First Published:The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 6, No. 2, February 1, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As 1976 opened and a new school semester began, the question of busing and the fascist, anti-Black, anti-working class activities of the anti-busing movement is continuing as a problem which the American working class and people must confront. A new, very limited busing program has been instituted in Detroit. A large-scale program may be instituted soon in Cleveland. Programs are continuing in Boston, Louisville and elsewhere. Struggles are raging between the fascist anti-busing movement and its monopoly capitalist backers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the revolutionary and progressive Black and white workers, Afro-Americans as a whole and other progressive people, who are resisting these attacks. As part of their drive to develop fascism in the U.S., the monopoly capitalists are organizing a fascist mass movement on the question of busing. This movement is mobilizing white working people to violently attack the democratic right of the Black people to attend integrated public schools, thereby attacking the interests of the entire working class and working to split it. The anti-busing movement is directly assisted and promoted by the monopoly capitalists' armed state machine (government with its courts, police, etc.) and its agents. They work overtime to promote the busing issue in a distorted way so as to pose as the "friends" of the Afro-Americans while stirring up to the maximum the contradictions among the people on the question. But in fact, far from promoting school integration, the monopoly capitalist state is actually doing everything in its power to disrupt and sabotage it, directly attack the Black and other working masses with reactionary violence, and, through wide-scale political deception about "peaceful desegregation", attempt to disarm the masses in the face of these attacks and sow illusions that the monopoly capitalist system can be democratic.
Discussions of this situation among workers and people in general are at a boiling point in many places. The monopoly capitalists have created a certain amount of confusion in progressive people's minds. Doubts are sown, undermining lessons learned in the struggles of the 1960's: Is it right to defend school integration as a democratic right of the Blacks? What importance does school integration have for white working people? Can the working class unite? Why do the government and the rich seem to support busing and integration when they have always been the cause of racial discrimination? Why can't we have peaceful desegregation under the present system Using this confusion as a cloak, and relying on the absence of a large-scale mass movement to force them to carry out even a limited democratic reform, the monopoly capitalists through their anti-busing movement and their armed state machine are escalating their violent attacks on the Black people and also on the broad masses of white working people who support the democratic rights of the doubly oppressed Blacks. As The Workers' Advocate pointed out in December 1974, the monopoly capitalists are attempting to reverse the gains the Afro-Americans made in their.glorious struggles of the 1960's. They want to intensify the Black people's oppression and deepen the present split in the working class so as to sabotage its united struggle for its immediate interests in the face of the deep economic crisis and also to undermine its struggle for a proletarian revolution, which alone can eliminate racial discrimination and capitalist exploitation altogether.
In this situation, a situation filled with danger for the Afro-American and working-class movements, it is necessary to examine busing and the anti-busing movement in general once again. It is also necessary to examine how it has developed in the particular case of Louisville, where this past summer and fall the fascist anti-busing movement reached its highest peak since Boston the previous year and exceeded the intensity and scale of the Boston events in several ways.
WHAT IS BUSING AND THE ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT?
As The Workers' Advocate pointed out in its December 15, 1974, issue, in an article analyzing the Boston busing crisis, the anti-busing movement is a fascist mass movement of attack on the Afro-American people and on the working class in general. Violently and in other ways it attacks the democratic right of the Afro-American workers and other Afro-Americans to have their children attend integrated public schools together with the children of white workers and other laboring white people. Buses are only a necessary means of transportation between segregated communities. Thus school integration, not the riding of buses, is the heart of the question.
This is the immediate aim of the anti-busing movement, not defending some supposed "democratic right" of whites to go to a segregated school next door to their house rather than to an integrated school a mile away. School integration was a democratic demand of the Black and white masses in the great struggles against racial discrimination and violent repression of the 1960's, one which was won to a limited extent in the South but which has remained only a promise in the North. The monopoly capitalists are still smarting from their defeats in these struggles and want revenge. Today the monopoly capitalists are taking this democratic demand and are promoting it in a distorted way in an attempt to turn it into an instrument for deceiving and splitting the workers and suppressing the Afro-Americans. They are taking advantage of the low level of the Afro-American, workers' and student movements, hoping to be able to present school integration in such a disruptive and mutilated way as to stir up conflicts among the people to a high pitch, organize a fascist mass movement, and not only sabotage further integration but deprive the Afro-Americans of the meager rights they won in the 1960's and in revenge drive them backwards towards all the oldest and most barbaric features of the Jim Crow segregationist system. Under the hoax of "quality education", they want to restore Black people to the degraded status of "separate but equal", that is, segregated and entirely unequal. To accomplish this, the monopoly capitalists are trying to mobilize a section of white workers and other laboring white people to go against their own real class interests, split the working class still further, take the side of the bloodthirsty capitalist class enemy and trample on the Afro-Americans' rights, up to and including making violent lynch-mob attacks on Black people, thus performing the role of hangmen of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. The Afro-Americans are singled out as the immediate target of the anti-busing movement because of their condition of extremely severe special class and national oppression and their resulting resolute fight against the monopoly capitalist authorities. The monopoly capitalists would like nothing better than to create a racial civil war in the U.S. between one section of the working class siding with the bourgeoisie and another consisting of the blacks and progressive workers and people opposing the bourgeoisie. This would undermine the over-all struggle of the working class and oppressed people against the monopoly capitalist class and seriously hinder the development of the proletarian revolution in the United States. Under such conditions, think how much easier it would be for the monopoly capitalists to further develop fascism in the U.S., shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto the working class and oppressed nationalities and prepare for war with the other imperialist superpower, the Soviet Union!
The anti-busing movement is organized, backed and instigated by the entire monopoly capitalist class operating mainly through its armed state machine. In this the bourgeoisie uses dual tactics. The Republicans, the "conservatives", etc., including President Ford, the chief political representative of the bourgeoisie, along with some Democrats, never tire of egging on the anti-busing movement. They all take a virtually open white chauvinist and fascist stand of opposing school integration, hiding only behind the transparent guise of claiming that it is not integration, but only "forced busing", which they are against. This is the same line promoted among the masses by the leaders of the fascist anti-busing movement, which now includes a section of the representatives of the labor aristocracy (these representatives are labor misleaders bought by the bourgeoisie to serve its interests in the working class movement) in Louisville, Boston and elsewhere. (Sad to say, even a small section of the "left" has taken up this line.) The remainder of the bourgeoisie relies more on political deception to accomplish the same goal. They include most Democrats, the "liberals", most of them also a part of the bourgeois state machine, such as the Kennedys, certain federal judges, mayors, etc. Most of the top labor lieutenants of the bourgeoisie are aligned with them, as are a broader section of so-called "leftists". These champs continually beat their breasts loudly claiming to be the "friends of the Black people", "defenders of civil rights" and "friends of labor". Occasionally they "give" a crumb to the masses because without doing so they could not keep their allegiance. They pose as the greatest foes of the "conservatives" who, they claim, are the only reactionaries. But all this is sheer fraud by masters at political deception who at heart and in deed are just as bourgeois, just as much white chauvinists and fascists, as the "conservative" Republicans. These liberals are oh so interested in promoting mutilated, disruptive busing programs now, when the progressive mass movements are at a low level and it is hard for the masses to force the bourgeoisie to really carry out their demands. The "liberals" provide a good foil for the "conservatives" and the two stage ''tremendous battles" in order to fool the masses and set them fighting each other. While pretending to be "for" integration, the "liberals" in the state machine go all out to make its execution limited, mutilated, difficult and disruptive for the broad masses, and utterly refuse to explain the democratic nature of integration in order to win real support for it. Instead they call for the masses to "obey the law of the land". This means, on the one hand, that those who are confused on the question and angered at the bourgeoisie's high-handedness will be easy prey to be mobilized by the fascists with their "anti-government" rhetoric and susceptible to the suggestion that the Black people are the cause of their problems. On the other hand, the anti-fascist people are expected to passively submit while the racist attackers of children go unpunished. On the one hand, the white working masses' legitimate hatred of the bourgeois state is demagogically turned against the Blacks. On the other hand, those Blacks and whites who already support integration are told to rely on the bourgeois state to achieve democracy and to deal with the fascists. These "liberal" monopoly capitalists even claim that a democratic right like school integration can be achieved fully and peacefully under the reactionary rule of the monopoly capitalist class. Thus, in instigating conflicts among the people and in sowing illusions about the "democratic" nature of the imperialist system, the "liberals" in the bourgeois state do their full part in developing the fascist anti-busing movement. Such is the hypocritical role of the "liberal" bourgeoisie.
These are the aims and the dual tactics of the monopoly capitalists in developing the fascist anti-busing movement and encouraging the masses to surrender to it. The development of this fascist mass movement presents a grave challenge for the class-conscious workers, for the entire Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities, and for all progressive people.
But where there is oppression, there is resistance. The monopoly capitalists cannot trample the people's rights at will. Everywhere that the fascist anti-busing movement has reared its ugly head, resistance against it has also developed. In Boston, massive demonstrations were held and armed self-defense against racist attacks was organized. In Louisville, the resistance movement developed still further. Today, in the whole world, revolution is the main trend, and the reactionary rule of the two superpowers) including that of the monopoly capitalists in the United States, no matter what fascist machinations they resort to, will not last long. Dark night has its end. The workers and other progressive people will certainly organize to smash the fascist anti-busing movement, defend and extend the democratic rights of the Black people and bring down the monopoly capitalist class itself.
SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE BUSING SITUATION IN LOUISVILLE
In the past year or so since the first really major busing crisis took place in Boston, the anti-busing movement has found a second major theater of operations --Louisville, Kentucky, once touted throughout the South as the "model city" of school integration. In the Louisville busing crisis, all the main features of the monopoly capitalists' fascist anti-busing offensive, as described above and witnessed in Boston, were present. But in the Louisville situation some of these features became more intensified, while at the same time certain new features emerged which were not present or were hardly present at all in Boston.
In Louisville, the anti -busing movement reached a size and scale which it never reached in Boston. In Boston, in the 1974-5 school year, the movement was concentrated in the neighborhood of South Boston and two or three other specific neighborhoods. In Louisville, where busing was carried out across school district lines, it spread throughout the city and Jefferson County. On one night the number of people rioting reached an estimated 10,000. Several anti-busing demonstrations were held with from 2500 to 6000 participants, and 3000 Kentucky residents attended a national anti-busing march in Washington October 26. Further, the reactionary fascist violence, coercion and intimidation used by the anti-busing movement was more intense and widespread in Louisville. In addition to stoning buses and beating Black passers-by at anti-busing demonstrations, on the nights of rioting the attacks on Blacks and whites and their homes throughout the county, the burning of houses, etc., reached a high pitch and continued afterwards. This was one of the intensified features of the situation in Louisville.
A second important feature, a new feature, still more significant for its potential danger to the workers' movement, is that in Louisville a large number of the local leaders of the industrial and craft unions took an open stand against integration and in many cases manipulated their local unions into voting against it. On several occasions they openly mobilized thousands of white workers in reactionary anti-busing demonstrations' inducing them to go against their own class interests and aid those of the monopoly capitalists. To do this they gave the class-traitor slogan: "Mr. Businessman and Mr. Labor Leader, Unite", which is based on the reactionary theory that workers and capitalists have "common interests" -- against Blacks. These labor lieutenants of the monopoly capitalists, indeed uniting firmly with "Mr. Businessman" (the capitalist), have formed an anti-working class, fascist labor front (coalition) against school integration, called Union Labor Against Busing (ULAB), and are attempting to extend this white chauvinist organization nationally. These actions showed that these people do not represent the interests of the working class at all, but are part of a small upper crust of workers who have gone over to the side of the capitalists and do their dirty work inside the workers' movement. Their actions brought about a deepened split in the local workers' movement and created the possibility of the break-up of some of the unions. This is a second important feature of the Louisville situation.
The third important feature in Louisville is that the "liberal" bourgeoisie in the state machine and outside of it exposed its support. for the white chauvinist anti-busing movement. As it did in Boston, the "liberal" bourgeoisie sabotaged the integration process. It worked hard to disarm the masses in the face of the fascist movement by raising the cry of "peaceful desegregation" as the banner around which to unite in opposition to the fascist movement. This was outright hypocrisy. As if the "liberals" like the Louisville Courier-Journal were really interested in desegregation when they used Louisville's "days of glory" in the 1960's as the "model city" of integration as a chance to segregate the schools fully and thoroughly once again! As if the Ku Klux Klan and other fascist vigilantes, and the armed bourgeois state which stands behind them, would ever allow genuine democratic rights for the Black people and allow them peacefully! As if this capitalist government, the very creator of segregation and instigator of white chauvinism, was the least bit interested in "peaceful desegregation"! These children's myths of the 1960's, which are being dragged out of the grave again today, got a sharp self-exposure by the events in Louisville, where the "liberals" collaborated in the promotion of fascism.
Finally, the fourth significant feature of the Louisville situation was the stronger and sustained movement of resistance to the anti-busing movement which has also developed. The Black and progressive white masses fought back against the racist and fascist attacks, protested, marched and rallied in defense of the democratic rights of the Afro-Americans and against the anti-busing movement, struggled for the actual carrying out of school integration, opposed the racial discrimination which is being practiced against Blacks in the newly integrated schools, and Black workers organized themselves against the efforts of the labor misleaders to utilize the unions to organize and finance the anti-busing movement. This is the fourth significant feature of the busing situation in Louisville.
These are the new or intensified features of the busing situation which have developed in Louisville, in the second year of large-scale crises over this question. They show that the monopoly capitalists have not given up their vicious fascist efforts to split the working class and attack the Afro-Americans in their drive to suppress the masses. But they also suggest that the resistance movement against fascism is bound to grow, win the confused sections of white workers away from the fascist leaders and put up still stiffer resistance to the monopoly capitalists' fascist drive.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LOUISVILLE SITUATION
a) A "Model City" of Segregation
A closer look at the Louisville situation will show how it actually developed.
For over 50 years, from 1904 to 1956, the Louisville schools were officially and legally segregated by race. The reactionary segregationist Day law was instituted in 1904, The monopoly capitalists' drive to reverse the advances the Blacks had achieved in the Civil War and Reconstruction and re-enslave them was then at a peak. The Day law set up a rigid system of "separate but equal" schools, sanctioned by the Supreme Court's Jim Crow Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, a system in which Blacks and whites were entirely separate and entirely unequal. Throughout this entire time, Blacks in Jefferson County, which had no Black high school, were bused (or otherwise transported) past the white schools to the Black Central High School in Louisville.
In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court, top judicial organ of the monopoly capitalist class, made the Brown vs. Bd. of Education school integration decision under the fire of the masses at home and abroad. Immediately the anti-democratic bourgeoisie itself sabotaged its implementation. In Louisville, in 1956, the school board adopted the "Louisville Plan", a "freedom of choice" plan supposedly to desegregate the schools. Operating under this plan the Louisville school system was declared by the "liberal" bourgeoisie to be the "model city" in the South for school integration. But between 1956 and 1975, when the present busing plan went into effect, the schools first underwent a certain trend towards limited integration until 1963-66, when the Afro-American struggle was at its peak, and then reverted to full segregation by the "free choice" (deliberate manipulation) of the Louisville school board During the 19 years since 1956, the monopoly capitalist government in Louisville "freely" never integrated at all 28 of its 68 schools, "freely" built six new ones on a consciously segregated basis, "freely" transformed one from all-white to all-Black in the first year of "freedom of choice", transformed six more from nearly 90 percent of one race in the early '60's to over 90 percent of the other race by 1971, transformed 12 from all-white to nearly all-Black in the same period and "freely" closed 10 integrated schools. This new segregation under the banner of integration fully exposed the falsity of the "freedom of choice" system, under which students are "free" to attend "schools of their choice". One study ("Louisville School System Retreats to Segregation", Commission on Human Rights of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1972, p. 16) points out how "freedom of choice" means freedom only in words and segregation in practice: "We see a system in which white students living in predominantly black neighborhoods find it easy to get transfers... in which black students from predominantly white areas are encouraged to attend black schools in the inner-city either through recruiting or through disciplinary transfers." President Eisenhower was so enthusiastic about this plan that he flew the Louisville school superintendent to Washington, claiming ''he pursued the policy that I believe will finally bring success in this." By 1970, Louisville schools were more segregated than at any time since 1956 and Louisville had become the most segregated school system of twelve major cities in ten southern states, according to a 1972 study by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Thus while the Black students were free in theory to attend integrated schools, in practice the systematic racial discrimination by the monopoly capitalists, which pervades the whole society made that freedom merely a hollow phrase, a sham, a trick-to prettify the same old Jim Crow system in a new form.
Thus the "model city" of school integration, Louisville in the 1960's, proved to be nothing but a new form of segregation. The Jefferson County Schools remained segregated throughout this period. This shows the deceptive and flimsy nature of all democratic reforms under the reactionary rule of the monopoly capitalists; no sooner are they "granted" than they are mutilated, undermined and, as soon as possible, entirely destroyed by the bourgeoisie and its government.
b) The Bourgeoisie Sabotages Integration and Instigates the Anti-Busing Movement
In December, 1973, the Sixth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Louisville schools to be integrated the following year. The anti-busing movement began to develop roughly from that date. As soon as the ruling was made, the city and county school boards, trying feebly to hide their role in segregating the schools, raised a hue and cry that there was no segregation and discrimination in the school systems, and even if there was, it was not "state-imposed", and declared that nothing should be done to change the situation. At the same time, Kentucky state legislators from the county began initiating anti-busing meetings under. the guise of "informing the public" about an "important issue", illustrating one method with which the monopoly capitalist government organizes the anti-busing movement. Also, a number of groups were formed, all with the sole purpose of opposing school integration. From the beginning these groups tried to conceal their racism and white chauvinism under a barrage of demagogy. They claimed that they were only against "forced" "busing", but no one ever heard them complain about "forced" school attendance in general, or "forced" riding on buses to segregated schools. And the fact that they have now come out against "forced" compulsory attendance in public schools in general, opposing a demand which the working class fought long years to achieve, only shows their entirely reactionary character.
In fact, it is the Afro-Americans who have been forced into segregated schools! It is the oppression of Afro-Americans which has been maintained by force by the bourgeoisie! The anti-busing groups also complained that "we're not against integration", but instead money should be spent on "quality education not buses" But dear sirs and madams, Black people have suffered for over 100 years from the kind of "quality education" that results from segregated schools. Segregated schools are part of the systematic racial discrimination practiced against the Black people by the reactionary monopoly capitalists, a practice which you deliberately hide with your rhetoric about "quality education". Black people have found through bitter experience that separate schools can never be made equal since they were made separate in the first place for the sole purpose of enforcing inequality of nationalities. The issue is not quality, but equality" of education. To counterpose quality education and integration in this way is simply a way of demagogically pitting the honest desire of the workers for better quality of schools against the necessity for fighting for the democratic rights of the oppressed Black. people. In fact, it is this very segregation of schools which splits the workers, deprives the Blacks of even the "quality" "enjoyed" by the whites and undermines united struggle to actually improve the quality of the schools.
Through such demagogy, some confusion was sown on,school integration. But still, throughout 1974 and at least until July, 1975, the monopoly capitalists in Louisville were unable to trick any large section of the masses of white working people into supporting the fascist anti-busing movement. In fact, the only anti-busing demonstration held during this period mobilized just 20 participants.
But during 1974 and 1975, the selfsame "liberal" bourgeoisie in the state machine, which poses as such champions of civil rights for the Blacks, deliberately issued and executed the busing orders in such a way as to cause the maximum of confusion and disruption, This created perfect conditions for the fascist leaders to capitalize on the irritation of the ordinary white working masses at the government's arbitrariness and inconsiderateness in order to whip up a massive hysteria against busing and the Black people and quickly grab wide support for the anti-busing movement. The Circuit Court, in December 1973, had ordered desegregation of the Louisville and Jefferson County schools by September, 1974. But District Court Judge Gordon, who was assigned to carry out the order, didn't bother to draw up a plan or begin preparations for busing until July, 1974, just two months before school was to begin. This meant that it was impossible to make the necessary preparations, or for parents to know what was to happen to their children. The anti-busing movement immediately cranked up its propaganda machine and began spreading wild rumors about the so-called "dangers" of busing. In the atmosphere of such confusion, the anti -busing movement was able to bring out 650 people to their only large meeting in 1974. But just two days after Judge Gordon issued his integration plan, the U.S. Supreme Court voided the order and remanded the case back to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court ruling against cross-district busing in Detroit. Thus, integration was again delayed. The Circuit Court again, in December, 1974, ordered desegregation, but this time it said that none should take place until all of the appeals or time allowed for appeals had run out, meaning that none would begin earlier than September, 1976. But in July, 1975, just two months before school was to begin, the court suddenly reversed itself and demanded desegregation by September of that year. This meant that, with only two months before school was to start, there was as yet no plan drawn up for how the desegregation was to take place. This, in turn, meant the maximum disruption of the process of organizing the integration program, resulting in disrupted curriculum, shortages, etc. The people of the area did not know where their children would be going to school, what classes they could take or even what time they would have to leave home to get to school. People were confused and outraged at the arbitrariness and inconsiderateness of the court's ruling. Right away the anti-busing movement seized the opportunity to channel this outrage of the people, which in fact was caused by the government's sabotage of school integration, into a hysteria against school integration and "busing".
All the worn-out arguments against integration which the bourgeoisie hatched in Boston were trotted out once again in Louisville. The anti-busing movement unfurled their American flags and began preaching that the fight against busing was a fight for "democracy" and "freedom of choice" against the "communist" government that had "forced busing" on Louisville. This ridiculous argument attempts to hide the fact that for 100 years the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class has "freely chosen" to discriminate against Black people and segregate the schools and it has only been the fight against such discrimination and segregation that has "forced" the government and the monopoly capitalists to integrate anything. The demagogy of the fascists implies that the courts were really interested in promoting integration when they ordered busing in Louisville in July, 1975, when it is clear from their actions that their real interest was to undermine and sabotage integration and create pretexts for the anti-busing movement to get support, attack the Blacks and split the workers. A particularly graphic example of assistance to the anti-busing movement by the bourgeois state was Judge Gordon's order that there be areas designated at each school as places where the anti-busing movement could "peacefully" demonstrate, thus legalizing violent attacks on the Black students at the schools, which is what took place. At the same time, as soon as these attacks took place, the local government banned all meetings and gatherings in Shawnee Park, a customary gathering point in the Black community for protest actions. Thus the "democracy" and "freedom" called for by the anti-busing movement is only democracy and freedom for the capitalists and fascists to attack and suppress the Afro-Americans and white working masses, while there is no democracy and freedom for them to fight back. Such is the condition of the working and oppressed masses under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The anti-busing movement also spread wild racist, white chauvinist slanders about so-called "dangers" facing the white children who attend schools in the Black community and floated rumors that it was "unsafe" for children to take long bus rides. The Ku Klux Klan suddenly began I holding public anti-busing rallies and, together with the Nazis, provided the most vicious and vengeful propaganda for white supremacy and against the Black people.
c) The Labor Misleaders Play a Dirty Role
It was in the midst of this developing racist hysteria that certain reactionary labor misleaders stepped forward to organize the industrial workers in Louisville against school integration. On August 23rd the Executive Board of Local 761 of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), the largest local in the state having some 16,000 members who work at the huge General Electric plant in Louisville, called a special membership meeting. There they announced their endorsement for an anti-integration demonstration called under the class-collaborationist slogan: "Mr. Businessman and Mr. Labor Leader, Unite", a general strike and a school boycott against integration. To successfully manipulate the membership present into supporting the program, speakers were brought in from the county board of education, the state legislature and anti-busing groups to turn truth on its head and develop the theme that school integration was an attack on the workers' rights. For example, it was argued that the government has year after year been imposing higher and higher taxes and that gasoline prices have been increasing yearly due to the government's handling of the "energy crisis". Therefore, it was argued, it is time for the workers to take a stand and that stand should be to stop "forced busing"! What a fine piece of fascist logic! Since the monopoly capitalists have been shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the shoulders of the workers and, to do this, have been using such things as the "energy crisis" and the exacting of higher tribute in the form of raising taxes, then the workers shouldn't fight the monopoly capitalists and their government, but "Mr. Businessman", "Mr. Labor Leader" and the ordinary white workers should unite to stop the children of white and Black workers from going to the same school (where they actually might get some common experience fighting together against the capitalist authorities). In other words, in the name of fighting against the plunder and exploitation of the masses by monopoly capital, the white workers should turn against the Black people, split the working class, unite with the capitalists and be their lynch-mobs. This fascist logic is at the very heart of the anti -busing movement.
The anti-busing demonstration the next day, approved by Local 761, was the first large anti-busing demonstration in Louisville, having some 750 participants. In the course of the demonstration not only did an IUE official blurt out the call for the workers to unite with the Ku Klux Klan ''because they are against busing", but the demonstration went marauding down Forth Street and seized and beat unconscious a Black youth, while the police stood idly by. That is how, in practice, the anti-busing movement is "against" the government and "for" the workers!
When the Black workers of Local 761 strongly opposed these fascist actions taken by the union misleaders, they were viciously slandered by these reactionary labor lieutenants of the monopoly capitalist class. These dogs even went so far as to claim that the Black workers who supported integration and opposed the anti-busing movement were "discriminating against" themselves, since the busing plan intended to bus Black children for eight out of their 12 years of school and white children only for two years! This is how these fascist misleaders of labor turn truth on its head and accuse the victims of racial discrimination of the crime itself. This is absolutely outrageous! These labor misleaders also had vicious slanders for the white workers who supported integration and opposed the anti-busing movement. Small wonder that in reaction to these splitting activities, some Black workers threatened to leave the union! Furthermore, these devious liars in top union spots even had the nerve to claim that "race, sex or religion has nothing to do with our decision" to oppose integration and that "in our opinion, forced busing is used by some to create racial unrest when there should be no problem between races, but races should unite, stick together and get the problem corrected." What hypocrisy! First, race has "nothing to do" with their opposing sending their children to school with children of -- a different race. Then the Blacks should unite with them, the labor misleaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, who are not only supporting but intensifying the systematic racial discrimination that Black people experience at the hands of the monopoly capitalists every day. No, they say, the Black workers should not unite with the oppressed masses of white workers, defeat these reactionary servants of the capitalists, fight for equal rights for the Blacks and in the spirit of equality and proletarian solidarity jointly fight against the reactionary rule of Capital. Oh no! Instead Black workers should stay in "their place" and not create "racial unrest" while these white chauvinist bullies trample on them and trick the ordinary white workers to take part in this reactionary activity. "Mr, Labor Leaders," the revolutionary workers are very sorry to inform you that they will never take your suggestion to be cringing lackeys for their class enemy. The Black workers and white workers are brothers; the Black workers are not only exploited as workers, but unlike white workers, are oppressed as Blacks. The working class is a revolutionary class and its own fundamental interests lie in freeing all oppressed sections of society including all races and nationalities. Without doing so, it itself can never win its emancipation from the chains of Capital. If all class-conscious workers do not defend this most oppressed member of their class and of society, they will surely be deprived of his strong arm in the battle against their common exploiters. There is nothing the workers hate more than diehard, unrepentant traitors from their own ranks. "Mr. Labor Leaders" of the Louisville anti-busing movement, as a final payment for your services to your masters. the workers sincerely promise that you will be sent to the same fate as the monopoly capitalists themselves.
In this way, these labor misleaders revealed the fact that they do not represent the working class and its true interests against the bourgeoisie, but instead they represent the influence of the monopoly capitalists on the workers' movement. To do their masters' bidding they work to split the workers and ally a section of them with the capitalists. Such is the role of the labor aristocracy, a small upper crust of workers and their representatives, a stratum which has been bribed by the bourgeoisie using the super-profits it extracts from exploitation of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. These reactionary elements participate and share in that exploitation and are corrupted thereby into working to suppress the masses of Black and white workers at home, who are all the more oppressed owing to the fact that their leaders have by and large been turned into tools of the class enemy.
Thus, using the wide-scale confusion and outrage caused by the courts' July order and the high-handed tactics of the government in general, the monopoly capitalists' anti-busing movement was able to develop a racist hysteria against integration in the city and to mobilize a section of workers to come out against their own class interests and violently attack the democratic rights of the Black people.
This development led, in the next few weeks, to the closing of a number of factories due to a boycott by the many white workers on the first day of school, to the stoning of buses full of school children, to the rioting of some 10,000 people in which homes were burned to the ground and ordinary people and even children were wantonly beaten, and to the whole massive anti-busing tirade that was so widely publicized nationally by the monopoly capitalist newspapers and television networks.
Furthermore, the monopoly capitalist authorities, both "liberal" and otherwise, did not stop their sabotage of school integration after issuing the abrupt integration order. There was a shortage of school buses, so that students were forced to go to school in shifts, the first one starting in the early hours of the morning and the last one returning the children home very late in the day. Not only that, but large numbers of buses never showed up in the morning, leaving hundreds of Black school children on street corners and in school yards. In December the school board admitted that it needed 300 more buses to transport the students satisfactorily, but even now they only plan to buy 50. Once the students got to school, they found that there was a shortage of teachers. Recently the school board admitted that they purposely had not hired enough teachers because they had "expected greater white flight". At the same time as this sort of sabotage of integration was going on, the capitalist school authorities launched a vicious campaign of racial discrimination against the Black students in the newly integrated schools. Many were segregated into "special remedial" classes and special schools, and some classrooms were even segregated with whites on one side and Blacks on the other. There have been large-scale suspensions of Black students. For example, school suspensions jumped 40 percent in September and over 50 percent in October from what they had been the year before. Despite the fact that Black students are only 23 percent of the school population and despite a number of large anti-busing walkouts by white students, Black students accounted for 58 percent of the children that have been suspended from school. At the same time, county judge Hollenbach refused to enforce truancy laws for a period of time, thus aiding the racist boycotts. Finally, while the government "banned" anti-busing demonstrations during the crisis, it did not seriously interfere with them when they took place.
This is the nature of the anti- and "pro" school integration tactics of the monopoly capitalists of every stripe -- sabotage school integration and incite white workers and masses to attack Blacks. That is how "democracy" is administered by the ruling class in the United States.
d) The Bourgeoisie Attempts to Disarm the Progressive People Mindful of the fact that oppression breeds resistance, and that the Black masses and progressive whites would not take these outrages lying down, the monopoly capitalist authorities early began their campaign to undermine the anti-fascist, anti-racist resistance movement. In the spring of 1974, when there was already widescale propaganda against busing in Louisville but the anti-busing movement was still small and weak, the city and county governments formed and financed what was called the Community Consensus Committee. It was the task of this committee to launch a campaign, particularly into the Black community, for what was called "peaceful desegregation". The explicit basis for this campaign was that people need not be for or against school integration, and that issue itself need not even be discussed and clarified, but that everyone should peacefully "obey the law". Meetings were organized on this basis with PTA's, among teachers, and coalitions of different organizations were formed. When the campaign really got underway in mid-1975, large signs and advertisements appeared around the Black community (thus aimed at the oppressed Blacks and not at their fascist attackers) saying, "Nobody wins if you lose your cool." Organizations were formed pledging support for "peaceful desegregation". Full-page advertisements appeared in the newspaper with such groups as the Chamber of Commerce pledging to "obey the law" and news stories appeared relating the "peaceful integration" of Louisville schools in 1956. The courts even established designated areas around the schools where people could "peacefully" demonstrate against busing (but, unfortunately, the anti-busing movement leaders did not "choose" to do so peacefully). Thus, in the face of the rise of the anti-busing movement with its violent anti-Black, anti-working class words and deeds, in the face of calls for a boycott of the schools and general strike and in the face of the open anti-busing assault on a Black youth on August 24th, the Afro-Americans and progressive white masses were told not to stand for or against school integration, not to resist fascist attacks, just "obey the law" and have faith that the government will carry out "peaceful desegregation"! And what was the fruit of these promises? First, the government sabotaged and made as difficult as possible the integration program, then it directly organized the fascist anti-busing movement to attack the Black people and split the workers, then it discriminated against the Black students in the newly integrated schools, and finally it hypocritically claimed that it was doing everything possible to carry out "peaceful desegregation".
e) The Resistance Movement
But what the monopoly capitalist press and television did not publicize was that, just as the bourgeoisie feared, all across Louisville and Jefferson County, Afro-Americans and progressive whites stood up to the attacks and threats of the fascist movement and fought to carry out the integration of the schools. Progressive people held demonstrations against the Klan on July 24 (125 people) and August 16 (85 people). When the Klan attempted to picket downtown last August, 100 Afro-Americans and other people angrily surrounded them and they had to be protected by the police. On August 30, over 200 progressive people demonstrated. When the busing program began, black parents went to the schools to supervise the loading and unloading of the buses and to defend the children against attacks. They rode alongside the children on the buses as they traveled to county schools. When buses didn't show up, they organized cars to transport the children and insure that they were allowed to attend classes. When the buses were stoned by the fascists, and the police refused to lift a finger, the school children on the buses lowered the windows and threw tin cans and other objects back at the anti-busing demonstrators. In one case, when the fascists tried to stop a bus from leaving the parking lot, the bus driver got out and chased them away with a club until the police rushed up and grabbed him and forced him back onto the bus. When crosses and garbage were burned on people's yards, their windows broken by bricks and stones and phone call threats on their lives made in an effort to stop them from sending their children to school, white parents in the county armed themselves, defended their families and resolutely continued to send their children to school. In fact, the very fury of the terror and coercion practiced by the anti-busing movement against whites in addition to Blacks is a tribute to the staunch, democratic character of the masses of both white and Black parents who refused to go along with the racist boycott and became targets of attack. It is also an exposure of the paper-tiger nature of the fascist movement, which escalated its terror as it became more discredited. By the first of October this active resistance by people who did not rely on the government to bring about "peaceful desegregation" had broken the racist school boycott. In the middle of October, on the first of November and on the first of January, the anti-busing movement tried repeatedly to mount school boycotts, but each time they utterly failed. Thus the Afro-American and other democratic and revolutionary workers and people were able to break the racist school boycott, but they have not yet been able to smash the entire fascist movement itself.
On other fronts, Black workers from at least twelve unions in Louisville organized themselves into the United Black Workers of Jefferson County and held meetings of as many as 250 Black workers to protest and wage struggle against the support for the fascist movement by the reactionary labor misleaders. Locals of the American Federation of Teachers(AFT) and the Service Employees International Union(SEIU) have supported integration. The local Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Louisville Central Labor Council passed resolutions against the Klan (though they took anti-busing stands as well). The UAW Local 817 at the International Harvester foundry, with a majority of Black members, took a neutral stand on busing. At the same time, Afro-Americans and their supporters waged struggles against the racial discrimination by the authorities in the newly integrated schools. They protested the suspensions and disciplinary acts unjustly imposed on the Black students by the racist authorities. On several occasions, mass demonstrations were held by the progressive masses to protest the fascist activities of the anti-busing movement and to struggle for genuine school integration. In August, a demonstration of over 200 people took place against the anti-busing movement. On October 11, nearly 1000 people held a demonstration in support of integration and against the anti-busing movement. On November 22, to counter an anti-busing demonstration the same day, progressive people held another demonstration of 150 people.
Due to this vigorous and widespread resistance and to the growing disaffection of the white working masses with the fascist movement, the leaders of the anti-busing movement had to change their tactics. As the movement lost support, a number of groups turned to more and more openly nazi tactics of blatant white racism and chauvinism, calling for Blacks to be harassed and run out of town. They further stepped up their terror tactics and openly called for "revolution", by which they mean a fascist military coup. In a number of cases these most fascist elements have crept up under the cover of darkness to the homes of Blacks and progressive whites living in the county and burned crosses in their yards, broke their windows and shot up their parked cars. In the December and January anti-busing demonstrations, these groups organized lynch-mob attacks on Black passers-by.
The anti-busing labor misleaders, on the other hand, verbally withdrew their slogan "Mr. Businessman and Mr. Labor Leader, Unite", withdrew their support for the anti-integration school boycott and general strike and instead formed their own "independent" fascist labor front called Union Labor Against Busing (ULAB), a body of labor misleaders formed outside of the actual local and central union bodies in the Louisville area. These labor misleaders, through ULAB, now try to present themselves as the "responsible" anti-busing group that is "independent" from the rioters and racists. This is further proof of the paper tiger nature of the fascist anti-busing movement, which is changing its outward tactics, but not its inner nature, in the face of resistance and the growing disaffection of the white working masses with its fascist activities. In addition to the resistance struggle, another factor causing these fascists to change their tactics is pressure from the international union leadership. These top labor lieutenants also represent the interestsof the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, but for them the open association of the unions with the Klan and Nazis, which the Louisville leaders engaged in, was, at the moment, too blatant a way of coming out in favor of the bourgeoisie. But this "change" by the Louisville labor lackeys of the monopoly capitalists is merely a tactic of theirs to deceive and maintain their leadership of the workers. ULAB has continued to pursue the same line of trying to make the trade unions into servile tools of the bourgeoisie to attack the democratic rights of the Black people and split the working class. On October 26, ULAB organjzed a national anti-busing march on Washington, which drew 6000 people, 3000 of them from Kentucky. In this it had the full support of all the fascist Louisville anti-busing groups, even though the ULAB labor traitors had the unmitigated gall to declare that their anti-equality, anti-Black march was aimed at the goal of "Equal Rights"! Further, ULAB has declared its intention of forming some kind of national fascist anti-busing labor organization, and has reportedly gotten support in this endeavor from labor lackeys from the Boston area. Meanwhile, in Louisville, it was ULAB which organized demonstrations against busing in December and this January. In each case they called for, and got, the full support of the other anti-busing groups, including the KKK and the Nazis. And it has been from these demonstrations that open mob attacks have been launched against Black people.
Further illustrating its consistently pro-capitalist nature, ULAB was particularly active in campaigning for Robert Gable, a notorious coal baron, for Governor of Kentucky in the November elections. Gable was running on a platform of greater handouts to the coal industry and against granting collective bargaining rights to public employees. While all of the candidates, to a man, were against integration, it was Gable who presented himself as the champion of the anti-busing movement. Like ULAB, the Executive Board of Local 761 of the IUE also endorsed Gable. But when this was brought before the local's membership, the membership rejected the anti-busing rhetoric, pointed to Gable's notorious anti-working class record and voted against endorsing him. Following the meeting, the Executive Board suddenly found some "irregularities" in the voting, rescinded the membership's vote against Gable and endorsed him anyway, brazenly flouting the will of the workers. Kenneth Cassidy, the local's president, even did numerous radio and television commercials calling for support for Gable. Thus the "new", "responsible" image of the reactionary labor misleaders in ULAB, of which the Local 761 leadership is a part, is only a new guise for the same program of betrayal of the working class under the myth that the workers and the capitalists and their politicians have "common interests". Claiming the workers and capitalists have common interests to attack the Afro-American people and their right to school integration, these labor lackeys support a capitalist coal baron who is campaigning against unorganized government workers having the right to organize into trade unions. This is how low these reactionary elements have sunk. Thus while the monopoly capitalists are specifically aiming at violently attacking the democratic rights of the Black people, their overall objective is to use "anti-busing" as an issue to penetrate the workers' movement and broad masses and win a section over to the bourgeoisie, thereby creating a mass basis for the overall fascisization of U.S. society by the monopoly capitalist class.
The movement of resistance to the monopoly capitalists' fascist anti-busing movement reached its highest point in a massive demonstration January 15th, in which over 2500 people from the local area, the majority Afro-Americans but including many progressive whites, held a spirited march and rally in downtown Louisville, the largest activity against the anti-busing movement so far. The march protested. against the racist activities of the anti-busing movement and the local government, demanded full implementation of school integration and celebrated twenty years of glorious Afro-American struggle from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to date. The march was endorsed by 43 different groups and organizations, including the Louisville Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. The marchers paraded through downtown six lanes abreast, shouting militantly:: "Stop, Stop the Racist Cops!" and "There'll be no peace till Blacks are free!" and held a rally at the Court House. Bystanders cheered the marchers. Hundreds of city workers, who had demanded and won time off from their jobs for the demonstration, joined the march along the route.. The Louisville Branch of COUSML carried a bright red banner in the midst of the masses, which declared: "Down with the Fascist Anti-Busing Movement! Long Live the Afro-American Struggle Against Racial Discrimination and Violent Repression and for Full Emancipation!" Comrades of the COUSML distributed over 550 copies of The Workers' Advocate to the broad masses, who showed keen interest in communist literature. Following the rally, pro-integration meetings attended by 600 and 550 people each were also held.
At present, the situation in Louisville is that the fascist anti-busing movement has received some sharp blows at the hands of the progressive people, but it is still alive and kicking and still marauding against the people. The monopoly capitalists are persisting in their evil activities, perpetuating racial discrimination and violent repression against the Blacks and working to split the working class in the face of the economic crisis. Such is the recent history of the busing crisis in Louisville.
CONCLUSIONS: PREPARE FOR STRUGGLE
A number of important conclusions can be drawn from the experience of the busing situation, the activities of the anti-busing movement and the resistance to it in Louisville.
First, the entire monopoly capitalist class, both ''liberals'' and "conservatives", are against the democratic rights of the Afro-American people and the interests of the entire working class and are viciously attacking them in order to divide the oppressed classes, preserve their rule and shore up their profits. Some capitalists openly organize the anti-busing movement, while others stir up contradictions among the people and sabotage integration, then work overtime to undermine the resistance of the broad masses to fascism. The agents of the bourgeoisie work to sabotage the workers' movement from the inside. Comrade V. I. Lenin, the great leader and teacher of the international working class, pointed out the significance of these two tactics of the bourgeoisie long ago, in 1910, when reviewing a book by the Dutch then-Marxist Anton Pannekoek. Lenin wrote: "... IN EVERY COUNTRY THE BOURGEOISIE INEVITABLY DEVISES TWO SYSTEMS OF RULE, TWO METHODS OF FIGHTING FOR ITS INTERESTS AND OF MAINTAINING ITS DOMINATION, AND THESE METHODS AT TIMES SUCCEED EACH OTHER AND AT TIMES ARE INTERWOVEN IN VARIOUS COMBINATIONS. THE FIRST OF THESE IS THE METHOD OF FORCE, THE METHOD WHICH REJECTS ALL CONCESSIONS TO THE LABOUR MOVEMENT, THE METHOD OF SUPPORTING ALL THE OLD AND OBSOLETE INSTITUTIONS, THE METHOD OF IRRECONCILABLY REJECTING REFORMS … THE SECOND IS THE METHOD OF 'LIBERALISM', OF STEPS TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL RIGHTS, TOWARDS REFORMS, CONCESSIONS AND SO FORTH... 'THE POSITIVE, REAL AIM OF THE LIBERAL POLICY OF THE BOURGEOISIE,' PANNEKOEK SAYS, 'IS TO MISLEAD THE WORKERS, TO CAUSE A SPLIT IN THEIR RANKS, TO CONVERT THEIR POLICY INTO AN IMPOTENT ADJUNCT OF AN IMPOTENT, ALWAYS IMPOTENT AND EPHEMERAL, SHAM REFORMISM"'. (Collected Works, Vol. 16, pp. 350-51.) Just as Lenin pointed out, in the U.S. today the "liberal" bourgeoisie, like the "conservatives", works just as hard to suppress the workers and broad masses and, as Lenin points out and the example of Louisville shows, both types of bourgeois work equally hard to split the workers and tie them to the coattails of the capitalist class. No amount of anti- and "pro"-busing rhetoric can hide this fact.
A second point that is clear from the Louisville situation is that equal rights for the Afro-American people are impossible, in any serious, thorough-going sense, under the reactionary monopoly capitalist system. The monopoly capitalist system means reaction all along the line, and especially on the national question. The integration of the Louisville schools after 1956 proved to be the most minimal and was quickly taken away again, showing, as Lenin quoted Pannekoek in saying, the "IMPOTENT AND EPHEMERAL, SHAM" nature of "REFORMISM". Despite the heroic, massive struggles of the Black people in the 1960's, the Louisville schools again became segregated, and the basic condition of the Black people did not change for the better as a result of these struggles. This teaches that the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression must be waged on a revolutionary basis. It must be directed at the basis of the system which is practicing racial discrimination and violent repression -- the monopoly capitalist system it;self. As Chairman Mao Tsetung, the leader of the communists and people of the world, pointed out in his 1968 statement "In Support of the AfroAmerican Struggle against Violent Repression" : "ONLY BY OVERTHROWING THE REACTIONARY RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS AND DESTROYING THE COLONIALIST AND IMPERIALIST SYSTEM CAN THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES WIN COMPLETE EMANCIPATION."
As a result of the fact that the contradiction between the 22 million Black masses and the monopoly capitalist class cannot be resolved under capitalism, the Afro-American struggle is a revolutionary struggle and a tremendous lever giving a great impetus to the struggle of the American working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The great Black struggles of the 1960's, which shook the imperialist system in the U.S. to its foundations and acted as a clarion call arousing the working class and other progressive people to struggle, are proof of this.
Thus Chairman Mao also stated in 1968: "THE BLACK MASSES AND THE MASSES OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES SHARE COMMON INTERESTS AND HAVE COMMON OBJECTIVES TO STRUGGLE FOR. THEREFORE, THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE IS WINNING SYMPATHY AND SUPPORT FROM INCREASING NUMBERS OF WHITE WORKING PEOPLE AND PROGRESSIVES IN THE UNITED STATES. THE STRUGGLE OF THE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES IS BOUND TO MERGE WITH THE AMERICAN WORKERS' MOVEMENT, AND THIS WILL EVENTUALLY END THE CRIMINAL RULE OF THE U.S. MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS. This means that the Black and white workers, the Black people generally and all progressive people in the U.S. must throw off the influence of the labor aristocracy and other agents of the bourgeoisie and rise up in a proletarian revolution, violently smash the state machine of the monopoly capitalists and replace it with a government of armed workers. This means replacing the present dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the rule of a tiny handful of parasites over the people, with a dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the immense majority over the exploiting handful. This dictatorship, and it alone, can and will give real democracy to the working people for the first time while forcefully suppressing the exploiting capitalists and depriving them of their means of production. One of the foremost tasks of this proletarian dictatorship will be to bring about the complete emancipation of the Black people, for, as Comrade Marx taught the American workers at the time of the Civil War: "LABOR CANNOT EMANCIPATE ITSELF IN THE WHITE SKIN WHERE IN THE BLACK SKIN IT IS BRANDED". (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 801) This, and this alone, will thoroughly put an end to the racial discrimination and violent repression which has been the lot of the Afro-Americans for long years. That is, only a revolutionary struggle, and not any myth of "peaceful desegregation", will emancipate the Afro-Americans and the working class as a whole.
Thus as part and parcel of preparing and bringing about the proletarian revolution and the emancipation of all oppressed U.S. society, the working class must take up the Afro-American struggle as its own. It must struggle to bring about the maximum improvements possible in the Afro-Americans' conditions under capitalism by fighting for the Black people's democratic rights, and improving their economic and social conditions. A militant struggle must be waged against the fascist anti-busing movement and the bourgeoisie must be forced to carry out as much of its promises of school integration as the working masses can make it do. School integration assists the working-class struggle over-all in that it opens up wider contacts and collective life between Black and white youths and their parents, making it easier for them to unite in common struggle against the bourgeoisie in school, in the factories and in society at large. In addition, the workers must oppose racial discrimination in the integrated schools and demand, in addition to integration, genuine special programs for the children of all oppressed, minority races and nationalities, including, for exampIe, the teaching of Afro-American history, the languages of other oppressed nationalities, and the hiring of Afro-American and other nationality teachers.
But the main importance of white workers and progressive people taking up the cause of the Afro-American struggle as their own is that only by doing so can white workers and revolutionary people break down the walls of distrust erected over the years by the monopoly capitalists and their agents among the workers and masses with their practice of racial discrimination and violent repression against the Black people, by their maintenance of the Afro-Americans in a status of special class and national oppression, and unite the working class for proletarian revolution. This task rests especially on the white workers, because it is to them which the bourgeoisie and its labor lieutenants are looking for its cannon-fodder for racist attacks against the Black people to still further split the working class. As the League of struggle for Negro Rights, organized by the Communist Party when it was still a revolutionary party, pointed out in 1933: "Today a new class has arisen to assume command of the march of history. That class is the working class. In its hand lies the fate of the future; it alone possesses the ability to so transform the present foundations of society as to wipe out once and for all the oppression of the vast majority of the people by a small group of exploiters, to eradicate for all time the causes of the present plight of the Negro people. Just as the fate of the Negro people is inextricably bound to that of the working class, the white workers cannot strike the fetters of wage slavery from their necks unless they strike the shackles from the Negro people... Unless white labor wishes to be dragged down to the oppressed and degraded position of the Negro toilers, unless it wishes heaped upon itself also the thousand and one persecutions which plague labor with black skin, unless it wishes to remain in perpetual wage bondage and misery, let white labor extend its arm of alliance and solidarity on every issue which faces it as well as the Negro people! It devolves upon the white workers to cast to the winds the least stench of the slave market and the lynching post still clinging to them if they are to appear in their full grandeur as the makers of history and the molders of the future. Unless they do this, they cannot rightly claim the Negro people as their allies, they will be deprived of that powerful black arm in the struggle against the adversary. The only way the white workers can break through the wall of mutual distrust that has been erected by three centuries of the oppression of Negroes in this country is to step forward as the champions of the cause of Negro liberation. They must emblazon on the banner of labor the demands born in the struggle for Negro liberation."
Today, as the monopoly capitalists' deep economic crisis enters its third year and its burden is being increasingly shifted onto the working class and oppressed nationalities at home, a storm of class struggle in the United States is brewing just over the horizon. As the two superpowers step up their contention for world domination, leading the world towards a new world war, and step up their wild attacks on the people of the world, with the Soviet social-imperialist wolves taking the lead, the anti-imperialist, anti-hegemonist struggles of the people of the whole world are also building up more and more power. In this situation, there is nothing that the U.S. monopoly capitalists can do but step up more reaction all along the line and attempt to disarm the masses with political deception, using every sort of opportunist element to aid them. Today their attempt to develop a fascist mass movement of attack on the Afro-Americans, to drive them backwards towards the barbaric Jim Crow system once again and in so doing split the working class, is the cutting edge of the U.S. monopoly capitalists' drive to the consolidation of fascism in the United States. Their aim is to smash the resistance of the working masses, shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto them, and create a secure home base for the world war they are preparing to slaughter the world's people. This development presents a very grave challenge to the American working class, to the Afro-American people and to the democratic people in the United States. But the revolutionary workers and masses welcome this challenge. They tasted the storms of struggle in the 1960's. The days are gone when the monopoly capitalist Hitlers could strut for long on the face of this earth, including the U.S. As Chairman Mao points out, "THE PEOPLE, AND THE PEOPLE ALONE, ARE THE MOTIVE FORCE IN THE MAKING OF WORLD HISTORY." The class-conscious American workers, Black and white, the masses of Afro-American people, other oppressed nationalities and white working people, will surely fight for the long-trampled rights of the Black people, defeat the fascist anti-busing movement and unite under the leadership of a proletarian party based on Marxism Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought for the proletarian revolution. The monopoly capitalist reactionaries will surely be crushed.