Nam and Laos from March 16 to March 20, he was acting as a tool in the hands of President Carter to carry out the foreign policy of U.S. imperialism. This demonstrated once again that the trade unions are integrated into the machinery of the bourgeois state.
Carter has been attempting to present himself to the American people as a man of peace, love and humanitarian impulses. He acts ever so sincere about wanting peace. Behind Carter's hypocritical talk of peace he is preparing for new wars of aggression by U.S. imperialism. Carter talks of "arms limitation" but continues the ever-escalating arms race with Soviet social-imperialism. He speaks of "healing the wounds" of the Viet Nam war by pardoning draft evaders and up-grading the discharges of U.S. soldiers who deserted from the armed forces during the war of aggression. And he sent the White House Commission on Missing in Action to Viet Nam and Laos to further this policy of allegedly "healing the wounds" of the war. As head of this Commission, Leonard Woodcock assisted Carter in promoting the deception that the U.S. government has become peaceful and humanitarian and only wants to "heal the wounds" of war and go on to develop peaceful relations with everybody. This deception serves preparations for new wars by hiding the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism.
"JUSTIFYING" U.S. IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION AGAINST INDOCHINA UNDER THE MASK OF IMPERIALIST PACIFICISM
Everyone knows that U.S. imperialism sought to dominate Indochina and that it waged a 14-year-long war in vain pursuit of this criminal aim. The U.S. imperialists used over a half-million U.S. troops, over a million puppet and mercenary troops, employed over 10,000 aircraft to drop more bombs than were dropped in any previous war in history, employed its modern weapons, including chemical warfare and only excluding nuclear weapons, spent over $200 billion, and employed innumerable other barbarous tactics against the Indochinese peoples. After many years of armed struggle the Indochinese peoples totally defeated the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys. This smashed the U.S. imperialist plan to dominate Indochina. It also exploded the U.S. imperialists' dream of using Indochina as a model of how the imperialists could defeat the armed national liberation struggles of the people. The victory of the Indochinese peoples was a powerful encouragement and stimulus to the revolutionary struggle of all oppressed nations and peoples of the world.
It is also well-known that the American people rose up against the barbarous war of aggression waged by the U.S. imperialists and waged a powerful mass anti-imperialist struggle against the war. In the course of the war the American masses fought vigorously against the reactionary U.S. monopoly capitalist state, some even sacrificing their lives in the struggle. The war aroused the hostility of the American people against the U.S. government to an extent unprecedented in recent times and pushed large numbers of the masses towards revolution.
President Carter is following a policy of imperialist pacifism, of intensified war-mongering under the cloak of "peace", a "world without nuclear weapons", and "human rights". An important part of this design is the effort to give U.S. imperialism the image of being peaceful and humanitarian and sincere about wanting "normal relations" with all countries. This is a sweet lullaby to put the American people, as well as the world's people, to sleep. It aims at hiding the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism by wiping out the people's memories of how the U.S. imperialists carried out a barbarous war of aggression in Indochina for over a decade. But even while singing this lullaby Carter bared his real fangs. In a news conference following the return of the MIA Commission,
"Well, the destruction was mutual, you know, we went to Viet Nam without any desire to capture territory or to impose American will on other people. We went there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese, and I don't feel that we ought to apologize or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability. Now, I'm willing to face the future without reference to the past. I don't feel that we have, that we owe a debt nor that we should be forced to pay reparations, or at all."
Have we not heard these same lies a million times before from the ever-so-"sincere" and "peace-loving" Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford? Under the cover of such lies, fraud and hypocrisy the war in Indochina was waged. The American people saw through the honeyed phrases of Carter's predecessors and they are not about to be taken in by Carter's brand of the same public relations. From Carter's words, if one were born yesterday, one might think that perhaps the Vietnamese and other Indochinese peoples invaded North America and that there was some "mutual" destruction going on! Or perhaps you might get the idea that American troops went to Indochina not to impose the will of the U.S. aggressors there but only to spread peace and love, at the invitation of the Vietnamese people. These lies were long-since cast a- side by the American masses.
Carter would like to be able to face the future "without reference to the past" but he will not be able to do so. The suffering of the Indochinese peoples at the hands of the U.S. imperialist aggressors and their heroic struggle have not been forgotten by the Indochinese peoples nor by the American people. Carter's lullabies are not enough to drug us and wipe out our memories. U.S. imperialism is a superpower, bent on world domination, and it will remain aggressive as long as it has a single tooth left in its head. The U.S. government is not, and cannot become, a peace-loving government which merely seeks "normal relations" with other governments. Carter cannot whitewash the reactionary aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism, a ferocious enemy of the peoples of the world and of peace.
Carter also showed his imperialist fangs on the issue of U.S. aggressor troops "missing in action". The entire issue of MIA's was raised by the Nixon administration as a propaganda attack on the Indochinese peoples. The issue was raised as a supposedly "humanitarian" concern on the part of U.S. imperialism for American troops who were not accounted for by the Pentagon. The U.S. arrogantly demanded an "accounting" from the Indochinese governments regarding the MIA's as a "humanitarian" issue. This was meant to hide the fact that the U.S. troops were sent to Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos to butcher the people, not to deliver flowers. The intent of the MIA hoax was to give the impression that while the American aggression was just and the American government is humanitarian,the resistance of the Indochinese peoples was unjust and their governments are inhumane. Of course, the U.S. imperialist aggressors never thought that perhaps they owed the Indochinese governments some "accounting" for the hundreds of thousands of Indochinese people killed, wounded and missing as a result of American aggression, or even for the hundreds of babies kidnapped from Saigon by the U.S. aggressors just prior to liberation. No, their'1 humanitarianism'' never included such a simple thought since it was merely a propaganda campaign against the Indochinese peoples. It was the U.S. imperialist aggressors who were inhumane in Indochina, who napalmed, defoliated, carpet-bombed, tortured, who established "strategic hamlets" and carried out "pacification campaigns" and employed bombing as a tool in negotiations as part of their arsenal of cruel, nefarious inhumane tactics in the war. The whole world knows these crimes. So, by raising the vile Nixonite propaganda about MIA's Carter is only showing that behind his smile lie the same fangs of U.S. imperialism which the world's people have come to know and hate and resist. The government of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) justly denounced the Woodcock Commission and refused to meet with it.
WOODCOCK CARRIES OUT FOREIGN POLICY OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
An essential part of Carter's and the Democratic Party's plan to "restore confidence" in U.S. imperialism with imperialist pacificism is the use of an army of sold-out labor traitors and trade union bureaucrats. By accepting the position as leader of the White House Commission on Missing in Action, Leonard Woodcock, President of the United Auto Workers, played a big role in the political deception of the Carter administration and, once again exposed himself as a tool of the U.S. imperialists. During the U.S. war of aggression in Indochina Woodcock pretended to be against the war at a time when most of the trade union leaders openly supported the war policies of the government and were openly thanked by the President for their loyal support. Woodcock then masqueraded as an opponent of the war and worked to sabotage the revolutionary movement from within and to keep it within the most narrow, legal, respectable bounds. Today he travels to Viet Nam and Laos as the instrument of the foreign policy of the U.S. state, directly carrying out the President's orders. This shows that Woodcock's opposition to the war in Indochina was a sham, and that all along he was a firm supporter of U.S. imperialism. The difference between Woodcock and the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO was merely that the AFL-CIO openly supported the war and opposed criticism of the government while Woodcock worked inside the mass movement to oppose its development in a revolutionary direction and to limit any criticism of the government to the most moderate kind. Carter's line of trying to "face the future without reference to the past" was directly repeated recently by Woodcock, Carter's tool. Woodcock declared "we can put a difficult and bitter past behind us". This is class collaboration pure and simple; it is a clear example that Woodcock, no less than the trade union leaders who openly supported the war, has become integrated into the state machine itself and is a firm supporter of aggressive U.S. imperialism, the hangman of the world's peoples.
Woodcock continues the long-standing role of the U.S. labor traitors in this regard. Samuel Gompers, who headed the AFL from its founding in 1889 until 1924, held that the function of the trade unions was to "defend and preserve the existing order, and to develop and improve it". In the Spanish-American war, the first U.S. war of aggression in the era of imperialism, Gompers and the AFL supported U.S. expansion and aggression. In World War I Gompers led the AFL's policy of complete loyalty to the government during the imperialist war and personally served on government boards that were part of the war mobilization apparatus.
The labor traitors completely abandoned the wage and other demands of the workers and put the unions entirely at the service and mercy of the state. By the present time, the capitalist state has subjected the trade unions to a whole series of laws, regulations, courts and bureaucratic apparatuses, such as the NLRB and Taft-Hartley Act, all aimed at integrating the trade union apparatus into the state apparatus for the purpose of attacking the working-class movement. The trade union bureaucrats have sabotaged even the most basic economic struggles of the workers at home, while becoming tools and mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism's drive for world hegemony.
Woodcock's career in the service of U.S. imperialism has been considerable; his recent mission to Indochina is merely the latest in a long list of services rendered to the state of the monopoly capitalists. He used his position as President of the UAW to become a salesman for Israeli bonds among the workers, thus aiding the government's policy of assisting racist and fascist Israeli zionism. In 1972 he sat on the Pay Board and assisted President Nixon in freezing wages. He is head of the Committee on National Health Insurance, which is a class-collaborationist committee of businessmen, "liberal" professors and labor traitors. The agitation for "national health insurance" plays a part in the Democratic Party's deception of being the "party of the workers", yet such insurance is only designed to guarantee the profits of the health companies and allow them to continue escalating their prices by using the governmental power to tax the workers. And last but not least, Woodcock is the chief spokesman for the notorious scheme of "national economic planning" which aims at having the capitalists, the state and the unions "co-operate" to "plan" the national economy so as to allegedly prevent economic crises and provide secure and full employment. The real content of this scheme is to totally integrate the unions into the bureaucracy of the state along the lines of Mussolini-style fascism in order to smash the struggles of the workers and increase their exploitation by cutting wages and increasing "productivity". Woodcock's "national economic planning" would be a great assistance to the monopoly capitalist dictators. Such has been the role of the labor traitor Woodcock. Such has been the role of the leaders of the other trade unions today. Carter's use of Woodcock to go to Viet Nam and Laos and make noises about peace and about forgetting the past is part and parcel of this basic politics of class collaboration to serve war preparations. Woodcock and other mouthpieces for U.S. imperialism go about among the workers constantly repeating that the U.S. government is for "peace" and "democracy" and "reform" and loves everybody. The reason that they have to do this is because the masses of workers do not believe it. End.
In the last few weeks the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress has rejected two reform bills given high priority by the AFL-CIO. The Democratic Party and Carter have been shown to have total contempt for their servile lackeys among the top bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO. The electoral strategy of the top trade union hacks has gone bankrupt once again!
The Democratic Party has long posed as the "friend of labor" and Carter maintained this pose in last fall's election. The AFL-CIO chieftains have long supported the Democratic Party as the party of the working masses and in last fall's election campaigned strongly for Carter and a Democratic Congress. They spent $11 million of the workers' funds in the election and urged the workers to participate in the campaign and to look to Carter to solve their problems. Thus, instead of organizing the workers to carry on mass struggle against the capitalists and the government to win their demands, they organized the workers to use bourgeois politicking to change a few laws. What has been the result so far of this strategy of the AFL- CIO chieftains?
The first priority of the AFL-CIO chieftains in Congress this year was the "common situs" picketing bill, which would have returned to an individual construction union the right to picket an entire construction site. This measure would assist the struggle of the construction workers against the construction capitalists. This right had been taken away from the construction unions in 1951, when the Supreme Court ruled that a construction union could picket only the subcontractor with whom it had a dispute, and not an entire construction site. The union bureaucrats practice capitulation to bourgeois legality, and have been trying to use bourgeois politics to pass a new picketing bill, but have gotten nowhere. President Ford promised the union chieftains that he would sign the bill if it were passed by Congress but when Congress did pass the bill, Ford broke his promise and refused to sign the bill. President Carter said he would sign the bill if it were passed. But as a result of pressure from the construction capitalists this year, the heavily Democratic Congress rejected the bill 217 to 205. The Carter administration refused even to use its power to get the bill through the House, which would have insured the passage of the bill. This is how the election of the so-called "friends of labor", Carter and the Democratic Party, has exposed the bankrupt strategy of the AFL-CIO chieftains.
A second crumb which the AFL-CIO big-wigs begged the government for was an increase in the minimum wage from $2.30 to $3. 04, or from about 47% of the average U.S. hourly manufacturing wage to 60% of that wage. This would be reached by January 1978. This 60% level is in fact such a low figure that it had been proposed by the arch-conservative and enemy of the working class, Robert A. Taft, way back in 1949! The $2.50 minimum wage proposed by President Carter, (in place of the AFL-CIO's proposed 60% level, or $3.04), would still leave the 10 million workers earning the minimum with wage with a wage that was 38 cents per hour below the federal "poverty line". That is, that the minimum wage proposed by Carter, the "friend of labor", would even fail to meet the federal minimum standard of living necessary for the worker to simply maintain himself. Carter's stand is that a larger increase would be "inflationary" and would "increase unemployment among youth".
After the federal government refused to give the trade union chieftains these two crumbs for which they had begged their response was to act upset. Meany called the Carter action on the minimum wage "a bitter disappointment to everyone who looked to this administration for economic justice to the poor". His possible successor in the top AFL-CIO position, Lane Kirkland, called for "more help from the friends we supported". Thus the AFL-CIO chieftains are complete traitors to the working class: they organized the workers to support Carter and the other candidates of the Democratic Party, a capitalist party; this party gives them a big slap in the face with the rejection of AFL-CIO proposals on two issues; and the AFL-CIO chieftains maintain their long-time traitorous stance that workers must still get on their knees and beg their "friends" in Congress or the White House to give them some crumbs. In the election the AFL-CIO leaders worked to "reward" their "friends", the Democrats. After the elections are over, the "friends" show their true colors. Election after election, the AFL-CIO goes through this routine, completely chaining the working class movement to the capitalist political parties and creating illusions that the government will satisfy the workers' demands. The trade union leaders did nothing to organize the workers to wage mass struggles against the monopoly capitalists and their state. Yet the only way the workers can win any victories is to rely on their own strength and to wage mass struggles. Mass struggle is the only weapon of the working class which can achieve anything. The first commandment of the trade union bureaucrats is to oppose the mass struggle of the workers and to collaborate with the state and create illusions about its promises, but the state is the organization of the monopoly capitalist ruling class. End.
In preparation for the opening of the 1977-78 school year, the Seattle School Board (SSB) is organizing wide-scale discussions around a "voluntary desegregation plan" for the supposed purpose of integrating the public schools. However, the "voluntary desegregation plan" will not integrate the school system, but instead will maintain segregation and racial discrimination there.
Why should the government at various levels cause all of this uproar about simply maintaining segregated schools? Because the Seattle School Board is using the discussions on this plan to create massive confusion about the just and democratic nature of school integration. For some time now, the Seattle School Board has been literally screaming against the use of "mandatory busing" to achieve "forced integration".
In this way the Seattle School Board is setting up conditions for the emergence of mass opposition to a possible federal court order in the future that would require mandatory busing. The monopoly capitalist class, which controls both the federal and local government-- including the Seattle School Board, is united in working to set up an inflammatory situation among the people so that a racist and fascist "anti-busing" movement can be incited to attack Black people and their democratic right to attend integrated schools. The attacks on Black people that have occurred in Boston and Louisville in the midst of court- ordered busing are not "spontaneous" occurrences, but have been directly organized by the monopoly capitalist class (both "liberals" and "conservatives") through their government machine at all levels.
In Seattle we are witnessing another such set-up. In 1975, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) began to confront the Seattle School Board over the increasing racial segregation in the public schools over the last 10 years. The OCR-HEW of the federal government presented an ultimatum to the Seattle School Board stating that it must design an effective plan to integrate Seattle's public schools by June, 1977 or the Seattle School Board world be faced with a federal court order requiring mandatory busing to desegregate the schools.
WHAT IS THE ISSUE?
On the surface this can look rather confusing. One section of the state machine of the monopoly capitalist class, in this case the federal government's HEW, appears to be trying to force another section of the same state machine, the Seattle School Board, also controlled by monopoly capital, to do something in the interest of the people, namely to integrate the "schools. However, what is actually happening is that both sections of the government are united in conducting an elaborate charade, a trick, in order to actually attack the Afro-American people and their demo- crated right to attend integrated schools.
The main features of this scheme are as follows:
1) The Seattle School Board creates hysteria in the mass media (PI, Times, TV News) beginning in December, 1976 about the "horrible" possibility of the federal government requiring mandatory busing in Seattle unless an effective voluntary desegregation program is developed by the Board this winter and spring;
2) The Seattle School Board organizes community discussions on their "voluntary desegregation proposals" where absolutely nothing is clarified, no concrete proposals are presented and the public only ends up getting confused as to what is being planned;
3) In the discussions, the Seattle School Board presents as the basic reason for developing the voluntary plan, the need to avoid a federal court order requiring "forced busing". It never clarifies the fact that integration of schools is a democratic right fought for by the Afro-American people through mass struggle in the 50's and 60's. Black people fought for integrated schools because they know from their experience that segregated schools (so-called "separate but equal") are inherently unequal. But the School Board doesn't explain the just and democratic nature of integration which all progressive people support, but calls on the people to "obey the law", "do it voluntarily" so the federal government won't "jam it down our throats" via mandatory busing;
4) The main purpose behind the School Board's community discussions on the "voluntary desegregation plans" is to do propaganda against "forced busing" and to confuse the progressive nature of the demand for integration;
5) Massive confusion about integration results. Parents and students are faced with insecurity. Where will the students end up going to school ? What kind of teaching programs will exist? The magnet programs are racist in their application, and students are mobilized to oppose integration itself, because of the racist magnet programs;
6) The magnet programs being proposed for Seattle will not desegregate the schools there. In addition, they haven't worked anywhere else in the entire country;
7) Once this entire charade of "involving the community in school desegregation" has been played up to the hilt, conditions have been prepared for the monopoly capitalists to employ one of two tactical alternatives in attacking the masses further: (a) maintain and develop this confusion, insecurity and hysteria over a long period of time so as to consolidate opposition to integrating the schools; or (b) have the federal government immediately slap a court-ordered mandatory busing program on the Seattle School District. In "response", proceed to whip up a fascist mass movement to divide the working class, pit white workers against their Black class brothers, and attack Black people and their democratic rights. (This is precisely what the government organized in Boston and Louisville.)
In sum, with their 'liberal" hand the monopoly capitalists appear to support integration, while actually setting up maximum conditions for their other hand, the open racists and fascists, to organize a fascist movement. In fact, after the debate over desegregation in Seattle was started in the mass media, we have already seen the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in Seattle for the first time in decades --burning crosses.
If anyone should doubt that the ruling class is capable of being so consciously and systematically evil, it should be noted that a similar series of events in Boston and Louisville set the stage for the government to instigate fascist movements complete with Ku Klux Klan marches, filthy American Nazi Party propaganda, physical assaults on Afro-Americans, shootings, and the burning of Black people's homes! The monopoly capitalists very definitely know what they are doing.
Griffin Bell, President Carter's recent appointee as Attorney General, outlined the bourgeoisie's tactics to continue to incite fascist movements throughout the country, when questioned before Senate confirmation hearings in January. Bell, an arch-reactionary racist from Georgia, who openly fought to maintain segregated public schools in that state in the 1950's, stated that the best way to "desegregate the schools" today is to "only use mandatory busing as a the end of World War II. Secondly, U.S. imperialism is in ever sharpening contention with the other imperialist superpower, Soviet social-imperialism (socialist in words, imperialist in deeds) over spheres of influence. This contention is leading to a new world war. Racial discrimination and violent repression are inherent in the monopoly capitalist system and are enforced by the state. At this time the monopoly capitalist government is organizing a fascist "anti-busing" movement in order to (1) undermine the resistance to their attempts to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class, and (2) suppress all resistance by the American people to their preparations for a new world war. The first target of this movement is the Black people's struggle; its further aim is to split the working class.
THE MAGNET PROGRAMS ARE NOT DESIGNED TO INTEGRATE THE SCHOOLS
The Seattle School Board's "voluntary desegregation plan" will not desegregate the schools. The magnet programs are straight-forward racist in nature. If implemented, the magnet programs will result in:
1) voluntary busing which would involve only 1,000 students in all grade levels (less than 2% of the total number of students in Seattle);
2) "schools within schools", which mean that the Black students participating in them will be "tracked" according to subject matter (such as the vocational training proposal for Black youth);
3) no integration for the grade schools (K-4) in the Central Area, where these schools are today almost totally racially segregated and where the Black children suffer severely from the cruelties and injustices of racial discrimination; and
4) the plans focus on the southeast high schools, which are the most integrated schools in the city. Presently Garfield H.S. in the Central Area has a 62% Black student population. But at Cleveland H.S. on Beacon Hill, the student population is 30% white, 24% Black, 23% Chinese, 12% Japanese, 7% Filipino and 2% Samoan, Vietnamese, and Korean. Franklin H.S. and Rainier Beach H.S. have similarly integrated student populations. It is quite clear that the magnet programs will disrupt the integration that already exists in these high schools in the south end.
In sum, the state-organized community discussions around "voluntary desegregation", and the magnet programs themselves, have absolutely nothing to do with integrating the schools, and have everything to do with maintaining racial segregation.
SCHOOL INTEGRATION: A DEMOCRATIC RIGHT FOUGHT FOR BY THE AFRO-AMERICAN MOVEMENT
School integration was one of the democratic demands of the Afro-American people's movement against racial discrimination and violent repression in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Long and bitter experience has proved to the Black people that segregated education ("separate but equal") is inevitably unequal and discriminatory. Through mass struggle over the last 25 years, Black people and their white allies have succeeded in breaking down some school segregation in certain areas. But now, when the mass movement against racial discrimination is at a lower level than in the 60's, the "liberals" in high government positions all of a sudden start pushing for school integration schemes without being forced to do so by mass struggles, This points to the fact that they are up to no good.
The discussions organized by the Seattle School Board on the Magnet Programs are intended to create confusion among the masses and to incite hostility among white workers against Black people's democratic right to attend integrated schools. The Seattle School Board "liberals" led by Supt. Moberly (as well as the OCR-HEW) refuse to explain the democratic nature of the demand for school integration and instead call upon the people to support "voluntary desegregation" so as to not have "mandatory busing" forced on Seattle by the federal government. They call on the people to "obey the law" by supporting the voluntary plan. To them the issue is avoiding court-ordered mandatory busing at all costs, which is portrayed as a disaster.
Most workers know and feel that the "laws" are enacted by the rich to serve its interests and to suppress the working class. This call to "obey the law" therefore allows the open racists to organize against the just demand for integration by utilizing the workers' hatred for the capitalist government and its laws.
Various government spokesmen are mystifying the issue by raising the slogans: "busing", "quality education", and "neighborhood schools". The real issue is not "busing". Buses are a modern means of transportation. Millions of people, including public school students, take them to school, work, and many other places. Yet, all the racists, both hidden and open, yell that "busing" is the Issue. The 'liberals" shout that it is the issue because it is the "law". The open racists and fascists who are trying to whip up a racist anti-busing movement whine that it is the issue because it does not increase "quality education" and destroys "neighborhood schools". "Busing" is not the issue, but racial discrimination and violent repression against the Afro-American people is the issue. Buses are simply a necessary means to integrate schools because housing is segregated. The racists are trying to make "busing" itself the issue to mystify the democratic nature of the demand for integration and to cover up their own racist and fascist stand.
Nor are "neighborhood schools" the issue. To call for "neighborhood schools" is to oppose school integration and to stand up for preserving white segregated schools and neighborhoods.
"Quality education" is not the issue either. The racists claim that there is a conflict between "quality education" and integration. This is a racist lie. Segregated schools have always meant low quality education for Black people. Integrated schools give students a chance to learn to unite in common struggle against the reactionary school "authorities". They also prepare them to unite as adults once out of school (in the factories, etc.) against the capitalist exploitation and oppression.
In fact, as the capitalist government in Seattle organizes against school integration, it is planning to further reduce the "quality" of education. The deterioration of the education the children receive is an especially acute problem in the working-class communities. In the segregated schools in the Central Area, the grade school children suffer severely from overcrowded classrooms and poor teaching materials. The low scores on the Metropolitan Achievement Tests (MAT) reflect the criminal neglect of the Central Area schools. However, the state government refuses to provide funding for basic education. It is now even attempting to lower the required age for leaving school. To cut spending, it has been proposed to change the state law requiring mandatory school attendance through age 18, reducing the age to 14, throwing the older students into the streets as unemployed or into slave-wage jobs. The same government which is attacking public education is organizing the "anti-busing" movement under the hypocritical banner of "quality education".
THE SEGREGATIONIST IMPLICATIONS OF THE "AUSTIN, TEXAS" SUPREME COURT RULING
All levels of capitalist government nationwide are stepping up their attacks on school integration. The "Austin, Texas" Supreme Court ruling removes legal responsibility from all school boards across the country to integrate the schools. This court decision states that school officials cannot be held responsible for integrating schools that are segregated as a result of "natural means", i.e. "defacto" segregation (schools that are allegedly segregated solely because of segregated housing patterns). It held that they can only be held responsible for "dejure" segregation, i.e. that which has resulted due to a school board's deliberate policies. (Actually, [โฆ] called "defacto" segregation is just as deliberate a policy as "dejure", only "defacto" segregation is carried out deliberately by the real estate companies and the government instead of the school board.)
The "Austin" decision is an outright attack on the democratic rights of Black people and all oppressed nationalities to attend integrated schools. Most school systems in northern and western cities, including Seattle, are segregated partially as a result of racial discrimination and segregation in housing. In condoning "defacto" segregation, the "Austin" ruling virtually negates the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka, Kan. Board of Education decision and all other decisions giving some legal basis for school integration that were passed in the last 23 years under pressure from the Afro-American people's mass movement.
The "Austin" ruling is part of the monopoly capitalists' over-all offensive to strip Afro-Americans of the meager rights gained in the mass struggles of the last 25 years. It further shows how the bourgeoisie is making an all-out effort to drive Black people back into outright Jim Crow segregation on all fronts including housing and employment. President Carter's appointments of Blacks to a Cabinet post and to the position of U. N. ambassador are political deception to fool people about the real designs of the monopoly capitalists.
The "Austin" decision provides a further legal basis for opposing school integration, but, at the same time it does not prevent the federal government from instituting court-ordered busing programs. Whenever this tactic is desired as a means to incite a fascist mass movement to attack the people, the bourgeoisie can easily get a court to rule that the Austin case is "inapplicable", depending on what tactics the fascists want to pursue at a particular time. Thus the "Austin" decision gives the ruling class more flexibility in trying to organize the fascist "anti-busing" movement.
In Seattle, neither HEW nor the Seattle School Board have any intention of integrating the schools. The 'liberal" section of the bourgeoisie appears to support integration, while actually presenting no comprehensible plan to effectively do so. Instead they work overtime to set up the most favorable conditions for the openly fascist section of the bourgeoisie to organize white working people in a racist and fascist mass movement against Black people and integration, and to divide the working class.
In the Central Area, the government has placed a host of Black opportunists with bourgeois nationalist politics in paid, government jobs. They are promoting the segregationist politics of "neighborhood schools" under the deceptive guise of "community control" -- i.e., the Black community Should control the Central Area schools to allegedly solve all educational problems. This is a deception. In the first place, the capitalists will control the schools until revolution removes them from power and the working class takes control. There is no such thing as "Black control". Secondly, this "community control" slogan is virtually no different than the segregationist battle cry of "separate but equal" and "quality education". The opportunists promoting "community control" politics directly serve the class enemy. These vicious politics being floated among Afro-Americans anger them to the very core. To promote the idea that the struggle is not to defend the Afro-American people's democratic rights to attend integrated schools, but rather that it is for "quality education" via "community control" is to betray the Afro-Americans and other progressive people who gave their lives fighting for the just demands of the CivilRights Movement of the 50's and 60's.It assists the fascists' attempt to organize a racist, segregationist "anti-busing" movement.
The masses of people should not be deceived by the talk of the capitalist state and its agents about "integrated, quality education". They have honey on their lips but daggers in their hearts. At the same time, all progressive people, especially white workers must militantly stand up in defense of Black people's democratic rights for integrated schools.
Schools prepare the youth for the labor market and to accept the cruelties and injustices of the capitalist system. However, the schools can also serve as a place where the working class youth of different nationalities come to realize their common interests and wage revolutionary struggle against the capitalist authorities.
The monopoly capitalist class and their government agencies HEW and the Seattle School Board are promoting sham integration proposals while actually maintaining real segregation. Further, they are striving to create an atmosphere of hysteria, insecurity, confusion and hostility among white workers in order to create conditions for organizing a fascist mass movement. As The Workers' Advocate, newspaper of the COUSML pointed out:
"Today their (the monopoly capitalists') attempt to develop a fascist mass movement of attack on the Afro-Americans, to drive them backwards towards the barbaric Jim Crow system once again, and in so doing split the working class, is the cutting edge of the U.S. monopoly capitalists' drive to the consolidation of fascism in the United States. Their aim is to smash the resistance of the working masses, shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto them, and create a secure home base for the world war they are preparing in which to slaughter the world's people. " (Feb. 1, 1976 -- in an article on the situation in Louisville, Kentucky.)
Seattle and the Puget Sound Area is a strategic area for the U.S. imperialists' war preparations. The area is dotted with military bases, and heavy industry is geared toward war production. Also, the working class and oppressed national minorities in Seattle have a history of revolutionary struggle and the monopoly capitalist class is searching for ways to suppress their struggles. So the monopoly capitalist class wants to split the working class by means of racial segregation and increased repression. The government is organizing the racist, fascist anti-busing movement to serve this purpose on a nationwide scale. All this is being done in order for the rich to maintain their dictatorship over the working class. Exploitation and repression go hand-in-hand.
The attacks being staged in Seattle against Black people and against the unity of the working class place especially serious responsibilities in front of white workers. In the first place, because it is on them that the monopoly capitalists are pinning their hopes for building a fascist mass movement. Secondly, because only by white workers taking up the Afro-American people's struggle as their own can the wall of distrust be smashed and the Afro-American movement and the workers' movement be united into a mighty fist against the common enemy.
Black and white workers, all progressive people! We must unite to smash the attempts to incite a fascist mass movement! This will give rise to an unprecedented upsurge in revolutionary struggle throughout the U.S. It will bring closer the day of proletarian revolution which smashes the rule of capital and its state and which alone can completely emancipate the Afro-American people and the entire working class.
Denounce the magnet programs as a fraud and swindle having nothing to do with school integration!
Smash the attempt to organize a fascist "anti-busing" movement!
Unite to defend the democratic rights of the Afro-American people!
The working class must take up the Afro-American struggle as its own! End.
Reprinted below is a letter to the Editors of TheWorkers' Advocate by the Cleveland Branch of COUSML.
To the Editors of The Workers' Advocate
Dear Comrades:
Events in Cleveland are rapidly proving the correctness of the stand of COUSML--"Oppose the Government Organized Fascist Anti-Busing Movement as an Attack on the Afro-American People and the Entire Working Class". The bourgeoisie here is working overtime to create an anti-busing movement and the handiwork of the monopoly capitalist state is seen everywhere.
The bourgeoisie's current anti-busing hysteria began in November 1975 when an NAACP desegregation suit against the Cleveland Board of Education and the State of Ohio Board of Education came to trial in federal court. This is not the first time the Cleveland school system has been taken to court for its vicious practices of segregation. In the 1960's a similar case was brought against the Cleveland schools but the courts after playing around a couple of years threw it out. This time the federal courts have found the Cleveland Board of Education guilty of segregating Blacks and ordered the schools to desegregate. The history of these two cases shows how the bourgeoisie uses dual tactics to suppress the Afro-American people.
In the middle 1960's there was a huge mass movement of the Black people against racial discrimination and violent repression. At that time the Cleveland Board of Education was viciously segregating Black children into schools so overcrowded that children had to attend school in two shifts. At the same time there were schools way under capacity in white neighborhoods. At that time the Black community rose up in a huge mass movement to demand that this vicious and blatant segregation and racial discrimination be stopped. This movement was massive and grew increasingly militant. The Black people demanded that their children be allowed to attend the under capacity schools in white neighborhoods and opposed the school board's plans to build more segregated schools to maintain segregation by building new segregated schools became the focal point of the struggle. The Black people and progressive white supporters staged demonstration after demonstration at construction sites to oppose this policy. This movement reached a climax in 1964 when Rev. Klunder, a white supporter, was killed at one of these demonstrations. This murder was followed by a boycott of schools by the Black community which was almost 100% effective and which received much sympathy from the white masses. The movement of the Black people reached even higher levels in 1966 and 1968 when rebellions broke out in the Hough and Glenville areas. The point is this: in the 1960's the mass movement of the Afro-American people was at a very high level and was stirring other sections of the people into motion against the imperialist ruling circles. At that time if the bourgeoisie through the courts had granted school integration as a concession the strength of the mass movement would have crushed any racist segregationist movement the government could organize to oppose integration and take back such a concession. What was the stand of the courts then--they threw out the case against the School Board!
In the late 60's and early 70's the bourgeoisie threw hundreds of militants (in Cleveland alone) in jail, infiltrated the Black community through poverty programs and drugs, promoted dead-end cultural nationalism and in general suppressed the mass movement of the Black people. So now today when the mass movement of the Black people and all other sections of the people is at a low level the same court which rejected the just demand for school integration in the 60's is turning around to order school desegregation. Have the federal courts suddenly become friends of the Black people? No! They are working hand in glove with all the other reactionary state authorities to set the Black people up for attack at a time when they are not well organized and to mobilize a racist mass movement against Black people to further split the working class and consolidate fascism.
Let us look further at the hand of the government in organizing the anti-busing movement. In November, 1975 when the NAACP case first came to trial both local newspapers in collaboration with the Cleveland Police Department began a hysterical series on crime in the Black community. In February, 1976 the first anti-busing meeting was organized by Councilman Basil Russo and was held in the conference room of the mayor's office. But Mr. Russo's meeting was attended by only 60 people and he and Mayor Perk had a hard time getting their anti-busing movement off the ground. A month later Councilman Russo joined forces with fascist Congressman Ron Mottl to organize an anti-busing group in the southern and western suburbs known as "People Against Busing". Russo and Mottl held a few meetings of 100-150 people but as the racist nature of "People Against Busing" was exposed to the masses, their organization began to flounder and they tried desperately to regain momentum by changing their name to "People Are Beautiful" and later to "Positive Action Base". In May, 1976 Euclid School Board Vice President Ted Stepien (a multi-millionaire advertising executive) along with reactionary school board officials in other eastern suburbs launched "Citizens for Neighborhood Schools", another anti-busing group. Mr. Stepien's well financed Madison Avenue approach was slightly more successful but fascists were still unable to organize in Cleveland itself.
Then on November 26, 1976 Federal Judge Frank Battisti ordered the Cleveland Board of Education and Ohio Board of Education to submit a desegregation plan by January 17, 1977.
The Cleveland Board of Education which has never consulted the citizens on anything suddenly became interested in "citizen input" in desegregation planning and announced meetings for "citizen input" to be held on December 8, 1976. As we will see later these meetings were planned from the beginning for the sole purpose of creating public opinion against school integration in Cleveland. On December 7, 1976 federal Judge Frank Battisti and the U.S. Supreme Court helped the School Board create hysteria on the question of busing and thus helped them build these meetings by announcing two contradictory decisions. Judge Battisti issued guidelines to desegregate every school in the city and ordered school desegregation to begin by September, 1977. The U.S. Supreme Court on the same day ruled against a similar order in Austin, Texas. These decisions, of course, made big news in all the media. With the stage thus set the School Board managed to draw a total of 5,000 to 6,000 people to meetings in the 28 junior high schools in the city.
At these meetings parents listened to a short televised speech by Paul Briggs, Superintendent of Schools in which he said "This is your night to speak out". Then the people were divided up into small groups of ten to fifteen for discussion. Each discussion group was lead by a School Board appointed moderator.
In these discussion groups the first thing people were told to do was to fill out a questionnaire which was designed to encourage anti-busing sentiment. From reports from several meetings at several schools it was the school officials and moderators who actively lead these meetings in promoting anti-busing sentiment. At several meetings on the west (white) side of town the discussion leaders called for anti-busing demonstrations, boycotts, etc. Of course with all this demagogy a lot of anti-busing sentiment was expressed at the meetings and the bourgeois press played this up to create more reactionary public opinion.
All this shows that the anti-busing movement is not a spontaneous movement but a racist and fascist mass movement consciously organized by the state. Right before our eyes the American state which all the opportunists prettify as bourgeois democratic is using all the tactics used by the Tsars of Russia or the Hitlerite Nazis to organize pogroms. The anti-busing movement couldn't even exist without the increasing support of the state.
On the other hand the resistance to the anti-busing movement is already developing. At a number of meetings in the Black community the School Board was soundly denounced for organizing a racist anti-busing movement and many people refused to fill out the questionnaires. In other places in the city where even one or two people denounced or exposed the racists and fascists these swine were forced to crawl back in their holes. In spite of all its monumental support from the bourgeoisie and the state the anti-busing movement will certainly be defeated by the active resistance of Black and white people.
The Cleveland Branch of COUSML will continue to participate in this resistance movement and explain to the masses the correct line of COUSML of active resistance to fascism.
[Photo: ACWM(M-L) cadre wages militant resistance struggle against the fascist police in the anti-hard-hat demonstration, July, 1970.]
On May 12, 1969, the American Communist Workers Movement was founded. The ACWM(M-L) was the main predecessor organization to the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the first attempt to build a national Marxist-Leninist center to lead the process of reconstituting the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party since the degeneration of the Progressive Labor Party into neo-trotskyism and revisionism. The COUSML continues the best of the tradition of the ACWM(M-L). The ACWM(M-L) was an organization utterly hostile to the bourgeois state, revisionism and all opportunism. This was so much the case that the capitalists and their opportunist servants labelled the ACWM(M-L) "the Cleveland crazies", just as an Afro-American who uncompromisingly resists racist violence has customarily been labelled "crazy" by the authorities and their boot-licking lackeys. The COUSML of today feels it a high honor that its predecessor was regarded by the class enemies of the proletariat as "crazy". Chairman Mao teaches us that "It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work."
Why was the ACWM(M-L) regarded by opportunism as "crazy"? Principally because its cadres came from the mass struggles, it always had a revolutionary attitude of uncompromising resistance to the fascist attacks of the bourgeois state, and because it took up the crucial national tasks facing the American proletariat and advanced the struggle to build the Party and develop the revolution right in the teeth of the opportunists of all stripes who were trying to choke the revolutionary movement.
At the present time all the revolutionary activists are discussing how a revolutionary Party of the proletariat can be created in the U.S. A look at the origins of ACWM(M-L) shows that a revolutionary organization comes into existence and develops by solving the practical problems of revolution and in no other way.
The cadres who built the ACWM(M-L) emerged in the stormy mass movements of the 1960's. The group which formed the initial core of the ACWM(M-L) first came together as the Cleveland Draft Resistance Union in the Spring of 1967. It was composed of revolutionary youth who had had experience in the Afro-American people's struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression in the South and the North, in the struggle of students against the decadent bourgeois educational system, and other struggles. The Cleveland Draft Resistance Union followed a line of vigorous struggle and soon assumed leadership of the militant youth and students in Cleveland in the struggle against the draft and the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Viet Nam. It was part of the especially powerful wave of youth and student struggle the struggle against the draft and the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Viet Nam. It was part of the especially powerful wave of youth and student struggle which swept the U.S. in 1967, when the youth and student movement broke out of the confines of pacifism and bourgeois legality imposed on it by the opportunists and waged active mass resistance to the government and the war. The CDRU organized militant demonstrations at the Cleveland induction center to support youths who resisted the draft as well as those who entered the Army and organized resistance there. The CDRU practiced active resistance to the fascist attacks of the government-organized reactionary gangs and to the police themselves. In the course of helping youth resist or avoid the draft, the CDRU carried on political education among them on the nature of imperialism and the war and mobilized them to participate in struggle. The CDRU supported resistance to the draft and resistance inside the armed forces, giving active aid to both. The CDRU also strongly supported the local workers' struggles, most notably a successful 13-month organizing strike at St. Luke's Hospital, during which a CDRU member was arrested on the picket line and an attempt was made to frame the organization on terrorism charges. The CDRU aimed its work at the working-class youth. It attracted and had the support of all the most militant, active youth in the Cleveland area. It also built ties with the most militant activists in the anti-draft, anti-war struggle in local areas around the country, but did not participate in SDS, as SDS refused to lead the struggle against the draft and the war.
This activity of the CDRU aroused the extreme hatred of the local state machine and its opportunist agents, who attacked the organization viciously. CDRU members were hounded by the local police "red squad" and by the Immigration Department and attempts were made to infiltrate the organization with agents and to frame it on terrorism charges. The CDRU also came into sharp contradiction with the opportunists in the people's ranks, a holy alliance of trotskyites, revisionists and social-democrats, who served the bourgeois state by trying to stop the movement from taking the path of active mass resistance to the war of aggression. This struggle was sharpest with the trotskyites,who exposed themselves as the servile agents of the state, opposing active self-defense against the attacks of the police in two militant demonstrations at the Cleveland induction center in the Fall of 1967. The CDRU also waged struggles against the revisionists and social-democrats who supported the campaign of McCarthy for President and who worked to keep the struggle against the war in the narrow bounds of pacifism and bourgeois legality.
In the course of these struggles, the core of activists in the CDRU became conscious of the necessity of adopting the world outlook of Marxism and organizing the industrial proletariat for socialist revolution. They were inspired by the great liberation war of the Vietnamese people, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China led by Chairman Mao and by the Naxalbari uprising of Indian peasants led by the communist revolutionaries. In the Spring of 1968 they began to organize a Marxist study group and took a decision to go to the workers in the factories. At this time, a number of social-democratic bureaucrats in SDS, represented nationally by Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, crawled out of their holes and latched onto the youth and student movement in hopes of liquidating its militant spirit and preventing it from taking up Marxism and going to the workers. At the same time, preparations were being made in various circles in SDS for the wide-scale promotion of terrorism in the form of the Weathermen, with the same goal. In Cleveland, some of both of these elements came forward to join and try to disrupt the Marxist study group. Their behavior was instructive of the nature of opportunism. They advocated studying the bourgeois liberal Carl Oglesby rather than Marx. To avoid a split, the revolutionary cadres agreed temporarily to study a book by Oglesby before taking up Marx. At the next meeting, the revolutionary cadres arrived having read the assignment, while the SDS social-democrats and terrorists had not even read their own assignment! Thus these opportunists revealed that not only did they support opportunist theories but they also refused to take seriously the study of any theory at all! They were militantly thrown out and the study of Marxism was vigorously taken up.
The product of this struggle was the formation of the Cleveland Workers' Action Committee in the summer of 1968 on the basis of Marxism and going to the factory workers, along with a certain grasp of the necessity of a revolutionary party. The Workers' Action Committee drew in several militant workers and revolutionary activists from the youth and student movement in addition to its core. Its members bad or took jobs in the industrial proletariat, participated in the struggles of the workers and conducted regular study of Marxism. When the armed struggle of the Afro-Americans in Cleveland, led by Ahmed Evans, broke out in the summer of 1968, the Workers' Action Committee distributed leaflets in support of it to the National Guard and demonstrated in support of the struggle. The Workers' Action Committee also participated in the local movement to support the California farmworkers' strike, advocating and organizing militant demonstrations at the supermarkets. This line brought the organization into nose-to-nose confrontation with the top UAW labor bureaucrats in Cleveland, who tried to suppress all militant mass struggle. (One of them privately offered a WAC comrade the presidency of an un-named UAW local if only the comrade would "put his socialism in his back pocket". This anti-working class bribe was of course indignantly refused.)
The Workers' Action Committee, waged internal struggles against anarcho-syndicalism of the old type in defense of the Leninist line on state and revolution, and against the lumpen-proletarian line which originated with the Black Panthers and was spread by the National Organizing Committee, an SDS-ERAP offspring, among the white proletarian youth. According to the heroes of lumpenism, the working class was racist and sold-out and it was reformist to takeMarxism to the industrial proletariat. Two supporters of this line were purged from the Workers' Action Committee. At the same time, the local SDS social-democrats and terrorists viciously slandered the Workers' Action Committee as "dogmatist" for its devotion to Marxism. (The very same people who in 1967 were moaning that-the active resistance of the CDRU and revolutionary youth to state attacks was violating their social-democratic values of peace and love, in 1968 became raving terrorists wildly slandering the youth who supported Marxism as "conservative" and "dogmatic". This showed that terrorism and reformism are twin brothers and revealed their frenzy at their failure to stop the adoption of Marxism by the youth and its dissemination among the workers.)
The Workers' Action Committee firmly took the attitude that there is one Marxism and one proletariat and should be one Marxist-Leninist Party as the headquarters and general staff of the U.S. working class in its revolutionary struggle. Consequently it investigated all the existing groups which had not already been discredited (as had the trotskyites, revisionists and social-democrats) in earlier struggles. It supported the armed self-defense carried out by members of the Black Panther Party but opposed the line of lumpenism and recognized the necessity of a proletarian party. It also studied the line of the Progressive Labor Party, focusing on its Draft Trade Union Program, and came to the conclusion that the "left-center coalition" the PLP advocated had nothing whatsoever to do with mobilizing workers for revolution and concluded that the PLP was a fundamentally right opportunist organization. (PL had even contacted and planned to meet with the Workers' Action Committee, but when the Workers' Action Committee presented its particular criticism in a letter to PL's Trade Union Organizer there was no reply.) The Workers' Action Committee came to the conclusion that there existed no group or party giving leadership to the revolution and concluded that one must be built.
In early 1969, the Workers' Action Committee came into contact with a the Canadian Internationalists led by comrade Hardial Bains,who were then the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist). They were calling for a Conference of North American Anti-Imperialist Youth in Regina, Saskatchewan, in May. The Workers' Action Committee members immediately felt that these representatives of the Canadian proletariat were "just different" from all the opportunist sects in the U.S. The Cleveland comrades were inspired by the militant mass-democratic method and by the application of Mao Tsetung Thought to the field of culture as well as economics and politics, the lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution brought to North America by the Internationalists. Taking up Mao Tsetung Thought and the mass-democratic method was an emancipation from the dictatorship of intellectualist pseudo-Marxism which had still hung over the Workers' Action Committee, preventing its cadres, who had a fundamentally correct line on major questions, from having the confidence to boldly and fully take up the national tasks of building the initial center of a Marxist-Leninist party for the U.S. Inspired and reinvigorated, the Workers' Action Committee (together with the Internationalists) contacted all the local activists and, on a national scale, the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, SDS (including Mike Klonsky), the Detroit Organizing Committee and others, to attend the Regina Conference. Only a small number of people, including none of the above organizations, responded, but this handful of people resolutely took up the tasks at hand and marched forward.
The Regina Conference brought to the U.S. the concrete application of Mao Tsetung Thought to the conditions of North America. The Regina Conference, in fact, was the First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists. It promoted the building of revolutionary proletarian parties in Canada and the U.S. on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. Inspired by the Regina Conference, the Workers' Action Committee cadres whole-heartedly took up the national tasks of building the Party and organizing the U.S. proletarian revolution. They formed the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) on May 12, 1969. It denounced both U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism and set forth the tasks of the American proletariat as building its own party, defeating opportunism, overthrowing its "own" bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ACWM(M-L) set to work militantly to disseminate Mao Tsetung Thought and build the Party.
The ACWM(M-L) held the Marxist view that there should be a single Marxist-Leninist center in the U.S. in which all the Marxist-Leninists should unite to build the Party. Like its predecessor, the ACWM(M-L) was firmly opposed to the revisionist line of polycentrism. The ACWM(M-L) contacted all the main groups and individuals claiming to be Marxist-Leninist and anti-revisionist in 1969, including the California Communist League, the Bay Area Revolutionary Union and Mike Klonsky, with the aim of uniting to build a single party. All of them arrogantly rejected this attempt at unity. All of them were perfectly clear about the origins of ACWM(M-L) in the mass struggles in Cleveland and there even existed personal ties with each. Nor did these groups and individuals reject this attempt at unity by openly claiming that the political line of the ACWM(M-L) was wrong. Instead, they used subterfuge, "agreeing" with the general line of ACWM(M-L) but in fact opposing it and practicing revisionist polycentrism. Some of these organizations (including the CCL), who were led by more "experienced" "Marxists" than the ACWM(M-L), held that it was impossible to form a national center and issue a national paper at that time. They gave the anti-Marxist line of pre-party collectives, which meant that each local collective should "interpret" Marxism as it wished and that some day, by some mystical process, all the local collectives would come together at a "Congress" and form a "Party". Consequently, they could not unite with the ACWM(M-L), whose "inexperienced" cadres were already issuing a national communist paper, The Workers' Advocate. Meanwhile, these worthies were surreptitiously forming their own national links to build their own national organizations with a right-wing sectarian line behind the backs of the Marxist-Leninist movement. At the same time, Klonsky and his friends, conceding that the basic line of the ACWM (M-L) was correct, refused to unite with it. They imposed uninvestigated sectarian principles on the Afro-American question in order to avoid uniting on the basic questions of Marxism-Leninism, attitude to the state, to imperialism, the proletariat and party building. These groups and individuals which refused repeatedly to unite with the Marxist-Leninists developed into a distinct trend of neo-revisionism, revisionism flying the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the forerunner of present-day open social-chauvinism, a trend which never was able to unite even itself but remains hopelessly fragmented.
Undaunted by this refusal of the "official Maoists" to shoulder the national tasks of building a Party in the spirit of Marxism, the ACWM(M-L) marched forward with its work. Among its achievements were the wide-scale dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, wide-scale revolutionary propaganda on national, international and local questions among the proletariat and other oppressed sections of the people, a vigorous resistance movement to the fascist attacks of the police, the smashing of the fascist hard-hat movement in Cleveland in 1970, the development of analysis of growing fascism in the U.S., the attraction of many honest activists from the revolutionary mass movements, expansion to many cities and the creation of a central leading group of somewhat experienced cadres. In the Fall of 1972, together with the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and other organizations, the ACWM(M-L) issued the Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists. This call had a thoroughly revolutionary character and expressed, once again, the desire of the ACWM (M-L) to unite all the anti-revisionists in the struggle to build the Party. A large-scale campaign was organized around the revolutionary slogan: "Marxist-Leninists, Unite!" But the neo-revisionists once again rejected this appeal, while the "Communist" League infiltrated the Conference Committee in order to split from it and form its own opportunist party.
The campaign around the Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists led to the Conference of American Marxist-Leninists and the founding of the COUSML. (The Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists was postponed until conditions are created to hold it.) It was the campaign around the Call which defeated the open advocacy of pre-party collectives in the Marxist-Leninist Communist movement and made the question of Party- building the key question in the Marxist-Leninist movement. However, the opportunists are still up to their dirty work. The neo-revisionists now verbally uphold building the party, while in practice they still uphold the revisionist theory of "many centers", and the neo-revisionist trend is giving rise to "many parties". The latest "party" to declare itself is the social-chauvinist October League's soon-to-be- founded "Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)". The theory of "many centers", "many parties" is really the line of no proletarian center, no party.
The revolutionary activitiesof ACWM(M-L) and its predecessors brought it up sharply against the state. To suppress the ACWM(M-L) the state carried out over 100 arrests of its members and supporters. The ACWM(M-L) waged many heroic battles with the state-organized fascist gangs and police, most notably the smashing of the hard-hat movement in Cleveland in 1970 and the fight to defend the William Z. Foster Center in Buffalo in 1972. In addition to this method of forcible suppression, the state also intervened inside the Marxist-Leninist movement. The opportunists, through their own right-wing sectarianism, became the witting or unwitting tools to spread the gossips and slanders of the political police, in particular the slander that the ACWM(M-L) was a "CIA" organization. Where does this line come from? It comes from the political police themselves, from the CIA and the FBI. Their aim, as admitted by the FBI agent Joe Burton, was to split the Marxist-Leninists so as to prevent a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party from coming into existence. When did this slander first arise? It arose at the time of the campaign around the Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists. Its purpose was to prevent this campaign from leading towards the re-constitution of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S. proletariat. No one should be so naive as to believe that such slanders against the Marxist-Leninists are "innocent" or "accidental". FBI-opportunist collaboration was repeated again in the Fall of 1976, when the Guardian, claiming you can learn lessons from known FBI agents, printed an interview with Joe Burton accusing the Association of Communist Workers, which had by then become the COUSML's Louisville Branch, of being an agent organization. This article came out just at the time when the Louisville Branch of COUSML was leading the struggle against the fascist anti-busing movement in Louisville and was aimed at undermining this struggle by attacking its leaders. Now the October League has again dusted off this same slander for the purpose of discrediting the Marxist-Leninists and "justifying" the formation of its social-chauvinist "party".
Several important lessons for today's situation can be drawn from these aspects of the history of ACWM (M-L). These lessons are:
1. Take up the national tasks of the proletariat. The ACWM(M-L) and its predecessors advanced the American revolution because they took up the crucial national tasks of the proletariat at the time. The revolutionary mass movements of the 1960's posed sharply the need for a Party. Coming from these struggles, these revolutionary activists shouldered the task of creating an initial center to lead the struggle for such a Party and succeeded in doing so. Today a major national task faces the Marxist-Leninists of waging war on open social-chauvinism, the bankrupt culmination of the neo-revisionist trend which arose to oppose ACWM(M-L), in order to unite all the genuine Marxist-Leninists on a firm basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
2. There is one Marxism and one Party of the proletariat in each country. Coming from the mass movements and recognizing, feeling, their need for a single revolutionary headquarters, the cadres who formed ACWM(M-L) were utterly hostile to the revisionist line of polycentrism, expressed in the line of the neo-revisionists for "pre-party collectives". Once it was ascertained that no leading national organization existed, one had immediately to be created. Once it was, all Marxist-Leninists should unite with it. This was the view and practice of ACWM(M-L), which was totally opposed to the egocentric, selfish clique-building of the neo-revisionists and served wholeheartedly the fundamental interests of the proletariat. For this "crime" of calling for Marxist-Leninist unity the opportunists have long slandered the ACWM(M-L) as "sectarian". How ironic -- the thief cries "Stop thief!". Today the OL social-chauvinists, who are real right-wing sectarians, are the latest to so consummate their clique-building efforts.
3. Take a revolutionary attitude towards the state. Our history shows that there is no way the interests of the masses can be defended, a revolutionary movement developed and a steeled Party built without uncompromising resistance to the fascist attacks of the bourgeois state. Active resistance to state attacks was a hallmark of ACWM(M-L) and its predecessors, from the draft resistance demonstrations to the fight against the hard-hats. But opportunism and particularly social-chauvinism kneel before and even glorify the bourgeois state and its main component, the police and armed forces. They oppose precisely the revolutionary methods of struggle practiced by the ACWM(M-L) and COUSML which allow the masses to break out of the confines of pacifism and bourgeois legality and get prepared for insurrection. Today the "quiet, respectable" social-chauvinists are the same people who called ACWM(M-L) "crazy" for fighting the hard-hats and the police. The flabby, philistine spirit of social-chauvinism is merely the outgrowth of the flabby, philistine spirit of "New Leftism" and neo-revisionism, while the militant revolutionary attitude to the state held by COUSML is a continuation of the traditions of CDRU, the WAC and ACWM(M-L).
4. Be totally hostile to opportunism. Through practice in mass struggle the revolutionary cadres who founded ACWM(M-L) became conscious of the consistent wrecking activities of various forms of opportunism. They saw that opportunism of all stripes is an obstacle blocking the revolutionary struggle and the building of the revolutionary Party. They rightly regarded the opportunists as agents of the bourgeois state in the ranks of the people. Consequently they adopted a totally hostile attitude to opportunist politics and the die-hard representatives of opportunism while attempting to win over and unite with all honest elements against the bourgeois state.
5. The chief enemy of the American proletariat is at home. All the activity of the ACWM(M-L) and its predecessors, as is reflected in the founding resolution of the ACWM(M-L) was permeated with a burning hatred for the U.S. government and burning desire to overthrow it and bum the monopoly capitalist system to ashes. Without such an attitude toward one's own bourgeoisie, the words "revolution" and "proletarian internationalism" are a sheer mockery. Yet it is precisely here where social-chauvinism has today cravenly betrayed the U.S. and international proletariat, advocating that the American working class unite with its "own" bourgeoisie to direct its "main blow" at Soviet social-imperialism.
6. Resolutely oppose social-chauvinism. The revolutionary cadres who founded ACWM(M-L) always sincerely tried to learn from the best experience of the revolutionary movement of other countries, while aiming all their activities at overthrowing their "own" bourgeoisie. They looked to the revolutionary people of Viet Nam, China, India and elsewhere for inspiration and guidance. When the Canadian Internationalists came to Cleveland in early 1969, the American comrades did not hesitate to learn from them and unite with them. This is a stark contrast to the arrogant social-chauvinist stance taken at every turn by the opportunists parading as "anti-revisionists", who viciously slandered the Canadian comrades, accused ACWM(M-L) of "sounding just like Peking Review", etc., etc. Today this social-chauvinism has reached the point of open defense of the U.S. imperialist state in its rivalry and war preparations with Soviet social-imperialism for world domination.
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These are some lessons which can be learned from a brief look at the origin and development of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist- Leninist) on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of its founding. Let all genuine Marxist-Leninists unite in the struggle against social-chauvinism and all opportunism to build the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Communist Party! End.
RECOGNIZING:
That the American monopoly capitalist class is the number one enemy of the American people, in that it ruthlessly exploits and oppresses the working class, the racial and national minorities, and the laboring masses of the petty bourgeoisie.
That the monopoly capitalist class oppresses and exploits the Black people of America, and other racial minorities, in an especially vicious manner, on the basis of race, in order to further its own class interests.
That U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of all the people of the world.
That U.S. imperialism in its highest and most decadent stage is turning the majority of the world's people against it, igniting People's War everywhere, and heading for total collapse.
That in a last frantic effort to preserve its position of rule, the American monopoly capitalist class and the government it controls is unleashing the forces of " fascism against the American people and the people of the world.
That it is the historic mission of the working class of America to lead in a class war, united with the racial and national minorities, revolutionary intellectuals and other oppressed peoples, for the final overthrow of the American monopoly capitalist class.
THEREFORE:
We announce the formation of the American Communist-Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), whose main tasks are:
1) to build a Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States, which will serve the people by putting into practice the thought of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the Marxism-Leninism of our era. The American Communist Workers Movement is the movement of the working class in America and resolutely defends the working class people against all exploiters and oppressors, and mobilizes the working people to fight the racial oppression of Afro-Americans and other racial minorities.
2) to initiate and lead mass democratic, anti-imperialist movements in the shops, on the campuses and
in the communities.
3) to lead the struggle to completely smash decadent bourgeois ideology, culture and art, and anti working class, anti-people ideas, fascism and fascist repression, wherever they appear.
4) to expose the reactionary, pro-imperialist line of the Modern Soviet Revisionists, and the various social democratic trends, and to combat the confusion they cause among the American people.
5) to lead the American working class in its historic mission of overthrowing the American monopoly capitalist class through a revolutionary civil war, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, emancipating all other oppressed classes, and putting an end to the exploitation of man by man forever.
DEATH TO THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS!
DEATH TO THE FASCISTS!
SUPPORT THE HEROIC STRUGGLES OF THE AFRO-AMERICANS AND OTHER RACIAL AND NATIONAL MINORITIES!
VICTORY TO THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS AND TO THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST WORKERS MOVEMENT!
VICTORY TO THE LIBERATION STRUGGLES OF THE WORKING AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE ENTIRE WORLD!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO TSE-TUNG, LEADER OF WORKING AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!
Issued by the Preparatory Committee for the Conference-- November 19, 1972.
Proletarian revolutions and wars of national liberation are raging, and the struggle for socialism is being waged all over the world. While revolution is the main trend in the world today, we see throughout the whole world that fascism is increasing its attacks against the revolutionary class and the revolutionary movement in general. Internationally we see this in the growing collusion of the U.S. imperialists and the U.S.S.R. social-imperialists to attempt to crush the proletarian revolution and increase their aggression against the peoples of the world. Within the U.S. we recognize the seriousness of the situation the imperialists are developing through their propaganda about the re-election of Nixon: the imperialists are carrying out a steady vicious advance toward an organized fascist drive against the working class of the U.S. In light of these conditions we view it as a very serious matter that the revolutionary movement in the U.S. is disunited and its forces are not monolithic but instead dispersed and scattered in the form of many individuals, groups and organizations throughout the U.S.
In opposition to the growing forces of fascism and to the disunity of the revolutionary movement there is arising a struggle to develop unity among the revolutionary forces. This is expressed concretely in the writing of this call by several separate organizations within the U.S. as well as in Canada and Quebec. The organizations in the U.S. are working with the support of the comrades of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Party of Quebec (Marxist-Leninist) for the development of the revolutionary movement in the U.S.
On what basis have these organizations united? We can only be united on the basis of the interests of the whole working class, that is on the basis of Marxism- Leninism, which is hostile to any struggle for personal interests or opinions. Marxism-Leninism is the theory of scientific socialism, that is, it is based in objective reality as opposed to a subjective fight for individual ends.
It is out of this struggle for scientific socialism, for correct line that the real unity of the revolutionary movement will develop in its highest form, a single organization that fights for the whole working class to overthrow imperialism. Lenin pointed out and history has confirmed that The Party of a New Type can only be built on the basis of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism (incorrect line). We don't want to unite purely for the sake of uniting, but for the sake of struggling for correct line for the working class in its struggle against the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
We are uniting on the basis of Marxism-Leninism to organize a conference (to be held sometime in 1973) where all honest revolutionaries would be minimally united on the basis of wanting to struggle for Marxism-Leninism against revisionism, for a Marxist-Leninist Party of the working class in the U.S.
The Preparatory Committee of the Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists calls on all those who agree in the main with the above points to attend this revolutionary conference. Those who call themselves Marxist-Leninists must hold themselves accountable in front of the people. There are many differences on the crucial task of building the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of a New Type. But these differences can only be aired in this mass democratic conference. All organizations whatever their size and experience have equal right as well as every obligation to present their views openly for discussion. For amongst Marxist-Leninists, there is no jockeying for position and fame. Let all Marxist-Leninists unite for the cause of proletarian revolution and the proletarian party.
SPEECH BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS AT THE CLOSING RALLY OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-L ENINIST), HELD ON MARCH 13, 1977.
Comrades and Friends,
The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists salutes the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).
Today the touchstone for genuine Marxist-Leninists is recognition of the revolutionary authority of Comrade Enver Hoxha. Comrade Enver Hoxha has come forward to give timely guidance and direction to the International Communist Movement and world proletariat. His leadership is of the same caliber as that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao. His REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE PARTY OF LABOUR OF ALBANIA sets forward the strategy and tactics of world revolution. This is a great victory of Marxism against opportunism. Already it is inspiring further advance in the struggles against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction. The trend coming out of Seventh Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania is irresistible!
We regard the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) as part of this irresistible trend. Under the farsighted and devoted leadership of Comrade Hardial Bains, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), the political party of the proletariat in Canada, has been founded and consolidated in an all-sided way. The Third Congress is the Congress of victory of Marxism in Canada. This is a turning point for the proletariat of all North America. The Third Congress, which is based upon firm adherence to the revolutionary theory of Marxism, addresses the deepest aspirations of the proletariat and toiling masses for revolution. To those who have raised the yellow banner of many centers, many parties, many Marxisms; to those who are congratulating themselves on having eradicated the world of labor, we declare: Look out! Here is the trend coming out of the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania! Here is Marxism! Right here in the soil of North America, rooted in the proletariat of Canada, glorious, irreversible and irresistible! Long live the Third Congress of CPC(M-L)! Long live the victory of Marxism in Canada!
During the last few years a trend of social-chauvinism has emerged openly in the U.S. This is a component part of international opportunism. This emerges precisely at the time when the two superpowers and world reaction are sharpening their swords against the people; precisely at the time when the imperialist bourgeoisie in the U.S. is engaged in war preparations and fascization of the state. Two standards have been put forward for the proletariat in the U.S. to march under. One is the yellow banner of class capitulation and collaboration hoisted by social-chauvinism. The other is the red flag of revolutionary struggle raised by the Third Congress of CPC(M-L). The historical experience of the 1960's shows that the proletariat and people in the U.S. will inevitably rebel against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its state. We are determined that social-chauvinism shall not eradicate this history and that the proletariat and people in the U.S. will march forward under the red flag.
Comrades and Friends,
The American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) was founded in May, 1969 at the time of the Regina Conference of Anti-Imperialist Youth. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists was founded at the time of the Conference of American Marxist-Leninists in August of 1973. The ACWM(M-L) and the COUSML came into being in order to found the political party of the proletariat and for no other reason. We have advanced this Marxist- Leninist position from May, 1969, up to the present day, and will continue to do so until the Marxist- Leninist Communist Party in the U.S. is founded. In the course of years of struggle to build the party we have learned the valuable lesson that it is impossible to uphold Marxism-Leninism and advance the building of the party without relentless and uncompromising struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. Only when we have adhered firmly to this lesson have we been able to advance.
At the time of the founding of the ACWM(M-L) our comrades approached all those calling themselves Marxist-Leninist and anti-revisionist On the question of uniting the Marxist-Leninists. From November of 1972 to August of 1973 we again did so, with the Call for the Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists. In 1974 we pointed out: when the time comes to found the party we will not fail to invite all the genuine Marxist-Leninists to participate. We still hold to this. We have adhered to this stand because the party must be the political party and advanced detachment of the class and not the private property of some groups or individuals. Building the party is a question for all Marxist-Leninist Communists and it is the responsibility of all those calling themselves Marxist-Leninist and anti-revisionist to contribute towards building the party.
During the time since May, 1969 the Marxist- Leninist Communist Movement in the U.S. has undergone advance. During the period from 1969 to 1972 the core of the activists who came out of the youth and student movement adopted Marxism-Leninism as their orientation. During the period from 1972 to 1975 the majority of these became aware that Marxism-Leninism and the reality of the class struggle demand the establishment of the political party of the proletariat as the indispensable condition for the advance of proletarian revolution. It was the wide-scale dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought and the wide-scale dissemination of the Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists conducted by ACWM(M-L) which gave great impetus to these developments.
Each of these advances of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement has been met by opportunism jumping out for a trial of strength with Marxism- Leninism. It is the sinister aim of opportunism to reverse these advances by vulgarizing and distorting Marxism-Leninism as a prelude to liquidating the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement, thus preventing the establishment of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. While attacking the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism, opportunism adapts itself in form according to the gains of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement in order to gain currency. Opportunism is able to adapt and re-adapt itself with relative ease, because of the historical fact that Browderite revisionism was never thoroughly repudiated in the U.S.
Browderite revisionism was the earliest current of modern revisionism. Browderite revisionism came up to liquidate first the revolutionary political line of the Party and, in 1944, the Party itself. Browderite revisionism was exported throughout the world by the Anglo-American bourgeoisie, especially to the English-speaking countries, to Latin America and to the Balkans. It became the inspiration and guide of Tito and was the parent of Titoite revisionism. It was the forerunner of Krushchevite revisionism and the present-day social-chauvinism in the U.S. is its child.
In the U.S., while Browder himself was denounced and the liquidation of the Party opposed, Browderite revisionism was never thoroughly repudiated and its ideological roots laid bare. Even though on the international scale great combat was waged against modern revisionism, especially after 1960, this was not successfully consolidated in the U.S. Since 1944 and until 1969 every attempt to re-establish the party of the U.S. proletariat has fallen into the morass of Browderite revisionism.
Based upon the ideological ground laid by Browderite and Khrushchovite revisionism, opportunism has nestled within the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement, adapting itself to each advance in order to liquidate the movement and prevent the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. The present-day social-chauvinism in the U.S. is the child of Browderite revisionism. We maintain that the thorough-going exposure and repudiation of Browderite revisionism is an indispensable condition for the defeat of social-chauvinism and the re-establishment of the Party in the U.S.
Today social-chauvinism in the U.S., the child of Browderism, is openly peddling basic revisionist theses. This finds its concentrated expression in the political line of the organization called the October League. These theses include:
1. The view that revolution is no longer the main trend in the world today.
2. The view that Soviet social-imperialism is the more rapacious superpower and the main enemy while U.S. imperialism is on the defensive; and that the U.S. proletariat must aim its "main blow" against Soviet social-imperialism.
3. The view that hides the growing all-round fascization of U.S. society and of the monopoly capitalist state under the slogan of "bourgeois democracy" and that concocts the alleged existence of a democratic, anti-fascist wing of the monopoly capitalist class.
4. The view that the monopoly capitalist state has "two aspects" and that the people can rely upon the "democratic, pro-people aspect" of the state to defend democratic rights and end war preparations.
These theses are Browderite revisionism in contemporary guise. Their features include:
1) Liquidation of the proletarian socialist revolution in the U.S.
2) Liquidation of the socialist camp on a world scale, that is, the socialist countries, the national liberation struggles and the revolutionary struggles of the world proletariat.
3) Apology for neo-colonialism.
4) Utter prostration before the U.S. monopoly bourgeoisie.
5) In particular, utter prostration before the U.S. state, that is, the state of the Anglo-American monopoly bourgeoisie.
6) They embody the outlook of philistines who fear revolution.
At this time I would like to speak to one of these theses, the thesis that revolution is no longer the main trend in the world today. This thesis is social- chauvinism begging to make itself known. Marxism- Leninism teaches that there are four fundamental contradictions in the contemporary world. These are:
-- the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of the capitalist and revisionist countries;
-- the contradiction between imperialism and social-imperialism and the oppressed nations;
-- the contradiction between imperialism and social-imperialism and among the imperialist powers;
-- and the contradiction between the imperialist and social-imperialist countries on the one hand and the socialist countries on the other.
The development of all four contradictions is favorable to revolution and three of them give rise to revolution. So how can it be that revolution is no longer the main trend? This runs completely counter to what exists in the world. This is real self-exposure. Here social-chauvinism reveals to the world its desires. "Revolution is no longer the main trend" is the wishful thinking of philistines who fear revolution more than they fear imperialism.
Comrades and friends,
This social-chauvinist trend is coming up at the time when the imperialists and social-imperialists are engaged in war preparations and are fascizing their states, militarizing the economies and shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the working masses. The revolutionary struggles of the world's people are developing and making the situation inescapable for the imperialists and social-imperialists. The imperialists and social-imperialists world like to launch inter-imperialist war but the situation is that they are not free to do as they please.
It is in this situation that social-chauvinism is coming up. Social-chauvinism takes philistine attitude toward the question of war and revolution and it is prostrate before the imperialist state -- in fear of revolution. At a time when the imperialists and social-imperialists are preparing to further attack the oppressed nations, social-chauvinism is acting as apologist for neo-colonialism. At a time when the imperialists and social-imperialists are engaged in war preparations, social-chauvinism advocates liquidation of the revolutionary struggles, which are the only safeguard against reactionary war. And at this time when the proletariat needs the leadership of its Marxist-Leninist party in each country, social-chauvinism is engaged in wrecking activities in the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement.
Today in the United States, opportunism is attacking the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement through the hoax of founding many Marxist-Leninist parties. The method for founding these parties is that of organizational fusion. The organizational fusion is carried out under the signboard that "the organizational building of the party is the most crucial step at this point".
The party of the proletariat is built organizationally on the principle of democratic centralism. Democratic centralism can only be built on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist political and ideological line. The so-called "organizational building of the party" carried out away from the Marxist-Leninist political line necessarily will be on the basis of opportunist political line. It is a method suitable to building loose Browderite educational associations and not for building the fighting Marxist-Leninist Party of the American proletariat.
The October League has revealed quite clearly how much all this has to do with Marxism-Leninism. Last year when OL issued the principles of unity for its Unity Committee to build a "party", they neglected the small matter of Marxism-Leninism. Nowhere did Marxism-Leninism intrude onto their principles of unity. In the second version of the unity principles, however, Marxism-Leninism made its debut. This is the bourgeois eclecticism of these opportunists. It is a stark revelation of the politics of social-chauvinism: transitory appearance of Marxism-Leninism, permanent essence of Browderite revisionism. This is the foundation for their "party".
We are opposed to the method of organizational fusion and we are opposed to the opportunist theory of many Marxist-Leninist parties in one country. Comrades and friends, there is one real world. There is one proletariat. There is one Marxism. There can be but one Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in a given country. The theory of building many parties is a sinister plot to paralyze the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement through dismemberment and unprincipled strife, based upon introducing freedom of criticism in the guise of "ideological debate". In this way opportunism gives itself a free hand to vulgarize and distort Marxism and discredit it in the eyes of the masses. It is an attempt to liquidate the struggle against social-chauvinism and opportunism of all hues, and to prevent the building of the Marxist- Leninist Communist Party. This phenomenon is tantamount to factionalizing the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement.
The method of factionalization has been used by opportunism to disrupt the Communist Movement in the U.S. since 1919. It has been especially acute at critical junctures in the struggle against opportunism. Its role has been to obstruct the struggle against opportunism by creating unprincipled contradictions, thereby conciliating the contradiction between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism; and by making Marxism-Leninism a matter of definition, discussion and interpretation when Marxism-Leninism is in life and death combat with revisionism.
In this regard the history since 1944 is revealing. During the development of the struggle against Krushchevite revisionism between the Moscow meetings of 1957 and 1960, a faction called the Provisional Organizing Committee, led by an admitted police agent jumped out to block the struggle against Browderite and Krushchevite revisionism. After disrupting the struggle against revisionism in the Party, the POC left the Party and promptly fell apart and became thoroughly insignificant. Its remnants dragged on and denounced the great leaders Comrade Stalin and Chairman Mao. It is well worth noting that social-chauvinism has glorified this insignificant group as the first attempt in the U.S. to build an anti-revisionist party, thus showing the POC to be one of the ideological parents of today's social-chauvinism.
We declare to the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement: the current thesis of building many Marxist-Leninist parties is not party-building but opposition to party-building. It is disruption of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement, based on vulgarizing and distorting Marxism. To build the party this sinister phenomenon must be defeated. This means the repudiation of Browderite revisionism and its child, social-chauvinism, so as to establish the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism as the sound theoretical basis of the proletarian party and the proletarian revolution. This must be organized in the proletariat itself. Marxism-Leninism is not the private property of various groups or individuals. It is the thinking of a definite class. It is the theoretical basis of the proletarian revolution. It "belongs" to the proletariat.
Comrades and Friends,
At various times in our history it has been suggested to us that we are building the party "up in the air" because we have always upheld the necessity of building the party, because we disseminated Mao Tsetung Thought, and so forth. We would like to know: does this mean that to float a "party" on the basis of social-chauvinism is what passes for building the Marxist- Leninist party with two feet on the ground? We would suggest: with two feet in the swamp. No matter how frenzied the activities of opportunists the proletariat will not change its class nature, Marxism-Leninism will not change into social-chauvinism, and Marxist-Leninists will not cease fighting social-chauvinism. For this reason social-chauvinism suffers perpetually from pessimism and crisis.
We are convinced that without a revolutionary party based on revolutionary theory it is not possible to defeat social-chauvinism and advance the proletarian revolution to victory. We are determined to build such a party. The historical experience of the CPC(M-L) shows that the Marxist-Leninist Communists can establish and consolidate the party in the proletariat and advance the situation for revolution, if only they dare to adhere firmly to the revolutionary theory of Marxism, work out strategy and tactics on the basis of the objective world and wage fierce and relentless struggle against modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues. The CPC(M-L) is a revolutionary inspiration and pathfinder for the proletariat in the United States. It is with great joy and revolutionary enthusiasm that we hail the Third Congress of CPC(M-L).
Workers of the World, Unite!
Our Epoch is the Epoch of the Victory of Marxism!
The Workers' Advocate warmly hails the building of the Canadian People's Defense Committee in Waterloo, Ontario, on May 4. This event is an excellent response by the Canadian people to the fascist attacks of the U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian state against the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and its Chairman, Comrade Hardial Bains (reprinted in the March 10 Workers' Advocate). We are sure that the founding of this committee will be a small but important step toward smashing the reactionary state and building a new state in Canada, one that is genuinely democratic.
The Organizing Committee to Found the Canadian People's (Citizens and Residents) Defence Committee (CPDC) calls upon all progressive and democratic people to attend its founding. This Conference will be held on May 4, 1977.
The Organizing Committee was established on February 27, 1977, following the February 23rd premeditated attack of the ECMP on the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and its leader, Comrade Hardial Bains. The ECMP ransacked the Kitchener-Waterloo Branch of the Norman Bethune Institute and private homes of various comrades working there. The RCMP goon-squad also arrested 17 people including Comrade Bains on trumped-up charges and seized printed literature and Party documents, as well as the personal papers of the comrades arrested.
The Organizing Committee to found the Canadian People's (Citizens and Residents) Defence Committee was established to launch a systematic and vigorous agitation against the state attack and in order to create correct public opinion against political persecution.
The Press Release issued by the Organizing Committee following its establishment pointed out that this attack of the RCMP on February 23rd is not the first time that such attacks have been organized by the state against CPC(M-L) and its leader Hardial Bains. "Since 1969, over 2,000 arrests of CPC(M-L) comrades have taken place and over 25 have been deported, all because they support the Party. Several bookshops have also been burned and vandalized over the years. "
Since the raid on the Kitchener-Waterloo Branch of the Norman Bethune Institute, various other events have taken place which amply prove the historic need for the formation of the Canadian People's Defence Committee at this time. Amongst other things, the administration of Cegep du Vieux-Montreal collaborated with the police prior to the Closing Rally of the Third Congress of CPC(M-L) and canceled the use of the Cegep for the closing rally.
Across Canada the state has attacked members and supporters of CPC(M-L) and other progressive and democratic organizations and individuals. There have been many arrests in Toronto and Montreal on petty criminal charges such as postering and public mischief. In Thunder Bay, police were called to the university campus to harass PCDN salesmen. The Montreal municipal council announced a by-law against postering which levies a $100 fine for the first offence, a $500 fine for the second offence and $1, 000 for each repeated offence. The by-law also threatens the publishers of the posters and anyone who displays them. The by-law is directed almost exclusively against progressive and democratic organizations who use the media of posters to keep the people informed about important events.
This direct repression of the state is accompanied by the indirect repression of the police socialists in the ranks of the people. We learned this from many examples. For instance, when the Haitian United Front Committee wanted to participate in a demonstration against the racist and fascist Bill C-24 on April 1 under a banner reading "Haitians Unite in a Broad Democratic Front to Overthrow the Fascist Duvalier Dictatorship", they were provoked by police socialists while the police stood by ready to attack. Another instance was a notorious police socialist newspaper spreading the lie and slander that Comrade Hardial Bains was a KGB agent. This was merely a repetition of the same line given by MP Jake Epp in Parliament on February 25. This slander has continued to be promoted by the bourgeois media, such as Paul Kidd who, commenting on MP Otto Jelinek's campaign in Parliament against Soviet social-imperialism and Cuban spies, tried to make the same slander on Hamilton TV.
Who is being attacked? The people and their organizations and their political party -- CPC(M-L). Coming to the furtherance and aid of the state in these attacks are the revisionists and opportunists of all hues.
This is why CPDC is being founded. CPDC will expose the attacks of the state as well as of the revisionists and opportunists of all hues who collaborate with the state against the people. CPDC will create public opinion in opposition to these attacks and the political persecution of those who oppose these attacks.
CPC(M-L) is the main target of attack in Canada because it has always led the opposition to these attacks. It has exposed both the state and its agents amongst the people. CPC(M-L)'s call to Make the Rich Pay! for the economic crisis has cut through the opportunists' confusion-mongering. It provides the only programme for the Canadian working class and people to resist the shifting o f the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs.
Comrade Hardial Bains is under continuous attack because he is the model of a genuine Canadian patriot who stands for the best interest of the Canadian working class and people. He is a Marxist-Leninist and the Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). He is also the national leader of the East Indian community in Canada and advanced the slogan Self-Defence is the Only Way! in order to combat the state-organized racist attacks.
These attacks on CPC(M-L) and Comrade Bains, the attacks against the glorious Canadian youth, the attacks against some of the most courageous and heroic contingents of the Canadian working class and people such as the East Indians, the Haitians and others and their organizations, are a sign of the weakness of the U.S. imperialist-dominated Canadian state. The present state is the state of the minority and of the foreign money-bags, especially of the U.S. It suppresses the genuinely patriotic elements while it provides every kind of facility to the foreign imperialists. A genuinely democratic state can only be established by the efforts of the majority of the Canadian people. It will vigorously mobilize the people against foreign imperialists and will suppress their agents in the country. That democratic state can only be established out of long-range struggle. The political persecution can only be ended with the establishment of this state.
The establishment of the Canadian People's (Citizens and Residents) Defence Committee is a small step towards building the new state. But it is an important and necessary step.
All progressive and democratic organizations and individuals, all mass organizations of workers, students, professionals and of the national minorities and all those who are against the political persecution by the state are called upon to support the work of the CPCD, and participate in the founding conference. End.
Comrade Workers!
The situation on the world scale is marked with the forces of revolution, of socialism, of the international proletariat, the forces fighting for genuine independence, national liberation and social emancipation in historic combat with the forces of reaction, of imperialism and social-imperialism, of the international bourgeoisie, the forces committing aggression, trampling underfoot the life and liberty oi the people everywhere. The main feature of today's world is that it is the forces of revolution which are in ascendancy and while they are immensely stronger, the forces of reaction are engaged in a death-bed struggle. The main ringleaders of the forces reaction today are the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists. Besides these two ringleaders the other imperialists and the reactionary bourgeoisie of every country make up the forces of reaction. The two superpowers, the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists, the two ringleaders of the forces of reaction, are in bitter struggle with one another. It is bitter contention between the two which characterizes the main feature of their relationship. In bitter contention with one another they are trying, on the one hand, to maintain their own spheres of influence, suppress their "allies" and make them submit to their baton, and at the same time, they are attempting to weaken each other's influence in the other's sphere. The other imperialists are also contending. They also have their own designs.
Comrade Workers!
It is within the framework of this overall contention and dogfight that a serious economic, financial, political, social and cultural crisis is taking place in the ' reactionary camp. The over-all and all-sided crisis is further awakening the proletariat these countries to wage an all-sided struggle against the reactionary bourgeoisie of their own countries. While the reactionary bourgeoisie of these countries is shifting the burden of the all-sided crisis on the backs of the proletariat and is fascizing the state, the proletariatcan only end this crisis by overthrowing the reactionary bourgeoisie. Thus we can see that this is a revolutionary crisis, a crisis taking place under the general over-all crisis of imperialism, crisis of capitalism which is in decay.
Comrade Workers!
The proletariat of all countries must have a correct attitude towards this crisis. Life experience of the twentieth century teaches that when imperialism fails in its deception and demagogy, then its response to the crisis is war. The two superpowers today are also preparing for war in response to this crisis. Not only the two superpowers, but the imperialists of various countries like Germany, Britain, France, Japan, etc. as well is their allies and the entire bloc of countries of the Warsaw Pact are also preparing for war. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) believes that to focus only on the war preparations of the two superpowers and to either ignore the other imperialists or to even go to the absurd length of proposing that some imperialists are preparing for war in order to "defend" their independence against one or the other superpower is to make a serious mistake. CPC(M-L) puts forward the view that we must use the class outlook of Marxism-Leninism to correctly analyze the situation and to arrive at the real causes of the war preparations and we must carry out class analysis of all forces. It is ourParty's view that the causes of the war preparations are not to be sought simply by repeating endlessly that there are two superpowers and that they are preparing for war, but has to be sought in the social system that prevails. Lenin characterized our era as the era of imperialism and social revolution of the proletariat. Lenin called imperialism as capitalism in its highest and last stage, capitalism in decay, capitalism in crisis. It is in this definition of our era that we can find the causes of war preparations. Lenin also pointed out that imperialism means aggression and war, and reaction all along the line. Lenin explained that at this stage of capitalism, there arise one or two superpowers that strive for hegemony over everyone else. The first world war was an imperialist war, a war imposed by imperialism over mankind in order to redivide the world. Today, a similar but not the same situation prevails. Imperialism and social-imperialism are contending in the conditions of acute over-all all-sided crisis. The response of the imperialists and all reactionaries to the crisis is war. They are preparing for war not because of contention alone but because of the social system that prevails in these countries. There are those false "Marxist-Leninists" who want to cover up this fact and draw unwarranted conclusions. The contention between the two superpowers is not because of contention but because of the social system. The response of other imperialists who are also carrying out war preparations is also because of the social system. Imperialism means striving for domination, hegemony, etc. It cannot be said that domination and hegemony are because of domination and hegemony. That is absurd.
Comrade Workers!
CPC(M-L) pays first attention to the kind of social system that prevails internationally and in each individual country. Today, there is a world imperialist-social-imperialist system of states. This is the world system of states but it is breached by the existence of socialist Albania and socialist China which have long ago broken from this system. There are also peoples and nations fighting for independence. This has contributed to the crisis of imperialism and social-imperialism. Thus our Party upholds the views that it is because of the existence of the world imperialist system of states that there are two superpowers and it is because of the socialist countries and the fighting proletariat and people of the world that the crisis of imperialism and social-imperialism is an over-all and all-sided crisis. The response of imperialists and social-imperialists of all countries to the crisis is war preparations. This is how our Party looks at the international situation.
Before the Great October Revolution, there existed world capital in control of the entire world. There existed a striving by the proletariat for the overthrow of capital but the proletariat was not yet victorious in any part of the globe. The Great October Revolution breached the front of capitalism and provided the proletariat with a fatherland. Not only did the Great October Revolution liberate a part of the world but it also intensified the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system and put it in general crisis. The main feature of this crisis is that it can only be averted by revolution. There is no other way out. Certain false "Marxist-Leninists" deny this and arrive at absurd conclusions that the main feature of the present world is the crisis of imperialism and social-imperialism. This is incorrect.
CPC(M-L) firmly believes that those who are just talking about the crisis without consciously planning to avert it by revolution are not only gravely mistaken but are the worst liquidators. We know that imperialism means capitalism in crisis. The revisionists and opportunists of all hues also know this. But only Lenin held the correct view that the distinctive feature of the era of imperialism is not just that it is in crisis but that the time has arrived for its overthrow. Imperialism, according to Lenin, was capitalism in transition to socialism. The Great October Revolution brought about this transition in one country, thus ushering in our era, the era of transition from capitalism to socialism. It is this feature which characterizes our era and is the cause of perpetual crisis, its deepening and broadening and the cause of the current over-all all-sided crisis. Our Party views everything from this general thesis and sets out to chart its strategy and tactics within this framework. CPC (M-L)'s attitude towards the two superpowers, the imperialist powers, the reactionary bourgeoisie of all countries, the war preparations, socialism, struggles for independence, etc., stems from this basic thesis. There are some false "Marxist-Leninists" who have deliberately covered up thisfeature with their absurd theories of "three worlds", "main enemy", "main struggle", etc. CPC(M-L) is firmly opposed to the false "Marxist-Leninists" and their totally fallacious theories.
Comrade Workers!
CPC(M-L) looks at the all-sided crisis in Canada within the general framework of the international crisis and our response to this crisis is within the general framework that this is the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism and that the crisis in Canada cannot be averted without completing this transition, without overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. This is our basic attitude towards the crisis. The reactionary bourgeoisie in Canada is responding to the crisis by stepping up the fascization of the state and by preparing for war. Its attitude towards crisis is to further deepen and broaden it. Neither can it plan an independent course and oppose the two superpowers, neither can it deal with any of the aspects of the crisis. The proletariat is the only really revolutionary class and only the proletariat can avert the crisis by achieving genuine independence, democracy and socialism for Canada. This means the overthrow of the capitalist system and its state.
Comrade Workers!
The objectives of the class struggle in Canada are:
1. Independence,
2. Dictatorship of the proletariat (establishment of proletarian democracy),
3. Socialism.
These are three aims of the same struggle. Out of these the basic aim is the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through revolutionary violence. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat, there can be no independence or socialism. This is the way matters stand in the real world today.
The revisionists in Canada slowly and slowly took the entire revolutionary content of class struggle out and went over to the side of the bourgeoisie. They took up the counter-revolutionary slogan of "socialism" through "democratic means" in 1952. Today, they are socialists in words only. They have replaced the revolutionary content of class struggle, its basic aim of overthrowing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, with the aim of preserving it by getting elected to the bourgeois parliament under the slogan of "democratic coalition" along with the social-democrats of the NDP. They see "class struggle" between the "right wing" and the "left wing" of the bourgeoisie. With the Communist Party of Canada turning revisionist in the fifties, the proletariat was deprived of its vanguard. A genuinely Marxist-Leninist and a genuinely revolutionary Communist Party is an absolutely necessary condition for the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Such a Party is the instrument to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat where it does not exist and to consolidate and expand it where it does exist. CPC(M-L) IS SUCH A PARTY!
PREPARE FOR REVOLUTION, AGAINST WAR!
MAKE THE RICH PAY!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXEST-LENINIST)!
Issued on May Day, 1977 by the National Executive Committee of CPC(M-L). End.
[Three sketches: Pedro Pomar Member of Political Bureau; Angelo Arroyo Member of Political Bureau; Joao Batista Drumond Member of Central Committee]
In mid-December three Marxist-Leninist leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil laid down their lives as revolutionary martyrs murdered by the Second Army of the Brazilian military dictatorship which serves U.S. imperialism. Representing the sentiment of the working and oppressed people of the world against the heinous crime of the Brazilian dictatorship, Comrade Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labor of Albania sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil a message on the deaths of the brave and self-sacrificing comrades Pedro Pomar, Angelo Arroyo and Joao Batista Drumond.
The killing of the three Brazilian comrades continues to arouse the indignation and deep hatred of the Marxist-Leninist parties and progressive forces throughout the world.
The Workers' Advocate denounces these fascist murders and pledges to avenge these heroic comrades by working hard to overthrow U.S. imperialism right in its heartland.
The three brave comrades who were murdered in the Lapa district of Sao Paulo in the struggle for liberation and independence were worthy sons of the Brazilian people, leading members of the Communist Party of Brazil, the most prominent of whom was Pedro Pomar, revolutionary fighter against imperialism, fascist reaction and modern revisionism.
Comrade Pomar, 63, was a great Marxist-Leninist fighter, mass organizer and a leading journalist and writer. Son of a family of modest means, he finished his secondary education in 1931. As a medical student, he played an important role in the Constitutionalist Movement of 1932 in the capital of the state of Para for which he was incarcerated for almost a year. In 1936, already a communist, he was a well-known member of the Regional Directory for the state of Para of the National Liberation Alliance which in November, 1936 led the insurrection of the Brazilian people. Comrade Pomar was again imprisoned for nearly a year. Re-arrested in 1940, Comrade Pomar managed to break out of the fascist jails and escaped in 1941 to Rio de Janeiro. From 1942 on, he has been a respected member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil. He was a federal member of parliament for the State of Sao Paulo from 1946 to 1950 and was one of the Secretaries of the Chamber of Deputies. Between 1944 and 1950, he was editor of the newspapers Tribuna Popular and Imprensa Popular in Rio de Janeiro. In 1962, Comrade Pomar was one of the principal reorganizers of the Communist Party of Brazil on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. Comrade Pomar for years was a member of the Political Bureau of the Party. In 1964, with the usurpation of power by the fascist junta, Comrade Pomar was arbitrarily deprived of his political rights for ten years. During the thirteen years of the fascist dictatorship, Comrade Pomar was singled out for attack and unjustly sentenced three times to a total of eight years in the mediaeval prisons by the "justice" of the military junta.
Comrade Angelo Arroyo who sacrificed his life for the just cause of liberation and national independence was a veteran proletarian fighter, a popular working class leader of the steel-workers' union in Sao Paulo who took up the cause of communism in 1945 at the age of 16. Comrade Arroyo was imprisoned in 1951. In 1954, he was elected member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil and in 1962 was one of the principal re-organizers of the Party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. From that time on, the comrade was a member of its Political Bureau. In October 1966, he was deprived of his political rights for ten years and was condemned by the Military Justice to eleven years in the prison cells of fascism.
Comrade Joao Batista Drumond was born in the state of Minas Gerais. Before the military coup d'etat of 1964, Comrade Drumond was a leader of the student movement which strove to integrate itself with the peasant movement in the south of his native state. From 1964 to 1965, he was Chairman of the Academic Directorate of the Economics Faculty at Belo Horizonte as well as one of the leading organizers of the 27th and 28th Congresses of the National Union of Students of Brazil. In 1969, he was elected member of the Central Committee of Popular Action oยฃ Brazil, nominated to its Political Bureau in 1971. Comrade Drumond always distinguished himself as a model revolutionary, joined the Communist Party of Brazil in 1972, was elected a member of its Central Committee, and was condemned by Military Justice to fourteen years to the prison cells of fascism and ten years denial of his political rights.
The lives of these three leaders of the Communist Party of Brazil who resolutely braved the tortures and prison cells of fascism and gave their lives in the struggle demonstrate the tempering and courage of the Brazilian Marxist-Leninists, who do honor both to the Brazilian Party and the fighting Marxist-Leninist parties and peoples of the entire world. End.
The Workers' Advocatehas received the following letter from the Finance Committee of the Frente Del Pueblo de Chile (People's Front of Chile). We urge all revolutionary and progressive people to strongly support the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist struggle of the Chilean people led by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile.
Santiago, Chile March, 1977
"Frente Del Pueblo"
("People's Front")
To: The Workers' Advocate United States of America
Esteemed comrades:
Accept the revolutionary salutes of us Chileans who are fighting in the ranks of the anti-fascist Resistance, for the overthrow of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Today, the isolation of the Military Junta is greater than ever. Desperate, the Chilean fascists are intensifying their bestial repression against the people, with all its resultant crimes, tortures, detentions and disappearances.
Today, more than ever, Chile is being sold to the highest bidder, delivered up to the voraciousness of the big multi-national corporations, in the first place, to those of North American imperialism.
Today, as in the best of times, the monopolists and latifundists (big landlords - ed.) of the country are gleaning incredible profits from the super-exploitation of the people, causing enormous suffering.
Today, trying to take advantage of the situation, some sectors of the opposition to fascism are tied to the great powers, intent on making a secret agreement, for a "way out" against the people and damaging liberty and national independence. They look for mutual understanding based on the disorganization, demobilization and demoralization of the popular masses, sabotaging at the same time all their initiative which is bound to overcome these obstacles.
To those of us in the front ranks of the anti-fascist Resistance, this situation doesn't discourage us, I seeing that, although it momentarily prevails, it is only one aspect of what is happening in Chile (and that which has been most known to the world); the other side of the coin is that there exists in the Chilean people an enormous desire to struggle and to overthrow the fascist regime. This is so, as it is measured by how the masses unite and organize in every center of work, study or population; the antifascist struggle has become strengthened and expanded to the length and breadth of our country.
The road which the fighting forces of the Resistance uphold, among them the FRENTE DEL PUEBLO, is the road of mass struggle, of the always greater development of the underground organization of the Committees of Resistance and till types of anti-dictatorial committees and organizations. The struggle of our people, through all of its forms, including the armed struggle, is the sole guarantee for the overthrow of tyranny, the smashing of fascism and the establishment of a United Democratic Government.
Our policy is to base ourselves on the Chilean people's own forces, because we know that we will win liberty through our own struggle and it will not be a gift from anyone. Nevertheless, our people need the support of the people of the world. International solidarity must be centered on aid to the struggle of the Chilean people, to their fighting organizations, to the underground press, etc. To propagate this struggle and aid is the primary task of international solidarity. Another important task is to isolate and weaken still more the dictatorship by means of the boycott, denunciation and other measures, all of which are an aid to the people's struggle in Chile. We reject the defeatist concept of "solidarity" of certain sectors, who put in the center the denunciation of the tortures, the repression and the blows which the people receive, magnifying these and minimizing the fighting which the popular masses are developing day in and day out against the dictatorship.
We also think we must obtain the financing of the Chilean Resistance fundamentally by basing ourselves on our own forces; in this sense, we guide our work. Nevertheless, our people need the aid of international solidarity. Today, in Chile, one-third of the active population is without work. In Chile there are ONE MILLION unemployed. The wages of the "privileged" who work are not high enough to insure a minimum diet. Inflation, cruelly punishing our people, has been averaging 1% a day during the three-and-a-half years of the Pinochet dictatorship.
In these conditions our work of financing the Resistance is very difficult. This is why, without abandoning our work of supporting ourselves, we are making a definite call to aid us economically in order to: aid the concrete work of the Committees of Resistance; aid the comrades that must work in secrecy; aid us in setting up hundreds of small workshops of propaganda throughout the country and publishing more widely the clandestine press; aid the political prisoners and their families, as well as the families of those who have disappeared.
With regard to international economic aid, our politics are also very clear:
-- The organizations of the FRENTE DEL PUEBLO in the exterior are self-financed, besides helping to finance the work in the interior of the country.
-- We send ALL the money that is accepted from other organizations and persons to the country.
-- We send a note directly from the country, to the address that you indicate to us, confirming the reception of all aid received.
-- In addition, we can send directly to you, from Chile, various materials and documents of the Resistance, for which no more is necessary than to indicate to us a name and address.
We will be grateful if you would send whatever contribution that you are able to send us by way of international draft or check to: Benito Guerro...[Address--Ed.]
Grateful for the valuable contribution that you can presently offer us, we take leave with warm greetings.
BICOMBATIENDO VENCEREMOS!
FIGHTING WE WILL WIN!
Finance Committee FRENTE DEL PUEBLO DE CHILE
(signed & stamped)
(Translation of letter is ours.)
End.
U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism and their reactionary agents the big bourgeoisie in the Middle East are waging a vicious campaign to encircle and suppress the Palestinian people's armed struggle led by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
All the reactionary forces in the Middle East have aligned themselves against the PLO and the Palestinian people in an effort to put an end to their glorious armed struggle for the recovery of their lost homeland--Palestine. The protracted armed struggle the Palestinian people have waged under the leadership of the PLO to smash the racist and fascist artificial "state" of Israel in order to regain their national rights is the greatest obstacle to the superpowers' domination and plunder in the Middle East.
It was the two superpowers and certain reactionary forces who instigated the civil war in Lebanon in an attempt to liquidate the armed struggle of the Palestinian people which is the spearhead of the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle. In this way, they hope to extinguish the revolutionary flame of the Arab people.
REACTIONARIES SCHEME IN AN ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS THE PALESTINIAN REVOLUTION
The situation in southern Lebanon shows that the Soviet social-imperialists, the U.S. imperialists, the Israeli Zionists and certain reactionary Arab forces and regimes in the Middle East are bent on continuing their assault against the Palestinian people and their leading organization the PLO. The Israeli Zionists are arming the Lebanese fascists to carry out genocidal attacks on the Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. The Syrian regime, which failed to subdue the PLO and the Lebanese National Movement by force of arms, is aiding the Israeli Zionists and the Lebanese fascists with its political deception in Lebanon through the "neutral" state headed by President Elias Sarkis which it has set up.
In December 1976, after the fighting in the civil war stopped, the Lebanese reactionaries called for other Arab countries, besides Syria, to disarm the PLO under the hoax that the PLO formed "a state within a state in Lebanon", to prepare conditions to further attack Palestinian refugee camps.
The decision of the Arab Summit Conference on Lebanon in October 1976 has called for the removal of heavy weapons from the cities. The PLO had complied with this decision, but President Sarkis, influenced by the reactionary Syrian regime and Lebanese fascists, tried to turn this provision into a general disarming of the PLO. He said that the Palestinians didn't need any heavy weapons because "a Palestinian fighter needs only a gun and a knife under his coat".
When the Arab "peace" keeping force which is dominated by 30,000 troops of the Syrian reactionary regime was busy surrounding the Palestinian refugee camps to collect heavy weapons, the Lebanese fascists were moving their own heavy weapons to southern Lebanon.
So, we see that these reactionaries, while putting all kinds of restrictions (through political deception) on the Palestinian fighters and PLO, they give the Lebanese fascists and Israeli Zionists a free hand to attack the Palestinians and the Lebanese Nationalist movement.
All the reactionaries including the ruling clique of Zionism hope to weaken or eliminate the PLO in order to proceed with their design of justifying the existence of the bastard "state" of Israel. On March 15, 1977, while the Lebanese fascists were attacking villages in southern Lebanon and where the Palestinian fighters are repulsing these frantic attacks, the Syrian regime sent their agents to split the ranks of the Palestinians and their allies. Recently, Hafez Assad, President of Syria, and Sarkis met and decided to form a Lebanese army unit which would consist of 3,000 men, equipped and trained by arch-reactionary King Hussein of Jordan, Assad, and supported by the reactionary regime of Saudi Arabia (stooge of U.S. imperialism). This unit would be sent to southern Lebanon to separate the fighting forces.
It should be pointed out that when the Arab "peace" keeping force was stationed in southern Lebanon, the Israeli Zionists "objected" to it. Through the mediation of U.S. imperialism, the Israeli Zionists welcomed the idea of the Lebanese army unit, instead of the Arab force, to be stationed in southern Lebanon to keep the region "quiet". The Israeli Zionists did not hide the fact that this unit of the Lebanese Army (which is called the Lebanese Security unit by Sarkis) will provide it with the security belt which will prevent the Palestinian fighters from staging operations in occupied Palestine against the Zionist enemy.
It is clear now, that this scheme of the Lebanese fascists and the Zionists which is coordinating actions against the Palestinian people in southern Lebanon is part of their plans to make sure that this security belt plan will proceed, with the result that the Palestinians will be surrounded and their armed struggle will be restricted and curtailed step by step.
DESPITE ALL THE REACTIONARY ATTACKS THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE ARE UNDAUNTED
The artificially created "state" of Israel is the main tool of aggression of the superpowers in the Middle East, used to split and attack the Arab people. But the Palestinian people will always uphold their national rights. They will never stop fighting, knowing the fascist and racist artificial "state" of Israel must be destroyed in order to build a democratic state of Palestine. The Palestinian people know that regaining their national rights is not a matter for debate -- they must gain it by their own efforts and through the barrel of the gun, the only language the reactionaries of all countries understand. That is why the PLO and the Palestinian people are continuing to display so much courage and determination in their struggle.
Great upsurges are taking place in the West Bank area, the Gaza Strip and the rest of occupied Palestine. In January of this year, the Palestinian fighters attacked the Lebanese fascists, who were armed by the Zionists, in the "Dabil" region. The whole fortified position was destroyed, and seven fascists were wiped out, with no casualties on the side of the Palestinians.
In the same month, the Palestinian fighters attacked a fascist stronghold in Maryajoun-al Khiam, putting the fascists to run and capturing all of their arms. It was reported April 8 that the Palestinians overran the entire town of Khiam where the stronghold was located.
On March 12, the Palestine News Agency, "WAFA", reported that the Palestinian fighters had conducted the third in a series of attacks against Israeli Zionist soldiers in occupied Jerusalem, using hand grenades and automatic weapons. Many Zionist soldiers were injured in the attack.
Many demonstrations have broken out in occupied Palestine in support of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. The demonstrators defy the brutal force of the fascist Zionists and display the flag of the PLO.
On March 20, the Palestine National Congress in its resolution stressed that the PNC rejects dealing with all international and Arab resolutions which are based on United Nations Initiative 242 (the resolution concocted by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism which recognized the existence of the illegitimate, artificial "state" of Israel and also rejects any solution which ignores the national rights of the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspirations.
The Palestine National Congress resolution also stressed that "the PLO is determined to continue the armed struggle" aid that "there shall be neither peace with nor recognition of the Zionist state of Israel".
It also stressed in its political resolution that the Palestinian revolution has every right to exist in southern Lebanon according to the 1969 Cairo resolution and subsequent agreements between the PLO and Lebanese authorities.
Despite the difficulties and the twists and turns in the Palestinian people's Struggle, despite the vicious reactionary attacks of the two superpowers and their agents in the Middle East, the Palestinian people are undaunted.
They are continuing their armed struggle through to the end to establish a secular, democratic Palestine! --they are bound to win!
THROUGH THE ARMED STRUGGLE, THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WILL REGAIN THEIR NATIONAL RIGHTS!
DOWN WITH THE TWO SUPERPOWERS AND ALL OTHER REACTIONARIES!
LONG LIVE THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION! End.
April 14 was a day of significance for the people of Spain courageously struggling against the Juan Carlos monarcho-fascist regime. That day marked the anniversary of the establishment of the Spanish Republic, proclaimed in 1931 following the overthrow of the monarchy of King Celfonso by the struggle of the masses of Spanish people. The first government under the Republic was a reform-oriented one, headed by Manuel Azana. Under this government various reforms were implemented including the buying of land from the wealthy landholders for distribution to the landless peasants and the reduction of the army. After meeting defeat at the polls in 1933, Azana's government was replaced by one led by the "Centre Radicals", with support from the principal bloc of rightists and the newly-formed Spanish Fascist Party, the Falange. In various parts of Spain the people rose up against the government, with Catalonia proclaiming its independence and a revolt taking place in the southern province of Asturias, led by the miners. General Francisco Franco was assigned to crush the miners' rebellion, and succeeded in doing so, carrying out a bloody execution of 2,000 miners, women and children. In 1936, a new general election placed the government in the hands of a Popular Front of the left and democratic forces set up to oppose the rightists and fascists.
On July 18, 1936, Franco, leading a military junta, staged a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat to overthrow the Popular Front government, thus provoking the civil war. In the course of the civil war, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, Franco, with the aid of Mussolini's army and Hitler's air force, succeeded in overcoming the democratic and patriotic forces, killing over one million patriots in the process and forcing another half million into exile abroad. During the civil war period, all the supposedly "anti-fascist" western "democracies" took a policy of "non-intervention" towards the struggle to maintain the Republican government, and only the socialist Soviet Union headed by Comrade Stalin provided assistance to the antifascist forces. An International Brigade of anti-fascist volunteers from various Western countries also united with the republican forces in their struggle against Franco. With the fall of the Axis power, U.S. imperialism began penetration of Spain, rapidly taking it under its complete domination.
The setback at the hands of the fascist forces did not make the Spanish people give up their struggle. In 1940 a general strike was organized in Barcelona, ushering in a period of countless industrial strikes and student uprisings in the urban areas which carried on for many years. The communists, forced underground, continued to lead the people in armed struggle. But despite the courageous struggles of the people, they did not succeed in overthrowing the fascist dictatorship, and the reason for this is to be found in the rise of revisionism in the Communist Party of Spain. In 1945, the leader of the Party, Santiago Carrillo, began to advance the line that "the masses are not ready to fight" and to go so far as to call for the "democratization" of the fascist Franco regime. In 1956, Carrillo's revisionist line was further developed in the wake of the infamous 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under the leadership of the Khrushchovite renegades. Carrillo returned from the Soviet Union calling for "national reconciliation", "peace" and "accommodation" with the fascist government. Deprived of correct Marxist- Leninist leadership, the anti-fascist struggles of the people could make no headway.
The Marxist-Leninists within the Communist Party of Spain waged struggle against Carrillo's revisionism, especially after he succeeded in imposing his openly revisionist line of "national reconciliation" on the party in 1956. This struggle served to organize the Marxist-Leninists, and at the beginning of 1964, three Spanish Marxist-Leninist groups were formed. Waging a vigorous struggle against revisionism, they succeeded at the end of the same year in establishing the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist) with participation from all three groups.
Basing itself firmly on the correct orientation of armed struggle to overthrow the fascist regime, the CPS(M-L) grew in strength and in influence among the masses. In 1971 the CPS(M-L) and about fourteen other organizations held a conference at which it was decided to form a united front against the fascist Franco regime -- the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist and Patriotic Front (FRAP). This was not just some front of a few political groups. The organizations participating along with the Party were mass organizations representing workers, peasants, intellectuals and professionals and others. A veteran patriot and fighter, Alvarez del Vayo, who had served as Foreign Minister in the republican government, also participated in the founding conference and was subsequently declared president of FRAP. FRAP adopted a six-point program of: 1) Bringing down the fascist dictatorship and throwing out Yankee imperialism through revolutionary struggle; 2) establishment of a People's Federative Republic which guarantees democratic freedoms for the people and rights for the national minorities; 3) nationalization of all foreign monopolies and confiscation of property of the oligarchy; 4) agrarian reform on the basis of confiscation of large latifundios; 5) liquidation of the remains of Spanish colonialism and 6) the formation of an army at the service of the people.
FRAP has consistently upheld the orientation of revolutionary irreconcilable struggle against the fascist enemy, and its work, under the leadership of CPS(M-L), has brought the struggle of the Spanish people to a high tide. Every occasion such as April 14, and May Day is marked by mass rallies and demonstrations in defiance of the brutal repression employed by the fascists. In addition, on several occasions the CPS(M-L) and FRAP have called upon the people to participate in militant nation-wide strikes against the regime and have met with tremendous response with, for example over one million participating in such a strike in October-November, 1974, and over two million on November 12, 1976. These struggles invariably include violent mass confrontation with the fascist police forces, erection of barricades, etc. In addition, FRAP is organizing armed struggle against the regime.
Following the death of Franco, on November 19, 1975, the Spanish oligarchy and their U.S. imperialist masters brought back the monarchy in the person of Juan Carlos and in order to overcome its dangerous isolation, the regime began to do massive propaganda for an elaborate hoax that under Juan Carlos, a process was taking place of "democratization" of the fascist regime. The Carrillo revisionists took up this propaganda in a big way, repeating endlessly that the regime was reasonable and that the people should stay within the law and rely on the elections fraud being organized by the monarcho-fascists to solve their problems. Despite the constant repetition of the "democratization" propaganda in all the official and revisionist media in Spain and abroad, the people, kept on the correct orientation by the leadership of FRAP and the CPS(M-L), have refused to be taken in by this hoax, and have further developed their militant revolutionary struggles.
On May 22 and 23, 1976, an event took place which further underscored the complete isolation of the regime and their revisionist apologists and which was, at the same time, extremely significant in uniting the Spanish people in support of the struggle against the government. This event was the Republican Convention of the peoples of Spain. Two hundred and thirty-three delegates participated in the convention, representing an extremely broad array of organizations of workers, youth, students, women, professionals, peasants, artists, etc,, from every region of the country as well as emigrant communities abroad. The Convention adopted a revolutionary orientation towards the Spanish regime, clearly rejecting and denouncing its "democratization" campaign as a hoax to obtain legitimization for the monarchy. The Convention, in its Political Resolution, declared itself resolutely for the Republic, in support of the right to freely expressed self-determination of all the nationalities which are a part of the Spanish state, and in favor of "non-participation in either of the two military, political and economic blocs set up and led by the United States and the Soviet Union (which is an imperialist and as much an enemy of the people as the United States)."
All of these facts show that the struggle of the Spanish people is irresistibly advancing to victory. Led by the political party of the Spanish proletariat, the CPS(M-L), and persisting on the correct road of armed struggle, the Spanish people will certainly succeed in throwing out the U.S. imperialists and establishing a People's Federative Republic free of imperialist domination in which the rights and freedoms of the masses of the people will be restored and their well-being greatly advanced. End.
In recent months, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro has been heaping all sorts of high praise on President Carter and U.S. imperialism. Castro, who has put his country in hock to Soviet social-imperialism, has for years worked as a front-man for Soviet revisionism under a false banner of "militant anti-U.S. imperialism". However, Castro's confessions of love for U.S. imperialism are clear expressions of the truth that to be a lackey of Soviet social-imperialism is to capitulate to imperialism in general, including to U.S. imperialism. Surrender to one superpower means capitulation in front ofboth.
On February 9, in a CBS-televised interview, Castro came out with a song of unabashed love for President Carter, the new head of the U.S. imperialist government. Castro praised Carter as a man with a "sense of morals". He said: "With his sense of self-criticism and his religious feelings, I feel that a man like Carter may abide by a policy of international principles. Neither Marxist principles, nor capitalist principles, but rather universally accepted principles in relationships among the peoples."
U.S. imperialism has committed untold crimes against mankind and is one of the two main enemies of the people of the world. It is an aggressive, war-mongering superpower and will continue to be such until it is burned to the ground. However, Castro, as an agent of the detente fraud of the two superpowers, tries to prettify U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, to cover up their aggressive character and to hide their war preparations for world conquest and capitalist profits. According to Castro, Carter's "religious feelings" will make U.S. imperialism abandon "capitalist principles" and lay down its butcher knives. What a farce! What a boot licker of imperialism Castro is!
This is the same Fidel Castro who, in the name of "anti-Yankee imperialism", "anti-CIA", and "anti- South African racism", has been doing the dirty work for Soviet social-imperialism in Angola. In the summer of 1975, 20,000 Cuban mercenary troops invaded Angola to turn the newly independent African country into a colony of the New Tsars of the Kremlin. These Cuban troops are still there, waging war against the anti-imperialist fighters of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), slaughtering the Angolan people, backing up with heavy armor the MPLA government of national betrayal in Luanda.
The Soviet revisionists and their followers hail the Cuban treachery in Angola as a "model of proletarian internationalism" and praise Castro's Cuba as being in "the van of the anti-imperialist struggle". But, in fact, not only have they invaded Angola to turn it into a base of Soviet aggression, but the Soviet-Cuban invaders have also struck a deal with the Americans and South African racists as well.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, lauds the Cuban occupation troops in Angola for "bring(ing) a certain stability and order to Angola". By "stability and order", Young means the suppression of the genuine national liberation forces led by UNITA, so as to prevent the total liberation of Angola and its breaking out of the sphere of imperialist plunder, and the protection of the investments of the U.S. monopolies. For instance, under the protection of the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA government, Gulf Oil is continuing its operations in northern Angola and the South African racists continue to operate and control the Cunene hydroelectric project in the south. The Cuban invasion of Angola has nothing to do with "anti-imperialism" whatsoever. The Cubans are in Angola as mercenary butchers for Soviet social-imperialism, and have no qualms at all about making deals with the U.S. imperialists and South African racists at the same time.
Castro's government in Havana has long ago betrayed the anti-imperialist struggle. The Cuban people waged a heroic armed revolution, liberating their country from the yoke of U.S. imperialist slavery, overthrowing the U.S.-puppet Batista dictatorship. But Castro betrayed the valiant Cuban people. Abandoning the anti-imperialist cause and the revolution, he threw Cuba into the clutches of the Soviet revisionists.
As a dependency of Soviet social-imperialism, the Cuban economy has remained backward. Maintaining its colonial character of a raw materials plantation, Cuba produces sugar, tobacco and minerals for its Russian imperialist masters and others, as it previously did for the United States. Once again in the grips of the imperialist yoke, the Cuban market has been opened up as a bone of contention between the two superpowers. Despite the U.S. trade embargo, U.S. monopolies are now cutting into the Cuban market through their subsidiaries in third countries. Castro, like Batista before him, is now offering up Cuba's resources to the U.S. imperialists once again. In his CBS interview, Castro said that "trade is the best way to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States". And then, like the most servile comprador, he invited the U.S. imperialists to once again, participate in the plunder of the land and labor of the Cuban people. Castro said: "We are sugar producers, important sugar producers, and you are sugar consumers... the sugar would be in the U.S. in a matter of hours. We are important nickel producers, and nickel is a very important material for development of modern industry."
The Cuban invasion of Angola, the re-colonization of the Cuban economy, and Castro's unabashed love songs for Carter and the U.S. imperialists provide important lessons. One must never capitulate to one imperialist superpower in the fight against the other. The revolutionary people reject and expose the Soviet revisionist front of "anti-U.S. imperialism", just as they must reject and expose the U.S. imperialist front of "anti-Soviet social-imperialism" which certain opportunists are floating. Both lead to treachery and betrayal of the revolution to world imperialism. End.
The following editorial is reproduced from People's Voice, organ of the Communist Party of Rwanda.
The struggle is getting organized. The Rwandan people, under the wise and clear-sighted leadership of the Rwandan Communist Party, are persevering in struggle and giving tit-for-tat.
Our Party directs the great proletarian struggle of the Rwandan people, and to win victory it applies an iron and conscious discipline. Certainly in the course of this great struggle our Party meets many difficulties that it tries to surmount. The Rwandan revolution has defeat, but this defeat is temporary. It is impossible that the Rwandan laboring classes, stupefied, held in a state of misery and ignorance, could accomplish the tasks of revolution without encountering all sorts of difficulties.
Since its founding day, our Marxist-Leninist Party has attached importance of the first order to democratic centralism, to criticism, self-criticism, to proletarian democracy, to critical analysis of problems and phenomena, to the healthy atmosphere of secrecy, to iron and conscious discipline, to the mass line, to class struggle. We rely on our own forces. We are waging a war of the poor; we are fighting against the rich. We must seize everything we need from the enemy. That is why our struggle is long and hard. Money is an important material for the development of revolution, but one can't disregard those who succeed without money.
Our Party is illegal; we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between ourselves and the enemy. We must persevere in struggle, in spite of difficulties, in spite of the extremely hard conditions in which we wage our fight.
Imperialism will not leave our country of its own accord; it is such that if we don't strike it, it will be impossible for us to drive it out. We have dared to fight; we must now dare to win.
Under the yoke of imperialism, capitalism and black fascism, the Rwandan people languish in nameless misery; till now we can't find the expression or description that gives the real sense of this misery. Our friends and class brothers; workers, peasants live in difficult conditions, not only lack bread and can never eat their fill, but are saddled with heavy taxes and levies. The majority, that is to say 80%, want revolution.
The Rwandan revolution is entering a decisive phase. In this period, the essential link in the chain, the fundamental task among all those standing before our Party, is the creation and development of our newspaper "People's Voice" for all of Rwanda. The situation is better than ever. The crisis has reached its culminating point -- and there is great disarray within the ranks of the fascist ruling clique. The time is becoming more and more favorable for launching the decisive battle, because the class forces hostile to us are in difficulty, tearing each other to pieces, and weakened by a struggle in the very heart of their power. The vacillating elements, dabblers, waverers, the petty-bourgeoisie in contradistinction to the bourgeoisie, are becoming more and more exposed before the people and have disgraced themselves by their practical bankruptcy; the students at the University of Butare not only demonstrate against the fascist regime but have fought, many among them preferred exile while those who remained have been expelled and the university closed; a powerful opinion movement in the heart of the proletariat is coming to the surface and beginning to win the broad masses of the people to the most resolutely bold, decisive and revolutionary action against the bourgeoisie. Our vanguard is ready to fight till the end and the broad masses are ready to support our vanguard.
If we carefully assess these conditions and choose the right time; we can see that not only is the revolution ripe but that our victory is definite. Arise, comrades! Arise ye wretched of the earth!
FROM COLONIZATION TO BLACK FASCISM
The period 1959-1960 was for Rwanda a theater of large-scale massacre of innocent people by a handful of brothers guided by the Belgian colonialist rulers and backed up by Belgian parachutists from Kamina Base in the Congo. Everywhere one saw only human dumps and smelled the putrid odor of unburied corpses. Disemboweled women, dazed children, violated girls by tree stumps, cattle cut in a thousand pieces, and the sky darkened by clouds of mournful black smoke.
The internal autonomy which marked the end of decolonization was characterized by a massacre more savage and barbarous than Rwanda has ever known in its history, even during its numerous wars of expansion or prestige against its neighbors. And in July 1962, the hoped-for and saving independence was aborted and the destiny of the people was put back in the hands of a clique of flunkeys who entered into a fatal step: the imperialist colonization of independent peoples. Its independence torn away, sold back to its former colonists, Rwanda experienced a peculiar fate under the colorless demagogy of Kayibanda, traitor and liar. The Rwandan people have never tasted the fruits of independence and can count only on the liberating forces of the revolutionary movement, under the direction of our Party, alone capable and devoted to seizing the destiny of a wounded nation out of the hands of the Kayibanda traitors and their consorts and the barbaric Belgians, in order to assure it a better future based on the establishment of a classless society, to build the country and nation in independence, liberty, peace and progress.
THE FRUITS OF INDEPENDENCE LOST LIBERTY:
The Rwandan citizen, to go from one hill to a further one, from one commune to another, from one county to another, had to carry a permit or travelling papers issued by the commune or county authorities. The validity of these documents varied from one week to a month and rarely extended to 3 months, as the case might be. The use of this document was between sunrise and sunset; a document for night use was given separately to people and for serious reasons. The police helped the government to carry out this enterprise, thought up to prevent the people from communicating, from exchanging ideas and services, from discussing injustices, etc.
UNITY:
Under Belgian domination, the Rwandan people were always divided into social, so-called ethnic and regional groups which were incited to engage in perpetual fratricide.
Since the fatal date when the independence of the Rwandan people was snatched away, Rwanda has regressed on all fronts. The possessions of the insurgents and of those suspected of discontent were seized, their houses destroyed, their livestock decimated, their fields and farms ravaged. These activities caused enormous loss to the country in property, material and human lives. On the ruins was erected a capitalist society profiting the bloodthirsty minority at the expense of the majority, who were ignorant and without power, dazzled by false images of the progress of certain individuals and for a certain section of society.
The few paved roads profit only those racketeers who exploit the people's production for their own interest, and assure a long life to their luxury cars or other implements that they use to bleed and plunder the broad masses. Public transportation is almost non-existent, medical care is costly, even in government clinics and hospitals. The schools are far from sufficient, and the teachers even more insufficient.
Agriculture is far from being modernized; the press, almost non-existent, is controlled and censored; the radio is a music box and only furnishes false and erroneous news. It is the voice of the new colonialists instead of being the voice of the people!
The tottering regime of Kayibanda was overthrown by another fascist one, this time military, which, like Kayibanda's regime, thirsted for the wealth of its unfortunate people. It has done nothing to improve the living conditions of the broad masses; on the contrary, it is soon going to take cover in the armpit of its neighbor from Zaire to impose Mobutuism on the sovereign people of Rwanda. The Belgians, scared of losing Rwanda once it is federated with Zaire, aren't hesitating to create divisions in the puppet army, which is blood-curdling to the fascist dictator.
Our Party is against the auctioning of our country and the alienation of our people. We must drive imperialism out of our country and overthrow the fascist Habyarimana regime. We have as our mission to give the people genuine independence, to put their destiny in their own hands, to restore their rights and to serve them. We have as our mission to erect a new society and build up the country by establishing scientific socialism.
Teresa Rugamba End.
Comrade Workers,
Seven years ago, on May 20, 1970, Chairman Mao Tsetung issued his historic statement: "PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE AND DEFEAT THE U.S. AGGRESSORS AND ALL THEIR RUNNING DOGS!" The May 20th Statement was issued just as the great mass movement of protest against the U.S. imperialist invasion of Cambodia was sweeping the U.S. and the entire globe. Chairman Mao's statement gave crucial guidance and great encouragement to the workers, oppressed nations and people of the world in their revolutionary struggle against the despised United States imperialist government, its servile flunkeys in every country, and all reactionaries. Here in the U.S., the American Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary masses enthusiastically hailed its publication and distributed it widely. Our organization has consistently distributed, defended and applied the May 20th Statement from the day of its publication to the present.
Today, although seven years have passed and Chairman Mao has died, his teachings are immortal and the May 20th Statement offers important lessons for the workers and oppressed people in the U.S. struggling against the criminal rule of the government of the big capitalist monopolies, the government of the rich.
Chairman Mao said in his Statement; "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." Today the capitalist and revisionist countries are deep in crisis and are shifting its burden onto the workers and oppressed nations. They are preparing a new world war between the two big imperialist alliances led by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This war is their desperate attempt to escape the crisis and prevent their destruction by the revolutionary people. But the reactionaries are doomed. Revolution is irreversibly the main trend and has gained even greater strength since 1970. Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos are liberated. Socialist China and Albania stand forth as bastions of world revolution. The people of Asia, Africa and Latin America have formed a broad front of struggle, arms in hand, against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction. The working class in the capitalist and revisionist countries is waging mammoth strikes and.protests. The Marxist-Leninist communist movement is flourishing, leading the revolutionary struggle. Revolution is a practical problem being taken up for solution in all countries. The truths of Chairman Mao's Statement, filled with boundless enthusiasm at the bright future of the peoples, that "REVOLUTION IS THE MAIN TREND", "A SMALL NATION CAN DEFEAT A BIG", and "U.S. IMPERIALISM... IS IN ESSENCE A PAPER TIGER shine like a radiant sun,inspiring all oppressed people today.
Chairman Mao also stated: "WHILE MASSACRING THE PEOPLE IN OTHER COUNTRIES, U.S. IMPERIALISM IS SLAUGHTERING THE WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE IN ITS OWN COUNTRY. NIXON'S FASCIST ATROCITIES HAVE KINDLED THE RAGING FLAMES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. THE CHINESE PEOPLE FIRMLY SUPPORT THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. I AM CONVINCED THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO ARE FIGHTING VALIANTLY WILL ULTIMATELY WIN VICTORY AND THAT THE FASCIST RULE IN THE UNITED STATES WILL INEVITABLY BE DEFEATED." This shows that the American people and the people of the world have a common enemy. Our struggles are linked. We in the U.S. do our part by overthrowing the U.S. government, bringing down the rule of the reactionary monopoly bourgeoisie which has inflicted so much suffering on our people and the people of the rest of the world. If we succeed in this great cause, we will have done our duty to the victims of "our" government, just as they are aiding us with their own struggles against U.S. imperialism and its running dogs in their countries. Today the American workers are astir. Many strikes are breaking out. The deception of the Carter administration is collapsing on such questions as energy. A bright prospect of revolutionary mass struggle is opening up for the working-class movement, the Afro-American struggle and for all oppressed people in the U.S. Only a handful of chauvinists and social-chauvinists (socialists in words, chauvinists in deeds) are championing the cause of "our government" against the people of the world and against its imperialist rivals, calling on the U.S. working class to surrender to the government and aim its "main blow" at the Soviet Union; the masses of workers in the U.S. have nothing in common with this criminal government and its war preparations and long to smash it to smithereens, as Chairman Mao encouraged us to do in his historic statement.
Comrade Workers,
To succeed, the world revolution must be led. Chairman Mao, heading the international communist movement until his death, gloriously led the world's people to many victories. Today Comrade Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labor of Albania, has boldly shouldered the responsibility of leading the Marxist-Leninist Communist movement and the world's people against the imperialist superpowers, the international reactionary bourgeoisie and and all enemies of the people. His historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the PL A, issued Nov. 1,1976, is a great Marxist document; like Chairman Mao's May 20th Statement, it is a guide for the world revolution. Under Comrade Enver Hoxha's wise leadership, the world revolution will reach new heights. Let the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet social-imperialists, all reactionaries and their opportunist agents beware! We proletarians of the world have Marxism, we have our trusted leader Comrade Enver Hoxha, we are building our Marxist-Leninist Parties to guide our revolutionary struggle! Nothing can stop the world revolution! Nothing can save the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class from destruction at the hands of the working class and oppressed people in the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution!
MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT WILL SHINE FOREVER!
CLOSELY FOLLOW COMRADE ENVER HOXHA, LEADER OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!
MARXIST-LENINISTS, UNITE IN STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM!
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION IN THE U.S. S OUR SACRED INTERNATIONALIST DUTY!
DEATH TO U.S. IMPERIALISM, SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM AND ALL REACTION! End.
[Photo: Comrade Mao Tsetung, Late Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Leader of the International Communist Movement "Revolution is the main trend in the world today." From Chairman Mao Tsetung's Solemn Statement of May 20, 1970.]
[Photo: Comrade Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania and Leader of the International Communist Movement "The world is at a stage when the cause of the revolution and national liberation of the peoples is not just an aspiration and a future prospect, but a problem taken up for solution." From Comrade Enver Hoxha's Historic Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, November 1, 1976.]
The following is a statement of the Central Committee of the Ethiopian Student Union of North America:
Since his assumption of absolute dictatorial power after the February 3, 1977 coup Col. Mengistu with the full and utmost collaboration of the revisionist Haile Fida clique has unleashed the most vicious repression campaign in Ethiopia. This recent wave of repression campaign unleashed against the oppressed peasants, workers, teachers, and students is the most vicious, the most barbarous and the most fascistic terror campaign ever launched by the dictatorial regime.
Through anti-people campaigns officially code- named "Liquidation campaign", "Search and destroy campaign" etc... .the fascist junta has and is brutally massacring thousands of peasants, workers, teachers and students all over the country. In a span of only two months since February 3 through April 3, it is believed (by conservative BBC estimates) that at least 2,000 progressive and democratic people have fallen victims of the campaign. As the EPRP in its News Release of March 16, 1977, brought to the attention of all progressive and democratic countries, political parties, organizations and individuals to condemn, "Assassination of students, workers, and teachers is being carried out in broad day light, prisoners are being executed en masse; workers, students and teachers are killed every day in all parts of the country. In one week alone, February 26-March 5, five hundred democrats and revolutionaries have been brutally murdered." To give some indication about the intensity of this vicious campaign, suffice it to note the following facts:
-February 25, 1977 -- 25 workers of the Addis Ababa cement factory executed
-February 26, 1977 -- 44 of the 470 progressive political prisoners held in the special security police station executed "secretly"
-March 13, 1977 -- 42 teachers, over half accused of being EPRP members and the rest accused of failing to identify themselves with the junta were imprisoned and later executed
-March 15, 1977 --43 people executed in Hagero district of Harrarghe Administrative Region
-18 people killed in Wabera sub-district in Sidamo Adm. Region
-March 20, 1977 -- In Bale Adm. Region Sero district, 34 people killed and in Gololcha sub-district,
70 houses destroyed
-Gamu Gofa Adm. Region Wabe district, 6 people killed
-Hararghe Adm. Region in an area called Bitcheta, 10 people killed
-In Dedessa district of Illubabor, 8 people accused of being EPRP members imprisoned, presumed to have been executed
-In Addis Ababa, 7 workers from Addis Tannery suspected of distributing "subversive" leaflets thrown in jail, fate unknown but presumed to have been executed
-March 22, 1977 --In Arussi Adm. Region in the sub-district of Chole, 84 "anarchists" (the fascist junta's name for suspected member and/or sympathizer of the EPRP) were executed
-In the sub-district of Agarfa, Bale Adm. Region, 19 people killed...
This not being enough to quench its thirst for blood, the fascist regime on March 23, 1977 promulgated a de facto state of emergency in and around Addis Ababa to further intensify its terror campaign. According to the Promulgation of March 23:
-Every individual is required to hold an I. D. card at all times; any one without such a card is liable for severe punishment -- meaning execution
-All movements of privately owned vehicles is prohibited day or night until further notice
-All bars will be closed until further notice
-Only vehicles (i. e. govt.) with special permit could move
-Security forces have the right to search, arrest, or kill on the spot all suspected members or sympathizers of EPRP....
As a result of the above promulgation the special security forces of the fascist junta in the past two weeks have cold-bloodedly slaughtered countless number of revolutionaries and democratic elements. Among the countless revolutionaries killed in the past two weeks are Comrade Markos Hagos the gallant leader of the Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Union and Comrade Tesfaye Debessay and many other fine sons and daughters of the Ethiopian people.
It is clear as daylight and is even being admitted by the fascist junta that the recent terror campaign is spearheaded against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party; for EPRP being the true communist vanguard of the Ethiopian Revolution has won the sympathy and support of the oppressed masses. In a vain attempt of breaking the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party the fascist junta has brutally massacred thousands of peasants, workers, teachers and students. But despite their terrorism the fascist junta and its revisionist collaborators are totally incapable of breaking the EPRP. History has proved that however severe repression the reactionary forces launch, they could never destroy the EPRP and the Ethiopian Revolution but rather by their futile attempt will hasten their own destruction.
ESUNA is confident and more than ever convinced that despite the temporary difficulties that might be caused by the recent terror campaign, the Ethiopian masses, under the leadership of EPRP will surmount all difficulties and achieve final victory.
ESUNA believes that all genuine and anti-imperialist and progressive forces are duty bound to support the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed masses in Ethiopia. With this in mind ESUNA calls upon all genuine anti-imperialist and progressive organizations to condemn the recent wave of fascist terror unleashed by the barbaric and dictatorial regime in Ethiopia.
Down with the Fascist Military Junta!!
Down with Feudalism, Imperialism and Bureaucratic Capitalism!!
Down with USSR-US counter-revolutionary collusion in Ethiopia!!
Long Live EPRP!!
Long Live the Ethiopian Revolution!! End.
During the recent "elections" in India held between March5 and 19, the ruling Congress Party, led by Indira Gandhi, which had been the ruling political party ever since the so-called "independence" in 1947 and had imposed the fascist "national emergency" in June 1975, was badly defeated. Indira Gandhi and her closest collaborators in the imposition of the "national emergency" lost their seats. The opposition party alliance won the majority of the seats, the "national emergency" has been "revoked" and a "new" government has been formed.
This has greatly enthused the Western imperialists, especially the U.S. imperialists. On the one hand, they have used this as a great opportunity for them to do a large amount of propaganda about the return of "democracy" to India. Thus, they have intensified the campaign to cause maximum confusion about the semi-colonial, semi-feudal nature of the Indian state in which elections are held precisely to cover up that fact and to sort out contradictions within the ruling classes and their imperialist and social-imperialist masters when these are not at the stage of their resolution by armed methods. According to them, with the "national emergency", India was moving towards the dictatorial rule of Indira Gandhi and her clique. Now, the process has been reversed.
The second reason for their enthusiasm is that the new government is decidedly more pro-U.S. imperialist than the previous one. The previous government of Indira Gandhi was a lackey of both U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, but with the latter's influence and control steadily increasing. One example of this was the signing of the 20 years "Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation" in 1971, which amounted to nothing but a military pact between the two countries with India under the hegemony of the Soviet Union, and which was an instrument for the rapidly increasing penetration and plunder of the Indian economy by Soviet social-imperialism. The new prime minister is an old tested lackey of U.S. imperialism. In the late 1950's when he was the Finance Minister in the Nehru government, he was instrumental in bringing massive amounts of U.S. finance capital into India under the hoax of "aid". After being selected the Prime Minister by his Janata Party, he immediately announced that India under him would move away from the "special relations" with the Soviet Union and "if the Indo-Soviet friendship treaty involves any want of friendship with others, then it will have to change". This only means that the new government's "non-alignment" would make it move more under the domination of the U.S. imperialists, a fact noted with much glee by them, as they said "Of particular importance to the United States is the ejected shift in foreign policy...All indications from the victorious alliance, known as Janata, are that a friendly attitude can be ejected towards the United States, with a noticeable cooling of feelings for the Soviet Union. Whatever its foreign policy, India has begun to earn a new claim on American sympathies, and perhaps aid". (New YorkTimes, editorial, March 22, 1977).
The whole campaign was fought on the question of the "national emergency" or the opposition to it in favor of the return of the fraud of "democracy". Indira Gandhi and her clique defended the "emergency" for bringing "stability" to India. Her opponents amongst the ruling classes, who formed an alliance led by the hastily constituted Janata Party and a defector from Indira Gandhi's government Jagjivan Ram, former Minister of Agriculture, who formed the "Congress for Democracy", demagogically fought for "democracy", which was the only way open for them to oust those ruling class elements who were suffocating them from holding any power. The large vote against Indira Gandhi and her party and government was the bitter response of the people against her naked fascism, especially of the upstart Sanjay Gandhi, her son, the man most closely associated with the most hated sterilization campaign in which over seven million people were forcibly sterilized and many were butchered.
There is no fundamental difference between the two parties in terms of their attitude towards the people. The leaders of both the parties come from the old undivided Congress Party created by the British colonialists, representing the interests of the big landlord class and the comprador capitalist class.They have great hatred for the people and their interests lie in serving imperialism and social-imperialism. Their division took place in the late 1960's as the result of increasing Soviet social-imperialist penetration in India starting in the late 1950's, and which was seriously contending with U.S. imperialism for domination over India by the middle and late I960's. Indira Gandhi and her clique, more pro-Soviet social-imperialist, ousted the pro-U.S. imperialist clique led by Morarji Desai who formed a rival organization also calling itself the Congress (Organization).
Both cliques are defenders of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal state of India. They zealously defend the most barbaric and medieval suppression of the Indian peasantry, constituting almost 80% of the Indian population, by the feudal landlord class. They are servile lackeys of the big comprador bourgeoisie. Jagjivan Ram, who defected because of his so-called commitment to "democracy", was the Agriculture Minister and thus directly responsible for maintaining and strengthening the most backward and oppressive feudal social system in the countryside. He was also the "Defence" Minister in Indira Gandhi's government during 1971 and thus directly responsible for launching the invasion and dismemberment of Pakistan.
The Indian people can win democracy only when, as a starting point, there is democracy for the peasantry. This can only take place when their feudal oppression is ended. In the present era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, only the proletariat and its working class party can lead the struggle for genuine democracy and independence which can be won only by organizing the Peoples' Democratic Revolution, the main content of which is the Armed Agrarian Revolution. In India, this revolution is being organized and led by the communist revolutionaries of the CPI(M-L) following the proletarian revolutionary line of Comrade Charu Mazumdar. Both the cliques are fascistically opposed to the Armed Agrarian Revolution and the CPI(M-L) and are determined defenders of the feudal landlord class. Thus, the "democratic" pronouncements of both of them are a farce and mere demagogy. The main issue for organizing the elections was not the so-called "democracy" but the opposition to the Armed Agrarian Revolution and the armed resistance of the people which was rapidly developing against the fascist state. The elections were organized to cause further illusions about the reactionary "parliamentary path".
The elections have become a further exposure of the opportunists and revisionists, led by the renegade, traitor and Khrushchovite revisionist Satyanarayan Singh (SNS), donning the garb of Mao Tsetung Thought. The SNS opportunists were responsible for causing disruption in the CPI(M-L) right after the completion of its historic 8th Party Congress. Instead of implementing the line of developing the Armed Agrarian Revolution through the campaign of the "battle of annihilation of class enemies" as they had agreed to at the Congress, they tried to paralyze the Party by issuing all sorts of vile rumours and slanders against Comrade Charu Mazumdar, to divert the Party from the road of the peasant armed struggle for seizure of state power by concocting the revisionist nonsense of "all forms of struggle are necessary" or that "mass movements are a necessary prerequisite for armed struggle". They were directly responsible for the damages suffered by the Indian Party and the revolution since the 8th Congress. The "national emergency" of 1975 was a god-send for them. Having been completely exposed in the previous five years for neither developing any mass movement nor any armed struggle, and that their line was nothing but an excuse to oppose the development of the Armed Agrarian Revolution, they concocted the "new" line that in 1975, Soviet social-imperialism became the main enemy of the Indian people and that the Indian people were faced with the fascist dictatorship of Indira Gandhi. To give itself a new lease on life, SNS revisionism concocted a "programme" which shamelessly abandoned the People's Democratic Revolution and replaced it with the road of "united Council of Action Against Fascism" under the leadership of "the opposition section of the ruling classes" to establish a so-called "regime of Patriotic and Democratic Unity" which would be against "repressive measures, against the suspension of Parliamentary Democracy, the suspension of Fundamental Rights, arrests, the total censorship of the Press, etc." The new government has demagogically announced that it will restore the "democratic rights", while in practice it will undoubtedly continue to carry out the suppression of the peasants, workers and other toiling sections even more ruthlessly. Thus, SNS's "programme" has been "completed" even before he could draw his second breath. This completely exposes the hollowness of his line and its service to U.S. imperialism.
The nature of the struggle of the Indian people has not changed one bit with the "revocation" of the "emergency" and with the establishment of the new government of Morarji Desai. This government will be even more fascist and repressive than the previous government of Indira Gandhi as it tries to stamp out the developing flames of the revolutionary struggle of the Indian people. The Indian people led by the CPI(M-L) will persist in the Armed Agrarian Revolution and the Peoples' Democratic Revolution, create the People's Liberation Army, build liberated areas, win over the countryside to surround the cities, and finally win political power throughout the country by the armed overthrow of the state of the big landlords and comprador capitalists, lackeys of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. Only thus will they usher in the era of people's democracy and genuine independence, and resolutely march forward on the road of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. End.
The following is a leaflet issued by the Eritreans for Liberation in North America hailing the successful conclusion of the First Congress of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Recently news has arrived of important new victories by the Eritrean liberation fighters in their national liberation war against the fascist Ethiopian regime, which has the backing of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.
The First Congress of the E.P.L.F. was successfully concluded on January 31, 1977 in the liberated areas of Eritrea. The Congress was attended by over 300 delegates representing all units and departments of the E.P.L.F. and its mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth and students from inside and outside the country. Representatives of a number of liberation movements and revolutionary organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, the Tigrai People's Liberation Front and representatives from neighboring countries attended the Congress.
The Congress was organized on these main themes: Organize, politicize and arm the masses; Struggle to build principled and genuine unity through the formation of a united front; Advance the economic and social transformation of the liberated areas; and Persistence in protracted people's war.
The First Congress of the E.P.L.F. has a historical significance for the Eritrean revolution. It is the first congress in the history of the Eritrean revolution in which the democratic and revolutionary forces had the upper hand. It is the first congress where the Eritrean masses, organized and conscious of their role, participated in laying down the program and political line of their struggle.
The National Democratic Program adopted at the Congress represents the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses of Eritrea. It calls for:
* The establishment of a people's democratic Eritrea.
* A self-reliant, independent and planned economy.
* Safeguarding the unity and equality of all Eritrean nationalities.
* The development of revolutionary culture, education and health care.
* Safeguarding the economic, political and organizational rights of the working class.
* The complete equality of women with men in economic, political, social and cultural life.
* A foreign policy of peace and non-alignment, of anti-imperialist solidarity with all just and revolutionary movements.
The victorious advance and deepening of the Eritrean The victorious advance and deepening of the Eritrean revolution has become an ominous threat to imperialist and zionist interests and an inspiring example to the national liberation struggles in the region, as crystallized in the successful conclusion of the First Congress of the E.P.L.F. and the revolutionary program, resolutions and guidelines that it has adopted.
Eritreans for Liberation in North America is holding a nation-wide programme on the First Congress of the E.P.L.F. and its significance for the revolution in Eritrea and the whole region. We warmly invite all progressive and democratic people to attend.
Eritreans for Liberation in North America End.
The Indian Progressive Study Group and the friends and supporters of the Hindustani Ghadar Party -- Organization of Indian Marxist-Leninists Abroad -- in the U.S.A. held a successful day-long informational conference and a mass rally in the evening on the Indian State and Revolution on March 26 at Boston University in Boston. The conference and rally were enthusiastically attended by nearly 150 friends and supporters of the Indian revolution, well over half of whom were patriotic Indians. The conference hall was decorated with revolutionary slogans and the large portraits of Comrade Charu Mazumdar and Comrade Hardial Bains. A very militant and serious attitude prevailed throughout the conference and rally.
The conference brought out detailed facts and analysis to show that the present Indian state is a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state in which the masses of the people are being intensely oppressed and exploited by their four main enemies, U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, the comprador bureaucrat capitalist class and the feudal big landlord class. It showed that the present Indian state and the social system of feudalism coexisting with foreign imperialist dominated capitalism were created by the British colonialists after completing the colonization and subjugation of India in the mid-nineteenth century. Ever since then till 1947, the Indian state was a state of the colonialists and the lackeys they created, the big landlord feudalists and the comprador capitalists, the instrument for the exploitation of the Indian people and in keeping them under colonialist bondage. In 1947 with so-called "independence", the Indian state basically did not undergo any transformation, the only change being to accommodate the transfer of political power from the colonialists into the hands of their agents, so that the old exploitation could continue. The so-called "independence" of 1947 and the "democracy" of the "republic" of 1950 were all a complete hoax, designed to cover up the semi-colonial semi-feudal transformation of the Indian state, because the state apparatus continued to be the same as rigged up by the colonialists, and even the constitution of the "republic" was the one prepared by the franchise of only the ruling class elements and under the direction and mandatory acceptance of the colonialists. The conference showed the increasing domination of India since the 1950's by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, who have converted India into a neo-colony of theirs with their respective spheres of interest and control. The "national emergency" of 1975 did not rob the Indian people of "democracy" or "democratic rights" as the imperialists as well as opportunists of many hues and colors were screaming so much about, since these never existed in the first place; it only intensified the fascist oppression of the people. Similarly, the removal of the "emergency" after the bourgeois fraud of "elections" in 1977 does not mean the return of democracy in India. Democracy for the Indian people will only be ensured after they overthrow the present state by organizing the People's Democratic Revolution, the main content of which is the Armed Agrarian Revolution against the feudal system, and thus win genuine independence and liberation by expelling the foreign imperialists and social-imperialists.
The conference also discussed the question of the struggle against opportunism in the Indian revolution and the Indian communist movement ever since the founding of the Communist Party of India in 1925. The masses of the Indian people have always fought heroically against the colonialist and feudal suppression, and that is why the colonizers had to stage the fraud of "independence" in 1947. Since then, they have relentlessly continued this fight against imperialism and feudalism. They always supported the communist movement and the Communist Party's leadership, but the leadership of the party had, till 1967, fallen in the hands of the revisionists and opportunists, who either followed the line of reformism or terrorism, but never the Marxist-Leninist line of the People's Democratic Revolution. The Marxist-Leninist line emerged victoriously only in 1967 when under the leadership of Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the historic Naxalbari armed peasants' uprising was organized by the communist revolutionary cadres of the revisionist dominated CPI(M). This was done in direct revolt against the revisionist leadership by following the clarion call of Chairman Mao, the great leader of the International Communist Movement, given during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, that "it is rightto rebel against reactionaries". They firmly grasped and put into practice the great fundamental truth enunciated by Chairman Mao, and before him by Comrades Marx and Lenin, that"Political power grows out ofthe barrel of a gun", and thus inflicted a decisive blow to the revisionist fraud of the "Parliamentary road to socialism" which has brought great harm to the Indian revolution. This was the beginning of the People's Democratic Revolution in India, the main thrust of this being the Armed Agrarian Revolution. The conference discussed these developments and of the Indian revolution since 1967, the formation of the revolutionary Communist Party of India (Marxist- Leninist) in 1969 and its historic Congress in 1970. It then dealt with the question of opportunism and revisionism trying, under the garb of Mao Tsetung Thought, to liquidate the Armed Agrarian Revolution and the CPI(M-L), by concocting all sorts of slanders and lies against Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the respected leader of the Indian revolution and the Party, and pushing the revisionist lines of "all forms of struggle are necessary" or that "mass movements for economic demands" are necessary prerequisites before organizing the Armed Agrarian Revolution. The main criminals are the Khrushchovite revisionist Satyanarayan Singh and his followers and collaborators. The Indian revolution developed rapidly from 1967, but suffered setback from 1972 on, because of the twin attacks of the fascist state and the attacks of the opportunist and revisionist elements. But the Indian communist revolutionaries are heroically fighting back to implement and develop Comrade Charu Mazumdar's proletarian revolutionary line. The conference discussed that the main danger to the Indian revolution is still revisionism, but this roadblock is being definitely smashed by the Indian Marxist-Leninists and the revolutionary masses, which will lead to great upsurges in the revolutionary struggle.
The evening rally consisted of militant solidarity messages for the Indian revolution presented by comrades from the Boston Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the Boston chapter of the Ethiopian Student Union in North America, in which the importance of the Indian revolution to the world revolution was stressed, and the spirit of proletarian internationalism was much in evidence. The cultural program consisted of revolutionary songs and poems, a Bhangra dance and a skit on the themes of the Armed Agrarian Revolution. The Ethiopian comrades presented two revolutionary songs about their People's Democratic Revolution advancing rapidly under the leadership of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party. The Kampuchean film, "Heroic Fighters", showing the historic victory in 1975 of the people of Kampuchea against U.S. aggression was enthusiastically received. The rally concluded with the singing of the "Internationale" and the whole conference shouting militant revolutionary slogans. End.
The following article is reprinted from the CCNYStudent, newspaper of the City College of New York Student Movement, Vol. 2, No. 5, April 21, 1977.
On April 7, the Board of Higher Education finally "leaked" publicly in the New York Times that a City University of New York-wide "two year skills" test will be given next September; tests in reading, mathematics, and writing are to be given to all sophomores. After one full year of deliberate deception as to its purposes, the BHE has bared its fangs and declared that those failing the test will be barred from the upper division of the senior colleges. This blatant attempt to drive thousands more students out of CUNY is but the latest attack on our basic interests by the CUNY administration, the latest attempt to make the people pay for the present economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist system.
The BHE is bending over backwards to deny these facts and is continuing to mouth their deception that the test is, according to Chancellor Brenner, not intended to cut the size of the senior colleges or otherwise to exclude any students from studying in the City University. Here their vicious hoax is exposed. How can a test designed to bar students from school not exclude any student from studying? For months the BHE has been giving the lie that the problem at CUNY is so-called "declining standards", "illiterate students", "liberalized grading" and that they are only interested in helping the students by improving the "quality" of the education at CUNY and providing remedial classes.
But Chancellor Kibbee himself has exposed this lie! In his December 1, 1976 report on how to meet future budget cuts, he recommends that the BHE "discontinue any institution's efforts in remedial education except in special programs.... Since many who come to us now are not (prepared for college work), the neteffect...would be a massive attrition of students during the first semester or at best the first year". Clearly the BHE has no intention of helping the students and every intention of drivingthem out of school, firing faculty and staff and reducing the budget.
In implementing this latest attack the BHE has relied heavily on the current nation-wide anti-student propaganda campaign on the question of "declining standards". The monopoly capitalists have been using the full force of their press, radio, TV, publishing houses and reactionary academic spokesmen to promote that the students are "illiterate", "ignorant in basic skills" and that many don't belong in school at all. These educational "authorities" and commentators pretend that the crisis in education -- the crisis at CUNY -- is completely detached from the general all-round crisis of the monopoly capitalist system. And they are attempting to cover their role as the hatchet-men of the bourgeoisie in attacking the basic interests of the students so as to defend the class interests of their rich masters.
For example, the BHE claims that the two-year test had its origins in their "discovery" that the grading process had become lax in recent year. This is the BHE's own version of the declining standards fraud and it too is pure deception. The facts show that the test has its origins in the notorious Kibbee Plan, drawn up at the dictate of the Emergency Finance Control Board, and is part and parcel of the attempts by the monopoly capitalists to shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class and people. By ending Open Admissions, stiffening retention standards and "rationalizing" CUNY, the Kibbee Plan let the BHE drive thousands of students from CUNY and fire thousands of faculty and staff, thus freeing millions of tax funds from the CUNY budget. These funds have been shifted into areas to be handed over more directly and usefully to the monopoly capitalists, such as increased debt service. Thus the profits of the financiers are preserved intact while the consequences of the crisis are placed on the backs of the people.
Kibbee's original proposal to the BHE meant to reduce enrollment by 20%. The two year test would serve this goal by "drop(ping) those whose performance to date does not represent reasonable progress towards a degree", and he estimates "one third of those seeking transfer to senior college would not preform up to a reasonable and acceptable standard". But the BHE today drops these facts from their "explanation" and raise their "liberalized grading process" and "quality education" fraud!
Interestingly, in their 1972 Master Plan the BHE was not worried about "lax grading"; instead they called for "Reducing the use of traditional grading systems for a significant portion of a student's course work, de-emphasizing working for grades". At that time the BHE was actively meeting the needs of the monopoly capitalists for skilled labor and at the same time creating an area of investment for the making of maximum profits by expanding in education and actively increasing enrollment. E. G., huge profits were made in construction and financing. Now in the midst of a severe economic crisis, education spending has been exhausted as an area of maximum profit and the skilled labor market is glutted. Thus government funds are today being shifted out of education spending in order to best meet the present needs of the capitalists and help them avoid the consequences of their crisis and place the burden onto the students and staff instead.
On another front the BHE is using the "declining standards" fraud to viciously attack the working class and national minority students at CUNY. These students are being especially hard hit by this attack. The sons and daughters of the working class and national minorities have always been blocked from receiving education under capitalism through the high costs and discriminatory standards; now this denial is being, extended. Further the whole "declining standards" campaign is being used by the capitalist state to whip up racist and anti-working class propaganda. They are turning truth on its head by blaming these students for this latest skills test attack and rotten education and attempting to deny that it is the capitalist system that is the source of all the problems facing the students.
The thoroughly reactionary nature of the BHE and the entire capitalist state is shown by, how the skills test serves the war preparations of U.S. imperialism. As a way out of their deep crisis, the monopoly capitalists are feverishly stepping up their war preparations, both for aggressive wars of the Viet Nam type and also for world war with the Soviet social-imperialists, their rival for world domination. The U.S. imperialists have a great need for a huge reserve of unemployed youth who can be forced into the imperialist armies as cannon-fodder. Isn't it precisely this need the BHE serves when it drives thousands of youth out of school and into the ranks of the unemployed.
At City College of New York hundreds of students have repeatedly expressed their desire to fight the latest attack on their basic interests. CCNY STUDENT MOVEMENT calls on all revolutionary and progressive students to take up this analysis of the Skills Test, propagate it widely and prepare for struggle to prevent its implementation next fall. As a start, the SKILLS TEST DISCUSSION GROUP is being organized by the CCNY STUDENT MOVEMENT. Students wanting to fight the Skills Test should participate in these discussions. End.
The following article is reprinted from the ChicagoStudent, newspaper of the Chicago Student Movement Vol. 3, No. 1, February 8, 1977.
The Necessity For Change Discussion Group held its first meeting Wednesday, Feb. 2, on the topic "Oppose the Bourgeois Educational System". A short presentation was given and lively discussion followed and continued for two hours.
In the presentation the Chicago Student Movement comrade pointed out that in imperialist society, the educational system is run by the imperialist ruling class to serve its interests, that is, to supply the imperialist economy with the trained manpower necessary in order to make maximum profits, as well as to impregnate the youth with bourgeois ideology. Further, the educational institutions are developed as major propaganda centers from which the imperialist ruling class floats its reactionary ideology in society as a whole. It is here that they experiment and hatch up their various schemes and theories with which to further exploit and oppress the working and oppressed people and extract greater profits. And further, various institutions are specifically developed to produce students for particular roles in society. For example: public, city, and junior colleges train largely working-class youth as skilled workers or professionals, while private, prestigious universities (like Harvard, the University of Chicago) train students quite directly as governmental officials, bourgeois ideologues and spokesmen.
The comrade pointed out that while in any society the ruling class controls the institutions of that society to serve its interests, that the interests of the bourgeoisie are fundamentally opposed to that of the proletariat and the content of bourgeois education is fundamentally opposed to the content of proletarian education.
The bourgeois world outlook relies on idealism and anti-consciousness. It actively discourages that one question the fundamentals of society. It denies that ideas, all ideas, have a social basis, and deals only with "thing s-in-them selves", "history-as-such", devoid of its social origins and class content. This suppression of consciousness is an active task and requires the active negation of one's entire life experience, it requires the suppression of one's Will-to-Be, that is, one's will to become conscious and to act on that consciousness, it requires the rewriting of history in order to shape the world according to the idealist viewpoint (i.e. that ideas shape the world, rather than the materialist view that ideas are a reflection of man's social being), it requires the active opposition to anything that exposes such a world outlook.
The proletarian world outlook is summed up in the slogans: "Seek Truth From Facts to Serve People", "Understanding Requires the Conscious Participation of the Individual in the Act of Finding Out" and "It is Right to Rebel Against Reactionaries".
One's consciousness does not reside in so many hours of study, but in one's participation and role in society. Chairman Mao said, "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution." (On Practice)
Discussion developed on the question of what is content of bourgeois education. It was pointed out that it is not a matter of asking for different courses or reforming the subject matter of various courses, but that the entire educational system in imperialist society is controlled by the monopoly capitalist class both in its content and the uses for which it is developed. Further, the ruling class, in trying to put down the rebellions of youth and students in the '60's, have developed further the "fine art" of deception, and quite consciously use this method very liberally on the educational front. Thus the bourgeoisie is even quite willing to submit, superficially, to demands for courses on various popular topics, but only in such a way as to continue to mystify the actual nature and character of imperialist society and education, in order to perpetuate the myth of "democracy" in education and to confuse what path forward revolutionary and progressive youth and student s should take.
It was pointed out that the political struggle, the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, takes place on many fronts, including the educational and cultural fronts, and that students should look seriously into these questions and take up the class struggle on the educational front while they are in the universities. It was further clarified that there is no contradiction between the class struggle against the bourgeoisie on the educational front and the class struggle on other fronts -- that these are all fronts on which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie must be smashed. In order to prepare for the overthrow of the monopoly capitalist class, class struggle must be developed wherever the proletariat is being attacked. It is only by participating in these struggles that the proletariat and progressive people can be steeled and that victory at the time of actual insurrection can be ensured.
Vigorous discussion also took place on the question of decadent imperialist youth culture. It was pointed out that with the rise of the mass movements of the '60's, the imperialist ruling class launched a cultural counter-revolution in order to wipe out the struggles that were developing and to prevent, especially, youth and students and Afro-American people from taking up revolutionary politics. Thus the promotion of drug-taking, pornography, social crime and other perversions.
The point was made that the monopoly capitalist class consciously uses the cultural front to launch propaganda in preparation for attacks on the proletariat on the economic and other fronts. Thus, for example, the onslaught of police shows on TV and other violent shows, in order on the one hand to promote reactionary violence, and on the other, to strengthen the role of the fascist police in suppressing the just struggles of the people.
It is not an accident that certain trends develop on the cultural front. The bourgeoisie has 200 years of experience in this country of how to enforce their dictatorship. They are not above using massive deception, in response to the revolutionary sentiment aroused among the people in order to channel this sentiment into harmless reforms and other dead ends.
Revolutionary and progressive youth and students should take up the class struggle on the educational and cultural fronts and meet these conscious reactionary attacks by the monopoly capitalist class with conscious revolutionary struggle. End.
In the April 4th issue of The Call, the OL has released its Draft Program and Draft Constitution for the "Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)".
The main feature of this "party" will be social-chauvinism. Under socialist phrases, the OL is actually cheering on the monopoly capitalists to fight harder against the Soviet New Tsars and stop "appeasing" them. The Draft Program is adapted to the needs of the U.S. monopoly capitalist state in a time of increasing imperialist rivalry with the Soviet social-imperialists. The Program calls on the American workers to become superpower national chauvinists and to defend the fatherland by directing the "main blow" at the Soviet social-imperialists. The Draft Program is adapted to the needs of the U.S.state to defend its neo-colonial empire both from "theft" by Soviet social-imperialism and from true liberation by revolution, and gives OL's Titoite theory of "Three Worlds" which denies revolution and apologizes for neo-colonialism. The emergence of OL's open social-chauvinism is the beginning of the bankruptcy of that opportunism that had been accumulating for years, and the struggle against social-chauvinism will lead towards the re-constitution of the party.
We call on all Marxist-Leninists to oppose the OL's attempts to build a social-chauvinist party. To aid in the repudiation of social-chauvinism and to help unite the Marxist-Leninists in the course of struggle against social-chauvinism, we are writing these notes on the OL's Draft Program for a social-chauvinist party.
(All page references in the article below which are not otherwise marked are to The Call of April 4th, 1977.)
Section I: COMRADE ENVER HOXHA IS THE LEADER OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT
OL's Draft Program is silent on the question of the leadership of the international communist movement. Behind the silence lies a vile plot aimed at Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania.
The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists holds that Comrade Enver Hoxha is following in the footsteps of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung. In the difficult period following the tragic death of Chairman Mao Tsetung, it was Comrade Enver Hoxha who stepped forward to take up the heavy responsibilities of leading the international communist movement. Comrade Hoxha has continued on his glorious path of open and uncompromising struggle against revisionism and all forms of opportunism.His historic REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE PARTY OF LABOR OF ALBANIA is a Marxist-Leninist classic which eliminated the possibility that a number of opportunist theories would have influence in the Marxist-Leninist communist movement. It is an important point of principle for the American Marxist-Leninists to recognize the revolutionary authority of Comrade Enver Hoxha.
International opportunism has hatched a vile plot against Comrade Enver Hoxha and against the purity of Marxism-Leninism. Some of the opportunists have honey on their lips, but murder in their hearts. When the historic REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE PARTY OF LABOR OF ALBANIA was released in November, 1976, certain bad elements shouted "Long Live" in public, while carrying daggers behind their backs. They sought to suppress Comrade Hoxha's historic report. They followed the Khrushchevite methods of political blackmail andbluster and tried to impose such opportunist theories as that of "Three Worlds" on the international communist movement by calling all those who stood up for the cause of communism and national liberation as "revisionists, centrists and Trotskyists of all types, from Brezhnev on down". (1) This method of "persuasion" is the same dirty style used by Khrushchev who, in his campaign to impose modern revisionism on the international communist movement, maligned Mao Tsetung's Communist Party of China and Enver Hoxha's Party of Labor of Albania as "trotskyite", "splitters of the international communist movement", "anti-Soviet", "dogmatic", "adventurist" and "sold out for thirty pieces of gold". But independently of the will of the opportunists, more and more parties and Marxist-Leninists around the world are hoisting the banner of the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania.
At the baton of international opportunism, the October League, which has never once displayed even one ounce of political independence or backbone, has jumped into the campaign to malign Comrade Hoxha and Marxism-Leninism. Because of the great respect of the American youth and Marxist-Leninists for Comrades Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha, the OL has been forced to use the neo-revisionist tactics of hiding its revisionism and social-chauvinism under the banner of alleged loyalty to Mao Tsetung Thought. But the OL's feigned "support" for Comrades Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha has always been of the most shallow sort. Neither in its two "unity calls" (2) nor in its Draft Program is there even mention of Mao Tsetung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to say nothing of any reference to its great role in regenerating the communist movement in the U.S. and internationally. And now the OL has been coming more and more into the open with its opposition to Comrade Hoxha. In OL's second "unity call" the OL still made some pretense of support for the international communist movement, hypocritically stating; "We have in the past and are continuing to receive great inspiration from the principled stand of the People's Republics of China and Albania against the Soviet revisionists" and "We fully support the great contribution of the socialist countries, particularly the Peoples Republic of China and Albania in the struggle against modern revisionism and for the building of socialism." Even these inadequate formulations are dropped from the Draft Program which merely says things like; "We defend and support China, Albania, and all socialist countries.,." (p. 6) There is no mention at all of Comrade Enver Hoxha in these documents, and the Draft Program consciously ignores the historic role of Enver Hoxha's Party of Labor of Albania in the struggle against modern Khrushchevite revisionism.
The OL has shown particular venom towards Comrade Hoxha's historic REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE PARTY OF LABOR OF ALBANIA, When the 7th Congress took place on Nov. 1 7, 1976, the OL hailed it in The Call and promised, in the Nov. 29th issue, that "Hoxha's report, ... will be carried in future issues of The Call..." It has been almost one-half year since the 7th Congress, and we have yet to see Comrade Hoxha's Report in the pages of The Call. Instead The Call has gone into a frenzy against the 7th Congress. TheCall continued its 8-part series entitled "Report from Europe". In this series the OL, with typical great-power American arrogance, presents itself as the arbiter of all Europe and continues its political blackmail of claiming that the whole international communist movement is united behind opportunism and its theories of "three worlds" and directing the "main blow at the USSR". This "Report from Europe" completely omits the views of the Party of Labor of Albania. Imagine that! To discuss the "Marxist- Leninist movement in Europe" and to omit a trifle, the Party of Labor of Albania! Albania is the beacon of socialism in Europe, a beacon so strong that its rays bring light and warmth to us many thousands of miles away here in North America, Of all the parties in Europe, the Party of Labor of Albania was the only party that came untarnished through the test of Khrushchev's attack on Marxism-Leninism, Yet TheCall, this great "defender" of China and Albania, this humble communist "inspired" by the People's Republics of China and Albania, ignores Albania while blithely stating in its "Report from Europe -- Conclusion" on April 18, 1977, that the "series covered most of the main points crucial to Europe today..." The Call, speaking with its usual forked tongue, explains that it omitted some parties because of "hard conditions" in Eastern Europe and because "many countries were not visited". But it is neither hard to get the views of the Party of Labor of Albania nor does it take even a visit to Albania; one must only open Comrade Hoxha's historic REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS and read. For this, five months would suffice, we think. The Call, however, lets the cat out of the bag and states OL's hatred for Comrade Hoxha and all the parties and Marxist-Leninists that form the irresistible trend coming out of the Seventh Congress as follows:
"Finally, the European communist movement is by no means uniform in all its views. The correct Marxist-Leninist line in these countries has developed, and is developing, in the course of struggle against erroneous lines. This ideological struggle has sharpened since the death of Mao Tsetung, which opportunists have used as an occasion to promote splits and attack Chairman Mao's line. The Callhas made its own stand clear on these basic questions. In the case of some countries or organizations, it has not made particular comments at this time."
And that is what is behind the OL Draft Program's silence concerning Comrade Hoxha, the historic Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, and the great struggle led by Comrades Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha against modern Khrushchevite revisionism.
American Marxist-Leninists! Do you remember all the fine words and oaths of deepest loyalty that have been uttered in the past in support of Comrades Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha? Now is the test which will separate real friends of Marxism-Leninism from the political double-dealers who shout "Long Live" in fair weather all the better to betray in the first breath of foul weather. Comrades, let all honest Marxist-Leninists stand up behind Comrade Enver Hoxha, leader of the international communist movement and continuer of the work of Chairman Mao Tsetung.
Section 2: THE DRAFT PROGRAM SPREADS FRENZIED JINGO-ISM IN THE FORM OF DIRECTING THE "MAIN BLOW" AT SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM
The central feature of the Draft Program is social-chauvinism. Behind all its refined, pseudo-Marxist phrases, the Draft Program is full of frenzied jingoism. As the war preparations between the two superpowers has intensified, the OL has come out openly on the side of U.S. imperialism and called for directing the main blow at the Soviet Union. The Draft Program states: "... we must direct our main blow internationally at Soviet social-imperialism". (p. 6) This means that the American working class should be rallied behind the U.S. monopoly capitalist class in order to be used as cannon-fodder against the foreign threat. It is opposed to the militant stand of the U.S. working class that our enemy, first and foremost, is at home. The Draft Program incites the American workers to slaughter the Soviet workers on behalf of the plans for world domination of the U.S. big bourgeoisie.
What type of third world war are the two superpowers preparing for? According to the Draft Program, "Today the U.S. and the USSR are locked in a life and death struggle as each strives for world-wide hegemony. The contention and uneven development between the two superpowers is bound to lead to a new world war, a war for a new redivision of the world." (p. 6) The Draft Program admits that the threatened world war will be an "unjust imperialist war", (p. 6) To advocate defense of the fatherland in such an "unjust imperialist war"; (and directing the main blow at the foreign enemy is fully equivalent to defense of the fatherland) is to criminally betray the working class and become an imperialist lackey.
The Draft Program attempts to justify its defense of U.S. imperialism by claiming that the Soviet Union is "the main source of a new world war", "the most dangerous of the two superpowers", "the mightiest military power in history'" and a "war-mongering upstart". (p. 6) Thus the Draft Program claims that Soviet social-imperialism will be the one who starts the war. But Marxism-Leninism teaches that in a war between two slave-owners for the redivision of the slaves and the loot, it does not matter who attacks first, who has more guns and tanks, who "unjustly" had a smaller share of slaves to start with, on which slave-owner's territory the war is fought, which is allegedly "rising" and younger and attempting to "steal" in order to get its place in the sun, or which is declining. The oppressed slaves in the U.S. can only hope for the defeat of "their own" government in an unjust war and work for its overthrow by means of revolutionary civil war. In so doing, the oppressed slaves in the U.S. are rendering the deepest support for the oppressed slaves in the Soviet Union, who will also work for the overthrow of "their own" government. Lenin emphasized that "ONLY A BOURGEOIS WHO BELIEVES THAT A WAR STARTED BY GOVERNMENTS MUST NECESSARILY END AS A WAR BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS, AND WANTS IT TO END AS SUCH, CAN REGARD AS "RIDICULOUS" AND "ABSURD" THE IDEA THAT THE SOCIALISTS OF ALL THE BELLIGERENT COUNTRIES SHOULD EXPRESS THEIR WISH THAT ALL THEIR "OWN" GOVERNMENTS SHOULD BE DEFEATED." (3)
Marxism-Leninism does not judge wars by the criterion of who attacked first, neither in just wars nor in unjust wars. In a war between an imperialist slaveholder and the oppressed nations, Marxism regards it as a war of aggression on behalf of the imperialist power and a just war in defense of the fatherland on behalf of the oppressed nations, irrespective of who attacked first, whose state boundaries are crossed, etc. For example, the repeated wars between the imperialist creation, the so-called state of "Israel", and the Arab countries and Palestinian people, are all wars of aggression by "Israel" and just wars of national liberation by the Arab people, regardless of who attacks first. While in a war between slave-holders, an "unjust imperialist war" as the Draft Program admits that the third world war would be, it is irrelevant who attacks first; it is a war of aggression and plunder, a war in defense of slavery, on both sides.
In order to create confusion, the Draft Program gives two "main blows". As quoted above, the Draft Program is for directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism "internationally". But it states that "within the workers' movement we must direct the main blow against the revisionists and the trade union bureaucrats. (p. 7) It is absolutely correct to oppose revisionism and opportunism, but that is not what the OL has in mind. Instead, the Draft Program reduces the question of fighting revisionism to a matter of fighting agents of a foreign power. And that despite the fact that Browderite revisionism arose historically in the U.S. as capitulation to the U.S. bourgeoisie and to this very day the present-day revisionist party is a protector of the U.S. bourgeoisie and a prettifier of U.S. imperialism. Thus the Draft Program states: "It (the CPUSA -- ed.) stands not only for reformism and compromise with U.S. imperialism, but even more significantly, it is an agent of Soviet social-imperialism, a fifth-column of social-fascism within the workers' movement. " (p. 6 -- underlining added) The two main blows are in fact only one main blow: internationally -- against the Soviet Union; domestically --against the agents of the Soviet Union. The Draft Program is simply pointing out the two ways in which it wants to mobilize the workers behind the U.S. imperialist war schemes: internationally -- in the U.S. armies of aggression; domestically -- behind the U. S, political police in a witch-hunt for foreign agents.
The question of striking a main blow "internationally" does, however, raise an important question of principle, namely, what are the international responsibilities of the American proletariat? This question is especially important since the U.S. is an aggressive superpower, a huge slave-holder which is, for all its decline, still the largest neo-colonial power in the world. The international responsibility of the American revolutionaries is precisely to overthrow the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and to support all genuine revolutionaries abroad. Either proletarian internationalism will remain an impotent gesture, some pious phrases to soothe guilty liberal consciences, or else it means building the revolutionary movement in the U.S. against "our own" oppressors, and on that basis participating in the international struggle to overthrow the entire world reaction. Lenin taught that "THERE IS ONE, AND ONLY ONE, KIND OF REAL INTERNATIONALISM, AND THAT IS -- WORKING WHOLE-HEARTEDLY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AND THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE IN ONE'SOWN COUNTRY. AND SUPPORTING (BY PROPAGANDA, SYMPATHY, AND MATERIAL AID) THISSTRUGGLE. THIS, AND ONLY THIS, LINE, IN EVERY COUNTRY WITHOUT EXCEPTION. " (4) The national and international tasks of the American proletariat are linked indissolubly, like the flesh to the bones, and cannot be separated into "two main blows". He who has no backbone and capitulates to the U.S. bourgeoisie "internationally" will present a sorry sight as a revolutionary "domestically".
The Draft Program's jingoist line of directing the "main blow" at the Soviet Union is not an accident or an unfortunate formulation. On the contrary, as the introduction by the editors of TheCall to the Draft Program states: "... the general line reflected in this Draft Program is the line that has over the years been leading the work of our Marxist-Leninist (read: neo-revisionist and social-chauvinist) trend." (p. 1) For some time, the OL has been trying to whip up an atmosphere of war hysteria against Soviet social-imperialism. The OL is "bold" and "Marxist" when it comes to exposing the crimes of the Soviet New Tsars, but glosses over like a liberal the crimes of U.S. imperialism. The OL has even taken upon itself the jingoist task of advising the U.S. imperialists to fight harder against the Soviet social-imperialists and has denounced the U.S. imperialists for "appeasement". The fact is that in order to deceive the masses and prepare for war, the U.S. big bourgeoisie is using the policy of imperialist pacificism, of frenzied but concealed war-mongering. It is using this policy not from choice, as the OL jingos would have us believe, but because of the necessity to pacify the masses, who have a fierce hatred of U.S. imperialism and a keen, bitter memory of the U.S. wars of aggression against the Indo-chinese peoples. The OL, with touching faith in the honesty of the U. S, government and its proclamations of "detente" and "peace", really believes that the government is "soft" on the Soviet Union. Under the guise of exposing the Soviet social-imperialists, the OL denounces this "appeasement" from the right, and quotes approvingly open war-mongers and fascists. The OL style of exposing the Soviet Union becomes less and less distinguishable every day from the ravings of the bourgeois jingoist press. The OL enthusiastically admits that this whole question of "appeasement" is one of how best to prepare for an unjust imperialist war. The May 2, 1977 issue of The Call carries the fourth in a series of commentaries on the Draft Program by OL's Organizing Committee, which states that "The appeasement policy, advocated by the leading circles of U.S. imperialism, is the way the U.S. imperialists have chosen to best contend with social-imperialism." As to what is behind the differences between open war-mongering and imperialist pacifism (wrongly called "appeasement" by the OL), The Call stated on Jan. 17, 1977, that "although sections of the U.S. ruling class differ with each other over how best to carry out the rivalry with the Soviet Union, they are all committed to intensified war preparations." Thus the OL shamelessly admits that its fight against "appeasement" is designed to help the U.S. ruling class find the best way to intensify war preparations and carry out imperialist rivalry with the Soviet Union, The OL's jingoist theory of "directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" is just the theoretical expression of OL's constant practical work in defense of the interests of U, S, imperialism.
The naive may be surprised that the OL combines rabid jingoism with a call in the Draft Program for revolutionary civil war. Doesn't the Draft Program state in black-and-white that "Our policy will be to turn this unjust imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war for the overthrow of U.S. imperialism"? (p. 6) Yes, it does. And if we were to go theirpious words and declarations, even Jimmy Carter is for "human rights" and a "world without nuclear weapons". Every war-mongering bourgeois is for "peace", even Hitler committed aggression in the name of "peace", and every chauvinist in the socialist ranks is for "internationalism" and "solidarity". Lenin denounced this repeatedly and pointedly, in statements like "ONLY LAZY PEOPLE DO NOT SWEAR BY INTERNATIONALISM THESE DAYS. EVEN THE CHAUVINIST DEFENCISTS, EVEN PLEKHANOV AND POTRESOV, EVEN KERENSKY, CALL THEMSELVES INTERNATIONALISTS. IT BECOMES THE DUTY OF THE PROLETARIAN PARTY ALL THE MORE URGENTLY, THEREFORE, TO CLEARLY, PRECISELY AND DEFINITELY COUNTERPOSE INTERNATIONALISM IN DEED TO INTERNATIONALISM IN WORD. " ( 5) Since we are not presently in an imperialist world war, and the OL believes that this war "is not necessarily imminent" (p. 6), it is easy to swear a few pious phrases on ceremonial occasions about one's great deeds... in the distant, far distant future. But, for today, the OL fights bitterly to make the American workers deliver the "main blow" against the Soviet Union, defend the U.S. imperialist fatherland, oppose "appeasement", go into an all-round war hysteria, and hunt out foreign agents. Marxism has always held that WAR IS THE CONTINUATION OF POLITICS BY OTHER, I.E., VIOLENT, MEANS. To tell what stand OL will take in the threatened world war, one should examine its political stand today. OL's and the Draft Program's jingoism and their concrete propaganda for chauvinism, their hysterical fear that U. S, imperialism is falling behind in the superpower arms race, that is what is real -- all the rest, and for that matter there really isn't that much to the rest, is just fancy verbiage, meaningless honeyed words to fool the unwary and inexperienced.
Section 3: THE DRAFT PROGRAM OPPOSES THE SECOND ANTI-COLONIAL WAR OF THE ANGOLAN PEOPLE AGAINST SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM
The OL, in capitulating to U.S. imperialism for the purpose of "fighting" the Soviet New Tsars, has in fact capitulated to the entire world system of imperialism. Once you have capitulated to the world system of imperialism, you become incapable of fighting consistently against any imperialism or reactionaries anywhere, and only capable of being a pawn in the inter-imperialist rivalries and secret diplomacy. Thus the OL, which screams and screams about directing the "main blow" at the Soviet Union, does not support the historic national liberation war waged by the Angolan people under the leadership of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) against the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA puppet regime.
The Draft Program expresses OL's treachery in this way: "The CP(ML) firmly supports the greatAfrican people in their struggle against racism, apartheid and the settler regimes in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Azania, " (p. 6) Thus the Draft Program pays lip service to the struggles against the settler regimes of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Azania, but is silent about the struggle in Angola. Angola's absence, in a list which includes the other armed struggles in southern Africa, stands out as a silent but powerful reminder of OL's betrayal of revolution.
But no one with the slightest democratic sentiment, with the slightest sympathy for the heroic African people, could cross their arms and turn away from the Angolan people! The tragedy of Angola shocked the world. A small people climaxed a centuries-long struggle against Portuguese colonialism with the successful 14-year long FIRST ANTI-COLONIAL WAR, only to have the Soviet New Tsars brutally intervene, split the unity of the Angolan people, pour in arms and puppet troops, massacre the Angolan people, and set up the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA government of national betrayal. A small people of six million were overwhelmed by a shower of modern weapons, tanks, missiles, jet airplanes, etc. U.S. imperialism, on the verge of complete expulsion from Angola, utilized the Soviet aggression in order to stay in Angola, The U.S. imperialists had the South African racist troops invade to fight UNITA on one front, while the Cubans were attacking UNITA on the other front. The Gulf Oil Co. helped finance the MPLA government and the Soviet war of aggression. And today the U.S. imperialists are so pleased with their continuing exploitation of Angola's resources that Andrew Young, Carter's UN ambassador, calls the Cuban troops a "stabilizing force". Yet the Angolan people never stopped fighting. Under the leadership of UNITA, they began the SECOND ANTI-COLONIAL WAR of the Angolan people, this time against Soviet neocolonialism. This war is the historic first people's war against Soviet neocolonialism in all Africa. The Angolan liberation fighters showed that, by completely basing oneself inside the country and standing for TOTAL INDEPENDENCE from both superpowers and all imperialism, the Angolan people could fight on and grasp their destiny in their own hands. The protracted armed struggle is going from one victory to another. The fraud of Cuban troop withdrawal was a miserable flop -- the only Cuban troops withdrawing being those who withdrew in boxes or who were wounded. The Angolan people will definitely win!
Angola is the path-finder for all Africa. Many lessons were written in the blood of the Angolan people. It has been shown, as Comrade Hoxha stressed in his REPORT TO THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, "THAT ANY ILLUSION OR VACILLATION, HOWEVER SLIGHT, IN THE STAND TOWARDS THE PRESENT-DAY SOVIET UNION IS FRAUGHT WITH CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES FORTHOSE POLITICAL FORCES AND MOVEMENTS THAT CONTINUE TOBELIEVE THE DEMAGOGY AND LIES OF MOSCOW." And the savage campaign waged by U.S. imperialism against the forces of liberation, the big campaign in the Western press against UNITA, the open collaboration between the two superpowers against the Angolan people, the maintenance of U.S. exploitation of Angola under the Soviet neo-colonial government, shows that, as Comrade Hoxha stresses, "THE COLLUSION AND RIVALRY BETWEEN TIIE SUPERPOWERS ARE THE TWO SIDES OF THE ONE CONTRADICTORY REALITY... " and "... ONE MUST NEVER RELY ON ONE IMPERIALISM TO FIGHT OR ESCAPE FROM THE OTHER. "
OL's shameful stand on Angola shows that it has indeed become a helpless pawn, a plaything in the hands of the secret imperialist diplomacy. The OL talks a lot about Angola in order to scare people with the Soviet threat -- OL even tries to scare the Latin Americans with the Soviet base in Angola -- but the OL remains silent on the fight for the genuine liberation of Angola as well as on the continuing U.S. imperialist exploitation of Angola. Thus OL's much vaunted "main blow" at the Soviet Union is exposed as being struck only when it is in the interests of U.S. imperialism and its war hysteria, in the interests of the defense of the U. S, imperialist empire from "theft" from the Soviet Union, and this "main blow" quickly evaporates when it is a case of supporting the genuine liberation of the peoples.
Section 4: THE DRAFT PROGRAM'S THEORY OF "THREE WORLDS" DENIES REVOLUTION AND APOLOGIZES FOR NEO-COLONIALISM
By capitulating to U.S. imperialism, the OL has capitulated to the entire world system of imperialism. This truth is seen in practice in the OL's failure to support the national liberation war in Angola led by UNITA against Soviet social-imperialism. And this shameful capitulation is raised to a "theory" in OL's Titoite version of the opportunist theory of "Three Worlds". This theory denies proletarian revolution in the U.S. under the guise that the American proletariat is part of the counter-revolutionary "first world" and must direct the "main blow" at the Soviet Union. This theory apologizes for neo-colonialism -- and in particular prettifies the U.S. neo-colonial empire -- and totally negates the great theory of new-democratic revolution by handing over the "third world" struggle to feudal landlords, the reactionary bourgeoisie and other neo-colonial puppets. This theory prettifies the reactionary "lesser" imperialist bourgeoisie of the "second world", urging them on to imperialist exploitation of Asia, Africa and Latin America under the hoax of "uniting with the third world". And this theory totally ignores and negates the great role of the socialist countries as bastions of world revolution and the leading role of the international communist movement. OL's theory of "Three Worlds" is a theory of all-round capitulation to the entire international reactionary bourgeoisie. In this section we will take up only certain aspects of its reactionary content with respect to the Draft Program and OL's commentaries on it.
First of all, it should be noted that terms such as "third world", "developing countries", "non-aligned world", etc. , are popular, unscientific terms that have achieved a relatively wide usage. It is not the terms in themselves that is the issue. Such terms can indicate certain secondary features of the world, but they hide the key questions of world politics, the major contradictions and the class forces in the world. And it is precisely to hide these contradictions and class forces that OL has elaborated its "Three Worlds" theory. In a centerfold article "Program Upholds and Defends 'Three Worlds' Concept" in its May 2nd issue, The Call points out that the Draft Program puts forth the theory of "Three Worlds" as a supposedly "great strategic concept", a "starting point in working out a revolutionary strategy for the defeat of imperialism and the two superpowers", and as the theory that "will guide our new party in answering the question, 'Who are the friends and who are the enemies of the world's people?' " Marxism-Leninism and class analysis are now allegedly out-dated by new developments in the world, and the theory of "three worlds" is taken by the Draft Program to be its guide to finding its friends and enemies. The article declares, after mentioning Lenin's classic work, Imperialism, theHighest Stage of Capitalism and trying unsuccessfully -- and naturally without any direct quotations -- to squeeze "three forces" from it, that: "Adapted to today's concrete conditions, which are different from those during Lenin's time, the theory of three worlds is solidly based on a dialectical materialist analysis. " Just like the modern revisionists Browder, Tito and Khrushchev before them, the OL leaders use any change in world politics, no matter how insignificant from the theoretical point of view, to introduce new opportunist theories, new revisions of Marxism.
It is Marxism-Leninism that has always given a clear answer to the fundamental question of principle of "Who are the friends and who are the enemies of the world's people?" Ever since the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 ushered in the era of world proletarian socialist revolution, Marxism-Leninism has held that the world has been fundamentally divided into two forces, two camps, into the forces of the world proletarian socialist revolution and the forces of the bourgeois world counter-revolution, In the March 10th issue of The Workers' Advocate, on pages 6-7, a number of quotations from Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha are given on the division of the world into "two major forces", "two camps", "East Wind and West Wind", "imperialism and Marxism!' are given, quotations from the time of great Lenin to the present. The forces of revolution, of socialism and freedom, are composed of the world proletarian movement, the socialist countries and the national liberation movement, and are led by the international communist movement. The forces of counter-revolution, of imperialism and slavery, are led by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. In holding that the world is fundamentally divided into two irreconcilable camps, Marxism-Leninism has always been able to give a correct analysis of the major contradictions in the world, an analysis that penetratesbeneath the secondary and non-essential features to get at the basic laws of the motion, development and change of world history. Marxism-Leninism teaches that there are four major contradictions in the present-day world: -- the contradiction between the oppressed nations on the one hand and imperialism and social- imperialism on the other; -- the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie in the capitalist and revisionist countries; -- the contradiction between imperialist and social-imperialist countries and among the imperialist countries;-- and the contradiction between socialist countries on the one hand and imperialism and social-imperialism on the other. In this way Marxism-Leninism has been an invincible guide to action, and has shown how the national democratic or national liberation movement has become an inseparable part of the world proletarian socialist revolution.
The OL, however, uses the plea of "new conditions" to attack the basic Marxist-Leninist principles. The OL does not begin its analysis from the real conditions in the world and the fundamental laws of motion, but from certain alleged "new" features. Thus OL no longer talks about the four major contradictions in the world, either in the two "unity calls" or in the Draft Program. And OL has denounced the Marxist-Leninist teachings on "two major forces" as a "trotskyist view", just as Khrushchev attacked the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania as "dogmatic", "Trotskyite" and "imperialist agents" for upholding these same teachings against modern Khrushchevite revisionism. In The Call article referred to two paragraphs above, the OL, clowning about as usual, parodies Marxism-Leninism and attacks it as trotskyite as follows: "Others (referring to Marxist-Leninists -- ed.) put forward the Trotskyist view that the only struggle in the world today is between the 'two worlds of labor and capital'. " (Here the OL, to cover its intellectual bankruptcy, resorts to its usual method of polemics -- lies, distortions and blackmail. No Marxist-Leninist ever, at any time, held that the division of the world into two forces meant that the only struggle in the world was between these two forces and that there was no such thing as, say, inter-imperialist wars and rivalry inside the enemy camp.) The Call's statement is really aimed at saying that the national liberation movement is not part of the world proletarian socialist revolution, of the "world of labor" and thus at opposing the teachings of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha on this question. Strangely enough, there was a time not so long ago when the OL itself swore allegiance to this "Trotskyist view" of the division of the world into two forces in order to hide its revisionism under a purely verbal allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. "The Statement of Political Unity of the Georgia Communist League (M-L) and the October League (M-L)", both in the May, 1972 form and the altered May, 1973, "reprint", states the following: "The fundamental contradiction which shapes this entire epoch is between the forces of imperialism and reaction and the forces of socialism and revolution. These two antagonistic forces are locked in the fiercest struggle. The forces of imperialism and reaction are on their death-bed and the forces of revolution and socialism are rising and growing stronger each day." The statement then goes on to give the "four main contradictions in the world today", as we have given them above, correctly finding no contradiction in talking about the two forces, the "fundamental contradiction which shapes this entire epoch", and about the "four main contradictions in the world today". Thus the OL slaps itself in the face and with its own words refutes the fairy-tale that the Marxist- Leninist theory of the division of the world into two camps, into "two worlds of labor and capital", is a "Trotskyist view".
Applied to Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Draft Program's theory of "Three Worlds" is an out-and-out apology for neo-colonialism and a defense of the U.S. neo-colonial empire. In this epoch, countries are grouped according to the social system prevailing in them; there are bourgeois-capitalist countries and socialist countries, and there is still feudalism and semi-feudalism, Among the formally politically independent countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, there are various types of countries, including socialist countries, newly-independent countries which have won their independence through protracted armed struggle and which have remained vigilant about imperialism, neo-colonies ruled by blood-stained fascist lackeys of imperialism, etc. The OL's theory of "Three Worlds" holds that "the movement of the entire third world was (is) objectively progressive". (6) It thus paints a beautiful dream fantasy of a world without neo-colonialism, without dependent countries, without imperialist lackeys, where all the formally independent countries, every single one of them, without exception, are anti-imperialist, opposed to war, opposed to the dictate of others and "objectively progressive". It denies that the reactionary bourgeoisie and the feudalists are in fact the base for imperialism in the "third world", and negates the vacillating character of the national bourgeoisie, while painting all sorts of big bourgeois as part of the national bourgeoisie. It thus paints the Latin American fascist oligarchies, the Shah of Iran, etc., in shining liberation, colors. It closes its eyes to the fact that after World War II, as the majority of "third world" countries became independent, colonialism did not vanish but was replaced by neo-colonialism or new-style colonialism. In fact, the word "neo-colonialism" does not even appear in either the Draft Program nor the two "unity statements". Thus the OL's theory of "Three Worlds" prettifies the vast U.S. neo-colonial empire and corrupts the consciousness of the American working class concerning U.S. imperialism. The OL's "Three Worlds" theory is exactly what U.S. imperialism needs to camouflage its defense of the U.S. neo-colonial empire from "theft" by the Soviet social-imperialists as simply "third world" countries defending their independence from Soviet domination.
Today Asia, Africa, and Latin America constitute a broad front of struggle against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and the other imperialist powers. Vast storms of revolution are sweeping Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Draft Program, following the theory of "Three Worlds", opposes these revolutionary storms and apologizes for neo-colonial suppression of these storms by identifying "third world" struggle as simply that of "countries", i. e. of the governments or state-machines of the formally independent countries. (7) The Draft Program states: "A powerful upsurge is taking place in the third world as these countries fight resolute battles against imperialism, colonialism and superpower hegemonism." (p. 5, underlining added) Imagine that! The fascist oligarchies in Latin America, the fascist Pinochet of Chile and the military dictators of Brazil, engaged in torture of the liberation fighters of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile and the Communist Party of Brazil, are allegedly fighting resolute battles (not just battles, but resolute battles at that) against imperialism and superpower hegemonism! Or would the OL be so bold to deny that Brazil and Chile, where Marxist-Leninist parties are leading the masses in struggle, are part of the powerful upsurge in the "third world". As a matter of fact, the Draft Program supports the U.S. neo-colonial regimes by preference. The Draft Program states: "The CP(ML) recognizes its special responsibility as the party of the proletariat within one of the imperialist superpowers to render direct aid and support to the third world countries and peoples, especially those dominated, threatened and bullied byU.S. imperialism." (p.6, emphasis added) The social-chauvinist party, as befits social-chauvinists living in the U.S., will "render direct aid and support" to countries dominated by U.S. imperialism, i. e. to the neo-colonial governments ruling on behalf of U.S. imperialism. It is amazing that the Draft Program is so open about this, but there it is in black-and-white. The Draft Program actually promises especially to support the governments of the neo-colonies, governments no different from those of Thieu's, Lon Nol's, and Ky's that were overthrown by the Indo-chinese people. Can a more fervent supporter of U.S. imperialism than the OL be imagined? The Draft Program goes on and states that "The CP (ML), while supporting the struggles of the second and third world against the two superpowers, never merges its own ideology with the ideology of capitalists or feudalists of those countries." (p.6) Thus the Draft Program clarifies, in case anyone missed it, that it gives its support to the "capitalists and feudalists of those countries."
In line with its apology for neo-colonialism, the Draft Program downplays the role of the national liberation struggles. Among on-going struggles the Draft Program only pledges explicit support to the struggles against old-style colonialism or settler states. The Draft Program thus talks about the struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Azania, Palestine, the struggles against racism, apartheid and Zionism, and also about "the growing independence movements in the countries dominated by the colonial rule of U.S. imperialism, particularly in Puerto Rico." (p. 6) The Draft Program is silent about the other revolutionary armed struggles raging in Asia, Africa and Latin America, such as the struggles in Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Spanish Sahara, Colombia, Brazil, India, Thailand, Malaya, the Philippines, etc. The OL, with its glorification of formal political independence, has raised the disdain for the national liberation movement to the level of a Khrushchevite theory. Thus Dan Burstein, editor The Call, has written in a major article on the theory of the "three worlds", that "although most of the third world countries have now won formal independence through brave armed struggle and dedication to the cause of liberation, today they all still face the task of winning their economic independence by combating the continued neo-colonial influence and domination of imperialism." (8) (Here the OL succeeds in using the term neo-colonial, but only to immediately take the heart out of it by restricting it to an economic question only. In that article, it is only with respect to Soviet neo-colonialism that Mr. Burstein is willing to concede that it also involves political domination.) This is a straight-forward Khrushchevite theory that separates politics and economics and liquidates the national liberation movement. The masses in the still economically-dependent "formally independent" countries are left to work hard for the profit of the ruling classes, develop the productive forces, and leave the feudal landlords and reactionary bourgeoisie in power. But this pipe-dream of peaceful imperialist exploitation of the broad masses in Asia, Africa and Latin America is being refuted by life itself, by the raging flames of the revolutionary wars for national and social revolution.
Finally, the Draft Program negates Chairman Mao Tsetung's great theory of new-democratic revolution. The nearest the Draft Program comes to even mentioning new-democratic or national democratic revolution is the following: "Our Party supports the struggles of the third world for independence, national liberation, new democracy, and socialism. " (p. 6) The Draft Program just jumbles together a list of fine words, "independence, national liberation, new democracy and socialism", much as it jumbles together endless other lists oi concrete demands. There is no explanation of the nature or significance of "new democracy" or new democratic revolution. There is not a word, not a single word, about new-democratic revolution as the general line for revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries. People's war is not mentioned at all, perhaps because many of the "resolute battles" of the neo-colonial countries that the Draft Program supports are being waged to suppress the people's wars of their inhabitants. The OL even goes so far as to attack the basic idea of new-democratic revolution as a "Trotskyist view". Earlier in this article, we noted that the OL's assertion about "the Trotskyist view that the only struggle in the world today is between the 'two worlds of labor and capital'" was really meant to imply that to divide the world into the world of labor and the world of capital, into the world proletarian socialist revolution and the bourgeois counter-revolution, is a trotskyite view that denies the role of the peasantry and of the national liberation movement. But it is a fundamental point of the theory of new-democratic revolution that these revolutions are new-democratic and not old-style bourgeois-democratic revolution, precisely because they are part of the world of labor, part of the world proletarian socialist revolution. Chairman Mao pointed out in his work "On New Democracy" that, "In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi- colony that is directed against imperialism, i. e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. " The Draft Program's opposition to new democratic revolution shows the sham nature of the OL's "support" for Mao Tsetung Thought as well as the reactionary nature of the theory of "Three Worlds".
Applying the theory of "Three Worlds" to the "second world", the Draft Program "support(s) the steps taken by these countries (of the second world--ed.) to unite among themselves and with the third world to resist superpower hegemonism." (p. 6)
What is the nature of the countries of the "second world"? The Draft Program admits that the countries of the second world exploit and oppress their own working class and toiling masses, as well as the countries of the third world...." (p. 6) Since the Draft Program is thus forced to admit that these "lesser imperialist countries" (p. 5) in fact engage in vicious exploitation of the masses at home and savage plunder of the "third world" abroad, well then, for what purpose would these countries unite? Obviously, to protect and intensify their vicious exploitation of the masses at home and savage plunder abroad. Comrade Lenin made a profound analysis of imperialism, which he developed in such classic works as Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. On the basis of this analysis, he analyzed the question of European unity and wrote the important work On the Slogan for a United States of Europe . (9) He proved that "From the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism -- i.e., the export of capital and the division of the world by the 'advanced' and 'civilised' colonial powers -- a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary." "A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of colonies." "Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty..." Lenin's penetrating analysis has been entirely confirmed by the reactionary nature of the present forms of collaboration among the Western European "second world countries", such as the Common Market and the "European Commission". For example, in the international arena the Common Market is a big neo-colonial power which endeavors to regain and maintain the old privileges of the former colonial powers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
What does it mean for the "second world" countries to unite with the "third world" countries? Here OL is of course talking about the unity of the countries, not the peoples. Is "unity between the second world and the third world" possible? It is, it exists today, and it is called -- imperialist exploitation. The Draft Program, by supporting the steps of the "second world" countries to unite with the "third world" countries, is supporting the plunder of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and even imploring the imperialists of the "second world" to intensify their efforts to exploit and rob the oppressed nations. Translated from the stale Draft Program to the lively world of active politics, the OL is shouting: "English imperialists! Strengthen your Commonwealth!" "Belgium! Stay in the Congo (Kinshasa), strengthen your positions, show an 'anti-hegemonist tendency' to your imperialist rivals!" "Holland! Remember your past glory in Indonesia! Do not give itup to the superpowers!" "German revanchists! Just because you lost World War n is no reason to allow the other imperialists to rob you of your place in the sun!" "Japanese imperialists! The dream of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is beckoning!" Oh yes, there are those who do not fail to say that the "second world" should give up its remnants of imperialist exploitation and unite on some humanitarian basis to help the "third world". Lenin ridiculed this as follows: "Renounce colonies, 'spheres of influence', and the export of capital? To think that it is possible means coming down to the level of some sniveling parson who every Sunday preaches to the rich on the lofty principles of Christianity and advises them to give the poor, well, if not millions, at least several hundred rubles yearly." (10)
Thus the Draft Program's analysis of the "second world" utterly negates the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the nature of imperialism with petty-bourgeois moralizing about the "lesser imperialist countries" giving up their naughty imperialist policies and lying down in peace together with the oppressed nations, the lamb and the wolf side-by-side. Having capitulated to the world-system of imperialism, the OL does not aim to change the world with its theory of "Three Worlds", but simply to put things in a good light by renaming the world. Inter-imperialist rivalry becomes "anti-hegemonist tendency". Imperialist exploitation of the oppressed nations becomes the "unity of the second world countries and the third world countries". The Draft Program's theory of "three worlds" is a theory of reconciliation with imperialism and capitulation to it, and will be indignantly rejected by all those who wish to wage a revolutionary struggle against imperialism and the reactionary bourgeoisie. (To be continued)
(1) Dan Burstein, editor of The Call, writing in Class Struggle, #6, p. 43
(2) The first "unity call" was the document "Marxist-Leninists Unite To Build the New Party", printed in the November 1975 issue of The Call, and the second was the July 1976 Declaration of the Organizing Committee entitled "Marxist-Leninists Unite!"
(3) Lenin's Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 315
(4) Lenin's Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 75
(5) Lenin's Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 74
(6) Class Struggle, #6, p. 47
(7) How the Draft Program uses the word "country" is crystal clear from statements like "While the countries of the second world exploit and oppress their own working class and toiling masses...."
(8) Class Struggle, #6, p. 45
(9) Lenin's Collected Works, vol. 21, pp. 339-343
(10) Lenin's Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 341 End.