[spoils shared by local and foreign capitalists. Both…]

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spoils shared by local and foreign capitalists.

Both presidents Carter and Reagan stood by with silent satisfaction when Saddam Hussein led an Iraqi invasion of Iran. The war, which was aimed at halting the revolutionary upsurge in the region, could only reduce the bargaining power of the oil-producing states as a whole-not merely that of Iran.

The current military stalemate between Iraq and Iran is the best outcome for imperialism. That's what Reagan means when he says he hopes neither side wins a decisive victory. For more than seven years, the U.S. government has done its best to prolong a war that has led to the death of more than 1 million young men and women.

Democratic and Republican moralistic prattling against dealing with "terrorist" Iran is mainly eyewash. When Reagan supplies weapons and military secrets to Iran against Iraq, it is no less in imperialist Post. The stage has been set for an incident that could be turned into a pretext for a U.S. military action against Iran.

U.S. warships out of the Persian Gulf!

Hands off Iran!

Distributors of Soclalist Action in Canada:

Alliance for Socialist Action 229 College St., Suite 208 Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R4 (416) 535-8779 Alliance for Socialist Action Box 2728 Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 483 Alliance for Socialist Box 12082 Edmonton, Alberta Alliance for Socialist •P.O. Box 7€ 1916 Station S Vancouver, British Columbia VSR 5T3 CTION JULY 1!

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- 1975-76 Lebanese Civil War:

How barbarism triumphs when workers are defeated Syrian troops-shown here occupying Beirut-are being used to stabilize rightist regime. 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1987 The history of the 20th century has witnessed many tragic examples of barbarism following on the heels of defeated working-class revolutionary struggles.

The stupendous horror of World War II, for instance, was a consequence of defeats in Europe. Spain and France were two of the most outstanding of the missed opportunities for socialist revolution during the world capitalist crisis of the 1930s.

One recent example of a defeated working-class upsurge-an example which is described in detail below-is the 1975-76 Civil War in Lebanon.

A common feature of all these missed revolutionary opportunities was the policy of class collaboration implemented by the misleaders of the workers' organizations.

Class collaboration is when working-class parties join in political or governmental alliances with a wing of the capitalist class. The Stalinists and Social Democrats, the most cynical advocates of class collaboration, justify these alliances with "anti-fascist" or "anti-monopoly" capitalists in order to achieve maximum "unity against the right."

But programmatic alliances with so-called "progressive" capitalists can only be achieved by subordinating working-class solutions to the political platform of their capitalist partners. Such alliances By W.I. MOHAREB and ALAN BENJAMIN What is behind the barbaric situation in Lebanon today?

are yul day, are or mad Palestinian or Lebanese Shiite "terrorists" who, it would appear, have nothing better to do than kidnap, stone, and kill every Westerner in sight.

When they're not focusing on "terrorism," the media portray the political landscape in Lebanon as one of irrational sectarian warfare among Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Palestinians. Images of Palestinian refugees fleeing Israeli or Syrian-backed Amal troops are common -place, but there is little analysis that explains the roots of the conflicts.

It is no wonder that so many people find it hard to follow the ins and outs of the complex situation in Lebanon.

Of course, there is no shortage of destructive violence in this area. But what the capitalist media consciously hide in their "objective" news reports is the direct responsibility for the violence of the U.S. government and its Israeli and Lebanese agents.

The media fail to tell us, for example, that just one of the dozens of Israeli air raids against so-called "Palestinian terrorist camps" usually results in far more civilian deaths than all the kidnappings in Lebanon this century. They neglect to mention that the U.S. battleship New Jersey alone inflicted hundreds of civilian casualties in Lebanon in 1984 with its offshore cannonades.

The big-business media also fail to tell us that it is the United States and its various proxies, including the Israeli and Saudi states, which originally funded, armed-and in some cases directly mobilized-the Lebanese fascists and other right-wing formations most responsible for the carnage.

The only way to understand current developments in Lebanon is to understand the dynamics of the 1975-76 Lebanese Civil War. It was these decisive events which set the stage for all subsequent poli -tical developments in this war-torn land.

Barbarism in Lebanon Lebanon today is a devastated land. The 1975-76 Civil War left tens of thousands of people dead, with at least double the number wounded. In addition to the dead and maimed-accounting for one Lebanese in 40—hundreds of thousands fled the alliance with "anti-fascist" capitalists, required the workers to oppose the peasants' demand for the land and the Moroccan peoples' demand for independence from Spain.

The Popular Front sapped and derailed the revolutionary struggle of the workers and peasants and ultimately paved the way for fascist counterrevolution. In Lebanon, the organizations of the working class and of the Palestinian movement waged a courageous armed struggle against the right-wing Christian militias, which were backed by the United States and Israel. But their armed-struggle strategy was not aimed at mobilizing the country, and countless more destitute.

Since the 1975-76 Civil War, more than 40 percent of the housing stock has been destroyed. Unemployment is estimated at over 35 percent. The unemployment rate for the most oppressed residents—mainly the Shi'ites and Palestinians—is around 60 percent.

The present barbarism in Lebanon-and barbarism is the only word that accurately describes the situation—is the result of the massive defeats suffered by the Lebanese working class and its allies in 1976.

Late in 1970, Palestinian workers began to turn to revolutionary organizations that offered solutions to the misery and oppression they faced inside the Lebanese state. By late 1973, this radicalization was spreading to Lebanese workers.

The killing of two strikers by Lebanese state security forces in the course of the famed Gandour Chocolate workers' strike in the fall of 1972 dramatized this process.

The killings were met by mass protests, student strikes, and a general strike.

April 1973 saw the largest mass demonstration in Lebanon's historycompel betrayal that laboring classes.

In the Spanish Revolution of 1936-38, for example, the Stalinists invented a new name-the Popular Front—to hide the class-collaborationist essence of their strategy. The Popular Front, which entailed a strategic 250,000 people assembled for the funeral of Palestinian resistance leaders murdered by Israeli commandos with the obvious complicity of the U.S. Embassy and the Lebanese army and police.

The following month, Lebanese army tanks and planes bombarded slums inhabited by Palestinian and Lebanese workers who had protested this complicity.

But this resulted only in further radicalization of the masses and exposure of the real class interests of the state.

Lebanese workers began to organize into trade unions at unprecedented rates. They also turned to their traditional organizations —like the Lebanese Communist Partyand to the Palestinian and Arab Stalinist formations in hopes of winning their demands. These included the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and their respective Lebanese fraternal parties-the Arab Socialist Action Party (ASAP) and the Organization for Communist Action in Lebanon (OCAL).

The class polarization reaching a feverish pitch. in Lebanon was The rapid growth oppressed masses for the seizure of political power. Rather it was aimed at putting pressure on the ruling capitalist parties to "reform and democratize the Lebanese state."

The Lebanese Communist Party and the other leftwing Palestinian and Lebanese parties formed the National Movement in alliance with the capitalist party headed by Kamal Jumblatt. This alliance restricted the struggle of the oppressed to reforms within the limits of aDita isın The left-wing organizations in the National Movement, moreover, failed to call on the workers and peasants in the adjacent Arab states to rise up against their capitalist masters. Such a call would have inspired the workers and all the oppressed in the region to come to the aid of the unfolding Lebanese revolution.

Instead, many of the components of the National Movement had illusions in the "progressive" Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. They looked to Assad to help them negotiate a reform of the Lebanese state. Of course, these hopes proved to be illusory. Assad ended up joining forces with the Lebanese fascists against the Palestinian and Lebanese workers and peasants.

The Lebanese Civil War of 1975-76 is of significance far beyond the borders of the Middle East. These events contain valuable lessons for working people in every country today.—The Editors of unions, revolutionary political parties, and militias-and the general strikes, political strikes, and mass urban protests—were the real (if downplayed) developments in Lebanon prior to the outbreak of civil war in April 1975.

For example, mass demonstrations throughout Lebanon in December 1973 were capped by a three-day political general strike in Tarabulus.

The Civil War, itself, was preceded by dramatic strike of the fishermen of Saida.

A class—not religious-war All the reactionary forces around the world-especially the U.S. mediaportrayed the 1975 Civil War in Lebanon as a "religious communal war between Muslims and Christians." In reality, the Civil War was a class war.

The class character of the war was masked by the large overlap of class and religious lines. The Christian minority— particularly the Maronite sect— made up the large bulk of the oppressor class. It was guaranteed a dominant role in the Lebanese (continued on page 13)

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Palestinians being driven from their homes in Beirut in 75-76 Lebanese Civil War not to abolish it and replace it with a new from his high command and called for the state based on the workers and peasants. secularization of the Lebanese state. Within For this reason. the leaders of the weeks. hetween An nercent and In narrant nternationa from 12) government and state—a status created by France when Lebanon was a colony. The "Muslim" majority, estimated at 60 percent of the population at the time, was oppressed and exploited.

The Christian rightists-especially the Kataeb or Phalangists-looked to U.S. imperialism and the Zionist state of Israel for help in safeguarding their privileges against the Muslim majority. They also quite naturally opposed the demands of the 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon. (It was, in fact, an attack by the Phalangist Party on a busload of Palestinians returning from a rally in April 1975 that touched off the Civil War.)

But it was the struggle of the workers and the peasants that gave this war its class character. In February 1975, the Saida fishermen won the support of the Palestinian workers in their struggle against the granting of a government fishing monopoly to the Protein Company. The mass of impoverished Palestinian refugees and workers were the natural allies of the Lebanese workers and peasants in their struggles.

It is important to note, furthermore, that while the bulk of the working class was Muslim and the strongest section of the capitalist class was Christian, the religious and class divisions were not identical. Many exploited Christian workers and many "Christian-led" organizations lined up on the side of the workers and the oppressed.

Crisis of leadership

The struggles of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses were truly heroic throughout the war. But despite pleas from the masses for their leaders to take power, none of the organizations of the working class and of the Palestinian movement had the program and resolve to lead a revolutionary struggle to victory.

In opposition to the right-wing Christian parties and their militias, the main leftwing and Muslim groups formed the Front of National and Progressive Parties and Forces-or National Movement. The dominant grouping in the front was the Progressive Socialist Party of Kamal Jumblatt. Jumblatt, a feudal aristocrat and a leader of the Druze community, was a representative of the more "enlightened" wing of the capitalist class.

Also included in the National Movement were the Lebanese Communist Party, the Arab Socialist Action Party, and the Organization of Communist Action in Lebanon.

The National Movement's program called for the reform of the state, a revision of the constitution, the secularization of the political system, and numerous economic reforms. The capitalist leadership of the National Movement headed by Jumblatt wanted to modernize the Lebanese stateNational Movement refused to call for the ANGUYIN formation of a united front of Christian, Muslim, and Palestinian workers against the capitalists and the Lebanese state. They refused to make the heroic resistance of the Lebanese workers and peasants a springboard for sweeping away the hated state apparatus. They refused to develop a network of councils of people's resistance.

In practice, the National Movement continually sought political compromises with the right-wing Christian forces. Throughout the Civil War, it backed up the legitimacy of the decrepit institutions of the capitalist state.

The Lebanese Communist Party, whose responsibility was particularly large since it had a significant mass influence, was the most consistent supporter of the National Movement. Faithful to a Stalinist conception of revolution by stages and alliances with the so-called national capitalist class, it fixed the framework of Donald McCullin Donof the old army had joined el-Khatib's rebel Lebanese Arab Army.

The central instrument of the capitalist class—the Lebanese army and police-had collapsed. And the fascist militias were all but defeated.

By mid-February, over 60 percent of the country had come under military control of the forces of the Palestinian resistance, the National Movement, and the Lebanese Arab Army.

It is in this context—in order to shore up the crumbling Lebanese capitalist state— that the Syrian government of Hafez alAssad intervened on the side of the Christian right-wing Phalangists.

Assad feared that a revolutionary victory of the Lebanese and Palestinian workers and peasants in Lebanon would extend into Syria itself. He wanted to preserve a balance of power favorable to the Christian rightists and to assert his control over the resistance and had become unreliable from Assad's point of view.

Syrian invasion

Despite Syria's efforts, the ceasefire and the repeated military interventions by the PLA and Saiqa were unable to bring class peace to Lebanon. The resistance move -ment was continuing to advance. So on May 31, Assad ordered an invasion of Lebanon.

Radio Damascus claimed that the "assistance" of Syrian troops in Northern Lebanon had "led to the establishment of law, the calming of the situation, and a stop to all sorts of fighting."

This was not the case. The Syrian invasion aroused vehement opposition among the Muslim majority and its Palestinian leftist allies. Hundreds of Palestinian fighters were killed when Syrian forces bombarded Palestinian refugee camps.

In July and August 1976, the entire population of the Palestinian refugee camp of Tal al Zaatar, including the Lebanese poor, rose up against the combined attacks of the Christian Phalangists and their Syrian allies. Their determination showed the depth of the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian masses. But they were brutally massacred by the forces of reaction.

Assad's invasion of Lebanon was warmly applauded by the Ford administration and by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The White House issued a statement June 1 saying that "the Syrians have played a constructive role in Lebanon."

Assad's blow against the Lebanese and Palestinian masses was also given a boost when Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived in Damascus on June 1, just as the main body of Syrian troops was entering Lebanon. On June 4, Kosygin and Assad issued a joint communiqué praising the role of their respective governments in the Lebanese crisis.

Significantly, the Syrian forces rode into Lebanon on Soviet-supplied tanks and troop carriers.

All the counterrevolutionary forces worldwide from Washington to Damascus to Tel Aviv-intervened in Lebanon to defeat the heroic struggle of the Lebanese and Palestinian workers and peasants.

But the critical factor in this defeat was the vacillation, reformism, and opportu -nism of the existing leadership of the working class within Lebanon and internationally. As a result, Lebanon since mid-1976 has been in the throes of reaction; a reaction that was deepened by the bloody 1982 Israeli invasion.

Defense effort for Warschawsky On Feb. 16, 1987, Israeli authorities raided the offices of the Alternative Information Center (AIC), seized its