This statement was posted on www.bolshevik.org on 12 June 2011.
In 1917 No.33 (2011), we noted that the Internationalist
Group (IG) had ignored the 23 October 2010 port shutdown in the San Francisco Bay Area
protesting the racist cop murder of Oscar Grant. This important action was initiated by
class-struggle militant Jack Heyman, whose activities in the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union (ILWU) the IG had previously promoted with enthusiasm. We speculated that
the IG’s reticence might have resulted from a reluctance to endorse the
union’s call to “jail killer cops,” a demand that has been a point of
contention between the IBT and the degenerated Spartacist League (SL). The IG did not
express an opinion one way or the other:
“Unwilling either to defend or to distance itself from the SL’s
brainless sectarian repudiation of the call to ‘Jail Killer Cops,’ the IG has
opted to ignore the most important labor action against racist capitalist injustice since
the 1999 ILWU shutdown of U.S. West Coast ports in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal (also
initiated by Heyman).”
—”Another ‘Blank Page’,” 1917
No.33
Our polemic apparently touched a nerve, and the IG broke its silence on the issue with
an April [2011] statement entitled “ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Justice for Oscar
Grant.” The IG allows that “the ILWU action points toward a real mobilization
of workers’ power in militant class struggle against the brutal enforcers of
capitalist ‘law and order’,” but explains that “the
Internationalist Group did not endorse the October 23 rally [organized by the union as
part of the port shutdown] because of disagreement with the ‘jail killer cops’
slogan.”
In the lead-up to the action, Heyman wrote:
“Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has called
for a labor and community rally October 23rd in Oakland to demand justice for Oscar Grant
and the jailing of killer cops. Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the
black community and others against the scourge of police brutality.”
—Counterpunch, 18 October 2010
The IG chose to interpret this call as sowing reformist illusions:
“Heyman, a militant union activist in ILWU Local 10, who was one of the
main organizers of the October 23 union action, wrote that ‘killer cops belong in
jail’ while correctly observing ‘that’s not how justice in capitalist
America works’ (Counterpunch, 18 October 2010). But in supporting the call
to jail killer cops, he and others suggest that it could work that
way.”
In order to give its argument some plausibility, the IG equates calls for jailing
killer cops with advocacy of “‘community policing,’ hiring more black
cops, putting in black police chiefs, black mayors and governors, and even a black
president.” Yet demanding that murderous cops who carry out extra-legal executions
be prosecuted and sent to prison does not amount to a call to reform the capitalist state.
The IG does recognize that “the racist police figure they have a license to kill
with impunity, and they do,” and also notes that “Police routinely kill
innocent black people with impunity across the country.” So should Marxists be
indifferent to such outrageous crimes? Only sectarian imbeciles could denounce the demand
that the perpetrators of such racist murders be held to account as reformism.
The fact that the police are essentially above the law—i.e., that they
routinely trample civil liberties, rights and freedoms supposedly guaranteed by bourgeois
legality—is widely recognized by the victims of capitalist rule. Far from
“propagating the bourgeois democratic myth that under pressure, the state can be
made to serve the interests of the masses,” organizing widespread opposition to
particularly egregious cases—like the cold-blooded execution of Oscar
Grant—can provide an opportunity to help militant workers and rebellious youth see
that the pervasive and systemic racism of American capitalism can only be ended through
socialist revolution.
While essentially agreeing with the SL on this issue, the IG gently chides Workers
Vanguard for “not distinguish[ing the reformists spreading illusions] from the
masses demanding justice”:
“An oppressed population demanding that a particular cop guilty of a
heinous crime be jailed is desperately seeking some measure of justice.…However,
when leftists call to ‘jail killer cops’ in general, they are propagating the
bourgeois democratic myth that under pressure, the state can be made to serve the
interests of the masses.”
The IG apparently agrees that [Grant’s killer Johannes] Mehserle “should
certainly be behind bars for the rest of his life,” i.e., in jail. In that case, why
should they object to the proposition that other cops who commit equivalent crimes also
“be behind bars for the rest of [their lives]”? American capitalism is deeply
racist and incapable of operating on a genuinely democratic basis, but Marxists are not
indifferent to violations of formal democratic rights.
In a 2009 polemic, the SL wrote:
“the BT’s cry to ‘jail the killer cops’ borrows from
the social-democratic lie that this state can be made accountable to the ‘will of
the people.’ The BT says so itself, writing, ‘whenever a few cops can be held
accountable for a few of their crimes it is a small victory for their victims.’ In
reality, even on those rare occasions where the rulers find it necessary to punish one of
their murderous gendarmes, the purpose is to refurbish illusions in the state as some kind
of ‘neutral’ arbiter.”
—Workers Vanguard, 24 April 2009
This went too far for the IG, which, in its recent statement, commented:
“By one-sidedly arguing that any jailing of an individual cop would just
be to ‘refurbish illusions’ in the supposed neutrality of the state [the SL]
even suggests that this would actually be a bad thing.”
Yet in an effort to avoid being too closely associated with our criticisms, the IG
approvingly cited some earlier SL smears:
“The SL recalled a BT article on ‘Cops, Crime &
Capitalism’ (October 1992) which grotesquely went on and on about the problem of
urban ‘crime’ in black neighborhoods—the codeword of racist support for
the police—in the aftermath of the 1992 protests against the acquittal of the racist
Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King.”
Anyone who actually reads “Cops, Crime & Capitalism” (1917
West No.2) will see that this is a complete misrepresentation. Far from complaining
about “black crime,” we explained the intimate connection between the
pervasive racism of American capitalism and state repression:
“Working people, blacks and other oppressed layers are ambivalent about
crime. Black people, for example, are the most frequent victims of crime, and many want
more police protection for their neighborhoods. On the other hand, they are also the most
likely victims of police brutality and misconduct. Blacks, especially young males, have
been so uniformly stereotyped as criminals that much of the bourgeois rhetoric about law
and order is racist code for ‘get the blacks.’ It is estimated that a black
male is almost six times as likely as a white male to do time in a state prison during his
lifetime.”
The statement discussed the social conditions that engender anti-social behavior and
how the legal framework of the “war on drugs” provides a “pretext for
police oppression of black youth.”
The IG’s recent leaflet includes the slanderous assertion that: “The BT
also called then [i.e., in 1992] for ‘workers defense guards’ to
‘prevent bloody spontaneous explosions, like riots.’” The IG cannot cite
a source for this accusation because it is pure invention. What we actually wrote was:
“Only the proletariat has the social power and the objective interest to
eliminate the causes of crime. A strong workers movement which established integrated
workers defense guards could take a big step toward defending workers and the oppressed
from both crime and police brutality. Workers defense guards would have nothing in common
with the Guardian Angels (or equivalent community policing scams) who work with the
police, nor with vigilantes who are often racist, ethnically-based gangs defending
‘their turf’ against ‘outsiders.’
“To be effective workers defense guards should be integrated to cut
through the racism which so divides the working class. They would generally be initiated
in response to attacks upon workers’ picket lines by the capitalist state, its
fascist allies or the private goons of individual employers. Once engaged in class
struggle, workers will quickly see the usefulness of defense guards in protecting workers
and the oppressed in other areas of their social life, including the fight to be free of
crime and police harassment.”
—“Cops, Crime & Capitalism”
In our statement on the Rodney King protests (“LA: Days of Rage,” May
1992), we stated “as revolutionary Marxists, we share the rage of South-Central Los
Angeles,” and concluded:
“In the wake of the LA events, bourgeois media and politicians are quick
to remind us that ‘rioting accomplishes nothing.’ This may be true in the long
term, but it is also true that every paltry reform or gesture toward racial justice that
the capitalist state has made in the past has been in direct response to anger in the
streets. LBJ’s ‘War on Poverty’ in the 1960s was aimed at keeping social
peace in the wake of nationwide ghetto explosions. When things settled down, the
‘Great Society’ spigot was almost entirely turned off. The only reason that
one of Rodney King’s club-wielding assailants, Laurence Powell, will stand trial a
second time (unfortunately not before an all-black and Hispanic jury) is because of the
South-Central eruption. Voting for BEOs [black elected officials] and Democrats, on the
other hand, has only led to a deepening of black poverty and an escalation of police
brutality.
“The bourgeois media is full of admonishments that all citizens must
‘respect the law.’ But since when has the American legal system ever treated
blacks as equals?…
“Marxists can have nothing but contempt for the hypocritical
condemnations of ‘violence’ and ‘lawlessness’ now gushing forth
from newsrooms, pulpits and capitalist presidential aspirants. Yet serious militants must
also recognize that racism, poverty and the violence of the capitalist state will not be
ended by unorganized explosions of black and minority rage, however justified. Because the
black masses lack the program and the leadership to fight for a real social revolution,
their spontaneous anger often strikes at the wrong targets, and leaves their real
exploiters and oppressors untouched.”
This is not the first time the IG has slandered us in regard to the 1992 events. In a
25 July 1996 statement (reprinted in our Trotskyist Bulletin No.6), Abram
Negrete, a leading IG member, falsely alleged that the IBT “called for
workers’ defense guards (sic) to stop ‘violence’ like the Los Angeles
upheaval.” We rebutted this baseless accusation in a 15 December 1996 letter to the
IG (also reprinted in Trotskyist Bulletin No.6), and invited the IG to withdraw
it. The IG, which neither responded to our letter nor repudiated Negrete’s
outrageous charge, has chosen instead to cynically recycle it in its recent statement.
The political dispute over “jailing killer cops” is linked to a variety of
other questions. In a 28 July 2009 letter to the SL’s Canadian affiliate we
observed: “When it was a revolutionary organization, the SL understood that
bourgeois democratic rights can only be preserved by opposing egregious violations
committed by state authorities. And it knew how to address such issues without creating
illusions.” We pointed to the attitude taken by Workers Vanguard (then
edited by IG leader Jan Norden) toward the post-Watergate investigations of the illegal
actions of America’s political police:
“Without exception the entire secret police—the most felonious
organization in the country—is guilty of the same charges [brought against John J.
Kearney, head of the FBI’s ‘Squad 47’ charged with illegal phone taps
and letter opening in New York] and probably much more that is far worse. From Kearney of
‘Squad 47’ to William Calley [a junior American army officer who ordered the
massacre of civilians in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War], to Adolph
Eichmann, capitalism’s butchers and hit men are always ‘only following
orders.’ And while we demand that the big guns who gave the orders be brought to
justice, the scum who actually pull the triggers must not be allowed to beat the rap. Put
away all the FBI/CIA criminals! Smash the capitalist secret police though workers
revolution!”
—Workers Vanguard, 21 April 1978
This approach is no less valid today. In our letter we also recalled that, when U.S.
federal agents dragged Spartacist supporter Jane Margolis out of the national convention
of the Communication Workers of America in July 1979, the SL responded by suing the U.S.
Secret Service:
“This is no ordinary lawsuit. At its heart, the case of Jane Margolis
versus the Secret Service poses a significant question concerning the independence of the
labor movement from coercive state control.…
“The facts of this case are without precedent in the history of the
organized labor movement in America. Never before have federal police agents disrupted a
national convention of a major trade union to forcibly remove an elected
delegate.…”
—Workers Vanguard, 23 November
1979
The statement observed that “the rights of labor are the cornerstone of
democratic rights generally.…” The democratic right not to be executed by
racist cops is one of vital interest to working people and the oppressed, and Marxists
have a duty to fight to ensure that “the scum who actually pull the triggers”
do not “beat the rap.”
The SL’s suit against the Secret Service was followed in the early 1980s by
successful lawsuits in defense of democratic rights against the anti-communist Moonie
cult, California Attorney General George Deukmejian, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney
General. We consider all of those initiatives to have been valuable contributions to the
protection of the democratic rights of the entire left and labor movement. The opposition
of the SL and IG to raising the demand to “jail killer cops” should logically
compel them to denounce such lawsuits on the grounds of promoting illusions in the
possibility of reforming the capitalist state. The SL has thus far refused comment, and we
anticipate that the IG will be similarly anxious to avoid addressing this awkward
question.
We very much regret that the leading comrades of the IG, with whom
we share much history and many programmatic positions, seem incapable of transcending the
pervasive cynicism that characterized the thoroughly degenerated Spartacist League of the
1980s and 1990s. Yet their treatment of the “killer cops” issue provides
another example of how, when faced with difficult political questions, they have a
persistent tendency to resort to evasions and slander. The IG leadership’s chronic
inability to “face reality squarely” and “be true in little things as in
big ones” belies its claim to uphold the banner of Trotsky’s Fourth
International.