Why is monopoly on foreign trade important?

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SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1989 13 fire Soviet workers.

Convertibility of the ruble A further reform that has long been demanded by the capitalists involves the Soviet currency: the ruble. [For more on the ruble, see accompanying article.] The ruble is not used outside the Soviet Union. Foreign investors anxious to repatriate profits have had to establish specific agreements with the Soviet government enabling them to exchange their rubles either for Soviet goods or for a foreign currency (usually marks or yen) they can use.

But this set-up has been very cumbersome for foreign capitalists, who continue to insist that the Soviet leadership must make the ruble convertible to other currencies at a fixed rate. (There are currently about 6000 different rates of exchange, each one determined by the specific foreign transaction.)

Beginning in January 1990, the ruble reform will begin. The ruble will be devalued by 50 percent on various business transactions, making it cheaper for foreign capitalists to operate in the Soviet Union.

Top Soviet economists have publicly stated that their goal is to have a fully convertible ruble by the year 2000.

Soon after the announcement of these new measures, six of the largest U.S. corporations (Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, RJR Nabisco, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, and Mercator Corp.) announced they were on the verge of signing joint-venture agreements worth billions of dollars.

Undermining planned economy The free convertibility of the ruble under the condition of uncontrolled capitalist penetration as is being projected poses a major Two years ago, Time magazine formulated the U.S. capitalists' support for Gorbachev's perestroika reforms as follows:

"Gorbachev may represent the West's last chance, at least in this century, of better integrating the Soviet Union into the world economy. There it could come under pressure to behave like a Western country, competing for capital and markets, lowering the barriers to foreign investment, and even making its currency convertible." (July 27, 1987)

The "barriers to foreign investment" referred to in the Time article stem from the monopoly on foreign trade imposed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian Revolution as a protectionist measure to help shelter the young Soviet state from imperialist economic penetration.

This monopoly was an explicit recognition of the fact that the relative backwardness of the Soviet economy could not be overcome without both the extension of the socialist revolution and the corresponding raising of the cultural and technical level of Soviet workers.

The vast natural resources of the Soviet state, its gold reserves, and concentrated working class were special and exceptional resources that allowed the Soviet state to survive the worldwide capitalist embargo and military intervention which followed the 1917 revolution.

The "shut-in" character of the workers' state, however, with its foreign-trade monopoly was imposed by necessity. A "free-trade" policy would have ended the revolution's potential for development in a short time.

Trotsky on the ruble In his writings during the 1930s, Leon Trotsky, the co-leader of the Russian Revolution, did not oppose the convertibility of the ruble in principle. He did, however, establish stringent conditions under which convertibility would be beneficial to the Soviet economy.

Trotsky pointed out that a stable ruble would best allow the Soviet state to measure its economic progress relative to the capitalist world.

Bureaucratic planning implemented by an arbitrary pricing system, he argued, had to be replaced with democratic planning based on realistic determinations of value, eventually allowing the Soviet state to effectively participate in a world market with a fully convertible currency.

But Trotsky posed this eventuality in the context of a monopoly on foreign trade-as well as an internationalist foreign policy. Gorbachev, on the other hand, is undermining the monopoly on foreign trade and pushing the traditional Stalinist policy of "peaceful coexistence" to new levels as he moves to make the ruble convertible.

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of service and dedication to the revolutionary movement and for humanity's struggle for a better world. The next issue of Socialist Action will include a more complete Send to: 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110 14 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1989 Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right, by James Coates. Hill and Wang, New York, 286 pages. $17.95.

Opening the pages of this book is like turning over a flat rock in the garden. Of course, the creatures who live under the rock-despite being scaly, slimy, and somewhat repellent—are healthy links in the chain of life. The human creatures James Coates reveals, on the other hand, are BOOK REVIEW virulently infected social psychopaths spreading contagion wherever they go.

Coates holds up a number of specimens for inspection. He lists them as varieties of the Survivalist Right.

One variety of Survivalists are the individuals who believe they can survive a nuclear war by hiding out in underground bunkers, stocked with piles of freeze-dried food and large stocks of firearms, to repel neighbors who might seek sanctuary.

More dangerous than these people, Coates tells us, are those Survivalists who are motivated by a world view: a view that sees "good" as fair haired, Anglo-Saxon Aryans-and evil as Jews and Blacks. To establish the supremacy of the white race, these Survivalists will rob, torture, and Kill.

The murder of Alan Berg Coates starts his book with a murder. On June 18, 1984, Alan Berg—a talk-show host on Denver radio station KOA—was assassinated by members of the Order, a neoNazi survivalist group. Berg's death has been dramatized in the new film "Talk Radio."

Berg, a Jew, had aroused their ire by alerting his listeners to the growing presence of racists and anti-Semites around Denver. He was waylaid before his house, and 12 bullets were pumped into his body.

It was a well-planned operation by a group that had robbed a Seattle bank of $25,000, held up an armored car for $500,000, and hit another armored car for $3.6 million.

Ten members of the Order were arrested for the Berg murder. In the courtroom they may have appeared as just another holdup and murder squad—until they talked of their motives.

They were Knights of the Aryan Order, they said. They were at war with the Zionist Occupational Government (ZOG) in Washington. There is a conspiracy by Jews and communists to destroy the white race through intermarriage and mongrelization.

Jewish international bankers, the Knights said, are intent on bankrupting this country by taking gold out of Fort Knox, and instituting the income tax. Plots against America are hatched at meetings of the Trilateral Commission.

The white race, they said, can be saved only through armed conflict-which must be prepared for. Attacks on the enemy now are only guerrilla skirmishes. Victory, they concluded, will come after a cleansing nuclear holocaust.

the Trotskyists are." tion in 1983.

article celebrating Milt's life and contributions.

Memorial meetings will be held for Milt in San Francisco on Sat. Feb.

p.m. (3435 Army St., Rm. 308) and in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 19 (location to be announced, for more information call 213-250-4608).

Then the Aryans will emerge from their bunkers to breed the pure white race.

A long history of hate Coates points out that hate groups have a long history in America. In the 1840s and '50s, Irish Catholic immigrants alarmed some native-born Americans, who formed the Know Nothing Party to combat "Papist plots." They made their point by burning down the largest convent in Boston.

After the Civil War, freed slaves became the target of fear and hatred. The Ku Klux Klan arose to "protect pure Southern womanhood," by terrorizing Blacks into submission. For over 125 years, this sheeted order has carried the virus of race hatred from one generation to another.

Today the hate movement is split into numerous splinter groups: the Minutemen, Posse Commitatus, Aryan Brotherhood, and others. They have their own particular agenda that puts them in competition with each other.

But there is a glue that binds them together and justifies 'MAKE EM SCARED!HITE REVOLUTION WIN IS THE WI ONLY SOLUTION !T their most heinous crimes. That is religious doctrine: theology of hate, expounded by bigots in preachers' robr in churches sometimes displaying romanticized portraits of Adolph Hitler. It is called Identity Christianity.

Soldiers of Christ There are about 50 of these churches, with names such as "Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation." Coates says, they "meld nuclear anxiety, pseudo-science, biblical fragments, and hatred into a single creed."

This creed has something for every hatemonger. Blacks, they say, are inferior because they are the result of a botched attempt by God to make a man. They are "mud people" fit only to serve Anglo-Saxons and Nordics, who represent God's greatest creation.

Much of their cosmogony is drawn from the Book of Revelations, prophesying a final battle of Armageddon between God and Satan. In the modern version it will be fought on the Kansas wheatfields between U.S. and Soviet armies.

Armed with this doctrine, Survivalists are convinced they are soldiers of Christ, carrying God's sanction for any crime committed for the cause.

Women are also enlisted, but only as bearers of Aryan children-often in plural marriages-so that Aryan "seed"

Milt Genecin, known in the socialist movement as Milt Alvin, died in Los Angeles on an Issue ... iss Jan. 26 after surgery for a broken hip. His health had been failing in recent years. Milt Il one year for $8. would have been 81 years old on March 3.

Born in Czarist Russia in 1908, Milt 6 months for $4 moved to the United States at the age of five.

Radicalized during the turbulent Depression Enclosed is a years, he joined the Socialist Party (SP) in 1935 because someone told him "that's where contribution.

Send me more When the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was formed in 1938, Milt was a founding information abr member. He moved around the country as a Socialist Actiol union and party organizer and served as a national committee member for many years. He became a founding member of Socialist Ac- Name His life represents a span of over 50 years Address City Zip at 7: 30 can be implanted into as many wombs as possible.

Coates points out that the recruiting grounds of the Survivalists are the rural Northwest, Midwest, and South. Embittered farmers who see bankers foreclose on their farms might be convinced there is an international bankers' conspiracy. With talk of nuclear weapons and war dominating the news, the story of Armageddon might not seem so unreal.

More important, the message of the Survivalists gives a sense of power to the powerless. Coates quotes from a Minuteman handbill: "See that old man on the corner Where you buy your paper? He may have a silencerequipped pistol under his coat.... What about your milkman? Arsenic works slow but sure.... These patriots are not going to let you take their freedom away from them.... Traitors beware! Even now the cross-hairs are on the back of your necks."

High-tech weaponry

The daily fare of Survivalists is race hatred. A former member said, "You don't read sports. You don't watch TV. All you do is read about Israel and race. It is race, race, race."

These messages of hate are spread by news sheets, video cassettes, cable TV, and computer "bulletin boards." Their weapons of propaganda, like their lethal weapons, employ the latest technology—thanks in part to proceeds from the $4 million heists that were widely distributed among the Aryans.

Periodically, Survivalists hold conferences that attract as many as 1000 people. Seminars are held on such topics as "Archery, crossbow, and black-powder guns," "Street action," and "Knife fighting." These seminars are not academic, but have been followed by murders that have shocked the nation.

In 1973, Ku Kluxers and neo-Nazis gunned down four leaders of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, N.C. On May 18, 1986, a husband-and-wife team of Survivalists wheeled a bomb in a shopping cart into an elementary school in the hamlet of Cokesville, Wyo. They wanted to seize the children to form a nucleus of a colony that would breed a master race. After a three-hour standoff, the bomb exploded-spraying 78 students with flaming gasoline.

Coates recognizes that the Survivalists, often holed up in bunkers on lonely farms, consumed with hate and misogyny, will not be the leaders of a mass fascist movement. But they give ideological nourishment to new layers of dissaffected youth, such as the Fascist Skinheads, who have spread from Britain to America.

Many of the Survivalists have been prosecuted and jailed. But they have found the prisons fertile grounds for recruitment. Their virulent strain of race hatred has so far infected only a tiny minority. This is because, for most people, everyday life in capitalist America remains livable. No devastating economic or political crisis is compelling Americans to search for radical solutions just to get by in life.

The Survivalists hope to expand their ranks as the economy worsens and more people lose confidence in the U.S. government. In all likelihood, demoralized elements of the population will gravitate toward their reactionary ideology.

James Coates is to be commended for bringing this contagion to the light of day. The question before us is, "What do we do with this information?"

The antidote is a revival of the mass working-class movement. In the '30s, workers' mobilizations effectively squelched the Silver Shirts, Coughlinites, and other hate mongers.

This time, the working class must move on to seize political power-and cut the merchants of hate from their roots in the capitalist system.

State Tel.

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