WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS
Volume 9, Number 7
August 15, 1979
P.O. BOX 11942 CHICAGO, IL. 60611 25¢
[Front page:
Auto Workers, Prepare for Struggle!;
Build the Marxist-Leninist Party, Vanguard of the Working Class!;
DOWN WITH CARTER'S ENERGY PROGRAM!--Fleecing the People to Fork Over $140 Billion to the Energy Monopolies;
Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism supports the campaign to build the Marxist-Leninist Party]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Victorious Nicaraguan People.......................................... | 2 |
| SALT: Arming to the Teeth.............................................. | 2 |
| Korea: Carter Talks Peace, Means War............................ | 2 |
| Blame Oil Billionaires, Not OPEC................................... | 3 |
| Labor Traitors Support Carter on Energy......................... | 3 |
| Oppose Continental Energy Pact!..................................... | 3 |
| CPC(M-L). Declares Support for MLP, USA.................. | 5 |
| Joint Declaration: Year of Stalin...................................... | 5 |
| Internationalist Rally: Lisbon........................................... | 7 |
| RCP Britain (M-L): Against the Followers of Mao Zedong Thought................................................... | 7 |
| Chinese Revisionism in Decay......................................... | 8 |
| Against Social-Democratic Infiltration of the Marxist-Leninist Movement, Pt. 2 (on MLOC/"CPUSA (M- L)")......................................... | 9 |
| Glaring Social-Chauvinism.............................................. | 9 |
| "Reflections on China": A Fiery Defense of Marxism-Leninism....................................................... | 12 |
| G.E.: Strikebreaking of Labor Traitors............................. | 6 |
| Westinghouse Workers Militant Struggle......................... | 6 |
| Ireland: Against "National Understanding"...................... | 6 |
Auto Workers, Prepare for Struggle!
Build the Marxist-Leninist Party, Vanguard of the Working Class!
DOWN WITH CARTER'S ENERGY PROGRAM!
Salute the heroic Nicaraguan people in their victorious overthrow of the U.S.-Somoza dictatorship!
Arming to the Teeth Under the Signboard of SALT
Korea: Carter's Words of Peace and Acts of Imperialism and War
Two Meetings Discuss Important Issues in Oakland
Blame the U.S. Oil Billionaires, Not OPEC, for Robbing the Working People!
Shameless Labor Traitors Support Carter's Hated Energy Program
Oppose the plans for a continental energy pact!
Statement of the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism
Letter from the Syracuse Committee
Welcome the "Joint Declaration on the Occasion of the Year of Stalin"
Joint Declaration on the Occasion of the Year of Stalin
Labor traitors sell out the GE workers with the aid of the "C"PUSA revisionist strikebreakers
Determined Strike of the Westinghouse Workers
IRELAND: AGAINST A "NATIONAL UNDERSTANDING"
The auto workers are preparing for battle against the "Big 3" auto billionaires. On September 14, the contracts covering 750,000 auto workers expire, and the workers are getting ready for a major strike against the starvation wages, the extreme overwork and the massive layoffs that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are imposing on them. The auto workers are also confronted with the Carter government, which is spearheading the offensive of the monopoly capitalist class to force massive wage cuts and a system of extreme overwork on the entire working class. To defend their livelihood the auto workers must wage a determined struggle to defy the wage controls of the Carter government.
When the auto workers fight to defend their livelihood, they are fighting in the interest of the whole working class against this fascist offensive of the rich. The government is trembling at the mere thought that the auto workers will break Carter's wage-cutting guidelines. They are moaning that the struggle of the auto workers will "make their job harder" to impose their wage- cutting schemes on the other workers. Against this eventuality, the government is gearing up to suppress the auto workers' strike. The Carter administration has promised the auto billionaires its full support to hold the workers' pay increases to the wage-cutting 7% limit. And they have singled out the Chrysler workers for an especially vicious attack, demanding that these workers must take a "substantial" 25% cut in their pay.
The UAW big shots have also joined this malicious campaign against the workers. UAW president Douglas Fraser has already promised to stop the workers from striking against Chrysler and he is demanding that these workers "sacrifice" to rescue the monopoly profits of the Chrysler moneybags. Fraser is, in fact, seeking to sabotage the struggle and limit the demands of all the auto workers so that the "Big 3" can "maintain the high level of profits" that they demand. This is the most scandalous betrayal of the workers.
In this life and death struggle, the workers must close their ranks and prepare to wage a determined strike against the auto billionaires and the wage controls of the Carter government. The auto workers are 750,000 workers strong. And today they have the support of all of the workers who are seething with anger against Carter's wage controls.
See Special Supplement on the Auto Workers' Struggle (Centerfold)
Today a big campaign is being waged all a- cross the U.S. to reestablish a genuine vanguard party of the American working class. This party is to be called the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. This party is the party of the revolution, the party that defends the interests of the working and oppressed masses. Today everyone can see that capitalism is rotting alive, with skyrocketing inflation, brutal speed- ups combined with massive unemployment, criminal preparations for war, and constant crisis. The capitalists have no solution to the crisis. Storms of indignation and hatred are growing among the American people against the brutal exploitation and dark terrorist rule of the rich. The working class movement is stirring as shown by the strike movement in defiance of Carter's starvation wage-price controls. The anti-imperialist movement is penetrating the masses with the spread of protests against imperialist war preparations and of the anti- nuclear movement. The Afro-American people, the Puerto Ricans, the people of Mexican nationality, and other oppressed nationalities are fighting against racial discrimination, against fascist immigration raids, against the activities of the racists wearing uniforms and the racists without uniforms. The 1980's promise to be a time of great class battles. The impending clashes of the revolution against the counterrevolution make it all the more imperative that the revolution has a general staff, an organizer and leader. This gives great urgency to the organization of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party of the proletariat, for the proletariat is the most revolutionary class known to mankind. It is the only consistently revolutionary class. It is the historic mission of the proletariat to arouse, unite and lead all the oppressed and exploited masses in a great revolutionary struggle to overthrow the monopoly capitalist dictators and institute socialism.
Today the working class stands at the center of the revolutionary ferment. But the working class can only really step forward as the core of the revolutionary movement of the 1980's through building its political party. The working class needs its voice, its fist, its vanguard. But, it may be asked, why is it necessary to build a new party? Aren't there many old parties around? Yes, there are. But they are all parties of the rich, parties of the capitalist program of starvation, fascism and war.
DOWN WITH THE CAPITALIST PARTIES!
The Democratic and Republican Parties are two twins, Tweedledee and tweedledum. They are parties of the billionaires, of the monopolies, of-racial discrimination and of savage capitalist exploitation. They are parties of war and of flag-waving imperialism, parties of the B-l bombers, the neutron bombs and the Cruise missiles. The Republicans openly pride themselves as the party of "big business". Meanwhile the Democratic Party is the favorite of the bourgeoisie for fooling the working class. The Democratic Party presents itself as the party of "labor and the minorities". But this is just a big lie, it is false advertising. It is the "Democrat" Carter who is following in the footsteps of the Republicans Nixon, Rockefeller and Ford with his outrageous "energy program" of fake shortages, skyrocketing prices, huge war stockpiles and fantastic profits for the U.S. oil monopolies. It is the "friend of labor" Carter who is implementing Nixon's legacy with his "anti-inflation program" of starvation wage controls and with his "productivity drive" of enforced speedup, maximum overtime, layoffs, and the elimination of the already minimal safety standards. It is the ''pacifist" and lover of "human rights" Carter who is loyally continuing war criminal Nixon's policies of signing hypocritical SALT treaties while escalating the arms race, of building a warmongering U.S.-China alliance, and of backing to the hilt those bloodstained heroes of the "free world", those fascist butchers, the Shah of Iran and Somoza of Nicaragua, in an attempt to drench the Iranian and Nicaraguan people's revolutions in blood. Carter's policies are nothing but Nixonite fascism without Nixon.
Trailing along behind these fascist parties of the rich, the so-called "Democratic" Party and the Republican Party, come the parties of the opportunist bootlickers of the rich, the sham "socialist" and the trotskyite parties. These parties are but the "left" fringe of the Democratic Party. They are more enthusiastic about how great life can be under capitalism -- if only their pet panaceas are passed in Congress -- than the capitalists themselves. While the Democrats and Republicans only promise people the sun, moon and stars at election times, these parties of bootlickers do it all year round. They oppose the revolution and attempt to divert the masses into an always impotent reformism.
BUILD A PARTY OF A NEW TYPE, A REVOLUTIONARY LENINIST PARTY OF THE PROLETARIAT
What the working class needs is a party of a new type, of the Leninist type, a party of the social revolution. This is not a party that grows fat from the bribes from the filthy rich exploiters, like the labor traitors of the AFL-CIO, but a party that fights against the exploiters.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. is a party of revolutionary struggle. Unlike the capitalist parties, it is not a party that appeals to the masses once every two or four years and in between spends its time sipping cocktails with the rich. No, it is a party that organizes revolutionary disciplined fighting groups in the factories, mines, fields, schools and communities. It is not a party to defend and improve capitalism, but a party of the gravediggers of capitalism. It resolutely defends the momentary interests and the immediate conditions of the exploited masses, but at the same time it uses the absolutely necessary day-to-day struggle to organize the working and oppressed masses into a powerful force for the socialist revolution.
The MLP,USA is a working class party. It is the party that organizes and politicizes the proletariat, that forges the working class into the powerful revolutionary force that stands at the center of the revolutionary movement.,.The party is composed of the finest sons and daughters of the working class, and of all revolutionary elements who take up the class stand and the historical mission of the working class.
The MLP,USA is a party based on science, on the scientific teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Marxist-Leninist theory illuminates the path forward, orients the proletariat, shows the present tasks and the ultimate goal. In contrast, the bourgeois parties are all parties of unbridled opportunism. They say one thing today and another tomorrow. They have no doctrine except red, white and blue chauvinism and defense of exploitation, no theory except "might makes right", "whatever is good for General Motors (or Chrysler or Exxon) is good for the nation. " The Marxist-Leninist party on the contrary is a principled party, a party that educates, enlightens and guides the masses, a party whose words and deeds correspond.
The MLP,USA is a party of proletarian internationalism, a party whose slogan is "Workers of all countries, unite!" It is a party whose roots go back into the revolutionary struggles of the 60's against U.S. aggression in Indochina and against the oppression of the Afro-American people. It lays special stress on opposition to American great-power chauvinism, and gives firm support to the revolutionary struggles all over the globe waged against "our own" exploiters, the U.S. imperialists, as well as those against all other imperialists and reactionaries.
The MLP,USA is the party of socialism. It firmly upholds socialist Albania, the only genuinely socialist country in the world today, while it is irreconcilably hostile to all the modern revisionists, whether those of the Soviet Union, China or elsewhere, who are betrayers of the revolution, imperialists and capitalists in deeds and socialists only in words. The world proletariat sees its bright red future and the goal of social revolution in the triumphant march of revolutionary socialism in Albania. In Albania, there is no economic crisis, no unemployment, no inflation, no exploitation of man by man, no racial or national discrimination, and women have equal rights with men. In Albania the working masses are politically aroused and highly active. The rule of the workers, the dictatorship of the proletariat, means the broadest democracy for the workers, peasants and working intellectuals and the iron suppression of the class enemy.
THE REVISIONIST TAKEOVER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE U.S.A. IS WHY WE HAVE TO REBUILD A NEW MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY TODAY
At one time the American proletariat had its genuine communist, Marxist-Leninist party. This was the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Originally the CPUSA was a real communist party, whose members fought and died for the proletariat, whose goal was revolution and not bourgeois respectability. It is this revolutionary party that must be rebuilt. The 60th anniversary of the founding of the CPUSA in 1919 must be celebrated by reestablishing the communist party, by founding the MLP,USA.
Today the "Communist" Party of Gus Hall and Angela Davis is not the same party as of old. A gang of revisionist traitors has taken over the "C"PUSA and destroyed its revolutionary, working class character. The revisionist party of Gus Hall still parades around in stolen clothes as "communist", but it is a party of timid, respectable bootlickers of the capitalists.
The revisionist party of Gus Hall has given up the revolution long ago. It denounces the Marxist.line of the "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions", the road of the Great October Socialist Revolution of Comrades Lenin and Stalin, and instead sings songs to "peaceful transition".
It tries to lull the workers to sleep by talking of winning the majority in Congress and winning the Presidency, at which time the capitalists are supposed to admit defeat like good boys, throw away their tanks and missiles, disband the army, the CIA and the FBI, and meekly follow President Gus Hall into socialism. A real communist party may run in capitalist elections, but it utilizes elections as a subsidiary means of revolutionary work and never creates illusions about congressional alternatives to revolution. Today the bourgeoisie is arming to the teeth, building prisons right and left, and organizing fascist groups including the KKK, while Gus Hall and Angela Davis sing sweet hymns to alleged American "democracy". Today the police break strikes and the companies tear up contracts, but the capitalist class as a whole is supposed to be willing to be expropriated without a fight.
In truth, the revisionist party of Gus Hall is just a "left" wing of the Democratic Party. It is a strikebreaker of the struggle against capitalist exploitation and political reaction. It propagates harmful illusions to divert the masses from revolution. It prettifies capitalism and paints it in glowing, communist colors. In election after election it urges the workers to vote for the Democratic Party as an alleged counterweight against the "ultra-right" in the Republican Party. It opposes the struggle against imperialist war preparations by promoting the warmongering SALT treaty as a step towards peace and by promoting the division of the world by two superpowers as "detente". The revisionists echo the lying imperialist propaganda about "arms limitation" with SALT at a time when even some of the imperialist congressmen themselves are forced to admit that SALT is a treaty for intensified arming, not for disarming. The "C"PUSA puts its hopes not in the mass revolutionary struggle against the imperialists, but in the sensibleness of the imperialists.
The "C"PUSA of Gus Hall also fervently supports the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union. They support Khrushchov and his followers in slandering the great Marxist-Leninist Stalin, in throwing mud at the Soviet Union of the days of Lenin and Stalin, in repudiating the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of the "state of the whole people", in restoring the profit principle in the economy, and in invading and dominating other countries. It is the sad fate of the revisionist party of Gus Hall to have to serve two masters -- the imperialist bourgeoisie of the U.S. and the social-imperialist bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union.
BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY WITHOUT THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS AND AGAINST THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS
The genuine communist party, the MLP,USA, can only be built by fighting against such class traitors as Gus Hall, the labor bureaucrats and the various opportunists. All the opportunists are social-chauvinists, that is, they are chauvinists and prettifiers of capitalism but with a sham "socialist" tinge to them. Therefore the campaign to found the MLP,USA is being conducted under the fighting slogan "Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists."
For the last ten years the advanced section of the activists from the 1960's and 1970's have been fighting against modern Khrushchovite revisionism and to build a genuine Marxist-Leninist party. In May 1969 the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist), the predecessor of today's Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, was founded with the aim of reconstituting a genuine communist party. These organizations served as the nucleus or core of the Marxist-Leninist Party. But the struggle against modern Soviet revisionism and for Marxism-Leninism was obstructed by opportunist conciliators such as the upholders of the Chinese revisionist "three worlds" theory. Finally these opportunists degenerated altogether into open enthusiasts for imperialism and flag-waving patriots. The "three worlds" theory was exposed for all to see as an anti-Leninist, chauvinist theory. It calls on the American proletariat to unite with the capitalists in order to "direct the main blow at Soviet social- imperialism". It supports butchers like Pinochet in Chile and the former Shah of Iran as alleged bulwarks against the Soviet Union, just as Carter and the capitalists do. For years, the "three worlders" opposed the Marxist teachings on building the party, on the revolutionary role of the working class and on fighting opportunism. Now they are exposed as outright social-chauvinists, as the "left" public relations men for the Pentagon, and the path has been cleared for the party. This shows how the Marxist-Leninist Party is being built "without the social-chauvinists and against the social-chauvinists."
Workers:
Without your own vanguard party, it is impossible for you to play an independent political role. That is why the capitalists and the opportunists pay so much effort to fighting against and ridiculing the idea of a genuine working class party.
That is why they call on you to tail along behind the capitalist politicians, always choosing the "lesser of two evils". To overthrow the capitalists and end the system of exploitation of man by man, we need not the "lesser of two evils", but a party of revolutionary struggle. Do not let the labor bureaucrats, poverty pimps and Democratic Party hack politicians monopolize the political scene. Workers, come out onto the political stage yourselves. Fight for the interests of all the working and oppressed people the world over.
SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN TO FOUND THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE U.S.A.!
BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY WITHOUT THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS AND AGAINST THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS!
Fleecing the People to Fork Over $140 Billion to the Energy Monopolies
On July 15, playing out a carefully orchestrated melodrama, accompanied by unprecedented grandstanding and public relations stunts, President Carter made his fifth major address on the energy crisis of U.S. imperialism. Brushing all the heaps of demagogy and lies aside, Carter's "turning point" speech proposed $140 billion of handouts for the energy monopolies along with other measures to bleed the people and stuff the pockets of the rich. This new proposal marks the second phase of Carter's energy program to make the working people pay for the energy crisis and economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist system and for the stockpiling of energy resources for aggressive imperialist war.
In the main, the Carter administration has already realized the first objective in its energy program: the elimination of any restraint on energy prices and the jacking up of prices sky- high. To realize this goal, over the last two years Carter has been preaching without letup the monstrous lie and swindle that "our natural resources are running out" and that supplies of oil and gas face "depletion within the decade". And therefore, according to Carter, the only solution to the energy crisis has been to jack up prices to the so-called "world price" in order to "stimulate conservation". Under this hoax of "running out of resources", and with the "assistance" of an artificial natural gas shortage in 1977 and an equally fraudulent gasoline shortage this year, the people are being squeezed to the wall with soaring energy costs. Oil and natural gas price controls are being rapidly lifted, the price of gasoline in many places is well over a dollar a gallon and all energy costs for the consumer are soaring at over a 60% annual rate.
Hence, the second phase of Carter's energy program: the dividing up of the loot among the richest monopolies, forking over to the billionaires the billions upon billions of dollars plundered from the working masses through skyrocketing energy costs. For this purpose, overnight Carter has changed his propaganda tune 180 degrees. All of a sudden Carter declares: "We have the natural resources", "we have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias", etc., etc. And Carter's latest proposal: in the name of developing these now "vast energy resources", hand out $140 billion to the giant energy monopolies to subsidize their synthetic fuels and other operations.
CARTER'S PROPOSALS FOR "ENERGY SECURITY": FLEECING THE PEOPLE TO FORK OVER $140 BILLION TO THE ENERGY MONOPOLIES
In his July 15 speech, Carter outlined a six-point proposal to Congress for the realization of so-called "energy security":
- Two points of the proposal are for the "freezing" of oil import levels. These measures are in reality only for the sake of demagogy, to create the impression that "the leader is acting" to hold down oil imports when in fact the economic recession and other factors have already held import levels below Carter's annual quota. Of course, when the situation changes so will the quota.
- The proposal includes a point on "conservation" which includes the setting up of standby rationing systems, temperature regulations and other such "mandatory measures" to be imposed on the people. As well, Carter is requesting that the masses inadequately heat their homes in the winter, stay in their houses to save gasoline and perform other similar "acts of patriotism". Furthermore, for the monopolies, Carter proposes to hand over some $6. 5 billion to GM, Ford and Chrysler for the development of car engines and other handouts for the rich.
- Another point of the proposal is for a law to effect the conversion of 50% of the electrical generation which is presently fired by oil to more plentiful fuels, coal, natural gas, etc. Carter has requested $5 billion of subsidies to be paid to the utility monopolies to make this changeover. (Note that this is the same Mr. Carter who pushed through legislation in 1977 to pay utility monopolies for converting over from natural gas to oil firing. But that was during the fraudulent natural gas shortage and today utilities and homes with oil heat are being converted over to natural gas which has all of a sudden become "plentiful" once again.)
Carter has called for the creation of an "Energy Mobilization Board" to "make absolutely certain nothing stands in the way" of "energy security. This board is particularly designed for the elimination of environmental impact studies and other "obstacles" to Carter's program and to ensure the energy monopolies free reign to ravage the natural resources and pollute the environment at will in their quest for maximum profits. This board could also have the powers to push through the construction of nuclear plants even more recklessly and with even less regard to safety and environmental precautions than at present. The further rapid expansion of U.S. imperialism's murderous nuclear energy program has a special place in Carter's plans for "energy security". As Carter declared the day after his energy speech, nuclear energy expansion "must play an important role in our energy future."
-- And the most significant point of Carter's new proposal is the setting up of an "Energy Security Corporation". This "independent, government- sponsored corporation" would have a charter to invest a minimum of $88 billion over the next decade towards the development of synthetic fuels (known as "synfuels") projects including coal gasification, extraction of oil from shale rock, alcohol fuels and the development of hard to produce oil and natural gas deposits, etc. The funds for this corporation would be above and beyond the over $16 billion a year presently spent for the development of expensive energy technology for the energy monopolies by the government's Department of Energy. The $88 billion would be spent on direct subsidies, loans and loan guarantees to the energy monopolies themselves for "synfuels" projects.
Carter's announced plan for "synfuels" to provide 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, or one-tenth of U.S. oil demand, will guarantee a real rain of gold for the billionaire kings of the energy industry. For example, the proposed construction of 50 government subsidized coal gasification and shale oil projects at a projected $1 billion apiece will be a multi-billion dollar boondoggle for the giant engineering corporations and oil monopolies which build such plants as well as for the same oil monopolies who control the vast coal and shale rock mining tracts. This $88 billion government corporation would not only provide and guarantee much of the capital for these projects, but also guarantee with subsidies the selling price of the "synfuels" products in order to guarantee the monopoly capitalists fantastic profits.
Carter's proposed Energy Security Corporation is a near replica of Gerald Ford's proposal for a $100 billion Energy Independence Agency. This agency was a pet project of Ford's vice president Nelson Rockefeller, the notorious billionaire of the Exxon corporation, the richest of the imperialist oil monopolies. While Rockefeller's $100 billion agency was mainly for the purpose of providing loan guarantees to "stimulate" the banks to invest capital for energy projects, Carter's $88 billion plan is mainly for direct subsidies and investments, which is a much more expensive venture and, of course, a much more profitable one for the energy monopolies.
Carter fraudulently claims that his $140 billion proposal will be paid for by the oil corporations themselves through a so-called "windfall profits" tax. But in reality this monstrous swindle known as a "windfall profits" tax will be paid for in the price of oil products purchased by the ordinary consumer. As Carter himself puts it, "these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans" -- that is to say, robbed from the working people to be shoveled into the pockets of the capitalist moneybags.
"SYNFUELS" PROJECTS TO STOCKPILE FOR WAR
The channeling of tens of billions of dollars into large-scale "synfuels" projects is not only a source of fantastic profits for the over-gorged monopolies. It is also an important measure for the development of strategic energy resources to serve U.S. imperialism's preparations for aggressive war.
The aggressive and warmongering nature of Carter's "energy security" program was clearly demonstrated by Carter's energy speech itself. Carter demagogically heaped abuse on the "foreign countries" of OPEC. And throughout Carter's speech ran the theme that the energy crisis must be solved on a "war footing": that "the real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing"; "we have the national will to win this war"; and "I will lead our fight", and so on. This chauvinist and warmongering propaganda is further evidence of the fact that the "energy security" program of U.S. imperialism is not only a program of unprecedented robbery of the working class and people but also a program for the seizing and securing of the oil resources of the entire globe and of energy stockpiling for imperialist war.
A lack of strategic energy supplies for waging aggressive war is a sharp manifestation of the energy crisis confronting U.S. imperialism. Following World War H, in their drive for maximum profits, the U.S. imperialist oil corporations in a big way set about the seizure and plunder of oil resources all over the globe, in the Middle East, in Africa, Latin America, Canada, etc. Presently their fabulously profitable overseas ventures account for about 50% of the giant U.S. oil corporations total operations. At the same time, the oil monopolies have suppressed the production of energy resources in the U.S. and continue to increase the level of oil imports to protect their super-profits from their imperialist plunder a- broad. Not only has domestic oil and natural gas production been curtailed, but since the 1950's, Exxon, Conoco, Gulf, Texaco, Occidental and other oil monopolies have deliberately suppressed the production of "synfuels" as well, buying up large tracts of the vast fields of coal and oil shale for this purpose.
Therefore, the inevitable result of imperialist plunder abroad and suppression of production at home has been the creation of a situation where U.S. imperialism lacks "energy security". Overseas supplies are being increasingly challenged by the people's revolution, by the revolution in Iran, by the liberation struggles of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples, etc. And the inter-imperialist scramble for the seizure of oil resources is intensifying, especially that between U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism in the Middle East and elsewhere. In particular, as the U.S. imperialist war machine is being oiled up for war against the revolution and against their Russian imperialist rivals, with the outbreak of war this monstrous machine of murder and destruction would require an enormous quantity of "secure" supplies of fuel.
Large sums of capital have been sunk into the stockpiling of energy resources for war with the deepening of the energy crisis in recent years. Right through the recent "gasoline shortage", the government continued to pour millions of barrels of crude oil into underground storage vaults as part of a $17 billion "strategic oil reserve". Oil and gas exploration and drilling continue at record levels and extraction technology is rapidly being developed, not to increase production levels, (which continue to decline) or to limit imports, but to develop resources and stockpile for war.
As opposed to other "alternate" energy resources, the oil produced from coal and shale rock provides excellent fuels for tanks, jets, trucks and other military hardware. While "heavy oil", geopressurized natural gas and other gases, solar energy, etc., may be cheaper and more efficient energy resources than extracting oil from coal and shale, they lack the strategic capacity to fuel U.S. imperialism's machinery of war. It is therefore not coincidental that a comparison is being drawn by the bourgeois media between Hitler's coal conversion plants, which in large part fueled the German Nazis' war machine with liquid fuels extracted from coal, and Carter's "synfuels" program.
CARTER'S ANTI-WORKING CLASS AND WARMONGERING ENERGY POLICY HAS AROUSED THE CONTEMPT AND HATRED OF THE WORKING PEOPLE
In his energy address, Carter, the "born again" lap dog of the Wall Street financiers, preached on at great length on the so-called "crisis of confidence" confronting his administration. What Carter is calling a "crisis of confidence" is the ever deepening dissatisfaction of the broadest sections of the working class and working people with the rule of the capitalist monopolies. In particular, there is a growing hatred and disgust for the bourgeois government which is crushing the working class for the profits of these same monopolies. Thus, Carter's speech bemoaned the "gap between our citizens and our government (which) has never been so wide", the "growing disrespect for government" and the "losing of faith" in all the rotten institutions which make up U.S. imperialist society. And Carter nervously pointed to the U.S. war of aggression in Viet Nam and the Watergate scandal as the source of this "crisis of the American spirit" which he says is "threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America".
But what Carter was trying to cover up with this demagogical sermon is the fact that the criminal and warmongering activities of the U.S. ruling circles are not a thing of the past but are being continued and stepped up. Carter wants to hide the reality that it is the anti-working class, reactionary and warmongering policies of the rich under his administration which are also increasingly hated and despised by the working people. The big bourgeoisie is waging a savage offensive against the masses, striving to make the working people bear the entire burden of the economic crisis, to develop fascism and prepare for war. And the Carter administration, despite its thin mask of being "the friend of labor and the minorities", has proved itself to be merely a tool of this capitalist offensive. In particular, it has been Carter's energy policy, which he has been implementing with a vengeance since taking office, that has exposed Carter and his men to the broad masses of working people as smooth talking liars and demagogs, as the bought and paid for lackeys of the capitalist billionaires.
And now Carter has declared that it is "on the battlefield of energy that we can win for our nation a new confidence" and that his latest energy proposals are the "first step" towards the "rebirth of the American spirit". However, far from overcoming the "crisis of confidence", these latest energy measures, including $140 billion of handouts to the big energy corporations, can only arouse even greater contempt and hatred among the working masses for the tyrannical plunder and rule of the capitalist monopolies. Far from narrowing the "gap between our citizens and our government", Carter's energy policies can only deepen the antagonistic gulf between the broad masses of working people and the capitalist government of the billionaires. And the "crisis of confidence" of the Carter administration can only intensify as Carter implements his energy program to line the pockets of the energy monopolies with more tens of billions of dollars and to bleed the working class and people to make them pay for the energy crisis of U.S. imperialism.
The Workers' Advocate recently received the "Statement of the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism Hailing the Call of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists". Accompanying their Statement was a spirited letter of the Syracuse Committee addressed to The Workers' Advocate. This letter describes the vigorous activities they have carried out in support of the Call to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party, including a propaganda march through downtown Syracuse on July 14 and a public meeting held that evening. At the public rally, attended by over 50 class conscious workers and revolutionary activists, their Statement was read in the form of a resolution and passed unanimously.
The revolutionary activists of the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism have participated in the revolutionary movement for quite a few years. Many of them emerged from the tumultuous youth and student movement of the late 1960's and early 70's and went into the working class to organize for the proletarian revolution. And, as their Statement points out: "It was the movement to repudiate social-chauvinism that gave rise to the formation of the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism. At the call of the COUSML, 'Marxist-Leninists Unite in Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism', in the March 10, 1977 issue of The Workers' Advocate, the comrades split with New Leftism, and all forms of opportunism, to take up the political line of the COUSML." Extremely indignant at the complete class treason of the advocates of the theory of "three worlds" and their thesis of "direct the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism", the Syracuse comrades put into practice the line of resolute struggle against revisionism of all types, especially Chinese revisionism. They have carried out vigorous revolutionary activity in Syracuse, including Marxist-Leninist agitation and organizational work in the working class and among the students. They have created a militant atmosphere of contempt for Chinese revisionism and the "three worlds" theory among an entire section of revolutionary activists through their work of distributing the publications of COUSML and in holding public meetings to discuss the burning questions facing the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. Today the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism has organized itself to carry out the main tasks for founding and building the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S. A. as outlined in the Call of the National Committee of the COUSML. Full of revolutionary optimism, their Statement declares, "We are fully confident out of our own experience, and the history of the COUSML that the COUSML is the nucleus of the Marxist-Leninist Party, that the correct political line of the COUSML is the political line that will always stand in defense of Marxism-Leninism and against all forms of revisionism and opportunism."
On July 17 the glorious armed revolution of the Nicaraguan people against the U.S.-Somoza dictatorship was crowned with success. The vile Somoza dynasty was smashed to bits and the butcher Somoza was sent scurrying to the protection of his U.S. imperialist masters. This is a brilliant victory in the Nicaraguan people's struggle for complete national and social liberation. The American proletariat and the revolutionary people of the whole world share the great joy of the Nicaraguan people at this historic event.
The defeat of the fascist Somoza follows close on the heels of the overthrow of another bestial regime imposed by the U.S. imperialists -- that of the Shah of Iran. Over a period of decades the U.S. monopoly capitalist class has established its extensive neo-colonial empire. It props up reactionary ruling cliques like the Somoza and Pahlavi families in the various dominated countries. These cutthroats commit innumerable crimes against the working people, assisting the plunder by the U.S. imperialist monopolies, suppressing the people's just resistance and receiving a share of the spoils in return for their services. However, the entire imperialist system is in profound, ever-deepening economic and political crisis. The heroic, self-sacrificing struggles of the people are settling accounts with these butchers one by one. The monopoly capitalists are haunted by the rising revolutionary movement and agonize over which of their ''dominoes" will fall next.
The defeat of their lackey Somoza is particularly upsetting to the U.S. imperialists, coming so close to home in a continent they have always considered their special preserve. Furthermore, the victory of the Nicaraguan revolution is a tremendous inspiration to the other struggles raging throughout Latin America against the fascist cliques protecting the interests of U.S. imperialism.
The crimes of the U.S. imperialists in Nicaragua go back to the early 1900's when the country was conquered and occupied by the U.S. Marines. In the mid 1930's the U.S. installed the Somoza family in power to help it carry out the systematic robbery of the Nicaraguan people. Under this arrangement the Somozas owned 30% of the arable land, owned the national bank, were granted concessions in everything from food processing to shipping to automobile dealerships. Eighty per cent of Nicaragua's products were owned by American monopoly corporations. For the workers and peasants this "arrangement" meant grinding poverty, ferocious inflation, unemployment reaching 40%, and brutal armed suppression. To protect its paradise of exploitation the U.S. imperialists organized, armed and trained the 25,000 man fascist National Guard, even sending the chief henchman, Anastasio Somoza himself, through West Point.
The Nicaraguan people answered their oppressors with constant resistance and rebellions culminating in the victorious mass uprisings of the past year. The U.S. imperialists and their lackeys tried their usual practice of drowning the people's resistance in blood, but to no avail. They killed 10,000 in the battles last September alone, and uncounted thousands since. Their Air Force carried out saturation bombings leaving 100,000 homeless. But the imperialists' mass murder only aroused the profound hatred of the people and increased their determination to overthrow the regime. In the end the "superior military force" of the reactionaries proved to be no match for the armed revolutionary masses and it was utterly disintegrated.
Following the expulsion of Somoza the new Provisional Government instituted a number of positive measures in the interests of the Nicaraguan people. The landholdings of Somoza were seized and distributed to the peasants. His banks, corporations, and other property were confiscated.
The former Constitution, puppet Congress, and courts were outlawed, and the despised National Guard was abolished. These victories advance the just struggle of the Nicaraguan people for complete national and social liberation and for the progressive development of the country. However, the enemies of the Nicaraguan people are not reconciled to their defeat. In particular, the U.S. imperialists are desperately trying to salvage the situation and to organize the counterrevolution. But today it is the powerful hands of the workers, peasants and other toiling masses that hold the destiny of the world and not those of the reactionaries.
The victory of the Nicaraguan people is further confirmation of the analysis put forward by Comrade Enver Hoxha in his book Imperialism and the Revolution. The situation in the world is in general revolutionary. In many countries this situation has matured or is maturing rapidly, while in many other countries this process is developing. Neither the brutal force of imperialism or social-imperialism, nor the preaching of the different revisionists on "peaceful development", nor the capitulationist theory of "three worlds" are capable of stopping this process. The path of armed revolution, as in the case of Nicaragua, is the correct path for the people of the world. The American proletariat salutes the heroic Nicaraguan people and rejoices in the success of their struggle to overthrow the U.S.-Somoza dictatorship.
Long live this great victory of the Nicaraguan people!
[Photo: Revolutionary fighters triumphantly enter Managua.]
Since early July the Senate has been debating whether or not to approve the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. This "debate" has been organized by the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie in order to promote their unbridled military buildup and all-round preparations for imperialist war. Through this public extravaganza, the imperialist politicians are trying to mobilize the masses to support the militarist plans of the rich.
Both "anti-SALT" and "pro-SALT" imperialist politicians were in complete agreement that in order for the SALT treaty to be approved, the military budgets must be expanded to unheard-of levels and the maximum number of weapons of mass murder developed and deployed. The openly militarist "anti-SALT" politicians stated that approval of SALT must be accompanied by guarantees of hug Go military expenditures from the Carter administration. For their part, the Carter administration and other "pro-SALT" forces lavished praise on the open warmongers and presented their own blood-soaked proposals for arms expansion. The only difference between the "anti" and "pro-SALT" butchers was that while the "anti-SALT" forces were justifying their positions with saber-rattling tirades against U.S. imperialism's main rival for world conquest, the Soviet social- imperialists, the "pro-SALT" "peaceniks" preferred a more saintly pacifist pose.
Thus, when the open militarists, like Senator Jackson, demanded as conditions for their approval of SALT that the defense budget be increased by 4-5% per year in real dollars, that the U.S. step up its weapons exports to NATO, and that Cruise missiles should be rapidly deployed, the "pro-SALT" Senator Cranston called this "responsible" and "rational". When the Nixonite fascist Kissinger testified that: "Rarely in history has a nation so passively accepted such a radical change in the military balance," the Carter administration stated it liked Kissinger's "general approach". The Carter administration hastened to add that it would continue to "strengthen our strategic and conventional forces, and to redress effectively problems that have developed over the past decade. " To accomplish this task, the administration suggested that the military budget should be increased by $12. 5 billion each year. In fact, Carter's "disagreements" with the "anti-SALT" forces are such that he appointed a member of an anti-SALT group, George M. Seignious, to head up the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency! Thus, all the imperialist politicians agreed that they were not against fraudulent declarations of "disarmament", such as SALT, as long as the development of the U.S. military machine continued unimpeded in practice.
The position of the Carter administration ripped another hole in its "pacifist" mask. Just as in the past with the MX and Cruise missiles, the B-l bomber, the reinstitution of the draft, etc., the latest call for arms expansion is being pawned off as a concession to the open warmongers, allegedly necessary in order to achieve Carter's "peaceful" imperialist paradise on earth through the SALT agreement. What limitless hypocrisy! "Helpless" Carter, chieftain of the U. S" imperialist armed forces, loves peace so much that he is "forced" to arm to the teeth for wars of aggression and plunder. But no amount of posturing can hide the warmongering deeds of "peacenik" Carter.
It is clear that no matter what disguise they may adopt, the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie will never give up its efforts to launch wars of aggression. Only the working class and people are genuinely opposed to the warmongering. Today a movement is developing against the war preparations of U.S. imperialism including the movements against the draft, and against the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. This movement is an expression of the general revolutionary ferment. It is the development of the revolution which undermines the efforts of the U.S. imperialists to prepare for war. To eliminate war once and for all the imperialists must be eliminated.
[Cartoon.]
When candidate Jimmy Carter outlined his foreign policy program during the 1976 presidential campaign he took great pains to portray himself as the candidate of peace. He "opposed the U.S. playing the role of world policeman." His foreign policy would bring a new era of benevolence and good neighborliness. As one proof that his leadership would change U.S. imperialism's aggressive ways, Carter promised to withdraw the U.S. occupation troops in Korea.
Now, three years later, the 30,000 combat troops remain. And on July 20, Carter announced that the CIA had "uncovered new evidence of a North Korean buildup" and therefore the U.S. troops must stay on until the puppet Pak Jung Hi clique can be armed and rearmed with new weapons to prop up its pro-imperialist and fascist rule. This concoction of a "North Korean buildup" is the same hoax that has been used to justify U.S. imperialist occupation of southern Korea for 30 years.
Such transparent lies no longer fool anyone. Indeed, they reveal the utterly fraudulent nature of the unending words of "peace", "disarmament", etc., coming from imperialist politicians like Carter. This pacifist propaganda is for the sole purpose of masking stepped-up war preparations on an enormous scale. "Peacenik" Carter is leading the U.S. imperialists in developing new weapons of mass destruction like the Trident submarine, the MX and Cruise missiles, in conducting nuclear war exercises like "Global Shield", in carrying out overt and covert operations against the revolutions in Iran, Nicaragua and elsewhere, in stockpiling energy resources for war, and in preparing for the reintroduction of the military draft.
The announcement of the maintenance of U.S. combat troops in Korea is another demonstration of the fact that U.S. imperialism will remain a bloodstained aggressor as long as a single tooth remains in its head. This is the same U.S. imperialism which waged the most criminal war of aggression against the Korean people in 1950-53, and which has carried out innumerable provocations there since, including the Pueblo spy ship incident and the notorious "tree felling" incident at the Demilitarized Zone, and which last March carried out massive threatening war exercises across southern Korea including hundreds of thousands of troops. It is the same U.S. imperialism which continues to prop Up the fascist puppet dictatorship in Seoul for the persecution and murder of the Korean people. The maintenance of U.S. occupation troops in Korea is part of the frenzied war preparations of U.S. imperialism. And it is the typical result of imperialist words of peace and acts of war.
[Photos: The above pictures are of two meetings held by the San Francisco Bay Area Branch of COUSML in Oakland on July 7 and 15. The first meeting discussed the criminal nuclear energy program of U.S. imperialism and the necessity to organize mass revolutionary struggle against it. The topic of the second meeting was "Defend Socialist Albania!". The speaker pointed out: "Socialist Albania stands as a powerful beacon inspiring the workers and oppressed masses throughout the world to fight for the realization of the glorious ideals of independence, democracy and socialism." Thirty revolutionary people attended each meeting and participated in a vigorous and politically conscious way in the discussion of these important issues. These two meetings were held at Marxist-Leninist Books and Periodicals bookstore.]
The giant U.S. oil corporations have engineered another fraudulent oil shortage, which in turn has driven up gasoline prices to over $1.00 a gallon. This systematic robbery of the masses by the billionaire oil tycoons through fake shortages and sky-high prices has aroused the anger of the broadest masses of the working people.
And Carter's energy program of enforcing this outrageous robbery to the hilt has been an important factor in the so-called ''crisis of confidence" of his administration, sharply exposing to the masses that Carter is nothing but a bootlicking lackey of the rich.
But to divert the growing storm of indignation of the working class and working people against the tyrannical plunder of the capitalist billionaires and its flunkey government, a new wave of lying propaganda is being unleashed that it is the "foreigners", the "unrest in Iran", "the Arabs" and mainly that it is "OPEC" that is to blame for the shortages and soaring prices. Thus, while the rich are shifting the burden of the energy crisis onto the working people, they are at the same time whipping up vicious national chauvinism and racism against "foreign oil producing countries" to escape the blame. However, in reality, it is not OPEC but the U.S. capitalist oil billionaires who are throttling the working people.
The truth of the matter is that the promotion of these chauvinistic lies to blame OPEC for the shortages and high prices is direct government policy to deceive the people. The calculating and conscious nature of this imperialist hoax was starkly revealed in the secret June 28th memo to Carter from his domestic affairs advisor
Stuart Eizenstat. This memo, from a White House expert in lies and public opinion manipulation, outlined the plans for this systematic propaganda campaign to "blame OPEC" and deceive the people as follows:
"In many respects it would appear to be the worst of times. But I honestly believe we can change this to a time of opportunity. We have a better opportunity than ever before to assert leadership over an apparently insolvable problem, to shift the cause for inflation and energy problems to OPEC, to gain credibility with the American people, to offer hope of an eventual solution, to regain our political losses. We should seize the opportunity now and with all our skill... Use the OPEC price increase as the occasion to mark the beginning of our new approach to energy... We must turn the increase to our advantage by clearly pointing out its devastating economic impact and as a justification for our efforts against OPEC ... With strong steps we can mobilize the nation around a real crisis and with a clear enemy -- OPEC."
And to "gain credibility with the American people" Carter has indeed been playing this lying chauvinist trick "with all his skill". In his July 15th energy address Carter's "OPEC is the enemy" demagogy was truly rabid: "Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has the knife... This is the direct cause of the long gas lines... It is the cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face", etc., etc. And these same ultra-chauvinist lies have been carried far and wide by the reactionary bourgeois media. According to countless newspaper articles and editorials, TV commentators and even songs on the radio, OPEC is the sole source of the high energy costs, the entire energy crisis and all its effects.
But facts show that it is the U.S. oil billionaires and the U.S. monopoly capitalist government which are throttling the working people to make them pay for the energy crisis of U.S. imperialism. And OPEC is only being made the scapegoat. Take the price of gasoline for an example. From January 1974 to July 1979, the market price of OPEC crude oil rose by 66%, from $10.84 to $18.00 per barrel. This means that OPEC prices have only just kept pace with the inflation of the U.S. dollar. On the other hand, during this same period, retail gasoline prices charged by the U.S. oil companies increased by -- over 116%, from 46.3¢ to over $1.00 a gallon. Clearly it is the overgorged oil kings of Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and the rest who are the ones jacking up prices sky-high.
Or look at the demagogy about OPEC "monopoly" price fixing which is allegedly "strangling" the American consumer. What this hypocritical propaganda is meant to hide is the fact that it is the U.S. oil monopolies who have replaced competition with monopoly and regulate and fix prices for the realization of maximum capitalist profits. In past years, the U.S. government, acting on behalf of the U.S. oil companies, imposed quotas to regulate U.S. domestic oil prices above OPEC prices to ensure the U.S. corporations the highest price. And presently a handful of giant interlocking oil monopolies, who have joined together in a powerful cartel, are engineering devastating energy shortages and are engaged in an orgy of price fixing to plunder the masses. It is the champions of U.S. so-called "free enterprise", the Rockefellers, Mellons and other multi-billionaire oil tycoons who have a complete energy monopoly, fix prices at will, and who are strangling the working people.
Furthermore, it is not OPEC which has a "stranglehold" over the U.S. as Carter and the other lying lap dogs of the rich contend. But it is U.S. imperialism which has stretched its bloody stranglehold over the oppressed peoples of the world, including the oppressed people and the resources of many of the oil exporting countries. For decades the U.S. multinational oil corporations have been ruthlessly plundering the oil resources from all over the globe. Their extensive operations in the Middle East, as well as in Latin America, Canada, Asia and Africa, are a source of fabulous super-profits for the U.S. oil corporations. And for the people of these areas, this plunder means ruin and poverty, and the devastation of their natural resources. And to ensure that nothing should endanger the U.S. imperialist stranglehold over its neo-colonial empire, the Carter administration is presently setting up a 100,000 man military "strike force" with the explicit mission of being ready at a moment's notice to seize the oil fields in the Middle East and elsewhere.
It is not OPEC which is "strangling" the American consumer but the bloodstained U.S. imperialist monopoly capitalists who are strangling not only the American people, but people all over the world.
Scarcely hours after Carter's July 15 televised speech announcing his latest outrageous anti-working class energy proposals, top labor bureaucrats were lavishing him and his plan with praise. Carter's energy program not only is a program of burdening the masses even more heavily through increasing prices, but provides for over $140 billion in handouts to the energy monopolies, money extorted from the workers through taxes. The plan is so pleasing to the energy monopolies that William Simon, Gerald Ford's Treasury Secretary and big friend of the oil barons, gleefully described it as "a gargantuan welfare boondoggle for the energy industries." This monstrous fleecing of the working people and $140 billion boondoggle for the giant monopolies are what the top union officials, the so-called representatives of the working man, are praising to the skies.
George Meany, arch-sellout and traitor to the working class, said the "energy program is good, long overdue, and warrants the support of the American people." He called for it to be "forcefully applied". The day after Carter's speech, Glenn E. Watts, president of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), joyfully welcomed Carter to the CWA national convention in Detroit. It was a disgusting betrayal of the workers for this labor traitor to hug and kiss the chieftain of the bloodsucking monopoly capitalist class at a union convention, supposedly a workers' gathering. Trying to get the workers to swallow Carter's program, Watts gushed, "I saw the man we elected in 1976, a decent, honest, hardworking man, here to communicate with the people of this country...." So afraid was this traitor of even the tiniest disruption of the Carter show, that a convention delegate who has opposed Carter in the past was hauled out of the convention hall, handcuffed and interrogated by Secret Service and Detroit police for over half an hour! Echoing Watt's praise, Douglas Fraser of the UAW, present at Carter's CWA performance, hailed Carter for projecting "more leadership than I've seen in a long time". What an ugly spectacle. The Carter administration is mercilessly enforcing the unprecedented robbery of the working class and people on behalf of the billionaire lords of oil and these so-called "labor leaders" are on their knees kissing Carter's feet!
To try to shove Carter's energy program down the workers' throats, the labor traitors are propagating the most vicious national chauvinist propaganda. "If his program is forcefully executed," says Meany, "America will be on the road to energy independence." An unnamed "labor leader" quoted by Carter in his July 15 speech said, "The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing." But these are just the most recent national chauvinist, warmongering utterances of the "labor" bureaucrats. In February 1979, William Winpisinger of the International Association of Machinists (LAM) filed a lawsuit against OPEC, charging "price fixing" and "trust violations". Deliberately hiding the fact that it is the giant U.S. monopoly oil corporations who are engaged in an orgy of "price fixing" and robbery of the masses at home and abroad, Winpisinger babbled against OPEC: "It's time somebody fought back against these price fixers. They've been able to get a stranglehold on American consumers." Arnold Miller and Sam Church, top officials of the United Mine Workers union, have tried to popularize their vicious chauvinist propaganda in a song that blames "Arab oil" for miners being unemployed, and calls for "fighting for independence" by use of coal. The top bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO echo the chauvinist lying propaganda that U.S. imperialism is being "shackled" by "foreign oil" and call for "liberating" the U.S. from the "tyranny of OPEC", when in fact it is U.S. imperialism which has "shackled" the oppressed peoples all over the world in its neo-colonial grip and which wantonly plunders the oil and other resources across all four corners of the globe. Thus the efforts of the top labor traitors to make the workers swallow Carter's energy program are draped in red, white and blue lying propaganda, aimed at getting the workers to sacrifice in the interests of oil monopoly profits and for the greater glory of U.S. imperialist slavery and aggression. This is contemptible betrayal of the working class.
It is clear that the top "representatives of labor" are fully in alliance with Carter, "the friend of labor", and the biggest monopoly capitalist exploiters against the working, class. Not only are these traitors seeking to make the working masses pay billions for the capitalists' energy crisis, but they are actively assisting the war preparations of U.S. imperialism by their rabid national chauvinism. Today the trade union apparatus has been integrated into the capitalist state machine, and these top labor hacks serve as state bureaucrats suppressing the workers' movement. The. < alliance of these labor bureaucrats with the Carter administration is a tool of the capitalist offensive of starvation, fascism and war. Time and again, the capitalists, officials of their government, and the top labor bureaucrats sit down together in various councils, boards, and meetings to collaborate against the workers, just as they did recently at Camp David. The workers can expect nothing but betrayal from these top labor hacks, who are the Trojan horse of the bourgeoisie inside the workers' movement. In order to defend their vital interests, the workers must oppose the liberal-labor politics and class treason of the labor bureaucrats, rely on mass revolutionary struggle, and develop their own class conscious leadership united into the Marxist-Leninist Party of the proletariat.
[Cartoon.]
(The following article is excerpted from People's Canada Daily News, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), July 19, 1979.)
Among the ruling circles in the United States, the push for some sort of continental energy pact, involving the United States, Canada and Mexico, continues to gain momentum. U.S. President Carter has made it clear in recent remarks, that his plans to make the U.S. "self-sufficient" in energy do not preclude imports from Canada. His rivals for the presidency in 1980 have already declared that the push for a continental energy pact will be a major campaign issue. California governor Jerry Brown and leading Republican contender John Connally have been pressing for such a pact, and Edward Kennedy has also spoken repeatedly in favor of it. The U.S. imperialists speak of "sharing" the energy resources of the three countries, and of how such a pact will be of "mutual benefit" to all parties concerned, but no one is fooled by this demagogy. What the U.S. imperialists obviously want is unrestricted access to the oil, natural gas, coal, hydro-electric power and uranium resources in Canada and Mexico to satisfy their rapacious appetite for energy.
The Canadian proletariat and the broad masses of the Canadian people should vigorously oppose the plans of the U.S. imperialists to impose their continental energy pact on Canada. Such a pact would only mean greatly intensified U.S. imperialist domination of Canada, still closer integration of the Canadian economy with that of the U.S., the stepped-up plunder of the resources and intensified exploitation of the working people. A most sinister aspect of these plans is the fact that they are intimately bound up with the war preparations of the U.S. imperialists. The vast quantities of oil which the U.S. imperialists currently plunder from the four corners of the globe are of vital importance to keep the wheels of their economy turning and to fuel their enormous military machine....
The U.S. imperialists consider Canada to be a "secure" and "stable" ally where the risk of a disruption of the plunder of the oil and other energy resources is low. One report prepared for Nixon in 1970, on the question of the relationship of oil imports to national security stated that "The risk of political instability or animosity is generally conceded to be very low in Canada." The report also said that "Canadian...oil is nearly as secure politically and militarily as our own, although complete realization of these security benefits will require fully understood and harmonized energy policies." (in other words, a continental energy pact). So the plans of the U.S. imperialists to build the Alaska Highway natural gas pipeline, and to develop other energy resources in Canada -- e. g. the Arctic Islands natural gas reserves, the McKenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea reserves, the Athabasca Tar Sands and heavy oil deposits, the offshore resources in the Maritimes, etc. -- are based on their assumption that they will be able to plunder these resources without fear of disruption. One indication of their confidence is that they are preparing to launch a big oil storage project in the Maritimes, where they intend to store millions upon millions of barrels of oil as a strategic reserve in case of the outbreak of war. It is very important for the U.S. imperialists to maintain Canada as their strategic reserve. Not only energy, but many other resources vital to the U.S. military machine are plundered from Canada, including nickel, iron ore, copper, tungsten, lead, zinc, cadmium, aluminum, fluorspar, asbestos and others. Governor Brown of California commented recently that a "common market" with Canada and Mexico would "create the most powerful group of trading nations" -- that is, would enhance the military might of U.S. imperialism and further facilitate its global warmongering plans. The efforts of the U.S. imperialists to impose their continental energy pact are efforts to further draw Canada into the U.S. imperialist war machine.
The rich of this country, both native and foreign, have done in the past and are doing today everything in their power to ensure that Canada remains a "reliable" reserve for U.S. imperialist plunder and aggression. The rich of the country serve as the social base for the all-sided U.S. imperialist domination, facilitating this domination in the economic, political, cultural and military spheres.... The reactionary bourgeoisie in Canada enriches itself by maintaining a subordinate relationship to U.S. imperialism and actively serving the interests of U.S. imperialism.
The Canadian people, led by the proletariat, must not allow Canada to remain the "reliable" reserve of U.S. imperialist plunder and aggression. This means that the proletariat must lead the broad masses of the people in the struggle to overthrow the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada. The overthrow of the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada is not only an important task for the proletariat in its struggle for genuine independence, democracy and socialism in Canada, but depriving the U.S. imperialists of their strategic reserve in Canada is also a big blow against the preparations of the imperialists and social-imperialists for global war and the unprecedented slaughter of the world's people. Ending the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada, depriving the U.S. imperialists of the Canadian proletariat as cannon fodder and of the resources needed to fuel their war machine, will be a big contribution to the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and people the world over. The elimination of the U.S. imperialist domination is not the elimination of the domination by U.S. imperialism of the bourgeois state, but the elimination of U.S. imperialist domination by eliminating the bourgeois state.
The schemes of the U.S. imperialists to impose a continental energy pact with Canada to advance their warmongering ambitions is bound to stir up a storm of protest and opposition from the Canadian working class and people who are opposed to the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada and who do not want Canada to enter into any aggressive and unjust war. The imperialists are aware of this and are preparing the conditions so that these protests and opposition will not amount to much. They have unleashed their agents -- the revisionists and opportunists of all hues -- to eliminate the leading role of the proletariat in the struggle against the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada as part of and subordinate to the proletarian revolution. The revisionists and opportunists say that Canada is "sovereign" and that this "sovereignty" is "threatened" and should be protected, and they want the proletariat and people to entrust the bourgeoisie with the defense of this "sovereignty", or at the most, to prod the bourgeoisie to defend Canada's "independence" on a more "consistent" basis. Thus, they deny the fact that Canada is not sovereign and it has never been. The Canadian monopoly capitalists have their own class interests served by the sellout of the country and this is why they go begging for foreign finance capital and why they welcome the U.S. imperialist domination of Canada. The rich cannot express the sovereignty of the people and the people cannot depend on the rich to defend their sovereignty. The proletariat must lead the broad masses of the people to establish the sovereignty of Canada by overthrowing the rule of the rich. There is no other way that the sovereignty of the people can be defended. Only the proletariat is genuinely patriotic and democratic.
Comrades and friends,
The Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism vigorously hails the Call of the National Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists. The Syracuse Committee sees this as the urgent and necessary step to consolidate the victories won by the genuine Marxist-Leninists against opportunism, revisionism, and social-chauvinism, and to prepare the decisive condition for the revolutionary development of the upcoming class battles of the 1980's. The Call of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists expresses the strength, depth and development of the great movement of the proletariat in the U.S. and worldwide to fight against the betrayal of modern revisionism. From the time of the death of Comrade Stalin, when the Khrushchovite revisionist traitors seized power in the Soviet Union and used the great prestige of the Communist Party of Lenin and Stalin to impose their revisionist politics of conciliation and outright collaboration with imperialism and reaction on the international communist movement; from the time when Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania boldly stepped forward to defend Marxism-Leninism and the world revolutionary movement from the betrayal of modern revisionism; from that time until today the task of the genuine Marxist-Leninists around the world has been the reconstitution and constant strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist parties, the vanguard organizations of the proletariat in its fight for revolution and socialism. This task could only be carried forward on the firm foundation of Marxism-Leninism, and in constant struggle against all revisionist currents, and by waging a conscious and militant fight against the entire world system of imperialism. It was out of this fight against Khrushchovite revisionism, led by the Party of Labor of Albania, that a great upsurge in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement arose which resulted in the reconstitution of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties in many countries.
The Communist Party of the U.S.A. was one of the many parties which Khrushchovite revisionism succeeded in degenerating into bourgeois capitalist parties. The CPUSA had been weakened by the revisionist politics of Browder, and although Browder was kicked out of the Party and his line struggled against by the honest revolutionaries, they were unable to repudiate the liberal-labor essence of Browderite revisionism and fell prey to the deception and blackmail of the Khrushchovite revisionists. The degeneration of the CPUSA left the proletariat in the U.S. without its vanguard party, without the Marxist-Leninist consciousness and organization necessary for the proletariat to advance in its fight for revolution against the U.S. imperialists.
From out of the revolutionary mass movements of the 1960's, a section of the revolutionary activists grasped the necessity for the vanguard party. They rejected all the revisionist betrayals, and inspired by the international struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism shouldered the task of building the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. They formed the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969, and right from the beginning called upon all the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries in the U.S. to unite into a single Party based on Marxism-Leninism.
The fight to reconstitute the Party brought the genuine revolutionaries face to face with the opportunist trend of neo-revisionism. These neo-revisionists claimed to uphold Marxism-Leninism, but fought all the efforts of the ACWM(M-L) and later the COUSML to build the vanguard Party. They promoted anti-Marxist "theories" such as "pre-party collectives" to keep the movement toward revolution weak and divided. But the COUSML, undaunted by the neo-revisionists' disgusting activities, fought against this trend and continued to consolidate and strengthen the genuine Marxist-Leninist movement, preparing the conditions for the refounding of the Marxist- Leninist Party. With the degeneration of neo-revisionism into open social-chauvinism, the neo-revisionists openly declared their alliance with the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie with their call to "aim the main blow at the Soviet Union."
A great movement arose in the U.S. to oppose and denounce the social-chauvinist traitors. The COUSML gave direction to, inspired and led in an all-round way this movement among the revolutionary activists, using the hatred of the activists for the social-chauvinist class traitors to deepen the movement in defense of Marxism-Leninism and the trend toward the building of the Party. The COUSML linked the fight against social-chauvinism to the international fight against Khrushchovite revisionism, and especially to the new opportunist trend of "three worlds" based on the anti-Marxist "Mao Zedong Thought". COUSML showed that the social-chauvinist trend was fostered, given direction, and in an all-round way led by the Chinese revisionists. It was only on the basis of the all-round efforts of COUSML to broaden the movement against social-chauvinism and to defend the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism against the social-chauvinist distortions, that the basis for the disunity in the Marxist-Leninist movement since the early seventies was sorted out. The anti-Party trend fought against the unity of Marxist-Leninists called for by COUSML, precisely because it stood in defense of imperialism in general and U.S. imperialism in specific.
It was the movement to repudiate social-chauvinism that gave rise to the formation of the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism. At the call of the COUSML "U.S. Marxist-Leninists, Unite in Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism" in the March 10, 1977 issue of The Workers' Advocate, the comrades split with New Leftism and all forms of opportunism, to take up the political line of the COUSML.
A strong militant unity has been forged with the COUSML in our united struggle against social- chauvinism, and to build the Party based on one political line. With the correct guidance and assistance of the COUSML, the SCASC has been able to develop a very strong trend against neo-revisionism and for the correct Marxist-Leninist line of the COUSML. We are at a point today where a strong pro-Party trend is participating in carrying out the tasks put forward in the Call of the COUSML to build the Party.
We are fully confident, out of our own experience and the history of the COUSML, that the COUSML is the nucleus of the Marxist-Leninist Party, that the correct political line of the COUSML is the political line that will always stand in defense of Marxism-Leninism and against all forms of revisionism and opportunism.
With this Call, and the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A., the proletariat now has its weapon to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism!
BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY WITHOUT THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS AND AGAINST THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS!
VIGOROUSLY PARTICIPATE IN THE HISTORIC MOVEMENT TO RECONSTITUTE THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE U.S.A.!
From: Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism
To: The Workers' Advocate
Comrades;
Revolutionary greetings! The Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism, participating in the movement against social-chauvinism and toward the reconstitution of the Marxist-Leninist Party, would like to report to The Workers' Advocate that the pro-Party trend in Syracuse is growing stronger, and in this historic period, rallying ever closer behind the correct Marxist- Leninist leadership of the COUSML.
We are sending you these photographs of the propaganda march and mass rally held here in Syracuse on July 14th, hailing the Call of the National Committee of the COUSML to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists. Also enclosed is the statement by the Syracuse Committee delivered at the mass rally.
The propaganda march went through the downtown business district around 12 noon. Fourteen comrades and friends participated in the march, and over 50 copies of the Call of the National Committee of the COUSML were distributed.
The mass rally of over 50 comrades and friends was the largest ever in Syracuse, and was attended by a cross section of revolutionary students from many countries, class conscious workers and revolutionary activists. The Buffalo Branch of COUSML participated in the rally. A comrade from the Buffalo Branch presented the main speech concentrating on the history of the fight against neo-revisionism and the clarification of the trends in the Marxist-Leninist movement through the fight against social-chauvinism. Comrades from the Buffalo Branch also presented, the song "We'll Build the Marxist-Leninist Party".
Also at the meeting, comrades from Syracuse presented a cultural presentation entitled "Albania Our Beacon" which included a brief history of Albania through songs and reading documents from the PLA.
We feel the events of the 14th are a concrete expression of the vigor of the pro-Party trend and the movement against social-chauvinism and all revisionism and for the refounding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A.
The Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism
[Photo: Militant mass meeting organized by the Syracuse Committee Against Social-Chauvinism.]
[Photo: Vigorous cultural presentation entitled "Albania Our Beacon" at July 14 meeting.]
From "The West Indian Voice", Newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group
(The Workers' Advocate has received the above-named statement from The West Indian Voice, newspaper of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group of New York City, which was printed in their July-August issue. Their statement, reprinted below, is full of revolutionary enthusiasm for the campaign to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. It states, "The patriotic West Indians can only rejoice at the call to 'Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists'. This decisive advance for the American proletariat is also a victory for the largest section of the West Indian community which belongs to it."
Last month we informed our readers that the June-July issue of The West Indian Voice carried the complete text of COUSML's Call to build the Marxist-Leninist Party as a special supplement. The recent statement of The West Indian Voice has provided further proof that the movement against social-chauvinism is uniting all that is alive, honest, and loyal to Marxism-Leninism and the proletariat.)
The West Indian Voice enthusiastically welcomes and supports the Call of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists -- "Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists". The establishment and constant strengthening of the political party of the proletariat is the most decisive question facing the American revolution, and is gloriously celebrated J)y all the honest, enlightened and revolutionary forces in the society loyal to the proletariat and people. The proletariat is the most thoroughly revolutionary class, and is history's appointed gravedigger of the class of the monopoly capitalists and its barbarous rule in the society. The proletariat alone is capable of taking the revolution up for solution, of mustering behind it all the oppressed people and all those sections of the people who desire freedom from the bondage of enslavement under capital. To accomplish its aim, to realize its leading role, the establishment and leadership of its own political party -- its general staff -- is the most crucial question. Because only the Marxist- Leninist party of the proletariat can make the proletariat conscious of its mission, organize, prepare and lead it to overthrow the rich and their state and usher in the bright red future of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The patriotic West Indians, united to build the mass defense organization of the West Indian community, have always stood firmly on these questions, and have always said clearly and openly that the American proletariat stands at the center of the solution to the racist attacks being carried out by the rich and their state against our community, as well as against other communities. Without the leadership of the proletariat, nothing which claims to be revolutionary and to have the interest of the oppressed masses at heart, can develop successfully. Furthermore, the struggle being waged against the racist attacks by the communities facing these attacks, forms part of the overall policy of the proletariat, is subordinate to and in coordination with the movement of the proletariat towards its objective.
For the patriotic West Indians, this is not mere eyewash or empty words. But this means first and always that the proletariat, led by its Party, exercises its hegemony in all the revolutionary currents in the society, providing farsightedness, wisdom, confidence in what lies ahead, revolutionary methods and leadership in the class battles. Outside of this, the struggles and just aspirations of the working masses cannot escape the traps put in the way by the class of the rich which, among its many means, has the opportunists, social-chauvinists and traitors of every hue to work on its behalf.
The emergence of the patriotic organization of the West Indian community in 1978 was not by chance. The Caribbean Progressive Study Group works to unite the West Indian community to fight the racist attacks by the rich and their state, and is made up of militant sons and daughters of the community. The neo-revisionists, social-chauvinists, reactionary cultural nationalists and others, by promoting various phony "solutions" to the state-organized racist attacks, have, for years, been blocking the community from the path of vigorously fighting the attacks. What have they contributed to solving the problems of the community? Absolutely nothing; they have only created added problems for the community.
For years, the social-chauvinists, "three worlders", reactionary cultural nationalists and trotskyites have been running around saying that the countries of the West Indies are in their mysterious "Third World" where there is no class struggle being waged by the people against the local reactionaries and sellouts, where they claim that the puppet regimes and sellouts also oppose imperialism to a "certain extent", and that these countries are "independent" and "sovereign".
By spreading maximum confusion on these issues, they work to baffle the community and sidetrack its fighting spirit, rendering big service to the hated puppet regimes in the West Indies and especially to the U.S. imperialists, the class of the rich, whom they serve. So the launching and continued work of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group is also in opposition to betrayal of the interests of the West Indian community by these elements.
This development was possible because the patriots understood that to guarantee the advance of the struggle in the West Indian community, it was absolutely necessary to base themselves on the strength of the proletariat. The establishment of contact with the line of the Marxist-Leninists in the West Indies -- the National Liberation Movement of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as with the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, saw the beginning of the transformation of the situation in the West Indian community, with the launching of the Caribbean Progressive Study Group under the slogans of the proletariat, UNITE TO FIGHT STATE-ORGANIZED RACIST ATTACKS and SUPPORT THE STRUGGLES FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION IN THE WEST INDIES. Now the community is armed with the fighting slogans with which to defend its interests.
The patriotic West Indians can only but rejoice at the Call to "Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists". This decisive advance for the American proletariat is also a victory for the largest section of the West Indian community which belongs to it. With the proletariat armed with its own political party, the struggle of the West Indian community cannot be wiped out; it may go down a bit, experience the necessary twist and turns, but because of the strength of the American proletariat, it is bound to come back up again, ever stronger.
The arduous struggle waged by the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists to reconstitute the political party of the American proletariat, has a special place in the hearts of the patriotic West Indians. Ever since the party of the proletariat was converted into a party of scabs and renegades from the proletariat, from Marxism- Leninism and the revolution, and into servants of the monopoly capitalist dictators -- the conditions facing the struggles of the working masses and revolutionary activists have grown increasingly difficult. Under the dastardly attacks of the U.S. imperialist robbers and hangmen, the proletariat was left without its own leadership. In these conditions, the rich and their servants floated every variety of anti-people, chauvinist and anticommunist ideology and dressed up this scenario as having something in common with the lofty aims and aspirations of the working and oppress-3 ed people, in order to corrupt their ranks.
For ten years, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists led by the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) -- predecessor to the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists -- and then the COUSML, have fought an uphill battle to reconstitute the party, not only having to stand up to the monopoly capitalist dictators and their outright fascist ideologues, but also against the neo-revisionists who paid lip service to their "Marxism-Leninism" and who took the mission of disrupting the reconstitution of the party at every turn. The neo-revisionists, while claiming to "oppose" revisionism, attempted at every turn to sneak in the revisionist policies and methods which had left the movement prostrated for decades. Having over ten years of experience, the neo-revisionists have now degenerated into open and disgraceful social-chauvinism (socialism in words but chauvinism, i. e. support for one's own bourgeoisie, in deeds). They openly call for the proletariat to see their main enemy in a "foreign threat", to climb onto the war chariot of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie and become cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism's predatory plans to expand its neo-colonial empire and slaughter the peoples.
The proletariat is preparing for the great class battles of the 1980's. Everywhere, broader and broader sections of the people are being driven to revolt. The emergence of open social-chauvinism is an extremely serious danger facing the working class and people, and requires a fierce fight, first and foremost the building of the Marxist-Leninist Party, without which there can be no lasting victory. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, heading the exposure of, and attack on the social-chauvinist traitors, has invigorated all the genuine Marxist-Leninist elements and revolutionary activists with the spirit of complete irreconcilability to social-chauvinism.
In order to consolidate these victories and prepare the proletariat for the coming storms, it is necessary today to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists, and this campaign is firmly supported by revolutionary-minded West Indians.
The Workers' Advocate is printing below the text of the "Joint Declaration on the Occasion of the Year of Stalin", which has been signed by many Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations. The issuing of this declaration is a concrete advance for the forces of Marxism-Leninism in the world and a blow to modern revisionism and all opportunism.
Joseph Stalin was an outstanding champion of the cause of the international proletariat, of socialism and communism. Along with Marx, Engels and Lenin, Stalin is a classic Marxist. He was an ardent defender and brilliant theoretician of Marxism-Leninism. J.V. Stalin's very life and work are inseparable from the victorious cause of the overthrow of imperialism and the successful consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism.
It is for this reason that all of the imperialist and revisionist criminals, all of them without exception, see with their eyes and feel in the marrow of their bones that great Stalin is their unyielding enemy. The imperialists and the revisionist traitors launch ceaseless attacks on Stalin, on his person and his teachings, for the sole purpose of fighting against the revolution and socialism and wiping out Marxism-Leninism itself. Therefore, the consistent and resolute defense of the glorious banner of J. V. Stalin is an imperative duty. It has been and remains a dividing line between the genuine Marxist-Leninist communists and the revisionist and opportunist renegades of all hues.
Today, all of the revisionists are persisting in their filthy attacks on Stalin. History shows that they must do so in order to realize their counterrevolutionary and anti-Marxist aims. For the Khrushchovites to organize the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism, they had to viciously attack the beloved work and name of Stalin. The Titoite revisionists have always attacked Stalin to serve their subservience to imperialism. And the Chinese revisionists too have never defended Stalin correctly but have always agreed with the Titoite and Khrushchovite abuse of Stalin. The Chinese joined the anti-Stalin chorus in order to pursue their own anti-Marxist- Leninist course of liberal bourgeois coexistence with the class enemies and conciliation of modern revisionism and imperialism, a course which has brought them to betrayal and open alliance with imperialism. The Chinese leaders, like the other revisionists have had to slander Stalin because he was the staunchest proletarian revolutionary who adhered firmly to the revolutionary class struggle and who fought relentlessly against the class enemies, the revisionist deviators and imperialism.
The commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Stalin's birth, this glorious "Year of Stalin", provides further impetus and strength to the struggle to defend the purity of Marxism- Leninism and the cause of revolution and socialism from the all-sided attacks of the modern revisionists and imperialists. The "Joint Declaration on the Occasion of the Year of Stalin" issued by many Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations is an important defense of Stalin and of Marxism-Leninism. It is a step forward in the strengthening of the international Marxist-Leninist movement, a step towards its further consolidation and unity on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
All glory to the great Marxist-Leninist J. V. Stalin on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth!
(The following Joint Declaration on the Occasion of the Year of Stalin is reprinted from People's Canada Daily News, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist- Leninist), August 1, 1979.)
This year is the 100th anniversary of Joseph Stalin's birthday. For more than half a century Stalin was a great communist leader, a fighter in the foremost ranks of the Bolshevik Party and the international communist movement. His name is connected with the October Revolution, with the building up. of socialism in the first socialist country in the world, with the defeat of nazi-fascism. His work is connected with the revolutionary struggle on the five continents over a long period, because for many years Stalin was teacher, leader and inspirer of the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat of the whole world.
Stalin is a classical author of Marxist-Leninist theory, which he further developed and extended in many aspects on the basis of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, his teacher and comrade-in-arms.
Stalin's name, which is so loved by proletarians and true communists, is now trampled underfoot, cursed and defamed by the reactionary bourgeoisie and revisionists of all hues. All revisionists are united in their attack on Stalin, join forces with the bourgeoisie in this attack and trumpet slanders and lies in a shrill choir. This joint attack on Stalin's name, in which the imperialists and their agents in the working class movement work together, is not just an attack on a person or personality of the past: it is an attack on the principles, the ideals, the spirit, which inspired Stalin and which live today in the struggle of millions of men and women. It is an attack on Leninism, on the revolutionary theory of the proletariat.
Throughout his whole life Stalin was a defender of proletarian internationalism, of the unity of the struggle of the proletarians of the whole world, of the steel unity between communists of all countries, of world revolution, a great leader of the Communist International. Therefore all revisionists who preach the "national path to socialism", chauvinist social-imperialism, those who slander the work of the Communist International, the theorists of "limited sovereignty", attack his work and slander it.
Stalin was in theory and practice a determined defender of the right to self-determination of oppressed nationalities and of the independence of peoples subjugated by imperialism. Therefore he was and is the target of attacks by all chauvinists and imperialists.
Stalin was an unyielding defender of the Leninist concept of the party, of its unity of will and action, its historical necessity for carrying through the proletarian revolution, its vanguard role. Therefore all revisionists launch unrestrained attacks on him, -- the defenders of "various lines in the party", of the "party of the whole people", of "revolution without a party", those who deny the proletarian class character or who raise liberalism in the Party to the level of a theory or want to destroy the revolutionary character of the Party by bureaucracy.
Stalin was a defender of the Marxist-Leninist concept of class struggle in all its forms, of the revolutionary spirit of struggle. Therefore all conciliators, pacifists and adherents of bad compromises attack him.
Stalin was a defender of the principles of the dictatorship of the proletariat and applied these principles consistently in the Soviet Union. He was a defender of armed revolution under the leadership of the proletariat and at the head of the CPSU he realized the liquidation of the exploiting classes and the building up of socialism. Therefore all revisionists attack Stalin, especially the Khrushchov revisionists who, proceeding from the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU, destroyed Stalin's work in the Soviet Union, restored capitalism in the Soviet Union and changed it into an imperialist country, and the Chinese, Yugoslavian and other treacherous revisionists who have devoted all their efforts to preventing the building up of socialism in their countries or to reestablishing capitalism. This attack is joined by those who deny the existence of socialism in the world today, who contest the possibility of building up socialism, who preach the reactionary classes' "integration" into socialism or the "transformation" of capitalism into socialism. Throughout his whole life Stalin defended the Marxist- Leninist principles, theoretical and ideological severity and clarity against superficiality and eclecticism, ideological steadfastness against inconstancy, proletarian politics against bourgeois politics, revolutionary practice against opportunism.
Therefore the defense of Stalin's name means, today as it did 30 years ago when Comrade Stalin was still alive, the defense of Marxism-Leninism, the proletarian revolution, socialism, the world proletariat.
Therefore the parties which have signed this document on the occasion of the significant celebration day of the 100th birthday of Joseph Stalin, the great communist leader, upright revolutionary and outstanding Marxist-Leninist, declare:
The defense of the name and work of Joseph Stalin is a duty for all true communists, for it represents a line of demarcation between Marxism- Leninism and revisionism, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between imperialism and the peoples, between capitalism and socialism, between revolution and reaction.
Joseph Stalin's name will never die as long as there is a struggle against the exploitation of man through man, as long as there is a struggle for the communist future of humanity, as long as humanity remembers those who paved the way to its liberation.
Signed by the following parties and organizations:
Organization for the Construction of the Communist Party of Afghanistan (Marxist-Leninist)
Central Committee (provisional) of the Communist Organization of Angola (abroad)
Marxist-Leninist Party of Austria
Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party of Dahomey
Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist)
Workers' Communist Party of France
Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist)
Workers' and Peasants' Communist Party of Iran
Communist Party of Italy (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party of Japan (Left)
Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party of Peru (Marxist-Leninist)
Portuguese Communist Party (Reconstructed)
Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)
Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey -- Construction Organization
[Photo.]
Our close fraternal comrades of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) have issued a statement declaring their great revolutionary enthusiasm for the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. This statement is entitled "BROTHER MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY TO BE FOUNDED IN THE U.S. IN THE NEAR FUTURE." It appears in the August 1, 1979 issue of People's Canada Daily News, Organ of the Central Committee of the CPC(M-L). This article gives the views and position of the CPC(M-L) on the Marxist-Leninist movement in the U.S. The CPC(M-L) puts the question of the proletarian party in the forefront and hails the coming founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S.A. as "a great step forward for the proletarian movement for emancipation in the U.S."
This statement puts emphasis on "the vigorous all-sided work for over 10 years" of the COUSML and ACWM(M-L) before it, work that has "now created the conditions to found the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S." It especially points out the protracted, difficult fight against opportunism hiding in the ranks of those claiming to be "Marxist-Leninist". The statement says, in part:
"The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) before it have carried out vigorous all-sided work for over 10 years to establish the political Party of the U.S. proletariat, We have shared weal and woe together during these past years and we know from our own direct experience that the U.S. Marxist-Leninists had to fight extremely tenaciously and without vacillation not only against imperialism and revisionism, but also against those who pretended that they were "revolutionary" and "Marxist-Leninist". In their glorious work to establish the Party, the ACWM(M-L) and COUSML not only had to first fight that the genuinely Marxist-Leninist Party, the Party of revolution and socialism, be founded, but also had to struggle against those who first opposed founding the Party but later changed their tactics and took up the task of opposing the Marxist-Leninist Party by declaring, one after another, their opportunist parties. But COUSML carried on its struggle to found the genuinely Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary political Party of the U.S. proletariat and firmly unmasked the so-called "Marxist-Leninist" parties which have been founded since 1973, each one of them aligned to definite opportunist positions in the U.S. and internationally. We warmly congratulate COUSML for its resolute work in defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian internationalism and its resolute development of the work to found the Party."
The American and Canadian Marxist-Leninists have long supported each other in the common struggle against imperialism, revisionism, and all reaction. We are fighters in the same trench. The fraternal unity of the COUSML and the CPC (M-L) has always been a powerful factor for revolution in North America. Let the Marxist-Leninist parties in Canada and the U.S. march forward together as fighting contingents of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement!
On July 1 the GE monopolists reached an agreement with a 13-union coalition, primarily composed of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) and the United Electrical Workers (U E), for a new three year Contract covering 120,000 GE employees. This is a sellout contract and will result in the further impoverishment of the electrical workers.
The leaflet reprinted below, which was distributed to GE workers in Louisville, denounces this agreement. It analyzes how the labor traitors were able to impose it on the workers and avert a strike through demagogy designed to lull the workers to sleep with sugarcoated lies praising the sellout agreement. The labor traitors demonstrated once again that they are tools of the capitalist government, headed by Carter, and its program of cutting the workers' wages and intensifying their labor. Despite the fog of confusion generated by the union bureaucrats, 42% of the workers voted against the sellout contract.
It should be of interest to our readers that the July 5, 1979, edition of the Daily World, the yellow rag of the "C"PUSA revisionists, carried an article entitled "G. E. Electrical Workers Win Higher Wages, Better Benefits". In this article the revisionists praise to the skies the electrical union bureaucrats and their sellout agreement. It states, ''Electrical workers at General Electric plants around the country won substantial wage and benefit gains in a tentative contract approved by union boards Monday." Noting that the contract had not yet been voted on and ratified by the workers, and uncertain that all of their praise would be sufficient to convince the workers to do so, the revisionists then immediately go on to quote one of the chief labor traitors behind this sellout, UE President Denis Glavin: "We have made significant and substantial improvements." These oh-so respectable (and oh-so bourgeois) revisionists think that by invoking the words of the U E president the workers will be forced to agree. After all, what better authority exists on these matters than the bought and paid for union officials?
But a rebellious mood is growing among the workers, which presents the revisionist lap dogs of the rich with their share of difficulties. Because of the widescale opposition of the GE workers to the sellout agreement, on July 11 the Daily World was forced to print on their front page a supposed "retraction" of their earlier article. "Our apologies to electrical workers," they mumbled. Their information was "based on reports from union sources" and "We have received several letters and phone calls from electrical workers saying our information was not accurate."
One of the letters was from a worker at the Lynn, Massachusetts, GE plant. It pointed out that the Daily World is handed out once a week at the plant gates of the Lynn factory. But apparently the revisionists' selling job of the contract was not of first-class labor bureaucrat caliber, as the IUE local 201 in Lynn (as well as local 761 in Louisville) voted the contract down.
The revisionists claim that the problem with their article was "inaccurate information". How could this be so, when everyone knows that the Daily World and the hack officials of the UE have a long history of close ties and collaboration, hand in glove style? In fact, the article contained the main facts and figures of the settlement. Their problem was in analyzing this information through their distorted, revisionist, anti-working class eyeglasses.
So we can see that the revisionists admit to no wrongdoing whatsoever, but shift the blame onto "union sources", whom they nervously finger as the real culprits. Such is the "solidarity" between the revisionist scribblers of the Daily World and their cronies in the UE. The revisionists go through these disgusting antics in hopes that they come out "smelling like a rose". But their real odor as strikebreakers and scabs is what fills the air.
This fiasco for the revisionists illustrates an important point. The revisionists are among the worst strikebreakers nestling inside the working class movement.
(Following are excerpts from a leaflet issued by the Louisville Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists on July 23, 1979.)
With the IUE-GE negotiations over and the contract ratified, thousands of electrical workers are asking, "How could the national leadership sell us out?" Before the talks, the IUE national leadership claimed that they would "ignore the guidelines" and "negotiate for the needs of our people -- and to strike, if necessary.," But Fitzmaurice and his crew, who were "tremendously pleased" by the settlement, showed these were nothing but sugar-coated lies aimed at lulling the workers to sleep. Fitzmaurice and all the top labor "leaders" united with GE to avert a strike because they are in complete agreement with the program of the Carter government and the monopoly bourgeoisie to "fight inflation" by cutting wages and increasing productivity. Yet, despite this treachery, 42% of the workers voted to reject the sellout agreement. The treachery of these labor traitors shows them to be the agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, whose role is to subvert the workers' struggles from within. Thus, for the workers to advance their just struggles, they must overcome the sabotage of these bought-off labor traitors and wage vigorous mass struggle against the capitalist exploiters and the Carter, government.
In times of skyrocketing inflation, and despite Carter's wage controls, the workers demanded a substantial wage increase and an adequate COLA, to be paid quarterly. Yet Fitzmaurice and the national negotiating team agreed to a paltry wage increase of only 44-l/2¢ an hour over three years, and a "new, improved" COLA, which is still inadequate in dealing with the runaway inflation and will only be paid twice a year. This wage increase and COLA barely exceed Carter's guidelines and will cut the workers' real wages over the next three years. The settlement also failed to eliminate employee contributions from the pension plan; it failed to provide full medical and dental coverage (and what is provided does not start until the second year of the contract); it failed to obtain a union shop; and it provides GE with another form of discipline -- "non-disciplinary"terminations to use against the workers fighting against GE's productivity campaign.
Claiming "low worker productivity" is a source of inflation, the Carter administration has established a National Productivity Board to intensify the workers' labor as "an important contribution to reducing inflation". The GE capitalists are in complete agreement and launched their Productivity Campaign to "cut costs" and be "more competitive in the marketplace". While the GE workers are waging determined struggles against the intensification of their labor, Fitzmaurice is promising GE "cooperation in developing joint programs to increase productivity..."! The new "non-disciplinary" terminations established in the national agreement are another way to suppress the resistance of the workers to the productivity campaign. Thus, far from "negotiating to meet the needs" of the workers, Fitzmaurice treacherously accepted and promoted a contract which guarantees huge profits for the GE capitalists by cutting the workers' real wages and enforcing the Productivity Campaign.
Since late 1978, Fitzmaurice claimed the IUE negotiating team would "ignore the guidelines", "negotiate to meet the needs" of the workers, and "strike, if necessary". However, at the same time, he blurted out, "In any case where the company adheres to the 7% and becomes strictly adherent to it, we advise our people to negotiate a one-year contract," indicating rather than fight the controls, the workers should look for a way to get around them. In reality, Fitzmaurice and the AFL-CIO Executive Council, to which he belongs, are long-time champions of wage controls. As far back as 1969, they insisted Nixon adopt mandatory wage controls to "fight inflation". Presently, the top labor bureaucrats feign opposition to Carter's controls because they do not control wages and prices "equally". However, what they really oppose is voluntary controls; and they are working feverishly to develop and implement fully mandatory wage controls. In October 1978 the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a statement in sham opposition to Carter's Phase II wage guidelines. Referring to this statement, Fitzmaurice confessed, "I voted with the rest of the council for compulsory, mandatory wage and price controls... President Carter's program of voluntary controls is just not going to work. People don't voluntarily discipline themselves..." Thus, Fitzmaurice has never been in favor of the workers' mass resistance to defy wage controls and told the electrical workers to "ignore the guidelines" in order to undermine their struggle by lulling them to sleep.
Then, well into the negotiations, Fitzmaurice adopted a "militant" stance and, under the hoax of "spearheading" the fight against the wage controls, the IUE initiated a lawsuit to "challenge their legality". Fitzmaurice whined that the controls gave GE an edge at the bargaining table", since they were "forced" to comply for fear of losing government contracts. Fitzmaurice claimed the lawsuit would "increase the chances for peaceful settlements" by "removing the government from management's side of the bargaining table." But this lawsuit was a big charade because Fitzmaurice really wanted the courts to confirm that it is legal for the government to cut the workers' wages through Carter's wage controls.
Throughout the negotiations, Fitzmaurice obscured the need to wage vigorous mass struggle against the wage controls. So intent was this traitor to suppress any mass active resistance, he confined the workers' struggle against the wage controls to a ridiculous court case! But the workers' own experience shows that the courts of the rich are not their friend. The government is not above classes, "neutral", or "democratic" as the labor bureaucrats would have the workers believe. The capitalist government serves the interests of the rich by attacking the workers. Carter and his administration are acting in behalf of their monopoly capitalist masters by imposing fascist wage controls to suppress the workers' movement, cut the wages of the whole working class and ensure maximum profits for the rich.
The traitorous activity of these labor lieutenants is more and more becoming exposed as the workers continue to vigorously resist bearing the burden of the capitalist economic crisis. To advance their struggle, the path forward for the workers is to overcome the sabotage of the labor bureaucrats, who restrict and undermine their struggle, and wage vigorous mass action to defend their vital interests against the attacks of the rich and their government.
OPPOSE THE SABOTAGE OF THE LABOR TRAITORS -- AGENTS OF THE BOURGEOISIE
IN THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT!
WAGE VIGOROUS MASS STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF THE CAPITALIST EXPLOITERS AND THEIR GOVERNMENT!
Since July 15th, 37,500 electrical workers nationwide have been on strike against Westinghouse Electrical Corp. The electrical workers, who are organized into the IUE, UE and IBEW, are resisting big attacks on their living and working conditions. In particular, they are fighting to prevent Westinghouse from replacing their current, noncontributory pension plan with a new plan that requires large employee contributions.. The workers at Westinghouse are also demanding compensation for the job loss caused by plant closings. In addition, the Westinghouse workers are demanding wage increases and improved COLA to combat the effects of inflation. For several years now, Westinghouse has been making especially vicious attacks on the electrical workers in order to raise profits and improve its competitive position in the industry against its major rival, General Electric. Since 1973, when its profits declined from the previous year, Westinghouse has carried out extensive rationalization. It has eliminated the less profitable divisions -- such as housewares and major appliances where it could not successfully compete against GE -- and concentrated on developing production in its most profitable divisions, such as motors and generators for industry, nuclear reactors and weapons systems. Through this rationalization, Westinghouse has increased its profits steadily since 1973-74; from a net income of $165 million in 1975 to a net income of $311 million in 1978.
It is the electrical workers at Westinghouse who have been made to pay for this rationalization and the increased profits it has produced. First, many electrical workers have been thrown out of work as Westinghouse sold off some operations and closed down others. At the same time, to make the remaining product lines more efficient and profitable, Westinghouse has been shutting down its older plants in the Northeast and moving its operations to the South, thus throwing more workers into the street. As well, Westinghouse has attacked the workers who remain on the job through an increased productivity drive: threatening the workers with plant closings if they do not increase productivity and through various productivity measures, increasing their profits per worker by over 50% between 1976 and 1978.
Throughout this period, the electrical workers have resisted the effects of this rationalization program at Westinghouse. At the Buffalo plant, for example, 750 jobs have been eliminated by moving a product line to a new plant in Ashville, North Carolina. Combined with this, Westinghouse has attempted to introduce numerous productivity measures in the Buffalo plant under the threat that unless productivity improves, other product lines must be moved out of Buffalo as well. In response to this attack, the Westinghouse workers in Buffalo have waged numerous wildcat strikes and smaller walkouts against the various productivity measures, such as increased production quotas, job combination, and reduction of the workforce through attrition. The current contract demand for increased compensation for job loss comes but of this struggle which the workers throughout Westinghouse have been waging for several years. The workers are demanding big severance pay and special pension benefits for those who are thrown out of work due to plant closings. They are also demanding advance notice of any intended closings so as to place themselves in a better position to fight these measures in the future.
Westinghouse is also attacking the electrical workers' wages and benefits in order to increase its profits and improve its competitive position. This year, as in the last contract struggle in 1976, Westinghouse is demanding that its workers sacrifice to reduce Westinghouse's "cost disadvantage" against GE. In 1976, the Westinghouse workers had to strike just to force Westinghouse to grant the same wage increases already agreed to by GE. This year, Westinghouse is insisting that its workers accept a new employee-contributory pension plan similar to that in effect at GE in order to reduce its "cost disadvantage". This is a big "take-back" demand by Westinghouse, as these electrical workers have had a non-contributory plan since the early 1950's. Combined with Westinghouse's offer of a small wage increase of 48¢ over three years, the introduction of an employee-contributory pension plan would severely cut the workers' spendable incomes.
The electrical workers at Westinghouse are waging their strike under most difficult conditions. The entire electrical industry is only 50% organized, and at Westinghouse only 50,000 out of a total 140,000 workers are unionized. During the current strike, 65 non-union plants are still operating. And at the unionized plants, approximately one-fourth of the workforce is organized in the Federation of Westinghouse Salaried Employees which has not struck with the other unions, but ordered its members to cross the picket lines to scab on the striking workers. To stop the scabbing, the Westinghouse workers organized mass pickets at the outset of the strike and successfully shut down the struck plants completely. But within the first week of the strike, the courts enjoined the striking workers from mass picketing and ordered them to allow the FWSE members to return to work.
This suppression of the Westinghouse strikers by the courts shows that the government stands behind the Westinghouse capitalists and is their tool for attacking the workers. In fact, the entire attack Westinghouse is waging against the workers' living and working conditions is part and parcel of Carter's "anti-inflation" program of wage cuts and productivity drives. It is through the government, as its main instrument -- and particularly through Carter's "anti-inflation" program -- that the capitalist class is organizing its offensive against the workers. To resist this capitalist offensive, the workers must also fight the government and in particular defy Carter's wage controls.
In waging their strike, the Westinghouse workers also face the sabotage of the labor bureaucrats who head the electrical trade unions. In a situation which demands that the workers muster all their forces to fight their powerful enemies -- the electrical monopolists and the capitalist government -- the leaders of the IUE, UE and IBEW have done everything to restrict and limit the workers' struggle. The labor bureaucrats have split the workers' ranks by settling on a new contract at GE (where the largest number of electrical workers are concentrated, with 120,000 unionized GE workers) before negotiations with Westinghouse were completed. This left the smaller workforce at Westinghouse "on its own" in the current strike. Moreover, the contract which the labor bureaucrats negotiated at GE is a sellout of the workers' basic demands; it calls for a piddling 44-l/2£ wage increase over three years and even when combined with the revised COLA formula does not protect the workers' wages against the ravages of inflation. What is more, the labor bureaucrats had sworn that this year GE workers would win a non-contributory pension plan. But instead, the labor bureaucrats sold out this demand at GE and allowed the electrical monopolists to turn the tables on the workers and insist on a contributory pension plan at Westinghouse. Finally, these labor traitors have preached subservience to the reactionary court dictates and pledged to abide by any court-imposed restrictions on the strike even before they were issued.
Despite this, and against all these odds, the electrical workers at Westinghouse are determined to defeat the pension "take-back" demands of Westinghouse and win some measure of compensation for job loss caused by plant shutdowns. The Westinghouse workers, as the many wildcats and walkouts at the Buffalo plant show, have a militant history of struggle against their capitalist employer and they are prepared for a long and hard strike. The fact that the Westinghouse workers launched their strike and are determined to carry it through under such difficult conditions is a sign of the growing strength of the workers' movement. It is an indication of the workers' deep sentiments to fight wage cuts and productivity drives dictated by Carter's anti-inflation program.
EMPLOYERS, GOVERNMENT AND TRADE UNION ARISTOCRATS COLLUDE TO IMPOSE WAGE RESTRAINT
The monopoly capitalists of many countries are using wage restraint policies of different types to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the workers. Many governments are pursuing policies similar to President Carter's wage controls in order to suppress the workers' wages and to jack up the profits of the monopoly capitalists.
In Canada, wage controls were imposed in 1975. Although they were supposedly phased out last year, the government "Anti-Inflation Board" is still rolling back workers' wage increases to levels far below the rate of inflation.
In New Zealand, where inflation is at an 18% annual rate, the reactionary Muldoon government imposed a wage freeze on July 24. The previous wage freeze had been lifted in 1977.
The French government just extended its "austerity program" for another 12 months and plans to intensify its attempts to restrain the workers' wages during this time.
The newly-elected Conservative Party government of Thatcher in Britain has the same anti-working class policy as the previous "Labor" Party government. The "Labor" government's wage controls program, called the concordat, was signed by the government and the trade union bureaucrats and it dictated the level of the workers' wages through government pay commissions. It also banned the right to strike in "key sectors" of the economy.
In the north of Ireland, the workers' wages have been under attack under the wage restraint policies of the "social contract", "5% pay limit" and "concordat" schemes imposed by the British colonial regime.
Successive governments of the Irish monopoly capitalists in the south of Ireland have in recent years held down the wages of the Irish workers by means of the so-called National Wage Agreements, imposed with the aid of the labor bureaucrats at the head of the trade unions. As a result, the real wages of the workers have drastically declined. The Fianna Fail party was elected to office in 1977 and is following essentially the same policy as that of the former coalition government of the Fine Gael party and the Irish Labor Party. With the Fine Gael/Labor Coalition's policy exposed and discredited, the Fianna Fail has been attempting to impose wage restraint on the workers in the name of a "National Understanding". The following article describes the anti-working class policy of the Fianna Fail and is reprinted from Red Patriot, An Tirghrathoir Dearg, newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist), Vol. 5, No. 94, July 8, 1979.
Last week the government lent its seal of approval to the negotiations which have been proceeding between the employers and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions over the previous two weeks. The government has consented to underwrite a pay rise of 16% over 15 months with the renewed promise of a tax rebate of £39 million at the end of this year, a rise of £1 per week in social security payments and the other so-called "commitments" which the government promised before -- the job creation program, etc.
In other words this is a rehash of the same "National Understanding" -- giving an additional ONE percent of a rise. Only this time, instead of the initiative coming from the government, the bourgeoisie has promoted the new deal for maintaining class peace through the joint agency of the employers' organizations and the top trade union leadership.
The concept of a "national understanding" differs in no way from the previous system of National Wage Agreements, except that the government throws in the additional carrot of "declaring their commitment to abolish unemployment" (by 1984), and other social and economic reforms.
The reason why the political executive of the bourgeoisie -- the government -- has adopted this slightly different approach to their problem of "maintaining class peace" (discouraging the strike struggle to redress wages against rising prices), is because the old system of National Wage Agreements became thoroughly exposed and discredited as simply an instrument to hold back wages behind inflation.
This problem of the exposure is a constant political problem for the monopoly capitalist class. After taking great pains over the last two years to present their policies as more democratic and socially conscious than Fine Gael/Labor Coalition (witness the Green Paper of June 1978, and the White Paper of January 1979), Fianna Fail ran into quite a crisis when the membership of the trade unions massively rejected their new-style National Wage Agreement early this summer.
Actually Tianna Fail's policy was never any more "progressive" than the Coalitions', and was certainly not the product of some particularly socially conscious group of individuals -- or party -- as they would like to claim. Their policy was simply a revamping of the basic policy of the Irish bourgeoisie to hold down wages behind prices, and thereby increase the rate of profit to foreign monopoly capital and encourage further imperialist investment on which the southern economy depends.
The rejection of the first attempt at the National Understanding reflected the disillusionment of the working class with the Fianna Fail government and their exposure as another gang of exploiters like the previous government (after they had promised the sun, moon and stars in the 1977 general elections). Attempting to overcome this problem, the bourgeoisie has now tried a further form of concealment and this is to make it appear as though the policy to hold down wages comes from the employers and the unions in coming together to maintain employment and increase trade and production. In this way the bourgeoisie hopes to disguise the role of this discredited government in imposing this deal and thereby throw more credibility on the "national understanding" itself.
But workers will not swallow the same old poison with a "new" or '/different" flavor. The fact is that this rehash represents no real improvement on the previously rejected deal -- only one percent. When 16% over 15 months is completely inadequate to cover the rises in prices.
Recent increases in basic prices -- gas, 14.4%, electricity nearly 20%, CIE fares and P & T [post office] charges, plus the rises in foodstuffs at over 20% (all well above the official Consumer Price Index rise of 12-15% for this year) -- show that this new "understanding" is simply another instrument to impose wage restraint and higher exploitation.