*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Sex, Race And Class In The "American Century"

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1987 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

Markin comment:

I have posted this entry as a snapshot in time from this period (1980s)presented by a revolutionary whose real working class experiences in the 1960s are probably a little bit different from those of most of us who became serious leftists at that time.

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Down With U.S. Imperialism!

Sex, Race and Class in the "American Century"

On 22 November 1986 the Spartacist League held a forum in San Francisco called "Fight Reagan Reaction with Class Struggle!" We print below an edited transcript of the speech given by comrade George Crawford, an SL Central Committee member.
Tonight we're going to be talking about domestic reaction within the United States now—Reagan's war or, very importantly, the ruling class's war, against what is known as the Vietnam syndrome, which came from the U.S. defeat on the battlefield at the hands of the heroic Vietnamese workers and peasants. Now, this is also an international phenomenon, there's America's military attacks on Libya, on Grenada, many evidences of this. But inside the United States you have what you could call a moral rearmament, which is an enforced social reaction coming from the government in league with and using what is known as the Moral Majority forces, religious fundamentalists. It's stepping up, becoming greater every day.

Everybody is constantly amazed that there's no opposition to this incredible crusade against every kind of democratic right; that the Democratic Party basically tries to out-Moral Majority the Moral Majority. And the point that I want to make in the talk is that this is not simply the Republican Party or Reagan. This is a war against the population by an entire ruling class, because something is seriously wrong from their viewpoint with America. Very important for them that, one, workers work for what they're paid and, two, most importantly, volunteer to die en masse when necessary. And if a ruling class does not have that, it's in trouble. And it doesn't have that now, it's a long shot from there.

The 1950s: The Bomb and the Red Purges


I want to go back and describe a little bit about the '50s. The U.S. won World War II and it came out of World War II as the strongest and the overwhelming imperialist. The other imperialists economically were destroyed through the process of World War II. But the Soviet Union also won World War II, and not only that, within a very few years it had the atom bomb. And so the U.S., you might say at the very pinnacle of what it had declared its century, looked over its shoulder and there was the Soviet Union with the atom bomb. The atom bomb was very important to the U.S., by the way, and was used. It's a matter of record that the atom bomb was used not for victory over Japan but to send a message to the Soviet Union for after the war. It was a calculated decision, to the point of even keeping Stalin totally in the dark; they did not want him to know what was going on in terms of the development and the dropping of the bomb.

So the U.S. lost its trump card within a very short time after World War II. Not only that, the U.S. had another problem. The original organizers of the AFL-CIO were in the main some kind of communists. They belonged to the Communist Party, they belonged to the Trotskyist party, they maybe were Musteites; but they were still there. And so in the late '40s, these people were neutralized. Either they were physically thrown
out of the unions, or they were isolated, or they were beaten up.

I remember when I went to work in '64, this was in a rubber plant in L.A., and it was about '69 when I started becoming political; and within about three years I met two guys, and I'd worked with the guys or around them for about eight years, and I had no idea that these people used to be political. Turned out that they were all, not members of the CP because there were no members of the CP left, they were supporters of the CP. One guy had three generations of union members which meant there were union members in his family before 1900. And the other one was a guy that, well, finally he told me that he had a full set of Capital locked away in his basement, which nobody else knew about. But then over a period of time he had convinced himself that communism's okay and all that, and Marx was right and all that, but the real question is the Catholics. And no one in the plant knew that these people were in the least bit leftist. They had not gone to a union meeting since the meeting in 1949 when they took the communist organizers out in the parking lot and beat them up.

Now, the '50s were pretty rough. One of the things in the '50s is that the population actually believed that this was the American Century, and that communism was, indeed, irrelevant—except as an external international phenomenon which was the enemy. But inside the U.S. there was a belief—and I'm not sure it was in all layers of the population, certainly less in terms of blacks—that U.S. imperialism is going to have things its way. And, after all, it had absolutely no competition from any other imperialist power in the '50s. U.S. Steel could produce at less than full capacity and simply dictate world steel prices, and pay incredible dividends (which paid off about 20 years later in plants that can't compete).

There was no pill, of course. You know, this "Just say no"? Boy, we grew up with this "Just say no." You know, it brings one to rage. And for the most part you unfortunately had to say no. Was it because you wanted to be a good citizen or a good Catholic? No, it was fear! Because 15 percent of your graduating class of women were pregnant in high school and they didn't graduate. And you had two choices: in L.A. either you sent your girlfriend or went with her to Tijuana, and since you couldn't speak Spanish you stood out in the avenue with a $20 bill and you ended up with a woman dying or horribly mutilated with infection because the only person that stops is a cab driver. So that wasn't an option. Or you went to one of these incredible homes where the women put their babies up for adoption. And of course the third thing was marriage. So your life's over. At 18, forget it. That's it. The woman doesn't graduate from school, maybe you graduate from school. If you're lucky you've got an old man working in a unionized job and gets you a job, if you're not lucky it's gas station mechanic forever. There's a good film about this called Fat City, a John Huston film.

And so you did not get an enormous amount of questioning about options, what do I want to do in life, what will I do next year in life? It was there, you just did it—or it did it to you. And left politics, or politics per se was not even an alternative. And I'm sure where I grew up was a bit worse, because it was one generation away from the South, a Southern working-class area, but there was no option, one could not conceive of thinking about becoming a revolutionary politician. I mean, the political debate that was going on was whether the Democrats sold out Eastern Europe and China, and if you were a Republican you said yes and if you were a Democrat you said no and that's as far as it went. And that's what the ruling class liked a lot. Because the workers did not create a hell of a lot of trouble. They were economically combative, that is true, but the politics one would say were at an all-time low.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War

What happened to change all this? First of all, you had the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was very, very powerful because here is a fundamental democratic right that should exist by the very underpinnings—and formal underpinnings, and agreed by all, in the Constitution—of our society. Yet it was impossible and did not happen and the civil rights movement was a failure. Right now they try to pass off what a success it was. At the time we all knew it was a failure, and that what was happening was simply tokenism, and what was happening was that the real leaders of the civil rights movement were being butchered and murdered by the state.

And the second thing of course that happened was the Vietnam War. I want to tell one story about the Vietnam War. We were talking about the Vietnam syndrome and I think this story makes it actually clear. In 1969 I was just beginning to become involved in organized politics and just by chance dropped by Newsreel, a kind of New Leftist group, and they were involved in military organizing on the West Coast. Now, the main and only training camp for the Marines on the West Coast is called Camp Pendleton, it's a critical camp. It's got some of the greatest real estate in the western United States. To get into Camp Pendleton you literally have to go to Oceanside. Well, that's Marine property, basically—it isn't, but it is.

And so there was a demonstration by an organization called the Movement for a Democratic Military. Now the organizer was a black sergeant, supporter of the Black Panther Party. There was a bus with Black Panther Party members going from L.A. to Oceanside for the rally. So I decided to go down with various people to this rally. And I got down there, and there's this little amphitheater right on the ocean, like in a hundred little seaside towns, and you've got an audience of about 500 Vietnam vets or about-to-be Vietnam vets because they're sitting there waiting for demobe orders home. Black and white, overwhelmingly from the South, Marines, sitting in there listening to all the antiwar speakers, including the Black Panthers! And the Black Panthers had a position that the Viet Cong should win the war—long live the revolution of the Viet Cong. And so around the edges of the amphitheater, of course, you've got the other Marines singing the Marine anthem and burning the Viet Cong flag. They had that Green Beret guy that was against the war and various other people, a woman and a doctor and all that, and they spoke for a while. After about an hour and a half, we were approached by military Movement guys who said, "You really ought to leave about now because something's going to happen soon." And so as we were leaving on the only road out of Oceanside, I looked back and fights were starting and the streets of Oceanside became one big melee that night.
Now, first of all, one does not want to say that this is revolutionary integrationism because there was no consciousness of class, there was no place for this to go because there was no mass party. We were too small. But in a little, not insignificant way, class war was beginning a little bit that night in Oceanside. And for the bourgeoisie and everybody who has an interest in capitalism, including the labor bureaucracy, this is the height of their horrors. They can't stand this. This must be reversed no matter what.
And so actually as a postscript to what happened in Oceanside, the Movement for a Democratic Military tried to sustain their organization, and they had a little storefront in Oceanside, and every night or every other night, they got shotgun blasts into their storefront for about six months. And then the cops ran a massive provocateur operation on them, and then some months later there was a massive indictment of antiwar guys and the indictments were held in Arizona. They pulled them all out to Arizona and they resurrected some anti-IWW laws that hadn't been used since the early 20th century.

The other thing is that for the first time the soldiers in the war watched TV almost every night and so they got to hear the total crap that was being put forth on American TV news about how "we are winning the war," and they knew it was all lies, total lies. So in a sense what you had was a snapshot, like a very bright flash bulb, on the real nature of this class society, stripping away all the hypocrisy.

"Ethnic Purity" Carter Paved Way for Reagan

After that the bourgeoisie knew they were in trouble. And so a wing of the bourgeoisie adopted a defeatist position on the war. Now when the SL said that at the time, everybody laughed at us because they were all in the popular front with this wing of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie wanted to get out of this war, they wanted to get out of an impossible situation before it got worse. (They actually did that, they were able to co-opt the antiwar movement in the U.S. Along the way they had to dump Nixon because he wasn't the guy that was going to reinstill faith in anything, it was quite clear.) But what you had was a generation of people that looked at life and figured, what do I really want to do with my life? Sex was one of the answers, there were a lot of answers. But the point of it is that since then the initial reaction to Washington and the government regardless of the power is "Bullshit! What are they trying to do to us now?" And that exists today.

Now, I remember after Watergate reading in the New York Review of Books about how liberals were very upset about Watergate, and they were very pissed off at Nixon. And liberals said: the major problem with Watergate is that it damaged the imperial presidency, possibly beyond repair; and we as liberals know that all progress for the common man must come through the United States imperial presidency. And so this moral rearmament became urgent for them. So you get Jimmy Carter, the born-again, "ethnic purity" Democrat, and that was his purpose.

First of all, you should remember that Jimmy Carter wasn't just an ass. One time in his life he was a nuclear sub officer. So he had to have something going for him that was not obvious. Jimmy Carter, in his anti-Communist crusade, the "human rights" crusade, installed the boycott of the Olympics. It was under Carter that we got the establishment for the first time of religious fundamentalists in Washington; it was under Carter that leftists in Greensboro were slaughtered, an action that was organized by the FBI, like many if not most of these Klan executions in the South are. But he blew it pretty good—the killer rabbit and everything. Some nuclear sub officer!

So what we got was Reagan and Meese. The first thing they did is they got PATCO, the air controllers. Now, these people are so educated and are so white-collar that they were the tip of the top layer of the labor aristocracy. They come out of the service, they're at the top. And so these guys decided their work was impossible—which everybody knows it is—and they needed more money and they needed better working conditions. So they went on strike.

Now, the money demands were irrelevant. There are not that many of these guys. Any other administration would simply pay them off. But rather than pay them off, Reagan fired them all, got two union leaders, put leg irons on them and paraded them across the country, making sure there were lots of photographs. And if he can do this, and does want to do this, and is so proud of doing this to those guys, what the hell is he going to do to the rest of us? That was the message.

Then there was the MOVE bombing, just total fire-bombing, genocide of blacks, children, simply because MOVE didn't fit in, simply because they were different. They were no threat to anybody, everybody knows that. It was genocide, straightforward. State-enforced social reaction targeting everybody they suspect of not being in sympathy with a white, Christian fundamentalist, English-speaking America where deviants will not be tolerated.

Now, Rambo. This is Reagan's hero, this is the Reagan administration's movie. What is Rambo? First of all the guy's kind of short, second of all he was a draft dodger, third of all he's an ex-porn star. And this is the guy that kills 5,000 Vietnamese in 45 minutes? It's incredible, nobody believes it, it's just a simple lie. It has no power at all. And the viciousness of this enforced reaction with Reagan is because nobody believes. So the only way forward for Reagan is terror against the American population.

Reagan's Soldiers:
Religion in the Service of Reaction

Now, I want to talk for a few minutes about the nature of Reagan's soldiers, the cutting edge of Reaganism in terms of the active domestic policy, and that's the religious right, the Moral Majority, whatever you want to call them. These people have always been around. First of all, these people are not the Jehovah's Witnesses, who are very sincere in their religious beliefs and suffer for it. These people are not the Amish in Pennsylvania. These people are not particularly religious. I'm not saying that they're enlightened or advanced. What they are demagogues, and they use religion.

These people are also always used, historically. And who are they always historically used by? They're used by the Southern upper class. There was a movie some time ago called Advise and Consent. And always you have the Senator who gets down there and it's the Sam Ervin type and he's got this drawl and he's just the country boy and all, except he's got a Phi Beta Kappa key from Harvard, he's got the Oxford scholarship, his family goes back three hundred years in the South, one of the old slave-owning families. And he's the master. He's the master not simply in that sense for blacks but also for the Southern poor whites, who he calls "Southern white trash," which is the layer you're talking about in terms of these revivalists and such in the South.

These fundamentalist leaders have always served their master. And what these guys are all about is money. Now there was a line from Prizzi's Honor. Some woman has ripped off the Mafia for money, you know, it's not too smart. Jack Nicholson is going with that woman and so he's got trouble now. And he looks at her and he says: You know, Italians like money more than they like their sons, and they like their sons an awful lot. Well, these guys like money more than the racism, and they like the racism an awful lot.

The people that take these guys really seriously are sort of like the types you would see going out on Saturday night to a professional wrestling match and taking it really seriously. I'm sure they must have more people but what I'm trying to say is they are not on their own a significant percentage of our society in terms of power or anything else. Maybe in Alabama, yes, but only if a Huey Long was in office, you see. That's their relationship, always. So they are powerful because of the Reagan government but most of all they are powerful because they serve a need that the entire bourgeoisie has right now, which is this terror on the American people to restore in the population unquestioning loyalty in preparation for the anti-Soviet war drive. That's what purpose they serve.
You could say, well, this doesn't make any sense at all, why is it critical to go after sex videos for this question? Isn't this creating problems? You're going after people, they're not leftists, they just want to be left alone. Why isn't there something like a Brave New World where you've got those pleasure pills and all that sort of stuff, and then you've got total totalitarian society? Because class society doesn't work like that, because it's class; because reaction takes particular historical forms. In Germany, there was Hitler; in this country it takes the form of the Ku Klux Klan.

And so what these people's ideology represents is classical—the ideology of the Ku Klux Klan in this country. If you're talking about fascism and how the bourgeoisie needs fascism at a certain point and turns around and uses these dogs, that's what's going on now. Not in the sense that these people have taken power, no. Not in the sense that the Reagan government is fascist, no. But in the sense of using these people and using this ideology, that is certainly going on.

I want to talk a little bit about their ideology. (I want to use Gore Vidal because Gore Vidal really hates Christianity. As he says, his secret hero is Herod, Herod and the Apostate Julian, the last pagan.) Of course, they pick and choose from the Bible what they want, even though they'll tell you that every word in the Bible is god. Except they fight over which Bible. For example, as the Jews will tell you, the Bible bars shellfish, the Bible bars pork, etc. Well, somehow those things are not effected. They're not effected because Paul sold out on those issues in order to get a hearing from the Romans.
But to them what the Bible is, very important, is a justification for their racism. The whole thing about the descendants of Ham is used by these people. In secular terms, when you hear the cry of "law and order" or "cut welfare" or "the death penalty" those are simply code words for "get blacks." And as for Jews, "these are the people that killed Christ, these are the Christ-killers." And it will never change.

And sex, well, the main teacher for them is Paul, that's the main guy that they swear by. As a comrade said last night, the Catholics call him Saint Paul and for those who have met him personally they call him Paul. The twice-born, the third-born, the people who talk in tongues, who have visions nightly; no priests, they do it—personally.

So, anyway, Paul had a position on sex: forget it. His position was that sex under any circumstances regardless was a sin. It was a departure from purity. You should go out in the desert and wait for God to come to this earth. And God was going to come in six months. God didn't come in six months. Well, God was going to come in nine months. God didn't come in nine months. And he's having trouble with his people, right? Certain things are happening and they're getting upset. And he finally said: it's better to marry than burn. And he wasn't talking about the fires of hell when he's talking about burn. So he will let you marry, but that's as far as it goes.

Now, the position on women for the entire Judaic-Christian tradition is one of the most backward positions there is. It's that women exist simply as a repository of the sacred sperm, that a woman is commanded to serve and obey her husband as he is in turn commanded to serve and obey his temporal, Bible-quoting master. And Constantine, when he was having trouble with the Roman Empire, figured out that Christianity was the best thing that he had. So he made it the state religion. It wasn't actually that big, it certainly was no threat. But it was used, it was the greatest thing for state reinforcement of ideology. Been that way ever since.

Gore Vidal talks about homosexuality in the Bible. And it turns out there's quite a bit of homosexuality in the Bible. Vidal talks about the stuff with David and Jonathan, and it's quite clear. David's always talking about his love for Jonathan. And Vidal talks about Ruth and Naomi. He says, it's quite clear about their emotions toward one another, that this would be the basis for joint ownership of a pottery shop in Laguna Beach.
But then you get to Leviticus. And Leviticus on homosexuality is something like, if one man lie with another man, thereby he be put to death. Real hardcore stuff, from then on.

And Paul of course was dealing with Leviticus. Why does Paul hate sex so much? Aside from maybe he was a little peculiar and he had his problems, why does he hate sex so much? What is the political reason? Well, what Paul was competing against was the Roman gods, the pagan religions. And the greatest god of the pagan religions was the Goddess of Fertility. And, of course, when they went to a Sunday ceremony, they got it on. And they really got it on. The hardest teachings of the Bible against homosexuality and against sex in general come right after what is known as the Babylonian captivity, where the Jews were forced to live in the city of Babylon for a period of time. And it turns out that Babylon was the Paris of the B.C. world. It's sort of like in the First World War, once the farm boys see gay Paree, that's it, boy, ain't never goin' back to the farm. Well, once the Jews got to Babylon they really didn't want to go back to that desert. Not only did they have as much sex in ways that they could never conceive of (human sex, not goats) but indoor plumbing, everything, it was a very advanced city. And the Jewish ruling class had a problem, they somehow had to get the Jews back into the desert. And so you get all these moral strictures on sex. In other words, what was going on in sixth century Palestine was very similar to what they're trying to pull off today. Sex is bad; go out and get killed or live in the damned desert. So, the Bible is a historical document.

"Moral Rearmament" Is Enforced Social Conformity

What are the issues that are coming up today? First of all, women. For what the bourgeoisie is talking about socially, it's essential that women get out of the factory, certainly that women get out of the trade unions. They don't want women to have class consciousness, that's a no-no. They want to get them out of the productive process, back into the home. They want to eliminate their rights. They want to eliminate day care. They want to eliminate abortion. And they're simply doing that by abortion-clinic bombing and terror. What they'd like to do is eliminate the pill, but only the Pope thinks he can pull that off. Their key slogan for women is: Defeat ERA and Save the Family.
There is a study that's just come out that said: For 20 years, the federal government before the Reagan administration had systematically destroyed the family; we have and are going to reverse every one of those policies. What were those policies? The biggest one was welfare. So we're going to save the family by cutting off welfare. Now, figure 20 years back from where Reagan got in office. What do you get? The beginning of the civil rights movement. It's not an accident.

Sex. The Supreme Court has made sodomy illegal, i.e., you will go to jail for sodomy. The point is the way the ruling is formulated: it's illegal because it is against historical Christian-Judaical principle. Well, where does that stop? They can say blacks are unequal because of historical Christian-Judaical principle. (And the head of the Supreme Court turns out to be a racist vigilante.) There's no limit to this. It's a total elimination of separation of church and state. Our position on sex is: government out of the bedrooms, let people figure it out themselves.

AIDS. The first thing you've got to understand is that these people think that AIDS is the greatest thing that's ever happened. As long as it doesn't get in a massive way into the heterosexual population, it's like god speaking. The more homosexuals die, the better it is. So, of course, they do not fund AIDS projects. And, of course, Dianne Feinstein is not going to release needles to drug addicts so AIDS would not be spread many, many times over by using dirty needles. This should be an enormous scandal.
I saw this liberal program on AIDS the other night. I was listening for one of these liberal doctors to get up and say, "We need money. We need massive funding." And they wanted to say it, it's quite clear, but for some reason they didn't say it. But they said everything else. They got the hottest researcher around (he's from Scotland, actually) and he said: AIDS as a virus is very difficult medically, what needs to be done now is massive experimenting; we can sit around, we could talk about it forever, but what needs to be done is trial and error in an international sense. And in the next scene they talk about the technical problems, and the man who narrated says: the problem that scores of researchers are running into across the country— "Scores" of researchers are working on the vaccine for AIDS across the country, that's it! And we're talking about a screaming national health emergency. But the government is coming from a totally different direction on this AIDS question. They want to politically exploit it, it's good for them.

Death penalty. The death penalty simply means: kill blacks. The death penalty was temporarily ruled unconstitutional in 72, largely as a result of the U.S. bourgeoisie trying to clean up its act in terms of how it was seen internationally. By the way, this country is one of the few countries that actually has the death penalty; most of the European countries don't. The interesting thing about the death penalty is that it's a forbidden topic for debate now. We just had a major election in California over [State Supreme Court chief justice] Rose Bird, over the death penalty. Her right-wing attacker's every other word is: she doesn't believe in the death penalty. I saw a number of her commercials; she didn't have the guts to get up and say: I oppose the death penalty. I think it's barbaric, inhuman. And the majority of the world, and the state, and the ruling class of the world agree with me. No, politics has gone so far to the right that she didn't even say that. She said: well, um, I oppose the judiciary being political. You try to figure out what that means.

In fact, the entire election was absurd. All these justices say they're friends of labor. Not one of those guys mentioned unions throughout the entire campaign. Reagan's Central America policy is very unpopular with the population. Why didn't [Democratic Senator] Cranston run his campaign on opposition to Central America? It's because he's got Reagan's position on Central America. He didn't want to make Central America an issue. That's what we're talking about, bipartisan support to the war drive. Also, bipartisan support to this social crusade against you.

The drug witchhunt. The ruling class has declared a war on drugs. Total hypocrisy. The ruling class has pushed and made money from drugs I don't know since when. The British used drugs as one of their ways to conquer China; Hong Kong was founded on the profits of the opium trade. And who ran drugs all through the Vietnam War and before that out of the Golden Triangle? It was the CIA. Who provided the planes? It was CIA airplanes. When they talk about landing in those paddy fields, what do you think they were loading? It wasn't all orphans.

And in the cities. As just one example, you have the movie The French Connection, the biggest bust in heroin that's ever happened in New York City. They had the trial years later, not one speck of that heroin was left. They couldn't find it, it was all gone. It'd all been sold. It's obvious and has been documented—it's the cops. The cops either hold the pushers up for their cut and then the pushers charge that much more; or they just take the entire thing and sell it themselves. So what you get between the pushers and the cops is combat for profit. And that's the vice squad.

So this war on drugs is simply a tool to build the police department, to eliminate democratic rights so the police can go anywhere to terrorize black kids. And not only that. The conditions of capitalism in the ghettos are so severe with generational unemployment, with no possibility of getting out for these kids, no possibility of jobs, so why not take drugs? A black mother in the ghetto knows that there's a struggle every day, second by second, to save her child from that damned pusher. So what you get is the black hustlers like Jesse Jackson that come up and say to this black woman, "Yeah, you've got to support your cops, that's the answer." It's a rotten shell game.

Now, we're opposed to laws against what they call "crimes without victims." Basically it's a matter of personal rights. We feel that if somebody wants to take drugs, that's his own right. What kind of sex people want, that's their own right. We're against the state intervening in any of these questions. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't give a damn about a generation of ghetto kids that become addicts. But how do you fight that? How you fight that is by struggling against the ruling class and the conditions they impose by which the kids become addicts.

Now, in the black movement, there's always been two wings. One, the Jesse Jacksons and George Washington Carvers, the Uncle Toms, who say what you've got to do is, don't ask for anything from the white man, improve yourself in the eyes of the white man, and if you're good and good long enough, then you'll get something. And basically what it does, it accepts the terms of the racism of the oppressor. Jesse Jackson's recent statement is that drugs kill more than Klan ropes—does he want a united front with the KKK against drugs? Or what about a united front with the local racist politician against drugs? And then you've got Farrakhan who pushes the same stuff, except in his case, even worse—anti-Semitism, hustling black shampoo.

And then you have the wing of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois which fights against the conditions, and fights against the racists, and fights for equality. Our position is for revolutionary integrationism, black liberation through socialist revolution.
In California there was an "English-only" proposition on the ballot. Now, this is simply vengeance. Everybody who's had any contact with immigrants knows that the first thing they want to do and have to do is learn English. And by and large they always do learn English. It's critical for them obviously in terms of making money. What this stuff is of going after English-only and destroying bilingual education is to eliminate the possibility of immigrants learning English, to eliminate the possibility of them Irving a decent life in the United States so they don't come here.

Now, of course, one must understand that there are two classes of immigrants. There's the people who come from right-wing reaction, the states which are overwhelmingly supported by the U.S. government, like the Haitians. They don't get in. And then there are the exploiters, the people like [South Vietnam's Marshal] Ky, the protégé’s of the U.S., the U.S. stooges. Not only do they get in, but they get everything.

Dictatorship of the Property Party

Everybody talks about the two-party system in the United States. There's not a two-party system, there's a one-party system. And that party is the property party. The people that belong to that party are less than one percent of the population of the United States, and they own the United States. And they own the government; they run the Republican and the Democratic parties.

The only difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is how they do things, not what they do, and not where they're going. Basically when you become a politician in the Republican or Democratic parties, you get a job. And you don't go to your constituents and get a job. No, you go to the businessman, at whatever level, and get hired, get his endorsement. You're a hireling of the bourgeoisie. Capitalist politicians are generally not the top people around. These are the people who are not good enough to make a great career in the professions, law or things like that. So, you know, you've got a big mouth and you're not particularly successful, not real smart and you don't mind being a prostitute and saying whatever somebody tells you, you become a politician. The property party is what really makes the difference, that's what calls the shots in this country. The class nature of this country is that the people who own this country are the people who run this country. It is their dictatorship.

There is a major economic crisis, it's a crisis that capitalism's had since its inception. What you've got in this country is a question of overproduction in every major field. Protectionism is coming up over the question of U.S. cars, or whatever, and this is reactionary and we're opposed to it.

And you've got overproduction internationally, in steel, in cars, in computer chips. What happens when you get overproduction that exceeds the market's ability to buy? These things are not sold. You get bankruptcies. Economies go under. Now, what happens if you're the U.S. bourgeoisie, you can't sell your stuff, and you've become a weak country economically, but because of a quirk of history you have the strongest military forces, aside from the Soviet Union, in the world? Do you just sit there and say, well, we're not going to sell anything this year, so I think this country is simply going to go down the drain and I'm going to lose everything I got? No, you use your cards. You use your ace, and your ace is your military card. It's the only card the U.S. has right now. So you go into various countries or various areas of the world and you seize those markets. What that is is war. And capitalism has never resolved an overproduction crisis yet through any other agency except war.

Why do we always talk about the anti-Soviet war drive? Why can't there be coexistence, why can't they just disarm? Why can't they recruit some Democrats, maybe they'll get along? They can't get along for two reasons. One, the very fact of the existence of the Soviet Union as a workers state, however degenerated, threatens capitalism. But, two, you've got to sell your goods. And one-sixth of the world's humanity, if you can open it up for private property, that's an enormous market. That would give capitalism a new lease.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx says that the history of man is the question of class struggle, and that where one class cannot triumph over another in a clear way, sooner or later it leads to the ruination of both classes. So what we are facing is barbarism. The only alternative to that is the international proletariat taking power, and the critical aspect is not the lack of a working class or the lack of militancy or anything like that. We've seen plenty of that, we've seen strikes historically and even in the recent period. The question is leadership. And that's the Spartacist League."

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Hamburg: Women Spark Shipyard Occupation (1984)

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

Markin comment:

With the desperate need to ramp up the class struggle today (from our side, the bosses have been on a seemingly eternal offensive) this is a good article not only about the vanguard role that women can, and have, played in important class struggles in the past but about the tactics and strategy necessary to win struggles, if possible.


**************

Last fall in West Germany strikes and plant occupations broke out in the key Hamburg and Bremen shipyards against massive layoffs of the workforce. The nine-day Hamburg HDW [Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft] shipyard occupation in September was sparked in large part by the militant actions of a group of women, wives of shipyard workers. W&R, along with comrades of the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands (TLD), section of the international Spartacist tendency, recently spoke at length with Birgit Wojak, one of the main activists of the women's group; we are pleased to print below excerpts from this very exciting interview.

The TLD had raised key demands during the occupation, in leaflets and discussions with workers in Hamburg and nationally, to extend and win the workers' strikes. These included: "For factory occupations in all plants hit by mass layoffs and closings! For a joint national shipyard, steel and mine strike!" Layoffs were hitting the vital Ruhr steel and mining districts. At the same time the Board of Directors of HDW (which is owned by a state conglomerate) announced that in HDW's Hamburg branch one half of the 4,500 workers would be laid off and in HDW's Kiel branch one out of every three of the 9,000 workers. This "hot autumn" of workers' demonstrations, strikes and occupations
potentially posed the most important class battle for the German workers in 30 years.

The Hamburg and Bremen shipyard occupations took place as political ferment in West Germany is greater than at any time since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1948. The deployment in West Germany of the first-strike Pershing 2 missiles, under the command of the anti-Soviet fanatic Reagan, has deeply polarized West German society. The dramatic actions of the North Sea shipyard workers is a further sign that the West German capitalist order, long the relatively stable core of NATO Europe, is now beginning to break down under the combined impact of war mobilization and economic crisis.

But as Wojak graphically describes, not only the "IG Metall" union bureaucracy and the SPD [Social Democratic Party], but even the so-called "leftists" who had control of the Hamburg occupation itself, did everything in their power to undercut the struggle and prevent the workers from carrying it to victory. The main brake on the German working class is the Social Democrats. Though out of power when these shipyard layoffs were announced, they were the architects of the West German bourgeoisie's present austerity program which has meant massive attacks on the working class.

The dramatic Hamburg occupation—and its betrayal— showed above all the need to forge a revolutionary working-class party by splitting the working-class SPD ranks away from the pro-capitalist tops.

The TLD's aggressive propaganda campaign around the occupations presented a broad programmatic alternative for the workers. Its leaflet noted the importance of the foreign workers: "Yesterday and today these foreign brothers are in the front lines of the struggle.... Full citizenship rights for foreign workers and their families!" The TLD further noted: "While the IG Metall bureaucracy wants to stiffen the backbone of the German steel magnates in the protectionist Common Market cartel, the 'left' is mobilizing for a 'National Steel Company/ or a 'National Shipyards Company.' But if the capitalist economy is not done away with, these nationalized companies (like HDW) will serve the capitalists. As opposed to the Rostock Yards only a few miles away [in East Germany], whose order books are filled with contracts for icebreakers, passenger ships, etc., running for years thanks to the Soviet planned economy, the capitalist 'solution’ to the crisis in the shipyards is arms production: battleships and submarines for war against the Soviet Union."

Lenin said that the fate of the October Revolution was inseparable from the victory of the German October. The converse of that is that the failure of the German working class, the best organized working class in Europe, to live up to its revolutionary obligations has led to two world imperialist wars. The TLD's leaflet concluded: "A militant strike in steel, the shipyards and coal would show the workers the way to prevent stationing NATO first-strike weapons. By strikes—not 'minutes of warning' against the 'superpowers.' For the Breits and the Loderers the Bundes-wehr is a 'peace force. They hate the Soviet Union and fear a new Bremen Soviet Republic, a new Ruhr Red Army—a German October.

"For the revolutionary reunification of Germany by a social revolution in the West and proletarian political revolution in the East! Smash the anti-Soviet war drive! For unconditional military support of the DDR/Soviet Union! For a socialist planned economy! For the Socialist United States of Europe!"

W&R: Can you tell us something about your background that you feel contributed to your becoming an activist in this struggle and occupation? Wojak: The thing that made me just want to do something—I didn't know what I wanted to do—was that my mother died, basically because she worked herself to death. Normally she shouldn't have been allowed to work at the job she did because she had asthma. She worked as a presser in a knitting mill and couldn't handle the wool dust. My father had to retire early as a partial invalid. He lost a leg, also worked 25 years at HDW as a welder, and now he can hardly do anything. The only thing my father had was my mother. He's just vegetating. And that was the main thing that made me say, that's not going to happen to me, and I wasn't going to put up with it any longer. And they want to fire my husband from the HDW plant.

W&R: Plans were announced for massive layoffs in the shipbuilding industry in early spring and a "warning strike" was called, including demonstrations. How did you become involved in the struggle? Wojak: I was approached by my husband to get involved with this women's group—they were actually all wives of men who were already active in the HDW shipyard and who were also affiliated with one political current or another. I met the women's group myself at a forum and found out that they had gone into the Hamburg parliament, tried to storm the microphone to draw attention to the situation of workers in the entire shipbuilding industry. The mike was cut off immediately so that they couldn't say anything. And because they had counted on that they had written an "Open Letter" to the mayor of Hamburg, the Social Democrat von Dohnanyi, and rained these leaflets from the gallery down onto all the parliamentarians. And they unfurled a banner reading, "HDW and MAN wives fight together with their men." Two women were picked out and criminal charges were brought for disrupting a public parliamentary session.

I met these women at a forum on this HDW issue, and Klose, the former Social Democratic mayor of Hamburg, was present. What struck me about this forum in particular was the workers; there were a whole lot of workers from HDW there. They were absolutely furious and wanted a complete change. And this Klose, he just tried to channel it into orderly channels that he could keep in hand. In the beginning, when I heard about what they did, it seemed to be a little bit too radical to me. But that Klose wanted to steer the workers in a very definite direction that he could keep in hand seemed even more awful. So I decided then to go to this women's meeting and take a look for myself.

At this first women's meeting I went to, in April, one woman said right away, yeah, maybe we can still see to it that there are a couple of strikes at HDW, and if it all
doesn't do any good, then we have to occupy the plant. And I thought, sure, if they occupy the plant, that's a long way off, and you don't have to go along with them. But during the occupation, in September, it turned out that some of the workers— I count myself among them as well—that we were the ones who carried out the occupation, whereas the women who had been talking weren't at all the ones who did the occupying. These women as well as so-called "activists" in the plant saw the plant occupation as a means to put pressure on the government to save jobs. And then when I participated in this occupation and got angry every time I had to leave the occupied shipyard and had to sleep alone in my bed at home, I saw it as if I had seized a piece of this shipyard along with all those workers. W&R: The women's committee waged a hunger strike that led up to and in some sense precipitated the September shipyard occupation. What motivated it?

Wojak: In all our work between the warning strike in the spring and during the occupation in September, we tried to do all kinds of actions to mobilize the workers so that they would occupy or put up any line of resistance against the layoffs at all. Whenever there was any kind of plant assembly or when any new events in the shipyard came up we stood in front of the gates with our banner and passed out leaflets, calling on the men to defend themselves, to do something, offered them our help. The result was that the men laughed at us. Then this situation came up in a plant assembly where we said, either we're going to storm the microphone now, just like in parliament, or you guys read these things aloud. And the guys running the meeting were scared to death that we'd storm the mike, because they didn't expect the workers to do the same thing the parliamentarians did, namely nothing, when the mike was turned off, but that the workers would probably resist. So under this pressure, they read what we had written. And for the rest of the plant assembly we were surrounded by a ring of company cops. W&R: What were your demands? Wojak: Our demands were basically the men's demands. They were for the 35-hour week, statification of the shipyard under control of the workforce (we extended it to real control). Then there was the men's demand for "useful alternative production," and that filter systems be installed in power plants so they don't pollute the atmosphere so much. In fact, there was quite a hard discussion with one of the women in the women's group about this, with the result that the men raised "alternative production" as a very hard demand and we just raised it on the side.

W&R: Who were they, and what were the political currents in the women's group?

Wojak: The political people in the plant were primarily from the DKP [pro-Moscow Stalinists], people from the GIM [German section of the United Secretariat], people from the SPD, from the union—in fact all the political groupings were present. In the women's group there were the DKP, KPD [Maoists], GIM; there were people from Arbeiterpolitik [Brandlerites] who got in through women's groups in the union. It was the same with the Social Democrats who also had influence through the unions and some women's groups.
This discussion about "useful alternative production" that came up in the women's group was introduced by me, because I was the only really unpolitical woman there and saw immediately what this "useful alternative production" basically meant for jobs. I told them that it's baloney and meaningless for jobs, whereas all the others supported it at first. The minute I started this discussion I had the feeling that all these women had a narrow-minded view of the whole situation because of their political orientation. That led me to view everything essentially more critically than before.

Maybe one more reason why the hunger strike happened. We wanted to spur the men on to fight. And we had found out that at Hoesch, in the Ruhr, where layoffs in the steel industry are also an issue, there was also a women's group, and they had waged a hunger strike. We had exhausted all the possibilities—standing in front of the gates; in plant assemblies; we went into the union and meetings organized by the union, where we were regularly thrown out. But the men saw us, and you couldn't pretend we weren't there. The Hoesch women had videos of their hunger strike and of the men's strike, and they advised us, if you do a hunger strike, there's no way it can fall through—you definitely have to do it.

From the very beginning we said we don't want to starve ourselves to get sick or die or something, but we agreed from the first if we do a hunger strike to limit it to three days. Because we thought, three days: that's enough to get it in the public eye. And if the men haven't gotten it together after three days to pull off a decent action, then even a ten-day hunger strike won't do any good.

W&R: So how long did the hunger strike go on before the occupation began?

Wojak: We waged a three-day hunger strike right before the occupation. When it got under way there were five women who took part in it from the first to the last day. And there were nine on the last day. We didn't just want to wage a hunger strike without drawing in the men in the shipyard. Because we didn't know that they would publish the list with the mass layoffs at just the same time, we had convinced the men beforehand to carry out an action in the plant as well, if we did this hunger strike. We won them over to boycotting overtime at that point. And then-it became known in the yards—that was the afternoon before the hunger strike, right before quitting time—as people found out that 1,354 people were supposed to be laid off, there was a symbolic occupation of the plant gate for two hours, with only 1,200 people taking part.

The first day of our hunger strike, when nobody knew anything about it beforehand, even the men in the shipyard, about 80 percent of the workforce said completely spontaneously, if the women go on a hunger strike then we'll boycott the canteen for the day. That was a very important thing, because you could see that we women were recognized by the men in the shipyard for the first time. The canteen had been contracted out to a private company before the layoffs were announced, and some women who worked in the canteen were thrown out and rehired for considerably less pay—we wanted to boycott the canteen until the women got the same pay as before.

All the men who were at all political had laughed at us before for this demand, and said that no worker would follow this demand because their own stomachs are more important than other people's stomachs. And the fact that 80 percent carried out this canteen boycott— and they really went hungry, because they didn't know they were going to boycott the canteen and didn't bring sandwiches from home—that proves that they were simply wrong, that the workers forgot their own empty stomachs in their solidarity.
This whole hunger strike was received by all the workers in the shipyard extremely well anyway, although they hardly dared to approach us because of their preconceptions—these poor, weak women, they're standing there and what's more, going hungry for us, and what have we done? They could hardly look us in the eye. And after quitting time that evening, here came all the workers and they brought us flowers. Most of them just kind of shoved them in our hands and walked on by.

W&R: So how did the actual plant occupation begin?

Wojak: The first one to call for an occupation, or for a massive action, I believe, was me. After the three days of the hunger strike were over, there was a closing rally. We had gotten an enormous amount of solidarity and over DM 9,000 ($4,500) in contributions. Several plants declared their solidarity, and it was not only for the women but for solidarity against all layoffs.

We held a rally at the end where each of the women who had taken part in the hunger strike was supposed to say something to the brothers in the shipyard. And I was the last one, and I had lost my notes. So I just called on the men to just do something, and if they didn't fight, that we women would think up something to do to them that would be pretty nasty. W&R: Lysistrata meets the class struggle. Wojak: But the effect of that was not that they all got terribly scared of me or the women, but they applauded it wildly, they cheered it, they picked it up like something they'd wanted to say themselves for a long time. And finally somebody said it. The hunger strike was over on Friday and then came the weekend. The gates were picketed from the outside so that no overtime could go on—organized by the men and some of the women picketed too.

There was a general plant assembly during the hunger strike where the men fought with the bosses and got us the right to speak. A plant assembly is where the whole plant comes together in one room, organized by the union—there's a minimum of four assemblies annually. And the Management Committee [the bosses] and the plant council are there and make reports. Every individual worker can speak.60 this plant assembly continued on Monday morning. It ended with a march of the workers through the inner city in a demonstration of 3,000. And after the demonstration all the workers went back into the plant and continued the plant assembly and then voted to occupy the plant. And that was adopted 100 percent.

W&R: And who was elected the leadership of the occupation?

Wojak: There was a prominent supporter of the DKP, who had worked out this occupation plan just in case. And they were essentially the people who had been working together beforehand—like the DKP, SPD, KPD, GIM, unionists.

W&R: What was the relationship of the official union leadership of the Metalworkers [IG Metall] to the occupation?

Wojak: Before the occupation the IG Metall didn't look upon it kindly and it didn't look on the women's activities kindly either. A week before the hunger strike somebody from the union put out the word that the HDW women are dead, they don't exist anymore. And then when this demonstration through the center of town took place and afterwards the occupation was voted, they were singing a different tune all of a sudden. Because they probably saw that the workers just couldn't be stopped. So they said, we'll support every action; go ahead, and we'll always be behind you. Only I'm talking about the local union organization in Hamburg—there wasn't so much as a letter of solidarity from the IG Metall from the rest of the country. During the occupation the union reps didn't behave worse than the "activists" in the plant, which were in all these parties, but they were awful enough themselves.

W&R: We haven't discussed the laws that come from the 1950s—the "Factory Regulation Law" (Betreefasver-rassungsgesetz). Can you explain why this law is followed so slavishly, and what it in fact means with regard to workers' struggles?

Wojak: The "Factory Regulation Law" is a law the government passed that means limitations on the workers, especially in strikes. It's a terribly thick book that's not easy to explain. But for example it says that in your plant you can't just support strikes in other plants or collect money for them. All the plant assemblies— how they are to be held, whether there are secret or open ballots, are governed by it. And a plant occupation is a violation of the "Factory Regulation Law" because a worker can't just seize the plant that belongs to someone else.

W&R: The fact that the members of the plant council are bound to silence is also laid down in the "Factory Regulation Law" as well, including about layoffs. Wojak: Yes. In the case of this list of 1,354 people to be laid off, for example, the members of the plant council were obligated not to make that public. This law basically just hinders the workers from using their power m any way whatsoever against the bosses. And the unions haven't done anything against it and are therefore complicit.

W&R: What was the role of the women's committee during the occupation?

Wojak: Pretty pathetic, because we had set as our goal calling on the men to wage a fight. And in fact we reached that goal with the hunger strike. So during the occupation we didn't want to stand on the sidelines; but we really didn't know at all what we ought to do
I myself concentrated on extending the strike together with two other women. We went to AC Weser, to a shipyard in Bremen where they had decided long before the HDW occupation to occupy\ this shipyard because there was no more putting the brakes on these workers or holding them back from doing an action like that. So we drove to Bremen and were totally depressed when we got there, because the conditions under which the shipyard was occupied were really awful for the workers. They had one last ship in Bremen which was up for repairs, and then the whole shipyard was supposed to be shut down, closed

We weren't allowed to speak to the workers there before the occupation was voted. And when they did vote to occupy, you could see that a crime was perpetrated against the workers, because the occupation was coupled with the condition that the necessary repairs for this one ship still had to go on during the occupation. Further, the occupation in Bremen was; an extremely late point in time—one day before the occupation in Hamburg was given up, and it w; planned that way.

During the HDW occupation a ship was literal kidnapped from the HDW workers. The cables were cut. One worker was injured, not very seriously, bi people could in fact have been killed. We took the brothers in Bremen a cable from this captured ship as warning that they should keep a close watch on the ship. The workers welcomed us with cheers. We g more applause for what we said there than ever before although it was just to give them a little courage at really nothing more. Afterwards we also discussed with a whole lot of workers, and a lot of them who h been for going on with these repairs changed this opinion within five minutes and didn't want to do it anymore.

Another guy, the DGB [German trade-union federation] chairman in Bremen, spoke, and first express his solidarity and cozied up to them like mad and said you guys are in an unusual situation; so an unusual situation demands unusual means and you guys have
grasped them. And it's right that you have occupied your shipyard and you ought to occupy it a while longer—and then you ought to let the bosses and the politicians decide what ought to happen to the shipyard. And even then the workers applauded. And there was this worker sitting next to me during this speech, and it just slipped out of my mouth: how can this man be allowed to speak here? Why doesn't somebody throw him out? Then he really thought about it, at first he didn't say anything at all, then he said, yeah, that's outrageous, what he's saying here. He can't be allowed to do that. But then the guy up front was already gone. But before, this guy had clapped too.

We had these buttons with "Stop the death of HDW in installments—HDW must stand" on them, with the HDW insignia and over that "HDW Occupied" on a red background. And a worker in Bremen just had to have it, and he gave me his helmet. It has a sticker on one side, "AC Weser Occupied," and on the other "HDW Occupied."

When we women came back from this shipyard occupation, we didn't have the feeling that this occupation would be a support for the HDW workers, but that it was something designed to. go against workers' struggles. When we got back to HDW, we told the strike committee what was going on, that AC Weser wouldn't be a support for Hamburg and that they would have to extend the struggle in other ways. They said it wasn't right to tell the workers something like that. I did tell the workers that, and I know one other woman—from the GIM—also told it to the workers.

W&R: The TLD raised the demand to extend the strike to mining and steel, where there were also plans for substantial layoffs and firings. How do you feel about that demand, and given a revolutionary leadership, do you think it could have been an outgrowth of the shipyard occupation?

Wojak: It would have been possible, definitely. The question of extension was already very close, even without a revolutionary leadership, and only a spark would have been necessary to ignite it. But with a revolutionary leadership there would have been a guarantee for extending it.

W&R: How did the occupation end, and what did the workers win or lose?

Wojak: The HDW occupation lasted nine days. The mass of workers lost their jobs. The layoffs were carried out just like they had been planned. The layoffs are continuing today. The workers in the plant have worse working conditions than before, there's speedup. There have already been two deaths as a result.

The reason the occupation was broken off then was: yeah, they said we have the chance of getting a decent severance plan. They didn't even get the severance plan they had before the occupation but one significantly worse.

The foreign workers are in a very bad position. They are the ones primarily hit by the layoffs. About 50 percent of the foreign workers at HDW were fired. And they can be deported immediately if they don't get a new job, and they don't have a chance to get a new job either. So they won absolutely nothing, except when one or the other can draw the lessons—that you have to design an occupation differently, that is, not carry out an occupation under such conditions, but from the very beginning set the conditions yourself and not let them be dictated to you.

The occupation ended with a general plant assembly, which includes the lower- and middle-level management. Then the Management Committee has the right to take part; most of the time politicians are also invited—but not to this one. The Management Committee announced that if they didn't give up the occupation then they might fire the whole workforce— in one fell swoop. Without notice. People weren't quite convinced that that would in fact happen. But in the 70s that did happen once, when two shipyards, the Deutsche Werft and the Howaldtswerke fused. They fired the whole workforce because they were on strike, and afterwards they just hired back the part that they needed. So the threat of firings was in the air. Then there was the second thing. The Management Committee had announced that if Hamburg resisted and continued the occupation, the works would go deeper and deeper in the red, and then they wouldn't have any other choice but to split off Hamburg and Kiel from one another, as affiliates or even as two independent companies. But this plan has existed a long time, even without the occupation.

W&R: What was the role of the DKP and the KPD and the GIM during the occupation, and in the plant assembly meeting?

Wojak: From the first moment they set their stakes all on negotiations—negotiations with the politicians in Bonn and Schleswig-Holstein, since HDW is 100 percent state-owned. Those are both Christian Democratic governments. And their role was precisely to put pressure on these politicians, to say, "Do something about the shipyard please. Don't throw all these people out onto the street, after all." They all agreed completely on that. Those were always the things that kept coming up even before the occupation, in strikes or other actions—apply pressure. You can also see it in this program for "useful alternative production." That was drafted by people from the DKP, from the GIM— in effect a somewhat broader version of the strike committee together with people from the union and other activists. Then the union took it up and printed it as a program. For all practical purposes their aim is to give the capitalists a hand, how to make it, if you can just get a little bit more capital to boot, without having to fire guys.

W&R: I understand that in the course of the occupation a GIM supporter in the workforce put up a banner of Solidarnos'c'. How was this received?

Wojak: This Solidarnos'c' banner actually only had a slight meaning for the workforce. It was one banner among many. There were other banners from other plants, for example AEG Schiffbau brought over a huge banner. Such banners were received with more applause and many more workers also crowded around them. Solidarnos'c' itself was seen as the shipyard workers there going into the streets, and they stuck together and fought for their rights. Solidarnos'c'' real role wasn't seen; most of the workers don't know much about Solidarnos.

The thing is, they tried to block every political discussion in the union. There was a band in the yard one evening and they were singing some kind of political things, and a guy from the SPD took the mike away from them and said, look, leave politics out of this; the shipyard occupation isn't a political affair. The workers who got wind of it were pretty pissed off. And I noticed how they attacked the union bureaucrats pretty hard: what is this, and everybody can say what they want to here, and even if there's political stuff here—there's a highly political situation at HDW. He went away then, but the musicians didn't have the nerve to start again. But that was just the way discussions about Solidarnos'c' or issues in a larger context during the occupation were blocked, and the GIM supporters hung the sign up, intervened by doing that, but didn't tell the workers anything about it.

W&R: What role did these left groups play in the plant assembly discussion regarding the occupation in the face of the fact that the occupation had spread to Bremen, so that ending the occupation at that particular point in Hamburg was particularly criminal.

Wojak: It was criminal. The political groups were all straining to reach the same goal, told the workers, yes, under these conditions where we have to take into account that the whole workforce will be fired, where there's no sort of severance plan at all, and then the poor foreigners will be fired and won't even be able to take home any severance pay at all if they're deported—at such a point we can't call on you guys to continue the occupation, although we would have really liked to. That was what was said during the occupation, during the vote, by all the political groups. And Bremen. The workers in Bremen were of course terribly disappointed. They probably did see it as criminal, what happened in Hamburg. Only the strike committee (which was the same as the plant council in Bremen) said, what's so bad about that? Hamburg and Bremen don't have anything to do with each other.

W&R: Let's return to the question of the foreign workers. It's my understanding that the foreign worker also supported the end of the occupation even though they had the most to lose by the layoffs. Why was that?

Wojak: It was essentially Turkish workers who sup ported ending the occupation. Not because they were Turkish, but simply because the Turks speak the leas German, and because they were absolutely no properly provided with information. Hardly anything was translated. There was one Yugoslavian woman in our women's group and we were the first ones in the shipyard to have leaflets and placards in Turkish and Yugoslavian when we went into the plant assembly during the hunger strike, and a lot of foreign workers stood up. They applauded us and brought us chairs, because finally somebody in the shipyard was thinking of the foreign workers. I believe that without the women, the foreigners wouldn't even have known what was going on at the beginning of the occupation.

There was one Turkish guy in the yard who could speak good German. They told him, this is the way things are, and then it was up to him the extent to which he passed on the information to his brothers, or not. He handled it by saying, listen, the next vote is going to be about this or that, and if I raise my hand, that's correct, so you guys do the same. Of course, in this vote on the occupation that wasn't possible—it was secret, and nobody raised his hand. Most of the Turks had no idea what they should do and were totally unsure of themselves.

I heard that a couple of days beforehand there were also people in the yard who had threatened the Turkish workers. There was almost a physical fight. They threatened that if the Turks continued to participate actively in the occupation they would beat them up, or they threatened them in other ways. As far as I could find out these were people that came from the [Turkish fascist] Grey Wolves.

W&R: Did the workers in the shipyard occupation take any measures such as forming workers defense guards to defend against the fascistic Grey Wolves or other fascist groups that might attempt to break up the occupation?

Wojak: No, none at all. There was no defense, neither against the fascist groups, nor against the scabs, nor against the police attacks that had been threatened.
I have to add that there were a whole series of scabs during the occupation: almost all the white-collar workers worked during the occupation, and after a couple of days parts of the machine shop started working—in the end I believe it was half of the machine shop that worked, first secretly and then openly.

First the workers said, look, they're working. They can't do that. We're going to throw them out. And then there were discussions with the strike committee, and they said, no, that would disturb the "peace and quiet" in the yard, and peace and quiet and order [Ruhe und Ordnung], that's the one thing that you have to maintain in such a big occupation, and you ought to go to the people and talk to them and try to convince them not to work. When I came onto the yard the next day I asked, well, did you guys throw out the white-collar workers? And the workers said, no, we have to keep it quiet, and all that creates an uproar, and we can't do that either. That's the way they manipulated the workers' opinion in practice.

I ask myself how these people in the strike committee wanted to convince people to continue the occupation or not to work, when they themselves had made a deal with the management about painting the bottom of a ship and sent the workers off to work. The painting has to be done in two coats—if the second coat isn't done, then the first coat is ruined too. And for doing that they got from the management deliveries of food to the canteen for one more day.

A number of times in the Social Democratic daily paper there were two-page spreads: HDW will be cleared; police attack; police intervention threats—in order to confuse the workers about what they ought to do. When the first article came out I was in the yard too, and the workers said—a lot of them anyway—what do they think they want, the police? They won't even get in here; the gates are shut tight, and right behind the gates is the fire station. We have water cannons, we have helmets, we have clubs, we have everything here. They won't get in here at all; we'll know how to defend our shipyard for sure. And the next day I asked, what are you guys doing now, and they said, well, when the police come, then we'll let them carry us all away. We won't offer any resistance. And so that's another sign how the opinion was manipulated by the strike committee.

W&R: One of the points made in the TLD's leaflet directed at the HDW occupation was the comparison between the Rostock shipyards in East Germany, where the order books are full—a demonstration of the power of a planned economy—and HDW, which is even turning away work from the Soviet Union at the same time it's laying off thousands of workers. Did this contrast have any impact on the workers during the occupation?

Wojak: This discussion definitely existed in the shipyard, this comparison between the DDR yards in general and shipyards in the Soviet Union, and here in West Germany—simply because these orders to build ships were refused. The workers said, sure, build ships—if it was a question of what kind of ships we need, we could be booked up too. The thing is whether we want to build them—or whether our bosses want to build them. And they just don't want to. And that's whose fault it is that we aren't getting any more work in the harbor.

W&R: After the occupation you put out a leaflet in which you call for a study of the lessons of the occupation. What do you think those lessons are?

Wojak: The lessons of the occupation are that the workers' interests were not represented during the occupation at all, otherwise they would have had something to take home with them from such a large-scale occupation. The people who are responsible for this are the strike committee, who belonged to all the political parties. It would have definitely been possible to extend a strike to all the shipyards, to the mines and to the steel industry, like it says in the TLD's leaflet. That was the least that could have happened. Such an extension into broad areas would have paralyzed a large part of the West German economy. At that point the HDW occupation would have been just one point of a massive campaign.

But of course you can't carry out such an extension if you basically don't want to win but only want a couple of concessions from the capitalists. If you lay the basis for things like this, then the consequence is that the workers take the power. And you have to want that.

There was criticism of a lack of solidarity from other plants. Well, if you don't offer me something to fight for, then what am I supposed to go running off and fight for?
During the occupation I saw what would have been possible, and I saw what all the parties and political groupings did. I saw what the social democrats of the SPD did. They said to the workers, we are the party; we'll do everything for you; we'll save your jobs, but we're going to do it together with the capitalists. And together with the capitalists means against the workers. That's not a party that can be the leadership of an occupation or of strikes, or of the workers' interests.

The DKP did nothing different from the SPD. Maybe there was a little bit more leftist touch in their speeches, but looking at what they did, they are indistinguishable. The GIM was in the shipyard, and they hardly opened their mouth. But the one guy from the GIM that was in the strike committee was also indistinguishable. It's exactly the same with the KPD, and the people from Arbeiterpolitik didn't have any different program either.

The first thing the workers have to have, that's a decent party that represents their interests. When you read the TLD's leaflet, you saw that they did represent the workers. The other political groups, parties—they wanted to keep the TLD out of the shipyard as far as possible. And discussions they had with individual workers were also not looked on kindly.

All the political groups except the TLD said, the workers—they're not that advanced; they can't do all that yet; and they don't understand all that yet. But I'm a worker myself. If somebody asks me, do you want to determine what's produced in your plant, I'll say of course I want that. And if he asked me, do you also want to determine how much you earn, then I'll say, of course I want to determine that. And do you also want to determine your hours and your working conditions? Then of course I say I want to determine that too. I don't have to be so all-fired advanced for that; every worker understands that. And that's what the TLD said. And it's simply necessary to have a party, one you can really turn to with your interests and doesn't turn right around and betray the workers again.

*Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- "The Baader-Meinhof Complex"

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "The Baader-Meinhof Complex"

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Constantin Productions, 2008

This film, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex", is based on a novelistic treatment of the, sometimes, heroic exploits of the 1960s radical Germany group, the Baader-Meinhof Group (aka Red Army Faction, RAF), that, like a number of other such formations at that time, such as the the Weathermen in the United States, set out to form guerrilla organizations in order to fight imperialism. That of their own state, as with the Weathermen, or others, or to act as a "second front" in order to assist the Vietnamese in their struggle against American imperialism.

Just before I watched this film I watched and reviewed, "Salt Of The Earth". That latter film presented a very different view, one that involved getting working and other oppressed peoples to organize themselves in mass action in the struggle against the bosses, a view more in tune with my own understanding of political organizing for radical social change. A way that in the long haul would prove, I think, to be more effective in the fight against international capitalism that the actions of RAF-type guerrilla formations. Nothing in this film, other than a sneaking admiration for the willingness of these fighters to sacrifice their lives for the struggle, has moved me from that earlier conviction.

And that, my friends is the most graphic comparison that I can make about the fate of those, mainly, student radicals that went up against the German state in a more protracted struggle than here in the United States, and lost. Throughout the viewing of the film I kept getting the feeling that these fighters were talking to themselves in a vacuum. That the mere fact of being willing to fight, and to die, for the cause of the oppressed was enough to validate their positions and their strategies. And as the story unfolds I kept getting the feeling that I had been here before. And I had. In previous reviews of the actions of the Weathermen and of other armed struggle, substitutionist radical student-based formations that dotted the left-wing political landscape in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Off this viewing I would note though that the RAF seemed to be a much more serious and committed organization, at least before its original cadre were taken off the scene and out of day-to-day leadership, one way or another, by the West German security apparatus and their international allies.

An American communist revolutionary that I greatly admire, James P. Cannon, an old Wobblie, founder of the American Communist party and founder of the American Trotskyist movement, once noted that if you get a small group of radical political people in a room and keep them there long enough anything is bound to happen. And that is exactly what happened here. The script could have almost been something out of Dostoevsky's "The Possessed", with a few modern technological updates. And this in a country, Germany, that had a long traditional of radical action, including a not unheroic communist past, had a vibrant and wide-spread student movement in the 1960s and, most importantly, an organized working class chafing under a bureaucratic Social Democratic Party leadership that needed to be replaced.

So what does the Red Army faction do- starts an urban guerrilla campaign based on expropriations and acts of selected terror. Now, let us be clear most of the actions of the RAF, especially those aimed directly at the American military presence in Germany were defensible, as was the organization itself when confronted by the German state. The political differences over strategy, here the effectiveness of an intellectual elite-led urban guerrilla warfare not based on mass support against a modern industrial state, are what separate us, at it did with the Weathermen. However, the weakness of such a strategy got confirmed, intentionally or not, as the leaders and rank and file members got rather easily picked up, picked off, placed in jail, and placed on trial. In the end, with not way out, the isolated original leadership is forced to acts of suicide. In a sense, what we are witnessing unfold is the turn from a heroic guerrilla formation to a class war political defense organization. That scenario too is familiar from the old Black Panther days here in America.

This is a film to watch, however, whatever the intentions of the director and producers as to the lessons to be drawn. If the strategy of urban guerrilla warfare ever seriously resurfaces in the West just drag out this film to clear the air. And then have your contacts watch that "Salt Of The Earth" that I mentioned before.

From "Revolutionary History" -Vol.4 Nos.1 & 2-The Spanish Civil War- José Rebull -On the Slogan of ‘A UGT-CNT Government’

Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History" -Vol.4 Nos.1 & 2, 1992-The Spanish Civil War. The View from the Left-On the Slogan of ‘A UGT-CNT Government’

Markin comment:

Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution from a POUM leftist in the Spanish Civil War period. The UGT was the Socialist-aligned trade union federation in Spain. The CNT the Anarchist (FAI)-aligned federation. The POUM and its militants had many faults, too many to be a revolutionary organization during that war but the commentator is dead on about the slogan of a purely trade union government- and why we oppose such a slogan. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!

From "Revolutionary History", Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-Open Letter to the KKE (Communist Party Of Greece), 1927-A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-Open Letter to the KKE (1927).

Markin comment:

Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!

*From "Revolutionary History", Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-The Left Opposition in Greece (1930)- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-The Left Opposition in Greece (1930).

Markin comment:

Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!

*From "Revolutionary History", Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Revolutionary History, Vol.3 No.3, Spring 1991-"Stalinism and Trotskyism in Greece (1924-1949)".

Markin comment:

Part of knowing what to do to forward the struggle in Greece today is to know some historical background of the struggle in the past. Here is a contribution. Victory to the Greek workers! Workers to Power!

*From The "Leon Trotsky Internet Archives"- Learn To Think (1938)

Click on the headline to link to a "Leon Trotsky Internet Archives" online copy of - "Learn To Think (1938)."

Markin comment:

This article has a certain currency as its authority, and that of the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, was used by the Spartacist League/U.S. in one of their polemical defenses of the now repudiated position in justification of not immediately calling for U.S. troop withdrawal from Haiti in the wake of the earthquake there in January, 2010.

*From The Lenin Internet Archives-Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women (1918)

Click on the headline to link to the "Lenin Internet Archives"-"Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women (1918)."

Markin comment:

These Bolsheviks, at least in the early days, really were ahead of their times on the woman question. There are many lessons to be learned from their attempts to organize the working women of the world that we should pay attention to, especially as globalization makes proletarians out of the women of the third world.

*From The James P. Cannon Archives- The Meaning Of The Great Minneapolis Teamsters Strike Victory(1934)

Click on the headline to link to a "James P. Cannon Internet Archives" online copy of his 1934 article written in the aftermath of the victory of the Minneapolis Teamsters strike.

Markin comment:

Every once in a while, especially in the last several years when there has been truly a dearth of class struggle here in America, it is good to go back and read about one of our victories written by an American revolutionary labor leader, James P. Cannon. Something by Leon Trotsky is also recommended just to keep the edge up.

*The Latest From "The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee" Website- Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers

Click on the headline to link to a "Lynne Stewart Defense Committee" Website posting about the next scheduled sentence hearing in her case.


Markin comment:

As always, and until she and her co-workers are freed, Lynne Stewart must not die in jail. Freedom now!

*Books to While Away The Class Struggle- A Distant Mirror Mirrored- Barbara Tuchman’s “ A Distant Mirror”

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for historian Barbara Tuchman.

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara Tuchman, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1978

There was a time when I liked to read virtually anything by the self-made historian Barbara Tuchman. That was back in my very early left-liberal days of the 1960s when I was much enamored of the Kennedy boys. It had been reported that at some point during the Cuban missile crisis (for the younger set, look that up on “Wikipedia”, or some other ancient source) that Jack Kennedy had read Tuchman's “Guns Of August”. The import of that reading by him was that he, supposedly, thought through her contention that the subject matter of that book, the struggle of the various bourgeois governments of Europe to play “chicken” and win before World War I, got out of hand well before the issues could have been resolved short of war. In short, that war was entirely avoidable had cooler heads prevailed. Well, I have long given up my left-liberal past and with it a move away from a dependence on the top governmental view of social and political change like that example. I have also moved away from Tuchman’s premise that merely by acting rationally bourgeois governmental leaders could, and can, solve any problem that confronts them. Still, I like to, on occasion, read her books because, whatever our political differences might have been, I know that she massed a great deal of useful information about the subjects that interested her.

That is certainly the case here with her monumental overview of the 14th century in Western Europe, as seen through the prism of one of the premier noble families of France. A family that was central to much of the political, social, economic and religious action of the century, the Coucy family. Moreover, as her title indicates, she has a thesis here as well- that the calamitous 14th century has some important lessons to tell a late 20th century audience about how to save itself before it is too late. While, as I mentioned above, Tuchman is always a good source for interesting historical data and it s always good to “learn” the lessons of history these lessons seem to be directed, once again, toward bourgeois governmental leaders. I would draw rather different conclusions and look to a different section of the population to learn those "lessons".

Well, why pick on the poor, bedraggled 14th century? For this reviewer, who has mentioned in the past that in his old age he wanted to sit back and study the role of religion in the development of Western capitalist society, especially those early protestant movements, this is an important period where the grip of the Roman Catholic Church and its far-flung bureaucracies were being challenged on many fronts by secular forces (and being defended by other such forces). For Tuchman it is one of those decisive turning points in history as well where such concepts as the rule of law, the notion of a rational elite (as exemplified by the Coucys), the beginning of the flourishing of cities and the emergence of the bourgeois element that would drive (and still drives) Western society, and in the process create nation-states out of the patchwork of duchies, archbishopric sees, counties, and all lesser forms of governance. In short, the outline for modern society that the modern reader can recognize, for good or ill.

If you are looking to delve into the seemingly never-ending fights between various nobilities, mainly in England and France, a bewildering array of very unstable alliances, the ‘skinny’ behind the two Pope (Avignon and Rome) struggle in the Catholic Church that ran riot throughout the later part of the century, or the absurdly complicated manner of solving conflict through an occasional war then this is your first stop. If you are also looking to get a glimpse at the culture, mainly high Church and chivalrous noble culture, the way the various local nobilities lived and intermarried (another cause for bewilderment, if you are not careful), the way wars were fought and who fought them and the place of such phenomena as plagues, pilgrimages, the late Crusades, and such this is also a place to stop. If you want to know everything about the several generations of Coucys, you will get that as well. And all these fairly well-written six hundred plus pages are done with the needs of an interested, but notnecessarily knowledgeable, layperson in mind. And with some very interesting illustrations, as well.

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Nina Simone performing Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (audio only, but that is just fine anyway, right?

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

Markin- Any song that starts with "When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Eastertime too..." will always get my attention. And did, along with the other key song from this album, "Desolation Row", back in the day.

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.

Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.

Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Deportee"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harrsi perfroming his father's song "Deportee."

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.


Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again

My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died

CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.

Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

CHORUS

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)

*Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-"The Salt Of The Earth"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for "Salt Of The Earth

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Salt Of The Earth, starring professional and non-professional actors and actresses, directed by Herbet Biberman,1954

Lately, with the recent coal mining disaster in West Virginia and the struggle for union recognition in the Boran mines in California the subject of unions, union safety committees, and the right to organize unions in the mines has come up, front and center. Those events, as well as the repeated instances in this space of my writing about the Kentucky coal mines and the sagas of bloody Harlan County have provided many lessons about how to proceed with this kind of struggle. So it is apt that the film under review, "Salt Of The Earth", is being reviewed at this time. This rather didactic film, by today's standards at least, with quite a political history of its own brings home in dramatic form almost all the lessons of the struggle in the mines.

A quick overview is in order here. Western zinc miners, mainly Hispanic at this site, were negotiating with the local agents of a huge mining conglomerate based elsewhere over working conditions and mine safety. The negotiations stalled, the mine conditions got worst, and eventually the impasse was resolved in a strike vote. The miners went out and stayed out for several months as the company "stonewalled" on their demands. Along the way every trick in management's book was brought into play from closing off credit to the company-owned store, harassment of various forms, bringing in the local police and goons, and going to the bosses' courts. That last trick worked, or almost worked, except that the miners' wives, who had been organized into an auxiliary, saved the day by 'manning' the picket lines. The struggle continued with more harassment, more threats, and eventually things were brought to a head by an attempt at evictions, first of the main local miners' leader. Still the lines did not break. The company seeing its position, for now, as futile agreed to negotiate in "good faith".

That, "for now", is critical for it is spoken by a senior representative of the company who has let the "cat out of the bag" here. A successful fight for a union contract is just a momentary "armed truce" in the class struggle and is recognized by the bosses as such, if not by most union leaders. It should, however, be recognized as such and etched in the mind of every labor militant. That dramatic finish to the film,however, with a hard fought "temporary" victory, thus let's one see in microcosm all the problems that went before in order to get just this momentary justice. I might add that this film, done in 1954, at a time when unions were still growing and thriving in this country, and when there was still a layer of militants in the secondary leadership of the organized trade union movement would almost seem like a "socialist's paradise" compared with he level of class struggle today.

Although some of the factual aspects of this film may be different- the locale of the mines were in New Mexico not the East, were zinc rather than coal mines, and the miners were mainly Hispanic rather than Appalachians whites this script could have been written today without much exaggeration. I am not generally a fan of the Stalinist-influenced "socialist realism" form of political propaganda, of which this film seems a prime example, but in this case it is very effective as it brings up every possible problem that any union recognition effort runs into.

For openings there are the problems of separate Hispanic mine locals and of Anglo locals and of separate local union contracts rather than a uniform national contract. This is a recurring problem, not fully resolved even during the great strike wave of the 1930s. Another is the problem, endemic to the mining industry, of the physically isolated places that the vast majority of mines are located in which makes wide-spread support more difficult, although as depicted in the film, financial and physical aid did come in during this battle. Another problem mentioned here, and a particular problem of long, drawn out strikes is that of union members going back to work, or trying to, for a whole variety of reasons, none good enough. Also the attempts by the bosses to buy off union militants with promises of advancement or "soft" jobs, or failing that to run them out of the mines, out of town, or into jail.

The thing that makes this one interesting, and brings a rush of solidarity to the cause, is that once the militants were committed to the strike most of them were willing to see it through to the end. They faced down the attempts by the company to bring in scabs, to jail their leaders, to use their legal system to get injunctions and other legal relief in order to break the union. There was nothing the company was not willing to do to break the strike. And they almost did, except, and this is what also makes this one so interesting, is the wives of the miners, not without a great deal of social and personal turmoil, filled the breech when the company got it's injunction. The women, who had formed, the by now classic women's auxiliary first used extensively in the great strike struggles of the 1930s, "womanned" the picket lines, and held them through thick and thin, including arrest of their leaders.

This film is certainly an advanced one for the time in dealing with the women question, especially in an isolated, company-run town where the socially conservative Hispanic male miners had a hard time coming to grips with the need to include the women, and their demands, in the negotiating struggles. Of course, in true "social realist" form, the woman narrator/star also turns out during the course of the film to be an "earth mother" and stalwart militant, or at least evolves into that position during the struggle. In that sense this script follows the tradition of Maxim Gorky's "Mother" in its depiction of the evolution of political class consciousness by the most oppressed layers of society, especially house-bound women with children.

Note: As described in the above-linked entry from "Wikipedia" those involved with the production of this film, including the director, produces and many of the actors faced the "blacklist" during the 1950s "red scare" in America. Frankly, whatever qualms I have about its literary and political deficiencies, this film is a powerful statement about working class struggles and the road forward. Watch it.

*From "The Rag Blog" -Amy Goodman : In Praise of Lena Horne

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry-Amy Goodman : In Praise of Lena Horne.

Markin comment:

I have made my own comments about Lena Horne elsewhere in this space. But the point that Lena made about the studios cutting her out of films shown in the South makes me want to scream one more time- Mississippi Goddam.

*From The Renegade Eye Blog-Iran: We Will Take Revenge for Farzad and His Comrades!

Click on the headline to link to a "Renegade Eye" Blog entry-Iran: We Will Take Revenge for Farzad and His Comrades!

Markin comment:

Every militant leftist fighter stands behind this commentary, whatever our other poltical differences.