Pacifism, Revisionism and

involve an attack on the working class.

It is Wilson's intention also to do this that makes him so attractive to de Gaulle. Wilson's government's problem is precisely to carry out that vital renewal of British capital that the ruling class has been afraid or incapable of doing since 1918. De Gaulle's intentions in France are the same.

The measures already taken by the Wilson government, and especially this week's Budget, are the first steps in this long-delayed confrontation with the workers. And it is these steps to 'put the house in order that pleased de Gaulle so much during his conversations with Wilson last weekend.

Integration De Gaulle intends to use British capitalism's weaknesses to ensure that the new developments in Britain reinforce the French bourgeoisie with regard to the Americans and not vice-versa. Hence, the agreement that France would not encourage any speculation against the pound as it is now doing against the dollar.

The next move would be to integrate the two capitalist powers more closely by admitting Britain to the Common Market. This would no longer be on the same conditions as when the affair was discussed by the Tories three years ago: its result now would be to impose drastic cuts in living standards of the working class, which de Gaulle and Wilson see as necessary if they are to confront the United States.

But the situation in the working class is not the same either. The attacks already carried out by the Wilson government have given rise to stirrings in the British working class.

And this class is not in the same state as was the German working class when similar plans were put into effect by the German capitalists in the late 20s and 30s.

Undefeated workers The working class has suffered no major defeat since the Second World War. It has experienced a relatively high standard of living and can see no reason why it should give it up.

All of the major imperialist powers can only turn now to an attack on the workers throughout the world in this battle between the decaying imperialist bourgeoisies.

But the working class is not at all in the same state as the ruling class. It is undefeated and confident. It lacks only the conscious leadership that can turn this capitalist onslaught into the suicide plunge of a rotten system.

This leadership is now being built. As the imperialist system lurches into the biggest crisis in its history, it will ensure that it is the last.

of a white woman and civil rights fighter by members of the Ku Klux Klan has forcibly and tragically underlined one thing. It has proved that the ONLY effective deterrent to Klan violence and the provocations of racist thugs in uniform is the organised and violent resistance of Negro and white workers.

More and more events in the Deep South are demonstrating the incontrovertible fact that the ballot can and will be secured only by the bullet.

Servitude

That even the wily Rev. King is not entirely unaware of the Alabama situation is revealed in an article reproduced in 'Peace News' (23/3/65). He has this to say about Negro servitude in this benighted backwater of the United States:

'Yet if Selma outrages democratic sensibilities, neighbouring Wilcox County offers something infinitely worse. Sherift P. C. Jenkins has held office in Wilcox for 26 years. He is a local legend because when he wants a Negro for a crime, he merely sends out word and the Negro comes in to be arrested. This is intimidation and degradation reminiscent only of chattel slavery.' Yet hundreds and thousands of unarmed people (like the Rev. James Reeb and Mrs. Liuzzo) were persuaded to march and risk their lives in Alabama. For what? For little, or nothing!

Despite the immensity of the march and the wide interest it aroused, millions of Negroes still remain voteless, segregated and terrorised. They will remain in this position until capitalism in America has been overthrown and the basis of racial discrimination destroyed.

The organisers of this moral and religious charade will no doubt try to console their followers with the happy thought that the victims of Negro question pacifists, however, demonstrations are nothing more than a necessary and inseparable supplement to the legislative activity of the capitalist state.

To whom the power, to him the petty-bourgeois!

This policy of 'rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's' has already boomeranged in the face of Dr. King as when he appealed to the Federal executive to investigate the murders in Alabama.

President Johnson, who, incidentally, promised during his election campaign to disrobe the Klan, made a frenzied verbal assault on the Klan and then cynically passed the investigation on to the House Un-American Activities Committee!

To ask this bunch of labourhating, Communist-baiting reactionaries to conduct an investigation into the Klan is the ultimate in fraud and hypocrisy.

Why, we might as well ask the Klan to investigate itself!

Riff-raff

Not even the New York Times' could swallow this canary with equanimity. In its editorial (31/3/65) it stated bluntly:

'We are equally dubious about the projected investigation of the Ku Klux Klan by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Everyone already knows all that is necessary to know about the Klan, which that its racist notions are nonsense and its members are bigoted riff-raff. Even if an inquiry were needed, the committee, with its staff bloated by over-paid time-servers, has never demonstrated any investigative competence. .

'If legislation is needed to control the Klan, the Justice Department can prepare it without the bumbling intervention of this discredited committee which should have been abolished long ago' No wonder the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan's United Klan of America welcomed the investigation!

There is no end to the chicanery of Dr. King. Now he appeals to Wall Street and Northern big business - the very same forces who are stepping up the Vietnam war— to put an economic squeeze on Alabama. Thus, continued reliance on pacifism and religious ecstasy in the Deep South is synonymous with support for the most reactionary capitalist forces in the north.

To ridicule and expose humbugs and charlatans like King, Shuttleworth and Forman is not enough though. The only answer the pacifistreligious confusion amongst Negroes is a renewed and relentless struggle for the creation of a revolutionary communist party with deep roots amongst Negro and white workers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

This task would be more than fulfilled if those who claim to be Marxists in the United States-like the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party —had followed a consistent revolutionary policy.

The Communist Party long ago gave up any claim to liberate the Negro masses because of its treacherous policy of support for the Democratic government of Roosevelt and its cynical attempts to manipulate the Negro movement to suit the foreign policy of the Soviet the bureaucracy.

The Socialist Workers Party, however, because of its antiwar position during the Second World War won the sympathy and support of many Negro militants.

Trotsky, who recognised the absolute importance of finding a road to the Negro masses, warned the Socialist Workers Party about the consequences of failure to find such a road.

Retrospectively, we can say that his warning was almost prophetic:

"The characteristic thing about the American workers' KU KLUX I ney look me out Da șai alien in ine great white race.

I said. "Mister benet anyt li you d just turn me The white man said, Gandir Youinain : 1 ney nit me in the neac And then they kicked me Ontite gramad, date La ANTACH Thignel A poem by Langston Hughes from "Harlem, U.S.A.

parties, trade unions and organisations and so on, was their aristocratic character. It is the basis of opportunism.

The skilled workers who feel set in the capitalist society help the bourgeois class to hold the Negroes and the unskilled workers down to a very low scale. Our party is not safe from degeneration if it remains a place for intellectuals, skilled workers and Jewish workers who build a very close mileu which is almost isolated from the genuine mass. Under these conditions, our party cannot develop — it will degenerate.' (Excerpt from Trotsky's discussion with J. R. Johnson, 1939.)

Despite some episodic successes in recruiting Negroes, who were never trained theoretically, this is precisely what happened to the Socialist Workers Party. Today its centrist degeneration — gangrenous and awful to describeis most glaringly revealed on Lincoln Rockwell (centre), leader of the American Nazis, sitting the Civil Rights front.

Not only have the party leaders failed to give any kind of leadership or directive to the Negro masses, but they have also consciously deceived and disorientated the vanguard of the Negro workers with a policy which oscillates between downright paternalism and outright opportunism.

(Last week in The Newsletter Cliff Slaughter showed how the Socialist Workers Party was helping the capitalist state by raising the demand 'Send Federal troops to Alabama'.)

The opportunistic policy was formalized in its July 1963 resolution and passed at its convention. It marked decisive break with, and an abandonment of its stated policy of giving independent Marxist leadership to the Negro workers. The relevant section of the resolution (Freedom Now- the New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation and the Tasks of the Socialist Workers Party') reads:

'Our attitude towards separatists, including the Muslims, is a friendly one. We recognise that the mere existence of the Muslims has had healthy effects, pushing rival Negro tendencies to the left and thereby imparting an impetus to even purely integrationist battles. We note with interest that, far from being a hardened sect, the Muslims have shown a capacity during the last year to change in a direction that better serves the interests of all Negroes. However, they have still to develop a programme of action the struggles now taking place.' The last sentence in the light of subsequent events has a grimly ironical ring.

Irony apart, the . explicit support for separatism contained in this resolution is completely unhistorical and violates the deeply ingrained eelings of the overwhelming najority of Negroes who ar ruggling for total assimilatic 1 American societ Mushima in aran ur on he Bles of the Northern States was a danger signal to the communist and labour movement. It revealed a grave crisis of leadership in the whole working class movement. The Newsletter gave repeated warnings about the counterrevolutionary potentialities of this mystical organisation.

Surrender

The duty of Marxists was to analyse its class basis and its history in order to combat it openly and unreservedly and at the same time show in practice how white and black labour should fight against landlords, capitalists and their police.

This the Socialist Workers Party and its paper, 'The Milia Black Muslim meeting. become "a, criminal organisation—in the hands of a man who's senile"....

•.. Malcolm X went on to accuse the Black Muslims of having friendly relations with the Ku Klux Klan and Lincoln Rockwell's Nazis, and of getting money from the same sources which support those racist organisations' (Our emphasis He described a meeting in Georgia he attended in December 1960 between the Black Muslims and the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan. At this meeting there were negotiations to give the Black Muslims a county-sized tract of land to be used by them as a showcase for their programme of a separate nation...

He asserted that Jeremiah X, head of the Black Muslims in the South, attended Klan rallies. ...

Malcolm X declared that Rockwell corresponded regularly with Elijah Muhammad and was permitted to attend Black Muslim meetings, despite the resentment of many Black Muslims. . . . Malcolm X charged that the Black Muslims had been ordered to attack any of their members who defected to Malcolm. He cited a series of such beatings and shootings that had taken place recently. ... (The Militant', 22/2/65. Report by David Herman.)