Vol. 1, #7
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY, USA
Sept 25, 1985
[Front Page: On the revolutionary movement in the Philippines: Conciliation with liberalism is a dangerous course]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Letter from Tennessee............................................................................................ | 5 |
| Rambo - Bloodlust of the Bourgeoisie................................................................... | 6 |
| The UAW and Chrysler The Fraud of Profit-sharing............................................. | 8 |
| Chrysler Wants Saturn-style Concessions.............................................................. | 8 |
| Scandal Rocks Local 7........................................................................................... | 9 |
| Fight GE's Productivity Drive................................................................................ | 10 |
| From a Postal Worker in Syracuse, NY.................................................................. | 11 |
| INS - Part of the War on Central America............................................................. | 13 |
| Nicaraguan Marxist-Leninists Denounce Counterrevolutionary Allianceof Contras and the Internal Opposition................................................................. | l4 |
| OMLWP Repeats the Errors of the Seventh World Congress of the CI................. | 14 |
| Reference Material: On the AIC of Chicago.......................................................... | 22 |
On the revolutionary movement in the Philippines:
Conciliation with liberalism is a dangerous course
RAMBO - BLOODLUST OF THE BOURGEOISIE
CHRYSLER ANNOUNCES ITS PROPOSALS FOR SATURN-STYLE CONCESSIONS
DENOUNCE G.E.'S STEPPED-UP HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN! FIGHT G.E.'S PRODUCTIVITY DRIVE!
A postal worker from Syracuse declares:
THE POSTAL WORKERS HAVE GOT TO STAND TOGETHER AND SAY "ENOUGH"!
A NOVEL EXCUSE - THE INCOMPETENCE OF MANAGEMENT
THE INS - ONE PART OF THE WAR ON THE CENTRAL AMERICAN TOILERS
NICARAGUAN MARXIST-LENINISTS DENOUNCE ALLIANCE OF CONTRAS AND INTERNAL OPPOSITION
On OMLWP's article "Will the real united 'front please stand up?":
OMLWP REPEATS THE ERRORS OF THE 7TH CONGRESS OF THE C.I.
Reference material:
On the "Anti-Imperialist Coalition" of Chicago
The last two years have seen a big upsurge in the struggle in the Philippines against the Marcos dictatorship. The people are rising to their feet because they cannot breathe under its iron heel, because the workers and peasants are being squeezed to the bone. The people of the Philippines are also fighting the U.S. government which backs Marcos to the hilt and props up imperialist domination over that country.
Today the Philippines is the scene of a continuing stream of mass demonstrations, strikes and armed actions of guerrilla fighters. There is a significant opportunity for the maturing of a revolution.
However the fight against Marcos is not developing in a straight line towards a revolutionary outcome. There are many' twists and turns in the struggle. Different forces in the movement represent different class interests: there are liberal forces, social-democratic forces and revolutionary forces involved. What these trends do and how they relate to one another will have an important influence on the future of the revolutionary movement.
The struggle in the Philippines has seen the dramatic growth of the insurgent forces of the New People's Army and the National Democratic Front, which are closely associated with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Over the last 15 years, the CPP has succeeded in building up an armed revolutionary movement which is today the most successful armed insurgency in southeast Asia.
Our Party welcomes the growth of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines. It is the revolution which can liberate the Filipino people rather than simply adjusting the methods of oppressing them. it is the revolution which the best elements of the Filipino workers and peasants have been working for, sacrificing for and striving for with all their might for decades.
But we also believe that it is important to discuss the fact that, despite the successes of the CPP and NPA, there are major weaknesses in their orientation and tactics, weaknesses which represent serious problems for the fate of the revolutionary movement. It is necessary to overcome these weaknesses to strengthen the Filipino revolutionary movement.
The CPP's major problem is a marked tendency towards conciliation with the liberal and reformist bourgeois opposition to Marcos. As the bourgeois opposition forces have become more active in recent years, this weakness in the CPP's policy has become more and more pronounced. This harms the struggle today and holds out the potential for disasters tomorrow.
The Workers' Advocate has in the past referred briefly to these problems. In this article, we offer a somewhat more elaborate survey of the problems in the line of the CPP, while we hope to provide further reference material in a future issue of the Workers' Advocate Supplement.
The Bourgeois Opposition in the Philippines
We begin our discussion by noting some features of the bourgeois opposition to Marcos. These are the forces that oppose Marcos from a liberal, reformist, or just mildly critical, standpoint. In recent years this opposition has differentiated itself into two wings.
The Liberal Opposition
There is a right-wing liberal opposition centered around the UNIDO coalition of 12 bourgeois parties. Its leading light is Mr Salvador Laurel. This wing is known for its pro-imperialism, its fierce anti-communism and its avowed hatred for the revolutionary movement. It is simply interested in having Marcos replaced with a bourgeois regime with more democratic trappings, similar to the regimes that were in power before Marcos. In the opposition to Marcos, it promotes electoralism as the way to replace Marcos and it is open to negotiated compromises with U.S. imperialism, or even the Marcos regime itself, towards this end.
The Left-Wing of the Bourgeois Opposition -- the Social-Democratic Opposition
Over many years of Marcos' tyranny, the liberal brand of politics had been the common politics of the entire bourgeois opposition. But in recent years, there, has been a differentiation in the ranks of bourgeois liberalism. Particularly since the murder of liberal leader Benigno Aquino by Marcos in August 1983, a more left-sounding wing has congealed within the bourgeois opposition. This can be characterized roughly as a social-democratic trend.
This section is centered around such figures as ex-Senators Jose Diokno and Lorenzo Tanada. It includes a variety of organizations and has organized a series of coalitions in recent years. But its latest project has been the launching of the coalition called Bayan (New Nationalist Alliance), which appears to be an alliance between this trend and forces to its left. There has been talk of developing this coalition into a political party called the People's Party.
This trend speaks in the name of the people and claims to stand with the interests of the toilers and the poor. It claims to stand for an uprooting of the reactionary institutions of the dictatorship. As well, it expresses a critical stand towards the U.S. government and opposes the U.S. bases. For the struggle against Marcos, it advocates both electoral forms of struggle and what it calls "militant non-violent struggle".
The Line Between the Two Wings of the Bourgeois Opposition is Indefinite and Fuzzy
The two wings of the bourgeois opposition are frequently involved in polemics between each other. But at the same time, the lines between the two wings of the bourgeois opposition are not clear-cut. There are constant discussions between them for unity behind a single policy, and there are a number of individuals and groups who pass from one to the other. The CPP has problems dealing with both wings of the bourgeois opposition. The stands of the CPP on this question have been apparent for some time in its communiques and stands on major events. The January 1985 issue of Ang Bayan, journal of the Central Committee of the CPP, carries a number of articles spelling out their approach towards the bourgeois opposition.
The CPP Constantly Appeals for Unity with the Right-Wing Liberals
In this issue of Ang Bayan, the article spelling out their views on the right-wing liberals is titled "Bourgeois' Reformists' Duality is Basis for our Dual Tactics". (Note that there is confusion in the CPP terminology - they refer to the right-wing liberals as "bourgeois reformists" while calling the left-wing of the bourgeois opposition, the actual reformist, trend, the "liberal democrats". Apparently this is because the CPP leadership regards the term "reformist" as criticism but the term "liberal" as a reference to a more positive, favorable phenomenon. We will use the more correct terminology in this article.)
Here the CPP recognizes that the liberals oppose the revolution and seek to defuse the explosive situation. But the CPP still paints the vista that the liberal so-called opposition to Marcos is a major force on the side of the people.
In its analysis, the CPP explains that it stands for what it regards as the implementation of the "dual tactics" of criticism and support towards the right-wing liberals. The CPP does carry on a certain amount of criticism of the liberals on such things as their anti-communism, their support for the U.S. imperialism, and their attacks on the armed struggle. But this is in the context of the CPP leadership's prettification of the liberals' opposition towards Marcos.
The CPP leadership issues incessant appeals for the liberals to join in the allegedly common struggle against the regime, but the CPP does not carry out hard-hitting exposure of the liberal treachery to the struggle. This goes to the extent that, when the liberals take positions directly opposed to the struggle carried out by the CPP (or even the social-democrats), the CPP leadership still finds ways to endorse the liberal policy as allegedly another legitimate method of struggle against Marcos. For example, this happened last year with respect to the fraudulent parliamentary "elections" of the Marcos regime; the right-wing ran in the elections, while the CPP and the social-democrats both boycotted the elections. Nevertheless, after the elections the CPP leadership advocated that the liberal participation in the elections and the militant boycott weren't opposed to each other, but really complemented each other.
This amounts to nothing but promoting dangerous illusions in the UNlDO liberals. Their "opposition" to Marcos represents no serious force against the regime. The liberals are only posturing as fighters against Marcos in order to reap the benefit of the mass struggle of the toilers and so that the revolutionary movement does not gain even greater strength.
The CPP Policy Tends Towards Merger with the Social-Democratic Opposition
The CPP's policy towards the-left-wing of the bourgeois opposition is spelled out in the Ang Bayan article "Liberal Democrats: Reliable Allies in Anti-Dictatorship Fight."
The CPP recognizes that the social-democratic trend has only recently differentiated itself from the stands of the right-wing liberals. But the CPP does not draw the correct conclusions about why such a trend has emerged.
In fact, this trend has come up to block the motion of masses further to the left, towards revolutionary conclusions. This trend has influence on sections of the masses who are indeed genuinely being radicalized by the events of recent years. This leftward motion of new sections of the masses is an important phenomenon and another sign of the revolutionary crisis in the Philippines. But newly-radicalized militants are not the sole membership of this trend; instead the trend is dominated by bourgeois politicians who have taken up pro-people and want anti-imperialist phrasemongering to block the passage of the masses over to support of the revolution and the CPP.
But the CPP sees the whole social-democratic trend as a single entity, representing a force that has all genuinely moved to the left and is open to being won over. And the policy they have adopted towards it is the warmest praise for this trend and a policy of alliance with it which essentially tends towards merger with social-democratic policy.
Thus the Ang Bayan article lauds the social-democrats as a "genuine anti-dictatorship force," as "firm anti-fascists," as staunch and militant fighters and as fighters against imperialism. They describe them as firm allies for the democratic revolution and even suggest that they can be taken along to the socialist revolution!
Since this trend has influence over a certain part of the masses moving to the left, it is clearly important for revolutionary forces to find ways of dealing with. it. And this may well involve, according to the circumstances, agreements and attempts to come to agreements with such forces. But, in using united front tactics to reach the masses under the influence of the social-democratic trend, it is essential for revolutionary forces to fight hard to defend the class independence of the toilers and not to blur the distinctions between revolutionary and reformist policy.
But in its practical policies in the legal and semi-legal mass struggles where the CPP is in alliance with the social-democrats, the CPP simply merges its policy with the social-democrats. It carries out virtually no criticism of them.
For example, on the issue of last year's elections, the CPP worked jointly with the social-democrats in the boycott campaign. It is quite possible that it was useful and important to strive for collaboration with the social-democrats in exposing the election fraud, but the problem is that the CPP nowhere drew any distinctions between reformist and revolutionary policy on the boycott. This covered up the fact that the social-democrats launched their boycott on the narrow grounds that Marcos had refused to grant a number of relatively minor democratic concessions. (And, as we have noted earlier, after the elections, the CPP leadership also gave up criticism of the election policy of the right-wing liberals, who had fought bitterly against the boycott campaign.)
The Danger of Merging With the Bourgeois Opposition.
Conciliation with bourgeois liberalism and reformism is a serious problem for the development of the revolutionary movement. It is promoting illusions in the liberal bourgeoisie as fighters for the interests of the masses. It is teaching the masses reliance on the bourgeoisie.
But the Filipino bourgeois opposition is not a reliable force in the fight against reaction. It not only wants to maintain a regime of exploitation, if with somewhat altered form, but even its opposition to the dictatorship is, at best, a half-hearted, reformist opposition.
If one teaches reliance on the liberal bourgeoisie, then one is weakening the confidence of the masses in their own strength and their ability to carry the struggle through with their own power. If one organizes the struggle against Marcos through appeals to the bourgeoisie, one is forced to tone down or step by step abandon the class demands of the toilers out of fear that these class demands will make the bourgeoisie recoil. And indeed, the CPP has toned down many of the vital demands of the toilers. But without such demands, one cannot really mobilize the toilers, cannot keep their enthusiasm, cannot expect them to fight resolutely to the end.
And conciliation with the bourgeois opposition holds even greater dangers for the future. It greatly weakens the movement towards possible maneuvers of imperialism and the bourgeoisie, which could at some point, when things got too hot, decide to replace Marcos with a liberal or even reformist regime. The bourgeois opposition and a greater or lesser part of the political trends associated with it would then seek to win whatever forces they could away from the revolutionary movement and to crush or intimidate whatever they could not. Preaching of illusions in the bourgeois trends only opens the way towards such disasters and makes it that much harder to win away the masses from the bourgeois trends when they openly betray the struggle.
And even if a revolution does win, a policy of alliance with the liberals, of allowing the bourgeois opposition into the new government (which the CPP leadership advocates through its call for a coalition government with the bourgeoisie) will only weaken the sweep for the revolution and give entrenched positions to the counterrevolution. As the current example of Nicaragua shows, the bourgeoisie (including the former bourgeois opposition) will not quietly turn into patriotic, democratic or socialist bourgeois but will find ways to work for counterrevolution.
The CPP claims to stand for socialism (ultimately), but not only has it put a Chinese wall between the struggle for democracy from the socialist revolution but the policy of conciliation with bourgeois liberalism and reformism is something that hamstrings the ability of the workers and poor peasantry from going over from the democratic revolution to a socialist one.
Problems Are Rooted in Maoist and National-Reformist Influences
The CPP came up as part of the worldwide revolt against Soviet revisionism in the 1960's. It wiped out much of the direct influence of the corrupt, pro-Soviet revisionist clique which had collapsed into thoroughgoing reformism and outright capitulationism.
But the CPP suffered from the harmful influence of Maoism. The CPP's problems of conciliation towards the liberal and reformist bourgeoisie have a great deal to do with the Maoist views. The CPP upholds a Maoist theoretical framework which paints the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries as firm fighters against imperialism and for the people. The CPP upholds the Maoist dogmas about a Chinese wall between the democratic and socialist revolutions, and it also upholds the Maoist scheme of allying with the national bourgeoisie right through to socialism.
At the same time, the CPP has also been troubled by certain national-reformist tendencies that have been a historic problem in the Filipino left. There has for decades been a small national-reformist current within Filipino bourgeois politics. The CPP's roots came out of a political trend which in its earliest years was connected to this national-reformist current. Many militants from this trend did go to the left and towards revolutionary positions, thus taking part in building the CPP. But there was not a thorough break with the old traditions of the bourgeois-nationalist trend and certain deeply-held illusions in bourgeois nationalist and reformist politics remained. Maoism itself reinforced faith in national-reformism.
Today, years later, when reformist bourgeois politics has again emerged as a significant trend and has influence in the movement, the weaknesses in the CPP's stand towards national-reformism and the bourgeois opposition are surfacing as a major problem in its work. [By the WA staff] <>
To The Workers' Advocate
Dear Comrades:
I would like to thank you once again for the sample copies of The Workers' Advocate, The West Indian Voice, and other literature including "Our Differences with the PLA" and "Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought Are Anti-Marxist-Leninist and Revisionist"; also "In Honor of the Memory of Comrade Enver Hoxha." I have also received the latest issue (Aug. 5) of The Workers' Advocate (comments on this to follow).
The more I study politics, the class struggle and Marxism-Leninism, the more I have become convinced of the correctness of the MLP stand on the above issues. For almost a year now, I have followed world events through short-wave radio (Radio Tirana, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, R. Prague, Voice of Nicaragua, the BBC, etc.) and through the press of various leftist political parties (The Militant, The People, The DW [Daily World], The WA [Workers' Advocate]). I have read much of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin (and also Trotsky, Mao Tse-Tung, DeLeon amongst others. I have considered, with open mind, such ideology as the permanent revolution, revolutionary trade unionism, democratic centralism, evolutionary socialism (revisionism), and other approaches to the socialist path. I make no claims to be well educated in Marxism-Leninism; I only have decided to commit myself to disciplined study and struggle. However, I have come to the conclusion that the aims of socialism and capitalism are completely contradictory to one another; there is no way they can coexist. Reagan, amongst others, knows this quite well - this is why he hates it. Reagan is an "honest" capitalist (if there is such a thing). The Democrats cannot be trusted and neither can those who trust the Democrats (the liquidationists). Only the WA has come forward to expose all class collaborators and opportunists - regardless of what they choose to call themselves. The WA is a truly the vanguard of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism; first and foremost in the struggle.
Throughout the pages of the WA, the class struggle is pushed straightforward with no quarter for anyone who would attempt to obstruct or mislead the working class from realizing their historic goal.
In the language of the people, all lies and lairs are exposed - their conspiracy or plots against the working class are exposed. The WA displays much courage in the midst of enemies on all sides.
It takes courage to expose the Sandinistas' revisionist policies when all others are singing them in perfect harmony. The WA does praise the Sandinista FSLN for the overthrow of Somoza and the bloody regime and for fighting against reaction and U.S. imperialism. However, the analysis of TheWA of the problems caused by the Sandinistas allowing petty bourgeois and other reactionary and potentially reactionaries into the party is correct. The Sandinistas wish for something which is impossible; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and peasantry try to live together in some sort of "One Big Family" fairy tale. Because of this, the revolution is plagued by problems from both without and within. If the contras (or U.S. intervention) does not destroy the revolution, then the power-and-wealth craving bourgeoisie will (if they are not eliminated). Attempting to collaborate with the bourgeoisie only results in suffering and setbacks for the workers and peasants - the ones who really paid the price for the revolution. The bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie never had any sympathy for the poor masses - they were only interested in their own benefit; therefore, the proletariat should extend no sympathy to them.
It takes courage to expose such misleaders as Rev. Farrakhan and Rev. Jesse Jackson, preachers of capitalist reaction and exploitation. Rev. Farrakhan is nothing more than the black equal of Rev. Falwell. The WA is correct to attack capitalist/imperialist, anti-progressive "preachers" from the likes of these all the way up to the Imperial-Wizard of the Vatican.
I wish you would push this further in the future. The reason these preacher-leaders arise within the black proletariat can be traced back to slave days and is a result of it. During slavery, the church was about the only institution blacks were allowed. This was only allowed in order to subject them to white plantation-owner domination by giving them a good dose of religion opium and the "servants obey thy masters..." sermon (which they still preach today).
Rev. Jackson's tear-jerking political "sermons" are the same old soldout, burnt out "We Shall Overcome" rhetoric that died, with Rev. Martin Luther King. Rev. Martin Luther King, however, was a brilliant man. He realized that he could preach the all men are created equal" rhetoric and the morality which the U.S. government supposedly represents, back into the faces of the Jim Crow leaders and expose them as bigots, hypocrites, and liars. For the embarrassment and humiliation he caused them, they had him eliminated. By that time the movement had accomplished about it could, considering the limitations of pacifism and civil disobedience as compared to class struggle revolution. The movement became a free-for-all and was degenerated by all sorts of disoriented trends, the counter-culture hippie movement at the head. This prevented the broad masses of working people from identifying with it more intensely. While Johnson was signing "great society" measures, he was sending their sons off to die in an imperialist war.
Twenty years later, Rev. Jesse Jackson believes he can accomplish much by preaching humanity and equality rhetoric to the Chieftains. This time they will not be embarrassed or humiliated. No, they are not worried about being exposed! Reagan has no shame in declaring outright racist policies, especially when he has his own "preachers" such as Falwell and Farrakhan to back up his policies with their own brand of "morality" and "justice" to brainwash and confuse the most naive. After all, the "right" to exploit labor should be made available to all without regard to race, sex, or color. Who knows? If you learn how to "play the game" you can become mayor of Philadelphia - or perhaps even (president)?
Jackson can no more exorcise the evil from capitalism than Bishop Tutu can with apartheid. The Imperial Wizard of the Vatican, last survivor of the Dark Ages, has recently been on tour of the African Continent to the delight of his foot-kissers there. They might as well have sent the Klan to burn a cross on their lawn! The rulers hope that he can sprinkle some Holy Water on the flames of revolution, or at least clam them down with a big dose of religion opium. It is no wonder he does not support even "liberation theology" since he is nothing more than a tool of the ruling class.
Albania's stand as an atheist state represents progress for the people. Religion only divides the people and is used as some sort of "moral weapon" by the exploiting rulers. It is time for blacks and other working people to DUMP political preachers and misleaders: regardless of their politics or religion!!!
... What I have tried to say is that religious-type misleaders, whether ultra-rightists (Falwell) or even self-styled "liberation theologists," only stand in the say of progress and revolution and confuse the peoples. Even at best they are potentially reactionary. If priests want to be revolutionaries, they must give up the teachings of the Vatican and take up the "cross" of Marxism-Leninism; if they want to be priests, stay out of the people's lives and be a Vatican foot-kisser. Marx said it well in "Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of Right,""Religion is the opium of the people."
Sincerely, A Reader from Tennessee <>
The film "Rambo First Blood Part Two" made a big stir. This was because it was no fluke, but a true child of the times, an offspring of the Reaganite era. The film reflects the fact that the American generals and politicians and executives are no mild-mannered men who learned their lesson in Vietnam. No, they are vicious criminals aching to spill blood, to wipe out the lessons of their defeat and draw "first blood".
The theme of "Rambo" is that the American military, with its special commando forces, are the rightful rulers of the world who can kick ass and wipe out those damn Vietnamese and Russians, if only given half the chance. "Rambo" is a film of one long bloodlust. It is full of pictures of Rambo wiping out whole squads of enemy soldiers single-handedly.
It appeals to the born-again, flag-waving American. Tired of those diplomats who keep telling you to negotiate, to consider your actions, to think of the consequences? Go see Rambo kick the stuffing out of the Russians. Tired of those sentimental boobs crying over the rights of the Vietnamese and actually suggesting that Lt. Calley was guilty of mass murder? Go see Rambo wipe out a Vietnamese village with no regrets. Yes, the film wouldn't have been complete if Rambo had only killed soldiers. So although it had to be rather artificially added into one of the battle scenes, the film made sure to show Rambo wiping out a civilian village. The bloodlust wouldn't have been complete without it.
At the same time, there is no blood and gore in Rambo. Yes, there is scene after scene of explosions and murders and killing. But the knife slides in the body, and you don't see the blood. The makers of the film evidently felt that if they showed the blood and gore, the film might have the wrong effect of disgusting its viewers with the brutality of war and inspired disgust with the new "American dream" - kill, kill, kill, sock it to them.
Rewriting the History of the Vietnam War
A major theme of the film is that the war in Vietnam was lost because of betrayal. If the Pentagon couldn't win in real life, it can win in retelling the story in film. Someone betrayed the war, otherwise the Rambos could have beaten those dastardly Vietnamese with one hand tied behind their back. Why, someone tied both his hands so that only now can he take his "first blood". As Rambo says when he is asked to go on this last mission into Vietnam - "Are we allowed to win this time?"
The entire American bourgeoisie is rewriting the history of the Vietnam. It insults the grandeur of the Pentagon, it casts doubt on the ability of the U.S. to win in a nuclear first strike, it tarnishes the image of the invincible American supermen, to suggest that the U.S. armed forces would lose. So despite the fact that the U.S. Air Force dropped bombs on Vietnam equal in TNT equivalents to all the bombs of World War II, despite having over half a million troops there at one time, despite the use of the most disgusting chemical warfare, it is suggested that the U.S. military followed a "no win" policy in Vietnam.
This is the big lie of today. Just as Hitler organized for fascism by pretending that Germany really won World War I, but was stabbed in the back, so today the modern-day, Hitlers, the Reagans who worship at Bitburg cemetery, are harping myth that the U.S.- really won in Vietnam, but "we weren't allowed to win."
National Reconciliation of Liberal and Conservative for the Sake of War
As well,"Rambo" is based on the view that all Americans should reconcile to stomp the Russian. It is notable that Rambo, after threatening to come back and get the bureaucrat who sold out his mission, relents. The bureaucrat is an American after all, so Rambo scares him a bit, shoots his computers, and walks away.
Indeed, "Rambo" is a film that dispenses with such irrelevant points as suggesting who sold out Vietnam. It just presents the image that someone did it, by god, and we won't let it happen again. Can't blame the military - after all, General Westmoreland is now a hero, ever since he claimed that the U.S. really won the war in his libel suit against CBS. Can't blame the politicians - after all, it was Nixon who was forced to stop his bloody saturation bombing raids and sign the agreements with Vietnam, but the militarists need Nixon today and are fawning over the feet of this low-life scum. So "Rambo" comes up with the answer - there is no need for an answer! Just feed the emotion of revanchism, of revenge.
Contempt for Reason
"Rambo's" message is - let's get down to the bottom line: kill the Russian, kill the foreigner. All this talk and reasoning and pondering things is just so much junk, so much sellout.
It is notable that Rambo can hardly string a sentence together. Thinking is useless. Similarly, Rambo loves primitive weapons. The film makes a point of him killing with a bow-and-arrow. The modern weapons he uses are almost all Russian weapons he captures or otherwise obtains. Indeed, the rocket-launcher he holds in the famous advertising poster for the film is supposed to be Russian-made.
True, his bow-and-arrow is tipped with American high-tech warheads that give the modest arrow more firepower than heavy artillery. But bear in mind that consistency is also another intellectual virtue, and intellect is taboo in this film. The hightech warheads are needed for the other theme of the movie - American superiority over the rest of the world. The American bourgeois regards himself as "He-Man, master of the universe", but at the same time he revels in the high-tech weapons with which he hopes to dominate the world in air-conditioned comfort, by pushing a few buttons.
Thus "Rambo" plays well to the Reaganite mood down with reason. Leave words to the soldout columnists hired to put a "scholarly" veneer on the Reaganite venom. "Rambo's" contempt for thought and for truth is patterned after Reagan himself, whose speeches are marked by lies, nonsense, absurdities, and he doesn't give a damn when he is caught in them. No wonder Reagan has called "Rambo" a model of how to conduct foreign policy.
The MIA Theme
Another theme of "Rambo" is that Americans are so put upon - just look at what those foreigners are doing to those poor missing-in-action soldiers. It is OK that Rambo is a killing machine, because he is avenging the MIAs. Look how the Vietnamese torture those MIA's, using them for slave labor in harvesting the rice fields. No fantasy is too extreme for Rambo, because, after all, the whole issue is a fantasy.
One of the horrors of war is that people simply disappear and are never heard of again. But only a person whose eyes were shut tight could fail to notice that the Vietnamese suffered from this far more than the American troops.
Nevertheless the American reactionaries are shedding crocodile tears over the MIAs. Why, if anyone is not accounted for, he must be a prisoner. Very well, if 1400 or so American GIs unaccounted for indicate that Vietnam is holding them alive, guess how many prisoners Germany and Japan still hold from World War II. After all, there are 78,000 American servicemen still missing-in-action forty years after the end of World War II. Perhaps Falwell and Buckley can get together to demand an accounting from Germany, Japan and Italy. Better yet, send in Rambo. Burn down Bonn, Rome, Tokyo (that will also take care of the imports - two birds with one stone).
Hypocritical Tears over the GIs
"Rambo" also is part of the lie that the Vietnam GIs have been horribly mistreated by the opponents of the war. Rambo is finally stirred to eloquence in "Rambo Part Two" ( that is, to more than one sentence in a row). at the end when he delivers a sentimental appeal to love the Vietnam veterans. This is supposed to justify killing all the Vietnamese, and this indeed is the hypocritical platform which liberal and conservatives have found to unite in the holy cry for revenge and for "not fighting a war unless we intend to win it".
This supposed love of the warmongers for veterans is another of the great myths being repeated over and over again. It was not the anti-war movement that mistreated the veterans, but the militarists themselves. The generals sent them into an unjust war for the benefits of the millionaire corporations. It was the anti-war movement that, by fighting the war, by exposing the real reasons for the brutality of the American way of fighting it and by trying to organize the GIs actually did all that was humanly possible to help those GIs who maintained a sense of honor.
American Militarism Gets Down to the Bottom Line
"Rambo" is not an isolated film. It is merely the most successful of a whole series of new films that glorify war. The main characteristic of the new films, such as the Chuck Norris films on stomping the Vietnamese or Red Dawn on stomping the Russians and Cubans, is their bloodlust.
On the other hand, the emptiness and lack of content of the films glorifying this new drive to war reveals that U.S. imperialism is hollow and bankrupt. An exploiting class that needs "Rambo" to pluck up its courage and that worships the "wisdom" of Reagan is a class that is on its last legs. It is a class that rules a capitalist system that is ripe to be overthrown by the working people. And only this overthrow, only the socialist revolution of the proletariat, will remove the threat to the world posed by the bloodlust of the bourgeoisie.
By the the Workers' Advocate staff. <>
As the bourgeoisie cuts wages and speeds up the workers, it is promoting the fraud of "profit-sharing". According to this, the workers should forego fighting for wage increases, or even take wage cuts, in return for a share in the profits naturally, just a few crumbs after the executives take their bloated salaries, the banks take their cut, the government takes its cut, the other companies take their cut, etc. The bourgeoisie likes profit-sharing not only because it is far cheaper than paying wages, but because it inculcates the idea of class collaboration and it goes hand-in-hand with the most vicious productivity measures.
Last year, the bourgeois press carried big articles about the $5,000 the workers would allegedly have gotten from the profit-sharing plan. The UAW bureaucrats, who have echoed every campaign of the bourgeoisie, are now seeking to ram profit-sharing down the workers' throats.
The following three-part leaflet was issued recently by the Detroit Branch of the MLP,USA.
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With the official opening of the Chrysler/UAW contract talks on August 15, Marc Stepp [UAW bureaucrat] announced that profit-sharing will be a major UAW bargaining goal. Stepp suggested that the rank-and-file workers were stupid idiots for rejecting the profit-sharing fraud in the last contract. And he made the fantastic claim that each Chrysler worker would have gotten between $4,000 and $5,000 in 1984 if they had accepted the profit-sharing scheme. With such monstrous lies as this, it's a wonder that Stepp can get his expanding nose through the doors.
Mr. Stepp let the figures speak for themselves!
If you take the profit-sharing proposal defeated by the workers and plug in the numbers you'll see that each worker may have gotten some $500, not $5,000.
The formula works as follows. In each quarter Chrysler made more than $50 million in profits, a maximum of $8 million would have been divided among all the Chrysler workers. 80 in 1984, $32 million would have been divided up among the some 60,000 workers. That's about $533 per worker, before taxes, or about $.25 an hour. [In fact, Chrysler was forced to give the workers a $500 bonus anyway during that year of record profits in order to assuage the outrage among the workers at their treatment.]
The profit-sharing scheme -- pure and simple Reaganomics
The UAW/Chrysler profit-sharing schemes are rotten from every angle. First, profit-sharing payments are one-time deals that are never rolled into the base wage rate. Second, profit-sharing in Chrysler's best, year would still mean only a few hundred dollars while each worker has sacrificed more than $20,000 in concessions over the past five years. Third, these schemes have been cooked up by the UAW and Chrysler to throw the workers' annual wage increases out the window. Instead, they want to tie the workers' wages to Chrysler's profits and losses. Rather than fight against Chrysler's slave-driving, the workers are to slave-drive each other. The workers are expected to push for job elimination and job combination with the hope that a few of Chrysler's concessions dollars will "trickle back down" to the workers. This is nothing but Reaganomics pure and simple.
It's pay back time
Chrysler has millions of bonus dollars for its top executives. It has big money to buy up entire companies like E.F. Hutton Credit Corp. But it cries poverty and offers the workers only pennies when contract time rolls around. This won't do!
Chrysler workers need and deserve a big wage increase this year. Not a one-time bonus or a profit-sharing scheme, but a major raise that is rolled into the base wage rate. After all, Chrysler has stolen at least $20,000 in concessions from and every worker over the last' 5 years. Mr. Iacoocca, Mr. Step, it's pay back time! <>
On August 29, Chrysler's top labor relations negotiator, Thomas Miner, finished outlining the company's eighteen proposals for the 1985 national contract. Initial news reports indicate that Chrysler is indeed looking for a "Saturn-style" contract - chocked full of concessions.
Some of the most outrageous concessions proposed by Chrysler include: the wholesale elimination of job classifications from more than 500 down to about 6; an attack on the seniority system that would limit workers' "bumping rights"; a further extension of the two-tier wage system which would "stretch out" the time it takes for new hires to get full pay; and a cutback in the "excessive" amount of relief time that workers now get.
Chrysler's gotten fat off of the billions of dollars of concessions robbed from the workers. But it still wants more.
The rich have feasted enough. Now, its time for the workers to get theirs. Say no to Chrysler's concessions deal! Get organized for an all-out fight to win a major wage increase and job security for the Chrysler workers! <>
Wolf Lawerence admits that Charlie Cooke signed a backroom deal with Chrysler to extend the local contract
The following part of the leaflet set back the attempt Of the bureaucrats to tell the workers that the local contract had already been secretly extended three years ago. The "Citadel", official publication of the hacks of Chrysler Local 7, wrote in its September 13th issue that:
Some group passed out a leaflet in front of the plant talking about a scandal at Local 7 pertaining to our Local Agreement. There has been no scandal at our Local. The management representatives used a little trickery to deceive our past Bargaining Committee so that they would not have to negotiate this year.
The present Bargaining Committee and the International UAW informed the company that this was illegal, and we will not [sic!] begin negotiating a new contract on Monday, Sept 16, 1965 [sic!]. On the subject of classifications: it is the position of this Local Union that classifications belong to the International UAW.
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At the August 18th local union meeting, Wolf Lawerence announced that the local contract with Chrysler will not expire until the end of the next national contract, that is, probably not till 1988! So far, Lawerence and the other top leaders of Local 7 are blaming this whole scandal on the previous local president, Charlie -Give 'Em Concessions- Cooke. They have thrown up their hands claiming, "We just found out about it."
But everyone knows that many of the present local officials were part of Cooke's bargaining committee. How could they not know about a deal they agreed to? And how come Lawerence, who ran for local president promising he'd fight against concessions, doesn't repudiate Cooke's sellout agreement? It would appear these sold-out bureaucrats don't want to give the rank-and-file a chance to have a head-on confrontation against Chrysler's job-eliminating productivity drive. So they've let Chrysler take away the workers' right to strike over local issues, saddled the workers with three more years of the last concessions deal, and will keep everything bottled up in combining and eliminating jobs one by one.
No to job combinations! Fight for real job security!
Whenever it's felt like it, Chrysler has already been violating the old contract to combine jobs, change work rules, axe job classifications, and eliminate positions. Just since changeover at least 16 janitors jobs have been eliminated and foremen are harassing line workers to do clean up work. As well, a big push is on to force assemblers to tag and chalk jobs so that inspection jobs can be wiped out. But over the last two years workers have been fighting back with repeated slowdowns and walkouts. This whole affair has been building up to a major confrontation over a new local contract. The workers want the contract up to bar the company from any tampering with work rules or job classifications and an agreement that absolutely guarantees all existing jobs and brings back those who are still laid off. And the rank-and-file has shown it is ready to wage a determined strike to win these demands.
Scandal #2
But Lawerence and the other local officials are afraid of such a struggle. While pointing a finger at Charlie -Give 'Em Concessions- Cooke, Lawerence admitted that he himself is going along with Chrysler's plans to cut and combine jobs at Jefferson. At the same August 18 union meeting, Lawerence told the membership: "I won't lie to you. Some job classifications will be eliminated. Some are ancient and outdated, thirty to forty years old." Which ones, Wolf? Janitors? Inspectors? This is the kind of talk you'd expect from a general foreman or a speed up engineer! Thanks for your honesty, now we know which side you're on.
Get Organized for Struggle
Jefferson workers: Charlie Cooke's backroom deal with Chrysler should be denounced in the harshest terms and Wolf Lawerence's arrogant statements in support of Chrysler's job-eliminating programs should also be condemned far and wide. These sell-outs can't be trusted. The rank-and-file must. take matters into their own hands. The only surefire way to defend our jobs and working conditions is to get organized to strike and to wage other mass actions against Chrysler.
The agreement to extend the local contract to '88 was neither presented to the workers nor voted upon by the workers. What is more, Chrysler violates this contract whenever it wants. Why then should the workers consider it to be a legally binding scared agreement? To hell with it! tear it up! Get ready for struggle! workers must have a new contract that outlaws Chrysler's job combinations and guarantees job security for both the presently employed and those who are still laid off! <>
The following article is reprinted from the August 13th issue of The Boston Worker, newspaper of the Boston Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party.
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On Monday evening, August 5, in the "Warehouse of the Future", a foreman literally jumped on a steward for the crime of not getting off the phone fast enough. The steward, Pat Smith, was taken to the hospital coughing up blood and treated there for bruised ribs. Reportedly, a second foreman went to Smith's home and threatened his wife to the effect that if her husband pushed the issue he might "be rubbed out". This is an outrage! Workers through-out the plant should condemn this brutal assault on a fellow worker and demand these foremen be punished!
Workers, this assault is no isolated incident. Other examples of fascist intimidation in order to impose a military-like atmosphere abound. A day or two after this incident, a welder with a flash burn was leaving the plant after receiving medical attention at the infirmary. A guard provoked an argument with him at the gate and the worker got suspended! Last week, too, a xyglo inspector in 1-74 got fired for forgetting to record into a log book a test procedure he had done. And yet another worker on 2-74 was still suspended after three weeks for the crime of not feeling well on company time.
In addition to handing out contacts, warnings, suspensions and even a firing, G.E. has completely bypassed the established upgrade procedure. in recent weeks, jobs from lathe operators in 74 to assemblers in Gear Plant have been opened to new hires instead of to senior workers through the upgrade system.
Harassment Is Part of G.E.'S Productivity Drive
The ink is hardly dry on the new concessions contract and G.E. has already launched a new wave of harassment against workers and assaults on hard-won work rules. The events of the past week show what the G.E. Capitalists want when they. call for productivity", "competitiveness" and "factories of the future". They want the right' to harass and speed up workers, fire the militants and those who don't go along with their productivity drive and impose a fascist discipline on everyone else. This is what G.E. would like to have in all its factories in the near future - conditions like those in the factories of the distant past!
Indeed, this is going on in all the industries in the country. This is part and parcel of Reagan's "recovery": the monopoly capitalist corporations make record profits by pushing the working class to the wall.
The Union Bureaucrats Will Not Organize the Fight for Us
Nationally, also, the union officials of all the industries from the UAW to our own President Bywater [IUE President] agree with the capitalists. They say that the workers should sacrifice so the corporations can remain "competitive". The concessions contract that Bywater and the entire national negotiating committee agreed to and forced on the workers sets the tone for even more outrages like those we've seen in recent weeks.
Locally, some of the union officials felt they had to appear to oppose concessions in the contract because of the pressure from the shop floor. But as Malloy's [a local union leader] vote for the negotiating committee shows, this Opposition is half-hearted at best. Today, in the same way, the union is threatening a strike over the Pat Smith affair because of the anger of the G.E. workers.
We Must Rely on Our Own Efforts
If the fight to defend Pat Smith is to gain a measure of justice, we must be prepared to carry out a serious Strike and not a symbolic action nor settle for an agreement to discuss the case. Furthermore, if we are to wage a serious fight against G.E.'s entire harassment campaign, we must fight on our own. We must denounce very attempt at harassment and speedup and vigorously defend those workers singled out for attack.
With the 4,300-strong NO vote against the concessions contract, we can certainly organize a serious fight against the productivity/concessions drive of the G.E. billionaires. Let's distribute leaflets, such as this one, widely. Let's organize slowdowns, demonstrations and strikes to beat back G.E.'s offensive and to let G.E. know it can't get away with harassment and physical assaults here in Lynn.
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The following articles on the conditions facing the postal workers are based on reports sent in to The Workers' Advocate by a progressive postal worker in Syracuse, New York.
SQUEEZING THE "CASUAL" WORKERS
Every summer, to make up for vacations (from May to Sept. approximately 30 workers are off), "casual" employees are used at the Post Office. They unload trucks, dump and manually sort the mail alongside of the regular workforce. They are called "casuals" because they are hired for 6 weeks with an option to be extended for 6 more weeks, then they are laid off until the next time they are needed. This occurs during the summer to cover vacations and during the Christmas rush to add extra workers.
Ten years ago the casuals were getting $6.90 per hour. As every other worker in the post office got pay raises over the years, the casuals' pay actually decreased to $5.00 an hour (approx.). Casuals also' don't receive health insurance, life insurance, sick or annual leave, or any other company-paid benefits. They are only guaranteed two hours of work per day, but can be used up to ten hours if needed, so they have no idea how many hours they will work each day. It can be seen why the money-grubbing postal management prefers to increase the use of casuals than to hire them as regular workers. This summer at least 30 casuals were hired; in the past the normal number was 10-15.
Squeezing the Clerical Postal Clerks
The post office also works to cut the number of regular workers by pushing them harder. In trying this, management found out that the regular workforce could only be pushed so far and no further. Management claimed they still needed more work to be done, but wouldn't hire any more permanent workers so they hit upon a great idea. Why, they had a great untapped potential! The clerical workers in the offices!
These people were postal clerks level 5 the same as the clerks that sorted the mail. So management decided they could be used for 2 to 3 hours a day on the floor and thus take up the slack. What did it matter that they had their own work in the offices to keep them busy for 8 hours a day? Just do it faster, eliminate those coffee breaks and unnecessary jobs, tighten things up, and those clerical people. will find the time. And if they don't want to, then management decided that they can take leave without pay (LWOP) to cover the time they aren't needed in the offices.
Recently, one office worker who was assigned to the mail floor was not paid for the three hours she spent sorting mail; she was given LWOP because management couldn't verify her time on the floor (it got lost in the timekeepers' computers), even though floor supervisors could verify she was there. This is now in a union grievance.
And There Is More to Come
Summer is now coming to an end; the new fiscal budget begins in September; and the regular employees see things going back to normal; but what happens at the Christmas rush? Or next year? And there is a rumor that, this November, the post office is given another entrance exam - for what? They aren't hiring any permanent help. Casual workers aren't even being hired off the lists created by this exam. These people on the list won't take a casual" job position because of a lack of benefits, etc. They'd rather wait and take their chances on permanent hiring (keeping what jobs they have at the moment). Casuals are coming from the unemployment offices.
What new actions are postal management going to take to speed up and eliminate jobs, to increase productivity, to push workers to their ultimate limit for higher gains for the post office, consequently allowing the post office to buy more machines and eliminate more workers?
The postal workers have got to stand together and say ENOUGH - enough of management's capitalist attacks against the working class! Unite with the Marxist-Leninist Party to stand up for the rights of the working class, show the union bureaucrats that we won't allow them to sell us out to management anymore - we will fight to build the Party of the Working Class! <>
In June of this year, at a Syracuse mail handling center, small groups of employees were being gathered together by management for discussions of how to increase productivity. These talks are nothing new to postal workers; they receive them about once a day in short sentence commands from their supervisors. What is unique about the recent talks is the story line which would have sounded better on "Hill Street Blues". A true tale of woe in which local management admitted that the deficit was their fault! Here it is:
Even though the cost of stamps has just been, raised (Jan.), the Postal Service is still operating at a deficit. Because of locally accepting and promising delivery of certain batches of large companies' mailing (Carrier Corp., GE), mailing which it was impossible to meet in the workers' normal 8 hours, it became necessary to implement a heavier than usual overtime schedule in a three month period.
Add to this the fact that, on the national level, Reagan appointed one or two persons who would like to see the end of the Postal Service as it is today and split it up among hundreds of private contractors. All current postal workers would then of course lose their jobs.
Therefore, in order to offset this catastrophe, and keep these jobs, the postal workers would have to improve production, tighten everything up so well that the price of stamps wouldn't have to be raised and workers' jobs wouldn't be threatened.
Then of course there are the OCR's (optical character readers - machines that read the address and zip code on the letter, spray a bar code on the envelope and then sort the mail to its proper destination). Management admitted that, on the national level, these machines had been expected to handle 80% of the mail-sorting volume but that, actually, only 10 to 20% was being worked by these super- expensive machines.
Why? To be effective, this mammoth machine stipulates mail has to arrive into it in plain envelopes, no handwriting, only typing, no window, no marks under the address, the last line of the address exactly three inches from the bottom of the envelope and the envelope with letters no more than l/8th of an inch thick. Otherwise it can't sort the mail. Now, if the postal workers insisted on such picky conditions, imagine what management would say and fast!
Therefore, because of a) management's goof on the local level necessitating so much overtime, and b) management's goof on the national level of buying gigantic and expensive machines that do 10-20% instead of the projected 80% of the mail sorting, it is up to the workers to speed up so that stamps wouldn't have to increased again and jobs wouldn't be threatened.
And how was this to be done? Why, workers on the letter-sorting machines would have to step up their rotations (one worker keys sitting down, then after 15 minutes is replaced by another worker who had been standing behind the machine gathering the sorted mail and putting rubber bands about it). By saving 5 seconds on the switch, plus by cutting the errors made when keying, and if the workers doing hand sorters worked a bit faster, and if sick leave was eliminated, maybe, just maybe, workers would be able to save their jobs.
The Union Bureaucrats Lend Management a Hand
A week later, each worker received a letter in their mail boxes in that official white envelope with the eagle in the corner. Upon opening the envelope, there was a letter signed by the presidents of the Rural Carriers association, the Mail-handlers Union, the Clerks Union and the National Associate Letter Carriers' Union together with the signature of the Syracuse Main post Office's Postmaster, A.J. Sarnor. In content, this mailing merely repeated the oral talk each worker on the floor had already received.
Here were the union bureaucrats, blatantly in collusion with the management to speed up the workers. Of the six signatures, five were by the local union heads.
Discussions were common on the work floor, after the management talk and especially after the letter, as to the lies coming from management and union. "Just another dirty, low-down way to make us feel we have to work harder."
Facts were becoming clear to the workers: the increased hiring of "casuals" (temporaries with no job security, sick leave, vacation, pension and other benefits a regular worker would have); LWOP (leave without pay) being handed out in abundance, especially during slack hot summer months when vacation has already been used up by the workers and the heat/humidity index inside the building was so high that the temptation to get out, even though there was no pay and paychecks would be very low, was too great to be resisted. Also, if 80 hours of LWOP accumulates for a worker, which is quite average, this means 6 hours less of annual leave.
And supervisors were bearing down heavily on workers who were sick more than zero times per quarter. Then there is that old game of pitting different work crews against each other: contests and awards to crews who produced more in one day than the others (free coffee or public acknowledgement). Finally, the puzzling fact that suddenly there was no need for any overtime at all. From a recent three months of hectic overtime to this drying up of the reservoir. The workers' are disgusted with the way the union is not supporting them. This can be seen by some workers, who don't realize the importance of opposing the the bureaucrats from within the union, dropping out of the union (fifteen to twenty already have terminated union dues and many are waiting for their seniority dates so that they can do the same). The workers' open hostility to management is becoming even more commonplace, but so is their frustration with and growing consciousness of the sellout tactics of the union leadership, those traitors to the workers' cause. <>
The much-hated U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is not a non-political agency; instead, it is directly involved in carrying out Reaganite aggression and oppression of the Central American people. The INS is well-known for its largescale persecution and deportations of ordinary Central American refugees, sending them to their deaths at the hands of the fascist U.S.-backed regimes in their native countries. Between 1980 and 1983, for example, the INS deported 30,000 Salvadoran refugees, handing them back to the Salvadoran death-squad government. This year the INS also gained notoriety for baring its teeth against the sanctuary movement which extends humanitarian aid to Central American refugees in the U.S., helping slap the activists in this movement with indictments, fines, gag orders and threats of heavy prison terms.
The Case of Edgar Chamorro - Former Contra Leader
Recently, the INS revealed a new facet of its assistance to the Pentagon and State Department war on Central America. It has tried to deport a former contra leader because he had second thoughts about trying to strangle the Nicaraguan revolution through murder and terror. It started exclusion proceedings against Edgar Chamorro on June 26, after he took a trip to Washington to urge Congress not to give humanitarian" funding to the contras and two days after his opinion article appeared in the New York Times and the Miami Herald offering mild criticism of U.S. policy in Nicaragua.
It's not as if Edgar Chamorro were a revolutionary, or a friend of the working people. From 1982-84, he was one of the leaders of the FDN (the main contra group engaged in murdering Nicaraguan revolutionaries), responsible for propaganda glorifying their armed attacks against Nicaragua and drawing a CIA salary of $2,000 a month.
In 1984 Chamorro had a falling out with the CIA and his contra companions. As a result, he was involved in exposing the existence of the CIA murder manual. This manual showed that the Reagan administration was nothing but a bunch of coldblooded murderers, a government version of Murder Inc. The manual consisted of instructions in how to murder opponents, terrorize the people, and even murder one's own followers in order to create martyrs. And Chamorro, stating the obvious, pointed out that the contras "are in the hands of former national guardsmen [Somoza henchmen] who control the contra army, stifle internal dissent and intimidate or murder those who dare oppose them."
Chamorro's Differences with Reagan
In his article Chamorro elaborates his differences with the Reagan government. The problem with the murder manual, and with the contras' terror tactics in general is, he maintains, that they don't work. In his opinion those methods are only hardening the Nicaraguan people and Reagan will never accomplish his goal of making the Nicaraguan people "cry uncle."
Chamorro is for "moderation". That is, Chamorro was part of the bourgeois opposition to the tyrant Somoza; he wanted a "revolution" that would simply be a change of regime that leaves the exploitation of the working masses unchanged. At first he found something good in the Sandinistas. Then he joined the contras to fight the revolution arms-in-hand. And now he again is in favor of a "reconciliation". He says, in his article, that the revolution accomplished some good things that can't be denied and gave dignity to the Nicaraguan people, but there are good people among the contras too. He wants "a policy of national reconciliation that would strengthen the moderates and pragmatists and weaken the extremists and ideologues on both sides [Sandinistas and contras]." i. e. the repression of the working masses and conciliation of the bourgeoisie from the Sandinistas is promising but not enough and must be strengthened by adding more "good" elements from the bourgeois counterrevolutionaries.
To accomplish this, Chamorro calls for disbanding of the contras immediately as a first step towards dialogue and the implementation of the Contadora proposals, which he evidently thinks will turn Nicaragua into an ordinary "moderate" regime, thoroughly capitalist and pro-West of course.
It is a sign of the times that this vacillating ex-contra is now to the left not just of the White House, but of the Democratic Party, which voted "humanitarian" aid to fund the contra murder campaign. (Of course, this is only because Chamorro thinks the revolution has already been tamed.)
Deportation Proceedings Start and Stop
For his friendly advice to the White House, and the embarrassment he gave the CIA, this contra "brother" of Reagan's was rewarded with deportation proceedings. Once again, the INS stepped forward as the heavy-handed enforcer of the war on the Central American peoples. And once again the Reagan administration shows its idea of the "freedom" it is imposing on the Central American people - the "freedom" to agree with waging war, with murder manuals, with the latest marching orders from the CIA and the White House.
As of the last week in July, Chamorro's case was dropped. After all, he is an important public figure supporting the U.S. domination of Central America. Once his case came into the open, the NS had to recall that it is supposed to represent the overall interests of the American billionaires, and not just the latest whim from the White House. Still, the case provided an interesting insight into the role of the INS as an agency of political repression, an enforcer for the CIA, and a enthusiast for killing Central American workers and peasants.
[By the Workers' Advocate staff] <>
The following article is reprinted from Prensa Proletaria, newspaper of MAP-ML, the Marxist-Leninist Party of the Nicaraguan proletariat, issue 16, July 16-31, 1985. it has been translated by The Workers' Advocate staff.
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They proclaim themselves the "Triple A" (Arturo Cruz, Adolfo Calero, Alfonso Robelo) and on July 19, 1985 they announced their new alliance named the United Nicaraguan Opposition" ("Unidad Nicaraguense Opositora" - UNO).
This peculiar alliance of two ex-members of the Sandinista government juntas which were in power in Nicaragua, Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, along with the ex-manager of Coca-Cola in Managua and leader of the Conservative Party, Adolfo Calero, claims to achieve a "political-military" synthesis that combines the criminal actions of the counterrevolutionary forces [CIA-backed contras] with the actions of the internal counterrevolutionary forces which maintain open activity in Nicaragua.
In this regard, Arturo Cruz took the explicit action of supporting the armed counterrevolutionary bands, something which he had been doing in a concealed manner for a long time before, especially in the short period when he supposedly was the presidential candidate for the Democratic Coordination [a political grouping of the bourgeois opposition which ended up boycotting the 1984 elections in Nicaragua].
The public incorporation of Cruz in the "task forces" of imperialism demonstrates once more the justness of the campaigns which we Marxist-Leninists have unfolded in Nicaragua against the internal counterrevolutionary forces, and the struggle against the series of political concessions that the Sandinista petty bourgeoisie has made toward these forces. In no way is it a coincidence that the most significant enemies of the Sandinista government are former allies or friends (Robelo, Cruz, Pastora who was a Sandinista militant).
Despite the fact that Arturo Cruz, now part of the counterrevolutionary alliance "UNO", has declared that this grouping has no direct link with the "Coordinadora Sacasa Guerrero" [the "Democratic Coordination"], he also acknowledged that "they [the DC] are our heroes. They are doing their own thing independently, we are doing ours. We respect them immensely and their ideals are ours."
Cruz is very conscious then of the role of the "Coordinadora" in the counterrevolutionary division of labor.
The struggle against the openings toward the right is already an old struggle of the Nicaraguan Marxist-Leninists. The restatements about "national dialogues," "salvations of the fatherland," and other euphemisms for class conciliation and political defeatism, make it necessary to redouble this struggle of the Nicaraguan proletariat in defense of the revolution and its deepening along class lines, against the power of the bourgeoisie, the landholders and imperialism.
As Cruz himself acknowledges, the internal political actions of the reaction are not unconnected to the military actions, and it is necessary to put in this perspective all the political actions which are directed at augmenting the internal game of the reactionary forces. To not yield more political space to these forces is one more form of complementing the resistance against the military and economic aggression of imperialism. <>
On May lst of this year the Workers Advocate Supplement carried the lead article "In Defense of Leninist United Front Tactics/On the backward turn in the line of the international communist movement at the Seventh Congress of the C.I. in 1935." The articles in this issue were part of the study of united front tactics that the Workers' Advocate has been publishing for some time. These articles elaborate united front tactics and are also aimed at the now-fashionable liquidationism that hides under a distortion of united front tactics.
The Workers' Advocate has since carried further articles emphasizing that the wrong stands of the 7th Congress of the C.I. have been, on the theoretical side, one of the sources of present-day revisionism and liquidationisrn. And we knew that, as we dealt with the Seventh Congress, the liquidators were bound to shout "ouch".
One of these frenzied "ouchs" was recently sounded in issue #2 of "Workers' Truth", the bulletin of the "Organization for a Marxist-Leninist Workers' Party" (OMLWP). The lead article was devoted to denouncing our Party for our views on the Seventh Congress, and the attack was continued in a second article on work for the April 20th national demonstration.
The OMLWP is upset because it follows the liquidationist policy of trailing behind the reformist swamp, along with the social-democrats, revisionists and trotskyites. It denounces our Party for maintaining the independent communist work of leading the class struggle rather than tamely merging our work with the reformists as the OMLWP does.
The OMLWP is just a small sect in Chicago and, moreover, one that has admitted in the first issue of its bulletin in April to being "discouraged". But its recent articles against our Party have some interest because the OMLWP has taken on itself to be the mouthpiece of the reformist slanders against our Party in Chicago. It has put in writing the slanders it has heard in CISPES circles. And it demands that our party merge its work into the opportunist swamp around the "left" wing of the Democratic Party.
As well, the OMLWP also is interesting in that it attempts to clothe its utter liquidationist practical policy under the cloak of being so pure and "left" that it cannot even recognize that a communist movement has existed for the last 50 years. As part of this, it defends Seventh Congress tactics under the banner of being the most extreme, critic of the Seventh Congress. Learning to recognize the frivolous playing with phrases as the "left" face of liquidationism is important for learning how to conduct a truly revolutionary, anti-liquidationist policy.
The OMLWP Has No Independent Analysis of the Seventh Congress
The OMLWP devotes its attack on us, and most of this issue of its paper, to the question of the united front. OMLWP's article claims that our Party's understanding of united front tactics and analysis of the Seventh Congress are flawed, centrist, sectarian, rightist, you name it. Indeed, OMLWP alleges that our Party doesn't even know what the united front is but "views the united front as synonymous with mass work". (p. 13, col. 1 - all page reference are to "Workers' Truth" #2 unless otherwise indicated.)
Yet, strangely enough, the OMLWP itself has no alternate analysis of the Seventh Congress. On the actual issues of the Seventh Congress's views on how to build the united front, it has to admit that the MLP articles are detailed and valuable.
According to the OMLWP:
MLP produces a list of the 'profoundly erroneous tactics' and views which emerged at the 7th Congress, some of which are: 1) abandoning the Leninist stand of winning the masses for communism; 2) defining Social-Democracy and reformism as progressive forces; 3) whitewashing the bourgeois liberals; 4) liquidationist tendencies on the question of party building; 5) abandoning the revolutionary struggle for the, liberation of the colonies; 6) replacing the Leninist orientation for the anti-war struggle with pacifism; 7) creating illusions in the bourgeois-democratic imperialist powers; 8) hiding the class struggle; 9) a liquidationist perspective of worldwide merger with Social-Democracy; 10) beginning the liquidation of the CI apparatus. These problems and others are discussed in detail in the MLP article and are worth-while studying." (p 41, emphasis added)
Following this list the OMLWP claims that our Party "fail[ed] to draw the necessary conclusions" and doesn't go far enough. But OMLWP's article is unable to do anything but briefly paraphrase the criticisms that it admits our Party has made.
We certainly agree that the articles in the Workers' Advocate on the united front deserve study. And we are encouraged by the grudging respect that these articles have won even from those, like OMLWP, who make a career out of opposing our Party. But we would like to ask: isn't it strange that our Party can provide a "worth-while" discussion of the Seventh Congress and the united front "in detail" at a time when we are not supposed to even know what the united front is?
OMLWP Finds the Anti-fascist Struggle Suspect
All that OMLWP has added to the critique of the Seventh Congress is blatant errors of the worst sort. Its basic theory is that the real error of the Seventh Congress is that it centered the attention of the communist movement on the struggle against fascism.
Our Party has stressed that it was absolutely essential for the world communist movement in the 1930's to throw itself into the struggle against fascism. We have pointed to the role of fascism as the spearhead of the bourgeois offensive of that period. We criticize the Seventh Congress for weakening the struggle against fascism, not for emphasizing the struggle against-fascism.
OMLWP, on the other hand, finds the struggle against fascism suspect, something to be tolerated only within narrow limits. According to its article:
The reasoning for the above tactics [the erroneous tactics of the Seventh Congress] flowed from the CI analysis that fascism was at that time the main enemy of the world's people." (p. 2, col. 2)
Indeed, Dimitrov, in his report to the Seventh Congress, tried to present the new line as simply an adjustment of communist tactics to deal with the struggle against fascism. He demagogically presented opposition to the new line as a failure to understand the fascist menace.
And the OMLWP agrees with Dimitrov! In order to denounce the new line at the Seventh Congress, the OMLWP denounces the need to fight the world fascist offensive.
OMLWP, as usual, reduces things to a phrase, "main enemy". But the issue is the role of the fascist offensive of the 1930s in the intense and bloody class battles taking place all over the world. OMLWP of course can't altogether deny the struggle against fascism, but it denigrates the importance of this struggle. According to OMLWP, the fascist offensive didn't effect politics on a world scale , and the OMLWP is only ready to admit "the very real struggle against fascism in several countries" (See OMLWP's "Principles of Unity" of September 1983, Point II.8, p. 10). The OMLWP suggests that it was overconcern with the struggle against fascism, and with the struggle against the capitalist offensive in general, that was the root cause of the errors of the Seventh Congress - and it is probably not an accident that, in listing the points we made against the Seventh Congress, it left out the point on "Abandoning the Standpoint of Struggle on the immediate Issues In Favor of Highflown, Empty Words about the Immediate Issues". Similarly, in denouncing the work of our Party of using anti-imperialist agitation as one of the means of splitting the masses away from the capitalist parties, OMLWP states:
Although anti-imperialism is not the opportunist 'anti-fascist united front,' it is also not communism either." (p. 3 col. 2)
The OMLWP doesn't bother to explain further. what is wrong with the "anti-fascist united front". All that comes through is that "anti-fascism" is suspect in OMLWP's eyes, while "anti-imperialism" is better still tainted, of course, when our Party carries out true anti-imperialist work directed against the reformists, but really good when the social-democrats, trotskyites, and OMLWP unite with each other and with CISPES in its name.
In its "Principles of Unity" OMLWP states outright that World War II was solely an inter-imperialist war without any other aspects. It denounces defense of then-socialist Soviet Union, holding that it was just an imperialist, capitalist power. OMLWP holds that it was "betray[ing] the proletariat" and "leading it to defend the imperialist fatherland" to be concerned whether the Nazis overran the Soviet Union and all of Europe, or whether the Soviet Union, the anti-fascist guerilla movements, etc. defeated the Nazis. According to OMLWP, such concern was in itself capitulation to the British-French-American imperialists. The OMLWP feels no class solidarity with the heroic and painful struggle of the working masses against fascism. And the OMLWP has to close its eyes to the huge impetus to the revolutionary movement given by the defeat of the fascist Axis in World War II.
All this denigration of the struggle against fascism is really back-handed agreement with Dimitrov. It means to accept Dimitrov's lie that the fight against fascism necessitated abandoning the Leninist tactics. Dimitrov demanded abandoning the Leninist tactics in order to fight fascism, while OMLWP denigrates the importance of the fight against fascism as its central criticism of the Seventh Congress.
Writing Off the Communist Movement
OMLWP uses its criticism of the Seventh Congress not in order to learn how to carry out united front tactics today -- because, as we shall see in a moment, it actually imitates the Seventh Congress in its own united front work - but to write off the communist movement since 1935. It uses the criticism of the Seventh Congress to denounce the communist movement. In its eyes, there is no such thing as a communist movement with problems. There is either a completely pure movement, or it is reactionary and it is a matter of indifference whether the Nazis crush it in World War II or it crushes the Nazis.
OMLWP dances and leaps on this question. It says don't all the errors of the Seventh Congress constitute not just errors, but revisionism, and hence show that the communists were now only so-called "communists" and actually pretty much the same as the bourgeois forces? In the name of denouncing the Seventh Congress, the OMLWP writes off the movement and spits on the sacrifices of the working class and communists. And no matter how much OMLWP claims it does this from the most high- minded, revolutionary motives, no one who looks at OMLWP closely can fail to see the most craven capitulation in its views, the cowardly desire to desert ship and justify class treason whenever the proletarian forces run into serious. difficulties. The OMLWP is on the communist side - just so long as the communists can easily and immediately seize state power, without setbacks or errors, and enjoy the fruits of victory.
And the OMLWP's stand also amounts to throwing away the experience of the world communist movement. The OMLWP doesn't study the movement carefully and learn from it, but writes it off totally. And the result is that it is condemned to reproduce the very mistakes that it allegedly condemns, indeed that it allegedly condemns so much more strongly - in its own eyes, at least - than our Party.
Nor can OMLWP present a consistent picture of history with its stand that all the communist parties became simply bourgeois forces after 1935. It itself is forced to admit in its article that the working masses after World War II had the responsibility to support the the Communist Party of China against Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. (p. 4, col. 2) This alone destroys its theory that the Seventh Congress wiped out all distinction between the communist and the bourgeois political forces. After all, the leadership of the CP of China was one of the most enthusiastic backers of the line of the Seventh Congress, even trying to present matters as if they were the only real followers of this line and its true authors. Yet the distinction between the CPC, even with such erroneous theories, and the reactionary bourgeois nationalists of the KMT was crucial for the working people.
In its Practical Work, Such as It Is, OMLWP Repeats the Errors of the Seventh Congress
As we have seen, although OMLWP presents itself as the most stern critic of the Seventh Congress, in fact it ends up agreeing with Dimitrov that the struggle against fascism really is the. cause of the errors of the Seventh Congress. The connection between OMLWP and the Seventh Congress becomes even cheer when we examine OMLWP's united front tactics in the present. We will see that OMLWP is one of the most servile followers of liquidationist policies which duplicate and build on the errors of the Seventh Congress.
Among the issues that the OMLWP in practice agrees with the Seventh Congress on are the following:
That united front tactics mean first and foremost united front agreements and coalitions from the top with the reformists and opportunists,
That the reformists and opportunists allegedly fight well in the immediate struggle,
That independent communist work should be ridiculed as sectarianism, denounced as staying on the sidelines, and counterposed to united front work.
These liquidationist points are in fact the very center of OMLWP's attack on our Party, just as they are also in the forefront of Dimitrov's and the Seventh Congress' attacks on Leninist united front tactics.
United Front Tactics Before the Seventh Congress
To see this, we must first briefly review the basic change in united front tactics that took place before and after the Seventh Congress. Here we will not try to duplicate or summarize the detailed discussion in the series of articles in The Workers' Advocate. Instead we shall simply point to a few basic issues; we recommend that the interested reader carry out the serious study necessary to come to an informed view of these issues.
Prior to the Seventh Congress, the basic issue, the whole brunt of the Leninist united front tactics was that the communist parties must not rest content with simply uniting the workers who already agree with the communist theories. Instead they must win the majority of the working class to communism by leading the working class in struggle, by uniting workers who, despite their differing views, Were burning with the desire to fight against the bourgeoisie. This was to be done despite the diehard opposition to the class struggle by the reformist and opportunist leaders and political trends.
The emphasis was on the united front from below; agreements, and appeals for agreements, with opportunist parties and leaders were to be judged from the angle of whether they aided or retarded the unity from below.
As the Fourth Congress of the CI stated:
"The most important thing in the tactics of the United Front is and remains the agitational and organizational unification of the working masses. The real success of the United Front tactics is to come from below, from the depth of the working masses themselves. At the same time, the Communists should not decline, under given circumstances, to negotiate with the leaders of the workers' parties in opposition to us." (from Point 10. "The United Front Tactics" of the "Resolution on the Tactics of the CI" of the Fourth Congress, November-December 1922.)
The United Front -- According to the Seventh Congress
The Seventh Congress reversed these Leninist tactics. According to Dimitrov and the Seventh Congress, united front tactics were identified with the united front from above with the opportunists. Far from holding that "under given circumstances" negotiations with the opportunist leaders had a place, they held that such agreements and negotiations were at the heart of united front tactics.
In essence, the work from below was now largely judged on whether it helped or hurt chances for agreements from above, rather than judging appeals for unity from above on whether they helped or hurt the real unification of the fighting masses. This, and not the fight against fascism, was one of the central theses that resulted in one opportunist error after another - for this thesis required that the communists sell one aspect after another of the class struggle and the communist tactics in order to induce the social-democratic and reformist leaders to enter agreements.
United Front Tactics - According to OMLWP
And on this key issue, the OMLWP agrees whole-heartedly with the Seventh Congress. They denounce our Party up and down because, while we go all out to unite the masses in struggle against imperialism, we are not in this or that coalition dominated by reformist, social-democratic and trotskyite forces, such as Chicago-area CISPES or the so-called "AIC" (Anti-lmperialist Coalition) of Chicago. (Note that OMLWP avoids the name AIC and refers to it as the April 20th contingent.)
In fact, we join or stay out of the opportunist-led coalitions depending on the circumstances sometimes joining helps one stay close to the masses, while at other times joining means getting bogged down, away from the masses, in useless squabbles among opportunist leaders or agreeing to give up militant agitation, slogans, and other work.
But in either case, our Party does not take a sectarian attitude towards CISPES, AIC or any of the opportunist-led coalitions. We attend mass activities organized by these coalitions and work among the masses influenced by the opportunists. We pay close attention to that section of these coalitions which consists of honest activists longing for the struggle and do our best to link up with these activists, encourage their fighting spirit, and help them break through the barriers put in their way by the reformists. Even the OMLWP was forced to take notice of our extensive work with the AIC - by cursing our work repeatedly - in the same article which tries to present our Party as taking a sectarian stand towards AIC.
Meanwhile OMLWP and the dominant AIC leaders took an extremely sectarian attitude towards our Party and all activists who didn't agree to the discipline of AIC. They saw no value in the far more extensive anti-imperialist work that was carried out outside AIC and that had been going on long before OMLWP and the main AIC leaders consented to do anything outside the CISPES umbrella. The OMLWP, in its articles, stays as far as possible away from the question of why the AIC couldn't support any mass activities that didn't agree to come under the discipline of the small AIC. The OMLWP whines that we [OMLWP and AIC] would have been a much greater anti-imperialist force and would have reached more people before and during the demonstration" (p. 14, col. 2) if MLP had accepted AIC discipline, but stays as far as possible from the question of whether anti-imperialist work as a whole would have been a greater or lesser force if the MLP had agreed to curtail its work to fit it under the AIC umbrella.
OMLWP Regards Only the United Front from Above as United Front Work
Instead OMLWP declares on principle that it is sectarianism not to be in the opportunist-dominated coalitions. It argues that only this is united front work, and in so arguing it is simply covering up its cowardice, its refusal to do anything beyond the bounds of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party.
OMLWP's very definition of united front work is identical to what the CI called the united front from above. The OMLWP regards any other conception except the united front from above with the opportunists as "view[ing] the united front as synonymous with mass work." (p. 13 col. 1) They write:
"This concept of the united front being the same as mass work reflects sectarianism. By not distinguishing between the separate work a party does among the masses to win them to communism (its own work in factories, trade unions, mass organizations, the development of its own mass organizations, its own trade unions, etc.) and its attempt to unite workers in separate groups or parties in the battle against capital in order to win workers influenced by the compromising groups and parties - the united front... "(p. 13, col. 2)
Thus, according to OMLWP, there are two separate spheres of work, unrelated to each other. There is the independent communist work, that is one thing. And there is a completely different thing, the work to unite the workers, which is the united front work.
What a fraud! What is the independent work of the communists? Isn't it to lead the workers in the struggle against capital? And, if so, isn't the nature of that independent work key to whether or not the masses can be united in the struggle against capital? And thus, isn't the independent agitation and struggle of the communists key to uniting the workers.
Yes, special attention must be given to the particular tasks involved in mobilizing activists and workers with differing views. But this work is closely associated with the independent communist work among these activists and workers. To regard the united front work as fancy agreements from the top without independent work going on constantly among the rank-and-file is to give up Leninist tactics and run the risk of simply merging into the reformist swamp. The CI, prior to the Seventh Congress, had to wage a protracted struggle to ensure that united front tactics weren't perverted by leaving out the independent communist work - but OMLWP on principle denounces the independent communist work as something separate and detached from the united front work.
Thus, prior to the Seventh Congress the C.I. insisted that the independent work of the communist parties was at the heart of united front tactics. As the Fourth Congress put it:
"The tactics of the United Front imply the leadership of the Communist vanguard in the daily struggles of the large masses of the workers for their vital interests." (Point 10, "Resolution on the Tactics of the CI", emphasis added.)
There aren't two class struggles - one where the communists can do their independent work, and one where the united front is supreme. There cannot be a separate, independent communist strike at a factory, and the strike of the mass of workers. Therefore, to separate the independent work of the communists from the work to unite the workers against capital means to regard the independent work of the communists as something detached from the struggle.
But for OMLWP there are two separate spheres. There is the sphere of independent work, where the OMLWP can say any "radical" thing it wishes, because this sphere takes place outside of the struggle where words can never be checked with deeds. This is the sphere of rampant sectarianism, of OMLWP's idea of theoretical work, and so forth.
And there is the battle against capital, where the OMLWP is afraid to go beyond the bounds of what is agreeable to the CISPES leaders, to the AIC leaders, etc. Indeed, the OMLWP viciously attacks those, such as our Party, who have the revolutionary spirit to truly break with reformism, fight the labor bureaucrats, etc.
For OMLWP, only formal united fronts from above with the opportunists count as real united fronts. They write hypocritically, after denouncing independent communist work:
"No, united front work would be if MLP built a contingent around anti-imperialist slogans, had other groups in it, and MLP's propaganda and participation were on a communist basis." (p. 13, col. 2)
In fact, we have repeatedly build contingents with groups around anti-imperialist (or other appropriate) slogans, and we did this at the April 20th demonstration also. But unless these contingents contain the particular, diehard social-democrats and trotskyites that the OMLWP is currently playing with, and come under the discipline of consensus with the opportunist marsh, the OMLWP doesn't recognize this as united front work.
In short, OMLWP entirely agrees with the fundamental idea of the Seventh Congress that the united front from above with the diehard opportunists is the only type of united front work. Despite its pretense of denouncing the Seventh Congress, it actually, reproduces the theses of the Seventh Congress in its own words.
OMLWP Whitewashes the Social-Democrats and Trotskyites
The OMLWP also fully agrees with Dimitrov and the Seventh Congress on the nature of opportunism. OMLWP of course pretends to be the most stern critics of opportunism in abstract theory, but they praise the work of the social-democrats and trotskyites in the present-day coalitions and denounce the Leninist teachings on opportunism as mere dead words from a textbook.
Listen to OMLWP describe the work of the trotskyites and "left" social-democrats who dominated the AIC of Chicago. They relegate their disagreements with the trotskyites and social-democrats to such issues as the theory of permanent revolution while praising the Opportunists for pushing forward the immediate work. They go so far as to ridicule the idea that the social-democracy and trotskyism have anything to do with a coalition dominated jointly by trotskyite groups (who hardly make a secret of their trotskyism, but shout it from the rooftops) and "left" social-democrats.
"It is true that the contingent was not M-L and that deviations existed within. But not so much for the reasons MLP gave. To us the deviations were around some groups' views of the Trotskyite permanent revolution, or Trotskyite party building, or 'Social-Democratic' illusions about what is possible to win under capitalism and how much to push the idea of socialism,...
"Knowing from its textbooks that Social-Democracy and Trotskyism hold back the working-class movement, the MLP had to apply that label to the contingent. It seems to us that it was not the contingent which held back the working-class movement, but the MLP." (p. 11, col. 1)
Compare OMLWP's praise of how the opportunists really push forward the immediate working-class movement with Lenin's golden words:
"The [reformists and centrists] differ from us not only (and not chiefly) because they do not recognize the armed uprising and we do. The chief and radical difference is that in all spheres of work (in bourgeois parliaments, trade, unions, cooperatives, journalistic work, etc.) they pursue an inconsistent, opportunist policy, even a policy of downright treachery and betrayal.
"Fight against the social-traitors, against reformism and opportunism - this political line can and must be followed without exception in all spheres of our struggle. And then we shall win the working masses." ("Greetings to Italian, French and German Communists", Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 62)
OMLWP would have us believe that these words are outdated dogmas from a textbook. But anyone who really engages in revolutionary work knows that they are more true today than ever. The differences between revolutionaries and the trotskyites, revisionists and social-democrats is not something separate from the progress of the working-class movement, because in all spheres of work the opportunists follow a policy of kowtowing to the "left" wing of the Democratic Party and betraying the independent class interests of the proletariat. They differ in how they cover up their betrayal with "left" words, but today they all follow, essentially, a liquidationist policy.
Lenin's teachings on the nature of opportunists are verified again and again in the class struggle. Revolutionary practice and life itself teach the correctness of the Leninist critique of opportunism. The Workers' Advocate has carried many reports on how the treachery of the social-democrats, trotskyites and revisionists is manifested again and again on all the question of the present-day struggle.
The struggle against opportunism is at the heart of Leninist united front tactics. Those who have lost (or never had) the will to fight opportunism as it manifests itself in the ongoing struggle, those who cannot even understand what the opportunists are doing wrong, can not have the faintest idea of how to apply communist united front tactics.
But for OMLWP, as for Dimitrov and the Seventh Congress, the struggle against opportunism is dogmatic invention of those damned sectarians, sideliners, bookworshippers. Just like Dimitrov, OMLWP denounces the Leninist teachings on the struggle against opportunism as outdated.
The OWLWP Ridicules Independent Communist Work
The OMLWP also follows Dimitrov and the Seventh Congress in ridiculing the independent communist work to lead the class struggle. Dimitrov and company had lost faith in winning the masses to communism. OMLWP is willing to talk about winning the masses to communism, but it divorces this work from the current class struggle.
In fact, OMLWP centers its attack on our Party on the vigorous independent work of our Party to unite and lead the masses against the bourgeoisie. It is because our Party engages in this work that OMLWP says we don't know what a real united front is. Why, to mix up winning the masses to communism and the daily struggle is to be guilty of "centrist sectarianism", of viewing "the united front as synonymous with mass work", to be "well known for 'standing on the side lines' and 'refusing to get their hands dirty.'" (pp. 15, 13)
Faced with the successes of our work, OMLWP just lies about it. OMLWP claims that our Party did not work to build a contingent for the April 20th national demonstration in Washington and to unite a section of the masses around anti imperialist slogans. (p. 13, col. 2) But, faced with the fact that this allegedly non-existent contingent was far larger than the AIC contingent, OMLWP cries out, rather comically, that MLP attempted to "out-chant contingent chants". -Better to complain about "despotic politics" than to examine why the AIC plan flopped. And certainly better than to explain why the AIC took a sectarian attitude towards the main anti-imperialist activities in Chicago in preparation for the, April 20th demonstration.
The fact is - it is OMLWP which is sideline to the ongoing struggle as a matter of principle. In their Principles of Unity, the OMLWP declares that it is wrong to devote much attention to the ongoing struggle.
"The forms for building the party vary given the stage of development. At first, while Marxism-Leninism (and the working-class movement) is only reemerging and theoretical work and propaganda are the major activities, books, journals, debates and forums will be the corresponding forms.... The OMLWP analyzes the stage of development and applies the proper forms to that stage. At this time we see that the theoretical and propaganda needs are still great, so we devote our efforts to the corresponding activities.
"The communist or socialist education and organization of the working class must also include work in the day-to-day activities of the class and to help the working class win necessary reforms and build up its forces organizationally. Until there is a vanguard party, such work can only be weak and sporadic. The OMLWP carries out what mass work it can, knowing that its major energy must go to building the vanguard party." (Part III "Practical", Points B4 and C)
Thus the OMLWP, repeating the flagrant errors of the Maoists and neo-revisionist section of the movement of the 1970s, separates party building and theoretical work from the ongoing struggle. They then emphatically declare that the ongoing struggle is of minor concern to them. They are side-line on principle.
And once again we see that belief in the wonder-working powers of reformist coalitions goes hand-in-hand with cowardice and abstention from the ongoing struggle.
The OMLWP On Adapting Agitation to the "Middle Class"
Thus the OMLWP's united front work is directly along the lines of the Seventh Congress. And it is these questions on which OMLWP and Dimitrov agree and not the recognition of the need to fight the world offensive of fascism - that were at the root of the errors of the Seventh Congress.
Consider the question of watering down communist agitation to appeal to the liberal bourgeoisie and the "middle" classes. The Seventh Congress was famous for this. While OMLWP, reiterating its demand that our Party tone down its work to what is acceptable to CISPES, states:
"The largely middle class membership of CISPES is hardly touched by MLP's patient leafletting." (p. 13, col. 2)
Here we see again MWP'S disdain for independent communist work - imagine how sad it is to do "patient leafletting" or to be "standing outside a factory handing out Workers' Advocate" (Ibid.) when one could avoid all that hassle by just relying on joining CISPES or AJC. So instead of appealing to the proletariat, one should adapt oneself to the largely middle class membership". (And all talk of membership aside, it is really the reformist leaders, with their "middle class" politics, that OMLWP has in mind.)
Here it is - in full bloom! All OMLWP's talk of getting to the "workers and oppressed" via entering CISPES is nonsense. And so is the OMLWP's talk about "propaganda and agitation on a communist basis". The real issue, for OMLWP, is doing nothing that would scare away those under the sway of "middle class" politics. 80 down with "patient leafletting" and "standing outside a factory handing out Workers' Advocate." What does that have to do with the "real united front" work of winning over the liberals? (For that's what middle-class politics in the anti-war movement is - liberalism.) OMLWP doesn't have much time for the ongoing struggle itself, or for patient leafletting of the proletariat, but it can't lose sight of that middle class liberalism.
Yes, work should be done among all progressive activists, whether they are from the "middle class" or anywhere else. But this work should aim at mobilizing them into the struggle and at breaking them away from "middle class" politics.
Our Party, whether it joins a reformist-dominated coalition such as CISPES or AIC, or stays outside, puts emphasis on uniting the working masses and propagating the proletarian line. Communist united front tactics always require patient work among the masses, and the spirit of not bowing down to the middle class leaders.
OMLWP - Mouthpiece for the Slanders from the Reformist Leaders
Finally, there is one final feature of OMLWP's article that deserves attention. It is notable that OMLWP, which is so understanding and forgiving to the social-democrats, trotskyites and reformists, has a foul mouth when it comes to revolutionaries such as our Party. It repeats the slanders from the CISPES and AIC leaders, and it invents a few lies of its own. OMLWP, which has such cowardice in front of the labor bureaucrats and middle class elements, suddenly becomes a real big mouth in attacking communism.
As we have seen, OMLWP repeats all the stock reformist lies about communist work being sidelineism, sectarianism, despotic politics, etc. etc. It shows no respect at all for communism.
But it praises the work of the social-democratic and trotskyite-dominated AIC extravagantly, hiding the fiasco of the AIC with the most absurd inventions. Why, according to OMLWP, "The Focus Was on Organizing the Working Class and Oppressed". (p. 10, col. 1) Actually, the focus was on squabbles among the opportunist leaders of AIC and on trying to find more rightist forces to win over. OMLWP itself, as we have seen, holds that the present stage of its work is not to organize the working class - so it hardly seems that it could have put the focus on organizing the working class while in AIC.
Of course, the OMLWP has to distinguish themselves a bit from the other reformists. So it adds a few lies of its own.
OMLWP, for some reason, throws in the question of Albania into the article on the united front. It states that our Party "hasn't had the guts to openly criticize the PLA [Party of Labor of Albania]" and hasn't discussed the PLA's stand on Khomeini or on the Malvinas war.
In fact, we have discussed the weakness in the PLA's line thoroughly and in public (and have paid particular attention to the questions of Iran and the Malvinas war). See, for example, the entire issue of the Workers' Advocate of March 20, 1984, an issue whose lead article is entitled "Our Differences with the Party of Labor of Albania".
The OMLWP is quite aware of the literature from our Party on the PLA. But, although it calls its bulletin "Workers' Truth", it prefers to lie.
Similarly, in order to cover up the fact that it is denouncing independent communist work, the OMLWP pretends that the MLP's work is really suspect. It states:
"If promotion of anti-imperialism is the bulk of what the MLP does in the anti-war or anti-intervention movements (including what is written in their paper), it is not winning the masses to communism. [Which is supposed to be assured as soon as one joins CISPES or AIC.- ed.] A tactic of stopping communist propaganda in order to get people to an anti-imperialist level first (instead of helping the anti-imperialist movement grow while introducing communism) is not the united front." (p. 3, col. 2)
Now there's a serious attitude. The OMLWP states that it doesn't know if the MLP really has this sin, but it will make the accusation anyway.
In fact, the stand of our Party was expressed in detail in the resolutions of the Second Congress of our Party, published on Jan. 1, 1984. OMLWP must have been aware of the resolutions: no one reading the Workers' Advocate could have missed the entire issue devoted to them. But that didn't stop the OMLWP from inventing some more fairy tales.
Resolution II.C, on "The Struggle Against Militarism and Imperialism", fully explains the issue so mucked up by the OMLWP. It states, in part:
"... Opposition to imperialism as a system is an important step towards a revolutionary stand, but it is not the full stand itself. The anti-imperialist slogans are an appeal to the masses which helps awaken them to political life and consciousness. They help sever the masses from the influence of the Democratic Party and the capitalist parties generally. They are well adapted to the present situation in the U.S., because, among other things, anti-imperialist agitation has a long history and has penetrated widely among the masses and because of the experience of the the struggle against the U.S. war of aggression in Viet Nam and against the various other U.S. aggressions around the world. But general anti-imperialist agitation and organization does not exhaust the tasks of revolutionary work in the anti-war movement.
"Thus it is crucial that the proletarian wing of the anti-war movement be constantly built up and strengthened. The working class must be brought into all the actions against imperialist war so that it can take its place in the center of the anti-imperialist struggle. The activists must be won over to the standpoint of the class struggle and to see the role of the proletariat as the leading and main force of the coming socialist revolution. No artificial wall must be placed between anti-imperialist work and communist work.
"Direct work must be done in support of the perspective of the socialist revolution....
"Thus the Marxist-Leninist Party works to promote the class perspective in the fight against imperialist war, to bring the proletariat to the center of the anti-imperialist struggle, and to build up the Marxist-Leninist trend within the movement. In this way it puts forward an inspiring perspective before the anti-imperialist movement; it guides the movement so that it serves as a force for the socialist revolution; it fights vacillations and the influence of the reformists; and it ranges the anti-war movement on the side of the proletariat." (TheWorkers' Advocate, Jan. 1, 1984, p. 30)
This is what the OMLWP professes to believe is the "tactic of stopping communist propaganda in order to get people to an anti-imperialist level first". As a matter of fact, we have seen that it is the OMLWP that demands that communist propaganda be curtailed so that it won't upset the "middle class" elements in CISPES and which devotes much of its article to complaining over and over that our Party introduced much too militant a line into various coalition meetings.
Uphold the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Critique of the Seventh Congress
The OMLWP's liquidationist stand, their hatred for the forces of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, and their perversion of united front tactics illustrates the necessity of upholding the Marxist-Leninist critique of the Seventh World Congress of the CI. The OMLWP's liquidationist conception of united front tactics duplicates the errors from the Seventh Congress. Their demand that communist work be watered down to what is accepted to the reformist and opportunist-dominated leaderships of various coalitions, and that the communists channel all their work in the mass movement through the reformist-dominated coalitions, would be the death of revolutionary work. And these demands are made in the name of the "united front".
Therefore, let us persist in upholding revolutionary Marxist-Leninist united front tactics! Such tactics are essential for uniting the masses in the struggle against the bourgeoisie. And let us continue to wipe out all the foundations of the liquidationist tactics. Part of this is carrying but the criticism of the Seventh World Congress of the CI. <>
The above article shows that the OMLWP'S views on united front tactics duplicate the errors of the Seventh Congress. An examination of the history and role of the "Anti-Imperialist Contingent" of Chicago will further show the utter hypocrisy of OMLWP's demand that our Party had to join the AIC as a matter of principle.
The driving force behind the formation of the AIC was the so-called "Anti-Imperialist Group" of Chicago. AIG was formed by a few social-democratic and trotsky individuals and small groups and OMLWP. It came from elements that were subordinating their work to CISPES.
But as Chicago-area CISPES went so far to the right that it essentially ceased any mass activity or even organizing for the national demonstrations, the AIG decided to continue CISPES-style politics with some activities outside CISPES. AIG also noted that there was a leftward trend of the activists that was bringing a number of them into the anti-imperialist contingents and other activities around our Party.
AIG was formed to ensure that the leftward-moving activists would not fundamentally break with CISPES-style politics and, in particular, it was opposed to the activists attending the anti-imperialist contingents around our Party that had been organized regularly in Chicago for years or taking part in the work of building up the Chicago Anti-Imperialist Newsletter. Far from welcoming the work our Party had done for years -- now, AIG had been formed allegedly to support anti-imperialist work -- AIG took a hostile stand. Although the AIG had few contacts with the masses, it advocated that the tail should wag the dog - that all activity must be coordinated through them. Rather than working hard to link up with the anti-imperialist activists and the ongoing activities, it demanded that everything stop and subordinate itself to the discipline of an AIC consensus.
It is also interesting, in the light of OMLWP's demands that our Party take part in this or that coalition, that AIG never invited our Party to take part. It simply demanded that our Party throw all its force behind whatever scheme NC was planning at the moment.
AIG eventually organized a somewhat broader group, the "Anti-Imperialist Coalition", which had the goal of organizing a contingent for the April 20th National Demonstration. It did have a section of honest activists, but it was still dominated by the social-democratic and trotskyite individuals and small groups. The AIC had difficulty doing much work among the masses and, like AIG, was bogged down in squabbles among the leaders. Although the OMLWP bitterly denounces our Party for not joining the AIC, in. fact our Party was excluded at the beginning. But, on the one hand, the deals the AIC leaders tried to make with forces even further to the right fell through, and, on the other hand, rank-and-file activists in the AIC insisted on inviting our Party to various activities because they respected the hard work of our Party among the masses.
The AIC leaders then demanded that our Party agree to their discipline. Our Party took part in various AIC activities on a friendly basis, and helped swing the balance against such proposals as holding a raffle whose prize was a dinner at the Playboy Club or have the diehard anti-communist social-democrat Sidney Lens be the featured speaker at an AIC event, but we refrained from joining the AIC and refused to curtail the scope of our work.
Meanwhile the AIC leaders did not support the anti-imperialist activities of our Party. As the article by OMLWP shows, they looked down at our "patient leafletting", our demonstrations in working class areas, and our other protracted work to push forward the movement against U.S. imperialism and strengthen the proletarian wing of the movement.
The OMLWP ignores the struggle waged by the A1G and AIC leaders against the anti-imperialist work of our Party. It simply seeks to construct a "communist" coloring for the slanders of the social-democratic and trotskyite groupings. For example, there was allegedly no need to respect the anti-imperialist work of our Party, for who cares about "patient leafletting", because the anti-imperialist contingents around our Party weren't "real" united fronts, because anti-imperialists shouldn't be concerned with independent communist work, because the MLP's anti-imperialist work was either too communist or not communist enough (OMLWP makes both charges), and so on and so forth. OMLWP presents matters as if AIC was the center of the anti-imperialist movement in Chicago.
The study of the Leninist united front tactics, including the repudiation of the turn in the line of the international communist movement at the Seventh Congress of the CI, helps explode these fallacies. <>