Vol. 2, No. 2 February 1970
Newspaper of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist)
PO 5221, Cleveland, Ohio Tel. 861-6949
The proletariat is the greatest class in the history of mankind. It is the most powerful revolutionary class ideologically politically and in strength. It can and must unite the overwhelming majority of people around
itself so as to isolate the handful of enemies to the maximum and attack them. -Mao Tsetung
MASS LAYOFFS CAUSED BY IMPERIALIST CRISIS
Editorial:
Hail the 1st National Conference of the American Student Movement!
Indian Revolutionary Welcomed in Cleveland
Cleveland, Schenectady...
Strikers Fight G.E., Defy Union Hacks
Long Live the People's Republic of China!
Death to the New Tsars of Soviet Social-Imperialism!
Student Front to Fight Racial Oppression Formed in Cleveland
STUDENTS FIGHT OVERPOPULATION THEORY
LAST CLEVELAND GE STRIKERS RELUCTANTLY RETURN TO WORK
Layoffs!
A wave of layoffs is sweeping the auto industry. 19,000 auto workers have been permanently laid off since December; 110,000 temporarily laid off. At mid-February General Motors cut its production to half the Feb. 1st level and closed 14 assembly plants. For the month of January, auto sales were down 16.5% and production down 29% below the 1969 level. Unemployment has reached 5.2% in Michigan as the rolls have grown by 60,000 auto workers since November. In Cleveland, layoffs were heavy at Ford Brookpark, which may close down for a week. Chevy was working short weeks.
A Black construction worker in Detroit, who has been laid off 21/2 months, said as he waited two hours in line for his unemployment check; "When you come in here and tell them you're not working they make you sign a statement and then they have to ask you your momma's name, your name, your address and how many toes you got and then you have to wait two weeks for a check. It's pitiful."
A chain reaction of layoffs is spreading to auto parts suppliers and is expected to hit steel-workers next, 20$ of whose production goes to automobiles. This new stage of the economic crisis began in the housing industry, where inflation and imperialist boss Nixon's tight money policy made it nearly impossible for working people to buy houses. Widespread layoffs in building trades followed the drop in sales. With the further growth of inflation and fear of recession and layoffs, working people stopped buying cars, and the auto layoffs began. With each new set of layoffs, demand for consumer goods drops further, setting the stage for1more jobs to be closed down.
Such, is U.S. monopoly capital's answer to the economic crisis it has brought down on itself: place all the burden on the working people. Faced with the storms of world revolutionary struggles depriving them of their ill-gotten cheap labor and markets for investment, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class is turning on the working and oppressed people at home, trying to extract the difference from their sweat. By passing repressive-laws, heavily arming its police, carrying out fascist repression against the Black people, who were the first to stand up, and by constantly blaming the people for everything, the monopolists are attacking the American people and laying the basis for out-and-out fascism when the people's anger mounts too high. Admitting they are already into a recession, these parasites are stepping up arms preparation (Nixon, for example, will not divulge the percentage of the budget planned for "defense," and planning to avoid depression the only way they know how: WAR. When the gimmicks of Nixon's economic advisors fail to halt the downward spiral, a wide campaign of slander and provocation can be expected against the People's Republic of China, bright red bastion of world anti-imperialist and socialist revolution, in order to justify an armed attack. Another possibility is a dogfight over markets with the socialist-in-words, imperialist-in-deeds Soviet Union, in the Mideast or India, where they have large investments.
As Chairman Mao Tsetung recently said: "To start a war, the U.S. reactionaries must first attack the American people. They are already attacking the American people -- oppressing the workers and democratic circles in the United States politically and economically and preparing to impose fascism there. The people of the United States should stand up and resist the attacks of the U.S. reactionaries. I believe they will."
U.S.IMPERIALISM IS TO BLAME
Such crises as these are inevitable under capitalism and have occurred periodically throughout U.S. history, the worst being the Depression of the 30's. Basically, they arise from the fact that the capitalist returns to the worker less than the worker produces, so the worker doesn't have enough money to buy back his own produce. This leads to a constant glutting of the market with over-priced products and forces the capitalist to look overseas for new markets and even cheaper labor, and so on. When the capitalists of a few major countries (Europe, Japan, the U.S. and recently the Soviet Union) have become a tiny handful of parasites whose empires cover the globe, capitalism has reached the stage of monopoly capitalism, the stage of imperialism, and "free competition" has come to an end. This stage was reached by 1900.
In the stage of imperialism, whole nations along with the international working class are set into rebellion against the chief imperialists and their local lackeys. Out of this rebellion arose the first workers' state, the Soviet Union, (which has since degenerated into a dark fascist capitalist state), Socialist China and other anti-imperialist nations, as well as a host of armed national liberation struggles in the semi-colonial countries and revolutionary proletarian movements in the imperialist countries themselves.
U.S. monopoly capital came to dominate the capitalist world after WWII, but it is a paper tiger, a giant with feet of clay, hated by the world's people including the American people. As Chairman Mao pointed out in 19U7: "The economic power of U.S. imperialism, which grew during World War II, is confronted with unstable and daily shrinking domestic and foreign markets. The further shrinking of these markets will cause economic crisis to break out."
The monopolists have two methods of dealing with these crises short of war. First, they try the carrot -- that is, liberal government spending, printing of money, etc. This only postpones the crisis and deepens it. Money loses value and working people suffer, unable to buy necessities. Then the imperialists try the big stick method -- tight money, clampdowns on spending, fascist repression of the people's just struggles. This brings the crisis into the open, as the Nixon administration has done, precipitates a recession or a depression, and places many more nooses around the imperialists' necks by calling forth unprecedented waves of anger from the people.
WE WILL FIGHT BACK
Thus, led by the auto industry tycoons, the monopoly capitalists think they can heal their wounds by brushing away thousands of U.S. workers like flies. Be careful, "gentlemen" -- these "little "flies" you take lightly have a sharp and deadly bite. In fact, we workers do not really resemble flies at all. In reality, it is we who are mighty, who produce all your wealth! You are the real parasites and someday soon we will brush you away from the table like flies!
Fellow workers, it is time to stand up! As we pointed out in the GE strike article in this issue and in last issue's editorial, the only solution to the problems of the working class is revolution, armed seizure of state power by the working class from the monopoly capitalist class, setting up a workers' state and running the economy for the benefit of the working and oppressed people. Such a war as the imperialists plan can only be successfully opposed by preparing to fight them here at home. Such a revolution can only be carried out when wide public opinion is won for it by doing propaganda for revolution and serving the people. The politically-advanced workers and revolutionary intellectuals should join together in a disciplined revolutionary organization, a new Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of America, and win the support of the masses of people in the course of struggle. Advanced workers who already agree with The Workers' Advocate should help circulate the paper and should participate directly in building this organization. All workers concerned by the economic crisis should attend the public meeting called by the American Communist Workers' Movement (Marxist-Leninist) to discuss our analysis of the situation and to make plans for immediate action.
"However active the leading group may be, its activity will amount to fruitless effort by a handful of people unless combined with the activity of the masses. On the other hand, if the masses alone are active without a strong leading group to organize their activity properly, such activity cannot be sustained for long, or carried forward in the right direction or raised to a high level." -- Chairman Mao Tsetung
To sum up the results of our Learn from the People Campaigns around the country and our daily mass work in the working class, the situation is excellent for the working class and its allies but there are serious problems that must be over come if we are to move forward. Everywhere we found militant strikes and a high level of interest among workers for Mao Tsetung Thought and other communist literature. The broad masses of students are also eager to change the world, and welcomed a militant alternative. People everywhere confirmed our political line of carrying out mass democratic struggles against imperialism by in fact participating in them; there was great eagerness for struggle against fascist and liberal bourgeois ideology which is leading the people astray; and many agreed wholeheartedly on the need for a new Marxist-Leninist communist party to lead the working class and its allies in overthrowing the monopoly capitalist class and establishing socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Many people threw themselves into revolutionary work.
The main problem we encountered was the lack of strong, principled organization and a current revolutionary theory to tie the many spontaneous struggles together into one solid chain that cannot be broken. In the working class great class hatred bursts forth every day, but the trade union hacks do everything in their power to turn it into harmless channels in order to protect their own position and the monopoly capitalist system. In the political field the capitalist politicians give similar misleadership. "New Left", Trotskyite and revisionist types make noises about going to the workers, but never really integrate with or serve the working class. Thus pessimism and a great desire for change exist side by side. Among the students the reactionary "Left" has been much more active, with the same results.
In short, in the course of mass democratic struggles a disciplined leading body of advanced proletarian revolutionaries must be formed to win the approval of the masses and give coordinated leadership to the struggles of the whole working and oppressed people of America.
"The masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts, the relatively active, the intermediate and the relatively backward. The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements." -- Chairman Mao Tsetung
This guideline holds good in everything. We hold that it should be applied to our problem in the following way: consolidate the active people who come up in mass democratic struggle on the ideological task of applying Mao Tsetung Thought to American conditions and on the political program of the American Communist Workers' Movement (M-L). Our newspaper, as our main common activity, is the principal tool for this work. It is a tool for summing up the peoples struggles, analyzing the successes and failures and popularizing them on a national scale so that the movement in each locality is enriched by the experience of the movement elsewhere. In this way it serves as a collective organizer and releases the initiative of people to do mass work and to sum up their mass work scientifically It trains advanced workers to analyze the contradictions among all the classes and peoples in society and thus prepares these workers to play the leading role of the proletariat. A political newspaper produced by the proletarian revolutionary headquarters will play a supreme role in building the party.
We know from our own experience that "when Mao Tsetung Thought is grasped by the broad masses it becomes an inexhaustible source of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power." (Lin Piao) The American Student Movement is, in essence, a unified network of Mao Tsetung Thought propaganda teams, disseminating Mao Tsetung Thought widely and applying it concretely to the problem of attacking the oppressors of the working class in one of their most sacred lairs -- the university. This is important now for three reasons. First, the imperialists are peddling all kinds of phoney theories to naive petty bourgeoisie, blaming the working people for war, poverty, etc. The purpose of this propaganda is to train the students as unthinking agents of oppression against the workers in such jobs as foremen, teachers, social workers. These plans must be exposed at their origin. The second reason is that the youth, enthusiasm and mobility of students equips them to spread Mao Tsetung Thought among the masses of students and working people with great speed, raising the level of student struggles in support of the working class and making it easier for advanced workers to come forward by' applying their wealth of practical experience. Finally, students must betray the petty bourgeoisie and actually join and integrate with the working class and its struggles on the job and in the community in order to become proletarians and to be truly revolutionary. The American Student Movement is preparing to do this. The ASM is the proletariat's movement on campus. Thus it has the right to say that it is the only student political movement with a bright future, since it is the only student movement serving the one class in the world with a bright revolutionary future -- the working class.
The First National Conference of the American Student Movement will be held in Cleveland March 6-13. It will sum up and consolidate the work of ASM on a national scale, and give concrete guidelines on moving forward. It will adopt the revolutionary method of testing everything in the fire of mass democracy. Evening rallies open to progressive people are planned to support the struggles of the working and oppressed people of the world. (See page 8 of this paper.) The Conference will provide another proof of this penetrating statement of Chairman Mao Tsetung: "We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong."
DARE TO STRUGGLE! DARE TO WIN!
Saturday night, Feb. l1, a revolutionary Indian comrade from the Ad Hoc Committee of the Hindustani Ghadar Party, was warmly received at a meeting of workers and students in Cleveland. He told the history of brutal oppression of the Indian people by British colonialism, American imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and the Indian reactionaries, and of the Indian people's resistance to this oppression.
The crimes of the British colonialists were many. They stopped the economic development of India and introduced the vicious system of landlordism. They distorted and undermined agriculture to the point where widespread famines occurred. They ruthlessly repressed the patriotic struggles of the Indian people who have heroically resisted the vicious oppression of the colonialists and imperialists.
After World War II, when British imperialism was so weak it could no longer hold onto India, the American imperialists started to take over. After the restoration of capitalism in Russia by the Soviet revisionist renegade clique, Soviet social-imperialism started to compete with U.S. imperialism for the wealth of India. The comrade pointed out how these are now four mountains on the backs of the Indian people, U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, the Indian reactionary comprador capitalists, and the feudal landlord system. He told the history of vigorous struggles of the Indian people against their oppressors which has been going on since the arrival of British colonialism in India.
The comrade thoroughly exposed and condemned the counter-revolutionary activities of the arch-reactionary Gandhi and of the Indian revisionists "Communist" party. Gandhi did everything to help the British colonialists and their Indian stooges. He always told the people to do the opposite of what was necessary -- to be peaceful when they needed to rise up with arms, to confuse their friends with their enemies when the Indian people needed to expose and struggle against the Indian reactionaries who were serving the British, and so forth. In a similar manner the revisionists, the so-called "Communist" Party of India and the so-called "Communist Party of India (Marxist)," have completely sold out the Indian people. They never intended to lead a revolution in India and they have now sunk to the level of participation in local government and sending troops to suppress the revolution.
However the reactionaries have not succeeded in putting down the India people's just struggles either by force or by trickery. Our Indian comrade proudly told of the rapid growth of the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside. Today, the base areas of Naxalbari and Srikakulum are shining ever more brightly red, lighting the path to liberation for the Indian people. The comrade pointed out how the key to building real thorough-going revolutionary struggle in India has been Mao Tsetung Thought. It has only been through the concrete study and application of Mao Tsetung Thought to Indian conditions that Indian revolutionaries has been able to correctly initiate and lead the armed agrarian revolution and build the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
As the comrade pointed out, the victory of the Indian revolution will be a really big blow for both U.S. and Soviet imperialism. The loss of the wealth and labor of the Indian people will deeply wound U.S. imperialism and be a big help to struggles of the working and oppressed people of the U.S.
The meeting ended with the militant shouting of slogans:
VICTORY TO THE ARMED AGRARIAN REVOLUTION IN INDIA!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
LONG LIVE CHARU MAZUMDAR!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO! A LONG, LONG LIFE TO HIM!
[Photo: Joseph V. Stalin Dec. 21, 1879-Mar. 5, 1953 Great Proletarian Revolutionary]
With the G.E. Strike we saw the first nationwide struggle of workers against the extreme inflation and growing recession the imperialists have brought on us in recent months. The strike dealt a heavy blow to the monopoly capitalists, who are losing all around the world, and caused them great losses of profits, setting a wage raise pattern that the monopolists desperately fear will be duplicated or surpassed in the larger strikes coming this year. The united mass- action of the workers rolled back GE's reactionary take-it-or-leave-it Boulware negotiating policy, and did damage to the imperialists' frenzied arms build-up. (GE, as a major armaments concern, collaborated with Nazi Germany up till the eve of WWII and represents a bulwark of the forces of rising U.S. fascism.')
From the workers' point of view, however, the 7% raise will be rapidly eaten up by inflation, because the capitalists always use strike victories as excuses to raise prices still higher, as well as to speed up and automate more and more work, thus setting the stage for more strikes. This will continue as long as political power remains in the hands of the monopoly capitalists, by which they protect their hold on the means of production. This lesson, that the workers can only partially defend themselves on a daily basis in the economic struggle and must overthrow the capitalists' political power to win freedom, is the basic lesson of the GE strike. With the economic crisis deepening and working class struggles rising, the GE strike was a sort of trial- run battle between the two class forces at a new level of struggle. Faced with such strikes, the Black rebellions and other struggles, the rulers will use more and more fascist repression against the people in an attempt to stave off the end of their parasitic existence.
GE Workers Fight in Schenectady
The struggle of GE workers against General Electric company and the sell-out union leadership has demonstrated that the great truths put forward by Chairman Mao Tsetung apply as well to the problems of the American working class as to - the problems of the Chinese people. In Schenectady, N.Y., where there is a long history of courageous struggle by the GE workers, this has been amply demonstrated.
Chairman Mao has pointed out that "'Lifting a rock only drop it on ones own feet' is a Chinese folk saying to describe the behavior or certain fools. The reactionaries in all countries are fools of this kind. In the final analysis, their persecution of the revolutionary people only serves to accelerate the people's revolutions on a broader and more intense scale."
Even before the strike began, the union hacks, company officials and police colluded behind the workers backs to leave open a "corridor" in the picket line so that scabs and "white collar" scabs could get through to run the machines. As one GE worker pointed out "If we open up a corridor, we might as well not even have a picket line!" So when the first pickets gathered at the front gates and the chief of police told them to stay out of the "corridor", the workers said "To hell with the corridor", and closed off the whole entrance. This enraged the reactionary police (and surprised the union hacks), so they arrested a couple of strikers. Not to be cowed by this vicious attempt to trample on their right to self-defense, the GE strikers kept the gate closed down for two solid weeks.
The next trick, used by the reactionary company officials, was to attempt to create public opinion favorable to their suppression of the workers. Letters were written to the strikers wives saying that the strike could not be won, and full page advertisements were taken out in the newspapers saying that the workers were on strike for no reason, that GE was making a reasonable offer, and that the workers were mindless mobs under the control of a few power hungry union officials. As Chairman Mao points out "To overthrow a political power it is always necessary first of all to create public opinion. This is true for the revolutionary class as well as for the counter-revolutionary class."
In response to GE's attempt to create reactionary public opinion as the basis for suppressing the strike, GE workers found several ways of going out among the people themselves. They took shopping bags urging a boycott of GE products into the shopping districts of Schenectady and used the occasion to present firsthand their side of the story. They handed out union authorization cards and appeals for contributions to the strike to GE white collar workers. When it proved difficult to leaflet moving cars, GE workers would drive up to the gate in one of their own cars and stop, either pretending car trouble or pretending to argue with their fellow strikers. This would hold up a whole line of cars and give the strikers time to pass out leaflets and talk about the strike. (One striker went through the picket line six times before the reactionary police realized what he was doing.)
As Chairman Mao has pointed out "Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history, such is the history of civilization for thousands of years." and "If there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs."
The biggest rock that the union hacks lifted, however', was their speech to the Schenectady workers urging acceptance of the sell-out contract they had negotiated. For example, under the old contract the workers had won the right to strike on a grievance after the first three grievance steps. The union hacks reported that the company had demanded 10 days notice before such a strike was called and that they had "whittled the company down to 24 hours' notice" The workers, however, saw through this is nonsense, and when the chief shop steward tore the sell-out contract apart point by point, relying on the peoples' experience to prove what he was saying, he received a long, vigorous ovation from the rank-and-file. This left the union hacks looking like the fools they, are with a big rock sitting on their feet. The Schenectady local of IUE rejected the union hacks' contract, and remains a leading center of the electrical workers' resistance to both GE and the sell-out union hacks.
These are only a few examples, among many in the long history of courageous struggles by the American working class against U.S. monopoly capital, showing the universal applicability of Mao Tsetung Thought.
The GE strike reflects the ability and determination of American working class people to put an end to exploitation and oppression. Our long history of economic strikes demonstrates that a revolutionary party, such as that described by Chairman Mao, cannot spring up spontaneously. That economic struggles are mainly defense struggles against our main enemy, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Building a party requires that the advanced sections of the working class come forward, using Mao Tsetung Thought as a guide to action, and call on our class brothers to consciously take up the main political task of the day. Since we have no revolutionary theory current among the masses of people, our first task is to spread Mao Tsetung Thought widely among the working class and oppressed people. This can be done by organizing Workers' Mao Tsetung Thought study groups, by selling The Workers' Advocate and the writings of Chairman Mao among the people, and by leading the American working class in political struggle in the factories and in the communities. The struggle to counter the reactionary propaganda of GE company, which is aimed at lulling the people to sleep in the face of a police state (fascism), is only one example of political struggle. Many working-class people in the U.S. have already taken up this call by the American Communist Workers' Movement (M-L) and we know that many others soon will. Victory will surely be ours.
[Photo: Under Arrest Joseph Mangino I.U.E. local 301 business agent, Schenectady and Elmer Collis (right) chief shop steward. As one GE striker said, Union Hack Mangino would never have become a hero if it hadn't of been for Steward Collis' courageous leadership in closing up the "corridor" that Mangino and the company officials had agreed would be left open.]
The American Student Movement, started by working class communists, is being joined and supported by progressive students all over the U.S.A. Formed at the Dec. 1969 North American Anti-Imperialists Conference at Vancouver, B.C., the American Student Movement is being built by communist students under the guidance of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist).
After a fierce struggle against the old mass bureaucratic method of work (see last month's Workers' Advocate on the Vancouver conference) communist students went forth from Vancouver on a Learn from the People Organizing campaign on U.S. campuses with the slogans ORGANIZE TO CHANGE THE WORLD! SMASH THE OLD TO BUILD THE NEW!
On the Learn from the People Campaign, ASM members have been both learning from students all across the U.S. and teaching them. That is,while ASM members have been spreading the program of mass democratic struggles against fascist and other antipeople ideas and practices on the campus, they have been learning the history of students' struggles against U.S. imperialism. The main fact we have found is that time and again the masses of sincere and honest students have been criminally misled by the New Leftists, the Trotskyites, and various revisionists and opportunists. Up until now, students who wanted to fight imperialism have had only two choices -- bureaucratic, single issue reform movements (like the antiwar movement) or little cliques of adventurist "heroes" (like many SDS groups). Because they haven't provided a real alternative these so-called "left" movements have bred pessimism and political cynicism.
The ASM has been able to break through all this despair, muck, and confusion by pointing out that on the campus the main fight students must take up is against all the incorrect, anti-working class, racist, anti-people, and fascist ideas which are being spread there. Secondly ASM has been encouraging students to give direct support to the struggles of working and oppressed people in the U.S. and around the world. Above all the ASM has been showing how students and all oppressed people must concretely study and apply Mao Tsetung Thought, the highest development of working class ideology, as the only guide to action in fighting imperialism.
An example of the method of work followed by the ASM occurred at Stanford University when communist students found a meeting organized to introduce "meditation" classes by a maharishi from India. The decadent feudal classes that this man represents in India are being smashed by armed agrarian revolution so he has come running to U.S. imperialism looking for his decadent way of life. The ideas he is pushing (blaming the people for their oppression, saying people's problems are "in their heads" and encouraging people to abandon struggle against imperialism) help the U.S. monopoly capitalist class by laying the basis in ideology and culture for a fascist state. Many progressive students came to the meeting with a sincere interest in changing the world, since the maharishi covers his fascist ideology with crocodile tears for "the pain and suffering of humanity" The ASM members vigorously exposed and denounced the maharishi's fascist cult. Many students agreed with this analysis and a lively debate over ideas took place. As a result many people were filled with optimism for the world-wide victory of socialism and resolved to oppose all such fascists in the future.
At the University of Iowa in Ames city, the ASM showed the correct method for developing mass democracy over revolutionary ideas. "Violence in Society" was the topic of discussion at a meeting of several hundred people. The first obstacle to developing revolutionary ideas was an alliance of a handful of pacifists, anarchists, and fascists who were attacking everyone who wanted any kind of real change in the oppressive conditions under which most of the American people are forced to live. They were particularly attacking a Puerto Rican organizer from Chicago who vividly described the oppression of his people and who said there had to be "some kind of a revolution". The ASM members sharply denounced and opposed these reactionaries and stood up for the interest of the majority who wanted to discuss the concrete alternative to continued violent oppression of the people.
With the open reactionaries isolated and defeated a vigorous mass democracy developed after the meeting over the difference between reformist and revolutionary politics. The Chicago organizer's method was to build mass organizations around various "issues" without building a revolutionary core of leadership. ASM clearly showed how a revolutionary party of the working class -- a genuine Communist party -- was absolutely necessary to carry through the struggle to real victory. Without building a Communist Party to lead the struggle against imperialism no real success can be achieved.
Students began to enthusiastically grasp these revolutionary ideas and began to discuss the role of their university in training future oppressors of the working class. Many students bought the Workers' Advocate and various works of Chairman Mao. Thus revolutionary ideas were spread among the students by first of all attacking and isolating the reactionaries who stood against all change and their showing real change can occur only by following the bright red revolutionary banner of Mao Tsetung Thought.
Such struggles as these against the fascist ideas being put forward by the universities, as well as the widespread dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought and the program of the ASM have brought excellent results. Units of the ASM have been formed in Iowa, serving the mid-west, in Colorado, serving the Rocky Mountain States, and in Washington State, serving the West Coast, putting the ASM on a firm national basis. The political program of the ASM is now being discussed and carried out on various levels by progressive students all over the U.S. and widespread interest in the Cleveland conference has been generated. By relying firmly on Mao Tsetung Thought as a guide to action and by following the political leadership of the ACWM (M-L), the American Student Movement will play an important role in building a Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S. The struggles it is initiating against bourgeois ideology, and particularly against fascist ideology, in the universities are attacking the U.S. monopoly capitalists where they are weakest, in the sphere of ideology, literature, art, culture, and social form. This will bring masses of students into principled unity with the working and oppressed people of America, it will defeat the misleadership which has been repressing the revolutionary initiative of the people, by attacking the misleadership at its source in the universities; and it will provide a reserve of cadre for the working class movement when communist intellectuals integrate among the working people at the place of work and in the communities. All working class people should joyfully hail the development of this student movement as another step down the bright red road of proletarian revolution.
ORGANIZE TO CHANGE THE WORLD!
SMASH THE OLD TO BUILD THE NEW!
VICTORY TO THE STRUGGLES OE THE WORKING AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE OE AMERICA
LONG LIVE MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT, BRIGHT RED PATH OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!!!
[Cartoon.]
A Cadre Tempered in Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Shenyang, January 18 (Hsinhua) -- The impact of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on the ideological revolutionization of cadres was described by Li Kuan, Standing Committee Member of the Communist Party Committee of the Shenyang Metallurgical Plant, in an interview with Hsinhua.
Li Kuang made serious mistakes before the cultural revolution when he, as director of the plant, acted according to the counter-revolutionary revisionist line pushed by the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Lui Shao-chi. The workers criticized him during the cultural revolution and helped him recognized how serious his mistakes were. He acknowledged this, and made earnest efforts to correct them. The workers approved him and gave him warm support. His experience led him to understand the absolute necessity and timeliness of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He has made a real study of Chairman Mao's great theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and is determined to follow Chairman Mao always in making revolution. He looks ahead into the 1970's with revolutionary pride and confidence.
Following is a summary of the interview:
I joined the revolution in 194l. After liberation, I was poisoned by Liu Shao-chi's counter-revolutionary revisionist line. During the cultural revolution, the revolutionary masses saved me from sliding down the capitalist road. All this has made me understand the absolute correctness of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line and made me loathe the counter-revolutionary revisionist line pushed by the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi.
I was transferred to the Shenyang Metallurgical Plant in 1948 from an old revolutionary base in Shantung. I worked successively as head of a shop, chief engineer and director. When I first arrived, I was thrilled to see such a big factory become the property of the people. Alongside the workers, I worked energetically and fought the class enemy day in and day out. We had the revolutionary spirit of hard work like the people in the old revolutionary bases and soon restored production.
On the eve of the country's liberation, our great leader Chairman Mao warned us at the Second Plenary Session of the Party's Seventh Central Committee: "There may be some Communists, who were not conquered by enemies with guns and were worthy of the name of heroes for standing up to these enemies, but who cannot withstand sugar-coated bullets; they will be defeated by sugar-coated bullets."
This teaching of Chairman Mao's shows how sharp and complex the struggle between the two classes and the two lines was after nation-wide victory. It reflects the great attention paid by Chairman Mao to the cadres. But I did not understand it. I thought that being a good cadre simply meant working hard and being honest. I failed to see that the arch renegade Liu Shao-chi who had sneaked into the revolutionary ranks was trying to restore capitalism by pushing a counter-revolutionary revisionist line for running enterprises in opposition to Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. I carried out the revisionist line- because I was not conscious of the struggle between the two lines and was not mentally prepared to continue making revolution.
Whom should we rely on in running a socialist factory? This involves a sharp struggle between the two lines. Chairman Mao points out: "We must whole-heartedly rely on the working class". But Liu Shao-chi advocated "let specialists run the factories". Since I had not paid enough attention to studying Chairman Mao's works, I mistakenly carried out Liu Shao-chi's counter-revolutionary revisionist line. I adopted a system putting the factory under the control of the engineers, accountants and planners, and I as director had the final say in everything. I promoted to key positions a large number of unreformed bourgeois intellectuals, including some with very bad political records. They drew up 1,100,000 words of complicated rules and regulations that repressed the workers' revolutionary enthusiasm.
Influenced by Liu Shao-chi's "material incentives" trash, I introduced 50 kinds of bonuses; I didn't realize that all of them fitted in with Liu Shao-chi's attempt to corrupt the working class. He clamoured that "technique comes first', so I attended a "night college" and studied technology very hard. I neglected the study of Chairman Mao's works. I was increasingly poisoned by Liu Shao-chi's counter-revolutionary revisionist line. Step by step I led the socialist plant down the road of capitalist restoration. The workers firmly opposed all the wrong things I had done, but I failed for a long time to realize what my mistakes were.
Then the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers and revolutionary cadres and intellectuals overthrew the arch renegade Liu Shao-chi and his henchmen and sharply criticized their counter-revolutionary revisionist line. The plant's workers citing a host of facts, criticized the serious error I had committed in carrying out the counter-revolutionary revisionist line.
I was once brought to a copper electrolysis trough by the workers there. I had worked in this shop in 1962 to gain experience in order to guide the work. At that time the trough leaked badly. I pressed such fallacies as "put production in command" and "material incentives". I even said this: "There's a bonus for whoever is able to stop the leak." But bonuses did not solve the problem of leak.
After the cultural revolution began, the workers showed their initiative and renovated the trough. Putting politics in command, they did this project carefully and solved the problem. Pointing to the trough, a veteran worker said to me: "look, what's more effective, the money you offered or the power of Mao Tsetung Thought? Chairman Mao long ago taught us that "Politics is the commander, the soul in everything" and that "Political work is the life-blood of all economic work." But you fell for Liu Shao-chi's fallacy "put bonuses in command." taking the socialist road then?"
On another occasion, workers took me to a shop. All the charging, refining and slag-tapping used to be heavy manual labour. The workers had repeatedly suggested that the out-moded equipment be renovated and they made drafts. But I listened to a bourgeois technical "authority" and stopped the workers from trying to renovate the "modern" equipment. And now, the workers were operating the new equipment which they had made during the Great Proletariah Cultural Revolution. I watched as a push on a button on the electric control panel made the charging car move automatically and another push button made the slag-tapping car do the same. The entire work process was electrically controlled. Full mechanization had raised productivity greatly. The workers said: "You had blind faith in bourgeois 'experts' and stubbornly refused to let us workers make any changes in the 'modern' equipment. As a result, we endured the back-breaking labour for a dozen long years. Now we're freed of this labour, thanks to Mao Tsetung Thought. Now just tell us, who can do more, your bourgeois 'experts' or us workers?" By comparing the new equipment and operations with the old and reasoning things out, the workers at this on-the-spot criticism meeting hit my error squarely touched me to the core. That was what convinced me that I had been for Liu Shao-chi's sinister doctrine "let experts run the factories". I had had faith only in a few "experts" and had never relied on the workers. I had believed that money was everything and never gave prominence to the invincible Mao Tsetung Thought. I had made the socialist enterprise degenerate bit by bit and I had toiled for the revisionist line. Since I was going in the wrong direction, the harder I worked, the farther I departed from Chairman Mao's revolutionary line. I felt as if I were a patient on the point of death whom the workers,like doctors, were trying to save. Every criticism they made was treatment for my ideological disease, an effort to rescue me. The more my comrades criticized me, the more I hated the arch renegade Liu Shao-chi and the deeper I realized the absolute correctness of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line.
The revolutionary mass criticism also enabled me to understand deeply that the basic reason why I had committed serious mistakes in the struggle between the two lines was because I had not sufficiently remoulded my bourgeois world outlook. So I had made up my mind to accept the workers' criticism with a positive attitude, make conscientious efforts to temper myself through labour and remould my world outlook, raise my consciousness of the struggle between the two lines and return to Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line.
When the workers found I was beginning to understand my mistakes and was determined to correct them, they welcomed these changes. They continued to help me patiently and encourage me on every bit of progress I made.
Later, acting on the views of the workers, the plant revolutionary committee decided to put me in the post of deputy head of the zinc refining workshop. On my new post, I bore in mind the lesson of my past mistakes. I trusted the masses and relied on them, and gave prominence to proletarian politics. I placed myself in the midst of the masses and drew strength from them for continuing the revolution. The workers set strict demands on me politically, supported me in my work and help me ideologically.
Shortly after I became deputy head, I was put in charge of a technical innovation related to a sedimentation test. This used to take complicated processes and intensive labour, and improvement was urgently needed. I suggested that we fulfill the task ahead of schedule and win a new victory in grasping revolution and promoting production as a tribute to the Party's Ninth National Congress. The workers responded immediately. They pooled their wisdom and worked hard on the project. It was completed-- in one day and one night instead of the originally scheduled four days and four nights. The workers said: "We will follow, support, and carry out any opinion that conforms to Mao Tsetung Thought."
This incident gave me profound education. The working class has inexhaustible wisdom and strength. So long as we rely on the working class, we can do anything. Since then, I have tried more consciously to learn from the workers, joining them in labour, study and political activities and accepting re-education by them.
Last August the Party members and workers recommended me to become a standing committee member of the plant Party committee. I was very moved when I was given this important post. I resolved to arm myself with Chairman Mao's great theory on continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and constantly revolutionize my thinking so as to do a good job of wielding power for the people, consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and ensuring that our proletarian state will never change its political colour.
[Photo.]
[Photo: Big-character posters criticizing the bourgeois reactionary line mushroomed all over the country. The battle of the hundreds of millions of the people to bombard Liu Shao-chi's bourgeois headquarters developed vigorously.]
Under the dark rule of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique, a huge and expanding army of the unemployed has appeared in the Soviet Union. Destitute and homeless, the unemployed lead a very wretched life. This is one of the grave consequences brought about by the clique's restoration of capitalism in all spheres of endeavour in the Soviet Union.
After usurping power, the clique devised a series of "regulations" and "decrees" for restoring capitalism. The broad masses of the Soviet working people, once masters of the country, are thus reduced to hired labourers and chattels. The "decree" on the introduction of the "new economic system," in the name of enlarging the powers of managers, gives wide-ranging privileges to the capitalist roaders in industrial and mining enterprises. They can cut or hold back the payment of wages to workers and staff and recruit or dismiss workers at will. To get cheap manpower, a new "economic experiment" was recently carried out in many enterprises. Under this experiment, labour intensity is increased among part of the workers by various means such as "plurality of trades" and "increased volume of work," while the other workers are thrown out of the factories to swell the army of the unemployed. In two years time, the Shchekino Combine and the Furmanov Factory No. 2 thus sacked more than 1,800 workers.
Last September, the Central Committee of the revisionist Soviet Party and the Council of Ministers adopted a fascist decree on making regular appraisals of the personnel in scientific research, designing and technological departments. What this decree openly stipulates is that capitalist roaders and bourgeois reactionary "academic authorities: in these departments should make an "appraisal" of their personnel "every three years." They may charge a staff member with "bad conduct" at will, and arbitrarily "demote him or remove him from his past. In case he does not agree to the demotion, he should be dismissed."
The great teacher Lenin pointed out scathingly that the scabs, "in many cases, exploited the workers more than the old landowners and capitalists did." The handful of capitalist roaders with Brezhnev, as their representative are such scabs. P. Minasav, former manager of the Building and Repairing Trust under the Ministry of Agriculture, had said brazenly: "The trust is my home and I'm master. I can do what I like." When he was in office, he lorded it over the establishment and dismissed many of its workers and staff members.
As for the aged workers who have been bled white by the clique, they are easy victims, to be kicked out at will. Trud reported that under the pretext of "raising labour productivity" Shuru Kerimbekova and some other women workers of the Kalinin Sugar Combine, who had worked in this combine from the day it. went into operation, were sacked by its manager simply because they had been injured on the job.
The state of affairs in the countryside is even more serious. Large numbers of peasants have to find work in the cities because they are persecuted in the countryside. The Soviet journal Problems of Economics disclosed that in the Russian S.F.S.R. alone the number of "collective farm" members decreased by 3.1 million between 1959 and 1961, that is, a reduction of 27 per cent of all "collective farm" members. "Those who had to leave the collective farms and state farms were fully able-bodied men." The journal October disclosed that in a "collective farm" in Volgograd Region out of 393 labourers in 1953 only 170 are now left.
Unemployment has become so serious in the Soviet Union that even the Soviet revisionist press has to admit it one way or another. The journal Problems of Economics said that the percentage of unemployment among residents with labour power is "6-7 per cent in Moscow and Leningrad, 20 per cent on the average throughout the Soviet Union, 26 per cent in Siberia," while in Novosibirsk, it has even reached 30 to 33.8 per cent in some places.
Unemployment has brought abject misery to the Soviet labouring people. Large numbers of the unemployed workers have to leave their homes and wander from place to place in search of a job. Trud revealed that many teenaged children have been compelled to work in factories because their parents are unemployed. Some workers were driven to suicide because, jobless for a long time, they just could not earn a living.
A mass of facts disclosed in the Soviet revisionist press eloquently shows that under the revisionist clique's fascist rule groups after groups of the Soviet labouring people have been thrown into the abyss of unemployment and misery. But all these regressive actions by Brezhnev and his gang will inevitably arouse growing and stronger resistance from the Soviet people. They will eventually bury this pack of scabs, lock, stock and barrel.
reprinted from MASS LINE
[Graphic: A poisonous poster published by the State Committee for the Press, advertising that when one has money, one has everything. The caption reads: Here Is Our Profit!]
[Graphic: An illustration from a Soviet revisionist journal. Its title is "The Powerful Locomotive", with the Russian on the front of the locomotive reading: "One Rouble". It instills into the minds of the Soviet people the poisonous capitalist idea that "money is the locomotive hauling everything forward".]
The Soviet revisionist renegade clique has made the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (C.P.S.U.), which had a glorious tradition of revolutionary struggle, degenerate into a revisionist party and bourgeois party. It has made the C.P.S.U. a tool for capitalist restoration at home and for aggression and expansion abroad, and a tool in imposing a fascist dictatorship on the broad masses of C;P.S.U..members and Soviet people.
From Khrushchov to Brezhnev and company, every renegade in the Soviet revisionist clique has been or is a person in power taking the capitalist road who has long concealed himself in the C.P.S.U. After the death of the great Marxist-Leninist Stalin, they staged a palace coup, usurped the leadership of the Party founded by Lenin and Stalin and turned the first state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the world into a fascist state under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
No sooner had the clique taken over than it used the power usurped. to wantonly smear and undermine the C.P.S.U., the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system to realize its aim of restoring capitalism. All this was done under the pretext of "opposing the cult of the individual". It betrayed Lenin's theory on Party building, that the Party is the vanguard of the proletariat, and, under the bourgeois signboards of the "party of the entire people" and the "state of the whole people", turned the C.P.S.U. into a tool for pursuing a counterrevolutionary revisionist line. Domestically, it has adopted one "Resolution" or "programme" after another in the name of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. and taken a series of other measures to frantically undermine the socialist system and restore capitalism in an all-round way. Acting in accordance with the capitalist law of seeking maximum profits, the clique has introduced a comprehensive, so-called "new economic system" with the profit principle as its core. It shamelessly howls that the "profit rate is the expression of the sense of duty" of C.P.S.U. members and brazenly calls on them to make "profits" for it. Externally, the clique has betrayed proletarian internationalism and wildly follows a policy of aggression and expansion in the hope of building up a colonial empire with the Soviet revisionist new tsars as the overlords. These renegades have also stepped up fascist indoctrination and thought control of the broad masses of the Soviet people Soviet Communist Party members and Soviet troops. With redoubled efforts, they have enforced militarist education in an attempt to drive the Soviet people, Party members, and soldiers to die for them in aggression abroad.
To push its counter-revolutionary political line, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique has unscrupulously carried out a counter-revolutionary, revisionist organizational line within the C.P.S.U. On the one hand, it has ruthlessly attacked and persecuted cadres and Party members loyal to Marxism-Leninism, and an the other hand it has enlisted deserters and turncoats and recruited a horde of renegades, enemy agents and capitalist roaders. It has "rehabilitated" class enemies of every description, who had been punished by organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat and expelled from the Party, and "reinstated their Party membership." To control the leadership of C.P.S.U. organizations, from local to the central levels, it has promoted a large number of representatives of the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionary revisionists to leading posts in them. While letting "specialists assume leading Party posts." it has replaced a large number of cadres of worker or peasant origin on the pretext that "lack of education" disqualifies them from responsible posts. As the Soviet revisionist press has disclosed, up to the beginning of 1967, so-called "specialists" and "intellectuals" with a higher education accounted for 97.6 per cent of all the secretaries of the C.P.S.U. regional committees, committees of territories and central committees of union republics. Of the more than 187,000 persons holding an associate doctor or higher degree in the Soviet Union, over 90,300 have been brought into the Party. In many places, there is not even a rank-and-file worker among those newly admitted into the Party.
The handful of Party persons in power taking the capitalist road, who control C.P.S.U. organizations, from routine elections to the adoption of resolutions, while the broad masses of C.P.S.U. members and cadres are stripped of all democratic rights.
These regressive actions of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique have aroused ever stronger discontent and resistance from the masses of C.P.S.U. members and Soviet people. To step up its repression of them, this clique has adopted many measures to impose a reign of fascist terror within the Party, in addition to restoring the Ministry of the Interior, increasing the size of the militia (the police), setting up more concentration camps, "lunatic asylums" and prisons and enacting a series of "laws and decrees" to strengthen the machinery of the fascist dictatorship. Brezhnev and company rave about the necessity to strengthen "iron discipline" so as to force the broad masses of Party members to obey their fascist orders. They have ordered local C.P.S.U. organizations, particularly those in remote areas and in areas inhabited by minority nationalities, to hold special discussions on the so-called "question of improving the intelligence work of the Party" and intensify "daily supervision" of C.P.S.U. members. Besides, they have set up so-called "organs of people's control" and formed "control teams" and "control posts" in all departments and in every corner of the country. Anyone showing the slightest discontent with the Soviet revisionist renegade clique or resistance to it is charged with "slandering" the Soviet state," "disrupting public order," "organizing and taking an active part in group activities" and other crimes, and is subject to arrest or imprisonment or otherwise ruthlessly suppressed.
Our great leader Chairman Mao has pointed out: "The Soviet Union was the first socialist state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was created by Lenin. Although the leadership of the Soviet Party and state has now been usurped by revisionists, I would advise comrades to remain firm in the conviction that the masses of the Soviet people and of Party members and cadres are good, that they desire revolution and thatrevisionist-rule will not last long." The Soviet revisionist renegade clique can usurp the C.P.S.U. leadership and run wild for a time, but it can never do away with the revolutionary tradition and revolutionary will of the broad masses of Party members and Soviet people. Seeing the renegade features of the new tsars in the Kremlin more and more clearly, they are determined to carry on the cause of socialist revolution initiated by Lenin and Stalin, and fight for the reestablishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and a proletarian Party in the Soviet Union and for the over-throw of the rule of the Soviet revisionist new tsars. This great aim of the Soviet proletariat is bound to be realized.
reprinted from MASS LINE
[Graphic: PAPER-CUT SHOWING THE RED GUARDS AT WORK DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION]
Several weeks ago, Black Students at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland denounced Negro lackey Congressman Louis Stokes and stood up for revolution as opposed to reform.
Shortly after that, during a boycott of the school cafeteria because of high food prices, scuffles broke out between Black students and photographers from the reactionary student press. With this as an excuse, the school administration called in the fascist city police to attack the Black students, who fought them tit-for-tat. (Later the Negro general chosen as Carl Stokes' safety director praised the police for "under-reacting.")
White students failed to aid the Blacks and a strong campaign of reactionary propaganda has been carried out by the administration, the campus and city press, all intended to blame the Black students for the violence and to divide them from the rest of the student body.
In response, the Cleveland Student Movement unit of the American Student Movement issued the leaflet below, called a public meeting, presented a worked-out analysis of the events, and formed the Student Front to Fight Racial Oppression, which won the support of numerous white students as well as the Black students. The Student Front is fighting racist ideology in the classroom and has demanded that the campus paper, the Commuter, serve the students and the working-class community by eliminating racist slanders from its pages and by printing correct accounts and analysis of events put forward by students.
Black Students Lead Struggle Against Repression At CCC
The main aspect of the struggles which took place at CCC over the past week has not been the fights between black and white students (contrary to the news media's lies); the main aspect has been the struggle between black students and the administration (and its police allies). Black students are confronting the school administration both from their particular position as part of an oppressed national minority, and from their position as students rebelling against oppressive educational system which is attempting to turn them into cogs in the machinery of U.S. imperialism.
Several of their demands are being met by the cowed administration, but the most significant achievement has been to show clearly that the brutal and repressive arm of the U.S. imperialists -- their fascist police force -- cannot come onto the campus to repress students and go unopposed.
Black people have been fighting police in the working class community for a long time. In the struggle at CCC, it was not until police arrived that large numbers of black students came out and joined the fighting. This showed two things:
1) The actually small amount of "infighting" among students, which served only to distract attention from the main enemy, was supported only by a minority of black students.
2) Even though, along with white students, they are moving by way of the university into petty bourgeois (middle class) roles of Increased status and financial benefit (with the underlying condition of helping in the process of exploiting those beneath them), the majority of black students still have strong ties with the working class and will readily take action against the oppressor class and its fascist agents. There are also many white students at CCC who have come from the working class; most others are from lower sectors of the petty bourgeoisie. When the riot squad arrived on campus it was clear that, although their interests objectively lie with those of the working class, very few of these whites were willing to side with it openly by giving support to the black students in their struggle with the police.
Fascist tactics have been in use for a long time in the black community, and as the economy grows weaker they will continue to be used to increasing degrees against white workers as well. It will become more and more necessary for the U.S. government to control the working and oppressed people by force, as the people increase their revolutionary solidarity, and money is no longer available to meet demands. This is why the interests of white students and workers lie with those of black students and workers -- they are being exploited and oppressed by the same enemy.
The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
Chairman Mao Tsetung
All students at CCC are being oppressed by an educational system set up explicitly to coopt people into becoming agents of the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class; the great need now is for unity against this educational system and the economic system which it serves. This unity will only come about if white students at CCC take initiative in 1) siding with the working class by taking up the fight of all students and exposing all forms of imperialist ideology which appear on the campus; and 2) giving active support to black students in their fight against the particular oppression they experience as an oppressed national minority, building support for them among other white students, workers and progressive petty bourgeoisie.
People who agree with the analysis presented here should put it forward to other students at CCC and to working people in Cleveland.
The U.S. ruling class has recently been trying very hard to shift the blame for the world's problems from the few oppressors in power to the masses of oppressed people. The Ford Foundation, the bourgeois press and T.V. have been promoting organizations and experts who say that the main cause of the world's problems is a "Population Explosion."
For example, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a biologist, has recently appeared twice on the Johnny Carson show, has written a paper back book, The Population Bomb, and is being rewarded for his propaganda by Stanford University. Ehrlich and other stuffed shirts have been saying that the mass of working people, particularly, are breeding too much, are basically irrational and need strong government control. Ehrlich heads a national organization called Zero Population Growth (ZPG) which is lobbying for the U.S. government to control the "breeding masses."
In other words, these middle-class "experts" are supporting the trend toward fascism in the U.S. by obscuring the exploitation of imperialism blaming the people and encouraging stronger imperialist government.
The American Student Movement is rallying students to fight these over-population experts and their fascist propaganda in the classrooms and in all the media. At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, students stood up in class to expose the lies of professors and ZPG members. In the face of many attempts by professors to stop open political discussion, the progressive students pointed out for all to hear that to blame the people for the problems of the imperialist system of class exploitation is to promote fascism. " They pointed out that by the ruling class to oppress the masses and that petty bourgeois (middle class) individuals must reject and actively combat the fascist ideas and policies of the ruling class. They gave examples in which U.S. peace corps members participated as part of the sterilization teams in India which have now sterilized over 3.5 million Indian men. These teams have been resisted by armed peasants and workers. In the classroom, several reactionaries showed their true anti-working class and anti communist colors by saying: "red agitators" can "manipulate" working people more easily if there is crowding and poverty.
Finally, the progressive students destroyed the ghost of "the population bomb." All the people in the world, they showed, could live in suburban-type housing with 4 people per 1/4 acre in an area the size of Alaska. The land in the temperate zones alone is enough to provide for 150 billion people with a well-balanced, decent diet (150 billion is 47 times the present population). The peoples' problems cannot be flamed on there being too many people. They are the result of the private ownership of land and the machinery of production by the parasite classes of landlords and big capitalists, enforced by their political power. When these are overthrown as in China, the working people can amply provide for themselves.
ASM students resolve to continue to isolate the reactionary population experts and groups such as ZPG and completely expose and discredit them to the masses of students.
ASM will continue to put forth the real alternatives of revolution under the leadership of the working class and Mao Tse Tung Thought as the only way students can truly reject their oppressor and serve the people.
by an IAM worker
Workers at GE Lamp Plant on Ivanhoe Rd. a local of the International Association of Machinists and the last GE plant on strike in Cleveland, voted to return to work after a valiant 16-week strike. They voted for the contract, not because it meant the strike was a clear-cut victory, but primarily because the gains were "better than nothing", and secondly because the tide had been broken in the strike and they couldn't fight GE by themselves.
While some economic issues were settled, workers know that the tyrannical exploitation of the bosses remains. GE still rules over them, uses piece-work to squeeze every drop out of the people, and has a free hand at lay-offs. They can still lay workers off for 5 days, call them back for one day and lay them off again. In the wake of mass unemployment, the union will merely make lay-offs orderly and "fair" through seniority.
The workers were handed a signed agreement and were threatened with the possibility of a "government-run union" if mediation broke down. Having no backing from the union mis-leaders and no organization of their own, the workers accepted reluctantly.
A black worker was greeted with applause when he asked: "When can we vote for a new committee?"
A union official, who helps rule over IAM workers at Addressograph-Multigraph and Park-Hannifin Companies, where workers recently conducted long strikes, admitted that he was worried about the strike at first because he didn't know how people would act when they haven't struck in a long time -- in other words, that he might lose control of the workers.
[Cartoon.]
[Full page advertisement for the FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE AMERICAN STUDENT MOVEMENT (Marxist-Leninist). It has a graphic, slogans and the program.]