Chinese dissident hits Bush's hypocrisy

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1990 Many in the Chinese pro-Democracy Movement are beginning to understand the hypocrisy of President Bush's "support" for human rights and democracy in China.

Lin Xilin, a leader of the 1956 pro-democracy movement in China who spent 15 years in prison, spoke out against U.S. policy at a Feb. 11-12 meeting in Paris on the theme "Revolution is Rising in the East of Europe." She said:

"My 40 years of experience in the struggle for democracy have helped me understand that the imperialists, in the final analysis, have the same interests as the dictators throughout the world...

"After the [June 4, 1989] Peking events, I saw young people who had placed their hopes in imperialism, in America, who said, 'You see the United States is supporting us; they are placing sanctions on China.' "In my opinion, these sanctions nothing but hot air. They amount to nothing. The U.S. government is not about to give up its interests in China for the sake of human rights.

"Deng Xiaoping and all the people of his clique, all the privileged ones, have had extremely tight links with the West.... So when I hear about sanctions it makes me laugh.

"Bush, in his attempts to get closer to the Chinese leaders, will carry on as he has done in the past with all dictators. He will continue to support the regime of Deng Xiaoping.

"We are therefore in a situation where the only path left open to us is to reinforce solidarity with all democratic movements in the world. The interests of the workers in the West are the same as the interests of the workers in the East.... The only path for democratic revolution is unity and internationalism." (reprinted from International Tribune No. 15, March 1990) which read, 'Our blood was not shed in vain-Berlin!' "We are also aware of the fact that Czech students mobilized by the thousands, carrying banners which read, "Tiananmen Square encouraged us.' "We, who for so long have been cut off from the world working class, have been encouraged by the renewal of solidarity among the peoples. We now know that it is not only possible to make the dictators tremble; it is possible to defeat them!

"Did you know, for example, that students in Peking organized a major celebration after it was announced that Causescu had been executed? They put together a story mural devoted to the Romanian revolution. One of the cartoons showed Ceausescu as a dog, with a caption, 'This dog fired on the demonstrators just as his master did on June 4 at Tiananmen Square.' "From now on it will no longer be possible to keep a people in isolation."

Chinese workers' movement

The question of the workers' movement in China is also extremely important. From the major media, it appeared that this was only a marginal development. Judging from more recent reports from China, it appears that the workers were beginning to organize their factory committees and independent unions in more places than just Peking.

"Workers "form the great majority of those who have been detained,' the report states. 'Their conditions of detention are much harsher than those of other groups.... They are also the ones most likely to be subjected to torture and other forms of gross ill-treatment during police interrogation. Significantly, all those known to have been executed since June 4 were either workers or unemployed.

This article gives you a sense of the threat to the bureaucracy posed by the Chinese workers' movement.

On German unification One issue over which there has been tremendous confusion within the radical movement is the issue of German unification. This is understandable given the imperialist propaganda barrage on this issue. It's not a simple question either.

Our starting point in approaching this discussion must be the needs, demands, and aspirations of the German workers' movement. Without this perspective, we are inevitably led into the trap of seeing these events solely from the point of view of the imperialists.

Obviously, as revolutionary socialists we are not indifferent to the character of the reunification that takes place in Germany. But we don't stand off on the sidelines telling whoever will listen that German unity is exclusively an imperialist ploy aimed at destroying the East German workers' state and annexing it.

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We would not get much of a hearing among the East German workers for such a view. Why is this?

This is because the goal of unity is a deeply felt aspiration of German working people. And it is a progressive aspiration. There is a specific German national question, even though the German nation is not an oppressed nation in the same sense as Lithuania or Armenia.

The German working class was divided against its will following World War Il and was subject to the occupation of four imperialist armies and then to a division which was the basis for maintaining the capitalist status quo in Europe during the entire postwar era.

Today the question of German unification has appeared with full force. It is on the agenda not because of the "vengeful" will of German imperialism, but because the workers have placed it there.

The Fourth International has always argued that as soon as German national sentiment was reborn, it would be necessary to integrate it into the struggle for socialism. But how can this be done?

The first thing is to avoid the mistake made by many on the left in Germany who hold that the demand for German unity is a people's right to self-determination.

In this context, it is worthwhile examining the March 18 elections in East Germany.

Meaning of March 18 elections What is clear from these elections is that the demand for German unification, as we predicted, overshadowed all other political questions.

The party that most strongly articulated the need for unity—Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Coalition—was the winner because it promised East German workers immediate unity with full rights, equal opportunities, and unlimited wealth. East Germans, from day one, would have the same standard of living as workers in West Germany, Kohl proclaimed.

This, of course, was sheer demagogy because Kohl's goal is to annex East Germany and turn it into a pool of cheap labor for West German capitalism. Kohl's program, only recently released, calls for closing down hundreds of "unproductive" state-owned factories, which will lead to a loss of an estimated 2 million jobs.

Soon after Kohl's Christian Democratic ally was elected in East Germany, Kohl and his party reneged on their first promise: The East German mark would not be traded at parity with the West German mark, as promised, but would be converted at the rate stages."

The economic policy statement of the SPD-East also backed off from support to the social gains of the East German workers' state (full employment, free education and healthcare, etc.). The SPD-East called instead for a "free market economy" where such social programs would be at the mercy of market forces.

Hence the SPD-East turned the masses directly over to Kohl and to his reactionary Christian Democratic coalition, which appeared in the eyes of the workers to be the champion of unification and a higher standing of living.

That the East German workers were initially looking to the Social Democratic Party does not mean they were moving in a right-wing direction either. They were looking to the old working-class party that was banned in 1946 and that hadn't been tainted by the brush of Stalinism.

Wenzell Woborill, a historic leader of the SPD in what became East Germany, was a prominent speaker at the rallies in Berlin and Leipzig after the Wall came down. He addressed an Open Letter to the December 1989 SPD Congress in West Berlin in which he gives a sense of why workers initially looked to the SPD:

"Comrades, I call upon you today for I am convinced that the Berlin SPD and the SPD as a whole should participate in the fight of the old social-democratic comrades and of all those who fight for free and true socialism.... For we are not only confronted with the apparatus of the SED [Stalinist party], but with the apparatus of the entire state.

"The conquests of the GDR [East Germany] today (state property and cooperatives, low rents, social security, guaranteed minimum standard of living, and so on) must absolutely be defended. Especially in relation to the economic reforms in East Germany, these conquests must be protected against the West German big monopolies.

"But this can only be done by solidarity in Rade unions action among workers with their independent trade unions, and an SPD defending the traditions of the labor movement....

"Comrades, the German question is on the agenda! This means that the right to self-determination of the German people will settle this question. This makes it all the more important that the SPD should pronounce itself in favor of the right to self-determination for GDR citizens and that it should do so publicly in front of the masters of GDR.

"We are Germans first. GDR citizenship was imposed on us. For the free democrats and socialists who remained here, German unity has always remained on the agenda. We must achieve it now. We don't want to suffer from the the consequences of the capitalist market economy (mass unemployment, impoverishment, increasing numbers of homeless people, drugs).

"The task of forging a united Germany is the task of constituting a free, democratic, and socialist Germany, a Germany of workers' unity." (reprinted in Tribune Internationale No. 15, March 1990)

This working-class component of the fight for German unity has been deliberately hidden by the imperialist mass media. They would like everyone to believe that rightwing nationalism is on the rise and that the Fourth Reich is on the horizon.

But these totally reactionary views have little to do with reality. The East German workers have ripped such right-wing propaganda into shreds when it has been distributed by totally marginal groupings at the regular mass rallies.

East German workers have illusions in the West, this is true. This is fully understandable. But these illusions will be fully shattered when they begin to see that the unity proposed by Kohl with a sugar-coating is, in fact, capitalist unity; that is, unemployment, plant shutdowns, loss of savings in East German marks, higher rents, inflation, and so on.

A political current that articulates the need for a unified, socialist Germany is bound to get more and more of a hearing from workers as these illusions are shed and workers begin to form their own committees and unions to defend the gains of nationalized property and to fight for their rights.

People who warned of the dangers of capitalist reunification without showing their support for the legitimate demand for self-determination and unification will be relegated to the sidelines. They will influence no one but themselves and perhaps a tiny group of their "new left" sympathizers.

For us, moreover, the fight for a unified, socialist Germany is a component of the overall fight for a united, socialist Europe. And yes, this question has been placed on the agenda by the unfolding political revolution in Eastern Europe.

The capitalists have their plans for a unified Europe. They call it the "Europe of 1992." Of course, this is a pipe-dream. Already inter-imperialist rivalries have developed over the German question. France and England fear a German super-imperialism. They want to make sure that the structures of NATO and the European Economic Community are securely in place so as to hem in the new German Goliath.

We must counter the "Europe of 1992" or the "Homeland of Europe," as Gorbachev calls it, with the slogan of a United Socialist Europe. Common initiatives and campaigns must be proposed throughout Europe to give this slogan a real working-class content, with rallies, common election campaigns, and the like.

On the situation in Nicaragua Political power has officially been transferred in Nicaragua from the Sandinistas to the right-wing UNO coalition headed by Violeta Chamorro.

The Sandinistas, you will recall, agreed to