WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS
Volume 9, Number 4
May 1, 1979 25¢
P.O. BOX 11942 CHICAGO, IL. 60611
[Front page:
No! To U.S. Imperialism's Nuclear Energy Program!;
HAIL MAY 1st--International Working Class Day!;
Carter's "Energy Policy": Plundering the Masses for the Profits of the Oil Billionaires]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Movement Against War Preparations............................... | 3 |
| Song Against Imperialist War........................................... | 3 |
| Militarist Film: The "Deer Hunter".................................. | 3 |
| Barbaric U.S. Prison System............................................ | 4 |
| Oppose Building Police Station in Afro-American Community in Seattle....................................................... | 4 |
| Fraud of "Windfall Profits" Tax........................................ | 5 |
| Deepening Energy Crisis.................................................. | 5 |
| Denver: Against Wage-Rate Cutting................................ | 6 |
| Teachers Struggle Against Lay-offs.................................. | 6 |
| Auto Workers Against Overtime...................................... | 6 |
| Teamsters Against Carter's Wage Controls....................... | 7 |
| Rubber Workers Against Wage Controls.......................... | 7 |
| Steel Capitalists Murder Worker....................................... | 7 |
| Rally of Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)............................................................. | 8 |
| Message of Party of Labor of Albania to Sixth Consultative Conference......................................... | 8 |
| CPC(M-L) in the Federal Elections.................................. | 12 |
| The Year of Stalin............................................................. | 10 |
| Meetings to Hail Imperialism and the Revolution........................................................................ | 10 |
| Does "RCP, USA" Oppose the Theory of "Three Worlds"?............................................................... | 10 |
| U.S. Neo-revisionism as American Expression of Chinese Revisionism - Part Two....................................... | 11 |
| China Welcomes Banks and Spy Stations........................ | 2 |
| Eritrea: On Guardian's Opportunism................................ | 12 |
No! To U.S. Imperialism's Nuclear Energy Program!
Carter's "Energy Policy": Plundering the Masses for the Profits of the Oil Billionaires
THERE IS NOTHING GOOD IN THE WARMONGERING U S CHINA ALLIANCE
CHINA WELCOMES U.S. IMPERIALIST BANKS AND SPY STATIONS
Protest Against Trident Launching Is Part of the Movement to Oppose War Preparations
Awards for "The Deer Hunter" Show That U.S. Imperialism Remains a Bloodstained Aggressor
10,000 Protest the Production of Nuclear Weapons
"IMPERIALIST WAR WILL END WITH THE END OF THE IMPERIALIST SYSTEM"
CANCEROUS GROWTH OF THE BARBARIC U.S. PRISON SYSTEM
Oppose the Building of a Police Station in the Afro-American Community in Seattle
Carter's "Windfall Profits" Tax is an Outrageous Fraud
Denver Sewing Factory:
Support the Just Stand of the Teachers Against the Hated Layoffs
CANADIAN AUTO WORKERS CONTINUE STRUGGLE AGAINST COMPULSORY OVERTIME
Teamsters Wage National Strike Against Carter's Wage Controls
Rubber Workers in Struggle Against Carter's Wage Controls
The Steel Capitalists Are Murdering the Workers in Pursuit of Maximum Profits
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (M-L)
Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile
Communist Party of Denmark (M-L)
Workers' Communist Party of France
Communist Party of Germany (M-L)
Communist Party of India (M-L)
Workers' and Peasants' Communist Party of Iran
Communist Party of Italy (M-L)
Communist Party of Portugal (Reconstructed)
Communist Party of Spain (M-L)
National Liberation Movement of Trinidad and Tobago
Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists
Bandera Roja Party of Venezuela
1979: THE YEAR OF STALIN
DOES THE "RCP, USA" OPPOSE THE THEORY OF "THREE WORLDS"?
Spirited Public Meetings to Hail Enver Hoxha's New Book "Imperialism and the Revolution"
From "Eritrea in Struggle"
More on Guardian's Opportunism
Marxist Leninist Party of Canada to Participate in Federal Election
It is a Program of Preparations for Nuclear War, of Neo-Colonial Enslavement, of Wild Profiteering and Criminal Poisoning of the People.
Since the recent nuclear breakdown and near catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, there has been a big upsurge in the mass movement against the reactionary U.S. nuclear energy program. Massive demonstrations of tens of thousands of people have taken place all across the U.S. In San Francisco 30,000 people protested the licensing of a nearby nuclear power plant. In New York City, 3,600 demanded the immediate shutdown of the Indian Point power plant. In Midland, Michigan, 5,000 people demonstrated at the site of a partially completed nuclear power plant. Other demonstrations have been held in more than 20 cities and towns.
The anti-nuclear movement is closely connected with the movement against the frenzied war preparations of U.S. imperialism. Along with the demonstrations against the nuclear power program, there have been massive protests against the production of nuclear weapons designed for mass slaughter in imperialist wars. In Groton, Connecticut, 3,000 people denounced the launching of the first Trident missile-launching submarine. A mass demonstration of about 10,000 people denounced the nuclear weapons plant at Rocky Flats, Colorado, and in a later protest 284 people were arrested. Other demonstrations against war preparations, against armaments production, against the visit of Teng Hsiao-ping and the official establishment of a warmongering U.S.-China alliance, etc., have been taking place for some time all across the country.
The monopoly capitalist moneybags and their political flunkeys, from Carter and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on down, are frantically trying to confuse, divert and liquidate the burning indignation of the masses of people to the U.S. nuclear program. They are calling for ''new independent investigations", "stricter safety checks" and other such frauds. But no amount of sweet talk of "concern" by the rich and their cynical political lap dogs can hide the true nature of the U.S. monopoly capitalist nuclear program. It is a program of frenzied preparations for a nuclear genocide, for a nuclear third world war. It is a program of monopolizing the world's energy resources in order to enslave the world in neo-colonial chains. It is a program that is lining the pockets of the energy monopolies. And it is a program of cancer and sickness, a program of radioactive poisoning of the masses. The only answer of the people can be mass revolutionary struggle against the criminal monopoly capitalist class and its- nuclear energy program.
A PROGRAM OF WAR PREPARATIONS AND NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL
Right from the end of World War H, with the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. imperialists have developed the nuclear energy program as part of their frenzied war preparations. The U.S. imperialists dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, an already defeated country, in order to intimidate the then-socialist Soviet Union, the shining bastion of world revolution, and to stop the powerful socialist and antifascist upsurge resulting from the defeat of German, Japanese and Italian fascism in World War II. The U.S. nuclear reactors of the 40's and 50's were used for the production of plutonium for atomic bombs, mad research was done to develop the hydrogen bomb, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus was launched... and all this was covered over by sweet talk about the "peaceful uses" of atomic energy. This nuclear program was part of U.S. imperialism's role as the world policeman and fascist hangman, the prop of fascist dictatorships all over the world, part of the plan of U.S. imperialism to drown socialism and the national liberation movement in blood. The then- socialist Soviet Union was forced to develop nuclear weapons in self-defense. During the 1960's the U.S. imperialists stepped up their nuclear program. Meanwhile Khrushchov had betrayed the Soviet workers and peasants, denounced Stalin, reestablished capitalism in the Soviet Union... and as part of this, converted the defensive and scientific Soviet nuclear program into an aggressive, warmongering one patterned on the U.S. model. Together, the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists stockpiled tremendous numbers of nuclear missiles and bombs, destroying even the slightest pretext that these weapons were for defense. Today the further fruits of the nuclear energy research and development programs can be seen in a spate of new devilish weapons -- the neutron bomb that "only" kills people, the "clean" bomb that "only" levels cities, the MIRV nuclear missiles, the huge Trident nuclear missile-launching submarine, etc.
Along with the direct research and development of nuclear military weapons, the U.S. imperialists are also preparing for war through the nuclear power plants for electric generation. The monopoly capitalists are developing and stockpiling energy sources for use in war. Furthermore, the imperialists are seeking a stable source of energy at a time when coal and oil have proved vulnerable to the just revolutionary struggles of the world's people and of the American proletariat. The glorious democratic revolution in Iran and massive strike movement of the coal miners including the big coal miners' strike of more than three months in 1977-78 have struck deep fear in the hearts of the U.S. imperialist warmongers.
EXPORTING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN ORDER TO MONOPOLIZE WORLD ENERGY PRODUCTION AND TO TIGHTEN NEO-COLONIAL SLAVERY
U.S. monopoly corporations led by General Electric and Westinghouse have already built or are constructing or have contracts to build nuclear power plants in more than 15 countries around the world including: Brazil, West Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Yugoslavia and others. Through this method of exporting a new, extremely costly form of technology -- nuclear power plants -- the U.S. monopoly capitalist dictators have been able to tighten their control over the electric power generating capabilities of many countries. Through control of this vital economic lifeline of a country, the U.S. neo-colonialists are able to strengthen their domination of their vast world empire.
When a country, especially a less developed one, switches over to nuclear power for electric power generation, it finds itself in the close grip of the U.S. nuclear monopoly. For example, take the question of fuel supply. Foreign utilities may purchase uranium ore from anyone on the world market (a world uranium market dominated by U.S. monopolies), but they must have this uranium ore "enriched" at uranium diffusion plants. And the only such plants in the world are controlled by either the U.S. imperialists or the Soviet social-imperialists. In the world today, the two superpowers are the only source of "enriched uranium". Carter opposes the development and sale of the dangerous "breeder reactors" -- reactors which produce plutonium fuel in the course of their own operation -- not out of concern for people's safety, but simply to preserve the American nuclear fuel monopoly.
Furthermore, although the foreign utility companies purchase the nuclear power plants from the U.S., they generally do not have any control over the technology. In general the U.S. monopolies, such as General Electric and Westinghouse, own the core of the nuclear reactor and lease it to the foreign utility. Thus the U.S. monopolies can control the servicing, repair, and refueling of the reactors for their entire life.
As well, the huge investments in the nuclear plants are used to tie the various countries to U.S. imperialism just as any other imperialist "investment" in the country does. The nuclear power plants cost between $750 million to $1.5 billion, which means huge profits for the U.S. monopoly capitalists selling the plants and long-term debts for the purchasing countries. And the debts are financed through such things as loans by the Export-Import Bank at high interest rates. This further impoverishes the "lucky" recipient of the nuclear power plant. This neo-colonial process is commonly known as "U.S. foreign aid" and "credits".
WILD PROFITEERING BY THE ENERGY BILLIONAIRES
The reckless pace of nuclear power construction, which has accelerated fantastically in the last five to ten years, has provided unbelievable profits to the big monopolies. Taken as a whole, in dollars, the construction of the nuclear plants across the country is one of the largest construction schemes ever developed in the U.S. The building of these plants has provided a veritable "atomic explosion" of profits for the finance capitalists, the construction industry and the manufacturing industry. And the profits are especially high as the construction work is often flimsy, not up to specifications (as revealed in the Three Mile Island fiasco and by the many unscheduled shutdowns and overhauls needed by the nuclear power plants) and cost overruns can generally be automatically passed on to the government and through utility bills. This bonanza, this stream of gold for the capitalists, is all extracted from the working masses through automatic rate increases in the skyrocketing utility bills and through ever-increasing taxes. It is one of the causes of the high cost of living. This clearly exposes the lies of the militarists and the energy monopolies about nuclear power as a cheap source of energy.
And these profits go to the very biggest monopolies. The nuclear energy industry is controlled by such U.S.
corporate giants as: Exxon Nuclear, General Electric, Westinghouse, Kerr-McGee, General Atomic, Union Carbide, Combustion Engineering, Bechtel, Babcock- Wilcox and United Nuclear. These giants control the uranium holdings, the mining and milling of uranium ore and the construction and maintenance of nuclear power pi ants 0 About 45% of U.S. uranium reserves are controlled by the U.S. oil billionaires with three U.S. oil monopolies (Exxon, Kerr-McGee and Continental Oil) controlling the mining and milling of uranium ore. Nuclear fuel rod fabrication is controlled by General Electric, Westinghouse, Babcock-Wilcox and Combustion Engineering.
RADIATION FROM THE NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAM IS POISONING THE PEOPLE
The working masses are not only being bled white to pay for the reactionary nuclear energy program. They are also being poisoned through radiation. During the entire nuclear energy program, the capitalists have failed to solve the basic questions of safe operation. Yet they have embarked on an ever-more frenzied expansion of the nuclear program. They are not only building more and more nuclear power plants, but increasing the size of the reactors and employing the most dangerous techniques. The amount of electricity generated by nuclear power multiplied by nine times between 1970 and 1976 (and about 48 times between 1965 and 1976). In terms of percentages, in 1965 nuclear power provided less than 0.5% of American electrical power, in 1970 approximately 1.7%, and by 1977 zoomed to about 13%c During this reckless development, the various safety problems have not only not been solved, but they are being aggravated to the extreme. While the nuclear power plants are now producing ever-increasing amounts of deadly radioactive wastes, there is still no known method for the disposal or even the effective long-term storage of these wastes. As well, more than 100 uranium miners have died from cancer induced by radon gas. Whole families who lived in towns downwind of the open air atomic bomb tests of the 1950's have been decimated by cancers such as leukemia. Breakdowns and unexpected malfunctions are common month after month in nuclear power plants. The profit-seeking capitalist billionaires operate under the law of the jungle. They follow the theory of "show me your injury right now, today" and refuse to deal with the long-term problems of human exposure to radiation, which turn up as leukemia or other cancers decades later. The nuclear power profiteers deny any connection with or responsibility for these long-term "accidents" and claim that the effects of radiation poisoning can come from "any number of causes".
Thus the U.S. nuclear power program is a dangerous threat to the health of the people. The reason for this does not lie in the inherent nature of nuclear energy in and of itself. Mankind will eventually harness nuclear energy, just as it now uses fire, natural gas, oil, etc. Rather the failure of the monopoly capitalists to develop the necessary technology and take the requisite safety measures in the nuclear power program only further exposes the basic contradictions in capitalist society -- between the social character of the large-scale means of production and the system of private appropriation of the product, between labor and capital. It is world imperialism and the big capitalist slave drivers who have developed nuclear energy for weapons of mass slaughter and who are recklessly expanding nuclear plants and poisoning, the people. Thus this is still another proof that capitalism has lost all reason to exist, that its existence is incompatible with the further development of mankind's economic forces. This shows that in fighting against the U.S. nuclear power program, the goal in the final analysis is the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism.
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE ENERGY BILLIONAIRES
The U.S. government and the state apparatus has shown itself to be nothing but a frontman for the American oil kings and giant corporations and nothing but a machine for waging war on the world's people. It is the government that has pushed the nuclear energy program. Between 1970 and 1978 the federal government directly financed $6 billion for the research and development of the nuclear power program (not including the expenditures for nuclear weapons and military research). The two governmental bodies given the responsibility to "regulate", "license" and "guarantee the safety" of the nuclear power industry have been the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) of 1946-74 and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of 1974 to the present. The history of these two bodies has been that of the fox guarding the hen house. Both government commissions have been revolving doors for the U.S. imperialist generals and the top executives of the giant capitalist energy corporations. Together these "neutral" army generals, oil company vice- presidents, CIA directors and nuclear power plant builders have been "regulating" the nuclear power program, i. e. ensuring the maximum of war preparations, the maximum in profits and the maximum disregard of the safety of the masses. In 1974 it was the infamous A EC which commissioned the notorious Rasmussen Reactor Safety Study which solemnly reassured the people that the chances of being hurt in an accident from a nuclear power plant were equal to being hit by a meteor falling from the sky.
This domination and utilization of the "regulatory commissions" by the big capitalist executives and the Pentagon generals is not something peculiar to the field of nuclear power, ?but is another example that the fake "American democracy" is nothing but a fraud, nothing but a cynical dictatorship of the rich moneybags and the fascist militarists over all spheres of life. Some people and the government itself are suggesting that the solution to the problems of the nuclear power program is to improve the composition and activity of the "regulatory" commissions. They are suggesting that there can be war preparations without Pentagon generals and militarists, capitalism without energy billionaires. No, the real solution is the development of mass revolutionary struggle, the development of the activity of the masses. It is the recent demonstrations that have forced temporary shutdowns and promises of improvements in some of the most dangerous nuclear plants, although the NRC knew of the dangers long ago. And it is only the socialist revolution that will smash the Pentagon warmongers and the monopoly capitalist class and properly develop and regulate nuclear energy.
Thus the nuclear power program is a reactionary attack on the people. It is a program of frenzied nuclear weapons production, a program to tighten up the neo-colonial enslavement of the vast U.S. world empire, a program of wild profiteering, and a program of poisoning the people. The masses are right to fight against nuclear poisoning and nuclear weapons. This struggle is part and parcel of the whole movement against the aggressive war preparations of the U.S. monopoly capitalist dictators.
DOWN WITH THE U.S. IMPERIALIST NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAM!
DOWN WITH ALL U.S. IMPERIALIST WAR PREPARATIONS!
International Working Class Day!
May 1st is the great day of celebration of the international struggle for the emancipation of the working class. For over 130 years the working class has united under the revolutionary banner of Comrade Marx: "Workers of All Countries, Unite!" May 1st is the day when this banner is raised high in grand demonstrations and rallies in every country. It is the day when the workers throughout the world jubilantly celebrate their past victories and get ready for future class battles.
The working class is the greatest revolutionary class. It is its destiny to completely destroy the forces of exploitation and world reaction which are today led by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social- imperialism. It is its historic mission to usher in socialism and to end all exploitation of man by man. The working class has its own revolutionary theory in the scientific teachings of comrades Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The working class is building its revolutionary leadership in the Marxist- Leninist parties and organizations of each country. The working class has already seized power and is building genuine democracy and socialism in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, the bastion of world revolution and the socialist inspiration of the international workers. With such a revolutionary theory, with such a revolutionary leadership, and with such a reliable base area as Socialist Albania, the working class has marched onto the stage of history today as the leader of the world revolutionary process. The working class stands at the center of our modern epoch as the gravedigger of capitalism and the hope of the future.
The current economic crisis has shown again the utter insanity of the capitalist system. It has lost any reason for existence. Millions of workers are being forced into ever more intense overwork so that the capitalists can throw millions more into the streets, into the ranks of the unemployed. An energy crisis is gripping the U.S. while the U.S. and world markets are overflowing with oil. Food prices at the supermarkets are skyrocketing while small farmers are being ruined en masse by the low prices of raw agricultural goods. Millions exist on the very edge of subsistence while commodities can't be sold for lack of a buyer. And this is not an accident, an oversight, but the inevitable result of the capitalist system of production for profit; an inevitable result of the contradiction between modern, large-scale socialized production and the archaic, outdated system of private appropriation by a handful of moneybags.
The capitalists have no solution for the crisis. All they can do is to strive to maintain their profits by squeezing the masses even harder. They live by the law of the jungle, grabbing whatever they can at the expense of the broad masses. They are striving to shift the burden of the crisis onto the workers, the poor and ruined masses of town and country, the oppressed nationalities at home and the oppressed masses abroad. Carter has called for a "fight against inflation". But what does he do against this capitalist disease that is impoverishing the masses? He organizes wage controls to bring an even greater cut in the wages of the entire working population, while at the same time launching productivity drives to further increase the overwork of the working class. Carter has called for "equality of sacrifice". But what is the nature of this equal sacrifice? Its nature is shown in the record $202.1 billion corporate profits of the capitalist moneybags in 1978, while the working class and oppressed masses are suffering under double digit inflation and drastic cuts in their real wages and standard of living. Carter has also called for "human rights" and "peace". But U.S. imperialism is propping up reactionary regimes, is attempting to put down national liberation struggles and proletarian revolutions, and is extending its tentacles ever farther to enslave the people of the world. Carter is stepping up military spending, reintroducing the draft, frenziedly building nuclear power plants to the detriment of the safety of the people, stepping up production of new and more advanced weapons of mass destruction, and strengthening a warmongering alliance with the Chinese revisionists. This is preparation for inter-imperialist war with the Soviet social-imperialists, but it is being carried out under £he hypocritical banner of a fight for "human rights" and world "peace". And so from the White House, from the halls of Congress, from the government at all levels there is this constant clamor that they will bring some reforms, some concessions to the masses, some "fight against inflation", some "human rights", some "democracy", some "peace". Today there is talk, yesterday there was talk and tomorrow there will be talk again. But the capitalists have no solutions to the crises. Capitalism has lost any reason for existence. And so there is talk of reforms, promises of concessions, while the masses are increasingly crushed for the profits of the capitalist moneybags. The continued rule of the monopoly capitalists can only mean starvation, fascism and war.
It is the working class that has the solution to the crises. And this solution is the organizing of the proletarian revolution to put to death the decadent capitalist System and to build a bright future of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. Already today the workers are throwing themselves into struggle, waging ever more intensive mass strikes, defying Carter's wage controls, resisting the violent attacks against them by the capitalist government. It is the Workers' movement which is inspiring the other revolutionary movements and is the center of strength for the other struggles. The Afro-American people too are militantly resisting the racial discrimination and terror organized by the rich moneybags and their government. A movement is now emerging against the imperialist militarization and war preparations, against the U.S. -China warmongering alliance, against the stepped up building of Trident submarines and other modern weapons of imperialist aggression and war. Broad discontent and mass actions are growing among many sections of the people, among the Mexican-Americans, the Puerto Ricans, the Native Americans, the rural workers, small farmers, youth and students. This discontent and these growing mass struggles are all signs of the general revolutionary ferment that is sweeping American life. They are the beginnings of the preparations for even greater class battles in the future.
And at the center of this revolutionary process is the struggle to build the Marxist-Leninist Party, the conscious leader and organizer of the working class. Today a great movement has unfolded against social- chauvinism and to build the Marxist-Leninist Party. Led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, this great movement is carrying through the Struggle begun with the founding of the single national Marxist-Leninist center, the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), in May 1969. But for the last decade a section of alleged Marxist-Leninists has disrupted every attempt to unite the Marxist-Leninists into the single vanguard Party of the proletariat. Today this neo-revisionist trend has gone over to an open alliance with the capitalist moneybags. They have openly revealed themselves as social-chauvinists, who are calling for even greater and more. frenzied preparations for imperialist war. They are calling on the American workers to unite behind the U.S. imperialist war chariot to strike the "main blow" at the foreign threat. They are advocates of the reactionary "three worlds" theory, the anti-Marxist theory that justifies the warmongering U.S.-China alliance. They have openly come out against the socialist homeland of Albania and are slinging the most disgusting anti-communist mud at the Party of Labor of Albania and its great leader Comrade Enver Hoxha. The working class cannot tolerate this social-chauvinist alliance with the rich. The building of the Marxist- Leninist Party must advance. But it is advancing today only without the social-chauvinists and against the social-chauvinists.
May 1st, 1979 finds the working class on the barricades of struggle. The building of the Marxist-Leninist Party is advancing through the movement against social-chauvinism. Mass revolutionary struggle against starvation, fascism and war is the order of the day. Comrade workers arise, our destiny awaits. Socialist revolution is our historic mission.
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
DEFEND SOCIALIST ALBANIA, BASTION OF SOCIALISM AND WORLD REVOLUTION!
WAGE MASS REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AGAINST STARVATION, FASCISM AND WAR!
DEFY CARTER'S WAGE CONTROLS!
OPPOSE THE AGGRESSIVE U.S.-CHINA ALLIANCE AND ALL IMPERIALIST WAR PREPARATIONS!
BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY WITHOUT THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS AND AGAINST THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS!
SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IS THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE PROLETARIAT!
It was two years ago that Carter declared "the moral equivalent of war" to realize his energy program. And now, in his "Address on National Energy Policy" on April 5, Carter announced the realization of the centerpiece of his energy program: the lifting of crude oil price controls, jacking up domestic crude oil prices over 77% by 1982. The plunder of the masses by the oil monopolies under Carter's program is taking on astronomical proportions. Energy Secretary Schlesinger has projected an over 30% increase in gasoline prices (up to over a dollar a gallon for regular) within the year. Carter's decontrol of domestic oil prices alone, besides countless other energy price and tax increases, will cost the masses over $17 billion by the end of 1981. Thus, while Mr. "Human Rights" Carter is working feverishly to cut the workers' wages, to impose his 7%'wage guidelines on the workers to suppress their struggles to keep pace with the soaring cost of living, at the same time, he is granting unprecedented price increases to the Rockefellers and the other oil billionaires. Carter's "energy policy" is the program of the big bourgeoisie to throttle the masses with soaring prices; to make the people pay for the economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist system.
AN ORGY OF OIL PRICE HIKES UNDER THE TATTERED HOAX OF "OIL SHORTAGE"
Once again the price gouging of the oil monopolies is being stepped up under the tattered hoax of an "oil shortage". In particular, the heroic Iranian oil workers, who stopped production in the Iranian oil fields in the course of the victorious struggle of the Iranian people to overthrow the fascist Shah and U.S. imperialism, are being blamed for an "oil shortage" and the soaring prices. The bourgeois commentators have even labelled Carter's recent lifting of oil price controls as his "Iranian response plan".
It is true enough that U.S. imperialism, the oil monopolies included, was shaken badly along with the entire capitalist world by the glorious uprising of the Iranian working class and people. It hurt their super-profits realized through the unbridled exploitation of the Iranian people and the plunder of their oil. It is also a fact that in response to the Iranian revolution, to make up for its losses there, the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie and the multinational oil corporations are stepping up their plunder of the peoples, including the American people. Nevertheless, that the oil price increases stem from an actual shortage of oil in the U.S. is a patent fraud, a hoax which has been exposed by the capitalist politicians themselves.
At the height of the revolt of the Iranian people last winter the bourgeois media carried hysterical headlines warning of impending gasoline rationing plans to deal with an alleged "oil shortage". Energy Secretary Schlesinger claimed that the cut off of Iranian oil had created a shortage of some one million barrels a day which could only be dealt with by drastic conservation measures. But, in fact, more oil than ever was being imported into the U.S. In March, Schlesinger's own deputy secretary, John F. O'Leary, made a statement of "clarification" that there was actually no oil shortage whatsoever and the oil companies were simply "restraining deliveries, causing some dislocation to consumers". Furthermore, a congressional subcommittee reprinted a report of the International Energy Agency that oil shipments to U.S. ports had actually increased from 8.4 million barrels a day in December to 9.97 million barrels a day in February, an increase of over one and a half million barrels a day. It was also reported that back in November the CIA had requested the reactionary governments of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other countries to increase oil production in order to cope with the danger of any shortage created by the intensifying crisis in Iran and that these governments had complied by boosting production by as much as 25%. More than enough oil was produced to make up for the loss in Iranian production.
As one Department of Energy official put it, Schlesinger "saw Iran as an unexpected opportunity to effect policy changes. It was a blessing in disguise -- in policy terms, a splendid opportunity". The merciless monopoly capitalist exploiters, who think nothing of playing with the lives of millions of working people, had once again turned on, and as rapidly turned off, an "oil shortage" fraud to plunder the masses with soaring prices.
CARTER'S POLICY OF SOARING PRICES AND FABULOUS PROFITS FOR THE OIL MONOPOLIES UNDER THE SIGNBOARD OF "INCREASED PRODUCTION" AND "CONSERVATION"
By the time he made his "Energy Address" Carter did not even raise the specter of an "oil shortage" which had already become too badly exposed and a dead letter. Instead he was even more cynical. He pointed to the near nuclear disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility as "proof" that "the energy crisis is real", that "time is running out" and therefore people must pay through the nose for skyrocketing energy costs.
Skyrocketing energy costs is the centerpiece of Carter's energy plans and is the principal "solution" of the monopoly capitalists to the energy crisis. According to Carter "we must produce more. We must conserve more" and "the most effective action we can take to encourage both conservation and production" is to decontrol oil prices and jack up energy costs sky / high. But this pack of lies that higher prices have anything to do with either increasing production or co- serving oil is a monstrous fraud.
Allegedly, the oil monopolies require higher price in order to realize the profits necessary for them to be able to increase U.S. oil production and limit the rapid increase in oil imports. Or, in other words, without gouging the masses with ever greater price hikes, the oil billionaires will not find it worth their while to produce oil and terrible consequences will be the result. This is simply a fabulous swindle. Price hikes mean increased profits for the oil monopolies and nothing else. Carter is raising hysteria about the situation whereby over the last decade the percentage of U.S. oil consumption stemming from imports has continued to rise from a small fraction to approximately half of total consumption. However, this situation has not been created nor is it determined by the price levels and profit margins realized by the oil monopolies as it is claimed. This is confirmed by to fact that the rapid increases in imports over the past decade have gone hand in hand with unprecedented domestic oil and natural gas price hikes and record billions of dollars of profits for the oil monopolies. For instance, following the near doubling of domestic energy prices and energy monopoly profits after be 1973-74 "oil shortage", oil and natural gas production did not rise also but began to decline even more sharply than before. And the phased lifting of nature gas price controls following the disastrous natural gas "shortage" fraud of the winter of 1977 has not prevented a further decline in the exploitation of natural gas reserves either. The truth of the matter is that the curtailment of domestic production and-he increase in imports is the result of the oil monopolists' drive to realize maximum profits through the plunder and exploitation of the working masses both in the U.S. and abroad. The policy of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie is to stockpile domestic energy reserves while holding the people to ransom will a series of "shortages" in order to bleed them wife. The oil corporations and the state are stepping up oil imports to stockpile for war and control world markets. Carter's plans to lift oil price controls will not change this imperialist policy in the least but will serve it down the line.
Besides price hikes, Carter has proposed a series of other measures such as the lifting of various pollution standards and environmental regulations, the mandatory replacement of oil with natural gas in electrical generators (which will reverse previous measures in the opposite direction during the so-called "natural gas shortage") ad other "incentives" to "stimulate" the oil monopolies in their unpleasant business of raking in more billions of dollars in profits.
A "CONSERVATION POLCY" TO GORGE THE OIL MONOPOLISTS WITH MAXIMUM PROFITS
Carter's plan for higher energy prices to "encourage conservation" is a most vicious attack on the working people. Tb U.S. monopoly capitalist class is the most wasteful class that there is. It has laid waste to entire nations, ravaged the natural resources at home and abroad and polluted the entire globe in its pursuit of maximum profits. At the same time the American working class and people, who suffer from savage capitalist exploitation, terrible indebtedness, mass unemployment, and can no longer make ends meet in the face of a present 15% rate of inflation and Carter's 7% wage guidelines, arc being forced to pay through the nose for energy allegedly to make them abandon their "wasteful habits". What a fraud! Carter's request, for instance, that employers start charging their employees for parking space in order to coerce the workers to "walk to work" and Mrs. Carter's suggestion (these are the same Carters who regularly travel by private jet or helicopter) that the people "try walking" are a real outrage. The working masses require gasoline, cooking and heating fuel, electricity, etc., to live, and price increases can't change that fact. Energy Secretary Schlesinger himself admits that higher prices will not result in any significant conservation of fuel. Carter's "conservation policy" is a policy of fleecing the masses to serve the insatiable appetites of Exxon, Texaco, Gulf, Mobil, Shell, etc., to gorge themselves with the maximum rate of profit.
AN ENERGY POLICY TO MAKE THE PEOPLE PAY FOR THE ENERGY CRISIS AND WAR PREPARATIONS OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
Carter's policy is to make the people pay for the severe difficulties which face U.S. imperialism on the energy front. However this is not a crisis resulting from an actual shortage of energy resources in that the U.S. has more than ample reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectric and other energy resources. It is an energy crisis stemming from the decay and parasitic nature of monopoly capitalism and U.S. imperialism's aggressive, warmongering drive for world domination.
Speaking of the "upheaval in Iran" and other events in the Middle East in recent years, Carter pointed out:
"These shocks have sent us stern warnings about energy, but our nation has not yet responded to these warnings. Our national strength is dangerously dependent on a thin line of oil tankers stretching halfway around the earth, originating in the Middle East, and around the Persian Gulf -- one of the most unstable regions in the world."
This statement by the chieftain of U.S. imperialism approaches the essence of the imperialist bourgeoisie's energy crisis.
Since WWII, the U.S. has evolved from the principal oil exporting country to the world's largest importer of oil today. The U.S. oil corporations have enormously extended their operations in the Middle East, in Latin America, Canada, Africa and Asia, areas where production costs are lowest and profits highest. The gigantic multinationals, Exxon, Mobil, etc., have also seized monopoly positions in the vast markets of Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Fully one- half of the revenues of these largest U.S. imperialist oil corporations are brought in from overseas. This control of international oil resources, markets, etc., plays an important part in U.S. imperialism's world empire.
But more and more, U.S. imperialism's system of savage plunder and exploitation of the people at home and abroad is in the throes of powerful "shocks" and crisis. The sharp conflicts among the capitalist states, particularly between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, but also between the U.S. and the imperialists of Europe, Japan and revisionist China, for conquest of economic territory, spheres of investment, markets and sources of raw materials, are being aggravated to the extreme. The inter-imperialist scramble for the seizure of the oil resources of the Middle East is particularly sharp. The deep economic crisis gripping the capitalist world since 1974 has created a glut on the world markets and the U.S. monopolies have dealt with this situation by capping wells at home and rapidly stepping up imports in order to maintain their super-profits from the control of world oil.
Besides the inter-imperialist contradictions, the biggest blows being delivered to U.S. imperialism are from the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and oppressed peoples, hi the Middle East the Palestinian and other Arab people continue their struggle against imperialism and social-imperialism and its terrorist gendarme, Israeli Zionism. And the heroic working class and people of Iran have risen up and driven out the fascist Shah, the bloodstained defender of U.S. imperialist plunder of Iran and its great oil wealth. It is these "shocks" in particular which have sent the U.S. imperialists "stern warnings about energy".
Thus in the midst of a country that is literally overflowing with oil and other energy resources, the imperialists' predatory, militarist and aggressive policy of plunder has been caught up in its own contradictions,- resulting in a profound energy crisis for the big bourgeoisie. The record trade deficits in recent years, inflated with the ballooning outflow of tens of billions of dollars to pay for oil imports, further aggravates the monetary, financial and economic crisis gripping the U.S. monopoly capitalist system. The mass importation of oil has lead to the situation where the U.S. warmongers lack self-sufficiency for waging war. And the lucrative profits from the overseas operations of the oil corporations are growing increasingly "unstable".
Nevertheless, imperialism would not be imperialism if it did not strive to secure maximum profits from the exploitation and ruin of the masses at home; from the enslavement and robbery of the oppressed nations abroad; and through militarization and war. - Thus, Carter's only "solution" to the energy crisis is, on the one hand, to arm the reactionary governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on, to the teeth to protect the U.S. multinationals' super-profits and to in every way step up U.S. intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. And, on the other hand, to squeeze the American working class and people to the wall, to make the people pay for the dollar outflows, the securing of maximum profits for the oil billionaires, and the stockpiling of oil and the development of energy resources such as dangerous nuclear energy programs for waging aggressive war. Such is the nature of Carter's energy policy.
THE WORKING CLASS IS RISING IN STRUGGLE AGAINST THE SOARING COST OF LIVING AND THE CAPITALIST OFFENSIVE
Carter's "National Energy Policy" to raise energy costs sky-high is another anti-working class outrage of his allegedly "pro-labor" administration. It is another reactionary measure of the capitalist offensive to shift the burden of the economic and all-round crisis of monopoly capitalism onto the backs of the working people through soaring prices, fascist wage controls and other strike breaking measures, mass unemployment, man-eating productivity drives, etc. In response, the working class is stirring in struggle, intensifying its strike movement against the soaring cost of living, in defiance of Carter's 7% wage guidelines and resisting the all-sided attacks of monopoly capital. The outrageous plunder of the masses by the oil billionaires; robbery on an unprecedented scale which is being enforced by Carter's "human rights regime, can only further arouse the working class and people to rise in mass revolutionary struggle against the bloodsucking monopolies and their state power. It is only the revolutionary struggle of the working class which can make the rich bear the burden of the economic crisis and which can sabotage the warmongers' plans for war. And it is this struggle which will overthrow the man-eating monopoly capitalist order once and for all.
From the time of Teng Hsiao-ping's visit to the U.S. early this year, the economic, political, financial, military and all-round imperialist alliance between the U.S. and China has been greatly accelerated. The U.S.-China alliance has been in the making since 1971. But since the renegade Teng Hsiao-ping's visit, which marked the brash announcement of this full-blown imperialist alliance, the transactions and agreements made between the U.S. imperialists and the supposedly "socialist" Chinese leaders make it clear for anyone to see that there is nothing good in the U.S.-China alliance.
Last month, at the invitation of the Bank of China, A.W, Clausen, president of the Bank of America, went to China. The Bank of America is the largest of all the financial establishments of the world-hated U.S. finance capitalists. Mr. Clausen was feted and dined, and met with upper echelon Chinese revisionist leaders. He met with Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien who (as reported in Hsinhua News Bulletin) said: "Though their social systems are different, our two countries can still have more interchanges, and we can cooperate very well between our two countries." The Bank of America was welcome to set up an office in Beijing (Peking --ed.), he added."
The Bank of America is the latest in a long stream of big U. So banks that have recently set up operations in Chinao China has thrown open its doors, windows and roof to the investments and plunder of the monopoly capitalists of the U.S.-led imperialist bloc. Besides these big banks, literally mobs of representatives of American corporations have been jetting in and out of Peking. Capitalist representatives from auto, oil, aluminum, copper, aircraft, shipping, tourism, soft drinks, and other sections of industry have one after the other arrived in China to survey the scene for establishing branches in China, embarking on joint ventures with the Chinese revisionist bourgeoisie, extending usurious loans and so on, with the aim of reaping super-profits. In addition, delegation after delegation has gone to China from the governments of all the Western imperialist powers -- the U.S., West Germany, Britain, France, etc. -- and Japan. They are all negotiating trade agreements, granting loans and developing closer relations with the Chinese revisionists.
The Chinese revisionist leaders would have us believe that all the imperialists' investments they are receiving, all the loans and credits of finance capital for which they have signed, are for the purpose of strengthening "socialism" in China, that they are simply "modernizing" their "socialist" economy. But this is a sham. The truth is: "In no case dc the capitalists provide their credits for the construction of socialism. They provide them to destroy socialism. Therefore, a genuine socialist country never accepts credits, in any form, from a capitalist, bourgeois or revisionist country." (Enver Hoxha, Imperialism and the Revolution) The "modernization" campaign of the Chinese leaders is in reality a campaign to rid the Chinese economy of any trace of socialism, strengthen capitalism and once again sell the Chinese people to imperialism. Recently the Chinese rulers even established an agency, the "Chinese Highway and Construction Co.", which they have advertized in the pages of Hsinhua, for the purpose of auctioning off Chinese workers to build highways and bridges anywhere in the world for foreign imperialism. This is reminiscent of the days of the old Chinese emperors. The Chinese revisionists' "modernization" campaign is the banner under which they're working to fulfill their plan to build China into an imperialist superpower with its own spheres of influence and exclusive domains of domination.
The opening of the banks of American finance capital in China shows that China has become enmeshed in the imperialist system of finance capital. This is the policy of the fascist Teng Hsiao-ping. In allying with U.S. imperialism he is selling the Chinese people, sinking them deep into debt to the U.S. finance capitalists and building capitalism as rapidly as possible in China. This is in line with the imperialist policy of Carter as well. In sealing the U.S.-China alliance Carter is striving to strengthen the position of predatory American finance capital in the world.
On the military front, in mid-April Teng Hsiao-ping offered to set up intelligence gathering stations in northern China for the U.S. imperialists to use against the Soviet social-imperialists. This comes just in time to help the Pentagon generals and the CIA who recently lost important spy stations in Iran which were shut down by the heroic Iranian revolution. Teng Hsiao-ping made this offer to a delegation of American senators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and before any official American request had even been made. This activity of the revisionist Chinese leaders is naked participation in the war plans of aggressive and bloodstained U.S. imperialism. China will of course be eager to get these spy stations and become a part of the military apparatus of U.S. imperialism,, This is what the Chinese revisionists have in mind when they speak of "modernization" of their "defense potential".
Clearly, there is nothing good in the U.S.-China alliance. It is an alliance of capitalism, aggression and war.
[Cartoon.]
On April 7, a demonstration of some 3,000 people took place to protest the launching of the Trident nuclear submarine in Groton, Connecticut. The demonstration was a blow against the war hysteria being organized by the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. In the 1900's, when U.S. imperialism launched its brutal war of aggression against the peoples of Southeast Asia, the American people rose up in their millions to oppose the warmongers. Today, when the U.S. monopoly capitalist class is intensifying its preparations for imperialist war, a movement has again arisen to oppose the warmongers.
The demonstrators in Groton, which included a number of workers from the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, the manufacturers of the Trident, expressed their indignation against the vicious nature of the imperialist militarization drive. They emphasized that the Trident was not a factor for peace, as the Carter administration, with its "balance of terror" theories, pontificates. Instead the protesters pointed out that the weapon was developed for the aggressive war aims of U.S. imperialism. The demonstration denounced the militarization of the economy whereby workers are forced to produce the weapons that are to be used to kill their class brothers. The masses also protested against the war-profiteering General Dynamics capitalists and the government, which awards the defense contracts, for the dangerously unhealthy conditions they force the workers to endure during the construction of the war machinery. In addition, the protesters expressed their outrage at the tremendous plundering of the people through taxation to pay for the Trident, which will cost over $1. 6 billion in 1980 alone.
About 250 of the demonstrators blocked the shipyard gates to prevent the launching ceremony for the Trident from taking place. In order to rescue the ceremony of the imperialist warmongers from disaster, the local fascist police and state troopers arrested some 229 people. Despite being removed from the demonstration, 36 of those arrested continued to protest by refusing to cooperate with the police booking procedures and were subsequently put in jail.
The launching of the Trident reveals once again the bloodthirsty nature of U.S. imperialism. The Trident is equipped with 24 nuclear missiles which have a range of 4^000 miles. The Pentagon generals have been boasting that it is the deadliest weapon that they have yet devised. Already new and more deadly Tridents are in the planning stages. Thus, when Rosalyn Carter, the wife of the "peace-loving" war chieftain Jimmy Carter, preached at the launching ceremony about "strategic arms limitation", she merely served to expose the fraud of the Carter administration's imperialist pacifism: pious phrases about disarmament while arming to the teeth.
The U.S. imperialists are currently in the midst of intense all-round preparation for war. These war preparations are directed against the revolutionary proletariat and peoples of the world, and against their imperialist rivals, particularly Soviet social-imperialism. In recent years, the U.S. has suffered defeats in Cambodia, Viet Nam, Iran and elsewhere. The rivalry for world domination with the Soviet Union has heated up as well. In these conditions, the U.S. imperialists are undertaking ever more adventurous warmongering activities.
Foremost in these preparations has been the development of the U.S.-China alliance. At the Trident launching ceremony the militarist Senator from Ohio, John Glenn, noted that the U.S. had lost its military bases in Iran from which it monitored the military activity of the Soviet Union. He then stated that the need for monitoring the Soviet Union would require "long-term cooperation between the U.S. and one or more of the following nations: China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. '' Only a few days after Senator Glenn's request, the Chinese revisionists volunteered to create a base in China for U.S. monitoring of the Soviet social-imperialists. This follows close on the heels of the Chinese invasion of Viet Nam. which was plotted in January amidst the hugs and kisses between Teng Hsiao-ping and Carter. In recent weeks, the Carter administration has made known its intention to invade the Middle East if the U.S. grip on the oil supply there is threatened. To make their threats good, the U.S. imperialists have been arming to the teeth and military expenditures are at an all time high. Preparations are being made to reinstitute the draft! New weapons of mass destruction are being developed at an unprecedented rate, including the Trident submarine which is a key weapon in the U.S. arsenal. Thus, the demonstration against the Trident is part of the struggle against the warmongering program of U.S. imperialism for world domination.
[Photo: Demonstrators protest against the Trident submarine in Groton, Conn.]
"The Deer Hunter" is a thoroughly reactionary and warmongering film. It glorifies the U.S. war of aggression against Viet Nam. The bourgeoisie has lavished praise on this film, and the lords of the decadent movie industry have given it five "Oscars", including "best picture for 1978". This shows that U.S. imperialism has not "learned a lesson" from its defeat in Viet Nam, has not "lost its nerve", but remains a bloodstained, fascist aggressor, preparing every day for new wars of aggression.
In order to prepare for new wars of aggression, the bourgeoisie not only builds B-l bombers and Trident submarines. It also utilizes films and the mass media. There are two types of movies which the bourgeoisie is presently producing about the U.S. imperialist aggression in Indochina. The first type are movies which promote pacifism in order to lull the masses to sleep. The bourgeois system was shaken to its core by the mass revolutionary upsurge in the 1960's. So the bourgeoisie seeks to disorient the masses and divert them from mass revolutionary struggle by promoting an "official opposition" of pacifism, individual salvation, mysticism, etc. The second type of movies are the open warmongering movies such as "The Deer Hunter". More and more of these imperialist films are being produced. This is part of the spread of fascist and racist ideas by the U.S. imperialists, part of war preparations and frenzied militarization. This rabid fascism and reaction is the real essence of U.S. imperialism, an essence which the mass media tries to hide with the first, or pacifist, type-of movie. The "Oscars" given to certain trashy pacifist and philistine films are just the flip side, the "beautiful" rainbow colored illusion, shielding the "Oscars" given to films like "The Deer Hunter".
"The Deer Hunter" presents the militarist-fascist views that "U.S. imperialism was right in Viet Nam." It justifies the naked U.S. aggression with the tired-out lies of the Pentagon that the liberation forces in Viet Nam were allegedly cruel, savage and subhuman, that the Vietnamese people and not the U.S. aggressors were the ones who committed the atrocities. Instead of showing how the U.S. troops burned down one village after another, how the CIA organized hit men and murder squads in "Operation Phoenix", how the U.S. imperialists employed the most barbaric means of mass slaughter and showed the true meaning of "Western human rights" by dropping tons of napalm and chemical poisons, instead the film concocts the big hitlerite lie that the Vietnamese allegedly forced American prisoners to play "Russian roulette".
The film is blatantly racist to the core. It presents the heroic Vietnamese people and their liberation fighters as savages, a decadent and corrupted people for whom "life is cheap". In truth, it is not the Vietnamese who hold life cheap, but it is the U.S. imperialists, the Pentagon generals and the monopoly capitalist slave drivers who hold life, to be more exact other people's lives, very cheap. But according to "The Deer Hunter", national liberation wars are just senseless violence. And so oppressed nations are painted as mere animals.
"The Deer Hunter" not only slanders the heroic Vietnamese people, but it also viciously slanders the American proletariat and working masses. It denies the whole glorious mass revolutionary struggle against the U.S. wars of aggression in Viet Nam and all of Indochina. Who can forget the anti-draft movement, the GI movement and the huge anti-imperialist demonstrations! The movement against imperialist aggression, combined with the heroic Afro-American people's movement and the other revolutionary movements, shook the very foundations of U.S. imperialism in the 60's. And today the U.S. government is still afraid to reintroduce conscription, while "The Deer Hunter" has been the scene for various protest demonstrations. Viet Nam veterans themselves have stepped forward to bitterly denounce the militarist lies of "The Deer Hunter".
Films like "The Deer Hunter" show that U.S. imperialism remains a savage beast and a barbaric lead er of world imperialism. And despite all the lies and slanders in "The Deer Hunter", it is the working- class which is the main and leading force for the socialist revolution which will wipe out U.S. imperialism once and for all.
[Photo: Several hundred people demonstrated in Washington D. C. on April 30, 1979 to protest the reintroduction of the draft. It was one of 70 such actions scheduled nationwide for that week.]
Ten thousand people demonstrated at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver on April 28th. The masses came to denounce the crazed militarization and war preparations of the American capitalist warmongers. They also expressed their outrage at the nuclear capitalists' poisoning of the land and ground water near the plant, which has occurred because of the capitalists' criminal lack of concern for the masses and which is a "byproduct" of the monopolists' cravings for maximum profits.
The following day about 300 protestors had planned to blockade the entrance to the plant. But when they marched on the gates of the nuclear facility, about 284 were arrested. Government officials were put in a frenzy by this two-day protest, which was one of the biggest of its kind in recent years. According to one report, they planned to prosecute those arrested on charges under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. This is not the first time the people have rallied against this plant of mass destruction. Over a six month period last year the masses blockaded the railroad tracks leading to the plant, which also resulted in arrests for the demonstrators.
The Rocky Flats nuclear plant is owned by the U.S. government and operated by Rockwell International Corporation. It is the only plant in existence in the U.S. that produces plutonium "triggers" (the device that sets off nuclear weapons). As such it is a component part of the U.S. capitalists' war machine. The U.S. government is not run by "non-violent Christians" and they have vet to turn any of their "swords into plowshares". Instead they have developed a colossal stockpile of armaments and are rapidly increasing the construction of more weapons of war. This attests to the warmongering nature of the U.S. imperialists. They are ferocious monsters, one of the biggest and most dangerous aggressive imperialist powers known in history..They are arming to the teeth in order to protect and extend their world empire, to drown in blood the proletariat and the people who are fighting for national liberation and socialism, and to prepare for an inter-imperialist war against the; equally savage Soviet social-imperialists with whom they are contending for world domination.
The American people have a proud history of opposing the aggression and wars launched by U.S. imperialism. During the late 60's and early 70's the American people rose up in their millions against the U.S. aggression in Viet Nam. Today U.S. imperialism is preparing to launch another war and use the masses as cannon fodder. But demonstrations such as the one in Rocky Flats and others show that the American people are rising up to oppose the war-mongering plans of the imperialists.
[Cartoon.]
(Reprinted from Workers' Weekly, Newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), February 10, 1979.)
[Sheet music.]
In Washington, in Moscow and throughout the bourgeois world
The superpowers each lead aggressive pacts
Behind the signboard of "world peace" they 're all arming to the teeth
And plans for war are daily being hatched.
Some say the British Empire has finally expired
And only superpowers cause war and strife
But if that's so we'd like to know why in many lands across the globe
British imperialists wield their butcher's knife.
(Chorus)
Before the first world war, labor leaders hotly swore
That by the working class they'd stand
But when the capitalists called, on their well-worn knees they crawled
To fight for their masters' homeland
Opportunists of all hues always take their cue
From the world imperialists' aims and needs
Under threat of world war, the workers they implore
To fight for their own bourgeoisie
(Chorus)
To oppose the Marxist-Leninists, the "three worlds" revisionists
Have conjured up a reactionary theory
They have their stake in war -- they're a rising superpower
They say unite with the class enemy.
All around the world, mighty struggles are unfurled
Against bourgeois-revisionist rule
We've got a common cause -- support revolutionary wars
And organize our own rulers' downfall.
(Chorus)
So when you get your gun, you'll know what's to be done
Organize to do it well
Take it firmly in your hand, unite with men from every land
And blast the capitalist class to hell.
(Chorus)
In the five year period from 1972 to 1977 the inmate population in the U.S. federal and state prisons increased by 36%, from 204,000 to 278, 000 (1). The present capacity of 262,768 has already been exceeded. In addition there were 141,600 inmates in almost 4, 000 city and county jails at the time of the last National Jail Census (1972). Approximately 400 more prisoners are entering prison each week than are being released. Bourgeois prison authorities are now turning to vacant factories and warehouses idled by the economic crisis and to schools and hospitals closed by budget cutbacks to handle the overflow. They are even building dormitories for the Olympic athletes at Lake Placid, New York which will be converted into a federal prison after the 1980 Winter Games (2). The cancerous growth of the U.S. prison system is a clear manifestation of the increasing fascization of the monopoly capitalist state machine. The big bourgeoisie is developing fascism in order to viciously suppress the masses of people, to increase their exploitation and to prepare for imperialist war.
Prison facilities in the U.S. range from the archaic Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois built in 1871 to hold 600, now housing 2,000 prisoners doubled up in four-by-six foot cells, to the ''ultramodern" concentration camps called "megaprisons". Conditions in all of them are barbaric and are getting worse. According to 1974 statistics the U.S. already had an "incarceration rate higher than that of any other nation in the Western world. The Dutch, for example, imprison 18 persons per 100,000 population, the Danes, 28; the Swedes, 32; the English, 75; and the Canadians, a grim. 95. The U.S. holds the record -- 2~12 imprisoned persons per 100,000 population (3). Since that time the U.S. monopoly capitalist class has embarked on an unprecedented cancerous expansion of its repressive apparatus to cope with the growing revolt of the oppressed masses.
The state of the rich is instituting such correctional innovations as longer sentences, mandatory minimum prison terms for all kinds of offenses, and abolition of parole. To solve their "problem" of imprisoning ever larger numbers of people, particularly the most rebellious sections such as the youth and national minorities, the bourgeoisie has launched a massive prison construction program. The National Moratorium on Prison Construction, which keeps tabs on prison and jail building, reports that "924 institutions of various sizes are now planned. Estimated costs for only 568 of these are already up to $3.47 billion" (4). The federal prison budget grows by leaps and bounds, doubling in 1977 (5). They even have plans for a national training facility for prison personnel modeled after the FBI Academy at Quantico. (6).
The "human rights" bourgeoisie of the U.S. tries to conceal its fascization of society by claiming that all of these prisons are necessary to protect the people from crime. In reality the prisons of the capitalist state exist to suppress those who resist the barbarous exploitation and oppression of the rich. When the workers wage a militant strike, the capitalists make every effort to jail them and smash their struggle. When progressive people stand up and fight against racial discrimination and fascist police attacks, when the masses demonstrate against the monstrous war preparations of the monopoly capitalists, they too are thrown in jail. Resistance to the rule of the rich is what the bourgeoisie regards as "crime".
As far as social crime is concerned, the proletariat is definitely opposed to it. But the responsibility for social crime rests solely with the rotten and degenerate rule of the monopoly capitalist class itself, which produces social crime and all other manner of social ills. It is brazen hypocrisy for the bourgeoisie to claim it has any program to stop crime. Its sole preoccupation is to maintain itself in power, and it demagogically uses the just hatred of the people for crime as a cover to build up its armed repressive apparatus.
(It should be noted that the bourgeoisie is aided in its masquerade of being "opposed to crime" by opportunists and social-chauvinists such as the "Communist Party (M-L)". In their April 2, 1979 issue of The Call, these liberal lackeys of the rich wring their hands about the alleged lack of "adequate police protection" for black women in the Roxbury section of Boston. This is calling for a cure from the gods of plague.)
The problem of social crime will be solved not with the strengthening and perfection of the monopoly capitalist state, but with its overthrow. The dictatorship of the proletariat is quite capable of solving the problem of crime, as evidenced by the People's Socialist Republic of Albania where social crime is a rarity. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie on the other hand has no solution to social crime nor any intentions of solving it. The rule of the monopoly capitalists is reaction all along the line and its program of prison construction is a program aimed against the working masses and is more weaponry for its already bloated monster of repression.
Footnotes
(1) U.S. News and World Report, "Crisis Builds in America's Crowded Prisons", August 7, 1978, p. 32.
(2) U.S. News and World Report, "Furor Over Lake Placid's 'Olympia Jail'", October 2, 1978, p. 82.
(3) U.S.A. Today, "Should There Be a Moratorium on Prison Construction? Yes!", January 1979, p. 39.
(4) Ibid., p. 38.
(5) Federal Prison Construction: Alternative Approaches, Congressional Office Budget Issue Paper, January 1977.
(6) The New York Times, February 13, 1978, Section II, p. 9.
(The following leaflet was issued by the Seattle Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists on April 24, 1979.)
For a year and a half, the Seattle city government has been quietly and persistently developing its plans to build a police station in the Central Area. The plan includes shifting 120 patrolmen to the new location, plus relocating undercover detectives and patrol vehicles in the predominantly black community. The aim of building the police station in the Central Area is to spread an extensive police dragnet over the area in order to terrorize the workers and youth, to make them live in fear of their lives every day. The monopoly capitalists and their state are scared to death that the black workers and youth will rise in revolt against the terrible deterioration in their conditions of life. Since the Central Area is one of the poorest areas in the city and is a relatively small area with a sharply declining population, the plans of the rich and their flunkey politicians to build the police station there completely expose the fact that the state (with the police-as its main instrument) is singling out the Afro- American people for special attacks, as part of bolstering its brutal dictatorship over the entire proletariat.
The state of the rich is beefing up its police apparatus to put down the revolt of the proletariat and launch attacks against them. This is occurring at a time of increasing revolt against Carter's wage controls, against state-organized racist attacks, and against the war preparations of U.S. imperialism. To keep their profits and political power intact, the rich are more and more resorting to violent state repression, to exploit and oppress the working people to the bone. In Seattle, the building and expansion of the police stations is a criminal attack against the entire working class and people.
In September 1977, the city council floated a bond issue in the municipal primary election which called for renovating the police stations in the north and south parts of the city and building a new precinct in the Central Area under the hoax of "decentralizing" police operations, A wave of "anti-crime" hysteria was widely promoted at the time in. the capitalist news media. Councilman Sam Smith, notorious flunkey of the bourgeoisie, rejoiced at the passage of the $5. 8 million bond issue by stating that the citizens of the black community, finally had one of their "demands" met. Of course, this is a complete sham.
In order to win "public approval" for their criminal police garrisons in Seattle, the bourgeoisie has systematically organized a big "anti-crime" campaign for the last five years. Playing on the genuine hatred of the masses for degenerate elements who rob, plunder, and assault innocent victims (and especially women), the biggest criminals of all -- the rich capitalists -- present themselves and their state as the defenders of the masses and big champs of "law and order". But in fact, it is the monopoly capitalist bloodsuckers who are responsible for every crime. It is the capitalist system that breeds the unemployment, that fosters the corrupt and degenerate culture and anti-people ideology, that drives the impoverished youth into despair and petty crime, that daily and hourly deprives the proletariat of the fruit of its toil, that forces the majority of the working people in a state of permanent insecurity, that glorifies the lifestyle and habits of the rich and other parasites in the mass media, that preaches the glories of U.S. imperialism at home and abroad, which, with fire and sword, attacks its enemies under the banner of "human rights".
In this "anti-crime" campaign, the mass media purposefully distorts the truth about the lives of the Afro-American people, the reality of a hardworking people who are viciously exploited and discriminated against by the rich and who have a glorious history of militant struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression. The bourgeoisie presents the false picture that the black people are "criminals" and are the recipients of "special treatment" (or "reverse discrimination") in the government, on the job, in the schools, in the communities. The aim of this fascist propaganda is to scapegoat the black people for the crimes of the rich and to launch racist attacks against them.
In Seattle, fascist organizations (including the Seattle Police Guild) have been set in motion by both "liberal" and "conservative" state authorities to organize attacks against the unity of the working class under the banner of "reverse discrimination" against whites. The plan is to incite the workers and youth of different nationalities against one another, and let their real enemy, the capitalists, off the hook. In these evil plans, the police play a central role, as does the building of the police station in the Central Area. As a matter of fact, certain police are being trained as fascist politicians for mainly the purpose of promoting the "reverse discrimination" fraud. One of them, the head of the Police Guild, is running for city council on the basis of his reputation as a diehard racist and a champ of open police terror.
It is also very fitting that in Seattle, the most livable "liberal" city, the police are also engaged in a highly- funded, widespread program to promote "better community-police relations", whereby community groups will supposedly supervise and control the activities of the armed wing of the state. To soften up the masses for attack, government agents operating under the cloak of "community organizers" (mainly the VISTA program) have organized the Cherry Hill Coalition and SESCO in the Central Area and Rainier Valley. The leaders of these organizations are misleading many ordinary people who are looking for a way to vent their grievances against the government. But the result of the work of the state agents (who were sent to Seattle) has been to set up commando squads for growing fascism in these areas.
Their aim is to set up a situation where people spy on each other and report any "wrongdoing" or "suspicious activity" to the police. The main demand of the agents is for more police presence under the hoax of "stopping crime". At the same time, they try to cover up their activity by posing as reformers and do-gooders, out to get the bad landlords, out to force the city to exterminate the rats, to put up stop signs at certain intersections, to lower utility rates for the aged, etc. The state of course plays along with these tricksters and promotes them as grassroots community organizers who are "fighting the system".
To catch the masses unaware, the bourgeoisie is using subtle tactics to gain "approval" for the police stations in Seattle. Their agents even brag that the Central Area plans are a "real sleeper", that it will be built before any mass struggle breaks out over the issue. The "liberal" agents of the state -- such as Royer, Smith, etc,, should be exposed for their deception and "innocent pacifism".
The building of the police station in the Central Area is part and parcel of the fascist offensive of the Carter administration. The black people, and especially the black youth, are burdened twofold by the economic crisis -- as evidenced by the extremely high unemployment rates among them. On top of this, the state of the rich is unleashing a vicious terrorism against the black people and the entire proletariat.
This criminal plan of the rich should be denounced far and wide. Everyone should be informed about the dangers of the fascization of the government apparatus.
The only solution to the problem of growing fascism is to do away with the criminal monopoly capitalist system. This will rid the entire proletariat of the scourges of crime, economic crisis, militarization, and racial discrimination.
This is the stand of the Marxist-Leninists of the COUSML, and this is the stand of the working people who yearn to rid themselves of exploitation and oppression.
Down with the Police Station in the Central Area!
Down with the Monopoly Capitalist Criminals!
President Carter recently announced his plans to lift price controls on domestic crude oil which will drive up crude oil prices 77% by 1982. Such unprecedented price gouging cannot fail to provoke fierce indignation from the working masses for both the merciless plunder of the oil monopolies and Carter's reactionary, anti-working class policy of organizing this robbery. But Mr. Carter is a sly politician, an arch-demagogue and a pathological liar to boot.
Thus, while Carter announced record price hikes for the oil billionaires out of the one side of his mouth, out of the other side he declared that "we must impose a windfall profits tax on the oil companies to capture part of this money for the American people." And since this announcement of oil price decontrols, the bourgeois media has faithfully centered its reporting on the valiant saga of Carter's "singlehanded battle" against the greedy oil companies who want to take "unfair advantage" of Carter's policy of soaring oil prices and thus "cheat the public" by defeating Carter's proposed "windfall profits" tax. In this way, Carter, the grinning flunkey and yes-man of the oil corporations and Wall Street financiers, is preening himself up as the concerned hero of the poor and oppressed. However, in fact, Carter's "windfall profits" tax is a big dose of political deception to sugar- coat the plunder of the masses by the oil monopolies.
Furthermore the tax itself is a gross swindle to rob the masses and provide handouts to the rich. When Carter makes promises, like the lying capitalist politician he is, more often than not he means the exact opposite of what he says. Such is the case when Carter declares that "I want to emphasize that this windfall profits tax is not a tax on the American people. It is purely and simply a tax on new profits of the oil producers. " What nonsense! Carter's plan is to bring the average price of domestic crude oil up from $9. 65 to over $16 a barrel by the end of 1982. A small part of this per barrel increase in price he wants to divert through his "windfall profits" tax towards an "Energy Security Fund" for the stockpiling and development of energy resources. And it is simply and purely the working masses who will pay for the price increases to the oil monopolies including the additional "windfall profits" tax to the "Energy Security Fund".
It is with a classical bit of double talk and unabashed demagogy that Carter warns: "But decontrol could also further inflate the already large profits of the oil companies." Hence the need for a "windfall profits" tax. The argument for decontrolling oil prices which Carter gave in the first place was the alleged need to increase the profits of the oil monopolies under the hoax of "providing plenty of incentive for increased production". The fact of the matter is, Carter is for both "further inflating the already large profits of the oil companies" and also adding into the price of petroleum products a "wind -fall profits" tax which is a further "tax on the American people". Hence Carter's announcement that he is going to jack up domestic oil prices by 77% over the next two years.
The revenues from the "windfall profits" tax are, of course, not to provide "money for the American people" as Carter alleges, but to provide further handouts to the rich. In the first place the "Energy Security Board" will fund multimillion dollar research and development schemes for the oil and energy, auto and transportation and other monopolies. Funding such expensive projects as the development of the technology for coal gasification is a tremendous boon to the energy monopolies and for the marshalling of energy resources for imperialist war.
Carter's planned "assistance to those who need it most" from the "Energy Security Fund", cannot hide (he unprecedented plunder of the working masses by billionaire oil and utility monopolies. There is speculation that this "assistance" will be in the form of coupons similar to food stamps which could only be used for utility bills, etc. The small quantities of his type of "assistance" to certain of the very poorest sections of the population to pay for energy bills, bills which they could not otherwise pay, amounts to nothing but subsidizing the market for the energy monopolies.
In any event, the melodrama of Carter's "struggle" against the oil companies over the "windfall profits" tax is being played at the expense of deceiving the working people. At most this "battle" reflects a difference among the monopolies on how to divide up the hot plundered from the masses. The portrayal of the "windfall profits" tax cutting deeply into the soaring profits of the oil monopolies is simply a fraud. For instance, Carter claims that his tax will cut the increase in the oil corporations profits by 50%. But this 50% tax is only for the fraction of price increases so defined by the Department of Energy as not already scheduled and thus as "windfall" earnings. An example is the price of "lower tier" crude which will more than double from its present price of $5. 82 to almost $13 a barrel over the next two years. But through a complicated system, only one third of the "lower tier" price increase will be defined as "windfall earnings". Therefore only about $2.30 a barrel will be subject to the tax. Hence, in the end, the oil monopolies will not receive (at least in direct revenues) about $1.15 of their total of $7 of price gouging. What a devastating blow the Carter administration has levelled at the "unfair price gouging of the oil corporations"!
Furthermore, Carter has not yet decided if his tax will expire or not with the completion of price decontrols in 1981. In other words, the question remains for the Carter administration whether or not the "windfall profits" tax will have served its purpose of sugar- coating the unprecedented price hikes of the oil billionaires and can be thrown overboard after the price increases have been shoved down the people's threats, or whether this outrageous fraud for fleecing the masses and providing handouts for the monopolies has some lasting value for the purpose of political deception. In either case, whatever the fate of Carter's "windfall profits" tax, no amount of lies and demagogy can hide the fact that Carter's energy' policy is a policy of bleeding the working class and people white with soaring prices for the profits of Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and the other lords of oil.
[Graphic.]
( The following article has been excerpted from a Radio Tirana broadcast, April 14, 1979, and has been transcribed by People's Canada Daily News.)
The fever of the energy crisis has sparked off wholesale confusion in the White House. In almost all the public speeches of American President Carter and the statements of other top officials, the energy crisis and its consequences are being treated with the greatest concern and most profound pessimism. In the latest speeches the American people have been confronted with countless claims and programs, with pompous promises to reduce the negative effects of the crisis, while at the same time appealing to the rank-and-file consumer to tighten his belt and make sacrifices in the name of the national interest.
This was the nature of last week's televised speech of the American president, during which he laid down a series of new measures to face up to the deepening of the energy crisis. The latest measures, as well as those which were taken previously, testify to the anti-people and rapacious character of the entire so-called energy program of the American administration. Following these measures, Carter was promptly congratulated by the American oil magnates, who stated that the energy measures are constructive and with broad perspectives.
Of course it could not be otherwise, when the latest decision of the American administration will cost the rank-and-file Americans another $15 billion at a time when the profits of the American oil concerns will increase by another $6 billion. The measures of the past and the new measures of the American administration in the framework Of the energy program are designed to lessen the negative impact of the deepening energy crisis on the sick American capitalist economy, to preserve intact and increase the profits of the monopolies, intensifying the exploitation and fleecing of the broad masses of the working people.
In their efforts to cover up the real essence of the crisis of capitalist society, the chiefs of the American administration and the different apologists of the capitalist society have produced different so-called arguments in regard to the causes of the energy crisis which has the American economy in its grip. Some talk about the decline in oil production, others about the decline of the oil reserves, still others about the rise in oil prices and the policies being applied by the OPEC member countries. But the truth is the exact opposite. In reality, the energy crisis, like all other crises of the economy of the bourgeois countries, has its roots in the capitalist mode of production and its antagonistic contradictions which are eroding the system. The energy crisis is the boiling point of the general crisis of capitalism which has enveloped all the sectors of life, the economy, finances, politics and all the institutions of the superstructure. The more the bourgeois society is in decay, the deeper its crises become, the more grave are the consequences of these crises. Capitalism as a social system, regard less of the theories hatched up by its own apologists, will never be able to escape from the contradictions inherent in it and which it fosters. It is incapable of preserving or maintaining internal social and economic equilibrium. In the present energy crisis, one can clearly discern the rapacious policy of the monopolies, which want to reap the biggest profits possible no matter what consequences this may have on the situation of the working masses. Even though at present the American hue and cry about a shortage of oil and the energy crisis may, to a certain degree, reflect the crisis situation in the American economy and that of the other capitalist and revisionist countries, this does not reflect in the slightest the real situation in regard to raw materials for the production of energy. Today, in connection With oil, the world market is estimated to have 100 to 200 billion tons of oil in excess of consumption.
In the fuss about, the so-called shortage of oil, the capitalist monopolies in their countries are trying to justify the cruel exploitation and repression of the working class, the shifting of the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working people, as well as the intensification of the hegemonic policy toward the oil- producing countries. Official American facts and figures show that in the situation of the energy crisis the American oil companies have not suffered the slightest difficulty, but on the contrary their profits have steadily increased.
An entirely different picture can be seen at the other pole of American society. While the energy crisis, together with the deepening of the economic crisis does not decrease but increases the profits of the capitalist monopolies, for millions and millions of the ordinary working people it has brought only impoverishment, unemployment and the further economic slump. According to the American press information, since the outbreak of the energy crisis at the end of 1973, until 1978, prices of basic consumption products has risen 46%; foodstuffs, 49.5%; electric-power charges, 63.7%,. Ever since the beginning of the energy crisis, which coincided with a new cycle of the economic crisis, more than 3.5 million young Americans have been laid off from work, thus increasing the army of the unemployed from 4. 5 million people in 1972 to more than 8 million. Neither the so-called energy program which Carter is busy applying nor the extension, expansion and intervention in the oil-producing regions of the world, not the Chinese supplies will be able to curb the deepening of the energy crisis, which, like the economic crisis, has its roots in the capitalist mode of production.
(The following leaflet was issued by the Denver Committee Against Social-Chauvinism, on April 24,
1979.)
The owners of the sewing factory have found another trick to cut the workers' wages. They are combining the jobs and then "retiming" them in order to cut the rates. These capitalists have always been notorious for cutting the workers' wages by cutting piece rates, but they have especially stepped up this practice since the workers received their wage increase with the new contract. By cutting the piece rates the capitalists are coldly planning to increase their profits by sweating more work out of the workers for less wages. Side by side with its attack on the workers' wages the company and its flunkeys carry out a propaganda campaign to slander the workers, divide them, and stifle their resistance to the wage cutting. When the workers object to the ridiculous new rates the supervisors and time study people say "The rate is fair. So and so can make it why can't you?" Usually it is not even true that "so and so" can make it. But even so, that is not the issue. The issue is that with the new rates the company is increasing the exploitation of all the workers, even the fastest, so that now each must work harder and faster for less than before. In fact even without cutting the rates,the workers' wages are being reduced every week by inflation while the articles they sew sell for more and more every week. The company is taking the workers coming and going. The workers then are doubly just to fight against the rate cuts.
Another trick the company uses to divide the workers is the dirty method of circulating gossip and slander against the workers who stand up to resist the rate cutting. When a worker refuses to speed up for a time study or fights a new rate, the next thing you hear is the supervisor circulating gossip that that worker is "lazy", "petty", "greedy", etc. These terms, however, apply not to the workers but to the owners of the company. The workers do all the work and produce everything that goes out the door. They receive only a small part of what they produce in wages while the rest goes to owners who do none of the work but merely get richer and richer off the workers' labor. It is not the workers who are the petty, greedy parasites but the capitalists. The reason the company and the supervisors spread such vicious slanders against the militant workers is to isolate them from the other workers so that the spirit of resistance does not spread. The gossip spread against the militant workers only helps the company carry out its program of increasing its profits by driving all the workers harder and faster for less wages.
How are the workers to defend themselves against the attacks on their wages, their conditions and their dignity? The union officials tell the workers to file grievances but the workers see that filing grievances has no effect. The company also realizes this. It knows that as long as the workers do no more than file grievances individually it can cut rates as it pleases. Grievances are just pieces of paper which it throws in the basket. It is only when the workers stick together and take action themselves that the company has trouble cutting the wages. This is precisely the kind of trouble the workers should make for the company.
The company carries out constant campaigns to intimidate the workers and isolate the militants. Why shouldn't the workers fight the company's lies and slanders and carry out their own campaign to denounce the company and isolate its flunkeys ? The workers should hold the supervisors and time study people accountable for helping the company cut the wages and for spreading slanders against the workers. Those people who do the dirty work of the rich against the honest working people should have no peace. The workers should also discuss among themselves and decide on ways in which they can stick together to resist the rate cuts on the spot.
The company's program of cutting the rates is not an isolated incident but part of the program of the big capitalists to make the workers pay for the current economic crisis of the capitalist system. This program of the rich is being spearheaded by the Carter administration with its campaign of wage controls, which Carter claims is intended to fight inflation but which is really intended to cut the workers' wages. The sewing industry capitalists are so notorious for their wage cutting that the Carter administration has held them up as a model for the capitalists in other industries. Carter's number two "inflation fighter" Barry Bosworth has put out a pamphlet where he shows how drastically the sewing industry capitalists have cut the workers' wages. Thirty years ago sewers made almost as much as auto workers but today they make barely more than the minimum wage. At the same time over the last ten years each sewing industry worker has been forced to work 40% faster. This is the kind of wage cutting and speedup the rich and their government want to impose on the whole working class.
The capitalists are preparing even bigger attacks on the workers. The workers must step up their resistance struggle against the capitalists and prepare for mass revolutionary struggles to make the rich pay for the crises they have created and to overthrow the dictatorship of the rich altogether.
(The following article is taken from a leaflet issued by the San Francisco Bay Area Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, April 21, 1979.)
Since June 1978, the attacks launched by the capitalist politicians against the public sector workers have reached a new high. In March, the San Francisco Board of Education, making good on the "promises" of the politicians to attack the public sector, sent 2,200 much hated layoff notices to teachers in San Francisco. This threat to the teachers' livelihood is being justified on the basis of a projected $23 million deficit in next year's education budget. This deficit is caused, according to these worthies, by the loss of revenues due to the Proposition 13 "tax revolt". The bureaucrats portray themselves as "hapless do-gooders" with their hands tied, forced to carry out the "will of the people" and administer cutbacks. Teachers are called on to sacrifice for the "greater good", to docilely accept these attacks and to fight among themselves over who will be laid off.
This so-called "tax revolt" is just one of many "reasons" that the capitalists and their government use to cover up what they are actually up to, which is to shift the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto the backs of the working people. The attack on the teachers is part and parcel of the attack against the entire working class in general and the public sector in particular.
In California, attacks are extremely sharp against public sector workers. The form the attacks take is layoffs and hiring freezes. Between June and December of 1978, 92,000 public sector jobs were lost statewide due to attrition coupled with a hiring freeze. This, of course, has resulted in intensification of work for those remaining on the job as they attempt to keep up with the work load which has not been decreased. As well, there are wage freezes which have been put into effect for almost all parts of the public sector. These wage freezes amount to cuts in wages when you look at it in terms of real dollars after inflation.
Here in California, the entire justification for the attack on the public sector employees is covered "legally" by the so-called "tax revolt".
The "tax revolt" movement made a big play with the discontent of the masses against the exorbitant and ever-increasing tax burden. But this was just political deception, empty words, the usual cynical double- talk of the politicians who always scream about high taxes precisely in order to hike these taxes to the skies. The big capitalists and their government tried to swear innocence of the "tax revolt" movement by floating a reactionary demagog and fast-buck artist with a shady background named Howard Jarvis as the leader of a "grassroots" movement of the "people" known as the "tax revolt". Jarvis authored the ballot initiative, Proposition 13, and began a demagogic tirade against "government bureaucrats", the "establishment" and "big business". Governor Brown "denounced" the "people's proposal", Proposition 13, and promoted his own proposal for "tax reform", Proposition 8, which was openly supported by the big corporations. However, Jarvis Proposition 13 and Governor Brown's Proposition 8 were nearly identical plans that both served the goals^pf the capitalist "tax revolt": to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working masses. At that point the situation was that there was: 1) a fake fight between phoney leaders of the"people" and the "government- business establishment", and 2) two proposals that both served equally well the "tax revolt" scheme of the rich. The June 6th election fraud was held, and "the people's" Proposition 13 defeated the "government-business" Proposition 8. The capitalist government of Brown graciously accepted its "defeat", declared Proposition 13 as the "word of the people", and pledged to faithfully implement it. And thus the government is magically transformed into, to use Jarvis' words, a "government of the people."
What actually happens in society is that the monopoly capitalist class is reaping huge profits by looting the tax monies extorted from the working and poor people. Taxes, for example, are a huge source of profits for construction capitalists. In Brown's proposed '79-80 budget, $100 million has been slated for construction of new prisons. Taxes are also looted by the finance capitalists, the bankers. $63.6 million in debt service to banks will be paid in San Francisco in 1978-79, all of which comes out of tax dollars. It is actually written into the provisions of Proposition 13 that debt service must be paid even if new taxes had to be created to cover it.
While the tributes to the capitalists are ensured, government at all levels seeks to reduce the amount of money spent on public sector wages, and on various services etc. By reducing wages and services, they can, indeed, ensure the maximum amount of tax money will be available for even more profitable use by the capitalists. Now the capitalists and their government have the "wonderful tax revolt" as the excuse to cover themselves when they launch attacks on the public sector. One of the first fronts of this attack is against the teachers.
Although the attack on the public sector employees is a principal centerpiece of the "tax revolt" there are other very distinct features as well. Under the well orchestrated program of the "tax revolt", tax "relief" of at least $2.9 billion is given annually to capitalist corporations while the tax burden of the masses has been massively increased. While the capitalists redistribute tax revenues in their own interests, they also take care to ensure that this redistribution does not affect the continual growth of the terrorist police forces in the slightest: Governor Brown's "bailout" bill has clauses in it that guarantee that the police departments should not reduce their level of "services".
To make the claim that the projected $23 million deficit in the San Francisco education budget is "justification" for laying off teachers is nothing more than to say teachers should give in to the attacks of the monopoly capitalists, that teachers should sacrifice to maximize the profits of these bloodsuckers.
The path forward for the teachers is not in finding some "humane" layoff procedure, or some other scheme which would cover over the attacks of the capitalists. This would amount to the teachers administering a beating on themselves.
The firm stand of the teachers has already shown they will not be cowed by the attacks of the Board of Education. Instead, the growing unity of the teachers and the developing militancy of their fight is leading them forward. This unity and militancy have already shaken the school board bureaucrats. Out of fear of the teachers' struggle they now want to stop the farce of administrative hearings; hearings which they had hoped would intimidate the teachers, force them to rely on lawyers, and dissipate their struggle through long drawn out sessions.
TEACHERS! CONTINUE TO DEFEND YOUR BASIC INTERESTS AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF THE CAPITALIST GOVERNMENT!
SUPPORT THE JUST STAND OF THE TEACHERS AGAINST THE MUCH HATED LAYOFFS !
(The following article is excerpted from People's Canada Daily News, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), April 3, 1979.)
Compulsory overtime has long been an issue facing auto industry workers, as well as other sections of the working class. In the auto industry assembly plants, night shifts that run from 6:30 p.m. until 5:00 a.m., or "weekends" that start on Sunday morning and end on Monday morning, etc., are commonplace. These long hours of intensive labor are extremely destructive to the lives of the workers, physically, mentally and socially. This debilitating forced labor is one of the aspects of work in the auto industry that the workers hate with a passion....
What makes the criminal nature of the auto magnates' practice of forced overtime still more glaring is the fact that it is accompanied by increased unemployment. While workers in some plants or sectors are working long hours, thousands of workers from other plants will be laid off, even from the same company. This aspect of capitalist exploitation was pointed out by Marx in his work Capital. He writes of "the condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part," and points out that in turn, the pressure of competition for jobs by the unemployed acts as a lever to force the employed workers "to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital."
The workers have waged, and are waging, many struggles against this slavery. In the 1973 contract struggle for the "Big Three" autoworkers, voluntary overtime was put forward as the number one demand. The trade union bigwigs passed out buttons to all the workers, with the slogan "Ask Me, Don't Tell Me", but after a token strike, they presented the workers with a contract "limiting" the workweek to 48, 54 or 56 hours (varying from plant to plant) and told the workers they had to accept it whether they liked it or not. Ford workers at St. Thomas and Oakville, Ontario, must work four 10-hour shifts and one 8-hour shift whenever the company chooses to schedule overtime. Chrysler workers in Windsor work six 8-hour shifts. For the St. Thomas workers, this was no gain at all because they had eliminated compulsory Saturday work, thus reducing the workweek from 56 to 48 hours, by their own efforts, without any "assistance" from the labor aristocrats of "Solidarity House" in Detroit. This victory was gained by means of illegal wildcat strikes on three consecutive Saturdays, in 1971. The workers' wives and children formed picket lines outside the plant each Saturday morning denouncing the company's arbitrary imposition of 56- hour weeks, and the resulting destruction of the workers' family lives and health. The company finally capitulated, in the hopes of getting enough volunteers from the two shifts to make up one reduced-production shift on Saturday. In recent years, however, every attempt to schedule a Saturday failed to produce the required 1,300 volunteers out of 3,300 workers.
The struggle has further developed since 1973. When the Oakville Ford plant scheduled compulsory overtime in 1976, workers took up the practice of large-scale "stay homes" on Friday nights. On 11 consecutive Friday nights, so many workers stayed home in defiance of suspensions and other discipline, that the truck plant had to be shut down and the workers "loaned out" in order to keep the car plant going. In June 1978, when the Ford capitalists scheduled overtime for the production workers at the St. Thomas assembly plant, militant workers on their own initiative organized a similar action, forcing the plant to close on Friday night, and costing the company to lose production of 500 cars.
Recently there have been two incidents at plants in the London area which mark further episodes in this struggle. One was at the St. Thomas assembly plant, where a referendum calling for voluntary overtime was passed by a big margin; the other was at a small, unorganized parts plant where the workers organized a mass refusal to work a compulsory Saturday. The referendum vote of the Ford workers came after they were asked to submit their proposals for the 1979 contract to the union. This "democratic procedure" was exposed as a farce when the trade union bigwigs in both Canada and the U.S. began making press statements as to what the workers' demands were, before the workers had even presented their views. Notable by its absence in these statements, was the demand for voluntary overtime. Militant workers began circulating a petition calling on the union leadership to make voluntary overtime the "number one priority" and suggested that a plant wide referendum be held. The sellout trade union leadership, true to their nature, did everything to liquidate this motion among the workers, all the while feigning "support" for the workers' demands....
These two incidents are only small steps in the resistance movement against capitalist exploitation and wage slavery in general. Both in the big assembly plant and in the small parts factory, it can clearly be seen that the workers' struggles must necessarily break out of the "legal" confines imposed by the monopoly capitalists and their agents, Both examples also show that despite the arbitrary rules and fascist discipline of the bosses, despite the "laws" of the reactionary state, and despite the sabotage of the labor aristocrats, the development of the workers' resistance and the forging of their unity in action, are an objective necessity and an inevitable phenomenon. In addition, the workers, as Marx has pointed out:
"ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these every-day struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an Economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a far day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'"
It is only by heeding this correct advice of Marx that the auto industry parts and assembly workers can successfully continue their militant resistance, prepare for further class battles, and participate in the preparations of the entire Canadian proletariat for an offensive, to Make the Rich Pay! for the economic crisis and to put an end to the man-eating monopoly capitalist system once and for all.
From April 1-10, 300,000 truck drivers waged the longest nationwide strike in the history of the industry, fighting against increasing capitalist exploitation and the Carter administration's wage controls. Rising up in defiance of the threats of the government and in combat against the constant sabotage of the Teamsters Union bureaucrats, the truck drivers' strike once again showed that the workers can defend their vital interests only by waging militant mass struggle.
The capitalist government desperately wished to prevent a strike from occurring, and issued several threats in an attempt to intimidate the workers. Carter vowed to seek a Taft-Hartley injunction against them to suppress a potential strike and in this way waved the big stick of the law, police, courts and jails at them. It also pledged to have the Interstate Commerce Commission de-regulate the trucking industry in order to increase the proportion of non-union drivers, which would increase competition in the workers' ranks and undermine their ability to resist the capitalists. But the truckers were determined to go out on strike regardless of the threats of the government.
On April 1, when the union negotiators rejected the last proposal of the trucking companies, the truck drivers did not hesitate and immediately struck 73 companies nationwide out of a total of 500 directly involved in the negotiations. The trucking capitalists responded by closing down their remaining operations and locking out the workers. Within only a few days many auto plants were running out of supplies and had to shut down or run short shifts. After a week the auto capitalists had laid off more than 100, 000 workers.
On April 10, the union officials treacherously agreed to a tentative agreement with the trucking industry before the workers' demands were met, and called a halt to the strike. And they recommended that the workers ratify this pact in a voting process that will not be completed until mid-May.
But when the nationwide strike ended, not all truckers returned to work. This included over 9,000 iron and steel haulers who waged an unauthorized wildcat strike, in defiance of the union hacks, demanding better terms in the contract supplement applying to their line of work. Production was seriously disrupted in many steel mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, and over 5,000 steel workers were laid off by the capitalists. When it became apparent that sweet talk would not get the steel haulers to give up their struggle, the union bureaucrats had no choice but to turn around and authorize it. The steel haulers returned to work after a settlement was reached in the last week of April.
The labor traitors have highly praised the tentative Master Freight Agreement, but this is a typical sellout's trick. At every step of the way they have restricted the struggle of the workers to prevent them from achieving their demands.
The union officials refused to explain the actual terms contained in the agreement in order to promote confusion in the workers' ranks, disrupt their unity and disintegrate their struggle. Nevertheless, certain conclusions can be drawn from the limited facts about the agreement that have been made available by the capitalists and union officials. Because of the vigorous struggle conducted by the truckers, the capitalists were forced to agree to a settlement that surpasses Carter's 7% wage/benefit increase limit. However, this agreement will still result in a decline in the workers' real wages in the coming three years covered by the contract. This shows that Carter's "voluntary" wage controls are a really brutal attack on the wages and well-being of the working class.
The previous average wage for most of the truck drivers was $9.50 per hour. The wage and benefit increase included in the tentative Master Freight Agreement is advertised as being approximately 9% a year, computed on the assumption of an 8.5 % inflation rate. This has the appearance of keeping up with inflation, but only the appearance, considering that the present inflation rate is actually 13%. But even if prices rose at a rate of "only" 8.5% the settlement will not keep up with rising prices since the inflation rate is based on the Consumer Price Index which minimizes the real effect of price increases on the people, and considering the fact that a large part of the money paid into fringe benefit funds for health care and pensions is never received by the workers. Furthermore, if the wage (and COLA) increase is considered separately, minus the fringe benefit increase, new facts emerge. This has been the customary way of doing things until Carter announced his 7% guideline and called on the workers to limit their combined wages and benefits to 7%. All of this discussion of "combined wage and benefit" increases has been organized by the bourgeoisie to limit the workers' actual wage increases to much less than 7%, that is, to force even more drastic wage cuts on them. If one takes the skimpy facts publicly available on the agreement it seems that the truckers' wage increase alone, including COLA, will average approximately 8% a year if inflation is 8. 5%, a definite wage cut.
The Teamsters officials, in league with the capitalists and their government, are hiding the real facts on this wage-cutting agreement from the workers. Fitzsimmons stated on April 11, "I'm sure they'll be satisfied with this agreement. At least I hope so." Fitzsimmons is lying to the workers about the agreement concluded with the trucking capitalists and is trying to convince the workers to accept it.
The capitalist media also pretended that the agreement was not a wage cut to help mollify the truck drivers, while simultaneously promoting the contradictory lie that the Teamsters' settlement is in compliance with Carter's wage-cutting 7% guideline. This propaganda was designed to spread demoralization and pessimism among the proletariat as a whole. The bourgeoisie is especially worried about the workers in the rubber, electrical, auto and other industries whose contracts will be renegotiated in the coming months. The capitalists want to throw cold water on their fighting spirit, which is mounting in anticipation of the coming battles.
Lying through his teeth, Carter's Chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, Alfred E. Kahn stated, "The settlement is within the administration's voluntary pay standards." On cue, newspaper headlines proclaimed such balderdash as "Trucks to Roll; Guidelines Met" and "Tentative Pact Falls Within Carter's Plan". But the lies of the Carter administration were so blatantly ridiculous that even the arch-reactionary magazine U.S. News and World Report could not stomach them and was forced to blurt out in its April 16, 1979 issue: "The government hoped to overcome this crisis by simply declaring any new wage settlement in the trucking and airline industries in compliance with the program -- even if it massacres the intent of the guidelines." And sure enough, when Secretary of Labor Marshall was told that the Teamsters had won a 30% increase over three years and exceeded the 7% guideline (22. 5% compounded over three years), he replied: "If it's 30% by whomever figures it and we figure it at 22. 5%, then it's within the guidelines." The government "redefined" 30% to be 22. 5% and with a straight face stated that the workers had complied with the wage guideline. What a fraud!
In their struggle, the truck drivers have come up against the obstructions and constant sabotage of the Teamsters Union bureaucrats, led by Frank Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons was the first top union bureaucrat to endorse Carter's anti-working class wage controls program when it was announced last fall. Throughout the negotiations he refused to mobilize the workers for mass struggle to defy Carter's wage controls, but instead called for the workers to beg the government to allow the Teamsters "special exemptions" from them. lie attempted to demobilize and demoralize the workers, to deny the importance of their own struggle and instead called for reliance on the benevolence of the government. This was treachery against the truck drivers. The bourgeoisie concedes nothing to the workers without a bitter single. And for the Teamsters Union aristocrats to ea for the government to make "special exemptions" to the drivers was also treachery against the rest of working class which also must rise up against the wage controls to defend their basic interests. The working class is not composed of "special interest groups" who scramble for "their share" and say "to hell with the other workers". The interests of every worker are inseparable from the interests of the c as a whole. But the Teamsters officials do not give this line because they are agents of the bourgeoisie. Their task is to split the workers and disintegrate the working class movement.
When Carter threatened the truck drivers with a Taft-Hartley injunction to suppress any possible sit Fitzsimmons called 'on the workers to cringe in ft of the state. The union officials limited the strike to only 73 companies under the hoax of not giving the government the pretext to declare a "national emergency" and to issue a Taft-Hartley injunction banning the strike. But to cringe in fear of the state and to capitulate to it is to betray the workers' interests. The workers can defend themselves successfully from the attacks of the government only through waging vigorous mass struggle.
The truck drivers wield such power and have such a militant fighting spirit that the union bosses could not prevent a strike outright, and the workers succeeded in waging the longest nationwide shutdown of the industry in history. But Fitzsimmons and co. refused to wage a mass strike with militant tactics, to defy the controls and to fight for the maximum wage increase possible. They restricted the strike to the goal of winning a slightly better COLA clause, all the time pledging allegiance to Carter's controls.
And when the strike was over and it was clear that the truckers had succeeded in surpassing the 7% ceiling, Fitzsimmons played stupid, refused to recognize this fact and would not call on all other workers to rise up and smash the wage controls altogether. He, along with Carter and all the monopoly capitalists wished to make sure that the truckers' struggle provided no encouragement to the rest of the working class.
All of these facts destroy the myth of the "militancy" of the Teamsters Union bureaucrats. It is only the rank-and-file truckers who are militant and desire to fight the bourgeoisie. These facts once again show that to advance their struggle, the workers must necessarily oppose the political line of the labor bureaucrats, who are the trojan horse of the bourgeoisie in the workers' movement.
"Voluntary" wage controls are the centerpiece of the Carter administration's misnamed "anti-inflation" program. The monopoly capitalists have no desire to actually fight against inflation. They hypocritically call for everyone to sacrifice, capitalists and workers alike, to supposedly stop inflation. But in practice the capitalists are reaping huge and ever-increasing profits while the real wages of the workers continue to decline as rising prices erode their standard of living. The workers have no choice but to fight back and resist the wage-cutting offensive of the monopoly capitalist class. To not fight back means to be saddled with at lest a 7% wage and benefits "increase", which in reality would amount to a 6% decline in real wages at today's 13% annual rate of inflation. The Federal government employees fared even worse than this, as Carter imply dictated a 5.5% increase in their wages last all.
But if they resist, the workers fare much better. In 1978 the coal miners, postal workers and the pulp and paper workers all were able to achieve wage increases of approximately 10% a year, even though their struggles were betrayed by the labor aristocrats. This shows that it is crucial for the workers to rise in struggle, oppose the sabotage of the union bureaucrats and defy Carter's wage controls to prevent themselves and their families from being reduced to starvation and pauperism.
Today, even 10% wag increases do not keep up with rising prices, and the workers' real wages are declining. Long ago, Marx showed that a basic law of capitalist production was that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This situation can only be eliminated through the socialist revolution, through the expropriation and suppression of the capitalist parasites and the ascendance to power of the proletariat.
The Carter administration is experiencing many difficulties trying to cram it "voluntary" wage controls down the throats of the workers, such as the truck drivers, despite the treachery of the trade union bosses and the violent repression of the state. The proletariat is waging heroic struggles to resist the capitalist offensive and is getting organized for mass revolutionary struggle.
Fifty-five thousand rubber workers of the United Rubber Workers union are presently engaged in a struggle against the Big Four rubber companies (Goodyear, Firestone, Uniroyal and Goodrich) for higher wages and an improved cost-of-living allowance. In 1976, the rubber workers fought a militant and determined 141-day strike, winning a substantial wage increase and, for the first time, a cost-of-living allowance. But the rapid increase in the rate of inflation has forced the workers into battle again just to keep pace with the rising cost of living.
In their just struggle for higher wages the rubber workers have come under attack by Carter and his "wage guidelines". On April 20, just as the contract was expiring, the White House summoned the capitalists and the union to Washington to "discuss" Carter's guidelines, that is, to stiffen the capitalists' resistance to the workers' demands While pressuring the workers into abiding by the meager 7 increase allowed for wages, COLA and fringe benefits together. Alfred Kahn, Carter's "anti-inflation" czar, threatened that "We have every intention of using whatever power is at our disposal to see they [the guidelines] are complied with." On April 26, Carter spokesman Jody Powell blamed the workers and their unions for the increasing cost of living and threatened retaliation. He said that "...powerful interests of society recognize no responsibility," and that "that sort of attitude is not acceptable to the President...."
In the face of this pressure by the government of the rich, Peter Bommarito, president of the United Rubber Workers union, has made a lot of noise about how he will never agree to a contract settlement within the 7% guidelines. In this way he is trying to make a name for himself as a big militant fighter for the workers and against Carter's wage guidelines. But this "militancy" is a fraud, a charade; the fact is that Bommarito and his top lieutenants have systematically worked to sabotage the workers' struggle: They dragged out the contract talks past the April 20 deadline, forced the workers to stay on the job without a contract, and tried to spread uncertainty and demoralization. An anonymous union source was quoted in the Akron Beacon Journal (April 29, 1979) that "Bommarito has good control, but every day without a contract makes it more difficult for him to keep everybody in line." In fact, some work stoppages have already been reported at Goodyear and Firestone plants.
Furthermore, Bommarito and the top union officials singled out only one company to be struck -- Uniroyal (which with 8200 workers is the second smallest of the Big Four), on top of signing a no-strike agreement with Firestone last February, thus betraying the workers' vehement demand of 1976 that all four big rubber companies be struck simultaneously. They have been doing propaganda all along to demoralize and discourage the workers so as to divert them from the path of militant mass struggle. Bommarito, for instance, preaches that "a confrontation is not the best course for any union; it isn't the constructive way to make progress"; and that "adjustments between w ages and profits should be made in conformity with the common good. " Finally, Bommarito opposes the "guidelines" because in fact he favors mandatory controls in the name of "equality of sacrifice"!
Bommarito's treachery is part of the feverish efforts of the rubber monopolists and the Carter administration to shackle the rubber workers and prevent this militant section of the working class from rising up in struggle as they did three years ago. In 1976 the vigorous four-month strike of the rubber workers battered the Big Four, driving down their profits by as much as 86% from the previous year, and upset the whole monopoly capitalist class. At the same time, their strike struggle greatly inspired and aroused the whole working class. This is what the capitalists and their state are so afraid of. Today the rubber workers and the entire working class are facing even more intense attacks as the rich and tin state try to force the workers to bear the burden of the economic crisis. Carter's wage guidelines art part of this fascist offensive to cut the workers' wages and fatten capitalist profits. It is only through vigorous and determined mass struggle, such as that waged by the rubber workers in 1976, that the workers can defy Carter's fascist wage controls and defend their basic interests.
(The following is reprinted from a leaflet The Workers' Advocate has received on the murderous conditions in a steel mill in relation to the productivity drive of the steel monopolists.)
In the last month, the steel capitalists have murdered one worker and critically injured another at our mill. These atrocities are the result of the company's "Cost Improvement Program", and of the "increased productivity" drive Carter is organizing in all industries under the hoax of "fighting inflation".
The two recent cases at our mill include a Mexican- American worker who died on March 3, 1979 of massive burns from molten steel spewn on him from a ladle at the basic oxygen plant (where molten steel is made from iron and scrap steel), and another worker, a millwright at the hot strip mill who has lain in critical condition in a coma since February 24, when a 600 pound vent pipe fell and crushed his skull.
This now makes six workers killed in our mill in just 18 months. This is a great crime against the workers!
The company tries very hard to pin the blame on the workers themselves for this situation. They have consistently spread the lie that these were all "just accidents", or that these deaths occurred because the workers were "careless" and "didn't work safely". But facts prove that it is these rich capitalists themselves with their "Cost Improvement Program" who are directly responsible for these deaths and no one else.
The murdered worker was 52 years old and a head slagger on one of the pouring platforms at the basic oxygen plant when he was burned. His job was to pour from the ladles into the molds. The ladle he was burned from had set too long and the steel had hardened in the taphole. When this happens, the company always demands that the slaggers either straddle from the platform to a mold top, or else stand on a mold right up under the ladle in order to burn the taphole open with an oxygen blow pipe and then jump back when the steel begins to pour. This is an incredibly dangerous job! While the murdered worker was doing this, a chemical reaction in the ladle caused the steel to blow up and spew out over the top. Seeing this, the worker tried to run; but he tripped over the debris and material which are all over the ground in the area. The molten steel landed on him causing massive burns. His fellow workers were also burned and were unable to help him. He lay on the platform for approximately one half hour before out-of-plant medical care could reach him (he had to wait for out-of-plant medical aid since the capitalists at our mill refuse to pay for adequate medical facilities in the plant). On March 3, he died of these burns.
Clearly, any one of a number of factors in this procedure could result in death. Although this is obviously an extremely dangerous and extremely outdated way to pour steel, one which is bound to cause death or injury at any time, the steel capitalists have used it for years, AND STILL CONTINUE TO DO SO, EVEN AFTER IT HAS CAUSED THE DEATH OF A WORKER!
If this is not premeditated murder, what is ?!
In each of our leaflets on the last five workers that have been killed in the mill, we have pointed out that these unsafe conditions are the result of the greed of the steel capitalists who are carrying out a big "increased productivity drive" in all the steel mills in the U.S. Now, in the most recent issue of the company magazine, the president of the company has come right out and admitted that this is precisely what the owners of our mill are doing. He says that for the past year they have been carrying out a "Cost Improvement Program" (CIP) on the front of "safety". He explains that the goal of this "CIP" is "to reduce costs". He says that "the CIP is a disciplined, organized approach to improving costs and profits", and that its aim is to stop the flow of profits "... at an ever increasing rate to non-productive environmental control and OSHA related items." In short, he is admitting that for at least a year now there has been a "disciplined and organized" (read: "premeditated") program at the plant to "improve ... profits" by spending less and less on safety procedures and equipment!
However, it is not just the steel capitalists at our mill who are organizing this program to increase profits by cutting safety costs. The Carter administration is pushing the very same program on a national scale for all industries.
Presently Carter is coordinating a big "increased productivity" drive designed to make the workers pay for the economic crisis. Carter and the other government officials have stressed time and again that his "anti-inflation" program not only means 7% wage controls (i.e. a national wage cut considering that inflation is over 12%); but a big push to "increase worker productivity" as well. "Increased worker productivity" means that the capitalists are out to cut production costs to the minimum, and to exploit the workers to the extreme.
One of the chief ways Carter is pushing for cutting production costs under this program, is by opposing that money be spent on new safety devices in industry, on the hoax that these new safety expenses also "cause inflation"! The government bureaucrats under Carter have even invented a new "science" to "prove" that spending money on safety is one of the "causes" of inflation. According to this "science", the bureaucrats estimate the "price" of the "average workers' life" at between "$200,000 and $300,000 each". Then, these lackeys of the big monopolies compare this supposed "price of a worker" to the price of any new safety regulation which is needed m industry. If the cost of the new device averages out to be more than $300,000 per each workers' life it will save, then the new safety regulation is declared to be officially "inflationary", and "not worth" the money. This is exactly the cold blooded manner in which the steel barons considered the "worth" of the murdered worker's life in deciding whether of not this incredibly unsafe method of pouring steel would continue as the standard procedure.
Clearly, the company's "Cost Improvement Program" is the very same thing as Carter's "increased productivity" drive. The whole idea is that the workers are forced to "increase productivity" (i.e. work harder and longer) while at the same tin even though the jobs become more dangerous, the companies spend less and less on safety with the full blessing of the government. This whole offensive led by Carter against the workers has absolutely nothing to with "lighting inflation". In fact, it has everything to do with increasing profits at the expense of the life an limb of the workers!
It is this "productivity" drive and "Cost Improvement Program" of the capitalists and the government which is directly responsible for the deaths of six workers at our mill alone in just 18 months time! This is nothing but murder, murder with the motive reaping millions in profits. Any claim to the contrary by the company and the government's OSHA is just lying propaganda designed to deceive the workers.
All the workers at the mill are outraged over these crimes of the rich. The workers are becoming ever more united against these attacks by the rich, and are getting prepared to act.
The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists hails the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). These events are a new step forward for the proletarian revolutionaries of Canada. This Conference marks a further advance in the building and bolshevizing of the CPC(M-L).
The CPC(M-L) and the COUSML are fraternal Marxist-Leninist organizations, fighting a common struggle against a common enemy. The close unity between the CPC(M-L) and the COUSML has been and continues to be a powerful factor for the development of the revolution in North America. The COUSML was deeply honored to have participated in the Conference and Rally and to have had the opportunity to learn from the experience of the fraternal Canadian comrades and to present our views on the burning questions facing the Marxist-Leninist movement today. The significance of the conferences and meetings of the CPC(M-L) have always extended far beyond the borders of Canada. The experience of the CPC (M-L), the first Party to be reconstituted on the Marxist-Leninist basis in North America, is a treasure of great value for the American Marxist-Leninists.
The Sixth Consultative Conference and the Rally were events of historic significance for the developing unity of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. At this Conference and Rally many Marxist-Leninist Parties and organizations participated at the invitation of the Central Committee of the CPC(M-L). The contributions of the Marxist- Leninist Parties and organizations and the conducting of bilateral and multilateral discussions have helped make this Conference into a manifestation of lofty proletarian internationalism.
The participation in the Conference and Rally of the delegation of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania was a tremendous event. This was the first-ever visit to North America by such a delegation of the CC of the PLA. It is to the great merit of the PLA that it was the first to recognize the features of Khrushchovite revisionism. Today, adhering to the immortal teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the PLA has vigorously carried forward the struggle against Chinese revisionism. The visit of the PLA to North America arouses the tremendous enthusiasm of the American proletariat.
Long live the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)!
Long live the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement!
Long live Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism!
--National Executive Committee Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist
(Following are excerpts from speeches at the Rally on March 31. The next issue of the journal Proletarian Internationalism will carry the full text of the public documents from the Conference and the Rally.)
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (M-L)
Our Party considers it a great honor to be able to participate in today's rally alongside so many representatives of the international proletariat. "Workers of all countries, unite!" has always been a fundamental principle of Marxism-Leninism, and the concrete realization of this principle, especially through the further building and strengthening of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement, is a most crucial task....
.. .Under these conditions, it is an essential task to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism, and to deepen and broaden the struggle against all forms of revisionism. Any letting up of the struggle, any leaving of it to chance, under any justification, can only have disastrous consequences for the cause of proletarian revolution and socialism.
Our Party considers that such a revisionist trend is "Mao Tsetung Thought."...
The situation in Britain is a conclusive exposure of the Chinese and other revisionists' thesis that "there exists no revolutionary situation in the West". In the face of the intensifying attempts of the monopoly capitalist class, all of its bourgeois parties, its labor aristocracy and trade union apparatus, to further unload its deepening crisis onto the backs of the working class and people; in the face of the growing fascism that the monopoly bourgeoisie is developing to force this state of affairs on the people, the working class and other sections of the working people are waging a most militant and determined struggle against the bourgeoisie, its government and its other representatives. But the opportunists, the Khrushchovite revisionists, Trotskyites and neo-revisionists still exercise considerable influence in the working class movement. With their economism and bourgeois trade unionism they are doing their utmost to limit the workers' struggles to the confines of the capitalist system and order, spreading maximum confusion, attempting to destroy the workers' revolutionary aspirations, and on all fronts, attempting to disarm the working class in the face of the increasing attacks by capital.
But the decisive factor is that the proletariat has its vanguard, the RCPB(M-L)e The Party, though still relatively young, through its work is creating the necessary conditions for the triumph of the revolution in Britain.
In the battle against the tyranny, our Party has striven to place itself at the head of the mass struggle and to give it a correct direction. We made efforts to unite the most militant sections of the Resistance, to develop the People's Front and to construct a broad anti-fascist front, at the same time that we isolate the two superpowers, the Christian Democrat leaders, and the revisionists who are out to impede, to control the struggle of the masses and prevent the genuine liberation of our people....
In the face of this situation our Party abroad has set itself the task of strengthening international solidarity with the struggle of our people by giving it a correct orientation. International solidarity has also played an important role in the struggle to isolate and deal blows to the dictatorship. In this sense, we would like to thank the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), the Canadian proletariat and people, for the tremendous solidarity which they have shown towards our people....
Chinese revisionism, with its superpower ambitions, acts openly and brutally against the peoples of the world. In Chile, only the fascists support revisionism. In our country, there is not even a single party, group, section or faction of any organization whatsoever which supports the Chinese revisionists....
In the context of the present international situation the unity of the genuine communist parties of the world around the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism becomes more necessary than ever.
We would like to salute from this platform the delegation of the heroic Party of Labor of Albania which is successfully building socialism, defending the immortal principles of Marxism-Leninism and fighting without compromise against the two superpowers and all imperialism, reactionaries and revisionists.
To the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
Dear Comrades,
The Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist) sends its warmest greetings to your Sixth Consultative Conference. We are convinced that your Conference will mark a new step forward in your struggle against modern revisionism and opportunism of every hue, firmly based on the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for an independent, socialist Canada.
We, the Danish Marxist-Leninists are convinced that the relations between our two parties will be further strengthened in the future in our common struggle for freedom and revolution.
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA
(MARXIST-LENINIST)!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist)
The international rally in Montreal in which we have the great pleasure to participate is an event of great significance, for all the international revolutionary and communist movement, and especially for our Party, the Workers' Communist Party of France.
Indeed it is the conclusion of the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in which various Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations have participated, especially our dear Party of Labor of Albania. This Conference has allowed our parties and organizations to go deeper into the crucial issues of our struggle to bring down the rotten imperialist-revisionist system and to better understand the precious experience of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which is an example to be followed by all the communist movement. That's why this Conference and today's rally, by their high internationalist character, are a significant victory for the communist movement against world reaction and all its defenders, especially the Maoist revisionists. On the other hand, the Conference and the rally are a big inspiration for our parties and are showing us the path to follow to develop the revolutionary movement of the peoples against imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism and all reaction, as well as to strengthen the revolutionary unity of the international communist movement, especially by denouncing all the Khrushchovite, Titoite, "Eurocommunist", Maoist and other revisionist theories, and drawing clear lines of demarcation against them.
Our Party, the Workers' Communist Party of France, founded on March 18, 1979, on the anniversary of the Paris Commune, the first state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, has inscribed on its banner the defense of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The working class of France, taking up anew its internationalist, revolutionary traditions that the revisionists were not able to bury, is proud of the opportunity which is being given to its vanguard Party to participate, a few days after its foundation, in this internationalist meeting. We enthusiastically salute all the comrades and friends present here.
Today, two camps are facing one another: the camp of socialism, with the glorious People's Socialist Republic of Albania at its head, and the moribund imperialist-revisionist camp. The old imperialist-revisionist world is in the grip of a very profound and insoluble crisis. It has itself created the decisive instrument of its doom, the working class, which has nothing to lose but its chains.
Central Committee
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
Dear Comrades,
We regret very much not being able, for unexpected reasons of time and also because of the great distance, to send a representative from our Party to participate in the Sixth Consultative Conference of your Party, but in our thoughts we will be with you, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist) sends to you, to the militants as well as to the friends of our fraternal Party in Canada, to CPC (M-L), our revolutionary and resolute greetings and hopes that your Conference will be crowned with full success. We are convinced that your Conference will clarify and deepen the Marxist- Leninist position on important questions on the situation in Canada and the international situation and questions of the world Marxist-Leninist movement and its struggle against revisionism in its different variants. We are convinced that your Conference will place you in a position to intervene even more resolutely in the class struggles of the proletariat and people of Canada and to win new victories in the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism, against the bourgeoisie and reaction, against revisionism and opportunism, with its closing rally in which numerous fraternal parties will participate. This Conference will at the same time contribute to strengthening the unity of the world Marxist-Leninist communist movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Let the fraternal relations between our two parties become ever stronger in the common struggle for socialism and communism.
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist)
The fierce infighting that has broken out today amongst the Indian ruling classes is a reflection of the utter bankruptcy of the Indian neo-colonial state and its inability to rule. The objective situation in India is very ripe for revolution, but it is the subjective factor, essentially the existence of a monolithic Communist Party that is lacking. It is to provide this subjective factor that we genuine Marxist-Leninists are rebuilding the Communist Party in India, by upholding the purity of Marxism-Leninism and opposing revisionism and opportunism of all hues, be they of the Khrushchovite, "Eurocommunist", Titoite or "Mao Tsetung, Thought" variety. We stand for the violent overthrow of the reactionary Indian state as the only correct road for the Indian revolution.... Since the Internationalist Rally held in Montreal on April 30, last year, the followers of "Mao Tsetung Thought" in India have been running around saying that Comrade Hardial Bains and CPC (M-L) have been organizing their own International. That International began a long time ago during the time of Marx and Engels and continues to this day, and we are very proud to be part of that International. What worries the opportunists is the growing unity of the international Marxist- Leninist communist movement, of which this rally today is a striking manifestation. It is these followers of "Mao Tsetung Thought" and their masters in Peking who have attempted to float their own yellow international that included in it the U.S. imperialists, the reactionaries of the "third world", the butchers and hangmen of the peoples such as Mobutu, Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, etc.!
We bring to you revolutionary salutations from a people who, after 18 months of uninterrupted uprising and by sacrificing over 100,000 of their best sons and daughters, overthrew the fascist tool of imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, in Iran, the Pahlavi regime, by their violent revolution, and put an end to this bloodsucking dynasty which for over half a century has made our country a heaven for imperialism and reaction, and a hell for the laboring masses.
... The Iranian working class and people greatly appreciate the internationalist support of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties, which throughout the struggle, educated the proletariat and the people of their countries about the Iranian revolution. We would especially like to take this opportunity to thank the glorious Party of Labor of Albania, the government and the heroic people of Albania for the internationalist support they have given to the Iranian revolution. Let it be known to everyone in this world that socialist Albania is the only country which has consistently supported our struggle right from the beginning and has openly declared its full support tor the victory of the democratic revolution of Iran in the important statement which was issued on February 18, 1979.
The struggle of the Iranian people and the victories which they have achieved in their democratic revolution have, once again, reaffirmed the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist thesis on revolution, and have exposed all the revisionist and counter-revolutionary "theories" of the Khrushchovite revisionists, the "three worldists" and the Maoists, and they tear apart the masks of the so-called "true friends" of the oppressed people, the Soviet social-imperialists, and expose the true nature of the reactionary leadership of the so-called "communist" party and government of China. Both these social-imperialist powers gave their full support to the fascist regime right to the last moments of its rule and participated in the same counter-revolutionary conspiracies against the struggle of our people as that of the U.S. imperialist and other imperialist powers....
Comrades and friends,
Our Party holds the view that even though the democratic revolution has been achieved in Iran, and has dealt a heavy blow to imperialism and social-imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism and internal reaction, this does not mean that the revolution has won its final victory. The imperialists and social- imperialists who have suffered great setbacks in Iran and have been forced to retreat have not ceased their conspiracies against the revolution and are preparing themselves for counter-attacks. For this reason it is necessary to redouble our vigilance so as to prevent the imperialists and internal reactionaries, who maintain their pillar in Iran (of which the army is still a strong base), from attacking the gains of the revolution. It is for this reason that our Party has called upon the Iranian people to not give up their arms; we must keep the arms in our hands as long as the reactionary army of the Shah remains in place and has not been dissolved, and in its place a genuinely people's army has not been established. All the chiefs of the army, the generals and colonels must be judged, and the majority of them delivered to a tribunal of the people and shot.
Today, what is capable of defending the gains of the revolution from the attacks of internal and external reaction is the ever-deepening ties of the Party with the working class, organizing it still further and raising its level of consciousness. It is in this manner that the revolution will continue and will take a proletarian character.
Our Party will defend the gains of this great revolution of the workers of Iran with all its strength, and will struggle to develop the democratic revolution to a higher level.
Moribund capitalism has tried to stop the irresistible advance of the revolutionary movement by generating another monster, another kind of revisionism, another social-imperialism. Today, the Chinese revisionists with their so-called theory of "three worlds" try to deceive people, to persuade them to collaborate and collude with the bourgeoisie. The so- called "three worlds theory" has developed shamelessly and these traitors to the working class do not even restrain themselves from asking the workers to support their own exploitation by the monopoly bourgeoisie and U.S. imperialism.
... It is an illusion that the working class in a highly-developed capitalist country is integrated into the bourgeois society and no longer has a stake in organizing the proletarian revolution. The working class doesn't accept the domination of the bourgeoisie and instead will fight to destroy the capitalist system in its country and will defeat every kind of imperialism and liberate the entire humanity.
Comrades,
I was very pleased by the Sixth Consultative Conference. The fraternal Party in Canada is a worthy representative of the working class. Its resolute defense of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and its efforts to further bolshevize the Party are the evidence that it Will without doubt lead the working class to revolution.
Comrades, this Conference is an important occasion for fraternal parties to meet. Revolution is a problem taken up for solution, and the communist parties have to prepare for the coming battles, always more firmly united.
The Marxist-Leninist communist parties, firmly linked with the working class, apply continually, concretely and firmly the scientific theory of Marxism- Leninism. They support, cherish and respect one another and refuse to deviate from the correct line.
The Marxist-Leninist communist parties will definitely strengthen our fraternal links in the same cause of the proletarian, socialist revolution.
The bourgeois-revisionist campaign against Marxism-Leninism also bases itself on trotskyite theories, Mao Tsetung's thoughts and other new philosophies which keep mushrooming. This campaign is even more intense during times of crisis to deviate the proletariat from the revolutionary path....
.. .Thus, in opposition to all bourgeois-revisionist campaigns to sow pessimism among the masses on the validity of the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and on the possibility to carry out the revolution, the Marxist-Leninists propagate among the masses a justified optimism and a revolutionary prospect for the present and future situation.
In our country, Portugal, presently all the opportunists and revisionists want to show the situation in a bad light to the working masses. In reality, the situation in Portugal is a revolutionary situation of deep and ail-sided economic, political, ideological, social and military crisis. The bourgeoisie has found a so- called solution for this crisis in the immiseration of the masses and in the political, economic and military subordination of our country to U.S. imperialism....
Our Party rejects these counter-revolutionary prospects and mobilizes the workers around the slogan: Make the Rich Pay for the Crisis! and calls for sharp struggle against the schemes of the bourgeoisie to have the workers bear the burden of the crisis on their backs. Our Party also brings into the mass movement a perspective of fight, of struggle and of uncompromising rejection of class conciliation. It also rejects the idea held by the revisionists among the masses that militant and revolutionary struggle inevitably leads to a military coup which will give rise to a new fascist dictatorship. In opposition to the revisionists and to the bourgeoisie, the Party holds not only that the genuine solution for the crisis is consistent struggle against all the measures aimed at making the working people pay for the crisis, but also that the masses must fight for a people's patriotic and revolutionary anti-fascist government which would take thorough anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist measures which constitute a solid base for facing the crisis of capital.
Dear Comrades,
We regret very much that we cannot be present in this Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) to which you have cordially invited us. Although the distance between our two countries is very large, the Marxist-Leninists of the whole world are every time more united in the struggle against imperialism in its different forms, against revisionism and for the world socialist revolution.
Our Party just like your own is engaged in this hard battle which is today, following the appearance of Chinese revisionism and its recent aggressive activities in Southeast Asia, becoming more intense than ever. The development and strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist parties represents, in these circumstances, a vital necessity not only in some places, but in all parts of the world. For this reason, dear comrades, we wish your Conference and your struggle against reaction and imperialism in Canada the greatest success.
National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)
Imperialism and reaction, headed by the two imperialist superpowers, are waging a fierce struggle to preserve their rotting self. All the forces of reaction are coming forward to serve their imperialist masters in this task of further enslaving the peoples of the world. In particular, those imperialist agents who call themselves "Marxist" are being mobilized to launch attacks on Marxism-Leninism, to attack the deadly enemy of imperialism, the socialist system, and to attack socialist Albania, where this socialist system is today being strengthened under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This struggle between these opposing social systems cannot be reconciled. Thus, imperialism is doing its best to distort the principles of Marxism-Leninism as are embodied in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. These distortions the imperialists are attempting to present to the proletariat and people of the world as "revolutionary theory"....
There are those who call themselves "Marxist- Leninist" and "revolutionaries" but refuse to unmask "Mao Tsetung Thought", under the guise that such is not important, or who advise that the theories of the Chinese revisionists such as the theory of "three worlds" are not in conformity with the preachings of Mao Tsetung. Our organization cannot accept that such is the case since Mao Tsetung has been at the heart of the leadership of the CPC from 1935 up to the time of his death. Mao Tsetung was the main architect and ideologue behind the Chinese revolution, the victories of which have been liquidated today because of these very teachings of Mao which are anti-Marxist- Leninist....
The situation of life of the proletariat and other laboring masses of our country is deteriorating rapidly. U.S. imperialism is continuing to show its most vicious nature by increasing its stranglehold over the life of the proletariat and people. As a result all the evidence of the imperialist ruination -- increased poverty of the working people, inflation, more workers out on the streets, the death of children from diseases of every kind, etc. -- are present.
Putting an end to this situation by overthrowing the rule of capital is not a matter of adventure as the social-imperialists charge us, but a task which must be carried out. We, the Marxist-Leninists of Trinidad and Tobago are determined to lead the masses in accomplishing this mission.
Comrades of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist),
Comrades of the delegation of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania,
Comrades of the delegations of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties,
Dear Comrades, dear friends,
In the name of the proletariat in the United States, the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists salutes this Revolutionary Rally.
Comrades and friends,
The successful conclusion of the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is a victory for Marxism-Leninism. The Sixth Consultative Conference has taken up revolution as a practical problem for solution. This is a product of the vigorous struggle waged by CPC (M-L) in defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism. From the beginning, CPC (M-L) has been built as a Party of revolutionary action. We are certain that the 10th year of CPC (M-L) will be marked by further advance in the building and bolshevizing of the Party.
Comrades and friends, The participation of the fraternal delegations in the Sixth Consultative Conference and in this Revolutionary Rally is a contribution to the strengthening of the unity of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. If the imperialists, the social-imperialists, the revisionists and opportunists can unite in single purpose against Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and socialism, so we, the genuine Marxist-Leninists throughout the world, should be united yet closer, in single purpose for the defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism, for the triumph of the revolution and socialism.
Comrades and friends,
The participation in the Sixth Consultative Conference and in this Revolutionary Rally of the delegation of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania is a tremendous event. It is the merit of the PLA that it was the first to recognize the features of Khrushchovite revisionism and to launch relentless struggle against it. Today, adhering to the immortal teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the PLA has vigorously carried forward the struggle against Chinese revisionism. Comrade Enver Hoxha's celebrated work, Imperialism and the Revolution, is a devastating blow against all forms of opportunism and revisionism, a resolute and courageous defense of the revolutionary doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, and a detailed exposition of the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world situation. Comrades and friends, if the imperialists, if the most reactionary, chauvinist and militarist circles can revel at the visit to North America of Teng Hsiao-ping, then so too does the PROLETARIAT have ITS answer to this, in the visit of the delegation of the Central Committee of the PLA.
Comrades and friends,
Today the "three worlds theory" and Chinese revisionism have become the object of scorn and hatred all around the globe. Since Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, the so-called theory of "three worlds", this social-chauvinist stand of sellout and betrayal, this amalgam of shop-worn revisionist and opportunist theses, has been exposed and condemned by the genuine Marxist-Leninists the world over.
The deepening of the struggle against Chinese revisionism has necessarily brought to the fore the question of exposing the source, the origin and development of this variant of modern revisionism. Based upon our work and struggle against revisionism, we have come to the conclusion that the emergence of Chinese revisionism in the Communist Party of China is the result of a very long period of internal corrosion and factional strife, which arose on the basis of the ideo-political line of Mao Tsetung. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists resolutely and unanimously condemns Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought as anti-Marxist-Leninist and revisionist. The revisionist thought of Mao Tsetung must be combatted as a component part of the struggle against Browderism, Titoism, Soviet modern revisionism, "Eurocommunism", Chinese revisionism, and opportunism of all hues.
Comrades and friends,
In the United States, the exposure of and struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Chinese revisionism has revealed an evil tumor which for years has been growing increasingly malignant with the body of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. This is the anti-Party trend of neo-revisionism, a trend of conciliation with modern revisionism, and of opposition to the building of the Marxist-Leninist Party. For a decade, the organizations and individuals comprising this trend have done tremendous damage to the cause of the proletariat. Today, neo-revisionism has degenerated into open social-chauvinism, has entered into open alliance with the Pentagon, and is carrying out the most gangster-style opposition to the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, to the Party of Labor of Albania, and its leader, Comrade Enver Hoxha. History shows that the mainstream within the neo-revisionist trend was encouraged, given ideological direction, financed, and in an all-round way fostered, as a special agency of Chinese revisionism, that U.S. neo-revisionism is in the main an American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism.
The deepening of the struggle against modern revisionism, and especially against Chinese revisionism on the international plane; the development of a movement against social-chauvinism inside the United States; and the strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist nucleus of COUSML have led to the developing exposure and repudiation of neo-revisionism. Neo-revisionism has degenerated into open social-chauvinism and has gone bankrupt. But social-chauvinism and the Browderite liberal-labor politics find their support in an entire stratum of the labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie, and their strength in their alliance with the bourgeoisie and its state power. The struggle against these politics and this stratum will not lessen, but will grow even more intense with the approach of the proletarian revolution. For this reason there can be no lasting victory in the struggle against neo-revisionism and social-chauvinism except through the reconstitution and building of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard Party of the proletariat. COUSML has taken up this task and is leading this struggle to build the Marxist-Leninist Party, without the social-chauvinists and against the social-chauvinists.
Comrades and friends,
The continuing and deepening of the struggle against Chinese revisionism, and the unmasking of the revisionist Mao Tsetung are important factors for the advance of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. But, comrades and friends, there must be vigilance. Today, Soviet modern revisionism is seizing upon the hideous charades of the Chinese revisionists to launch nefarious plots against the revolution. They are seizing upon the crimes of Mao Tsetung and Co. to pose as defenders of Marxism-Leninism and socialism, to restore the shattered prestige of the revisionist camp. In the present circumstances, social-democracy too is stepping up its activity. It too is seizing upon the crimes of Chinese social-imperialism with the aim of discrediting Marxism-Leninism.
It is the great crime of the Chinese revisionists that they postured against Khrushchovite revisionism, not to fight it, but to conciliate it, and that today they provide a cover for the Soviet modern revisionists and social-democrats. Today, as before, Soviet social-imperialism, together with U.S. imperialism, is a ferocious enemy of the revolution and the main bulwark of world reaction. Today, as before, Soviet modern revisionism remains a sworn enemy of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. We must not slacken our vigilance for a single minute. Our struggle against revisionism and opportunism must be waged from sound Marxist-Leninist positions.
Comrades and friends,
Twenty years ago, shortly after Khrushchov's infamous 20th Congress, the biggest professors of U.S. imperialism also held a meeting, a meeting at which they proclaimed "the end of ideology". Now, it is extremely interesting that professional ideologues should gather together to proclaim "the end of ideology". And history has shown that following this, these gentlemen did not retire to the countryside to tend their gardens. When the professional ideologues of U.S. imperialism proclaimed "the end of ideology", they were proclaiming an end to Marxism- Leninism, an end to the revolutionary proletariat.
In accordance with this thesis, U.S. imperialism has launched every sort of reactionary obscurantism, every sort of anti-communist ideology, and every sort of opportunist and police-socialist sect to fight against the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. Nowhere has this taken place to a greater extent than here in North America.
Comrades and friends,
Today, on the ninth anniversary of CPC(M-L), when we look at what has been wrought by the efforts of literally thousands of people who have sacrificed in order to build the Party, when we look at the Marxist-Leninist spirit and quality of this rally, we can say with confidence that Marxism-Leninism is very far from dead, but, on the contrary, is a living and vital force; and moreover, that it is not U.S. imperialism that will bury the proletariat, rather, it is the proletariat which will bury U.S. imperialism, right here in the soil of North America.
Comrades and friends,
GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
The holding of this international rally, as an integral part of the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), constitutes an important event in the struggle of the Canadian proletariat and the international Marxist- Leninist communist movement....
The present reactionary and revisionist offensive against Marxism-Leninism requires us to reach monolithic unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement on the basis of proletarian internationalism to carry on with greater strength the defense of Marxism-Leninism against its enemies and those who vacillate on it....
Bandera Roja knows how to apply the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism in our country. In a neo-colonial, dependent Venezuela which is submitted to the domination of U.S. imperialism, we know how to put forward strategy and tactics of revolutionary war, the only path for the seizure of power by the working class. We have put forward armed struggle against the bourgeois governments of militarized democracy and have raised high the defense of Marxism-Leninism in our struggle against those who vacillate on it....
On the international level, we have confronted various manifestations of revisionism. We have placed ourselves on the side of the consistent positions of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties against "Eurocommunism", trotskyism, the theory of "three worlds", Chinese revisionism, etc. In Latin America we are struggling for the unity of the Marxist- Leninist parties and for unity between these parties and the various liberation movements.
Dear comrades,
Our Party salutes the various organizations which are present here and reiterates to them our most firm decision to continue to struggle for the monolithic unity of the international Marxist-Leninist movement and for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
[Photo: Photo shows the participants singing the Internationale at the conclusion of the Revolutionary Rally.]
[Photo: Photo shows the audience and the delegates of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties and
organizations warmly applauding the delegation.]
(The following is the text of the Message of Greeting from the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania to the Sixth Consultative Conference of CPC (M-L), delivered by Comrade Xhelil Gjoni on March 26, 1979.)
Dear Comrades,
May I convey the militant greetings of the communists and working people of socialist Albania to your Conference, the Canadian Marxist-Leninists and militants on. behalf of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania and wish you further, ever greater successes in your revolutionary struggle against capitalist exploitation and bourgeois oppression, against imperialist domination and interference, especially by U.S. imperialism, for the rights of the Canadian working people, true national sovereignty and socialism.
We bring you fraternal greetings from the People's Socialist Republic of Albania which, on the 35th anniversary of its existence, stands like a granite rock on the shores of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, free and independent of anybody, successfully and unflinchingly building socialism in the conditions of savage, hostile capitalist and revisionist encirclement, according to the great Marxist-Leninist principle of self-reliance. Today, we let you know that despite the sabotage and hostile and perfidious acts at the hands of the Chinese revisionist leadership, the Albanian people, under the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, and relying on their own forces, have coped with all difficulties and successfully achieved the basic targets set for the year 1978, thereby honorably discharging the revolutionary common task in their own trenches and showing in practice and through facts, what a people, even though small like our people, can do, if it is fighting for a just cause and consistently adhering to the scientific theory of Marxism- Leninism. Applying the course of self-reliance with firm consistency and unwaveringly, socialist Albania has fought off all acts of interference, pressures and blockades and has never experienced, nor does it experience, economic stagnation, over-production crises, inflation, unemployment, price rises and lowering standard of living of the masses of the people.
We bring you greetings from Albania, where the people have been in power for 35 years now, under the leadership of the Party of Albanian communists, which they brought forth from their own ranks in the crucible of the revolutionary liberation struggle, from the country where everything is done according to the will of the working class, the working peasantry and the people's intelligentsia, from the country where the broad strata of the working people, with the working class at the head, exercise their own power and and sovereignty, actively participate in the governing of the country, have their decisive say in every field and exercise control on everybody and on everything. We extend our greetings to you on behalf of socialist Albania, where there are no unemployment and taxes, where woman enjoys equal rights with man by law and in life and has become a huge force for the construction of the new life, where the younger generation is surrounded by the solicitude of the entire society, the people and the Party, where it is molded with lofty ideals, is fighting on the advanced front of the socialist revolution and construction, in defense of the Homeland and socialism and does not experience such ills and anxiety as insecurity of the future, spiritual depression, crime, corruption and drug addiction.
Comrades,
All the Albanian communists and people watch with attention and sympathy and render all their internationalist support to the revolutionary struggle and activity of the Canadian proletariat and all progressive forces. Today, too, the Canadian working class which boasts outstanding militant traditions, stands in the frontline of the efforts of the Canadian people, against the bourgeoisie, imperialism and the reactionary circles. It is resolutely opposing the attempts to saddle the working people with the burden of the present crisis, it is fighting against the rising cost of living, against the violation of the natural rights of the working people, against unemployment and inflation, it is struggling to prevent the greedy local and foreign capitalist monopolies from fattening on its sweat, it is fighting to make the rich pay, against bourgeois violence, for the great ideals of freedom, people's democracy and socialism. The communists of Albania hail the struggle of their brothers, the Canadian Marxist-Leninists and their Party, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which have taken up the banner of revolutionary struggle, betrayed and thrown overboard by the revisionists.
The struggle the Canadian working class, people and Marxist-Leninists are waging is part and parcel of the great revolutionary process that has enveloped the entire world today. As Comrade Enver Hoxha has argued in his book, Imperialism and the Revolution, the entire world capitalist and imperialist system is in decadence and decay, it is growing weak and in decline. The present-day crisis has extremely sharpened all its contradictions and has put the revolution on the order of the day. As Comrade Enver Hoxha says: "Time is working for the revolution, for socialism, and not for the bourgeoisie and imperialism, not for modern revisionism and world reaction. The fire of the revolution is burning every- where in the hearts of the oppressed peoples who want to gain their genuine freedom, democracy and sovereignty, to take power into their own hands and to set out on the road of socialism, destroying imperialism and its flunkeys."
But victory will not come about of its own accord. Great forces of darkness, of the exploitation and enslavement of the working people and the peoples -- imperialism, social-imperialism, the big bourgeoisie and reaction -- have risen to their feet and are struggling today to avert and suppress the revolution and the liberation struggle of the peoples, to disrupt and wipe out socialism, to save and perpetuate capitalism. Social democracy and the Trotskyites, the modern revisionists of all hues, all the renegades from the working class, have gone all out to fight the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat, Marxism-Leninism, to denigrate, falsify and reject it. To promote the revolution, the cause of the liberation of the peoples and the progress of mankind, it is absolutely necessary to wage a merciless struggle against all these forces of reaction and retrogression.
In the present-day conditions, it is of vital importance to adopt a principled stand and conduct an uncompromising struggle against the two imperialist superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, which, as Comrade Enver Hoxha points out, constitute the greatest force in defense of the capitalist oppressive and exploiting system, the main bulwarks of world reaction, the sworn and most dangerous enemies of the revolution, socialism and the peoples of the whole world, which have taken over the hated role of international gendarmes against any revolutionary and liberation movement and represent the most aggressive and warlike forces that are driving the world through their acts towards a destructive war.
The dangerous activity of the two superpowers against the revolution, the freedom of the peoples, socialism and peace has been added to by a new threatening and very dangerous factor --the anti-Marxist, counter-revolutionary, expansionist, aggressive and warlike policy of Chinese social-imperialism for world domination. Every passing day provides new facts which clearly show that the Chinese leadership, with Teng Hsiao-ping and Hua Kuo-feng at the head, not only has nothing in common with Marxism- Leninism, socialism, the proletariat and the freedom- loving peoples, but is a revisionist, chauvinist and fascist outfit, loyal ally and zealous defender of the international bourgeoisie, U.S. and world imperialism and the most reactionary regimes. "Mao Tsetung Thought" which is an out-and-out anti-Marxist, counter-revolutionary and racist theory lies at the foundation of this entire policy. Its offspring and practical result are such monsters as China's imperialist and counter-revolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism, China's infamous treaty with rapacious Japanese imperialism, its support for the obscurantist fascist regime of Pinochet, Mobutu, the Shah of Iran, and so on, Teng Hsiao-ping's hysterical exhortations for war and the bloody and barbarous, fascist-type aggression against Viet Nam.
The Party of Labor of Albania has always regarded the principled and incessant struggle against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism, against all the forces of the bourgeoisie and international reaction, as well as against all the trends of modern revisionism, as a great task incumbent on all the Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary forces in order to promote the cause of social and national liberation of the proletariat and the peoples, the cause of socialism and communism. The militant unity of all true Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries the world over will be tempered day by day in this concerted struggle, on the basis of the immortal principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
LONG LIVE THE MILITANT INTERNATIONALIST UNITY BETWEEN THE ALBANIAN COMMUNISTS AND THE CANADIAN MARXIST-LENINISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES!
LONG LIVE THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN THE ALBANIAN PEOPLE AND THE CANADIAN WORKING PEOPLE!
GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM!
Revolutionary greetings
The Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania
Tirana, March 23, 1979
[Photo: Comrade Xhelil Gjoni addressing the Sixth C.C.]
Portion of the Speech of the Delegation of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania to the Sixth Consultative Conference of CPC(M-L)
Printed below are excerpts of the speech delivered by Comrade Xhelil Gjoni, member of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, and leader of the delegation of the CC of the PLA to the Sixth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), on March 29, 1979. This portion of the speech, entitled "On the centenary of the birth of J. V. Stalin -- a great revolutionary and thinker, a classic of Marxism-Leninism", pays tribute to the immortal life and work of J. V. Stalin, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. It has been excerpted from People's Canada Daily News, organ of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L), March 31, 1979.
This year sees the completion of one hundred years since the birth of J. V. Stalin, the great revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist thinker, the loyal disciple, collaborator and continuator of the ideas and work of Lenin, the distinguished leader of the proletariat.
The working class, the peoples of the entire world will always remember Stalin and his work, because they are inseparable from their common cause, the cause of freedom, the revolution and socialism. Today, the cause of the defense of Stalin has become not only a matter of honor but also a current principled question of great importance for the entire world communist and workers' movement, it has become a line of demarcation between the genuine Marxist-Leninists and the modern revisionists.
In fact, the struggle over the Stalin issue that has been unfolding between Marxist-Leninists and the modern revisionists is a struggle over questions of real principle, namely:
1. Should the working class and the international communist movement adhere in the future, too, to the fundamental principles and teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which Stalin carried out and developed so skillfully and courageously, or should they be given up and replaced with the opportunist and liquidationst ideas of the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites and the revisionists of every description?
2. Should the fundamental historic experience of the victory of the revolution and the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin be appraised and loyally adhered to or should the peoples fighting for the revolution and socialism embark on another road, that of capitulation and betrayal, the road of degeneration as is the case with the Soviet Union and other revisionist countries?
3. Should one follow the road as charted by Lenin and Stalin, the road of development and extension of the revolutionary movement against imperialism, social-imperialism, the bourgeoisie and reaction, the road of true unity of the world communist and workers' movement on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, or should the Marxist-Leninist parties set out on the road of isolation, division, degeneration and capitulation, as is the case with all the revisionist parties all over the world?
In other words, one's stand towards Stalin is a matter of principle: Should one take Stalin's revolutionary road or the treacherous and revisionist road of his critics, the Soviet, Yugoslav, Chinese, "Euro- communist" and other revisionists?
I. In his lifetime, Stalin was an unyielding revolutionary in the service of the liberation of the working class and the peoples of Russia and the entire world. As Lenin's close disciple and collaborator, he made an outstanding contribution to the strengthening and consolidation of the (Bolshevik) Communist Party of Russia, to the organization and victory of the October socialist revolution, the defense of the revolution from the external and internal enemies who kindled the civil war and organized the armed intervention.
We are all aware of the really tragic events that took place in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, of the defeat inflicted on socialism in the Soviet Union, the demolition of the camp of socialism, the split in the international communist and workers' movement. These tragic retrogressive events stem from definite causes which the genuine Marxist-Leninists have analyzed and they will constantly deepen their analysis of them. All analyses and conclusions clearly point to one thing: As long as Stalin was alive, the cause of the revolution and socialism was in sure hands, Stalin put in his place every renegade who dared violate, however little, the victories and prospects of the revolution or trample underfoot the ideas and principles of Marxism-Leninism.
II. In his lifetime activity, J.V. Stalin faithfully adhered to the principles of proletarian internationalism and consistently met its requirements. He looked upon the line of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, the entire domestic and foreign policy as closely connected with the interests of the revolution, the working class and the liberation struggle of the peoples against imperialism.
During and after World War II, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership helped the peoples and the communist parties in their liberation struggle against fascism and in the consolidation of the victories they had attained in the war. As the leader of the CPSIJ and the Soviet state, Stalin made a great contribution to the formation and strengthening of the world socialist system and the establishment of correct fraternal ties among the socialist countries based on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism....
To see the sharp revolutionary perspicacity of Stalin, how vigilant and principled he was, was also shown by his stand towards the leadership of the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung. Since the period of the national liberation anti-imperialist war in China, he and the Comintern rebuffed and criticized them for failing to carry out the principles of Marxism-Leninism concerning the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution, concerning proletarian internationalism, the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle, and so on. Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai said that Stalin suspected that "we were in favor of the Americans or that we were following the Yugoslav road." Time proved that in this case, too, Stalin was in the right. His prediction about the Chinese revolution, the ideas guiding it, turned out to be accurate. The revolution in China failed and the stage of the socialist revolution was not reached.
III. Stalin was a revolutionary of the Leninist type in the best sense of the term -- he was a man who embodied in himself revolutionary action and revolutionary thought. Stalin adhered to the Leninist teaching that the revolution is in extreme need of theory, for without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement....
Basing himself on the ideas and teachings of Lenin, in his many works, Stalin defended and further argued the most fundamental principles and laws of the revolution and socialist construction, which are valuable for all countries, and without which there can be no victory of the revolution and the construction of socialism. They served at that time and they still serve today as the most reliable criterion which distinguishes the Marxist from the revisionist, the revolutionary from the opportunist....
IV. The events that took place after Stalin's death, the counter-revolutionary process of degeneration and disintegration in the Soviet Union and the world communist and workers' movement, brought out even more clearly the figure of Stalin and his historic role. Taking advantage of Stalin's death, a major conspiracy engineered long ago surfaced. The most insidious plotters ever seen in history with the renegade and traitor, Nikita Khrushchov and now, the Brezhnev gang, usurped power and set out on the course of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the course of setting up a new society according to the model of the Western capitalist society in the interest of the new bourgeois class of the Party and state bureaucrats that had been created in the Soviet Union.
In speaking about Stalin as being 70% good and 30%' "bad", Mao Tsetung and the Chinese revisionists, like Khrushchov, pointed out only what was "bad" in him and they did that to justify their departure from the Marxist-Leninist principles of the proletarian revolution, socialism, proletarian internationalism. By attacking Stalin, the Chinese revisionists also sought to play down the work and authority of Stalin, to raise the prestige of Mao Tsetung to the level of a world leader, of a classic of Marxism-Leninism....
Over the last 26 years, since Stalin's death it has become publicly known now that wherever Stalin is attacked and slung mud at, under whatever pretext, revisionism raises its head, there is treachery and departure from the cause of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, for the Marxist-Leninists and the revolutionaries everywhere in the world, the defense of Stalin, his ideas and work, is not a matter of sentimentality, but a profoundly principled question of vital importance for the future of the revolution and the peoples. To defend Stalin means to defend Marxism-Leninism, to defend the cause of the revolution and the freedom of the peoples, to wage an irreconcilable struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and its revisionist agents. Our Party has viewed the question of Stalin from these principled positions and it has never budged, nor will it ever budge from such positions.
The centenary of the birth of J. V. Stalin is an opportunity for all the world's revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists to pay homage to his memory and raise high the figure of Stalin as an outstanding Marxist-Leninist, as a great internationalist, as a distinguished leader of the world proletariat, to step up their struggle in defense of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, to further tighten their ranks in the name of freedom, the revolution and socialism.
V. The following question may arise: Did Stalin foresee, or at least, did he feel that revisionism was to emerge and a tragedy take place in the Soviet Union? One thing is certain, that is we should admit unwaveringly and loudly that Stalin understood correctly the turbulent situation imperialism was creating in the world and the danger it posed to the Soviet Union. He took many measures of an economic, political and ideological character to face the danger and to safeguard the Soviet Union, the camp of socialism, the world communist and workers' movement.
But the greatest pressure by imperialism and world capitalism was to be exerted on the Soviet Union itself. Stalin predicted this pressure and the danger it was fraught with and began to take a series of measures against liberal manifestations. Death prevented him from carrying these measures through in order to make the cause of the revolution and socialism in the Soviet Union immune to the imperialist pressure and the danger of degeneration.
Stalin waged the class struggle against imperialism and its pressure successfully in all directions, political, economic and ideological.
An enthusiastic meeting was held in Chicago on April 14 under the above slogan. The following is the text of the leaflet calling for the meeting.)
It is of crucial importance for the advance of the proletarian socialist revolution in the U.S. that Chinese revisionism and its theory of "three worlds" be repudiated and the truths of Marxism-Leninism be upheld against the attacks and distortions of this latest variety of revisionism. The Marxist-Leninist Party, the decisive factor for the advance of the revolution, can be built only in the struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. The "RCP, USA" has always opposed and disrupted the struggle against Opportunism and revisionism. In theory, they have opposed the crucial role of the struggle against revisionism and followed the Chinese revisionist theory that revisionism and opportunism are "middle forces" that can and should be united with. In practice, they have conciliated the Klonskyite social-chauvinists on all issues, been fervent advocates of the basic ideological theses of social-imperialism and "three worlds-ism", and upheld the entire arsenal of Chinese revisionism.
Today, the "RCP, USA" has come to complete bankruptcy. Its anti-communist gangster attacks against the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha have shown the meaning behind Bob Avakian's constant "creative" revisions and negations of the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and especially his scorn for and constant attacks on Stalin. Why has the "RCP, USA" been so hurt by the very announcement of the publication of Enver Hoxha's new book, Imperialism and the Revolution, that even before reading the book the "RCP" leadership issued its gangster attack on Enver Hoxha and the PLA?
The reason lies in the fact that the "RCP" has always opposed the struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Chinese revisionism, and in fact are supporters of the "three worlds" theory. The "RCP" denies the importance of struggle against the very "three worlds" theory which it allegedly condemns:
1) The "RCP" says that the "three worlds" theory is not important because it is only the "international line" or "external line" of Chinese revisionism; 2) The "RCP" says that the "three worlds" theory is not important as it "did not become the focus of the struggle and split within" the "RCP"; 3) The "RCP" directs outrageous slanders at those who fight "three worlds- ism", such as the COUSML and the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). And in fact, we find that the "RCP" actually supports the theory of "three worlds". In their recent writings, the "RCP" allegedly opposes the "three worlds" theory, but analysis of these writings proves that the "RCP" actually supports this theory. These are the positions of the "RCP" in these writings which are directly and precisely the basic theses of the "three worlds" theory or which directly praise its theses: 1) The "RCP" denies the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the division of the world into two camps and instead substitutes for this the division of the world into two big imperialist blocs; 2) The "RCP" negates the existence of socialism in the world and the role of the only genuinely socialist country, Albania; 3) The "RCP" writes off the revolution -- I. the "RCP" denies the existence of strategy for the international proletariat and thus denies both revolution and Marxism-Leninism;4) The "RCP" writes off the revolution -- II. the "RCP's" view of the "non-revolutionary situation" denies the proletarian revolution; 5) The "RCP" holds that the "three worlds" theory can correctly define the tasks of the revolution inside the USSR; 6) The "RCP" holds that there are two "three world" theories,"the good one before Mao Tsetung died and the bad one after; 7) The "RCP" holds that the good "three worlds" theory correctly defines China's state to state relations, particularly with regard to defense against the Soviet Union; 8) The "RCP" supports U.S. imperialist domination of Western Europe, Canada and Japan by agreeing with the "three worlds" thesis that struggle against imperialist domination means abandoning the proletarian revolution and siding with one's "own" imperialist bourgeoisie; 9) The "RCP" agrees with the slanders of the "three worlders" against Stalin that the struggle against fascism is an alleged precedent for the thesis of "directing the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism".
Herein lies the reason for the "RCP's" wild attacks on Comrade Enver Hoxha and his new book, Imperialism and the Revolution, even prior to their reading it. The reason is that Enver Hoxha's book is proving invaluable in uncovering the deep sources and longstanding roots of Chinese revisionism while the "RCP" supports Chinese revisionism. The "RCP" leadership has shown by its wild attack on Comrade Enver Hoxha and his book, its hatred of socialism. The "RCP" would have the world believe that it is only motivated by its pure love for socialism in China. But how can one love socialism in China and hate it in Albania? Albania is a small country, with less population than many cities of the world. Yet it has set an example to the whole world of unflinching courage in following the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It impresses the whole world and upsets the plans of Chinese revisionism by relying neither on U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism nor any other patron. Albania stands firmly on the basis of self-reliance and the support of the world proletariat and all progressive people. It shows the tremendous power of the toiling masses when led by a genuine Marxist-Leninist Communist Party such as the Party of Labor of Albania. It shows the shining reality of socialism and shines forth as a beacon to all the oppressed and exploited masses around the world. And the "RCP" leadership has no warmth, no love, not even respect for glorious socialist Albania, but just fear and spite in front of Albania's unflinching stand against revisionism.
The struggle against Chinese revisionism and its "three worlds" theory is a very crucial issue facing the revolutionary movement, a life and death issue. We call on the progressive people to seriously address the issues raised here and expose the "RCP's" alleged opposition to, but real support of, the "three worlds" theory in order to further deepen and advance the struggle against this brand of revisionism.
[Note: For a full discussion of the issues raised above, refer to the articles "Does the 'RCP,USA' Oppose the Theory of 'Three Worlds' ?", Parts I and II, in The Workers' Advocate, Vol. 9, No. 2, February 12, 1979, and Vol. 9, No. 3, March 29, 1979.]
In January of this year, the Party of Labor of Albania published the English language edition of the book Imperialism and the Revolution, by Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the PLA. Shortly thereafter it was reprinted by the COUSML in the February edition of its journal Proletarian Internationalism and also in book form and recently in a Spanish edition. This brilliant Marxist-Leninist work has received an enthusiastic reception from the Marxist-Leninists and other people in the U.S., and large numbers of copies have already been sold from coast to coast.
Imperialism and the Revolution is a devastating blow against revisionism and opportunism of all hues, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by the revisionists and opportunists in the U.S. It is a resolute and courageous defense of the revolutionary doctrine of Marxism-Leninism and a detailed exposition of the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world situation. It is particularly timely in its repudiation of Chinese revisionism, the theory of "three worlds", and their roots in the anti-Marxist-Leninist and revisionist theory of Mao Tsetung Thought.
In order to further popularize the correct Marxist- Leninist analysis presented in the book, as well as the book itself, several public meetings were recently held by the Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area Branches of COUSML.
The meeting in Seattle was held on Saturday, April 14 under the banner of "Hail the Publication of Enver Hoxha's Outstanding New Book, Imperialism and the Revolution". The talk presented by a representative of the Seattle Branch of COUSML dealt with the significance of the book itself, and discussed the correct analysis it presents on the strategy of imperialism and modern revisionism, and its elaboration of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the revolution. The speaker also explained at some length the struggle of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. against Chinese revisionism, including the struggle against Klonskyite social-chauvinism, the "three worlds" theory, and the revisionist Mao Tsetung Thought which lies at the basis of it all. Many of the 55 people in attendance participated in a lengthy discussion of the points presented in the talk.
The Seattle chapter of Eritreans for Liberation in North America also presented a well received talk in which many achievements of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania in socialist revolution and socialist construction were outlined.
From April 7-29 four meetings were held in Oakland at the bookstore, Marxist-Leninist Books and Periodicals. The first meeting denounced Chinese social-imperialism's savage aggression against Viet Nam and showed how this criminal activity of the Chinese revisionists further confirmed the analysis presented in Imperialism and the Revolution, particularly regarding the strategy of Chinese social-imperialism. Three subsequent meetings were held under the title "Enver Hoxha's Work Imperialism and the Revolution -- Powerful Revolutionary Weapon". The topics discussed were: 1) "The Strategy of Imperialism and Modern Revisionism", 2) "The Theory of 'Three Worlds' --- A Counter-Revolutionary, Chauvinist Theory", and 3) "'Mao Tsetung Thought' An Anti-Marxist Theory". Enthusiastic and animated discussion occurred at all of the meetings, each of which was attended by about 20 people.
The meetings held in these two cities have already had the effect of further increasing the distribution and prestige of Imperialism and the Revolution among the revolutionary people.
[Photo: Meeting participants in Seattle shout "Long live Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism!]
U.S. Neo-Revisionism as the American Expression of the International Opportunist Trend of Chinese Revisionism
Part Two
Today the "three worlds" theory is being condemned by honest revolutionary forces all over the world as a reactionary, counter-revolutionary theory. The American "three worlders" have gone completely bankrupt. They have degenerated into open social-chauvinism and anti-communism, they call on the proletariat to ally itself with U.S. imperialism to "direct the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" and they are engaged in gangster-style attacks against socialist Albania and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Labor of Albania. This open betrayal is not an unfortunate accident or a quirk, but the inevitable result of years of corrosion by the opportunist trend of neo-revisionism, the trend of the Klonskys and Avakians.
History shows that U.S. neo-revisionism is in the main the American expression of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism. Right from the start, the neo-revisionist corruption was encouraged, given ideological direction and in an all-round way fostered by the Chinese revisionist leaders. The first article in this series in The Workers' Advocate of February 12 showed how the basic struggle in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement in the last ten years was between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and opportunist neo-revisionism and how the Chinese revisionists waged war on the Marxist-Leninists and organized the neo-revisionists into a contingent of their reactionary camp. This article and following ones will analyze a number of the basic neo-revisionist theses and show how they are also theses of Chinese revisionism. These basic neo-revisionist fallacies have provided the theoretical basis for the emergence of the open social-chauvinism of the "three worlders". The struggle against neo-revisionism is therefore inseparably tied up with the struggle against Chinese revisionism and "three worlds-ism".
This article will deal with one of the principal neo-revisionist tenets -- opposition to the irreconcilable struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. The neo-revisionists conciliate with modern revisionism and opportunism and with every fashionable anti-Marxist-Leninist deviation under the banner of such theories as "opportunism is a middle force to be united with" or under the pretext of fighting "ultra-leftism" and "dogmatism". Furthermore, it is now perfectly clear that these neo-revisionist lines are precisely those of Chinese revisionism.
This thesis of neo-revisionism, as neo-revisionism as a whole, has always met staunch opposition from the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. Over the last decade, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists led by first the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) and then by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, have always put the struggle against modern Khruschovite revisionism and all forms of revisionism and opportunism in the center of their activity. And it is as part of this glorious tradition that the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists are now waging a great irreconcilable struggle against social-chauvinism, "three worlds-ism" and Chinese revisionism.
NEO-REVISIONISM CONCILIATES REVISIONISM AND FIGHTS MARXISM-LENINISM UNDER THE PRETEXT OF FIGHTING THE "ULTRA-LEFT"
U.S. neo-revisionism has always speculated with the slogan of fighting ultra-leftism. In reality, however, it is the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists who have waged a consistent struggle against adventurism, anarchism and terrorism as well as against Browderite liberal-labor politics and right opportunism and revisionism. The neo-revisionists have prattled on endlessly about the horrors of the so-called "ultra-left" only to raise a yellow banner under which to fight Marxism-Leninism and to systematically denigrate and belittle the struggle against modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues.
In the past the neo-revisionists openly polemicized that the "ultra-left" was the "main danger". For example, Bob Avakian and the RU maintained that:
"The main weakness of proletarian revolutionaries and revolutionary organizations,... is our infantilism... This tends to produce two related errors: dogmatism and sectarianism." (Red Papers 2, 1969, p. 18) And from the beginning, on writing Red Papers 1 in 1967, the RU held that while "revisionism, or right opportunism" may be the "main long term danger", " 'left' opportunism" represents the "immediate danger". Michael Klonsky and the OL also held that: "While modern revisionism, or right opportunism is the main ideological enemy which confronts the world revolutionary movement, within the newly-emerging communist movement here, the main danger is 'leftism' and sectarianism." (The Call, "Building a New Communist Party in the United States", March-May 1973)
In order to "prove" this peculiar American exceptionalist idea, the neo-revisionists have often pointed to the degeneration of the Progressive Labor Party. According to the right-wing prejudice of the Michael Klonskys and the Bob Avakians, the PLP collapsed because it allegedly exaggerated the struggle against opportunism which caused it to land in "ultra-left" extremism and sectarianism. But in fact the important lessons of the degeneration of the PLP prove that the opposite was the case. The PLP failed to settle accounts with the right opportunist, liberal-labor politics of Browderite revisionism. The PLP, for instance, did not fight the social-democratic, revisionist and anti-communist politics and ideology of New Leftism but declared it "objectively progressive".
In reality, it was to hide its conciliation with revisionism that the PLP sought refuge in wild and provocative activities. Soon the PLP stopped fighting revisionism and opportunism altogether and quickly collapsed into a trotskyite sect.
On the basis of concentrating their fire against the "ultra-left", the neo-revisionist leaders have protected their own liberal-labor Browderite political line. And they have united with every right opportunist element imaginable -- the pro-Khrushchovites, the Castroites, the Titoite yellow journalists of the Guardian, the reactionary cultural nationalists, the trotskyites, etc. -- in an unholy alliance against the forces of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. The neo-revisionist struggle against the so-called "ultra-left" has always meant unity with opportunism in war against Marxism-Leninism itself. Therefore, when the Marxist-Leninists called for the unity of the Marxist-Leninists in one party to struggle against the revisionist betrayal, they were viciously opposed by the neo-revisionists who slandered this line as "ultra-left", "dogmatists" and "trotskyite", as "ahead of the masses" who allegedly were "not ready" for the building of the Marxist-Leninist party but were still in the "pre-party stage", etc. Or when the Marxist-Leninists carry out Marxist-Leninist revolutionary agitation in the working class, as opposed to the neo-revisionist trade unionist pablum, the neo-revisionists denounce this too as "dogmatic", "turning off the masses", and so forth.
While neo-revisionism has gone through a number of face lifts and now alleges to hold that revisionism is the "most dangerous", this war against the "ultra-left" continues to date. The "CP(ML)" social-chauvinist "three worlders" are viciously maligning anyone and everyone who opposes their social-chauvinism and their anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds", as a "dogmatist", "idealist", and a "trotskyite", and the "RCP,USA" is hysterically raving against the so- called "dogmato-revisionism" of the Party of Labor of Albania and all genuine Marxist-Leninists. As well, the professional conciliators with the open social-chauvinists, Barry Weisberg's MLOC, has declared the so-called "infantile left" -- the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists -- to be the most "anti-Leninist" of them all, worse deviators than the open social- chauvinists themselves. (See Unite!, February 15, 1979)
This line, that in the U.S. movement the problem has been the "ultra-left" was directly imported from Peking. From the beginning of their activities, the neo-revisionist big shots have come back from China to lecture about the errors of "the line of all struggle and no unity" with the opportunists, and other forms of so-called "sectarianism". Numerous reactionary "friends of China", William Hinton and others, would come home from China after discussions with the Chinese leaders and write books and give speeches against so-called "ultra-left" deviations and "dogmatism", and in support of the right-opportunist fallacies of neo-revisionism such as "the party coming out of the mass movement", etc.
After the downfall and death of Lin Piao, the Chinese revisionists began a big campaign against so-called "ultra-leftism" and soon restored to power the ultra-revisionist Teng Hsiao-ping and Co. The Chinese revisionists also began big international gossip campaigns against "ultra-leftism" and set the U.S. neo-revisionists into increased attacks on revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. In this period, the Klonskyites and other neo-revisionists with a China connection made a tremendous racket about "Lin Piao's ultra-leftism" in order to attack the Marxist-Leninists. And even now, the social-democratic publicists, Barry Weisberg, is writing diatribes against the "infantile leftism" of the COUSML which he claims "for ten years... followed the line of Lin Piao". (See Unite!, Special Supplement, March 1, 1979, p. 3)
It should be pointed out that this campaign against the so-called "ultra-left", fomented in China and pursued by the neo-revisionists in the U.S., was one of the indispensable ideological prerequisites for the formation of the ultra-right, counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance over the last decade.
NEO-REVISIONISM HOLDS THAT OPPORTUNISM IS A "MIDDLE FORCE" TO BE UNITED WITH
While neo-revisionism has always used the pretext of struggle against the alleged "ultra-left", at the same time in both theory and practice, it considers revisionism and opportunism as a "middle phenomenon" that can and must be united with.
According to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the forces of opportunism are dangerous forces of counter-revolution. The imperialist "liberals", the social-democrats and reactionary labor aristocrats, the modern revisionists and social-chauvinists of the Khrushchovite, Chinese and other trends, the trotskyites, the cultural nationalists and opportunists of all hues, are hidden agents of the class enemy within the workers' and revolutionary movement. Their sole mission is to subvert, disorganize and smash the revolutionary movement, to destroy communism and the Marxist-Leninist party of the proletariat and thus preserve forever the decadent rule of monopoly capital. Therefore a most determined struggle to win the working class and people away from the influence of these counter-revolutionary agents of the bourgeoisie is absolutely imperative to unite the working class and people in class struggle against the class enemy and advance the revolution. The Marxist-Leninists do not split the workers' struggles or factionalize the mass movements on the pretext of fighting revisionism. But all the tactics of the Marxist-Leninists must be directed at destroying the influence which revisionism and opportunism have in the working class and oppressed masses.
The neo-revisionists, however, advocate conciliation and unity with opportunism and do not agree with the line of stern struggle against it. They counterpose this line with vague phrases about "uniting all who can be united against the main enemy". But they do not clarify with these phrases with whom they are so interested in "uniting" because in fact they are for unity with the opportunists. In both theory and practice neo-revisionism is for unity with and subordination of the revolutionary movement to the soldout agents of monopoly capital; to the Democratic Party "liberals", the social-democrats and labor traitors, to the various revisionists and social-chauvinists, the cultural nationalists, the trotskyites, etc.
The conciliatory attitude of neo-revisionism towards opportunism was illustrated in stark relief in the course of the sharp and crucial struggle over whether to accept or to reject as class treason the social-chauvinist line of "directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" which broke out in 1976. At that time the two main neo-revisionist groupings, the "RCP,USA" and the OL (now the "CPML"), engaged in polemics over the question of Stalin's teachings on the necessity of directing the main blow at opportunism.
In his article "The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists", J.V. Stalin described the "fundamental strategic rule of Leninism" in this way:
"It is the recognition of the following:
"1) the compromising parties are the most dangerous social support of the enemies of the revolution in the period of the approaching revolutionary outbreak;
"2) it is impossible to overthrow the enemy (tsarism or the bourgeoisie) unless these parties are isolated;
"3) the main weapons in the period of preparation for the revolution must therefore be directed towards isolating these parties, towards winning the broad masses of the working people away from them." (Stalin, Works, Vol. 6, p. 402) And speaking of strategy in his classic work Foundations of Leninism, Stalin wrote: "Direction of the main blow: isolation of the petty bourgeois democrats, isolation of the parties of the Second International, which constitute the main support of the policy of compromise with imperialism."
These writings of Stalin are testimony to his unfailing loyalty to Leninism. It was Lenin who taught the proletariat: "Opportunism is our principal enemy." ("Report on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International", Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 231) And: "The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and a humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism." (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)
If the neo-revisionist "theoreticians" had read Stalin correctly they would have realized the burning necessity to organize a most stern and relentless struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all shades as Lenin also called for. But neo-revisionism drew an opposite conclusion.
For their part, the OL leaders, the learned professors of the "ultra-left is the main danger", of course did not raise Stalin's teachings on the "main blow" to strike a blow at revisionism but to justify their own social-chauvinism. They clumsily juggled with the phrase "main blow" to attempt to make a case for their own most traitorous revisionist line of calling on the U.S. proletariat to "direct the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism". Just as the Chinese leaders "justify" their criminal counter-revolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism against Soviet social- imperialism in the most "anti-revisionist" demagogy, so Klonsky too follows the same road. The shameless hypocrisy of the social-chauvinists knows no bounds!
The neo-revisionist "theoreticians" of the "RCP" responded to OL's social-chauvinist arguments by denouncing Stalin for being wrong about the need to fight opportunism in the first place. The "RCP" brazenly declared: "... The RCP does not agree with the formulation in these articles by Stalin... the correct stand of Marxist-Leninists is to unite all who can be united against the main enemy... to win over as much of the middle forces as possible and to isolate and expose enemy agents in the course of aiming the main blow at the main enemy.... The question of the main blow, however, is not merely a semantic one. The question is whether or not the workers and revolutionaries of every country direct their fire against the main enemies they face and unite all possible social forces, even wavering ones, against that enemy." (see Revolution, February 1977)
Thus Bob Avakian and Co. openly polemicize against Stalin and Marxism-Leninism by arguing that opportunism should be considered a "wavering" or a "middle force" to be "won over" and united with. This outrageous diatribe against Stalin and the Marxist- Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism speaks mountains for the entire outlook, approach and conciliatory spirit which neo-revisionism has always held towards modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues. But this anti-Marxist-Leninist sophistry of the U.S. neo-revisionists is not in the least bit original. It has been lifted word for word from the documents of the revisionist leaders of the Communist Party of China.
In 1956, at a time when the Chinese leaders were praising the renegade Khrushchov in his vile work of, as the Chinese party put it at the time, "firmly correcting Stalin's mistakes", the Communist Party of China wrote:
"... Stalin put forward a formula that in different revolutionary periods, the main blow should be so directed as to isolate the middle-of-the-road social and political forces of the time. This formula of Stalin's should be treated according to circumstances and from a critical, Marxist point of view.... Our experience teaches us that the main blow of the revolution should be directed at the chief enemy to isolate him, while as for the middle forces, a policy of both uniting with them and struggling against them should be adopted... efforts should be made to shift them from their position of neutrality to one of alliance with us.... In light of this doctrinaire error, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China... formulated a policy of 'developing the progressive forces, winning over the middle-of-the-roaders, and isolating the diehards'." ("The Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", Peking, pp. 15-16. Note; taken from third printing, 1961.)
Thus, the Chinese leaders threw overboard Stalin's teachings on the struggle against the compromisers and opportunism by absurdly counterposing this struggle to the need for unity against the main enemy. The Chinese leaders were never in favor of a stern struggle against modern revisionism and therefore engaged in criminal sophistry, playing with the purely verbal contradiction between directing the "main blow" at the main enemy and directing the "main blow" at the compromisers and opportunists.
What the Chinese were demanding in their polemic against Stalin was unity with revisionism. Instead of uniting the people in struggle against the main enemy, a task which includes winning the working class and people away from the influence of revisionism and opportunism, in place of that, the CPC pursued a line of winning over the revisionists and uniting with them under the hoax that revisionism is a middle phenomenon and is not counter-revolutionary.
This conciliatory policy explains the constant zigzags and vacillations of the Chinese party in the course of the struggle against Titoite, Khrushchovite and other trends of revisionism. This line explains how in the past the Chinese leaders wanted to include the Soviet revisionists inside the "united front against U.S. imperialism". Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai, in 1964, even signed a message to the Khrushchovite traitors declaring that, despite the differences they had with each other (differences that were claimed to be between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism!), the CPC and the Khrushchovites would always be on the same side in the end. Even at the time when the Chinese party finally came out and took an open stand against Khrushchov, it still found something good in the ultra-revisionist polycentrism of the Italian revisionists and numerous other renegades.
And today, inside China's "united front against Soviet social-imperialism", the Chinese leaders have included not only the U.S. imperialists and the biggest capitalists and reactionaries, but also the worst revisionist scum as their "comrades", the Titoites and other revisionist dregs in power, and they are increasing their connections with the Italian, Spanish and other "Eurocommunists" as well.
These developments bring to light the bankruptcy of the Chinese course of conciliation of revisionism. The Communist Party of China never put the defense of Marxism-Leninism in the center of its activities. Many of its past stands reek of national chauvinism. And their present "anti-revisionism" is nothing but a lying slogan to justify their own alliance with imperialism and world reaction and their own savage social- imperialism. To be continued.
The Workers' Advocate has just received the new issue of Eritrea in Struggle, Newsletter of Eritreans For Liberation in North America. This excellent issue (Vol. 3, No. 3, February-April 1979) includes articles on:
--International Women's Day
-- Anti-Eritrean Propaganda of the Soviet Revisionists
-- Behind the Visit of Hungarian General to Ethiopia
--The Present Situation in Eritrea in Brief
--Soviet Genocide in Eritrea, Zionist 'Heirs'
--Ethiopia: Five Years of Fascist Dictatorship
--Israeli-Egyptian Agreement: A Stab in the Back to the Palestinian and Arab Peoples
--In Solidarity with the Turkish People's Struggle
--International Solidarity with the Eritrean Revolution
--More on Guardian's Opportunism
Below we reprint excerpts of one of the articles in this issue.
It is to be recalled that in our September-November 1978 (Vol. Ill, No. 1) issue of Eritrea in Struggle we exposed the Guardian for its opportunist stand on Eritrea. [See The Workers' Advocate, Vol. 8, No. 10, Nov. 22, 1978]. In the article we wrote then ("Guardian's Opportunism Exposed"), we had said that the Guardian is "a defender and apologist of the Soviet and Cuban aggression against the Eritrean people." It was clarified point by point why this was so. In fact that this is so has been even more clearly proven by its practice since then. The Guardian hypocritically says it supports Eritrean independence, but in practice it has become the mouthpiece of the anti- Eritrean propaganda of the Soviet and Ethiopian aggressors and an open collaborator of the "leaders" of the Eritrean revolution. It is also engaged in the dirty work of fomenting splitism among Eritreans by slandering and defaming revolutionary and patriotic Eritreans and in particular our organization EFLNA.
The Guardian claims that it supports the Eritrean people's struggle for national independence and democracy. But is there really any truth in this claim? There is none at all. If the Guardian was modest at all, would it serve as the forum of the anti-Eritrean propaganda being launched by the enemies of the Eritrean people? The case in point is the series of eleven articles, written by... Wilfred Burchett, it printed recently (See Guardian November 15, 22, 29, 1978; December 6, 13, 20, 27, 1978; and January 3, 10, 17, 24, 1979). Of course in order to "dissociate" itself from the views of the said author, the Guardian stated at the beginning of each of the articles, "the author's views do not coincide with those of the Guardian -- particularly on the 'socialist' nature of the ruling group in- Ethiopia and on the question of Eritrea. But we are publishing the dispatches in the interest of further discussion." However, this is sheer demagogy and opportunism of the highest degree. The Guardian has a definite stand on the fascist Dergue in power in Ethiopia. It sees it as a government that has brought about revolutionary changes (See Guardian March 8, 15, 22, 1978).
And now to come to the counter-revolutionary articles written by Wilfred Burchett. Acting on behalf of the Soviet revisionists this counter-revolutionary individual echoes Soviet and the Ethiopian Dergue's propaganda. Any one who has been closely following the situation in the Horn of Africa can clearly see that the views this individual is spreading are the exact replica of what the Soviet revisionists and the Ethiopian fascists have been and are saying. With the sole aim of deliberately distorting Eritrean history and discrediting the just struggle of the Eritrean people for national independence and for justifying the fascist Ethio-Soviet aggression against the Eritrean people, this counter-revolutionary person totally bases his so-called facts and arguments on those of the Ethiopian colonialists and even the British imperialists. Not only does this individual argue against the Eritrean struggle but also condemns the heroic Ethiopian people and their struggle by glorifying the fascist Dergue as socialist and its fascist repressions on the people as revolutionary actions. Since his allegations are not a bit different from those of the Soviet revisionists, which we have exposed in this issue of Eritrea in Struggle under the heading "expose the anti-Eritrean propaganda of the Soviet revisionists," we will not dwell on them here. However, we would like to say in passing that this is not the first instance for this notorious Soviet agent to engage in such anti-people activity. There are numerous instances in which he has worked as a propagandist of the Soviet revisionists against people's struggles.
This is not all. The Guardian has also become the chief forum for promoting the EPLF leaders' erroneous line, in the U.S. The stream of articles that run through the Guardian's lines every week portray the EPLF's capitulationist line as revolutionary foresightedness. The writer, Don Connell, who claims to be an eyewitness, never deals with the main issues in Eritrea today. He simply glosses them over and beautifies the EPLF leaders. This individual has become the chief spokesman of the EPLF leaders in the U.S. and is carrying out this task in collaboration with the opportunists who have left our organization. The point is, however, in the recent programs in which he appeared as the speaker, he totally failed to answer the burning questions in Eritrea. On the other hand in a hopeless attempt to defend the EPLF leaders he in fact exposed their capitulation by repeating their statement that "to determine whether the Soviet Union is an enemy or friend of the Eritrean revolution is not on the agenda in Eritrea today. " Here, we would like to point out in passing that the EPLF leadership still holds that the Soviet Union is the strategic ally of the Eritrean revolution and imposes through both demagogy and brute force its defeatist line that the actions of the Soviet Union in Eritrea only and not the Soviet Union itself should be condemned.
Furthermore one of the chief tasks assigned to this individual by the EPLF leaders seems to be waging a propaganda of defamation against our organization. Using the same terminology -- "ultra-leftists"-- which the EPLF leaders are fond of characterizing the revolutionary resolutions of our 9th congress, he has on numerous occasions both in public meetings and in writing slandered our organization (See Guardian, January 31, 1979). We point out here therefore, that this individual, by eulogizing the reactionary leadership of the EPLF which is engaged in suppressing; Eritrean revolutionaries as "ultra-leftists", is objectively engaged in an anti-Eritrean activity for which he should be exposed.
In his anti-EFLNA activities, the so-called eyewitness reporter has the full backing of the Guardian. The Guardian has recently stepped up its anti-EFLNA propaganda. An article entitled "Eritrean Meet Disrupted", which appeared in the February 28, 1979 issue of the Guardian, for instance accuses EFLNA members and comrades from the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists of attempting to disrupt a public forum organized by the so-called Association of Democratic Eritreans in Boston on February 17, 1979. But this is a fabrication. The truth, which even the Guardian could not deny in the above mentioned article, is that our members and the comrades from the COUSML who went to attend the public meeting were not only denied entry but were also unjustly beaten. Entry denials has been the case in all the public forums in which Don Connell has been speaking (New York, Washington D. C., etc.). Our members never attempted to disrupt these meetings. The question is then why have they been barred from attending these public meetings? The answer is very clear. It shows the opportunists' (the EPLF leaders and their supporters here) fear of being exposed. Wasn't this also the case at the programs that were organized for the EPLF leaders some time ago (See Eritrea in Struggle, Vol. Ill, No. 2)
These are then the facts that glaringly prove that the Guardian is not supporting Eritrean independence but instead is trying to weaken it. Notwithstanding such obstacles created by opportunists such as the Guardian, EFLNA will firmly persist on the correct road of struggle it has embarked upon. In defense of our people's just cause for national independence, EFLNA together with all genuine revolutionary and patriotic Eritreans who are increasingly coming out openly against the defeatist "leaders" of the Eritrean revolution, is determined to wage an uncompromising struggle against the enemies of our revolution and against all those opportunists who have joined hands to weaken it.
PRESS RELEASE - APRIL 5, 1979
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada (the name under which the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist- Leninist) is officially registered under the Elections Act) will participate in the federal election on May 22, running about 150 candidates across Canada.
The main issues which the Party will take up in the campaign are:
--The question of the all-sided crisis of capitalism which brings with it chronic unemployment and inflation and massive indebtedness, etc., and causes the spiritual devastation of all the people, especially the youth, which causes the intensification of the exploitation and suppression of the broad masses of the working people, of the immigrants, of the Native peoples, of the youth who have no future whatsoever, of the women, etc., and which is making life unbearable for the vast majority of the people.
--The question of the war preparations and the fascization of the state, of the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada and the activities of the two super-powers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperial- ism, and of all the imperialists and reactionaries, including the Chinese social-imperialists.
The solution of the Party to the all-sided crisis, with economic crisis at the base, is to Make the Rich Pay! A genuinely Workers' and Farmers' Government can implement this program. The central issue in the implementation of this program is:
--to expropriate the property of the rich in Canada and to turn this property into social property;
--to throw the U.S. imperialists out of Canada and end all foreign domination of Canada;
--to end the war preparations; and
--to stop Canada's participation in any unjust, aggressive and inter-imperialist war if such a war breaks out.
Full details concerning the Party's program and its participation in the election will soon be released.
(Reprinted from People's Canada Daily News, Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), April 10, 1979.)