Vol. 2, #2
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY, USA
Feb. 20, 1986
[Front Page: Hearings on the bombing of MOVE: The police were out for murder]
IN THIS ISSUE
| On the Stand of the CP of the Philippines Towards the Liberals and the Election Fraud..................... | 2 |
| Boycott the Snap Election, Advance the Revolution............................................................................. | 3 |
| Postal Letter Carriers Face Catch 22..................................................................................................... | 5 |
| Beginning Vol. 3 of The Student........................................................................................................... | 7 |
| Correction on 'Low Intensity Warfare'.................................................................................................. | 7 |
| Correspondence: |
|
| Assoc. of Supporters of the CP of Iran in Britain Supports the Nicaraguan Workers Press Campaign............................................................................................................................................... | 8 |
| On the Reactionary Role of Social-Democracy..................................................................................... | 8 |
Hearings on the bombing of MOVE
The police were out for murder
A Comment on the Views of
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES ON THE ELECTION FRAUD
The statement of the Communist Party of the Philippines
"BOYCOTT THE SNAP ELECTION, ADVANCE THE REVOLUTION"
Letter Carriers Face Catch 22:
SAY NO! TO DOUBLE-ENDING AND SPEED-UP
ENTERING VOL. III OF THE STUDENT
CORRESPONDENCE
FROM LOS ANGELES - ON THE REACTIONARY ROLE OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
Last May 13, the Philadelphia,police carried out a murderous assault on the black group MOVE. After hours of firing ammunition, tear gas and water cannon on the MOVE house on Osage Avenue, the police dropped a powerful bomb on the roof. The inferno which resulted was allowed by city officials to destroy 61 houses in the west Philadelphia neighborhood, leaving over 250 people homeless. Eleven people in the MOVE house, including five children, were incinerated.
Outrage among the masses has not let the MOVE massacre fade away. And the police and city officials, with black Mayor Wilson Goode at their head, continue to feel the heat for their responsibility for this atrocity. To relieve the pressure and whitewash the massacre, the government is holding a string of official inquiries. In November the Philadelphia Special Investigative Commission (PSIC) concluded 18 days of televised hearings. The finds of the hearings are soon to be released. And four more investigations are yet to come: by the Philadelphia district attorney, the Pennsylvania Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Justice Department.
The 11-member PSIC was appointed by Mayor Goode to "investigate" himself and. his cronies. It included big time lawyers, bankers, and FBI men. Some of its members were also big contributors to Goode's election campaign.
Although its official "findings" have not yet been released,,one thing is clear: in no way will this inquiry condemn Goode and company for the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of the MOVE people, and the destruction by fire of a black working class neighborhood. Quite the opposite. The whole thrust of the hearings was that it was quite necessary and correct to stamp out the MOVE people. At the same time, it was unfortunate that the assault suffered from "miscommunications" and "mistakes". In fact, the capitalist authorities are using these hearings to sum up how the SWAT and police assault teams can do their jobs more neatly, with better equipment, better communications, and better planning in future assaults on groups the government may want to eliminate.
The Murderers Point the Finger at Each Other
The commission hearings saw a parade of, some 88 witnesses including the four key figures in the assault: Mayor Goode, then city Managing Director Leo Brooks, Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor, and Fire Commissioner William Richmond. These are the officials who bear the greatest responsibility for planning and ordering the murderous actions of the police and fire departments on May 13. To escape blame, they lied, contradicted each other, and pointed the finger. The lower officials, in turn, contradicted the chiefs, repeatedly giving conflicting testimony.
Goode, who last May thought it best for his image to accept full responsibility, changed his tune a bit during the hearings. Now he portrayed himself as uninformed, duped by his lieutenants, a bit foolish perhaps, but well-meaning, and oh-so sorry that things turned out as they did. Today, of the big four, only Goode's job is still secure. Brooks resigned shortly after May 13. Sambor resigned shortly after the hearings. And there are reports that Richmond is considering leaving his post. This is a typical cover-up in capitalist politics while all are guilty, the subordinates withdraw in order to save the top dog.
The Federal Government Also Had a Hand in the Massacre
In all fairness, Mayor Goode and his henchmen were not alone in unleashing the massacre of May 13. The hearings confirmed that they had the eager assistance of higher levels of the capitalist government, right up to the federal agencies.
Intelligence on MOVE was shared with agents from the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau. It was also the ATF which approved and helped the Philadelphia Police Department acquire automatic weapons and other military equipment for the assault on the MOVE home.
Back in 1984, Goode went to the FBI and the Secret Service to solicit their help. In January, 1985, the FBI gave the Philadelphia Police Department 37.5 pounds of the powerful military explosive C-4 to carry out the bombing of the MOVE home. Then on May 9 and 11, FBI agents, including an explosives expert and two SWAT technicians, participated in final tactical planning sessions for the assault. The helicopter and pilot that were used to drop the infamous bomb were provided courtesy of the Pennsylvania, state police.
No Survivors Was Part of the Plan
The testimony at the hearings -- despite all the contradictions, lies and cover-up -- painted a picture of the city officials and police working out a careful plan for the murder of the MOVE people. And when they put the plan into effect it was clear that they wanted no survivors, neither men, women nor children. Here are a few of the pieces of this murder plan that came out in the hearings.
In their testimony, Goode, Sambor and Brooks all repeatedly, said that uppermost in their minds was the safety of the MOVE children. (What kind-hearted gentlemen these child bombers are!) They said that there was even an order to seize the children prior to May 13. Yet on May 11, two days before the confrontation, a cop opened a police barrier on Osage Avenue to allow a carload of MOVE children to return to the house.
The truth is, Goode, Sambor and Brooks were out to see that the MOVE people fry, no matter their age. In the days before the assault, the people living in the MOVE house frequently went out and the police could have picked them up on the street. But that would have spoiled the plans to bomb MOVE, plans which the city and police had devoted so much time and energy to.
Ex-Police Chief Sambor testified that the bombing was "the safest and most conservative plan" (safer than what? nuclear-tipped artillery?) for ending the siege, supposedly because it would poke a hole in the roof, allowing the police to drop in tear gas bombs. Needing a hole for inserting tear gas is the official claim for why the bomb was used. But this official claim is a flimsy cover-up. In fact, the building was already full of holes and full of tear gas. For hours the police had been pumping gas into the house through holes in the walls created by nine earlier explosions. If anything, the problem the police had was that the gas was dissipating through big gashes in the house, with the lower front portion of the house ripped wide open.
The police didn't want a hole, but a fire. That's why they dropped a bomb on the roof after a helicopter pilot reported that large-gas cans (fuel for MOVE's generators) were "obvious" on the roof.
That's also why they dropped an exceptionally powerful and hot bomb. The Tovex TR-2 and C-4 explosives dropped on the house threw off an intense heat of some 7,200 degrees.
And that's why, once the fire had started, the police and fire chiefs did nothing to put it out. A fire expert testified at the hearings that the blaze could have been extinguished even up to 45 minutes after it began. But the top City brass stood by as the fire descended deep into the house - raging at 2,000 degrees, which is the temperature customarily used for cremating bodies - before they allowed the water hoses to be turned on. But by this time the inferno was out of control.
During the hearings, City Director Brooks explained that he gave the go-ahead to drop the bomb out of concern that MOVE people might try to escape under cover of darkness if the siege lasted a second day. "Concern about the children" sounds good at the hearings afterwards. But at the time the mayor's office and the police had only one concern: they were hell bent that none of the MOVE people escape the punishment that had been prepared for them.
A good deal of the testimony in the hearings showed how the police did everything they could to make sure no one escaped from the MOVE home after it had been turned into an inferno by the police bomb.
The testimony showed that people trying to come out of the home were fired on by the police. Birdie Africa, 13 years old, succeeded in fleeing the burning house and, along with Ramona Africa, was one of only two survivors. In videotaped testimony played at the hearings, Birdie stated that the adults shouted repeatedly that the children were going to come out through the garage. Conrad Africa attempted to take out one child as others followed, but the police opened fire, driving them back into the garage.
Even after the bomb had set the house ablaze, television footage recorded the sound of the police continuing to pound away at the building with automatic weapons. At first, all the adults and children sought refuge from the fire in the basement. As the fire spread and grew more intense, they began to shout that they wanted to come out.
Birdie, Ramona Africa, and two other children ran out as flaming debris was falling on them in the alley. Birdie recalled seeing the other two children west in the alley, but did not know what happened to them. It appears that the others who attempted to escape the fire with Ramona and Birdie were cut down by the police. Among other things, a detective who kept a log of events recorded a cop telling a crane operator taking part in the cleanup after the siege to "dig over here, you'll find a body of a male I dropped when the female and the child came out.".
In the days after the assault, the police took a lot of care to destroy evidence of what actually took place; including allowing the badly burned corpses of their victims to further decompose. Nevertheless, a forensic expert, Dr. Ali Z. Hameli, was able to find shotgun pellets in the remains of three of the bodies. The fragments matched the buckshot. used in the shotguns of the Philadelphia Police Department. This is consistent with other evidence that the police may have shot down some of the MOVE people attempting to escape, and then threw their bodies back into the burning house to cover up their murderous plan to take no prisoners.
The Cover-up Goes On
In the future rounds of hearings and inquiries, the mayor, the police and the others, will continue to spin their web of lies to cover themselves. But their crimes in the assault against MOVE are too monstrous to hide. Through the cracks in their own self-serving testimonies comes 'a picture of a carefully planned and gruesome murder of 11 men, women and children by the Philadelphia police, acting under the directives of Mayor Goode and his lieutenants, and aided by the FBI and other federal agencies. No amount of cover-up can wipe the blood from the capitalist authorities who are responsible for the west Philadelphia massacre of last May 13. (An article on the outrageous trial of Ramona Africa is in the February issue of The Workers' Advocate.) <>
The revolutionary struggle is deepening in the Philippines, throwing the reactionary forces into a crisis. The people are rising to their feet in struggle against the fierce repression of the Marcos regime and the heavy exploitation of the exploiting classes. U.S. imperialism is openly worrying about whether it should continue backing Marcos, who has proved incapable of stopping the growth of insurgent forces, or change horses and go for the liberal bourgeois forces who wish to maintain exploitation and continue fighting the revolution but under more "democratic" trappings.
These were the conditions for the election this month in the Philippines. They are discussed in the article "On the Filipino elections/Marcos and the liberals seek to avert revolution" (The Workers' Advocate, Jan. 1, 1986). This article pointed out the attitude of many of the political forces in the Philippines to the election fraud. But at that time we did not yet have word on the stand taken by the Communist Party of the Philippines, which is the driving force in. the National Democratic Front and the New People's Army.
Revolutionary Fire
Since then we have received word of the stand of the CP of the Philippines. Below we reprint an editorial statement of Ang Bayan, journal of the Central Committee of the CP of the Philippines, on the recent elections. Part of this statement breathes revolutionary fire. It points out the sham nature of any election carried out under the supervision of the Marcos apparatus for repression and electoral fraud. It points out that imperialism's support of the election fraud is for the purpose of
"gradually moderat(ing) the conflicts among the local reactionary classes, reconcil(ing) them, and consolidat(ing) their ranks within the framework. of puppet fascist rule. It wants to broaden the political base of such rule and lay the ground for the orderly transfer of power when Marcos dies or when it finally wants to get rid of him."
To change the regime, the statement stresses, requires revolution, not the election fraud.
Thus the CPP called for boycotting the election.
But Also Support for the Liberals
However, the same statement also shows illusions in the liberal. bourgeoisie and its candidate Corazon Aquino. It held that
"The opposition presidential candidate, Mrs. Corazon Aquino, has been carrying on a vigorous anti-fascist campaign thus making valuable contributions to the people's overall antifascist struggles."
If this were true, then why should one boycott such a "valuable" part of the struggle? And wait a minute. If the election is to reconcile the traditional opposition and merge it into the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship, then doesn't this mean that it is to reconcile precisely the forces around Corazon Aquino? After all, who else participated in the elections besides Aquino, her running mate Salvador Laurel, and the forces supporting them? These crying contradictions tie the statement in knots. They are not accidents, but a reflection of one of the fundamental weaknesses in the line of the CP of the Philippines: its conciliatory attitude towards the liberals. This is an illustration of what was described in The Workers' Advocate Supplement lead article of Sept. 25, 1985 entitled "On the revolutionary movement in the Philippines: Conciliation with liberalism is a dangerous course".
Criticism in the Abstract, Silence in the Concrete
Thus we see that the statement, which hints, when it talks in general about the elections, that the bourgeois opposition is part of the "local reactionary classes", mainly drops its class stand when it talks concretely about Aquino. It goes instead into superficial questions of "internal wranglings" in the Aquino camp, caused perhaps by "sincere political differences or by naked personal ambitions". And it only mentions in passing that she is either "naive" or "has not transcended her own comprador-landlord class background".
This does not mean that the CPP never mentions Aquino's class connections. For example, the statement, is a condensation of a longer, article in the Dec. 1985 English edition of Ang Bayan, which we have just received. This article even states, at one point, that
"Another cause of concern is that she [Aquino], has among her closest advisers anti-Marcos but pro-imperialist big compradors based in the capitalist enclave that is Makati [the Filipino Wall Street], and leaders of the ultraconservative and clerico-fascist Opus Dei. She is close to them because of her own comprador-landlord class background."
However, the article does not lead the reader to regard Aquino as a candidate of the big bourgeoisie.
Instead, she just has "connections" and drawbacks which are a matter of concern. The article does provide many useful denunciations of particular stands of Aquino. But, just as in the statement, it praises Aquino (and even Laurel, for heaven's sake) for denouncing "in the course of the current campaign, and even before" the reaction of the Marcos regime and says that, in this respect, "they have helped greatly in the overall anti-fascist struggles of the Filipino people."
Support the Revolutionary Movement in the Philippines
Nevertheless, the CP of the Philippines is still maintaining the struggle. This is illustrated by the fact that, despite everything, they did boycott the elections and they are continuing the armed struggle. We criticize the vacillations in the stand of the CP of the Philippine precisely from the standpoint of supporting the revolutionary struggle in the Philippines, from the standpoint of enthusiastically welcoming the rising up of the workers and peasants, and from the desire to contribute to strengthening this struggle both by propagating the justice of the struggle and by helping it to overcome its weaknesses.
And meanwhile the election fraud is blowing up in the face of US. imperialism and Marcos - it has given rise to even more bickering among the Philippine bourgeoisie, and it has solved nothing. Far from consolidating the rule of the Marcos regime and of the exploiting classes, it is giving rise to an even greater political crisis. The revolutionary crisis continues to deepen.
Let us rally to the side of our Filipino class brothers! Let us denounce U.S. imperialism for its crimes against the Filipino people! Down with the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship! Support the revolutionary movement in the Philippines! <>
Below is the editorial statement in a Special Release, January 15, 1986, of Ang Bayan, journal of the Central Committee of the CP of the Philippines.
The "snap presidential election" scheduled for February 7 will be no different from the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship's past bogus elections, plebiscites and referendums. But it has the makings of being the biggest political swindle ever attempted by the US-Marcos clique upon our people since the imposition of martial law in 1972.
It is a blatant attempt to prolong the life not only of the fascist dictatorial rule but that of the exploitative and oppressive ruling system which are imperiled by crises of the dictatorship's own making and by the people's relentless and heroic revolutionary struggles.
The snap election is an initiative of the Marcos fascist puppet regime. It enjoys the full support of US imperialism since it serves imperialism's own policies and objectives in our country.
The Marcos regime principally aims to ensure its rule until 1992, after 20 years of unprecedented terrorism, rapaciousness, and puppetry to imperialist interests. It is a cunning and ruthless maneuver to divert the people's militant resistance from such schemes of the dictatorship as the exoneration and reinstatement of Gen. Fabian Ver and his cohorts, the"regime's subservience to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and its bloody suppression of the people's democratic rights.
The snap election also aims to secure a "fresh mandate" to facilitate and hasten the influx of foreign support and loans, to divide the broad anti-dictatorship front, and to improve the regime's capability to launch even more savage onslaughts on the people's democratic ; organizations and their revolutionary movement.
While campaigning for reelection, the tyrant Marcos has been tagging his rivals in the traditional opposition as "communists.". This indicates that he schemes to crack down on them, too, after the election.
A rigged election
From all indications, the February 7 snap election will be a rigged one, a lutong Macoy. After two decades in power, Marcos has a firm grip on the state institutions traditionally used for electoral terrorism and fraud - the military and paramilitary, forces, the Commission on Elections, the courts. He controls the major mass media and the newly created Presidential Electoral Tribunal. He also has enormous economic resources looted and accumulated over 20 years.
Under fascist rule, all these are geared -- or are actually being used even now -- to secure "'victory" for the ruling clique.
True, upon the prodding of its imperialist masters the Marcos clique has extended some concessions to the traditional oppositionists. But these are meant only to lure them and the people into participating in its electoral sham, into serving as mere props in the regime's scheme to secure a "fresh mandate."
US imperialism, which has been generally supportive of its puppet Marcos, has made a big show of demanding "fair and clean elections." But it has been tolerating Marcos' political skulduggery.
Through the IMF-WB, imperialism has allowed Marcos to loot and squander: public funds for campaign purposes: it has allowed a 13+billion peso deficit in the national budget, more than twice what Marcos had asked for. And imperialism has the gall to feign "neutrality" in the snap election!
While posing as an impartial referee, imperialism wants to gradually moderate the conflicts among the local reactionary classes, reconcile them, and consolidate their ranks within the framework of puppet fascist rule. It wants to broaden, the political base of such rule and lay the ground for the orderly transfer of power when Marcos dies or when it fina11y wants to get rid of him.
The opposition presidential candidate, Mrs. Corazon Aquino, has been carrying on a vigorous antifascist campaign, thus making valuable contributions to the people's overall antifascist struggles. For this she has generated tremendous support from large segments of the population.
However, her campaign against the fascist puppet Marcos is flawed on several counts. Internal wranglings triggered either by sincere political differences or by naked personal ambitions continue to divide the forces of the traditional opposition. Even those close to her despair over her lack of an effective political machinery. She has yet to spell out a comprehensive program of government.
Mrs. Aquino's more recent pronouncements show that she has abandoned her previous progressive stand on a number of vital issues. And baited by Marcos - and applauded by US imperialism - she has been making increasingly strident anticommunist and antirevolutionary utterances. All these indicate that well-meaning though she may be, she is politically naive or that she has not transcended her own comprador-landlord class background even as she counterposes herself as Marcos' "exact opposite."
Still and all, she is an infinitely better person than Marcos. And even with all her defects and shortcomings, she could easily defeat Marcos under ideal circumstances. But we continue to live under fascist rule, and as already pointed out, Marcos is using every trick in the book to ensure his "victory," with his imperialist masters cheering him on.
On the remote possibility that she wins despite Marcos' flagrant terrorism and cheating, the fascist dictator has also made plans to keep her from assuming power, or if she does, to prevent her from governing effectively.
The Party's stand
The Communist Party of the Philippines is fully aware, as are most of our people, that no election under the present ruling system has brought about basic change in, the. exploitative and oppressive setup in our country. With this awareness, and given the circumstances attending the February 7 snap election as discussed above, the Party has taken the position that boycott is the correct response to frustrate the antinational and antipeople objectives of the US-Marco's dictatorship in this ruthless political swindle.
The Party is consequently calling upon you, our people, to boycott the US-Marcos election, while urging you to seize every opportunity to project your just demands and intensify the just struggles for our national and democratic interests.
The Party also seeks to remind you, our people, that only through our revolutionary struggles - and never through a sham election under fascist auspices can we change the present semicolonial and semi-feudal system in our country.
There are those in the antifascist front who hold that boycotting the sham election is defeatist and is a passive act. On the contrary, it exposes and spotlights the election's spuriousness and futility. It is an act of rejection that strikes deep in the heart of the present system.
We are fully aware that 'while many of our people see the correctness of boycott, many others are participating. in the belief that they can attain genuine change or at least strike a blow at the dictatorship.
For all its meaningless as a means of overthrowing the hated US-Marcos dictatorship, the snap election will teach many more among our people a most valuable political lesson: that revolution, not a rigged election, is the correct path to change.
We call upon you, our people those who are boycotting and those who are participating to forge a. strong unity after February 7 to broaden and intensify the antifascist and antidictatorship struggles, in urban and rural areas alike, in the armed sphere and in the open mass movement.
We call upon you to pursue the national-democratic revolution which, alone, can bring us genuine national freedom, democracy, justice and prosperity. <>
The following is taken from a leaflet issued by the New York Metro Branch of the Marxist-Leninst Party on January 7, 1986.
The latest in unwritten rules for letter carriers:
Regulation 22A:
Carriers must complete their appointed rounds without using the staircase in an elevator building, without dragging two sacks of mail at a time; scuffing their shoes, or violating any one of a thousand other work and safety rules, or they will get written up by the horde of inspectors and supervisors dogging their footsteps on the street.
Regulation 22B:
Carriers on business routes must break every rule on the books and their necks, if necessary, to cover twice the territory in the same amount of time, or they will get written up by their supervisors for coming back late. Sounds like the army? Well, this is the latest wisdom from management for the business routes in [zip code] 10022, and it's just a sample of the productivity measures carriers are getting hit with throughout Manhattan. It is no secret that postal management is on the warpath for stepped-up productivity. And after the videos are shown and the big shots have visited for an hour and left, what this boils down to for the postal workers is speed-up; and stepped-up harassment. This takes on different forms in different stations, but the experience of carriers working business routes out of FDR provides a good example.
Last summer management at FDR inducted a new legion of acting supervisors to crack the whip, and through the early Fall test cards turned up in mail chutes all over the place, station supervisors patrolled the streets, and workers got hassled, written up and suspended over clock hits, latenesses, infractions, The purpose of this campaign was to bully the workers into working, faster and harder. Through this period postal management increased the use of double-ending.
Double-Ending: One Worker Doing the Work of Two
Double-ending has been an issue for a long time. An end is supposed to be one person's section of a route. Sending one person out with two ends is a tremendous increase in the carrier's work on account of the distances involved alone, not to mention the volume of mail. The use of double-ending has gradually been increased over the last few. years to the, extent that now it has become the norm for the afternoon. Last summer during the vacation period, when the under-staffing problem was especially severe, double ends began to be assigned in the morning and triple ends cropped up in the afternoon. Usually, when sent out with two ends, the carrier is, automatically forced to work overtime. Double ends are not assigned on the basis of the Overtime Desired List, which means some carriers who want the overtime don't get it while others are forced to work overtime involuntarily. Many carriers have been faced with a choice between staying on late or racing like hell through the work and skipping breaks in order to get out and get home on time.
Now management has gone a step further. In mid-December management began to announce to the workers on a few routes that various ends could be combined and should still be completed within the one hour and 45 minutes that's usually allotted for each end. In the weeks since, this kind of arbitrary announcement has been made to the workers on any number of routes in the FDR section of Manhattan. Management is saying either race like hell and come back on time or get written up. And management is backing up this ultimatum with, stepped-up spying by route-testers and street supervisors. As usual, work rules are fine for harassing postal workers, but when it's productivity time, safety goes out the window. And in the USPS it's productivity time all the time.
The Work To Rule
The workers are standing up to this harassment by working to rule. They're dragging one bag at a time from the relay boxes. They're waiting for elevators rather than taking stairs. They're not taking a single illicit shortcut that would normally be needed to finish a double-end on time. As a result the carriers are not coming back on time. This is a good beginning. More of such resistance, and more organized resistance, is needed, or there will be no end to how far postal management will go in cracking the whip.
Down with Overwork!
Postal management wants the carriers to do more work than ever before, but without having to pay them overtime. More work for less money is the point to all of management's productivity campaigns; just as hard and as fast as they can until we ourselves establish the limit by fighting back, and fighting back hard. Working-to-rule and other forms of resistance must be organized and spread to give a loud NO!, to this drive for higher workloads and speed up. <>
The following statement is excerpted from an article in the Feb. 6, 1986 issue (Vol. III, #1) of The Student, a newspaper published by activist students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Today's issue of The Student begins our third year of publication. The state of the progressive movement today finds massive hatred for the Reagan government's brutal policies at home and abroad. Throughout the spring and fall of 1985 we saw myth after myth of "yuppism" and "careerism" shattered as students across the U.S. launched militant actions against apartheid.
Unfortunately, the maneuvers of the liberals to suppress and/or boycott any militancy in the movement has gone a long way to liquidate the struggle. While pretending not to, the liberal Democrats have gone along Reagan on every social budget cut and military spending increase. Last fall the Democrats even cancelled their symbolic "protests" against apartheid to give Reagan's microsanctions "a chance to work."
To overcome these obstacles and build the movement we should use the experience of the 1960's struggle against the Vietnam War and Jim Crow, segregation. We must build he independent mass movement! As we begin volume three of The Student, we reaffirm our commitment to fight the Reaganite offensive:
Defend the gains of the 1960's against the Reaganite offensive!
Build the revolutionary student movement, in solidarity with the working class and poor!
Down with the Republicans and Democrats, imperialist parties of the rich! <>
In the article on "The doctrine of 'low-intensity warfare'/Anti-terrorist hysteria to justify U.S. aggression" in the February 1 issue of The Workers' Advocate; the official name of the new U.S. imperialist military doctrine should have been given as "low-intensity conflict" (LIC), not "low-intensity warfare". <>
Below is a letter of solidarity from the Association of Supporters of the CP of Iran in Britain to the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua (formerly MAP-ML), a copy of which was also sent to us.
MAP-ML, Managua, Nicaragua
Dear comrades,
The heroic revolution of 1979 in Nicaragua, which toppled Somoza's dictatorial regime, and questioned the rule of capital itself, was halted. The proletarian alternative in advancing the revolution and gaining the political power was not achieved, and the Sandinistas instead formed a provisional government. A provisional government which even included, out of its five members, two of the well-known bourgeois elements! The Sandinistas, under the banner of 'mixed economy' and 'unity of the whole nation', halted the advance of the revolution and protected capital against any possible 'danger'. Restriction of the freedom of political activity, press, strike, opposition to any self-organisation of the proletariat, etc., are what the proletariat is facing in Nicaragua today.
'But in spite of all the temporary defeats that the bourgeoisie and imperialism have imposed on the working class and oppressed masses under its leadership, and despite all the obstacles that they place in the path of, the proletarian revolution, the class struggle of the world proletariat continues and its ultimate victory is inevitable.' - Programme of the CPI.
We support the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie in Nicaragua, for the advancement and deepening of the Nicaraguan revolution. Following the message of the CPI-Committee Abroad, in its biweekly news bulletin - Rasaneh - we send you our solidarity in your struggles for your right to your own independent press and send you a donation of 10 pounds sterling.
With fraternal greetings,
The Association of the Supporters of the Communist Party of Iran in Britain
7 December 1985 <>
Jan. 13, 1986
Dear comrades,
First of all, congratulations to the party of the American working class, the MLP,USA, on the 6th anniversary of the founding of the party.
In the Jan. 1, 1986 Workers' Advocate you reported on how the sleazy Reaganite regime with the Democrats and the bought-off AFL-CIO bureaucracy had set up the misnamed out "National Endowment for Democracy" (capitalist democracy - of course!). You exposed how the NED had already been caught slipping funds to neo-fascist groups in Panama and France. This is a telling exposure of just whose side of the class struggle the concessions-loving AFL-CIO union bureaucracy is on.
I would like to add an interesting anecdote concerning the leadership of the NED and the nature of social-democratic liberalism in general.
The leading stooge of the NED is a scab named Carl Gershman. Until recently Gershman & Co. served as waterboys for the Reaganite "neo-conservative" Jeane Kirkpatrick at the UN. Prior to this Gershman was the leader of the cold-war/zionist group Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) for years.
When I was active in building the anti-Vietnam War movement at California State University, Northridge, in 1971, the SDUSA group Young Peoples Socialist League (YPSL) was known as a sworn enemy of that movement. SDUSA-YPSL at first served as craven apologists for the Democratic Party and unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate and split the anti-war/anti-racist movement. When that failed the SDUSA-YPSL served as fingermen for the reactionary university administration and also became open boosters of Richard Nixon's bi-partisan funded war of genocide (state-supported terrorism!) in Indochina. By Nov. 1972 SDUSA-YPSL was even more pro-Nixon than the Young Republicans! They also tried to sabotage all union organizing on and off campus that was not authorized and controlled by the AFL-CIO misleaders! They also conducted almost religious worship rituals for their messiah George "I never walked a picket line" Meany, then AFL-CIO godfather. By 1974 SDUSA-YPSL had become body guards for capitalist politicians like the open bircher John Rousselot and other reactionaries! By 1975 the SDUSA dished up a ragsheet "New America" which extolled the glories of the "democratic two-party/system" (read capitalist plutocratic fraud). They also gushed with apologetics for the crimes of Israeli Zionism that could have been written in the zionist's embassy...
This history should be grasped by all honest activists and worker militants... Social-democracy, whether in its rightist or "leftist" guise, is pro-capitalist to the core!
The real path forward for the class struggle of the working people is staunch opposition to the capitalist bosses and their two-party con game and means building up the independent movement of the working class and its political vanguard, the MLP-USA!
Fraternally,
L.A. Supporter <>