WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! SPECIAL ISSUE
Volume 11, Number 4
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
March 25, 1981
[Front page:
U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of El Salvador!;
Stand Firm Against the Coal Barons--Defeat the Sellout Contract!;
No to the Reopening of Three Mile Island! (See inside)]
U.S. Imperialism, Get Out of El Salvador!
Stand Firm Against the Coal Barons-
No to the U.S. imperialist nuclear energy program!
No to the Reopening of Three Mile Island!
Workers and all progressive people! With every passing day the Reagan administration is sending more weapons and more military advisors to El Salvador. U.S. imperialism is rapidly escalating its intervention to rescue its puppet junta of fascist generals in the face of the powerful liberation struggle of the Salvadorian people. The dispatch of Green Berets to El Salvador brings home the likeness to the early days of the U.S. war of aggression in Indochina. The American people have not forgotten the genocidal crimes of U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia. We must not give the Reagan government a free hand in its criminal intervention in Central America! Take up the mass struggle in solidarity with the brave Salvadorian workers and peasants to drive U.S. imperialism out of El Salvador!
The People of El Salvador Have Risen in Revolution Against Merciless Exploitation and Fascist Tyranny
For over a year and a half El Salvador has been in the grips of nationwide civil war. This is a struggle between the four million workers, peasants and other toiling and freedom-loving people on the one side, and a small oligarchy of big capitalists, coffee plantation owners and fascist generals and their U.S. imperialist backers on the other side.
For decades the people of El Salvador have suffered unbearable tyranny and misery. The workers are mercilessly exploited at the hands of the big capitalists and the U.S. imperialist and other multinational corporations. Slaving for these local and U.S. companies, the workers' wages average $4 a day. A handful of rich landlords owns some 60% of all the land while the majority of peasants are landless and have been forced into peonage on the huge coffee plantations. This super-exploitation has been enforced through open and systematic terror against the Salvadorian people. For 50 years the workers and peasants have languished under the boot heel of one military dictatorship after another. The present U.S.-backed military junta is but the latest government of fascist executioners in the service of the U.S. multinational corporations and the local oligarchy.
Today the Salvadorian people have risen to their feet in revolutionary struggle against the military junta and against the inhuman exploitation and oppression at the hands of the oligarchy and U.S. imperialism. The workers, peasants and youth have hurled themselves into the liberation struggle. Strikes, factory occupations and land seizures have swept the country. The armed masses have tied down the fascist National Guard in fierce battles both in the countryside and in the workers' districts of the cities. In January, the revolutionary fighters wiped out many units of the junta's armed forces and seized the military garrisons in the province of Chalatenango, and in the cities of Santa Ana and San Francisco Gotera.
The military junta has responded to the people's liberation struggle with a policy of extermination, unleashing a reign of ferocious terror against the population. Countless thousands of the finest sons and daughters of the workers and peasants have been murdered in cold blood. Even 10 year old children are treated as suspected "terrorists" to be arrested, tortured and murdered. The government troops have resorted to wholesale massacres of the peasants, burning their homes and fields in Viet Nam-style "search and destroy" operations. The National Guard and the police are assisted in their bloody work by the right-wing paramilitary organizations such as ORDEN. These fascist gangs have been set up and armed by the wealthy families of the oligarchy (many of whom have already sought refuge in Miami) for the sole purpose of terrorizing the population through kidnappings, assassinations, etc.
But the brutal terror of the junta and the oligarchy has only strengthened the fighting resolve of the brave workers and peasants of El Salvador. At the same time, support for the democratic, anti-imperialist revolution has spread to the widest sections of the population, placing the military junta in total isolation and in deep internal crisis.
Reagan Is Rapidly Escalating U.S. Intervention
The U.S. imperialists are deeply concerned about the fate of the fascist junta and the profits of the U.S. multinational corporations operating in El Salvador. The Reagan administration has declared that keeping in power the bloodstained butchers in San Salvador is "the central testing ground of U.S. foreign policy." Therefore, to beef up the junta's armed forces Reagan has sent another $25 million for M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, helicopters and other military hardware. This comes on top of the $10 million of military aid which Carter had ordered before leaving office. Carter had also dispatched several teams of military "advisors" to direct the counterinsurgency operations of the junta's National Guard and police. Now Reagan has sent more troops including 15 Green Berets which bring the official number of U.S. military personnel, according to the State Department, to 56. But on top of this there are many more CIA agents, "civilian" advisors, and hired U.S. mercenaries who have been sent down to bolster the junta in its attempts to drown the liberation struggle of the Salvadorian people in blood. On March 24, Reagan doubled U.S. "economic aid" to the junta, to $126.5 million, much of which also goes towards military purposes.
Furthermore, U.S. intervention extends beyond the borders of El Salvador. U.S. imperialism has not been reconciled to the defeat that it suffered with the overthrow of the fascist dictator Somoza in neighboring Nicaragua and is plotting for a restoration of the old status quo in that country. At the same time the liberation struggle of the Guatemalan people is rapidly gaining strength against the fascist U.S.-backed military government. The U.S. State Department and the Pentagon are pursuing a regional interventionist strategy aimed at putting down the mounting wave of anti-U.S. imperialist struggle which is sweeping Central America. Among other things this strategy includes efforts to coordinate the military" forces of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras along with the remnants of Somoza's infamous National Guard and other fascist forces. U.S. arms and military advisors are also being poured into Guatemala and Honduras for this purpose.
Reagan tries to claim that the escalating U.S. involvement in El Salvador cannot be compared to the early days of the U.S. war in Indochina, when in fact the comparison is quite apparent to the whole world. In the early 1960's Kennedy dispatched military "advisors" and Green Berets into Laos and then into Viet Nam. This was one of the first steps towards a full-scale genocidal war waged in a desperate effort to smother the roaring flames of the liberation struggle of the heroic Indochinese people. War dog Reagan openly crows a- bout the "noble cause" of U.S. imperialism's hideous and barbaric aggression in Indochina which ended as a most ignoble disaster for U.S. imperialism. And with the introduction of military advisors into the civil war in El Salvador he is committing U.S. imperialism to a similar debacle in Central America. With its intervention in El Salvador U.S. imperialism is sliding deeper and deeper into the quagmire of aggression against the liberation struggles of the Central American peoples which are erupting with the force of powerful volcanoes. Despite all of Reagan's lying promises to the contrary, there is no "light at the end of the tunnel" to the U.S. escalation in Central America any more than there was in Indochina.
No Amount of Lies Can Cover the Bloody Tracks of U.S. Imperialism
Reagan and the State Department have been raising a big hue and cry that the conflict in El Salvador is merely the product of "Soviet terrorism." Reagan even tries to claim that he is dispatching Green Beret counterinsurgency teams to El Salvador only to prevent the Soviet Union and Cuba from "seeking to impose a military solution in a small, third world nation"! What an outrageous hoax! This big lie is presently at the top of the list of a whole series of big lies to cover the bloody tracks of U.S. imperialism in El Salvador.
The present-day Soviet Union is indeed a social-imperialist monster and Cuba has in fact been reduced to being its neo-colonial slave. The Soviet new tsars have themselves become bogged down in a Viet Nam-type war of aggression in Afghanistan. But in El Salvador it is U.S. imperialism which is propping up a hated dictatorship and which has sent in military personnel to massacre the people just as the Soviet social-imperialists are doing in Afghanistan. Thus, just like in Indochina and countless other cases of U.S. intervention around the world, Reagan is once again resorting to the timeworn jingoist hypocrisy about "Soviet aggression" to hide the hand of U.S. imperialism's own naked aggression.
A "Political Solution" Based on the Armed Suppression of the Salvadorian People
Of course, for their part the warmongering chieftains of U.S. imperialism would never even consider the idea of "imposing a military solution" in El Salvador. In fact in recent weeks the Reagan administration has been protesting that its warmongering declarations about "military options" and "drawing the line in El Salvador" were all "misinterpreted" and "blown out of proportion" by the press. Oh no, the State Department officials explain, the Pentagon is sending in countless tons of arms along with military "advisors" because Reagan is seeking not a "military solution" but a "political solution" to the conflict!
Added to this, the equally imperialist Democratic Party politicians such a Ted Kennedy have been creating a fuss allegedly in opposition to Reagan's escalating military involvement in El Salvador and in favor of a "political solution" or a "diplomatic solution" to be achieved through "social reforms," etc., etc. But just what kind of "political solution" and just what kind of "reforms" are these mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism stumping for?
According to the State Department, a "political solution" means the "stabilization" of the military junta so as to create conditions for elections and civilian rule sometime in the future. In the meantime the presence of the Christian Democrat Duarte and one other civilian among the fascist military generals of the junta is the alleged guarantee of this eventual "return to democracy." In other words, this is a "political solution" based on arming the military generals to the teeth in their murderous suppression of the Salvadorian people.
Likewise the "political solution" of the "liberal" heroes of the Democratic Party takes as its cornerstone keeping in power the military junta. They simply want to return to the Carterite policy of trying to put a "human rights" and "reform-minded" mask on the bloodstained military dictatorship. For instance, Kennedy has now proposed a bill to cut off military aid to the junta unless it undergoes a "human rights" facelift; that, for example, the military junta promises that it will maintain "civilian participation" and "reject any movement to military dictatorship"! Among a host of other proposals, the Democratic Party politicians are also discussing the joint House-Senate Dodd-Solarz resolution which would cut off further military aid to the junta unless it proceeds with the "social reforms" which had been urged on it earlier by Carter. In particular the imperialist "liberals" are calling for the implementation of the junta's "land reform" program.
So just what is this so-called "land reform" which these imperialist gentlemen are so keen on? It is nothing more nor less than a Viet Nam-style "rural pacification" program. It has been designed and directed by the very same advisors who were the architects of U.S. imperialism's "land reform" program in Viet Nam. In Viet Nam "land reform" meant military occupation of the countryside, the notorious "strategic hamlet" concentration camps and the hunting down and assassination of the liberation fighters. And in El Salvador it means the very same thing. The so- called "land reform" has virtually not touched the big plantations. In fact, the junta's troops have gunned down those peasants who try to seize the land. Furthermore, the "land reform" has been used by the junta to flush out and eliminate the peasant leaders and transform the countryside into an armed camp.
It is a telling fact that in the last year of Carter's term alone -- a year when the hypocritical declarations about "social reforms" and a "political solution" were loudest -- 13,000 civilians were massacred by the "reform-minded" and "moderate" military junta! This shows that whether out of the mouth of a Reagan or a Kennedy all the talk of a "political solution," "human rights" or "reforms" under the military dictatorship is an imperialist fraud to justify backing to the hilt the junta's policy of unbridled terror and extermination.
Solidarity With the Liberation Struggle of the Salvadorian People!
The heroic workers and peasants of El Salvador are demonstrating to the whole world the enormous power of the revolutionary struggle of the people.
The U.S. imperialists have always considered Latin America to be their private "backyard," their exclusive preserve of imperialist rape and plunder. For decades the people of Central America have been trampled upon mercilessly by the U.S. corporations and by the U.S.-backed oligarchies and dictators. The U.S. imperialists rigged up their so-called "banana republics" which have been propped up by repeated military intervention including several invasions by U.S. marines. However, by subjecting the peoples to this most brutal neo-colonial slavery, U.S. imperialism has created a tremendous anti-imperialist force.
El Salvador is a small and a terribly poverty-stricken and downtrodden nation. Nevertheless the liberation struggle of its people is striking heavy blows to the U.S. imperialist colossus. Only yesterday the Nicaraguan people toppled the U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty. Now U.S. imperialism is being scorched by the flames of the Salvadorian people's anti-imperialist, democratic revolution. And the ground is growing hot under the feet of U.S. imperialism in Guatemala, Columbia and elsewhere across Latin America where the people's liberation struggles are advancing with irresistible force.
The revolutionary struggle of the Salvadorian people is a great inspiration to the workers and downtrodden everywhere. In the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Germany and elsewhere, massive demonstrations have taken place in protest of the escalating U.S. intervention in El Salvador and in solidarity with the Salvadorian people. These demonstrations are a cause of great concern for the U.S. imperialist strategists who remember well the powerful mass movement of the American people and the people all over the world against the U.S. aggression in Viet Nam. Thus President Reagan, imitating J. Edgar Hoover, has even found it necessary to try to brand these demonstrations as part of a devious international conspiracy!
In a recent interview with the New York Daily News, Reagan asked ominously: "On these demonstrations about El Salvador, hasn't it struck anyone strange that, right on cue, it started here in our country? When I was in Canada a few days ago, it looked like the signs had been borrowed from the same demonstrations here, they all said the same thing." (Daily News, March 15, 1981)
Yes, Mr. Imperialist Neanderthal, demonstrations "started here in our own country" and all over the world "right on cue," and the "cue" was your rapid escalation of U.S. intervention in El Salvador!! And yes, these demonstrations are all saying the same thing. They are expressing the solidarity of the working and progressive people everywhere with the heroic liberation struggle of the Salvadorian people! They are expressing the fact that the American people and the people of the world have not forgotten the genocidal U.S. war in Viet Nam! And they are expressing the common demand of the world's people: U.S. IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF EL SALVADOR!
[Photo:Scene from a powerful mass demonstration in San Salvador, January 22, 1980.]
[Cartoon.]
The capitalists are trying to shove all sorts of vicious contract concessions down the coal miners' throats. But the coal miners have demonstrated their will to fight back to defend their livelihood. On March 17, when the initial contract negotiations broke down, militant wildcat strikes erupted through the coal fields. Within three days roving pickets spread the strikes to seven states and brought out over 10,000 miners in a strong protest against the arrogant concession demands of the coal monopolies.
These strikes shook up the coal barons. They fear that the 160,000 miners will rise up in a powerful industry-wide strike that will smash to dust the concessions demanded by the capitalists and cut into their overgorged profits. So to avoid a strike and keep intact the main bulk of their wage-cutting and productivity measures the coal monopolies dropped a few of their most outrageous "take-back" demands and quickly signed a tentative contract with the UMWA bureaucrats. UMWA President Sam Church was more than willing to accommodate the coal capitalists. When the coal barons offered a few crumbs, Church abruptly torpedoed a series of important demands of the miners and put his name to the sellout contract of the capitalists.
The coal miners face a sharp fight. While their wildcat strikes scared the monopolies into giving up a few of their most scandalous demands, they won't give up more without a fight. Only by rejecting the tentative agreement and waging a determined contract strike will the coal miners be able to defend themselves from the vicious attacks of the coal tycoons.
Reject the Sellout Contract!
According to incomplete reports from the news media the contract signed by Sam Church is a complete sellout. The coal capitalists gave up only their demands for compulsory Sunday overtime, to break up the industry-wide pension system, and to maintain the notorious Arbitration Review Board. But the UMWA bureaucrats conceded on virtually everything else including a whole slew of measures to cut wages, step up productivity, impose increasingly unsafe working conditions, and to split up and suppress the coal miners' movement. Church even agreed to let the coal barons stop paying royalties on non-union coal.
The miners still have to fight against the coal companies' demand for lengthening their regular working day, as well as against compulsory Saturday overtime and against a whole series of other measures through which the coal operators are trying to speed up production and further deteriorate the already horribly unsafe working conditions.
Church and company apparently gave up all of the miners' demands to equalize the pay from the different pension funds, to increase the pay and include a COLA for pensioners, and to get pensions turned over to miners' widows.
Even the agreement to end the Arbitration Review Board seems to be a hollow victory. This is the board which systematically upheld the capitalists' arbitrary violations of past contracts and which completely outlawed all local strikes and roving pickets. The news media reports that this board is to be done away with. But as long as its past decisions still stand, and as long as the rest of the system of compulsory grievance arbitration continues in the coal fields then all of the miners' grievances will still be decided in favor of the coal operators, and the miners' strikes over grievances, safety, etc., between contracts will still be outlawed.
Under the tentative contract the coal miners will see their pay eaten away by the soaring 14% annual rise in inflation because Church and company simply dropped the miners' demand to get back the cost-of-living allowance which they lost in the 1978 contract.
As well, the UMWA bureaucrats appear to have caved in to the arrogant concessions demanded by the coal capitalists on many other issues like the sale and subcontracting out of mines, the bidding system and seniority rights, work rules and so forth.
In short, the tentative contract agreement is a brutal attack on the miners. Unless they reject this agreement and wage a fierce contract strike, they will be further impoverished and beaten down by the monopoly billionaires of the coal industry.
Fight the Capitalist Offensive
The miners' contract has come up at a time when the capitalist class as a whole has launched a savage offensive against the working class. In auto, steel, rubber, trucking, aluminum and other industries the capitalists have viciously slashed the workers' wages and sped up production to inhuman levels. In some industries like auto and rubber the contracts that were already won through struggle have been torn up. At the same time many companies and individual factories have been split away from the national contracts and their workers forced to accept wage freezes, COLA cuts, pension giveaways, work rule changes, and so forth. The terrible cuts suffered by the Chrysler workers and others will also be imposed on the coal miners if they don't fight.
A resolute stand by the coal miners at this time will be a serious threat to this whole offensive of the lords of capital. Just like when the miners waged their historic 111-day strike in 1978, a sharp fight today will inspire the workers all across the country. A miners' strike will prove that the workers don't have to bend down to the vicious offensive of the capitalists, but can join hands in mass struggle to defend their jobs and livelihood.
UMWA Bureaucrats -- Traitors and Scabs to the Miners' Struggle
While the coal miners have shown that they are ready to fight, Sam Church and the other top bureaucrats of the UMWA have been working overtime to put a stop to the miners' struggle and sell them down the river.
Last summer Church declared that the slogan "No Contract, No Work!" should no longer be considered the motto of the UMWA and that he was willing to "extend the contract" in order to negotiate a settlement without a strike. In the middle of the contract talks in March of this year, Church went on to say, "We want stability in this industry. Lord knows I don't want a strike.... We're going to work our butts off to avoid it."
When the contract negotiations broke down Church dispatched the UMWA bureaucrats back to the coal fields to try and stop the wildcat strikes. He then threw out the window most of the essential demands of the miners, quickly signed a sellout contract, and began declaring again that the contract should be extended since in his view there is no reason to strike for just a few days.
Church claims that putting an end to strikes, or what he calls "labor stability," is the best thing that ever happened to the coal miners. "Labor stability," Church argues, means that the coal industry thrives, production and export of coal increase, and more jobs and a better life are given to the miners.
But life itself has already proven that Church's claims are the ridiculous fairy tales of a traitor to the miners. For the last three years there has been relative "labor stability" in the coal fields compared to the 1975-78 period. And what has it gotten the miners? The coal barons have been firing miners right and left. The capitalists' productivity drives have cut the work force and maintained extremely dangerous conditions. In 1980 alone 123 miners were killed in the mines and another 16,600 were reportedly injured. Mines are being sold, subcontracted out or closed down completely, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs, the loss of seniority for many miners, and a generally worsening situation for those miners still working. On top of this the miners' pay is being slashed to the bone by soaring inflation.
Three years of "labor stability" has brought nothing but impoverishment and ruin to the coal miners. And "labor stability" today will only mean further ruination under Sam Church's sellout contract. Long years of experience have shown that the miners have never won a thing except through struggle.
Take a Firm Stand Against the Coal Barons!
In a word, the coal barons and the UMWA top leadership have joined arms to saddle the miners with a sellout contract. The miners should take a firm stand against this sellout. The attacks which the miners face today are a continuation of the attacks which the miners fought with their heroic 111-day national strike of three years ago. The present situation demands the same resolute, self-sacrificing stand. For the miners to take a firm stand against the arrogant demands of the coal operators and the sabotage of the UMWA bureaucrats will be a powerful blow struck in defense of all the workers. The coal miners' struggle will receive the solidarity of the workers everywhere who are fighting the capitalist offensive.
March 28, 1981 marks the second anniversary of the nuclear breakdown and near catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This accident outraged the country and spurred forward the mass movement against the nuclear energy program. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in demonstrations and other mass actions. Once again, on this March 28, thousands of people are gathering in Harrisburg to protest against the Three Mile Island plant and the nuclear program.
The movement against nuclear power has been closely connected with the struggle against U.S. imperialist war preparations. Mass actions have taken place against both commercial nuclear power plants and against nuclear weapons plants and systems, including the Trident nuclear submarine and the Rocky Flats weapons plant in Denver. And it is no wonder. Right from the start, the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie developed the nuclear power program as part and parcel of the nuclear weapons program. The fight against U.S. imperialism lies at the heart of the fight against the nuclear energy program.
The nuclear program is nothing but a program of wild profiteering and criminal poisoning of the people. It is a program of preparations for war and of developing new ways to enchain other countries by controlling their energy sources. The nuclear energy program should be scrapped lock, stock and barrel.
No! To the Reopening of a Nuclear Power Plant at Three Mile Island!
The nuclear breakdown at Three Mile Island two years ago vividly exposed the dangerous and adventurous character of the nuclear program.
It punctured once again the myth of the "safety" of nuclear power. At that time more than 50,000 people were forced to flee their homes to escape dangerous radiation. Various studies have estimated that the radiation thatleaked during this accident will cause from 300 to 2500 cancer deaths. A meltdown, which almost took place, could have killed 45,000 people and contaminated a good part of Pennsylvania. Today the TMI power plant still continues to pose major dangers to the health and safety of the people of the area. The damaged unit has still not been cleaned up. Metropolitan Edison is even threatening to dump 700,000 gallons of radioactive water into the Susquehanna River from which residents get their drinking water.
The aftermath of the TMI breakdown also punctures the myth of "cheap" nuclear power. The utility company has already raised rates to pay for their own recklessness. Furthermore, the company is crying poverty and claiming not to have the money to foot the cleanup bill. So it is planning still further rate increases to make the masses pay for the cleanup costs and to further blackmail the people to let it reopen operations at the undamaged unit at the TMI plant. All across the country, nuclear construction costs have skyrocketed and utility rates have been repeatedly increased to pay for more nuclear expenses, for decommissioning programs and also for the huge bills for nuclear plants that proved defective or useless before they even produced a single kilowatt of electricity. To get public acceptance for the nuclear program, the capitalists swore up and down about how cheap nuclear power was. Today these bloodsucking millionaires are seeking to impose the whole burden of the nuclear fiasco upon the people. But it is the capitalists who are responsible for the nuclear program and it is they who should pay for its extravagant expense and for the cleanup costs.
Yet now Metropolitan Edison is clamoring to reopen the Three Mile Island plant. As well, the chieftain of reaction, Ronald Reagan, has brought back Joseph Hendrie to again head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency which licenses, promotes and whitewashes the nuclear industry. How shameless, for Hendrie was head of the NRC at the time of the TMI incident. He earned notoriety for arrogantly covering up the crimes of Metropolitan Edison which owns the TMI power plant. As soon as he returned to office, Hendrie pledged to streamline the licensing procedures for putting more nuclear power plants into operation. This is aimed at wiping away many of the nominal environmental procedures and regulations which exist today and thus to further weaken a system which has already produced the TMI accident. This elimination of safety regulations is part of the bipartisan program of "reindustrialization" supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
The U.S. Nuclear Program Is a Product of Imperialism and Closely Linked to Preparations for Aggressive War
The outrageous proposal to reopen TMI and the support for the nuclear program from the Reagan administration show that the nuclear program is not some "mistake" or minor aberration that can be cured by appealing to the "reasonableness" of the capitalists. No. The criminal nuclear program is deeply rooted in imperialism and fostered by some of the most powerful monopolies.
Right from the start the U.S. nuclear energy program has been an offshoot of and auxiliary to the nuclear weapons program. The U.S. government showed no interest in nuclear energy until it began its nuclear weapons program in World War II. It immediately put nuclear weapons to imperialist use. The atomic bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not dropped to defeat fascism, for Germany had already surrendered and Japan was all but defeated. Instead the bombs were dropped to intimidate the then-socialist Soviet Union and the victorious anti-fascist masses around the world. These bombs initiated the program of imperialist atomic blackmail. In the post-war period, the U.S. frenziedly built up its nuclear arsenal to assist its search for world domination. Lacking popular support, the U.S. imperialists eagerly sought means of mass slaughter. The nuclear energy program, which came years later, was a mere by-product of the nuclear weapons program.
Today as well, the nuclear energy program remains closely linked to war preparations. Nuclear reactor research is closely connected with nuclear weapons research, and the nuclear reactors supply plutonium for atomic bombs. In addition, nuclear power is being developed as part of energy stockpiling for war. Nuclear power provides an energy resource that is relatively immune to such disruptions by the people as mass strikes such as those of the coal miners.
The nuclear energy program is also being used by the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie to help it monopolize world energy resources and dominate other countries. U.S. monopoly corporations are building or planning nuclear reactors in more than 15 countries. The U.S. corporations maintain control through control of the technology, through being the source of enriched uranium fuel and through retaining ownership and only leasing out many of the reactor units. The huge expense of these plants also ties the recipient country to the U.S. financially. Domination of the energy supply of these countries provides both fantastic profits and a tighter political domination over the vast U.S. imperialist "sphere of influence."
Besides being a bloodstained program of war and imperialism, the nuclear program is also a source of tremendous profits for the big monopolies. The building and operation of nuclear plants provide massive profits to the construction and engineering giants, for the energy monopolies and for the banks, while the utility rates skyrocket.
Since it is a program in service of wild profiteering and imperialist aggression, the monopoly capitalists have developed the nuclear energy program at a frenzied pace, as an adventurous gamble, without regard for the dangers it presents to the masses. The entire imperialist nuclear energy program should be eliminated. But the reason why the nuclear energy program is so criminal and barbarous does not lie in the nature of nuclear energy in and of itself. Nuclear energy is a potential source of large- scale production of energy. Sooner or later mankind will learn how to utilize it. It is the imperialists -- the U.S. imperialists, Russian social-imperialists and others -- who have made a monster out of nuclear energy, developed it as an instrument of aggression and plunder, and gambled with the lives of the masses. Thus in fighting the imperialist nuclear energy program, the struggle must be directed against imperialism and the billionaire exploiters.
The Democratic Party and Its Flunkeys Are Enemies of the Anti-Nuclear Movement
The movement against the nuclear program has brought new sections of the masses into struggle against the imperialist fiends. In order to tone down this struggle, to destroy its militancy and convert the movement into a pressure group for this or that special interest of the energy industry, a section of the Democratic Party and its flunkeys seek to lead the anti-nuclear movement. They want to divert the movement from fighting its real enemies, the imperialists and exploiters, and instead reconcile the movement to these fiends and have everyone vote for this or that smooth-talking imperialist political liar, like Senator Kennedy or California Governor Jerry Brown.
To this end, this year the Democrats have continued to go all out to wipe out all militant slogans from the movement. For some time, among the most popular slogans among the masses have been the slogans calling for the total abolition of the nuclear energy program and slogans against nuclear weapons and war preparations. But wherever the flunkeys of the Democratic Party feel themselves in control, they do their best to eliminate these slogans. They don't want the movement to fight U.S. war preparations, because the Democratic Party is itself an imperialist party which stands for arming to the teeth.
Indeed, the flunkeys of the Democratic Party do their best to eliminate slogans against the nuclear program at all. They promote that it is wrong to be "anti-nuclear," to say nothing of anti-imperialist. They say that such an approach is not "positive." What they mean by "positive" is to join with the monopolies in a chauvinist alliance to "reindustrialize," "solve the energy crisis" and help the capitalists to develop "alternate energy" sources. So while the Democratic Party as a whole follows the Carterite energy policy of promoting nuclear energy and higher oil prices under the slogan of "alternative energy," the Democratic Party "liberals" try to convince the masses that "alternative energy" is the answer to nuclear energy.
The Democratic Party and its flunkeys are saying: Don't fight the monopolies. Instead, give them concessions and subsidies and work with them and invent schemes to ease them into new sources of energy without harming their profits. Hogwash! The energy monopolies are swimming in untold billions of dollars in profits. There is no common interest between these billionaire exploiters and the masses. Only by stern struggle against the monopolists and imperialists can the nuclear program be fought.
Some of the top sellout chieftains of the trade unions have also joined with the "liberal" wing of the Democrats to pay lip service to the anti-nuclear movement. But like the other flunkeys of the Democrats, they only want to keep the struggle under control. They are not representatives of the workers, but strikebreakers and slave drivers sitting on the backs of the workers.
They too prefer not to even be called "anti-nuclear" but pro-"alternate energy" or pro-"safe energy." Among these labor bureaucrats are such notorious sellouts as Doug Fraser of the United Auto Workers, whose idea of "struggle" is to take a seat on the Chrysler Board of Directors and hand over hundreds of millions of dollars time after time in concessions to the auto magnates. Also there is Sam Church, head of the United Mine Workers, who works hand in hand with the coal operators to ram productivity drives down the coal miners' throats and to ban all strikes and ensure "labor stability." One can get an idea of his version of "safe energy" by examining the coal fields, where there is a constant slaughter of miners from cave-ins and other accidents and from lingering illnesses like black lung disease. For just as the anti-nuclear movement requires struggle against the imperialists, so safety in coal requires the militant struggle of the coal miners against the coal barons.
The labor bureaucrats work especially hard with the other Democratic Party flunkeys to eliminate all condemnation of U.S. imperialism and to set up a chauvinist atmosphere. Just as the UAW bureaucrats are spearheading hysteria against foreign imports, so the labor bureaucrats also talk of "ending dependence on foreign oil." In this way the flunkeys of the Democrats try to hide the fact that the U.S. multinational oilcompanies are plundering oil resources around the world, and that U.S. imperialism enslaves whole nations. Oh no, instead, allegedly the other countries are ganging up on poor energy- short U.S. imperialism. What rot! In fact, the U.S. used to be the world's leading exporter of oil. It began importing oil not from shortage, but as part of the way the U.S. oil firms sought to monopolize and control as much of the world oil market as possible. The periodic shortages are fakes designed to impose outrageous price hikes. And overall the U.S. is swimming in energy resources. Just on the basis of technology presently in use or immediately foreseeable, without any importing of oil or use of nuclear energy, the U.S. has ample natural gas, coal and oil deposits to last for many, many decades, until long after other sources of energy come into use.
The anti-nuclear movement must fight the sabotage of the Democratic Party. Not only should the movement retain slogans against the nuclear program and war preparations, but it should go and strengthen these slogans, targeting imperialism.
Mass Revolutionary Struggle Is the Path Forward!
The plan to reopen Three Mile Island and the fanatical pro-nuclear course of the Reagan administration show that mass revolutionary struggle is the path forward for the anti-nuclear movement. There is no alternative to struggle, no shortcuts by schemes of tinkering around and modifying the "reindustrialization" plans of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Workers, young people, anti-nuclear activists! Persist in the path of mass struggle against the U.S. imperialist nuclear program. Work hard to draw new sections of the masses into the anti-imperialist struggle. Put opposition to imperialism squarely in the center of the struggle against the nuclear program.
Workers, young people, anti-nuclear activists! Only through organization can a powerful struggle be waged. So forge anti-imperialist groups everywhere. Use the burning indignation of the masses against the nuclear program to organize the masses.
The advance of the movement requires consciousness and revolutionary theory. Spread anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist literature among the masses. Study the Marxist-Leninist theory which tells the full truth about the imperialist system and the way to fight it.
No to the reopening of Three Mile Island!
No to the U.S. nuclear program!
Fight the war preparations of U.S. imperialism!