This is true in Yugoslavia and Albania, where workers and peasants carried out genuine and deepgoing popular revolutions in the 1940s. It is also true in Bulgaria, where, as Malapanis states, "the social transformation...took place...largely under the tutelage of Stalin's Red Army."
In all three countries, various pro-capitalist factions, all of which have their origin in the privileged bureaucratic social layer that has ruled since the late 1940s, either aim to put themselves at the head of the resistance in hopes of winning power, or try to retain it through the tried and true methods of police repression.
What Malapanis calls "the major difference" between developments today in Yugoslavia (and presumably Albania) and those in Bulgaria, that is, the lack of a popular revolution in Bulgaria 50 years ago, doesn't appear from the Militant's coverage to have made much of a difference, at least up until now. Some explanation in a future article would be most helpful. Keep up the good work!
Jim Altenberg
Oakland, California
Social Security
I was very impressed with Megan Arney's February 10
Militant article "Social Security: A product of labor
battles." As she points out it was the labor battles of the
1930s that led to passage of the Social Security Act.
In 1932, in Cassandra, Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town near Johnstown, PA, the coal company laid off one half of the work force. The miners who still had jobs went to the company and offered to work less so that nobody would be laid off. The company, certainly not interested in worker solidarity, refused.
Thus began the great Cassandra strike of 1932, a strike which lasted for close to two years. During those years, the miners' displayed tremendous determination, cooperation, and solidarity.
It was battles such as this that forced the capitalists to make concessions to labor.
Nicholas Brand
Loretto, Pennsylvania
On Watergate...
In your reply to reader Stan Smith (Militant Jan. 27,
1997), you take up the question of the Watergate scandal,
saying, "The Watergate crisis, for example, had little to do
with the incident after which it was named ... [but rather]
simply registered the implications for the U.S. bourgeoisie
of American imperialism's defeat in Vietnam."
This may be a passage that itself suffers from being written - as you say - "in-shorthand." And obviously, the, implications for the U.S. bourgeoisie of their defeat in Vietnam are vast, covering practically everything that's happened since that great day. But such a statement, so general, doesn't really explain what Watergate was all about either.
I hope you won't think I'm nit-picking to write this comment. but I believe the way you answered Smith in this regard rather more confused than clears up the point that should be made.
My starting point is that I believe the Watergate crisis actually had a lot to do with the incident after which it was named.
As The Changing Face of U.S. Politics explains:
"The working of American 'democracy' abroad has been revealed in Vietnam.... But even more than foreign operations, it was the extensive violation of democratic rights at home that were profoundly shocking to so many Americans as Watergate unraveled and the domestic crimes of the CIA, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service were exposed.
"As the Watergate scandal unfolded, American workers began to see this spectacle not as an isolated case of crooked politicians being caught, but as proof of a general mode of operation that constituted a threat to fundamental democratic rights. These methods were initiated, carried on, and covered up by a ruling class determined to halt and eventually roll back the social and economic gains made in recent years by the working class and its allies.... The 'credibility gap' that began with Vietnam and escalated to unprecedented proportions with Watergate represents in reality a crisis of political confidence in the government, the beginning of a crisis of legitimacy." (page 6 1 )
This crisis has "deepened popular doubt about the rulers' intention to administer a government or to decide domestic and foreign policy in the interests of the broad majority." (page 105)
It was this distrust and growing interest in fighting such attacks that provided the political underpinning for the wide support that made possible a victory for the SWP and YSA in their historic lawsuit against government spying.
I think it's important to explain Watergate and the political problems it caused for the ruling class concretely because this is an essential backdrop to understanding the intended effect of the pornographication of politics today. Pornographication is exactly aimed at depoliticizing the disgust so many workers and youth feel as the divisions within leading circles of a weaker and more unstable imperialism bring to light more and more of capitalism's scandalous business as usual.
It is part of "the politics of resentment that benefits the ultraright, not the working class."
This is why the coarsening of politics is such a serious question for class conscious workers. The reaction to Watergate during the post-war boom helps us see what is different in today's depression conditions.
...and uppercase 'Black'
Also, with regard to the use of uppercase in the word
Black. I believe the Militant - as do most
publications - capitalizes the names or all nationalities
(oppressed or not, regardless of their history or vanguard
role) as a matter of style: Quebecois, Italian, Russian,
Chechnian, etc. In this sense, uppercase Black is simply
consistent as applied to the word used today by most Afro-
Americans to describe their nationality. The
Militant - unlike many other publications - also used to
capitalize Negro when that was the word preferred by most
Blacks prior to the radicalization of the 1960s.
In contrast "white" (as the Militant has pointed out) is not a scientific designation for a nationality. It is a shorthand formulation with no precise political or biological meaning for people who can be of diverse national origins and different social classes (with conflicting interests).
We can speak of "white workers" in a shorthand way, or 'workers who are white." But this doesn't tell us very much about them. "White" could he used to describe, for example fighters, for an independent Quebec or many activists in the fight to win a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal - as well as staunch opponents of both these struggles.
"White" is a social and political category that feeds a racial myth. Used by itself, it doesn't really explain anything about a person's location in politics or even geography. Why would it be capitalized?
Pete Seidman
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania