workers vanguard no 854 - 16 september 2005

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 854 - 16 September 2005

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WfJRKERS ""fi lJ'R' 0No. 854 " Q C I i L 3 > C ' 7 ~ 1 16 September 2005Capitalist Rulers Left Blacks, Poor to Die

AP photosHeavily armed SWAT teams rolling past New Orleans Convention Cen.ter, where desperate hurricane victims waited for days for transportation out of the city.SEPTEMBER 12-New Orleans. one ofthe oldest. most cultured. most complex of American cities. remains devastated, its residents dispersed, its dead stilluncounted and unburied. Whole communities along the Gulf Coast have simply disappeared. Hurricane Katrina hasripped away the tattered facade of theU.S. government as "of the people. bythe people. for the people:' exposing theracism. venality. ruling-class arrogance

and utter ineptitude pf the White Housegang. A wave of revulsion has swept thecountry at the government's responseto the disaster. undercutting the postSeptember 11. "national unity" hysteriathat had already taken a beating over thedebacle in Iraq. Sections of the ruling classitself are hammering at Bush. not least fordamaging the image of the "world's onlysuperpower" internationally.Now they are even trying to forbid

news media from showing the dead. whoare still shamefully left to lie in the openwhile troops patrol the streets. When thetroops were needed to evacuate peoplefrom New Orleans, they weren't sent.Now. they've been mobilized above all toassert control over the city, to disarrri theremaining population and to enforce thegovernment's suppression of the truthabout the number of dead. While thegovernment and media claim that the

number is far lower than initially estimated, it is known that 25,000 body bagshave been sent to New Orleans.They want to hide the evidence oftheir crimes against the people of NewOrleans. But what is starkly exposed isthe raw reality of race and class in capitalist America.It is not just that the victims in NewOrleans were primarily black and poor,

con in lied on pa ge 8

7

For a Planned Economy Under Workers Rule!Statement of the Spartacist League/U.S.

The followillg leaflet was iss lied by the SpartacistLeaglle/U.S. Oil September 4.

"We're dying'" This was the desperate cry of thosemainly black people trapped by flooding from Hurricane Katrina. which has submerged 80 percent of NewOrleans and devastated wide swaths of lowerLouisiana and Mississippi. Natural disasters like hurricanes do happen. but the horror taking place on theGulf Coast is manmade. Having done nothing exceptwatch helpless people suffer. starve and die, the government says now is not the time to point fingers. Nowis precisely the time to indict the capitalist criminalsrunning this country. This anarchic, irrational profit-

driven system cannot even provide for the safety andwelfare of the population-the system must go.This disaster has laid bare the class and race divisions in America. The logic of U.S. capitalism is thatwhites mainly lost property. blacks mainly lost lives.It is overwhelmingly black people, deemed "expendable" by the rulers, who suffered and died by the thousands in this two-thirds black city. Because they didnot have cars to get them out of town or credit cards topay for motel rooms. Because they generally cannotafford to live on the higher ground. This catastrophicdestruction of lives and livelihoods underlines that theoppression of black people is rooted in the very bed-

rock of American capitalism and will not he endedshort of a socialist revolution that rips power and themeans of production from the greedy rulers ~ m d placesthem in the hands of the working people.This is a case of criminality piled atop criminality.The unspeakable. smirking George W. Bush trimmedhis month-long vacation by a couple of days to surveythe disaster zone from his presidential jet and askedinanely: Who knew the levees would break? Answer:Everyone. For years. scientists and Army Corps ofEngineers officials warned that the levees were sinkingand incapable of withstanding a powerful hurricane.

continued Oil page II

The Evolution Wars: Religious Reaction and Racist OppressionHail Charles Darwin! SEE PAGE FOUR

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On Footbinding in China6 June 2005

Dear Comrades,In Workers Vanguard No. 814, as part

of a paragraph highlighting the gains ofthe 1949 Chinese Revolution. WV states:"The revolution enabled women to advance by magnitudes over their previousmiserable status. symbolized by the barbaric practice of footbinding." Thoughnot explicitly stated. because the sentenceis couched in a paragraph listing otherunique gains of the revolution like thecreation of a collectivized economy andfreedom from imperialist subjugation. itsounds like we are saying that the practiceof footbinding had remained intact upuntil the 1949 Revolution.However. nobody would say that footbinding. which is said to date from thecourt of the 10th century, ended with the'anti-footbinding societies of the late1800s, with the edict of the Qing COlITtat the turn of the century, or with SunYat-Sen in 1911. Multiple sources putthis hideous practice. which effectivelyrestricted women to the kitchen and bedroom. as ending around the 1930s, aboutone generation after its formal abolition in1911. John King Fairbank in The GreatChinese Revolution 1800-1985 (1987)remarks about its prevalence until the1920s, although he says women were stillseen on farms hobbling on bound feet

in the ' 30s and ' 40s. William Hinton inFanshen (1968), noting exceptions. saysthat footbinding "came to an end almosteverywhere in the period between the twoworld wars." Elisabeth Croll in her bookFeminism and Socialism in China (1980)cites a number of surveys taken in the1920s and 1930s revealing increased percentages of women without bound feet invarious rural areas. Jack Belden in ChinaShakes the World (1949) and Ono Kazukoin Chinese Women in a Centllry of Re!'oilltion /850-/950 (1989) both referto the continued existence of footbinding. at least into the early 1940s in theareas where the Communists were introducing reforms. but these regions are continually referred to as the poores! andmost backward in all of China. Modernizing nationalists. missionaries. communists. and even a warlord all seem to haveplayed varying roles in abolishing thispractice throughout the first half of the20th century. Although it is indeed hardto imagine that there were not still vestiges remaining in areas of this largecountry by the time of the revolution, Ithink by 1949 significant inroads hadalready been made into its permanenteradication.I do think it is important to includemention of footbinding inany discussionof the oppression of Chinese women sothat the memory of the severe torture

Charles Darwin andScientific SocialismThe reactionary ideological climate ( ~ f the

post-Soviet world has been expressed inthe U.S. il1 the sharp rise of Christian fundamentalism. From the Bush White Houseto the Kansas State Board of Education,there is f lOW a concerted attack on CharlesDarwin's theon that the evolutioll of species, includiflg humall beings. is a result ofnatural selection. The founders of scientific

TROTSKY socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, LENINr e c ( ) g n i ~ e d Darwin's great cOlltribution toa materialist understanding of I/lan '.I place in naWre. They jillther r e c o g l l i ~ e d that theprogressi!'e dCl'eioplllent of human society required the replacement of the irrational

capitalist market econO/II." with a planned, socialis t econom.".In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature andpressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously. And

what is the consequence') Increasing overwork and increasing misery of themasses. and every ten years a great crash. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire hewrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highesthistorical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only consciousorganisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carriedon in a planned way, can elevate mankind above the rest of the animal world sociallyin the same way that production in general has done this for men specifically, Historical development makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but alsowith every day more possible, From it will date a new epoch of history, in whichmankind il.self. and with mankind all branches of its activity, and especially natural science, will experience an advance before which everything preceding it will paleinto insignificance.

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-Friedrich Engels, Introduction to Dialectics of Nature (1875-76)

! ~ ! ! ! I ! ! J ' l l . l J . . ~ ! ! ~ ! ! . 1 ! . . IRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Ray Bishop

EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Rosemary PalenqueCIRCULATION MANAGER: Susan FullerEDITORIAL BOARD: Kathleen Harris (managing editor), Helene Brosius (letters editor),Linda Jarreau (production manager), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Helen Cantor, Paul Cone,George Foster, Walter Jennings, James Robertson, Joseph SeymourThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 02760746) publ ished biweekly, e xcept skipp ing three aile mate issues in June. July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and skipping the last Issue in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway. SUite 318. New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 7327862 (Editorial), (212) 7327861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377 GPO, New York. NY 10116. Email address: [email protected] subSCriptions $10.00/21 Issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116.Opinions expressed in Signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is 13 September.

NO.854 16 September 2005

and mutilation of most of the femalepopulation is not lost. Contrary to misconceptions in the West. the custom wasnot limited to women of the upperclasses. Most Chinese women, includingwomen throughout thc countryside, hadtheir feet bound. with only few exceptions such as women of the very poorestfamilies, Hakka women and women ofnon-Han ethnic minorities like the Man-

Letterschus. Very young girls from age threeto seven or eight had their feet tightlywrapped and bent until the arch was broken and the toes permanently bent underto make the three-inch "golden lotus.'"The feet became of little use to standand, while wealthier women were saidto have s e r v a n t ~ to carry them around,peasant women who did work in thefields with bound feet were seen working on their knees. A recen t article in theLondon Guardia/1 (21 March) entitled"The Ties that Bind," states that by someestimates 10 percent of the little girlsdied from the shock of the severe painin the first few days of the feet beingbound. Even after several years whenthe pain eased. the \'arious effects ofthe crippling caused sutTering. continuingthroughout a woman's entire life.

Comradely.Judy C.

On Dresden Firebombing30 August 2005

Dear Spartakist and WV:I greatly appreciated the article "German Nationalism and the Bombing ofDresden" from Spartakist No. 158, translated in WV No. 852. My father. JacobSchanzer, survived a death march fromthe Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. He always spoke of the Alliedbombing of Dresden as an enormousatrocity, not only because of the massiveloss of life, but because of the destruction of one of the important centers ofGerman culture prior to WWII. Despitehis experience, my father remained agreat admirer of German culture, refusing to believe those who tried to findthe roots of Nazism in the works ofBeethoven and Goethe.

The article's points on the notion of"collective guilt" being the flip side ofNazi demagoguery casting the Germansas a "victim people" were also very

August 25 to October 5Local

Quota Week%(in point s) Two

Bay Area 650 456,5 70%Boston 140 99 71%Chicago 450 292.5 65%Los Angeles 325 179 55%New York 925 193 21%At Large 300 47 16%National Total 2,790 1,267 45%

strong and again reminded me of myparents. As a child. many of my parents'social circle were also Jewish survivors,many of whom understandably werequite anti-German. My parents didn'twant me (0 grow up with that attitudeand explained it to me this way when Iwas quite young: The Nazis believed allJews were bad. If you say that all Germans are bad, you are using the samemethod as the Nazis did. My father wasan admirer of Kautskyan-style socialdemocracy and my mother was a member of the left-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair.Thus, they had a rudimentary understanding of the class nature of fascism. Itis a sad comment on the total degeneracyof today's social democrats that theycannot even manage to expound this simple truth in the face of resurgent Germannationalism. Comradely,Jeffrey Schanz er

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WORKERS VANGUARD


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Feds: Hands Off ILA!On July 6, the Bush administration's

Department of Justice launched a fullscale attack on the 60, 000-member International Longshoremen's Association(ILA), which represents dock workers onthe Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from Halifax and Montreal to New Orleans andGalveston, Texas. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO)lawsuit seeks to put the I LA and its health,welfare and pension benefits funds underthe control of court-appointed officersand to remove ILA President John Bowers and four other leading ILA officialsfrom the union. The suit also names theentire ILA Executive Council as "defendants" and puts the union's electionsunder government control.The ILA has a history of bitter strikes-f ive between 1959 and 1971-whichthe government hit with strikebreakingTaft-Hartley injunctions. Now the Fedsseek to place the ILA directly under thethumb of the capitalist state-to gut thevery purpose of the union, which is todefend the interests of its membersagainst the capitalists. The governmenthas targeted the ILA because-alongwith the West Coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) andthe Teamsters, which was taken over bythe Feds through a RICO suit in 1989-the ILA has the powerto throttle shippingand commerce nationally. The government press release (6 July) announcingthe lawsuit made this clear. stating: "'TheILA plays a critical role in the movementof manufactured. agriculturaL and othergoods throughout the Eastern seaboard,and it has a major impact on the nation'scommercial activities." For the same rea~ ( ) n . the Feds \\ent after the ILWU during its contract battle with the shippingh o ~ s e s in 2002, as the Bush administration was moving military cargo throughthe porb in preparation for its imasion ofIraq. The attack on the ILA is an attackon the labor movement as a whole andmust be opposed and repulsed by thewhole of labor.The RICO suit alleges that ILA localson the New York/New Jersey waterfrontand the port of Miami are controlled bythe mob. The federal government hasengaged in a vendetta against the ILAfor over 50 years, always using the mobas an excuse. In 1951, at the height of

the McCarthyite Cold.War witchhunt ofreds and other labor and black militants,a waterfront "Crime Commission" wasset up in New York to target the ILA.Massive strikes and work stoppages in1954 defeated the government's attemptto drive the ILA off the waterfront. Inearlier years, the government had tried tosmash the West Coast ILWU through ananti-Communist witchhunt and deportation proceedings against then-union head

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738, 30 June 2000). Leonard Riley, LWCco-chair and a member of ILA Local1422 (whose president, Ken Riley, is alsoin the LWC), says in regard to the government action, "If we get an impartiallyrun membership vote for top officers,we will clean up this union" (LahorNotes, August 2005). The LWC has itselfdragged the ILA into the bosses' courts,most recently last year on charges that thevote on the master contract had been

WV PhotoBaltimore, October 1986: ILA pickets during strike that shut down Atlantic ports.Harry Bridges in the late 1930s and '40s.The capitalists' drive to strangle theILA, ILWU and other unions is facilitatedby the policies of the pro-capitalist unionmisleaders, whose abject class collaboration with the Democratic and Republicanparties of capitalism, the emi)loyers andtheir govc111ment weakens and underminesthe u n i o n ~ . Far from mobilizing the membership in struggle against the anti-unionsuit. ILA president John Bower, joinedwith the shippers' Cnited States \laritimeAlliance to declare himself ",hocked b)the irresponsihle and totally inaccurate"rumors that the union might actuallyorganize \vork stoppages to protest theRICO attack (American Shipper, 8 July).An opposition group within the ILA.the Longshore VVorkers Coalition (LWei,centered on ILA Local 1422 in Charleston. South Carolina, actually welcomedthe RICO suit as an o p p o r t u n i t ~ to "cleanup" the union. The LWC is supported bythe social-democratic Lahor Notes andbrain trusted by the si nister Associ ationfor Union Democracy, which specializesin anti-union lawsuits (see "Lawyers forGovernment Union-Busting," WV No.

rigged. The six-year. no-strike contract isa sweetheart deaL which certainly shouldbe fought. But in making a "coalition"with the capitalist courts. the LWC imitesthe class enemy into the union and under-mines the possibility of fighting for a better contract for the membership.The LWC's actions are particularly vilein light of Local 1422's own long andbloody history of being targeted b) thecapitalist state. In January 2000, 600 copsin riot gear invaded the Charleston \\ M > . ' ~ . t . i ! ' U ) ( ~ , ' ( i 'Ull~ ' " ..

Free the Five CommitteeFidel Castro addresses Havana rally for Cuban Five following June 2001conviction.Free Them Now!years to life. In addition to the espionagecharges, Gerardo Hernandez was alsoconvicted of murder conspiracy after theCuban air force shot down planes ofthe terrorist "Brothers to the Rescue" in1996, resulting in the deaths of four pilotsas they violated Cuban air space. TheCuban government has asked that the five

be allowed to return to Cuba immediately.We demand, as we have from the beginning: Free the Cuban Five now!Three of these courageous individuals had earlier joined the Cuban forcesin Angola that turned back the U.S.sponsored invasion by the South Africanapartheid regime in the 1970s and '80s.

In a message to the American peopleissued shortly after their conviction in2001, the Cuban Five proudly assertedthat Cuba, which "has heroically survivedfour decades of aggressions and threats toits national security, of subversive plans,sabotages and destabilization, has everyright to defend itself from its enemieswho keep using the U.S. territory to plan,organize and finance terrorist actions."The Cuban Five's actions in defense ofthe Cuban Revolution against U.S. imperialism are indeed heroic. Cuba has beenin the gun sights of U.S. imperialism eversince the Castro regime kicked out theU.S. capitalists, the Mafia and the venalCuban bourgeoisie and consolidated aworkers state in 1960-61, although onethat was bureaucratically deformed fromits inception. Our defense of the CubanFive flows from our unconditional military defense of the Cuban workers stateagainst imperialism and domestic counterrevolution. We maintain this defensedespite our political opposition as Trotskyists to Castro's nationalist bureaucratic regime. Key to the defense of theCuban Revolution is the fight to forge aworkers party to lead the struggle forsocialist revolution in the U.S. belly ofthe imperialist beast . .3


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The Evolution Wars:Religious Reaction andRacist OppressionHail Charles Darwin!

I f ever there were an argument against"intelligent design." it is George Bush. anignorant and dimwitted reactionary withstate power. Almost ISO years since thepublication of Darwin's Origin of Species. this born-again Christian presidenthas thrown the power of his office hehindChristian fundamentalism by arguing thatreligious fahles be given equal time withevolution in science classes in America.But the irrational obscurantism of leadingcircles of the American ruling class shouldnot be mistaken for an ahsence of purpose. Now, as at other key moments in thehistory of this nation founded on blackchattel slavery, religivn is being promotedto inculcate acquiescence to injustice.The brilliant, self-educated former slaveFrederick Douglass nailed the intrinsicrelationship between the pious religiosityof Southern slaveowners and the hellishreality of those they lorded over:"I assert most unhesitatingly. that thereligion of the south is a mere coveringfor the most horrid erimes.-a justifierof the most appalling barbarity.-a sanc

tifier of the most hateful frauds.-and adark shelter under which the darkest.foulest. grossest. and most infernal deedsof slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to thechains of slaverv. next to that enslavement. 1 should "regard being the slaveof a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me.... I thereforehate the corrupt, slaveholding, womenwhipping, cradle-plundering. partial andhypocritical Christianityof this land."

-Narrative of the Life ofFrederick Douglass (1845)For years, the fundamentalist Christianright has been politically pursuing itsreactionary religious agenda. But sincethe second coming of George W. Bush tothe White House, they're stalking thecountry. Since 2001 there have been challenges to the teaching of evolution in 43states! Even more widespread but harderto measure is the informal coercion ofscience teachers to suppress the "E"word. In March, the National ScienceTeachers Association reported that 31percent of teachers surveyed respondedthat they fe"lt "pressured to include creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution in theirscience classroom." Some Imax theatersin science museums are refusing to showmovies that mention evolution, the BigBang or the geology of the earth!A tangled web of billionaire Christianultrarightists, their foundations and misnamed "think tanks" (like the Seattlebased Discovery Institute) provides themoney behind this concerted drive toplunge the country deeper into ignoranceand backwardness. The "Wedge Document," an unusually blunt 1999 Discovery Institute manifesto, proclaimed itsgoal as "nothing less than the overthrow

of materialism and its cultural legacies"(New York Times, 21 August).For all the conservative cant coming outof the Supreme Court about the "originalintent" of the slaveowning framers of theConstitution, extreme right-wing religious elements seek to shred provisions ofthat Enlightenment-influenced document,and particularly the Bill of Rights, infavor of an America ruled as a theocracy4

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Charles Darwin's groundbreaking 1859 Origin of Species presented theory ofevolution by natural selection.under Biblical law. The particular versionof Christian fundamentalism now associated with the Bush White House developed over the past four decades as anideological umbrella enabling white racistbigots to link together their hostility toaffirmative action and welfare, "women'slib" and legalized abortion, and any tolerance of gay rights. They want a societywithout public schools, without unions,without separation of church and state,with the death penalty for abortionistsand many others, with legal repressionand extralegal terror for gays, and withblack people and immigrants yoked assubhuman objects of exploitation in anativist white Christian America.Bourgeois liberals push reliance onthe Supreme Court as the guarantor ofthe basic democratic rights that the government has in its cross hairs. That strategy offers no more protection thanan umbrella with holes in it. The truth isthat every gain and every protectionthat working people and minorities havewon in this country have been wrestedthrough class struggle and political battles and outright civil war. Holding on topast gains and gaining a position fromwhich to fight for new conquests requirea crystal-clear understanding that thegovernment rules on behalf of the capitalist exploiters, under both Democraticand Republican administrations. Political independence from the Democratsand a class-struggle perspective are keyto any successful fight against the current onslaught.A ruling class that sends more blackyouth to prison than to college in a society that purports to have equal opportunity bolsters its policies by blaming itsvictims and finding "'scientific" justification for segregation and subordination.Thus the ideological servants of American capitalism revive scientifically discredited myths of biological determinism

and genetic inferiority of racial and ethnic minorities. In defense of an economicsystem and social order based on blackchattel slavery, Supreme Court ChiefJustice Taney deemed black people "farbelow" whites "in the scale of createdbeings" and so ruled in his infamous 1857Dred Scott decision that a black man hadno rights that a white man was bound torespect.Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection continues to be explosive inAmerica today because it indicates thatall modern humans came from a common African ancestor, and hence there isno scientific basis for separate "races."The truth-that race is not a biologicalcategory, but a social and political construct-has profound political implications in the United States. As stated inthe amici curiae brief filed by the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee in the Supreme Court in 1985against the teaching of Biblical creationism in Louisiana schools:

White mobsbesiege blackstudent at LittleRock's CentralHigh,1957.Attacks on theoryof evolution havehistoricallyreinforced white-supremacistideology.

"Evolution. the science of man', 'descentwith modification' is the particuLir objectof the fundamentalist religious attack.The reasons for this lie in the fact thatevolutionary theory deprives mall of amythical 'special' status in nature. andexposes the lack of scientific basis forthe various religious and other justifications for belief in racial inferiority. Thenot so hidden agenda of the p r o p ~ ) n e n t ' of teaching creationism in the schools isto enforce the destructive and dangerom,dogma of racial inferiority."To the organizations here filing as amicicuriae. the studv of scientific evolutionis fundamental to man's quest for a materialist understanding of our world andhuman society, not the least because itprovides m a t ~ r i a l evidence that we areall part of the same human race, definitively destroying the myths of racialsuperiority."

The Materialist View of HistoryRegarding the warfare between scienceand religion over Darwinian evolution,the eminent British scientist and MarxistJ.D. Bernal wrote:"The very persistence of the struggle.despite the successive victories won by

materialist science. shows that it is /Jotessential1y a philosophic or a scientificone, but a reflection of political strugglesin scientific terms. At every stage idealistphilosophy has been invoked to pretendthat present discontents are illusory andto justify an existing state of affairs. Atevery stage materialist philosophy hasrelied on the practical test of reality andon the necessity of change."-Science and History (1954)Charles Darwin unshackled biologicalscience from the chains of religion byproviding a materialist explanation forthe evolution of life on this planet t hroughhis careful, meticulously recorded studies

of variation of species. As we wrote inour tribute to the late Stephen Jay Gould,who, despite having pathetically conciliated religion toward the end of his life,was a great Darwinian educator andpropagandist:

'The revolutionary aspect of Darwin'sidea was that the whole evolution of thenatural world could be explained on apurely materialist basis-natural selection-rather than through any supernatural intervention. The motor force wassurvival of the fittest: all organisms produce more progeny than can possiblysurvive within their ecological nichethe most intense competition is within aspecies, whose members all compete for

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the same lifestvle and food sources. Thecompetition b;tween species is important. but on a slightly lower level:'-"Science and the Battle AgainstRacism and Obscurantism:' WVNo. 797. 14 February 2003Darwin argued that natural selection.along with other more random processes.drove the evolution of new varieties oflife. Darwinian theory is entirely free ofmoral pronouncements on organisms.whether they diversify and thrive or goextinct. This is contrary to the "socialDarwinists" who. unsupported by Darwinhimself. exploited the term "survival ofthe fittest" as "scientific" evidence thatthe rulers were a higher order of being. inorder to justify the status quo of the cruelest exploitation of man by man. Indeed.Darwin was an ardent opponent of slavery. writing in a 5 June 1861 letter to AsaGray in the very early days of the American Civil War. "Some few. and I am oneof them. even wish to God. though at theloss of millions of lives. that the Northwould proclaim a crusade against slavery.In the long-run. a million horrid deathswould be amply repaid in the cause ofhumanity .... Great God! How I should,like to see the greatest curse on earthslavery-abolished!"Evolution is not "progressive," nor doesit necessarily lead to superior or moreintelligent beings, and it is certainly notpredetermined. The mechanics of evolutionare a matter of continuing inquiry and argument among scientists. Darwin did noteven like the word "evolution" because itimplied a climb up a ladder from lowerorganisms to higher beings (grotesquelydepicted in racist "scientific" illustrationsof human evolution as a transition fromstooped hairy apes to black people toCaucasians). Darwin preferred the term"descent with modification" and was arigorous and consistent materialist in hisinterpretation of nature, not viewing aslug as lesser or more imperfect in itsfunction or adaptation to its environmentthan an ermine-cloaked member of theroyal family. As Gould wrote in EverSince Darwin (1977): "Darwin was not amoral dolt; he just didn't care to fob offupon nature all the deep prejudices ofWestern thought."Those deep prejudices were unleashedagainst Darwin upon the 1859 publicationof his Origin of Species (which may inpart explain why Darwin waited morethan 20 years to go into print). A Historyof he Warfare of Science with Theology inChristendom by Andrew Dickson White,a co-founder of Cornell University whofought in the anti-slavery movement,documents the assault. In Britain, theVatican founded the "Academia" to combat Darwinian science, while Protestantsfounded the Victoria Institute for thesame purpose. In France, MonseigneurSegur went into hysterics against Darwin,shrieking, "These infamous doctrines havefor their only support the most abjectpassions. Their father is pride, their motherimp'urity, their offspring revolutions."Thomas Carlyle, a former Chartist (revolutionary democrat) turned reactionarydefender of slavery, was eviscerated byWhite for his attack on Darwin:"Soured and embittered, in the samespirit which led him to find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one ofFrederick the Great's generals than inWashington, or Lincoln, or Grant. andwhich caused him to see in the Americancivil war only the burning out of a foulchimney. he. with the petulance naturalto a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwinas an 'apostle of dirt worship':'Behind the wrath of the rulers, their highpriests and apologists, was worry. Geological evidence of the actual immenseantiquity of the planet and fossil evidenceof an evolving parade of life forms goingback millions of years exposed the Biblical Book of Genesis as a fairy tale. Desperate explanations that God hid fossilswithin rocks to lure geologists into temptation were a bit far-fetched even for themost blindly faithful. When the geologistand Christian Sir Charles Lyell came overto Darwinism, the church feared that theDarwinian theory, like the findings ofCopernicus and Galileo, might prove tobe true. Suggestions of a divine design16 SEPTEMBER 2005

Top: Dayton, Tennessee during 1925 trial of John Scopes for teachingevolution. That summer 40,000 Klansmen marched in Washington, D.C.guiding evolution were advanced to shoreup the crumbling foundation of Biblicalliteralism.Darwin himse lf took on this forerunnerto the "intelligent design" argument incorrespondence with the Harvard botanistAsa Gray, a devout Protestant. AlthoughGray arranged for the Origin of Speciesto be published in America, he was troubled about the book's theological implications and maintained the Christian beliefthat each living thing reflected intelligentdesign by a creator and constituted evidence of the loving character of God. Ina typically mild but stunning reply, Darwin wrote back:"I had no intention to write atheistically,but I own that I cannot see as plainly asothers do, and as I should wish to do,evidence of design and beneficence onall sides of us. There seems to me toomuch misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps1with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."Even conservative columnist GeorgeWill wrote, regarding the film March ofthe Penguins, " If an Intelligent Designerdesigned nature, why did it decide to makebreeding so tedious for those penguins?"(Pocono Record, 28 August).

Darwin's discovery of the continualmotion and interaction between organisms and their environment was embracedenthusiastically by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. According to Gould, Marxoffered to dedicate the second volume ofCapita/to Darwin (who declined as he hadnot read it). In Socialism: Utopian andScientific (1880), Engels wrote:"Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically .... In this connection Darwinmust be named before all others. He dealtthe metaphysical conception of Naturethe heaviest blow by his proof that allorganic beings, plants, animals. and manhimself, are the products of a process ofevolution going on through millions ofyears."

rial means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundationupon which the state institutions, thelegal conceptions, art, and even the ideason religion, of the people concernedhave been evolved, and in the light ofwhich they must, t h ~ r e f o r e , be explained,instead of vice versa, as had hithertobeen the case."Engels drew directly on Darwin's workin his 1876 essay 'The Part Played byLabour in the Transition from Ape toMan." Engels observed that with thedevelopment Qf erect posture and bipedalmotion, "the hand had become free,"allowing man to fashion tools. In turn, theuse of tools, speech and social organization enabled man to begin to transform and master his environment. Engelswrote:"Agriculture was added to hunting andcattle raising; then came spinning, weaving, metalworking, pottery and navigation.Along with trade and industry, art andscience finally appeared. Tribes developed into nations and states. Law andpolitics arose. and with them that fantastic reflection of human things in thehuman mind-religion."The division between mental and man-

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Evolution ...(continued from page 5)

particular West African tribe that theworld was created from the excrement ofants. All these myths have in commonthat they depend upon the deliberateintentions of some kind of supernaturalbeing:'Every leftist who has ever tried to getso much as a letter printed in the NewYork Times learns the race and class biasof "all the news that's fit to print"' in thatpaper. Turning O\'er page after page oftheir paper to proponents of "intelligentdesign" was a political decision in keeping with a decades-long Democratic Partystrategy: to conciliate religious reactionin order to present themsehes as crediblerulers for .God, country, family, and the"little guy."The "cultur e wars" in America-andevolution a big one-do indeed revealdifferences between the two capitalistparties. After Clinton's 1992 election, aDcmocratic-controlled Congress passedthe "Goals 2000: Educate America Act."which would have required states to adoptfederally approved standards for teachingscience and history as a prerequisite forreceipt of federal funds. Right-wingRepUblicans, led by neocon Lynne Cheney, went nuts over requirements to teacha little truth about the Ku Klux Klan andMcCarthyism. When the Republicansrecaptured a Congressional majority inthe 1994 midterm elections, they quickly

acted to allow states to adopt standardswithout federal oversight.These are examples of the not unim

portant distinctions between the oddlydemented Bush gang and the more liberalDemocrats. In the absence of a class alternative, it is precisely such distinctionsthat explain the, in many cases halfhearted, support for Democrats amonglabor and the oppressed. But the "lesserevil" is still the class enemy of the working people. Democratic president Clintonoutflanked the Republicans by signinglegislation to "end welfare as we knowit," by invoking the union-busting Railway Labor Act 14 times against potential

rail and airline strikes, and by vastly augmenting the arsenal of state repressiondirected mainly against black peoplethrough the passage of his 1996 "AntiTerrorism and Effective Death PenaltyAct." Hillary Clinton's recent panderingto the anti-abortion bigots to secure herown electoral fortunes lies on the samecontinuum.Jimmy Carter. Democratic president inthe late 1970s, epitomizes the contradiction of the religious element in the rulingclass. Underneath that humble SouthernChristian peanut farmer shtick is a manwho was trained as a nuclear engineerand helped design nuclear submarinesfor the U.S. Navy. Carter brought being"born again" from its public perceptionas a back woods affliction to the apex ofpolitical power in the White House. Thissen'ed to morally rearm post-VietnamU.S. i mperialism for Launching Cold WarII against "godless Communism."Religion: Social Gluefor a Society Riddledwith Contradictions

America is a deeply unstable, stablebourgeois democracy. Stripped of itsdemocratic mask, the state is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a class that accumulates vast wealth through the rawexploitation of labor. The working classis divided and prevented from uniting inits own interest mainly through the special oppression of black people as a segregated race-color caste-the last-hired,

:nCDcroU

March 2005:Scene outsideTerry Schiavo'shospice inFlorida.Capitalist rulershave fosteredresurgence ofreligious reaction,anti-scienceforces.

first-fired bottom rung in a society buttressed by the myth of social mobility forall. Yet black workers still have tremendous potential social power as a leadingpart of the working class. The materialreality of racial oppression itself perpetuates fear of and prejudice against peopleforced by capitalism to live in filthy, violent ghettos with few social services. Thecolor line is the visible birthmark left byslavery and so fundamental to modernAmerican society that it cuts straightacross the multiple fissures of successivewaves of immigration. As the censusforms say, "Hispanics may be of anyrace." Sure, and where one lands on the

Marxism, Militarism and War

6

Not One Person, Not One Penny for the Imperialist Military!U.S. Troops Out of Iraq Now!Saturday, October 1, 4 p.m.

First Parish Church3 Church St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge(This forum is not sponsored by the First Parish Church)

For more information: (617) 666-9453or e-mail [email protected]

Canada Out of Afghanistan! U.S., Britain Out of Iraq!"War on Terror" Targets EveryoneSaturday, October 1, 7 p.m.

University of TorontoInternational Student Centre33 St. George Street(north of College)

For more information: (416) 593-4138or e-mail [email protected]

. .,

f Frederick Douglass HouseFrederick Douglass, revolutionaryabolitionist.

wheel of fortune is heavily intluenced byvvhether one appears to be black or \vhite.America's other peculiarity amongadvanced capitalist countries is its deeplyreligious character. ]\;owhere else-noteven in Italy where the Vatican still hea\ill' influences civil society-is there suchrefractory religiosity and visceral hostility to the long-established facts of Darwinian natural selection as the motorforce of evolution. Why') The absence of

even a mass reformist workers party thatexpresses in even a blurry way that working people have needs and interests counterposed to those cif their exploiters is alarge part of the explanation for politicalbackwardness in the U.S. But like everything else in this country, it also boilsdown to the central intersection of raceand class. Religion in the U.S. supplies anideology that can seemingly harmonizeconflicting class interests while keepingthis society with two races firmly ordered:capital above labor and white aboveblack.Although fundamentalist preachers andchurches had been around for a while, itwas the impact of World War L the 1917Bolshevik Revolution and massive laborstrikes that drew them together as a political movement to fight "godless Communism," immigration, booze and the teaching of evolution. In the summer of 1919 the"World's Christian Fundamentals Association" was founded. The country wasgripped by fear, cynically manipulated bythe government through legal and extralegal terror. Civil liberties were nullifiedas people were jailed for expressing antiwar views. Murderous racist pogromsraged, with 26 anti-black rampages acrossthe country between April and October1919, Immigrants (who were often anarchists and communists) were rounded upand deported. Labor strikes, such as theSeattle general strike of 1919, weredenounced as unpatriotic "crimes againstsociety" and "conspiracies against thegovernment," and broken by deploymentof federal troops. In 192), the trial of theItalian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti began, and they wereexecuted in 1927.The ways in which the fundamentalistmovement served to bind a reactionaryyet deeply contradicted society togetherwere played out in Tennessee when a former Chicago Cubs outfielder turned evangelical preacher. Billy Sunday, arrived foran l8-day crusade in 1925 against theteaching of evolution. Leaping across thestage and screeching that "education todayis chained to the devil's throne," Sundaywhipped up more than 200,000 people inmultiply segregated rallies against "theold bastard theory of evolution." SUlllmerfo r the Gods (1997), Edward 1. Larson'sPulitzer Prize-winning book on the ScopestriaL recounts:

"Thousands attended Men's Night. wheremales could freely show their emotion out of the sight of women. Evenmore turned out for Ladies' Night. Thenewspaper reported that '15,000 blackand tan and brown and radiant facesglowed with God's glory' on NegroNight. An equal number of 'Kluxers'some wearing their robes and masksturned out for the unofficial Klan Night."That was the immediate backdrop tothe most famous battle between evolution

and creationism in U.S. history. In 1925,the Scopes "monke y trial" took place inDayton, Tennessee. That same year, some40,000 Klansmen in full regalia marchedthrough the nation's capital. It was a periodwhen anyone who wasn't as conformistand as patriotic as possible was suspect.Substitute "terrorist" for "communist"and it sounds eerily like the social climatetoday, and once again religious fundamentalism is advancing in lockstep withsocial reaction.John Scopes was indicted for violatingTennessee's statute that banned teachingevolution. The high school biology textbook he taught from reeked of the racistSocial Darwinist viev\s of the times. Manwas presented as the highest life form ofevolution. with the Caucasian race being"finally, the highest type of all." A largepolitical contradiction of the times wasthat many of the promoters of evolutionwere Social Darwinists who crusaded forbettering the human race by eliminatingthe "feebleminded" through eugenics. By1936, 35 states had laws compelling sexual segregation and sterilization of thosedeemed "eugenically unfit." In America,that was a loosely applied euphemismfor "poor white trash," black people andimmigrants.Southern slaveowners often denouncedthe cruelty of Northern capitalism whilefalsely portraying themselves as loving Christian protectors of their Negroproperty. So, too, the eugenics movement enabled William Jennings Bryan, theblowhard orator. 1896 Democratic Partypresidential candidate and prosecutor ofJohn Scopes, to posture as a humanitarian! Bryan said, "The Darwinian theoryrepresents man as reaching his presentperfection by the operation of the law ofhate-the merciless law by which thestrong crowd out and kill off the weak."Dismissing geological evidence that theage of the earth was much older than theBible said, Bryan blustered, "Men whowould not cross the street to save a soulhave traveled across the world in search ofskeletons."

John Scopes was defended by ClarenceDarrow, who used the trial as a platformto defend science and defeat Bryan's religious foolishness and phony goodness. AsDarrow once said in a speech to a groupof prisoners on the false definition ofcrime in an unjust society, "I t is not thebad people I fear so much as good people.When a person is sure that he is good, heis nearly hopeless; he gets cruel-hebelieves in punishment."Fundamentalism became notorious andidentified with rural backwardness as aresult of the Scopes trial. In response,fundamentalists constructed their ownworld with their own religious schools,universities and social institutions, beginning in the 1930s, But at every peak offevered anti-communist and racist reaction, they were brought out of their subculture to center stage. Fundamentalistsplayed a large role in the McCarthyitewitchhunt of the 1950s, identifying theUnited States, Jesus and the Bible asGod's gifts to humanity and the SovietUnion as the Antichrist and Devil.

What used to be the kooky fringe ofJohn Birch ilk is now frighteningly mainstream and mobilized. No longer contentwith ruling their own schools, they wantto destroy the public schools. and indeedthe entire world. Jen')' Falwell. Pat Robertson and bigwigs who overlap heavilywith the Texas Republican Party andthe Bush White House are "Dominionists"or -'Christian Reconstructionists." Theybelieve that fundamentalist Christians aremandated by God to occupy all secularinstitutions in order to destroy society aswe know it and usher in "the thousandyear reign of Christ." Then, as Bill Moyers wrote in "Welcome to Doomsday"(Nell' York Review of Books, 24 March):

"Once Israel has occupied the rest of its'biblical lands: legions of the Antichristwill attack it. triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. Asthe Jews who have not been convertedare burned the Messiah will return forthe Rapture. True believers will be transported to heaven where, seated at theright hand of God. they will watch theirWORKERS VANGUARD


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political and religious opponents writhein the misery of plagues-boils, sores,locusts, and frogs-during the severalyears of tribulation that follow.'T m not making this up."

Communism = America's LastBest HopeCivilization does not continually advance. Throughout history, human societyhas also paused, decayed or moved backward. This motion, its tempo and direction are intrinsically linked to the econ

omy and class struggle. Science is notindependent of these processes. At thetime of the industrial revolution, when theascendant bourgeoisie challenged andreplaced the feudal order. there was notonly tremendous progress in the materialresults of knowledge (e.g . the steamengine). but also leaps in ideas of humanfreedom (the Enlightenment). But theFrench Revolution's philosophy of "liberty, equality. fraternity" was limited inapplication to the new ruling bourgeoisie once it had achieved its own fundamental class interest: the abolition offeudal restrictions on private moneymaking through exploitation of the workingpeople. Marx surpassed the radical idealism of the French Revolution, under-


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New Orleans ...(continued from page 1)but a spotlight was thrown on the desperate conditions faced by black peopleacross the country. New Orleans has itsown peculiarities, including geography.But across the U.S., the mass of blackpeople is forced to live in inner citiesthat are little more than rotting s h e l l s ~ from Newark and Camden to Detroit andGary. No jobs. no health care. schoolsthat are little more than prisons. Thiscountry's racist rulers see no reason tospend money to maintain a laycr ofthe black population that is increasinglyseen as a surplus population. The horrificimages of homeless. hungry and dehydrated black men. women and childrenin New Orleans prompted many to compare them to images of the Third World.In fact, in measures such as infant mortality, America's ghettos do approachThird World conditions.Rap musician Kanye West was widely. cheered for saying on a telethon what millions are thinking: "George Bush doesn'tcare about black people." The matriarchof the Bush clan, former first lady Barbara Bush, sniffed disdainfully after looking in on the Houston Astrodome, "WhatI'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is theyall want to stay in Texas"! With nakedclass contempt, she declared, "So manyof the people in the arena here, you know,were underprivileged anyway, so this isworking very well for them." She was

speaking of starving people who had justhad everything in their lives ripped up,had just lost their homes and their jobs.Many didn't even know if their friendsand companions and family memberswere drowned or saved.But it's not just Bush and the Republicans. The other capitalist party, theDemocrats, is also directly responsiblefor deaths that likely number in the thousands. The black Democratic Party NewOrleans mayor, Ray Nagin, ordered anevacuation but provided no resources foranyone without a car to get out. Formerpresident Bill Clinton publicly solidarized with Bush Junior and also Senior,seeking to restore the spirit of "nationalunity." Nationally, Democratic politiciansare clamoring that the administration'sinaction over New Orleans shows its incapacity. to respond to "terrorist " threats.They aim to present themselves as theparty best able to wage the "war on terror," a code word for ripping up the rightsof immigrants, black people, the labormovement and most everyone else.Despite differences over particular policies, the Republicans and Democrats areunited in defending c a p i t a l i s m ~ a n anarchic, irrational profit-driven system thatcannot even provide for the safety andwelfare of the popUlation. The situationcries out for a socialist planned economy,in which natural resources and the technological and productive forces of society would be marshaled on behalf ofhuman needs, not profit. What is urgentlyrequired is to build a workers party thatcan lead a workers revolution to rip powerfrom the hands of the capitalist class andits political agents, right-wing Republican and liberal Democrat alike.Criminality Upon Criminality

Billions in government handouts arebeing shoveled out as fast as p o s s i b l e ~ t o the politicians' corporate cronies. It's a8

APCars leaving New Orleans ahead of hurricane.Thousands, mainly black, were crammed intoHouston Astrodome after days trapped by floodingin New Orleans.real "gold rush reminiscent of corporateAmerica's efforts to profit from the reconstruction of Iraq," as the capitalists' houseorgan, the Wall Street Journal (9 September) put it. Republican Congressman(and former real estate entrepreneur)Richard Baker of Baton Rouge told lobbyists in Washington, D.C., that "Wefinally cleaned up public housing in NewOrleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."Forty years ago, this was expressed as:"urban renewal" means "Negro removal."In fact, the social disaster was manmade,and what's happening now is sheer profiteering. Gasoline prices have soared above$3 a gallon and are expected to go higher.

~ - ~ Former presidentsClinton andBush seniorbackingGeorge W. Bushin wake of GulfCoast disasterBipartisan neglectprepared way forNew Orleansflooding.

A Wall Street Jou rnal (7 September) editorial was cheerfully headlined: "In Praiseof 'Gouging'."The government's generosity toward itscorporate pals stands in stark contrast toits murderous indifference and gratuitouscruelty toward the black working peopleand poor of New Orleans. Fury at the Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) finally forced the removal of itschief, Michael Brown. When Wal-Marttried to deliver trucks of bottled water,FEMA turned them back. Absurdly evoking "terrorist" threats, FEMA delayedevacuation flights until they could get federal marshals on board every plane, whichis not even done for everyday commercial flights. When starving, dehydrated,dying people tried to board flights out,FEMA "Homeland Security" agents initially stopped them because there weren 'tworking X-ray machines to check if theywere carrying bombs!Many liberals are complaining that thedisastrous government response to Hurricane Katrina shows how FEMA, nowpart of the Department of HomelandSecurity, has been "neglected" over theyears. In fact, FEMA's "mission," established in the heat of the U.S. rulers' antiSoviet war drive in the 1980s, was toprepare the infrastructure for a militarydictatorship in the event of a "nationalemergency," including plans for rounding up Central American immigrants andU.S. citizens in concentration camps (see"ReaganlNorth's Plot for Military Coup,"WV No. 433, 24 July 1987).

want to be the guys who rescue people.But they were told .. that is not the priority." Anger ran so hot over this incidentthat several men in their unit removedthe patches from their sleeves reading,"So Others May Live," in open defianceof military discipline.New Orleans police tried to keep people from even helping each other. MalikRahim, a veteran of the Black PantherParty of the 1960s and a local activist inthe Algiers neighborhood, which wasnot flooded and where phones worked,reported that police told people whohad dry homes and boats that their helpwasn't needed. Rahim wrote that "thepeople who could help are being shippedout. People who want to stay, who havethe skills to save lives and rebuild arebeing forced to go to Houston" (SanFrancisco Ba.v View, 31 August).Rahim described "gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickuptrucks, all of them armed, and any youngB ack they see who they figure doesn'tbelong in their community, they shoothim." When a band of some 200 people, including visiting paramedics from adowntown hotel, tried to walk out of NewOrleans over a Mississippi River bridgeinto a white area, suburban cops turnedthem back and fired over their heads, saying, "This isn't New Orleans" (New YorkTimes, 10 September).Now the forces of the capitalist stateare taking steps to disarm residents whomanaged to stay. No one, except for thearmed thugs of the government, is to beallowed to defend himself. In this diresituation and in generat, we defend theright of the population to bear arms. Noto gun control!The rulers' fear of an armed popUlationharks back to the fear of "servile insurrection" that haunted the slaveowners of thepre-Civil War South. The role of the federal troops sent in to New Orleans isabove all to reassert control over the cityand its people. Immediately following theflooding, the cops herded prisoners out ofNew Orleans and into the infamous hellhole of Angola prison. Many were kepthandcuffed on a highway overpass in themerciless heat, held at gunpoint until theycould be shipped to a prison. About theonly thing this government knows how tobuild and maintain is prisons. One of thefirst "public works" undertaken by localauthorities was to turn the Greyhound bus

station into a jail for "looters," with a signreading, "Welcome to the New AngolaSouth." We say: Release them and drop.all charges against them! Immigrantsalong the Gulf Coast are in particulardanger of deportation if they can't produce legal residency documentation. Wecall for full citizenship rights for allimmigrants! No deportations!Capitalist Chaos andProfiteering

The fatal undermining of the floodcontrol system around New Orleans didnot begin the day that George W. Bushentered the White House in January 2001.Far from it! Over two decades of neglectinclude the eight years of the DemocraticClinton administration in the 1990s, during which the U.S. experienced an economic boom and the federal governmentmanaged to run a sizable budget surplus.But the pork barrel triumphed as usual,as politicians of both parties divertedthe Army Corps of Engineers' moneyto far less important projects, as rightwing New York Times columnist JohnTierney pointed out in 'The Case fora Cover-Up" (10 September). Thus theLouisiana Congressional delegation andDemocratic Senator Mary Landrieu, whonow attacks Bush for not anticipating thebreach of the levees, "have been shortchanging the levees themselves" and have"directed large sums to dubious Corpsprojects aimed at i ncreasing barge traffic,not preventing floods." And it's not justthe Mississippi Delta. According to theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers,some 13,000 traffic fatalities each yearresult from inadequate highway maintenance. Compare this one, all but hiddenindex of death by government neglect tothe number of youth killed each year byf i r e a r m s ~ s o m e 2,800 in 2 0 0 2 ~ w h i c h iswidely publicized by proponents of guncontrol.The Gulf Coast disaster has exposedthe deadly logic of the capitalist ideologues who extol the "magic of the market" and preach the virtues of "small government." One of these types, right-winglibertarian Grover Norquist declared: "Idon't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where Ican drag it into the bathroom and drownit in the bathtub." The White House andCongress reduced the size of governmentfunding for flood control and disaster

On August 30, two Navy helicopterpilots disregarded orders and ferriedmore than a hundred hurricane victims tosafety. They should have been greeted asheroes. Instead they were reprimanded,and one of them was reassigned to overseeing a temporary kennel to hold thepets of service members evacuated fromthe area. Their commander said, "We all

'>." ' ~ ' ~ ' ,... Bengiveno/NY nmesAfter leaving thousands to die, authorities left corpses to rot on streets ofNew Orleans.WORKERS VANGUARD


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relief. and as a consequence, there arelikely thousands of people, mainly blackand poor, who have now drowned.The decades-long deterioration ofthis country's government-maintainedand -funded infrastructure has gone handin hand with the deindustrialization ofthe United States. Hurricane Katrinaknocked out 10 percent of the country'soil refining capacity. There is no sparec a p a c i t y ~ which is why oil companiesare about to make a killing at thepumps. There has not been a new refinery built in the U.S. since 1976. Overthe past quarter-century. total refiningcapacity has declined by 10 percent whileconsumption of gasoline has increased by45 percent.Why has this happened? At bottom, itis because .of the basic laws governingthe capitalist system of production. Therate of profit, which determines wherethe money goes, was too low to inducethe oil companies to invest in new refineries. As Robert Mabro, head of theOxford Institute for Energy Studies.explained: "The fundamental problem is .that we depend on oil companies thatdislike the refining business because ofhistorically low returns but whose deficit,can produce an economic, social andpolitical crisis" (Ne,1' York Times, 4 September). Even before Katrina, sharplyrising energy costs were dampening thefeeble economic expansion. Now theenergy crisis, a blatant case the irrationality of capitalism, is likely to tip theU.S. economy into a recession.Meanwhile, the ~ i r l i n e s are trying to

1930s New Deal. But it was the greatlabor battles of the time that forced theU.S. rulers, represented by Democraticpresident Franklin D. Roosevelt, to institute those projects as well as economicreforms like Social Security, unemployment insurance and welfare.The labor bureaucracy-in both JohnSweeney's AFL-CIO and the recentbreakaway coalition led by the SElU'sAndy Stern-are just as opposed tofighting for a program of unionized public works as the two capitalist parties areto accepting it. Despite wide sentimentat the base to participate in relief andrebuilding efforts, the union misleadershave done nothing to undertake themobilization of unionized workers that isnecessary.The union tops' refusal to engage inclass struggle is rooted in their support tothe capitalist profit system. expressedpolitically in their ties to the Democratic(and sometimes Republican) parties. Tounleash the social power of this country's multiracial proletariat, there needsto be a fight to replace the labor bureaucracy with a leadership committed tomobilizing labor's power. independentof the capitalist state and politicians.in the interests of all the exploited andoppressed.The Bush administration and Congressare handing out billions in no-bid contracts for Gulf Coast rebuilding to thebig corporations that are already looting Iraq-Halliburton: Bechtel; the FluorCorporation. Significantly. Bush issuedan order exempting jobs created by these

WV PhotoMay 1983: ILA mobilized in defense of school busing in Norfolk, Virginia.bust workers' unions, destroy their pensions and cut their wages, all the whileclaiming that high oil prices are makingthem do it. With early grain ready to shipbut with few facilities working, farmerswho ship crops down the MississippiRiver are faced with ruin. The shrimpingand oystering industries are wrecked.Poultry plants are destroyed, their stockrotting.What Needs to Be Done

Over a million people are displaced.The masses of displaced people must beprovided with jobs-union jobs at unionwage scales, with health care, housing,clothing and all other necessities. Insteadof being regarded as victims, these working people can be incorporated into aforce for their own revitalization. Whatis needed at the minimum is a massiveprogram of federally funded publicworks to rebuild New Orleans and therest of the devastated Gulf Coast. Thereshould be workers committees thatwould make sure that shoddy designsand penny-pinching construction couldbe vetoed before they endangered peopIe's I ves, and that lifesaving repairs andmaintenance would not fall victim to theax of austerity.However, not only the Republicans butalso the Democrats will oppose any suchprogram that smacks of "socialism."There is one and only one force in American society that can change the currentpolitical balance in favor of working people: a revitalized labor movement. Anumber of Democratic politicians andliberal commentators are talking aboutpublic works programs like those of the16 SEPTEMBER 2005

companies from the 1931 Davis-BaconAct, which stipulates that federallyfunded construction projects pay prevailing wages, which in practice are usuallysignificantly above the legal minimumwage. This is a calculated blow againstthe labor movement.Popular outrage at the response of theBush administration to the devastation ofHurricane Katrina extends to anger at itscrony capitalists who run Halliburton,Bechtel et al. A labor campaign to unionize the corporations engaged in "rebuilding" New Orleans and the rest of the

Gulf Coast would have massive popularsupport. Such a campaign could be animportant first step in the long-neededunionization of the South and more generally the revival of the declining unionmovement.Reformist leftist groups are pumpingout lists of immediate demands for floodrelief. for housing, for jobs-all urgentnecessities. But what is left out of theequation is how we're going to get thosethings. The agency for social changethe working class, including its key blackcomponent-is not what they look to tocarry out their demands.Typical of this approach is the FreedomSocialist Party (FSP). In a 4 Septemberstatement that calls for "a planned, cooperative economy run by the workers." theFSP argues that "public pressure" canprevent the Bush administration fromusing the crisis to enrich Halliburton,Bechtel, et al. Workers World Party's newfront group, the "Troops Out Now Coalition," one of the groups organizing theSeptember 24 protests against the occupation of Iraq, calls for "Money for Hur-

rsNew Orleans, September 1: Texas game wardens terrorize black residentswho used mail truck to escape rising floodwaters, forcing them to continueon foot.ricane Relief. Not for War." A coalitionstatel1).ent calling for a "national campaign for emergency action" headlines,'The Bush Administration Is CriminallyNegligent." It then states, "We call on theBush Administration" to do all mannerof good things. including "a massivejobs program at union wages for rebuilding." What is this. Christian redemptionthrough good works by war criminals?Such groups cynically appeal to naiveyoung liberals who believe that theAmerican government. even under Bush.can be made to respond to "public pressure." In practice, such pressure politicsis a vehicle for bourgeois "lesser evilism," i.e., the Democrat ic Party.Left-liberal publicist Naomi Kleinstates in the Nation (26 September)."New Orleans could be reconstructed byand for the very people most victimizedby the flood." But how? New Orleans isowned already, by corporations and biglandlords. They must be expropriated,their system of exploitation overthrownby workers revolution, before such massrebuilding in the interests of the peoplecan take place.American Capitalism andBlack Oppression

Some 40 years after the passage of theCivil Rights and Voting Rights acts, t h ~ Gulf Coast disaster demonstrates that thebasic condition of blacks as an oppressedcolor-caste forcibly segregated at the bottom ofAmerican society has not changed.Black and white liberals have long hailedthe civil rights movement of the late1950s-early 1960s as a historic triumphin the struggle for racial equality. Certainly, the end of legalized segregation inthe South was a genuine and importantdemocratic gain. But black oppression isrooted in the very structure of Americancapitalism, as the catastrophe in NewOrleans has so graphically demonstrated.As we wrote in an early, basic documentof the Spartacist League:

'The vast majority of Black peopleboth North and South-are today workers who, along with the rest of theAmerican working class. must sell theirlabor power in order to secure the necessities of life to those who buy laborpower in order to make profit. The buyersof labor power, the capitalists. are asmall minority whose rule is maintainedonly by keeping the majority who laborfor them divided and misled. The fun-

Black Historyand the Class StruggleNo. 18

Black History is sent to allWorkers Vanguard subscribers.$1 (48 pages)Order from:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116

damental division created deliberatelyalong racial lines has kept the Negroworkers who entered American capitalism at the bottom. still at the bottom.Ultimately their road to freedom liesonlv through the stru>!!!le with the rest ofthe worki;g class toe ~ h o l i s h capitalismand establish in its place an egalitarian.socialist society."Yet the struggle of the Black people ofthis country for freedom. while part ofthe struggle of the working class as awhole, is more than that struggle. TheNegro people are an oppressed racecolor caste. in the main comprising themost exploited layer of the Americanworking class ... Because of their position as both the most oppressed and alsothe most conscious and experienced section. revolutionary black workers areslated to play an ~ x c e p t i o n a l role in thecoming American revolution."-"Black and Red-ClassStruggle Road to NegroFreedom." Spartacist specialsupplement. May-June 1967The mass mobilization of black people in the Southern civil rights movement. and the subsequent Northern ghettorebellions, disrupted and challenged t h ~ racist American bourgeois order. Butthe civil rights struggles remained underthe leadership of liberals like MartinLuther King Jr. who were tied to theDemocratic Party and more fundamentally came up against the inadequacy ofdemocratic reform in addressing the defacto segregation and impoverishment ofblack people.The deindustrialization of the Northeast and Midwest beginning in the 1970shas been especially devastating for blacks,since unionized industrial jobs were central to the fragile economic base of thesegregated black communities. Budgetcuts at all levels of government and theslashing of social welfare programs, carried out by Democratic as well as Republican administrations, have hit particularly hard at the large sector of blackworkers employed in public services,and all but eliminated the slim lifelineformerly available to the unemployedghetto masses.The net worth (assets minus debt) ofthe average black family is today lessthan one-tenth that of whites ($6,000versus $67,000). Black unemployment isalmost two and a half times that ofwhites. And black people are twice aslikely to die from disease, accidentsand homicide. Seeking to escape poverty

continued on page 10

' C 9 ' ~ ' A Spartac;st Pamphlet $1Black Hlster,and Ibe Class Struggle

- -Ne.18__fREebhMA Life in theBlack Panther Party.... ~ . h o t ~ ~ . . . . , . .

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New Orleans ... sation 40 times that of an average workerin his company. Today it's more than 500times. The average real hourly wage ofworkers without a college degree is lesstoday than 25 years ago. Today as before,labor and black struggle will go forwardtogether or be driven back separately.The proletariat alone has the power toshatter this racist, capitalist system. Wonto a revolutionary program, black workers will be the living link fusing theanger of the dispossessed ghetto masseswith the social power of the multiracialproletariat under the leadership of a LeniDist vanguard party.

(continued from page 9)and learn a usable job skill, youngblack men join the armed forces at a rateclose to 50 percent higher than theirwhite counterparts, thereby becomingcannon fodder for the U.S. imperialistsin their military adventures like Iraq.Over 900,000 black men and women,including one out of every eight blackmen between the ages of 25 and 29, arein prison, mainly victims of the bipartisan "war on drugs."

The Class-Struggle Road toBlack LiberationBlack people are not just victims

of American capitalism. Despite thedestruction of industrial jobs and erosionof union strength, black workers, whoserate of union membership is 32 percent higher than that of white workers,continue to be integrated into strategicsectors of the industrial proletariat-inurban transit, longshore, steel and auto.

But for that to happen, the two mainobstacles preventing black workers fromplaying that historic role must be overcome. These are the Democratic Party,especially its black component, and thetrade-union bureaucracy. Beginning inthe 1960s, the Republican Party positioned itself as the party of the "whitebacklash," while the Democrats moved toco-opt young black activists into the government bureaucracy, initially through the

The attacks on the black populationhave also been wielded to undermine theconditions of the entire working class. In1980, the average C EO received compen-

The "War on Terror" TargetsBlacks, Immigrants, Labor and Leftists!Fight Government Repression!

Mumia Abu-Jamal cae Productions Lynne Stewart AP

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BAY AREA Saturday, October 1, 2 p.m.Berkeley Public Library - 2090 Kittredge St., BerkeleySpeakers include: Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel for Mumia Abu-JamalVideo showing of Lynne Stewart's presentation at New York RallyDon Cane, Labor Black League for Social DefenseModerator: Valerie West, Partisan Defense Committee

For more information: (510) 839-0852 or e-mail: [email protected] tCHICAGO Saturday, October 1, 5 p.m.

University of Chicago Law School, Room 2 -1111 East 60th StreetSpeakers include: Lydia Barashango, sister of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Moderator:

Standish E. Willis, Chicago Conference of Black LawyersMike Elliott, UAW Local 551, Chair, Education Committee*Don Alexander, New York Labor Black League for Social DefenseFred Redmond, USWA Assistant Director District 7*Brian Mendis, Partisan Defense Committee

*organization affiliation for identification purposes only For more information: (312) 563-0442Los ANGELES Saturday, October 8, 4 p.m.

Immanuel Presbyter ian Church* - 3300 Wilshire Blvd. (at Berendo St., 2 blocks west ofVermont/Wilshire Red-line Station)Speakers include: Lydia Barashango, sister of Mumia Abu-JamalDon Cane, Labor Black League for Social DefenseModerator: Valerie West, Partisan Defense Committee*The views expressed by the participants are not necessarily those of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church.For more information: (213) 380-8897

"War on Poverty" programs. Since then,black Democrats have often served asmayors of major cities where they act asoverseers of the ghetto masses. It is thesepoliticos who have implemented on theground the killing cuts in social welfareprograms. It is the cops under their command who brutalize and imprison youngblack men en masse.The trade-union misleadership's willful refusal to combat the racist oppression of blacks, and in recent decades

of mainly Latino immigrants, is the single most important factor underlyingthe decline of the union movement. Thisis nowhere clearer than in the South,which has been the main regional bastion of anti-labor reaction since thebuilding of the integrated industrial unionsin the 1930s.The momentous working-class battlesthat built these unions, often under theleadership of "reds," took place againstthe political backdrop of the so-called"New Deal coalition." In the North, thisconsisted of sections of the liberal bourgeoisie, the labor movement and theblack and Jewish minorities. However,key to the Democratic Party's dominancenationally was the support of the whiteruling class (the Dixiecrats) in the JimCrow South. a racist police state inwhich blacks were stripped of every

democratic right and liberty. The NewDeal coalition literally extended fromblack leftist union organizers in the Midwest to Southern sheriffs who weremembers of the Ku Klux Klan.Even in the heyday of labor radicalismin the 1930s and early -mid '-1.0s. no serious and sustained effort was made tounionize the South. for the labor topsrecognized that this would require

s m a ~ h i n g thc entrenched system of whitesupremacy and would therefore havedestroyed the fragile "unity" of theDemocratic Party. That unity was finallybroken up by the civil rights movement.as the main body of Dixiecrats decampedto the Republican Party.Since the 1970s, parts of the South

have experienced significant industrialgrowth, including large-scale investmentby European and Japanese corporationsattracted by the region's relatively cheaplabor. Only a very small fraction of Southern workers are unionized, although thereare some crucially important beachheadsof union strength such as the predominantly black ILA longshore union localson the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Organizing the region's proletariat, which nowincludes increasing numbers of immigrants, especially from Latin America,cannot be achieved on the basis of narrowbusiness unionism which accepts andadheres to this country's harsh anti-laborlaws. It will require a level of workingclass and black struggle that challengesthe very foundations of the Americanbourgeois order.

On the one side, the black masses willrally behind racially integrated workersstruggles against the local white powerstructure. On the other side, the Southernbranch of the U.S. ruling class-bothDemocrat and Republican-will resort topolice, company goons and professionalstrikebreakers while using racist demagogy to turn white workers against thelabor movement. The defense of strikepickets and the need to defeat racist terror will be directly linked.This is a concrete expression of ourperspective of revolutionary integration-ism. Counterposed to both liberal inte

grationism-the false view that blackpeople can achieve social equality withinthe confines of American capitalismand to all forms of black separatism,revolutionary integrationism is premisedon the understanding that black freedomrequires smashing the capitalist systemand constructing an egalitarian socialistsociety. There will be no social revolution in this country without a unitedstruggle of black and white workers ledby their multiracial vanguard party. Andthere is no other road to eliminating thespecial oppression of black people thanthe victorious conquest of power by theU.S. proletariat.

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Statement...(continued fronz page 1)But even the paltry millions that had beenbudgeted for repair and reinforcementwere slashed and diverted to help payfor the occupation of Iraq and the phony"war on terror," while the fi Ithy richgot more tax cuts. As Hurricane Katrinaapproached. black Democratic mayorRay Nagin ordered a full evacuation ofNew Orleans. But no transport was provided for the 35 percent of black households \vithOut cars. and for the tens ofthousands of the elderly and disabled.They were all left to die.Then it took five days-with temperatures in the 90s, with elderly peopledying in their wheelchairs and desperatemothers begging for food and water-forthe govcrnment to even begin providingrelief. Bush timed a photo-op in NewOrleans to coincide with the first convoys of relief s u p p l i e ~ . Meanwhi Ie hisman at the Federal Emergency Management.Agency (FEMA) claimed that thegovernment had not known that there,were thousands in the Convention Center-this as hundreds of millions of TVviewers around the globe watched scenesevocative of concentration camps or theMiddle Passage.

Barely a day after the flooding, thegovernment and its media mouthpiecesturned the victims intq "criminals," depicting black people as those who "loot"and white people as those who "find"items from local grocery stores. MayorNagin called off search-and-rescueoperations and redeployed police to stoplooters. With depraved indifference tothe desperate masses, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco announced thatsome 300 members of the ArkansasNational G uard had bee n sent to 'NewOrleans not to help the survivors butto terrorize them: "These troops knowhow to shoot and kill...and I expect theywill."Even as it joined the anti-looting hysteria, the New York Times (3 September)was compelled to admit that those abandoned by alllevcls of government viewedas "Robin Hood figures" the young blackmen who "found milk and food" Qr brokeinto fancy hotel kitchens to serve upgigantic breakfasts for those stranded inthe Convention Center. These are theheroes of this d i ~ a s t e r . It is the Americanruling class that has looted entire countries and continents, that in this country bled ,>,orkers' pension funds dry andgorged themselves on record profits whiledivcrting funds from health care, education and life-saving measures like floodprevention. And now the oil companiesare seizing on the disaster to further jackup prices.

Today the administrators of the capitalist state reveal the incredible depth oftheir class contempt and ignorance-theybelieved they could simply abandon thepoor, the old and the sick of New Orleansto their own fate. But everyone wasevacuated. from the oil rigs in the Gulfbefore the storm hi t Commentators nowspeak of "the storm after the storm,"advising America's rulers to prepare forsocial blowback at the base of society.Even from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, the administration's seeming indifference to the destruction of a majorAmerican city and a crucial port, witha petrochemical industry responsible for20 percent of the country's oil, is irrational. Coast to coast, working people,minorities and much of the rest of thepopulation are furious with the peoplerunning this country.The Democrats are now going afterBush hammer and tongs. This administration is a particularly crass expression ofthe greed and arrogance of America'scapitalist rulers. But the decline in realwages and the decimation of the labormovcment gathered speed under Democrats and Republicans alike, as did thegap between rich and poor, the impoverishment of the ghetto and barrio population and the massive incarceration of theiryouth. Indeed, it was Democrat Clinton16 SEPTEMBER 2005

Bush Bans Cuban Medical AidIt's more killing by the Bush administration, this time in the name of antiCommunism. Cuban leader Fidel Castro offered to immediately dispatchnearly 1,600 Cuban doctors with over26 tons of medical supplies to the GulfCoast of the United States to help treatthe thousands of sick and injured vic

tims of Hurricane Katrina. But Cuba'soffer was snubbed as the hurricane victims were left to die.A comparison of the U.S. government's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina with the successes of theCuban deformed workers state illustrates why ovcrthrowing the capitalistprofit system is literally a life anddeath question for working people,m i n o r i t i e ~ and the poor. According to astudy by Oxfam, Cuba has a "culture ofsafety," committed to reducing risksand saving lives. Before a Category 5hurricane blasted Cuba last year with160 miles per hour winds, nearly twomillion people were safely evacuatedwith no loss of life and no seriousinjury.Before a hurricane season begins,Cuban authorities review and revisedisaster plans based on the past year'sexperience. The entire country goesthrough a hurricane drill, the Meteoro,trimming tree limbs, checking dams forweak points and making repairs. Everyshelter is stocked with food, water andmedical supplies. Neighborhood representatives from the Federation ofCuban Women identify those most vulnerable-the elderly and single mothers with young children-who mightneed extra help evacuating. Schoolsensure that even young children knowwhat to do and where to go. Doctorsare evacuated with the communitiesthey serve. so they know who needsinsulin, heart medication, etc.Cuban doctors have saved livesworldwide and are often first on thescene to help the victims of disasters,whether the stricken region is ruled byan ally or foe. In 1972. when a devastating earthquake hit Nicaragua during

who boasted of having axed "welfare aswe know it."The devastation of New Orleans is theresult of decades of bipartisan neglect bya ruling class that doesn't want to pay forrepairing its deteriorating infrastructure.driven as it is by lust for immediate gain.Four years ago, FEMA itself warned thata major hurricane hitting New Orleanswas one of the three deadliest disastersthat could befall the U.S. Scientists atLouisiana State University modeled hundreds of storm possibilities and predictedthat more than 100,000 people could die.The government responded by repeatedlyslashing urgently needed funds. By 2004,the Bush administration had cut morethan 80 percent of the Army Corps ofEngineers budget request for strengthening the levees for Lake Pontchartrain.This June the government made evendeeper cuts.Bush and the Democrats cynically usedthe bodies of the working people killedin the criminal September II attack onthe World Trade Center as a bloody shirtin launching the "war on terror" andinvasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Askany black person in the Gulf Coast: Hasthe government protected them fromcatastrophe? Are working people safer?"Homeland Security" is ' now beingdirected with guns drawn against blackpeople in New Orleans. Meanwhile,black troops from Louisiana and Mississippi who were sent to Iraq to kill and diefor American imperialism now wait inanguish to hear if their own loved ones athome remain alive. The bloody subjugation of the Iraqi peoples is carried out

Reuters photosHavana, September 4: Cuban leader Castro addressing doctors equippedfor Gulf Coast relief. Bush refused offer of almost 1,600 doctors and over26 tons of medical supplies.the Somoza dictatorship, Cuban doctors and field hospitals were immediately dispatched to help the victims,as they were again recently to victimsof the tsunami in Indonesia and SriLanka.Despite the choke hold of the U.S.imperialist blockade and the loss ofeconomic aid from the former SovietUnion, the quality of medical care inCuba is high. Amid the barrage ofimperialist propaganda that Marxism"failed," this in itself is testimony tothe superiority of the planned, collectivized economy that was created inCuba when a workers state was consolidated following the expropriations andnationalizations of private property inthe summer and fall of 1960. Althoughthe workers state was bureaucratically deformed from its inception, theplanned economy, modeled on that ofthe Soviet Union, brought enormousgains to the Cuban people, such asjobs, free medical care, housing anduniversal education. These gains aretoday increasingly threatened, from

by the same capitalist class that has consigned thousands upon thousands of NewOrleans residents to death and devastation. U.S. out of Iraq-now! Down withthe imperialist occupation!The capitalist rulers have their priorities. and taking care of working people isn't one of them. When HurricaneMichelle, a Category 4 storm, hit Cuba in200 I, some 7 00,000 pe ople were evacuated in a matter of hours-despite poorroads and fuel shortages. Some 25,000volunteers were mobilized to go door todoor to prepare people for evacuation;trucks and buses were provided to movethe population to safety and living spacesorganized for the refugees. Similar operations took place in 2002, 2004 (evacuating 1.9 million people out of a total population of 11 million) and again this July.This shows the power of Cuba's collectivized economy, which, despite Castro'sbureaucratic regime, is organized not onthe basis of capitalist competition forprofits but on the basis of economic planning. The 1960-61 Cuban Revolutionthrew out the capitalists. the U.S. imperialists and their CIA spies and Mafiahenchmen, creating a bureaucraticallydeformed workers state, which must bedefended unconditionally against U.S.imperialism.The situation cries out for a workersrevolution in the U.S. to do away with thecapitalist system and establish a societywith a planned, collectivized economy.This country was founded on black chattel slavery. and the continuing enforcedsegregation of the black population as alast-hired, first-fired race-color caste is

without and within.The Bush administration has pledgedto maintain the starvation blockadeagainst Cuba imposed by DemocratJohn F. Kennedy in 1962. W

workers vanguard no 854 - 16 september 2005

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