What drives Star Wars madness?

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All out for April 20 antiwar marches!

The Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, is clearly a major step toward Armageddon— despite President Ronald Reagan's "peace" rhetoric.

The Star Wars program would outfit the nuclear "doomsday machine" with a more delicate hairtrigger-not to mention immeasurably greater destructive force-and make it even more susceptible to accidental detonation.

Few informed persons in the scientific and political world believe that the alleged goal of an effective shield against nuclear attack is within the realm of possibility. It is virtually impossible, in any case, to draw distinction between "offensive" and "defensive" weapons.

At the very least, as one commentator noted, "An aggressor with a good shield might be tempted to use his spear, confident he could deflect the weapon of his opponent."

Star Wars is a long-term crash program for development of qualitatively new weapons systems to be primarily deployed in space orbit. It has three main components:

1) Lasers that shoot multiple beams of high-intensity radiation, such as Xrays, that can simultaneously destroy a number of incoming atomic warheads. (One such laser contrivance would require activating the enormous power of an atomic-bomb explosion.);

2) A qualitatively more powerful radar system in orbit that has the resolution. required for pinpointing incoming decoys and real warheads, directing the laser beams to knock them out;

3) A new generation of super-computers and miniaturized mobile components that can be programmed to carry out the multiplicity of split-second decisions required to guide the search, find, and kill phases of the proposed space weapons system.

In addition to these main components, a. variety of other weapons for knocking out nukes are in the most pre(continued on page 13)

Millions of Americans remember the experience of Vietnam and are not willing to allow the government a free rein to embark on another adventure.

Millions of others who were silent during Vietnam are now experiencing a serious erosion in their standard of living as a direct result of the war-bloated economy. They will not be satisfied by administration rhetoric used to justify war spending while the cuts in social spending continue to jeopardize their right to a decent life.

Our task must be to educate and mobilize this potential force into a visible, independent political movement even more powerful than the movement that helped put an end to the Vietnam In several cities-San Francisco is a (continued on page 19, in “A strategy for socialist revolution”)

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«Rural America is in agony"

Mass demonstrations like we haven't seen since the Great Depression of the '30s have hit the Midwest farm belt. Over 100 legislators from South Dakota traveled to Washington, D.C., and demonstrated in the streets. Their buttons and signs read: "Rural America is in agony."

They told America: Bankruptcies are up 65 percent from 1981 to 1984; farm assets have declined by $1.6 billior since 1981; debts have increased by $1.3 billion. They asked for a 50-percent advance on loans for spring planting and a 90-percent loan guarantee. They asked for a meeting with Reagan. He would not meet the group.

All over the Midwest—in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska-mass rallies of thousands of farmers are taking place. They are demanding a moratorium on foreclosures; state loans for seed, fertilizer, and fuel; and emergency aid for the stricken farmers and their families.

Some of the factors that have so dramatically mobilized the farmers of America are the 58-percent drop in farm income from 1978 to 1983 and the grain embargo against the Soviet Union. Farmers in Europe are underselling the United States on the world market, and many Third World countries, former customers, can no longer afford to buy.

The prospects for farmers were summarized by Cy Carpenter, president of the National Farmers Union, in the Feb. 26 Minneapolis Tribune: Within the next year 400,000 farmers may be forced off the land; 200,000 bankrupted; hundreds of rural towns abandoned; 1,000,000 rural jobs lost; and 35,000 banks and related businesses may fold.

History repeats itself

The farmer was in much the same situation in the 1930s as he is now. A pamphlet t ly Everett Luoma, "The Far: mer Takes a Holiday" was quoted in The Farm auction in Hastings, Neb., in 1938 New York Times of Sept. 4, 1932:

"The drop in farm prices has wiped out farm securities, impoverished the farmer, and decreased his purchasing power. The farm towns have less and less trade.

Mortgage holders and financial institutions have in many cases become frozen and insolvent.

Farmers are losing their farms, which they acquired after generations of toil and thrift."

This sounds like a story The New York Times could print today.

The struggle of the farmers in the 1930s was one of the great battles that has taken place in the country. It involved hundreds of thousands of farmers. The farmers' struggle of that decade was a forerunner of the fights of the Teamsters in Minneapolis and in the entire Midwest. It showed the way for the Hormel strike in 1933 and other fights that followed.

The farmers' struggle was led tant revolutionary thinkers. by miliAmong them was John Enestvedt, a long-time member and supporter of the Trotskyist The primary organization in the 1930s was the Farm Holiday Association. It got its name by declaring a farm holiday on all farm products going to market. It also organized to stop all farm foreclosures by putting pressure on county officials and by instituting the penny-bidding system. Under this system, everyone was forbidden to bid more than pennies at auctions for whatever was sold.

By mass action the farmers stopped almost all farm products from going to the market. They blocked roads, halted trucks, and finally forced the national government to aid the farmers with a farm mortgage moratorium and financial assistance.

In their statement of principles in 1933, the Farm Holiday Association and the Farmers Union noted, "As organized farmers we make common cause with our organized brothers of industry who are in shops, factories, and on the railroads. We are both exploited by the capitalist owners of the means of production and distribution."

How has the U.S. government answered the clamor of the farmers for help today?

They offer a temporary halt on foreclosures. They offer sales tax-relief on farm equipment. They offer aid for spring planting. They offer reduced interest rates.

As one article said, "This is like throwing a rock to a drowning victim."

To top this off, Reagan vetoes all that is offered, saying it is inflationary. There seems to be plenty of money for guns, none for farmers.

Jake Cooper was a packing-house worker in the 1930s and a leader of the Minneapolis Teamster strikes of 1934. He is a member of the National Committee of Socialist Action.