Our readers speak out
1991 1991-08Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 16 →
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Immigrants
Dear editors, Your readers might not realize that a majority of the recent immigrants from the Soviet Union to Israel and the West Bank are not even Jewish. The Israeli government admits to a figure of 25 percent. Apparently, the criteria for emigration from the Soviet Union is a Jewish relative at some point in several generations.
The recent wave of immigration is the result of an agreement between Gorbachev, Bush, and Israeli officials dictating that all emigrants from the Soviet Union be directed to Israel.
This agreement cuts off virtually all immigration to the United States. It stipulates that once the immigrants get to Israel, they will not be allowed to leave.
As a result, some Soviet immierants are being used to "Zionize" the Occupied Territories. Conditions are so bad for the new Soviet immigrants that four to five families might occupy the same apartment. Prostitution is spreading amongst the immigrant school children. Three soup kitchens now exist in Jerusalem alone for the hungry and homeless immigrants.
Claudette Bégin, Union City, Calif.
Candidate
Dear editors, I was delighted to read in your June issuè about Joni Jacobs's campaign for San Francisco mayor. I am glad to see socialists using the electoral system to advance socialist politics. Please accept my small donation to help with the propaganda.
Chad Anderson, Champaign, Ill.
Hayden Perry fan Dear editors, A note of appreciation for Hayden Perry's articles every month. They are always sharp, clear, and informative. I photostat them on the xerox ledger and pass them around. I'm enclosing money for three subscriptions.
Henry Austin, Detroit, Mich.
Dear editors, In your July issue, you reprinted an article by Janette Habel on the economic squeeze facing revolutionary Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet-led ECOMCON trading bloc, in the context of U.S. imperialism's criminal embargo.
The article is informative and timely. But there are formulations in it that advocate reforms that go in the direction of decentralization and greater use of market mechanisms as an answer.
But giving more powers of control and management to the enterprises only leads to greater dislocations as they begin to compete with each other. The whole experience of Yugoslavia is a case history of the total failure of that road.
What is needed is to take the ideas behind Cuba's plan of "rectification" to their conclusion. Those ideas advocate drawing working people ever more into decision-making and participation in production on the basis of furthering the well-being of everyone-especially those on the bottom.
That would mean not only volunteer work, but real workers' democracy through organs of workers' political power from the local to the national scale. It would also mean development toward workers' management in the enterprises.
To achieve a real step forward in the empowerment of the workers, these measures require central planning of the economy-not decentralization. Without workers' management of the whole of the economy through an overall plan, working people can have no real power.
Conscious organization, education, and mobilization of the workers along these lines is the only road forward in fighting bureaucratic chaos. It is also the road toward developing communist values of cooperation, equality, self-sacrifice, and devotion to the well-being of all. It would greatly enhance the example that revolutionary Cuba shows the world.
Barry Sheppard, San Francisco, Calif.
Socialism
Dear editors, As a retired trade unionist, I have been following the news which is being made in Eastern Europe and Russia.
I read where Erich Honecker, the head of party and state in the former German Democratic Republic, was responsible for the deaths of persons shot and killed while trying to flee over the Berlin Wall.
I wonder if you can blame these actions on socialism. If so, then the apartheid system and thousands of deaths in South Africa must be Baltimore P.O. Box 16005 Baltimore, MD 21218 Boston P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 (617) 497-0230 Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 (312) 327-5752 Cincinnati P.O. Box 27111 Cincinnati, OH 452: (513) 272-2596 Cleveland P.O. Box 6151 Cleveland, OH 44101 (216) 429-2167 Detroit P.O. Box 1613 Detroit, MI 48231 branch in your area! Kansas City P.O. Box 32543 Westport Station, Kansas City, MO 6411 For information about other areas, contact the national office of Socialist Action at (415) 821-0458. the fault of capitalism. I say that socialism is still the best answer for the people that produce the wealth of our world. Socialism has been too busy trying to out-gun the capitalist. Socialism must learn how to lead the people and be part of the people-not follow the capitalist ideas, as some of the leaders have done in the past.
Joseph L. Stack, San Francisco, Calif.
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Socialist ActioN