Lets Just Say That If You Go In, So Will I

Scan page 14

SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1991 13 world. Under capitalism, even the caricature of political democracy begins (and ends) in the voting booth and is absolutely barred from the workplace-except in exceptional periods of heightened class struggle.

Thus, the bureaucratic caste's greatest fear is an uprising that could ultimately result in the re-conquest of democratic political power by the workers. Shevardnadze and all the world's bosses and bureaucrats see that outcome as the worst kind of dictatorship that could possibly befall them.

And we can be sure that such "democrats" will welcome the dictatorship of a Gorbachev when it becomes necessary to preserve their privileges and/or property rights. However, standing in their way is the huge obstacle of the reawakening Soviet workers.

The mass nationalist uprisings in the from the present leader of the Stalinist bureaucracies. , But Gorbachev and Co.'s plans to solve their economic woes by betting on the restoration of capitalism has gone awry. The bureaucrats are also being compelled to use whatever force is necessary to preserve their hold on state power in Lithuania and other Soviet republics. In fact, it is not excluded that imperialist troops will be called upon to come to their rescue.

And while Bush makes token declarations of opposition to Gorbachev's crackdown on Lithuanian protesters, he is faced with a similar potentially revolutionary dynamic unfolding throughout the imperialist camp.

The criminal war on the Arab people can be brought to a halt, just as the assault on the Vietnamese people was halted—by millions marching in the streets of America. The Jan. 19th and 26th mass mobilizations point the way. The American people can stop this crime against the Arab nation and the entire human race by way of a relentless series of peaceful and legal marches, demonstrations and protest meetings around the central demand: "Bring U.S. Troops Home Now!"

Every such mobilization, showing clearly where the overwhelming majority stand, contributes to ever larger mobilizations that will ultimately prove to be irresistible.

Gorbachev sent in troops only after the Lithuanian parliament and president, Vytautus Landsbergis-fearful of the consequences of the mass protests—suspended the price increases.

Gorbachev feared, more than anything else, Lithuanian and Russian workers uniting in their class interests-objectively against the restoration of capitalist market relations. He also aimed to bolster the bureaucracy's pro-capitalist course, which was set back by Landbergis's and the Lithuanian parliament's buckling to the pressure of the masses.

Although Gorbachev's act has temporarily blocked the road toward collaboration between Lithuanian and Russian workers, who are artificially divided by nationality, the economic and social forces set into motion by the Soviet bureaucracy's decision to take the road to capitalist restoration are irrepressible.

The struggles for national self determination and workers' democracy are of historic necessity and are organically connected. This objective force will grow in inverse proportion to the incapacity of the bureaucrats and the germinating new class of entrepeneurs to resolve the historic crisis of the degenerated and deformed workers' states.

Only the conscious leadership of a revolutionary, proletarian political party is required to realize the possibilities inherent in this pre-revolutionary situation.

This revolutionary opportunity, it must also be said—which cannot be confined to Eastern Europe-signifies that we are on the threshold of a new historical period, one on a level even higher than the pre-revolutionary period which opened up at the beginning of the 1930s.

But antiwar activists and their organizations must be on guard against letting their natural outrage, triggered by the criminal assault on the Arab people, lead them away from constitutionally guaranteed peaceful, legal mass protest. The criminal U.S. capitalist government will be sure to try to hold the movement as a whole responsible for any poorly considered reflex actions taken by even a tiny minority of the movement.

Moreover, the Vietnam War experience shows that the secret police agencies of federal, state and local governments are capable of attempting to dupe innocent and sincere protestors into taking illegal actions. In fact, the official record of that war proves that these police agencies hired provocateurs to carry out illegal acts which it then sought to blame on law-abiding peaceful protestors.

[See Cointelpro, the documented account from government records of these and other illegal acts by the FBI and other secret police agencies.] The organizations of working people have a special responsibility to help build effective mass peaceful protest. The experiences of trade unionists and civil and human rights fighters are especially relevant to guide the struggle under today's conditions. And they will be serving, at the same time, to advance their own class interests, as well as the interests of the great majority of the people.