WORKERS VANGUARD .

No. 345 s^5*»» 6 January 1984

U.S. Hands Off the World!

NATO

The destructive frenzy of dying capitalism: 16-inch guns of battleship New Jersey bombard Syrian forces in Lebanon; Pershing 2 missiles deployed In West Germany are six to eight minutes flying time from major Soviet cities.

■

JANUARY 3 — Millions around the world are wondering whether there will be a New Year's. 1985. On December 30 a high official in West Germany's foreign ministry declared. “The first American battery of nine Pershing 2 rockets is ready for action in West Germany." For action? So much for the claim that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is for "deterrence." The new NATO missiles in West Europe, the Marines in Leba- non, the rape of the tiny black West Indian island of Grenada, these are not the whims of one man. Ronald Reagan, but the destructive fren/y of a dying capitalist world order.

Reagan came to office promising to restore the “American century" of the 1950s. He was going to achieve military “superiority" over the Soviet Union and wipe out the “Vietnam syndrome" in America. But he can't. There will be no return to the world before the Vietnam War either in the minds of the American people or in the real balance of military and economic forces. However many billions are showered on the Pentagon, there will be no return to the time of the 1962 Cuba missile crisis when the U.S. had over 2.000 strategic nuclear weap- ons. the Soviet Union only about 70. Today, as Soviet chief of staff marshal

Nikolai Ogarkov warned, "retaliation will be certain in all cases." And he can deliver. The U.S. imperialists can no longer practice effective nuclear black- mail. They cannot police the world, they cannot dominate it. The only thing they can do is blow it up.

And they’re now acting just crazy enough to do it. like H itler in his bunker (but Hitler by then was militarily toothless). From the Pentagon to the White House the American rulers have gone absolutely gaga over the “interna- tional terrorist threat." They’re mutter- ing about the "truck-bomb gap” with Syria and Iran. First Reagan surrounds the White House with dump trucks Tilled with sand, then concrete barriers. One half expects he’ll bring in tanks next, as Washington comes to look more and more like some damn banana republic. Of course, there is no terrorist threat to the U.S. rulers. The real terrorists of the world— from Hiroshi- ma to Vietnam to Central America— are the men in the White House and Pentagon.

World Policemen Who Can’t Shoot Straight

The would-be policemen of the Near East arc behaving more like the Key-

stone Cops. On October 23 one man in a Mercedes truck filled with explosives drove right into the central lobby of the Marine headquarters at Beirut airport and blew it up. killing 241 U.S. servicemen. Not only can’t the U.S. forces in Lebanon protect themselves, they can’t even carry out a simple bombing raid The "retaliatory" air raid against Syria in early December was itself a mini-disaster Of the 28 relatively slow-flying planes sent on the mission, two were shot down by Soviet-supplied antiaircraft missiles. One pilot was killed and his navigator (who is black) was captured by the Syrians and held as a prisoner of war. the first since Vietnam Syrian strongman Assad was smart enough to release him to black Democratic politico Jesse Jackson just to rub Reagan’s face in it.

Even the Pentagon brass want out of the bloody mess in Lebanon. The official Long commission report on the October 23 bombing actually criticizes Reagan's policies for jeopardizing the Marines— an unheard-of thing. Reagan is in trouble over Lebanon. Right after the Marine headquarters bombing we raised the call "U.S. Marines Out of Lebanon. Now. Alive!" seeking to intersect the popular feeling that it was

Reagan’s senseless criminal policies which killed those 241 young men. Especially after the Pentagon report, the pressure is building in this country to pull out of Lebanon. Democratic front- runner Walter Mondale has just flip- flopped and is calling for a phased withdrawal So if Reagan cannot win the elections as the Teddy Roosevelt of Grenada, he may try an Adolf Hitler ploy and charge the Democrats with a “stab in the back” over the Near East.

If U.S. imperialism is caught in a bloody quagmire in Lebanon, it’s getting creamed in Central America too. When the Reagan gang took office, they targeted El Salvador as the place to wipe out the "Vietnam syndrome." Here was going to be a Vietnam in reverse, and on the cheap. Although the Soviet Union and Cuba gave little if any military aid to the leftist guerrillas, the Reaganites declared El Salvador the forward point of Soviet "expansionism." the front line of Cold War II. But while Washington’s puppet army and rightist death squads kill tens of thousands of defenseless people, the leftist guerrillas are w inning the civil war. Repeatedly now. entire army companies have deserted en masse. Last w eek the guerrillas captured continued on page 10

Marxism and Bloodthirstiness ... 4

Moonies Forced to Retract Deadly Libel . . .12

Socialist Action's Debut

Ex-SWPers Goon for S.F. Labor Fakers

The San Francisco Bay Area was the scene of some of the most militant strike action against the Greyhound bosses and their attempt to bust the Amalga- mated Transit Union (ATU). This explosive potential was shown in a December 3 demonstration when 1,500- 2,000 militant workers, after listening to over an hour of windy bureaucrats’ speeches, took off to the Greyhound terminal to try and shut it down. The fighting mood of the workers here, as in Philadelphia and Boston, showed that a national transport strike to bring Grey- hound to its knees was possible. Grey- hound bosses clearly recognized this — the company has announced the firing of at least 100 militant strikers, 34 of them in the Bay Area alone.

While AFL-CIO bureaucrats mouthed empty talk of "solidarity, "just as in the PA TCO strike they stabbed the isolated Greyhound strikers in the back by refusing to mobilize their ranks and opposing any real solidarity action. In the Bay Area these sellouts got a little help from some ex-members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who recently formed “Socialist Action" and are advertising themselves as the best friends of Polish Solidarnosc, the only “union" Ronald Reagan loves. At the maiden forum to introduce Socialist Action, held in San Francisco on December 16, these laborite reformists cynically bragged about setting up a "workers defense guard" (really a goon squad) to help the union misleaders protect Greyhound against "crazies" — the militants who wanted to stop the scab buses from rolling!

The Greyhound strike was a real test for the left. The Spartacist League and class-struggle unionists from long- shore/warehouse and telephone were present at the December 3 SF rally, calling for “Trucking, Rail, Transit, AFSCME Workers — All Out to Stop Union Busting!" Our slogans and chants were picked up by the strikers: we saw "Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!" and "No More PATCOs!" hand-scrawled on the back of official ATU signs; and as

the crowd was marching down Market Street they were enthusiastically chant- ing “On strike — Shut it down!" and "No scab buses!" At Seventh Street near Market the demonstrators surged to- ward the Greyhound terminal. At this point labor bureaucrats rushed to the front of the building with the cops. Walter Johnson of the Retail Clerks, perennial leader of every phony “soli- darity" coalition, and ILWU chief Jimmy Herman pleaded with the crowd to disperse. But demonstrators contin- ued to block Seventh Street for another two hours. No buses moved. The union misleaders were terrified.

Immediately a whisper campaign was begun by the bureaucrats saying that “the Sparts” were causing all the trouble, we were the "rabble-rousers." In reality, the most militant layer of Bay Area labor came out to shut down Greyhound, and our class-struggle slogans were eagerly taken up by the crowd in this spontaneous mass action. Next time, the bureaucrats vowed to be "prepared." At a December 5 strike support meeting, Seymour Kramer, an official in the UTU, called for more "monitors” to police the pickets at the upcoming rally. And on December 10 when militant workers again defied the sellout bureaucrats and set up picket lines at terminal entrances to stop the buses, a line of bureaucrats, painters union heavies, and "socialist” goons appeared. When the police commander told the picket captain to disperse the crowd, he dutifully announced "the rally’s over." And standing right next to him telling everyone to go home was one Jeff Mackler, co-national chairman of Socialist Action and a former teachers union official.

At its December 16 public debut. Mackler spoke along with Socialist Action's Maximum Leader Nat Wein- stein (the Solidarnosc-lover who made even the SWP puke). Mackler noted that at the Greyhound rally their strategy was "to have a little march, a nice peaceful march” while assailing “ultralefts” — that is, the militants (of

TROTSKY

The Trotskyists Remained Faithful to October

Leopold Trepper was the heroic Soviet spy who created the " Red Orchestra" that smuggled invaluable intelligence out of occupied Europe and Nazi Germany during World War II. In his memoirs Trepper recalled the heroism of the Trotskyists during the lime of Stalin's great purges in the 1 930s. We reprint below an excerpt from his account of that period.

LENIN

The glow of October was being extinguished in the shadows of under- ground chambers. The revolution had degenerated into a system of terror and horror; the ideals of socialism were ridiculed in the name of a fossilized dogma which the executioners still had the effrontery to call Marxism.

And yet we went along, sick at heart, but passive, caught up in machinery we had set in motion with our own hands, Mere cogs in the apparatus, terrorized to the point of madness, we became the instruments of our own subjugation. All those who did not rise up against the Stalinist machine are responsible, col- lectively responsible I am no exception to this verdict.

But who did protest at that time'7 Who rose up to voice his outrage?

The Trotskyitcs can lay claim to this '■•'nor. Following the example of their leader, who was rewarded for his

obstinacy with the end of an ice-axe, they fought Stalinism to the death, and they were the only ones who did. By the time of the great purges, they could only shout their rebellion in the freezing wastelands where they had been dragged in order to be exterminated In the camps, their conduct was admirable. But their voices were lost in the tundra.

Today, the Trotskyitcs have a right to accuse those who once howled along with the wolves. Let them not forget, however, that they had the enormous advantage over us of having a coherent political system capable of replacing Stalinism. They had something to cling to in the midst of their profound distress at seeing the revolution betrayed. They did not “confess," for they knew that their confession would serve neither the party nor socialism.

— Leopold Trepper,

The Great Game (1977)

whom there were hundreds) who want- ed to stop the scab buses — for supposed- ly seeking a bash with the cops. Reflecting the bureaucrats’ panic, Mackler went on:

“We had to organize a workers defense guard so the next week the crazies wouldn't run the demonstration We had a spectacle of a tiny sect of 20 people leading the chants to workers of 2,000 We needed a little proletarian discipline."

At this point another pscudo- Trotskyist reformist. Steve Zeltzer. pointed a finger at the two Spartacist supporters in the audience. Mackler agreed — “You’re pointing to theculprits

black question — which is really the American question — like the plague Which is a revealing omission in a country where blacks are in the fore- front of labor militancy and the struggle against fascism — things which I don’t think you want to have much todo with, except to stop. And I think the real problem that you face in this country is that the role you want, which is laborite social democracy, isalready taken up by Michael Harrington. That is your real problem You have very little relation- ship to Trotskyism and anybody in this room who is interested in Trotskyism should look to the Spartacist League which does represent that continuity, and certainly not to you, who are if anything a right-wing split from the Socialist Workers Party.”

San Francisco, 3 December 1983: Mass militant efforts to shut down bus terminals terrified Bay Area labor bureaucrats.

right there" — and launched into a frenzy of “outside agitator" baiting worthy of the worst Meanyite piecard: "No one in the socialist movement has the right to go to a striking group of 2.000 workers and take over that picket line, lead the slogans, organize the chants and march the workers around." Socialist Action, on the other hand, claims the right to organize an SWP-stylc "peaceful. legal” parade for the bureaucrats so that the angry workers can blow off steam w hile lecturing them that “we couldn’t close down the thing for the whole day.” In fact it was perfectly obvious that the workers could have and would have shut it down except that the bureaucrats and their waterboys acted as Grey- hound’s first line of defense.

Spartacist spokesman Diana Cole- man took the floor to respond:

"I want to talk about the Greyhound strike a little bit. I think that you see [SWP national chairman) Barnes' somewhat eccentric positions as a barrier to ending what you call the SWP’s ’self-imposed isolation’ which I think means that you want to be more effective at becoming the waterboys for the trade-union bureaucracy in this country.

“And yes. I did see what happened at Greyhound as a test of your organiza- tion when I saw, this last Saturday, Jeff Mackler standing up there shoulder-to- shoulder not only with trade-union bureaucrats but the San Francisco police department defending the Grey- hound bus station lest angry workers should get out ol hand and do some- thing ‘outrageous’ like shut down Greyhound or stop the buses Yes. I thought that really did show what side you were on.

"And I am Mattered by these somewhat oblique references, if people think that the Spartacist League mobilized every kind of militant action that has hap- pened around Greyhound But let me assure you that there are in fact militant workers in this area who do want to see the buses stopped and Greyhound shut down

"The other point which I would make about your paper is that you avoid the

The Bay Area has the most vital tradition of militant labor struggle in this country outside of the miners. So every couple of years or so the pro- company, pro-Democratic Party union hacks have a job for pseudo-socialist finks and goons in order to keep the lid on. During the 1981 PATCO strike, Zeltzer played this role when he helped the bureaucrats try to corral militant workers who were surging into the streets blocking traffic to the SF airport. Mackler’s talk of a "workers defense guard" against militant workers is of a piece with the obscene act of the UAW bureaucracy back in 1973 when they broke a sit-down strike at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant by mobilizing a 1.000-man goon squad. Playing on UAW tradition, they cynically tried to pass this off as a "flying squad."

Grovelling before the bureaucrats, the first issue of Socialist Action ( whose masthead imitates the Solidarnosc logo and which does not have a union bug) assiduously refused to take a position on the sellout contract which the ATU tops shoved down the Greyhound strikers’ throats. This puts them to the right of the A I U local president in San Francis- co, who blasted the sellout. And they rail against “ultraleft” workers just as Greyhound management is rounding up the militants for firing and maybe worse! I hese small-time social demo- crats look back to the big-time social- traitors like Gustav Noskc who. in order to head off red revolution in Germany in 1918-1919. was responsible for the murder of Communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht "Somebody has to be the bloodhound." was Noske’s infamous remark. In less than a month of existence as a public tendency these little Noskcs of "Social- ist Action" have made it perfectly clear where they stand— with the bureau- crats. the bosses, the cops and the com- pany against the workers’ struggle ■

WORKERS VANGUARD

Over 1,000 Votes for Kartsen in TWU Elections

Militant Opposition Forged in NYC Transit

fKKEr tote*, AW A

l^miL

Z*«ECMSr&i k7^ UkimbtfA

fmsaam “

Jmt/Xi mtosntf.. i

\—/nrrrb''Ji I

rs ’*l

Class-struggle fighters won a signifi- cant breakthrough in elections in New York’s transit union (TWU Local 100). Running as the only opponent to incumbent president John Lawe. Ed Kartsen of the Committee fora Fighting TWU received over 1,000 votes (7.6 percent of the total). This impressive showing came in a context in which many TWUers (almost two-thirds of the membership) showed their disgust for the leadership’s policies by not voting at all. In not only rejecting Lawe, but also the vicious red-baiting of prominent ex- oppositionist Arnold Cherry, the work- ers who backed Committee candidates Kartsen, Dave Brewer and Jim Smith made a conscious choice for a hard class-struggle program.

Kartsen’s vote total is a several-fold increase from what he received in the 1981 elections. The Committee has emerged as the recognized opposition in the TWU with a hearing and following among key militants. Kartsen did particularly well in the transportation section of the union, which has a high percentage of black workers. The TWU is a strategic union with enormous social power — American capitalism can’t run without New York’s subways — and represents a key intersection of NYC’s labor and blacks. With a class-struggle leadership the TWU could spearhead the city’s unions and minorities, with potential national impact, in class struggle against the bosses and bankers. The advances made by the Committee are vital and warmly welcomed.

The Committee won authority as the only group in the union to organize against race terror. When black transit worker Willie Turks was beaten to death by a racist lynch mob in Brooklyn, the militants fought to mobilize union forces in flatbed trucks to establish safety and order against the race killers. They helped organize and lead the only union protest against the acquittal of the murderers of Turks.

“Dissident" Local 100 bureaucrat Arnold Cherry and his ally Mike Scott (politically supported by the Commu- nist Party) took their reformist politics to their logical conclusion by giving backhanded support to Lawe. In sharp- ly exposing this maneuver, the Commit-

WORKERS

VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ot the Spartacist League ot the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura EDITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule,

Charles Burroughs. George Foster,

Liz Gordon. James Robertson,

Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour.

Mar|orie Stamberg

(Closing editor tor No 345 Liz Gordon) Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, skipping an issue in August and a week in December, by the Spariacist Publishing Co . 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007 Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business) Address all corre- spondence to Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116 Domestic subscriptions S5 00/24 issues Second-class postage paid at New York, NY POSTMASTER Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116 Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint

No. 345 6 January 1984

tee showed Cherry’s slicker brand of reformism to be no better than Lawe's conservative business unionism. In several instances confrontations be- tween former Cherry supporters and the Cherry gang were quite dramatic, with unionists angrily waving Committee leaflets in the faces of Cherry’s lieute- nants. Both Cherry and Scott were defeated for divisional offices.

The campaign leaflets for Kartsen, Brewer and Smith stressed that the attacks on the jobs and conditions of transit workers are part of a general capitalist offensive against the unions and minorities that can only be fought with a class-struggle program that points toward the abolition of the

Photo run In TWU paper shows Local 100 presidential candidate Ed Kartsen at 23 Nov. 1983 labor rally for Greyhound strikers In New York.

WHIRE

i^SUDARinl

in,

TWU Express

profit system and its replacement with a workers government:

"The money is there to rebuild transit, our schools and hospitals But it’s going to the banks that have run this city into the ground and to the bosses' war drive that pours trillions into a fanatical campaign to wage nuclear war against the Soviet Union. We need TWU leaders with an anti-capitalist program who will mobilize black and white in this city to smash the Reagan/ Koch cuts. Tear out the token machines — for free, safe, rapid transit for the people of New York! Cancel the debt — expropriate the banks! Jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no cut in pay!”

WV Photo

TWU militants at New York’s Pori Authority rally last November 23 for Greyhound strikers, calling for national transport strike against the union-busters.

We reprint below a leaflet issued by the Committee fora Fighting TWU follow- ing the elections:

The Fight Continues

The Local 100 elections are over and the Lawe leadership has won another two year term in office. But over one thousand members voted for candidates of the Committee for a Fighting TWU: 1 ,0 1 7 voted for Kartsen for president, 74 voted for Brewer for Exec. Board in Car Maintenance, and 72 voted for Smith for Exec. Board in United Motormen’s Division. We acknowledge the election proceedings were run fairly. The shat- tered Cherry opposition ran nobody for president and instead campaigned against Kartsen who was Lawe's only opponent in the presidential race. The Cherry slate was defeated for every office. The fact that a significant core of the membership cast their votes for candidates running on a program for militant class struggle indicates the basis for building a new, fighting leadership in this union.

Our union continues to crumble and in the next two years we must be prepared to selectively answer the increasingly sharper attacks by manage- ment. Those TWU members who supported the Committee fora Fighting TWU in the elections are the most conscious militants in the struggle to defend the TWU against Kiley/Koch/ Reagan’s war on the unions. We said the issues facing this union would not be settled by an election but by struggle. We need a whole new breed of labor leaders. What was needed to win the battle with Greyhound was militant mass picketing to stop the buses and concrete acts of labor solidarity by other unions. That’s what we fought for — a national transport workers strike to bust the union busters. The Committee also circulated petitions and collected money for Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero, two phone strikers on the

WesT Coast who face years in prison because of a vicious racist anti-labor frame-up. Ed Kartsen spoke at a mass rally to demand “Freedom and Jobs Back” for Lauren and Ray in Oakland October 29. Those who voted for us realize that the larger issues — restoring the tradition of militant labor solidarity, defending the picket line as the battle front of the working class, fighting for black, Hispanic and white workers to mobilize to crush lynch mob terror and stop Reagan’s mad-dog drive for war with the Soviets — are the critical issues facing the labor movement. It’s going to take mass labor action and our own workers party fighting for a workers government to get rid of capitalism which is the root of the problem. What we need is a hard core of committed people that are determined to make the kind of anti-capitalist program that we ran on the action program of this union. Join the Committee and help make that program an organized force.

Lawe’s sellout policies are running this union into the ground. His big thing is the dues checkoff. It was his sellout of the 1980 strike that enabled the courts and the TA management to attack the checkoff in the first place. And in order to get it back he’s let our wages and conditions go to hell. The dues checkoff has helped to keep the Lawe leadership lazy and dependent on management. This leadership should have to prove to the membership why they should pay their dues each month. The bosses’ offensive against the unions must be smashed. For the unions it’s fight or die!

The TWU must get off its knees! To hell with binding arbitration! No more PATCOs! No more sellouts! Bust the union busters! An injury to one is an injury to all! Picket lines mean you better not cross! Break with the Demo- crats! Build a workers party to fight for a workers government!

— Kartsen, Brewer, Smith and the

Committee for a Fighting TWU 29 December 1983

TWUer David Brewer at Spartacist Forum:

How Labor Can Smash the Racists

We reprint below remarks by a New York transit militant during the discus- sion period at an NYC public meeting December 9 titled. "The Class Struggle and the Spartacist League."

I’m David Brewer from the Commit- tee for a Fighting Transport Workers Union Local 100. If anyone is not familiar with any of the literature we put out. I’ve got some copies here, hopefully one of the other brothers in the Committee has got some of the Grey- hound leaflets because I handed out all of mine at the picket line the other night.

Now the Spartacist League calls for political revolution in the deformed and

degenerated workers states. In a sense we are for political revolution within the unions in this country because they have a rotten sellout leadership and we have to get rid of it.

Unfortunately we were not a factor in the 1980 [NYC transit] strike. The 1980 strike was a unique situation in this union, where you had a majority so- called “dissident” executive board, the union out on strike, but there was no class-struggle opposition among these so-called dissidents to warn the mem- bership and prepare the membership and lead the membership out of the sellout situation which was going to

happen and was clear was going to happen.

The dissidents, Arnold Cherry in particular, had the attitude — you get this a lot from guys — they had the attitude, well, the worse the better. The more unemployment the better. When their bellybutton starts hitting their spinal cords, then they’ll begin to wake up. We don’t believe that. Because defeat breeds defeat.

Muhammad Ali endorsed the Ray and Lauren case. And he knows as a boxer if you go in the ring and you get your head busted around a little bit

continued on page 9

6 JANUARY 1984

Marxism

and

Bloodthirstiness

Dougherty/Camera 5

October 23 bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Spartacist slogan “Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive!” intersected widespread outrage against Reagan's criminal and senseless policy.

U.S. imperialism’s trip wires for World War III extend from one end of the globe to the other. Reagan is now engaged in three wars — in Lebanon, El Salvador and Nicaragua — and in the Caribbean the U.S. troops are finishing off the rape of Grenada. American Pershing 2 nuclear missiles have been deployed in Europe, aimed directly at Moscow — at six to eight minutes striking distance. Decaying capitalism is readying to plunge humanity once again into global war, and lurching toward a nuclear holocaust which threatens the extinction of life on this planet.

Revulsion and opposition to the mass slaughter which is endemic to the imperialists’ class rule is a central part of the Marxist vision of and struggle fora classless, stateless society. The hideous threat of World War III and the bellicose policies of Washington today engender justified fears and inchoate pacifislic sentiments among the world’s masses, both in the Soviet bloc and the capitalist countries, sentiments which can be turned against the imperialist war- makers. The carnage of World War I gave birth to the Russian workers revolution of 19 1 7 — because the Bolshe- vik Party won the workers, peasants and soldiers to revolutionary opposition to their “own" government, and ended Russia’s participation in the inter- imperialist slaughter by replacing the exploiters* state with a government of the working people.

When over 240 U.S. Marines were blown to pieces at the Beirut airport compound in October, the largest number of American troops killed in a single day since the height of the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the American public reacted with outrage. There were elements of pacifism, isolationism and patriotism, and there was a broad grasp that the Lebanon intervention was senseless. The outrage was mainly directed at the imperialist commander in chief (who immediately launched the racist bully-boy invasion of tiny Grena- da for an easy "victory" to distract attention from thedebacle in Beirut). To intersect this conjunctural anti- government sentiment evocatively, the Spartacist League raised the slogans “Marines Out of Lebanon, Now. Alive!” and “U.S. Out of Grenada, Dead or Alive!" There were those among our readership who— objecting particularly to the word “alive” — denounced our Lebanon slogan as a “social-patriotic” capitulation to American chauvinism, counterposing the supposedly radical sentiment: “the only good one is a dead one.” But far from radical, this vicarious bloodthirstiness (reminiscent of some of the more dim and despicable elements of the old New Left — draft-dodgers turned accountants) challenges a fundamental attitude of Marxism as well as undercut- ting the central Leninist proletarian strategy to fight against imperialist war. Our critics have nonetheless served a purpose in prompting us to restate some basic Marxist truths, beginning with the

fact that Marxists are not bloodthirsty.

We are for the victory of just causes. Necessarily and above all, the centrality of just causes is the shattering of the exploiting and oppressing classes and the victory of socialism. We are social- ists not least because we are passionately opposed to war, the gathering together of large numbers of young workingmen to be slaughtered in the interests of the rulers. In this savagely class-divided world, dominated by the mass murder- ers of My Lai, the struggle for the victory of just causes will have a big physical component. We must stand therefore for the maximum assembling of effective force on the just side, hopefully to demoralize and deter the forces of reaction so that the actual casualties are minimized.

But in Lebanon at the moment, there is little evidence of justice on any side. At bottom, the present fighting there is a continuation of the centuries-old communal/sectarian conflicts between Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shi’ites, Druze and others. There is no known force fighting against the U.S. imperialists — they are all jockeying for position with the imperialists. Those whose cause is clearest — the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — in fact requested the intervention of the

• Jr

-3

imperialist troops (a suicidal demand supported by virtually the entire refor- mist left in this country, and sharply opposed of course by us revolutionists). Now the U.S. is there, having disarmed the PLO and prepared the way for the Israeli/ Phalange massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Arafat’s organization has split into bloody rivalry, dispersed and evacuated (under the UN flag and Israeli shells). The Israelis precipitously with- drew from Beirut, leaving the Ameri- cans to take the casualties. The warring Lebanese communal militias can’t tell the difference between the Americans and the Russians and couldn’t care less. Where is the just, anti-imperialist side in Lebanon today?

What about the allies of Arafat’s organization? In Tripoli where he was besieged by Syrian-backed PLO dissi- dents, Arafat allied with the Islamic Unity Movement of Sheikh Shaaban, which last October massacred some 50 members of the Lebanese Communist Party. What about the Shi’ites, who are at the bottom of the social scale in Lebanon, totally deprived of political power although they are the largest group in the country? Shortly before the Israeli invasion of June 1982. the Shi’ite Amal carried out murderous attacks against the PLO in Beirut and southern

Lebanon. As for the Syrians, who vaunt their rejection of any negotiations with the Zionists, they made a separate eeaselire with the Israelis early in the 1982 invasion, leaving the Palestinians to fight alone.

To be sure, our Lebanon slogan was highly conjunctural: the situation in the Near East is changing rapidly. The U.S. is already drifting in the direction of a direct conflict with Syria, thanks in good part to the Reaganites’ irrational notions of “Soviet surrogateship.” Should the U.S. go to waragainst Syria, a complete reevaluation would be indicated, not least because such a war could become a dc facto U.S. /USSR conflict in which Marxists would defend the Soviet side.

Lebanon is a quagmire for U.S. imperialism — and this is a good thing. But we do not gloat over those 240 aluminum caskets, those dead young men many of whom were considered expendable in the first place because they were black We can only despise those who call for the death of American soldiers for the crimes of their rulers. For Marxists there is all the difference between the men in the field and those who sent them there to die. We are not per se interested in the annihilation of everyone who is executing Washing- ton’s global bloodthirsty policies. Leb- anon has aroused strong opposition in the U.S. population; sending in the Marines was a stupid act which could backfire on the U.S. ruling class.

A very different situation obtains in Grenada, Reagan’s diversion from the Lebanon disaster. We viewed the U.S. invasion of Grenada in terms compar- able to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon: racialist atrocities against another nationality. We had a side in 1982: the defense of the Palestinians against the attempt to wipe them out. And we had a side in Grenada: with the 700 Cuban construction workers who resisted the Yankee invaders. It took 6,000 U.S. troops to “take” Grenada in the face of the Cubans’ heroic self- defense, and most of the Cubans were over 40 years old! The same issue of Workers Vanguard which our critics believe marks our decisive capitulation to “social-patriotism” hailed the Cuban fighters who — unlike anyone in Leba- non today — fought the main enemy. U S. imperialism. In Grenada, we had a side, and our call was “U.S. Out, Dead or Alive!”

And in Vietnam! The side of justice there was unambiguously that of the National Liberation Front (NLF)/ North Vietnamese forces against U.S. imperialism. At stake were the national rights of the Vietnamese people and the social revolution whose victory was the only way to definitively drive out colonialism. Our call for “Victory to the Vietnamese Revolution!" was not bloodymindedness but a recognition of what was necessary to bring peace to Vietnam after three decades of imperial-

We are for the victory of just causes. Left: liberation of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh Cit] by the North Vietnamese arm in 1975 was a historic victory ft world revolution Right: during Reagan's rape of Grenada, we said, “U.S. Out, Dead or Alive!"

ist war. In Lebanon, it is precisely the

WORKERS VANGUARD

Teheran Embassy Revisited

U.S. postmaster general William Bolger is calling on true-blue Ameri- cans to refuse to accept letters posted with a new Iranian postage stamp because it is "repulsive, a vicious distortion of a criminal act by Iran, and an insult to all Americans.” The stamp depicts the Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy in Teheran on 4 Novem- ber 1979 with the caption. “The Takeover of the U.S. Spy Den." During the 1980 presidential elections Reagan promised to wipe out the “humiliation of Teheran" by reassert- ing American militarism around the world, primarily directed at the Soviet Union. And now that Reagan’s in trouble domestically over the bloody Lebanese mess, he would no doubt like to rekindle the chauvinist war fever produced in America when the Kho- meiniite Islamic fanatics seized the Teheran embassy.

Certainly the American embassy in Teheran was a preeminent symbol of American imperialism — the home of the CIA station which masterminded the overthrow of the nationalist Mossadeq regime in 1953 and guided the shah’s bloody police state. Papers seized by the Iranian “students" (and later published in book form in Iran but barred from entering the U.S.) documented the extensive contacts between the American embassy and the haled SAVAK secret police. In short, there could be enormous justifi- cation for the seizure of the Teheran embassy.

But there's another overriding aspect to this which was totally ignored by the rad-lib supporters of Khomeiniite fanaticism who never have to think about the question of state power. In the present-day world, divided as it is among nation-states, the basis for any international rela- tions is the diplomatic convention of "extraterritoriality” for embassies. Diplomats are, in any case, nothing but certified spies in any and all cases. Nonetheless, as we wrote at the time of the Teheran embassy seizure:

“Diplomatic immunity and territorial sovereignty of embassies arc seldom violated even by nations at war, though every diplomatic office con- ducts its share of spying and intelli- gence gathering. These diplomatic rules of the game are necessary to maintain international relations be- tween nation-states, until the nation- state itself has disappeared in a socialist world."

— “Iran Embassy Crisis,” WV No. 244, 23 November 1979

At the same time, we called for the extradition of the criminal shah, whose presence in the U.S. provoked the embassy seizure, and we of course opposed any U.S. imperialist attack on Iran in the name of “releasing the hostages.”

To be sure, certain attacks on imperialist embassies are clearly sup- portable: during the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968, for instance, where the U.S. embassy had become the command headquarters for the half- million-strong imperialist army in the

war. the N LF commando attack on the embassy was a revolutionary act. Indeed, that single act broke the omnipotent image of American impe- rialism worldwide, and that was a very good thing.

But that had nothing in common with the Iranian seizure, which was a diversion designed to enhance Kho- meini’s reactionary hold on the masses— let them eat “anti-imperial- ist" rhetoric. The Iranian leftists, who had enthusiastically backed the rise and consolidation of the mullahs’ rule, mainly hailed the embassy seizure; within weeks many of them were themselves the target of the same Khomeiniite fanatics.

The Soviet Union, the world's first workers state, had to struggle for many years against diplomatic quarantine before its embassies were recognized by the imperialist powers. The refusal to recognize a foreign government is the diplomatic posture of war. Indeed, the barbarous treatment of Soviet diplomatic personnel of late is an index of the Reagan administration’s drive to smash Soviet state power: e g.. ( I ) the invasion of the Soviet diplomat- ic retreat on Long Island during the KAL 007 hysteria by a mob led by the Moonie cult with the connivance