WELL-ORGANIZED SITDOWN STRIKE IN MADRID
An unusual sight in the streets of downtown Madrid December 31 was a demonstration staged by 3,000 workers of the Standard Electrica plant, the largest industrial establishment in the area. They were demanding full-time employment and production bonuses.
Astounded by such an action in a fascist country where labor demonstrations are sthictly forbidden, the government ordered ‘out riot squads and mounted police. They charged the demonstration and broke it up. During the clash, they arrested six alleged leaders. However, this did not close the books on the case.
In their jail cells, the six went on a hunger strike. News of this’ leaked out to the workers.
On January 2, nothing was produced in the four plants of the big electronic company. A sitdown strike , involving 13, 000 employees, completely paralyzed operations.
In face of this powerful demonstration of solidarity, management had little choice. They got busy on the phone.
By nightfall the Tribunal of Military Order had agreed to release the six labor leaders. They demanded a face-saving condition -- that work be resumed -- and this was agreed to by the workers.
The most significant aspect of the incident was the capacity of the workers to get together under such short notice under the illegal conditions prevailing in Franco's Spain. The sitdown strike caught the authorities completely by surprise.
POLICE FIRE ON DEMONSTRATING STUDENTS IN INDIA, KILLING 9
Violence flared again in India when police of the Congress government fired into a crowd of demonstrating’ students in Patna January 5. Nine people were killed and 46 wounded by the cops. Several thousand students were involved. They burned down a bus depot and a government. warehouse and threw stones at the police.
The demonstration was one of a series of protest actions staged since December 9 when police fired on students at Muzaffarpur, killing two. A curfew was imposed in Patna and army units were ordered to stand by in the tense city. Demonstrations were banned and schools were closed down. .
RUBY'S DEATH AROUSES NEW DOUBTS ABOUT WARREN COMMISSION REPORT .
By Arthur Maglin
{First of three articles.]
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to seriously defend the report issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. There has been a groundswell of demands for reopening the investigation and the suspiciously confusing events surrounding the death of Jack Ruby on January 4 will almost certainly give further impetus to the controversy over the assassination.
Ruby, an associate of underworld characters and a crony of the police, shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters just two days after Kennedy was killed. Later, Ruby was convicted of killing Oswald, but this past October his conviction was vacated and a new trial set for this February.
; Then, on December 9, Ruby was transferred from the Dallas County Jail to Park-~ land Memorial Hospital. According to the New York Times of December 10 Ruby was “suffering from pneumonia." The Times went on to say that, "Ruby, who is 55 years old, has a heart condition." The Times also reported Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker as saying, "I understand Jack has had some cold for the last week."
Ruby's pneumonia then turned into cancer. According to the December 11 Times: ‘ "Doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital said today that Jack Ruby is suffering from cancer.
"Drs.Jay Sanford and Watts Webb of the Southwestern Medical School in Dallas said that Ruby had undergone surgery early today [December 10] and that cancer had been found in Ruby's lymph node. They said it had spread from some other part of his body."
The December 14.Times reported that:
"A physician who is treating Jack Ruby said today [December 13] that Ruby's cancer was too widespread to be successfully treated by surgery or by radiation."
Another doctor predicted that Ruby was a doomed man:
"A physician who treated Ruby over the weekend said that he may be near death.
"'It could be a month, it could be five years,' said Dr. Watts R. Webb, a professor of surgery at Southwestern Medical College.
"Sheriff J.E. Decker of Dallas County," the article continues, "who had custody of Ruby, has refused to allow newsmen to talk to him or photograph hin."
On December 2% it was reported that doctors at Parkland had ruled out a lie detector test for Ruby on the basis that in his present condition it would not produce valid results. Jack Ruby's brother, Earl, had said that his brother wanted to take a lie-detector test to prove for history that he was not part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
It was ‘reported on January 3, just before the annotincement of Ruby's death, that on about December 18 Ruby had secretly tape-recorded a denial of any conspiracy in. killing Oswald. .
According to the newspaper stories, an unwitting Dallas policeman was in the hospital room and two were outside the door when the recording was made. The tape recorder was hidden in. an attaché case. The policeman did not know what was happening because Ruby' s brother, Earl, told Ruby in Yiddish, "Jack, in the briefcase, the tape recorder is hidden here. :
Ruby, speaking haltingly in English, gave an account of the events of November 24, 1963 -~ the day he killed Oswald. In the recorded interview, Ruby insisted that it was purely coincidence, partly caused by his making an illegal turn into a parking lot, that brought him into the City Hall. at the instant Oswald was being transferred. Ruby further claimed that the moment of killing Oswald is a blank in his memory.
Later news reports on January 3 told of Ruby's death from "cancer." The front page of the New York World- Journal Tribune, however, reported the following as well:
"Penn Jones Jr., editor and publisher of the small Texas weekly, the Midlothian Mirror, a severe critic of the Warren Commission findings and a man who has spent thousands of hours during the last three years investigating the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy, commented:
"'T always said he [Ruby] would never live to get away from the Dallas authorities. . oO
"'My prediction has come true and I don't know what else I can say. He was still in the hands of the Dallas authorities when he made those tapes. I still think the assassination can be solved if the American people want it to be. I'm not sure the American people want it to be solved.'" i
The January 3 New York Post reported:
"One of his sisters, Mrs. Eva Grant of Dallas, visited him today about an hour and a half before he died. While hospital officials described his condition then as ‘comatose,’ Mrs. Grant said he was ‘sleeping peacefully.'
“Many of the policemen and reporters in Dallas knew Ruby before the tragedy as a ‘friendly, puppy dog-type, eager to please,' as one put it.
"But he often flew off the handle, according to strip-girls and bartenders in the club he ran, the Carousel. Ruby had ‘pushed around misbehaving customers and bumpand-grind girls who crossed hin.
"Ruby explained he had pumped the pistol bullet into Oswald to spare Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy the anguish of returning to Dallas for Oswald's murder trial.
"Always he insisted that there had been no conspiracy and that he had not known Oswald."
It turns out, however, after all of this that the cause of Ruby's death was not "cancer," his "heart condition," nor a case of “pneumonia. "On January 4 it was revealed that Ruby had died of a massive blood clot in the lungs. The January 4 New York Post reported this reaction: -
"Sol Dann of Detroit, a Ruby family lawyer, and Melvin Belli of San Francisco, chief defense counsel at Ruby ' s Dallas trial, both said his death was probably caused by police doctors' neglect.
"Dann said he has ‘strong feelings' that Ruby's health was not ‘properly protected' during his long stay behind bars. He said ‘an investigation should be made' to determine what was done to save Ruby's health.
"'Instead of dying in the electric chair he died in a hospital,' said Dann, who led the successful drive to have Ruby's conviction nullified on P peal. ‘It should be determined whether that was the result of neglect.
"Belli, in Paris en route to Rome, said Ruby! s death was 'as callous as it sounds. ' ‘ ee
"'T don't see how a man can be on a suicide watch and how they cannot pick out that the man is damn near dead. How the. hell could it have been missed?' Belli asked."
In Europe the manner in which Ruby died scarcely served to allay the widespread suspicions that were expressed from the beginning that Kennedy was the victin of a plot with sinister ramifications.
Jacques Almaric, writing in the very respectable Le Monde (January 5) called special attention to the astonishing exchange between: Jack Ruby and Earl Warren, reported by a now dead journalist, but included in the volumes of the Warren report without any denial as to its authenticity.
In this interview, Ruby begged Warren to have him transferred from Dallas to Washington. As long as he remained in Dallas, Ruby said, they would learn little from him. He demanded to be transferred as quickly as possible, saying that it was of importance to Warren.
-77?-
Almaric expresses his surprise that this request was never granted, that the commission did not follow. up this clue, nor even go into Ruby's relations with the police. .
Almaric adds, however, that this failure does not prove anything. "It does not prove in any case that Jack Ruby was inoculated with cancer to prevent him from dis~ closing a vast plot -- knowing that he was doomed, he did not risk much in. revealing what he had succeeded in hiding such a long time."
The reference to -the way in which Ruby may have contracted his fatal illness is no . doubt directed against ugly rumors circulating in Europe.
a oy . = JOHNSON IS RIGHT FOR ONCE
... Among other things putting him above ordinary men, such as being equipped with “extra glands," President Johnson has.a feeling for art. So far as is known, he has displayed this only once; but the quality of judgment revealed in the instance is sufficient to show that the world lost an art critic of highest caliber when Johnson decided to go into politics. ss:
The great man's hidden talent ‘came to light last -year when the official. Presidéen- _ tial portrait, which he had commissioned, was sent to him at his ranch for approval. When the artist arrived, he found that Johnson had set it up under fluorescent lights and "It looked like death warmed over.
“In a single pithy phrase, Johnson gave artist Peter Hurd the distillation of his Judgment -- "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw.
As Hurd told the story later, "My hair began to bristle. I said, 'What do you like, Mr. President? ' And he said, Aral show you) what I like,' and whisked out Rockwell." ; a
This was a drawing of the President done by the magazine illustrator Norman Rockwell from a. photograph and maybe one sitting by the great. subject for a. few. minutes. Johnson, as a true. connoisseur of. art, kept this beautiful work in his desk drawer for handy reference. . ;
According to .Hurd, _Mrs.. Johnson told him afterwards that she didn't ; expect to endure any meeting so grim again if she "lived to be 1,000." Over the phone she explained to Hurd, "The only thing that didn't go wrong that day was that the government of Viet Nam didn't fall.
No doors were slammed.as the artist left the LBJ Ranch. But, naturally, with the customer dissatisfied, the sale didn't go through. The price tag, incidentally, was only $6,000 -- just half the usual price, seeing who this patron -of the arts was and what it meant in reputation, free advertising and other good and valuable considerations to have a portrait of him accepted.
Hurd said, "I was damn glad to get out of the whole thing." Still, he was bound to feel some disappointment, and considered the President's comment "very damn rude," as he had spent fifty hours on the canvas, twice the usual time, and "I had worked my tail off."
The New York Times took an editorial position on the esthetic values where the artist and critic were at loggerheads, saying, "Mr. Johnson's reaction to Mr. Hurd's painting -- "the ugliest thing I ever saw' -- is. not easy to understand,. since Mr. Hurd _is only a slightly slicker, if less sentimental, practitioner. of the illustrative realism that is Mr. Rockwell' s standard style."
By way of consolation to the President, the Times declared that compared with news and TV photographs, "any painted likeness of Mr. Johnson or any other public figure is likely to take on the quality of a mortuary exercise..."
As for our own position, in this case we think the art critic is, in the main, correct. He is a little off base, of course, in putting such strong stress on nuances_ of style. Nonetheless, in view of the subject matter -- which must also concern the critic as well as the artist -- he is undoubtedly dead right in coming to the conclu- . Sion, "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."
HOOLIGANISM AT LIEGE -- DESERTION AT THE AVENUE KLEBER
By Pierre Frank
A demonstration in behalf of Hugo Blanco was held December 14 in ‘front of the Peruvian embassy in Paris at the Avenue Kleber. [See World Outlook January 6.] All the organizations claiming adherence to Trotskyism were there save one, the group that recently baptized itself "Organisation Communiste Internationaliste," plus the youth organization it guides, "Révolte." These two organizations had nonetheless been invited to a meeting to discuss undertaking the action in favor of Hugo Blanco and they were represented there by Stephane Just, who began by affirming amid general smiles that they were the only Trotskyists.
They refused, to go along with the action for. two main reasons: (1) We were associated with officeholders of the UNR [de Gaulle's Union pour la Nouvelle République] and priests in the appeal for "A Billion for Vietnam";* (2) the aétion in behalf of Hugo Blanco ought to try to mobilize the unions with the exception of the CFDT [the Catholicdominated Conféderation Frangaise et Démocratique du Travail]. These two reasons warrant some comments. -.
We signed the appeal for a billion and gave our reasons for it publicly. All that is involved in the appeal is a simple demonstration of solidarity, the weight of which we do not overestimate, couched in terms that are unassailable, expressing solidarity without any reservations towards’ the Vietnamese people against American imperialism. The appeal does not concede anything at all to "pacifist," "humanitarian" sentiments masking more or less dubious orientations. If some UNR deputies, some priests, etc., have subscribed to this appeal, is that any reason for saying, as did the spokesman of one of these groups at a meeting: "Not a sou for the billion! "?
We repeat: All that is involved is a simple act-of solidarity with human beings who each day are subjected to tons of bombs by American imperialism.
let us consider a less important example. Some workers are involved in a long strike, and a solidarity committee is set up to help the families of the strikers by collecting funds. And let us suppose that the bourgeois deputy (UNR or any other) of the constituency and the parish priest, for their own reasons, subscribe to the appeal. (Don't let anyone tell us that this is an absurd hypothesis; it has been seen. Only a few months ago a bishop marched at the head of a demonstration of strikers in.a city in the south.) Are our "purists" going to tell a striker who asks them to put their names down for something on the list: "Since the deputy and the curé on the corner are contributing, I'm not giving a sou"? With such "Trotskyism," we obviously have nothing in common. :
We are certainly in favor of steps to get the unions to take up the defense of Hugo Blanco. But why exclude the CFDT? When we were trying to save the Rosenbergs from the electric chair, appeals were addressed to the Vatican, which intervened. We wonder what objection could be made to that! ; ;
But for our sectarians, the argument is that the CFDT is a "Trojan horse" in the workers movement; that it is the vehicle of the Catholic hierarchy in the workers movement, etc. The latter point does not appear to us very exact since the split occurred with the CFTC [Confédération Frangaise des Travailleurs Chrétiens -- French Confederation of Christian Workers], because this split had an objective significance and cannot be interpreted as a maneuver.
‘ However, let:us grant the argument -~ that the CFDT represents interests alien to the workers movement. By the same logic, it could be said just as accurately that the FO [Force Ouvriére] is the "Trojan horse" of American imperialism, this conféderation having been supported since its foundation with American funds (the unions of that country serving in this instance as a transmission belt for the State Department). Why exclude one "Trojan horse" and not the other?
Stephane Just and his comrades aré against the CGT-CFDT [CGT -- Confédération Générale du Travail] accord not because of its reformist content, but in -principle,since they are against an accord on the trade-union level with the CFDT. On this point, moreover, they support the thoroughly reformist leaders of the Fédération de 1'Education _ Nationale. We will return to this later. °
*The current campaign in France to collect one billion old francs (US$2,000,000) to help the Vietnamese people in their struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression.
As for us, we are not only for agreements (their content is something else again), we are for even more; we are for the unity of the CGT, FO and CFDT. This, of course, must not be unity at any price. But in principle, communists are against splits on the trade-union level; and there was a time when they fought in favor of trade-union unity not only against the traditional reformists but also against the CFIC concept of "union plurality."
That's not all. If these "Trotskyists," horrified at the Catholic hierarchy, did not belong to a phony International Committee, if they were members of a genuine international organization, they would know, for example, that in Germany before 1933 there were Social Democratic and Christian unions, and that in 1945 trade-union unity was achieved. What is their slogan for Germany? To kick out the spokesman of the Catholic hierarchy ~- because there is one -- and split the unions?
This is still not all, because the workers movement, unfortunately, does not lack in "Trojan horses." The members of the organization who don't want the CFDT to defend Hugo Blanco are in the FO where they are in alliance among others with Hébert of Nantes. In the latter city, this anarcho-syndicalist supports the reactionary Morice, celebrated at least for having belonged to the Comité de Vincennes pour l1'Algérie Frangaise and. constructing a line bearing his name that sought to isolate Algeria from Tunisia. What does this indicate about the ties between Morice and Hébert?
Let's take a look, if you don't mind, in the direction of the Masonic lodges. We also see there the leaders of the Fédération de 1'Education Nationale. Aren't the lodges a "Trojan horse" in the workers movement? Do Stephane Just, Lambert and the others prefer the apron, hammer and Masonic rigamarole to the chasuble, stole and rituals of the Holy Roman Church?
The "arguments" that were trotted out didn't mean much to anyone except Stephane Just, for whom not much is really needed. They were only a pretext, after all, not to get involved in an action with "Pabloites," "Frankites," etc., in which it would not be possible to operate. the way these organizations did at Liége. There, in October, a demonstration was organized by the Jeune Garde Socialiste [Socialist Young Guard] of Belgium against NATO and for Vietnam. The organizations for whom Just spoke sent a delegation of some 300 youth, their main objective being to "unmask" the Fourth International. In this operation they conducted themselves in hooligan fashion.*
At Avenue Kleber they could not put us "on trial" in front of the Peruvian embassy. They would have had to march shoulder to shoulder with "traitors," "petty bourgeois," etc. This is not really possible for sectarians who do not know where the class line really runs and for whom the main enemy is not the bourgeoisie but those who belong at least as much as they do to the Trotskyist school. This sectarianism ran the whole gamut in less than two months -- from hooliganism at Liége to desertion at Avenue Kleber, as they have deserted in all the actions for Vietnam (National Vietnam Committee, War Crimes Tribunal...)
It is to be hoped that these experiences will begin to signify something to some of the youth who have been attracted up to now by formulas in which one denounces the Stalinists, the Catholics, the Fourth International, the Chinese, the nationalists of the underdeveloped countries -- everyone excepting a few reformist or Freemason friends.
* Their friend, Healy, continued the operation in England, where a comrade selling literature at the entrance of one of his meetings was badly beaten. Afterward, the victim denounced the scandal in the press, and for this, the same Healy who spread the lie _that the Belgian Young Guards had called the police against comrades in the demonstration at Liége is now threatening to drag him into the courts of Her Majesty the Queen.
SAVAGE CONDUCT UNDER AMERICANS IN MEKONG DELTA
The savagery with which American attack in the Mekong Delta is proceeding is indicated by a January 10 Agence France Presse dispatch reporting that in Long An province, the South Vietnam "Rangers," accompanying the Americans, entered a small village and seized four youths. Labeling them "Vietcong," the Rangers cut off their heads. Leav-— ing the bodies at the roadside, they strolled through the village, swinging the heads by the hair as trophies of war. The officers of the American unit in the area were reported to have been disappointed at such conduct as it was not calculated to help them win the hearts and minds of the local population, which Ky's American advisers have repeatedly affirmed is required to "win" the war.
"BUREAUCRACY IS ALWAYS ON THE PROWL" [CONCLUSION OF CASTRO SPEECH]
[In our January 6 issue we published the first part of a speech given by Fidel Castro December 9. After the opening part of his speech, Castro took up in specific detail a number of developments in agriculture in Cuba, reporting what was being done to solve concrete problems and the achievements up to now as illustrated in various parts of the country. In the part below, he has reached the question of sugar, the country's most important industry.]
x * *
This coming year we're going to have an excellent sugarcane harvest, in the harvest that. is already underway. As you_know, there are now 48 mills grinding approximately 25 million cwt. of cane. (APPLAUSE) Being able to start the sugar harvest in December has been of great importance. Because to complete the sugar plan, it will be necessary ‘for the mills to operate five or six months; to reach the sugar goal it is not only necessary to enlarge the sugar mills, which is being done. It will also be necessary to extend the duration of the sugarcane harvests. And now, this year, for the first time in the history of our country, no less than half a hundred sugar mills are in operation and have ground nearly 25 million’cwt. of cane in the first 10 days of December. That achievement is an excellent, a magnificent omen. It means that pursuing this path, we will be able to fulfill our sugar goal for 1970; it means that even though we have an imposing, arduous goal, we can fulfill it. Next year we plan to apply 400,000 tons of fertilizer to cane alone. This year, between September and June, we will apply 105,000 tons of fertilizer to coffee. To get an idea of how much fertilizer 105,000 tons is, it is enough to say that before the Revolution the fertilizer used in agriculture throughout the entire country did not come to much over 100,000 tons; and nevertheless, only for coffee -- for coffee. alone -- during the period between September and next June, 105,000 tons of fertilizer will be used.
The coffee plantations here formerly produced 30 cwt. for every 13.5 hectares, perhaps 40 or 50. On some occasions, a new coffee plantation produced 100, or slightly more, cwt. for every 14.5 hectares. We must commit ourselves to elevating the production of coffee to no less than 200 cwt. for every 13.5 hectares; that is, we have to practically triple or quadruple the production for every 13.5 hectares that existed under capitalisn.
In other words, in only two areas, coffee and sugarcane, half a million tons of fertilizer will be employed. To this figure must be added the fertilizer that will be applied to vegetables in general, to fruits in general, and to all crops in general. That is, our country is entering the stage of employing fertilizer, machines, and technology. on an extensive scale.
If, for example, fertilizer were not applied to those hectares of onions of Banao that are going to produce 5,000 cwt. in the first year, they would produce only 2,000 or 3,000 cwt. and the second, they would produce only 1,000 cwt. Employing fertilizer, agricultural production in our country can practically be tripled, because technology, except in a few crops -- such as potatoes and in some tobacco areas -- was not used in the past. Only in very rare cases under capitalism was fertilizer applied to sugarcane in the capitalist era and it was practically never applied to coffee. The major part of our agriculture lacked fertilizer. But, naturally, under capitalism, if 13.5 hectares produced only 50 cwt. we had not only sufficient coffee but excess coffee. But under the present conditions in our country, if 13.5 hectares produced 100 cwt., there would still be a shortage of coffee. But we shall cultivate to meet the maximum consumption of coffee, since we estimate that we will one day consume a million and a half cwt. in our country. Before the triumph of the Revolution, some 600,000 or 700,000 cwt. of coffee were consumed. We estimate that the consumption of coffee -- once it is no longer rationed ~~ will reach a million and a half cwt.
Some 150,000 tons of sugar were formerly consumed in our country. Presently, approximately half a million tons are consumed.
And this is the picture in every area of agriculture.
For that reason, we all must work; for that reason, all society must work. But not simply with physical effort, but with technology, with machines, with all the means that man can employ to increase production, to increase the wealth, to satisfy his needs.
In our notion not only will society as a whole be incorporated into productive work, but, in addition, technology and mechanization will be the handmaidens of produc-— tion. The enemies of the Revolution, the imperialists and the members of the bourgeoisie,
pelieved that the Cuban people could not progress; that without the landowners and technicians of the capitalist era, and suffering the imperialists' economic blockade, our nation would collapse. However, it is not turning out as they believed. Much to the contrary, our nation will achieve extraordinary success; our country will attain production figures that will surprise the entire world.
In the production of cattle, for example, there are at present 1,200,000 cows included in the artificial insemination plan. We can state that today we are among the top-ranking nations in the world in artificial insemination of cattle. (APPLAUSE)
By the end of next year more than two million cows will have been artificially inseminated. And by that date, with that percentage, we may be the leading country in this field.
A great many persons ask what this means exactly. They wish to know what artificial insemination means in practice. Take the Zebu cow -- I think that everyone around here has seen a Zebu at least once in his life -- which produces about a liter and a half of milk daily. The offspring of such a cow, produced by genetics and artificial insemination, may produce eight and ten liters of milk daily. Of course these changes do not come about from one year. to the next.
What is the significance of such a program? Could we have had even a million cows inseminated artificially in 1960? No. Because at the time of the triumph of the Revolution I believe there were just one or two experts in artificial insemination in the. entire country. And how many technicians are there in this field today? ‘Two thousand. (APPLAUSE)
Why have we been able to reach the million mark in artificial insemination, and even surpass it? Because in spite of the long backwardness in this field, we have two thousand technicians today. And it is not enough to speak only of the number of experts in artificial insemination, for their productivity has increased five-fold since that time when we first organized them by. group and they received motorcycles with sidecars to ride out to their jobs. We are able to "motorize" these technicians, and today you can see them constantly going back and. forth on the country roads.
What does all this mean? That several years have been required to train these two thousand experts; to arrive at the figure of a million cows inseminated artificially. These cows will give birth in 1967, the heifers will be ready for artificial insemination in 1969, and by 1970, hundreds of thousands of offspring of the original million cows will be producing milk.
Let us extrapolate even further. While by 1970 there will be approximately 400,- 000 such dairy cows producing, by 1971 there will be close to a million more; approximately a million more cows.
We have had to wait some years for this; we have had to work at this for some time. But the time is not far off when we will be reaping the benefits of these efforts.
In fact it is already of benefit to us simply to have two thousand trained specialists in an important field. By 1970 we will have five thousand such specialists. And does anyone know how many specialists in artificial insemination we will have by 1975? Twelve thousand!
Perhaps you are asking yourselves, “Why so many specialists in this field?" The answer is that we plan to have some eight million cows and heifers by that date. Moreover, we know from experience that certain underdeveloped countries may very well need specialized assistance and ask us for much aid.
But why twelve thousand experts? Wouldn't nine or ten thousand do? There are two good reasons why we are planning to train more specialists than we need.
These two reasons are: one, some nations may ask us for technical aid in the future; and two, if we have two or three thousand more than our immediate needs demand, this means two or three thousand technicians studying, advancing. For instance if we need nine thousand technicians and we have ten thousand, we can take a thousand off the job for a full year of higher studies.
On December 18, several hundred technicians will be the first graduates, of the Technological Institutes. Are you aware how many students there are in those schools at present? Sixteen thousand five hundred. And ‘how many will be studying there by January, 1967? Twenty-five thousand. And how many agricultural experts will have graduated by 1970? Twelve thousand. And by 1975, forty thousand. (APPLAUSE)
We can have an idea of what our country will be like when these tens of thousands of students graduate...thousands are studying for the fishing fleet, thousands for the merchant marine, and more than twenty thousand are studying for a career in teaching. Close to thirty thousand students are enrolled in the universities of Havana, Las Villas, and Oriente. What does this mean? I was explaining to some of the comrades here that in order to have an idea of a society where there are hundreds of thousands of technicians, all we had to.do. was to look at what Acosta has done here in Banao, or what Eliseo, an agronomist specializing in sugarcane, has done in Camaguey. Suffice it to see what an enthusiastic, capable, revolutionary technician can do, what two or three of them can do, to realize what a society that can boast hundreds of thousands of technicians can be like and what-it can accomplish.
In an effort to crush the Revolution, the imperialists did their utmost to make our technicians leave the country. They carried on all sorts of campaigns. Naturally, Yankee imperialism does not limit its efforts simply to taking technicians away from Cuba. We had very few technicians, and our technical level in many fields of science was quite poor. The imperialists lure technicians from England and from all of Europe as well. Every industrialized country is faced by the same problem: by offering higher wages -- sometimes two or three times as much -- the Yankees manage to entice technicians away from England and many countries in Europe. They take technicians away from their own allies. Many physicians and engineers who graduate in Latin America emigrate to the United States because the United. States tries to entice away technicians from everywhere. As I said before, they even take technicians away from their own allies.
They did not do this in Cuba simply because Cuba had good or many technicians. They did it in order to crush us. They are not interested in those technicians. I can tell you that all the technicians they took away, put together, are worth less than one good revolutionary technician. (APPLAUSE)
I am sure that the technicians they took from us will never help the imperialists reach the moon or discover anything, for they were mostly a conglomeration of incompetents, parasites, reactionaries, and scoundrels. (APPLAUSE)
One cannot think of a specialist in a technical field who is not first of all a real human being, and it is impossible to think of a human being who is an egoist. An egoist cannot be called a human being. One cannot think of a technician without human feelings. And only a technician who loves others, who feels a passion for work, who is stimulated by the ideal of serving his country, of being of service to his fellowman, can be a good technician.
The imperialists tried to take away all those miserable specimens. Did this cause any harm? Some, perhaps, but what does it matter? What do the few miserable specimens they took away mean? What does this trash they took away mean when compared with the technicians, the tens of thousands of revolutionary technicians the Revolution is now training? (APPLAUSE)
We are happy to say that notwithstanding the imperialists' campaign to lure away technicians, in coming years our country will be among those with the largest number of technicians -- in the underdeveloped sector of the world -- and on a level with many of the developed countries.
Speaking of a certain modern technique, I was explaining the case of artificial insemination, aimed at the development of our cattle industry. We are close to being in first place in the world in use of this technique. Undoubtedly, by next year we will be in first place. This is one type of technique; tomorrow it will be another, then still another, and so on. Take sports, for instance. You all know about the development of sports in our country; you know the place our country occupies in sports; we have just had the Chess Olympiad, and all the visitors, many of whom had become accustomed to the lies and vilifications that the imperialists print. about our Revolution, were amazed at the attention they received, at the organization of the event, at the people's interest in chess. They were amazed at their mass participation in such an activity that in many countries, especially capitalist countries, has always been reserved for a privileged minority. This very stadium, for example, can hold over 10,000 people. You know very well that when the baseball season begins it will be filled to capacity. We have estimated that over 10 percent of the population of Santa Clara has come to this stadium, and not all of those interested in coming have done so.
This means that mass participation of the people in cultural and educational activities, in sports, in production, in national defense, in building the nation's future, is a real, powerful, irrefutable fact, that has prevailed over the wrath of our imperialist eneny, over their blockades, aggressions, attempts to crush our country.
. And as each day goes by, as each month goes by, as each year goes by, it becomes more evident that they will never be able to destroy our Revolution. Each day it becomes more impossible to crush our Revolution! (APPLAUSE) Our Revolution becomes more power~ ful, more .solid every day.
_ What will they have to say about this? What will they say about the tens of thousands of women who have gone into production, who have begun working, who have enrolled in the Schools of Technology, Medicine and Humanities at our universities. What will they say about the thousands and thousands of women working in medical services?
What will they say about the tens of thousands of women who entered’ the field of education, and who have gone to work in day nurseries and schools? What will: they say. about the women who have gone into the field of production? What can they say?
What future could our women look forward to under capitalism and imperialism? To work at the worst tasks. What future awaited the daughters of workers and peasants? An honest job, by any chance? No, only a brothel. But brothels no longer await women in this country! (APPLAUSE)
ATL that our women could expect from capitalism and imperialism | were the worst jobs, the most humiliating jobs, discrimination, underestimation.
Today, this all appears to be a nightmare from the past. No worker , no father, has to send his daughter away to work as a maid for wealthy families, or to work ina bar or brothel. The past, that nightmare, that odious future which that society offered Cuban women has. been eradicated forever.
In order. to realize what the Revolution has done for the Cuban women and ‘in turn, what the Cuban women have done for the Revolution, one must go to Banao, ‘Ban Andrés, to Pinares de Mayarf, La Caoba and Palenquito. (APPLAUSE) a
One must visit the hundreds of avicultural centers in the country, the dozens of rabbit farms that are being developed through the country, to see our women employed at a decent, worthy, liberating job. And one of these places -- because it tts the one that has. impressed me the most, because it.is where woman's revolutionary spirit and fervor were most evident -- was precisely one that I mentioned before: ‘Banao. -’
Let the skeptics, those who did not believe -- or do not believe -- go to Banao; let those who underestimate women, those who cannot conceive of their capability and potentiality, come to Banao’™ and ‘visit many other places as well. (APPLAUSE)
This does not mean that the Revolution is trying to solve the problem of woman's work by means of bureaucracy, by means of some unimportant job in some office.
And when I say this I repeat that it should be understood that we do not believe that working in an office is undignified, or useless. No, office work is something we cannot do without, it is a necessary thing. What we can do without is bureaucracy, what we can do without, is the accumulation of bureaucrats in offices. (APPLAUSE)
Those who do not seem to understand what bureaucracy means; those who do not seem to understand that bureaucracy does not make anybody happy, that bureaucracy does not make any worker or any woman happy, should go to an office full of women employees and afterwards they should go to Banao. Let them try, let them see for thémselves, let them make a comparison. Let them verify the different ‘kind of enthusiasm ‘and happiness resulting from creative, productive work.
The result of knowing that they are serving their children, their husbands, their parents, their country, and the Revolution (APPLAUSE) , by struggling, creating useful things, and contributing to the general welfare. ;
Let a minimum number of employees remain in the offices. Let us be relentless in our attack on bureaucracy. This is an ill requiring years of permanent struggle because once we let down our guard, bureaucracy will take the offensive.
We have explained the whole process in one sentence : the Commissions ‘of the Fight Against Butveacuracy have become bureaucratized. In other words, they have let down their - guard and tried to solve problems by bureaucratic means. Some organizations have added to their personnel without consulting the Commissions; many offices, many administrators have increased their personnel without previous consultation. But we remain alert, without Lowering our guard. The next step is to de-bureéaucratize the Commissions of the _ Fight Against Bureaucracy and invest them once again with the revolutionary spirit and method. (APPLAUSE)
_ We did gain some ground in the fight against bureaucracy; an antibureaucratic awareness was created. But bureaucracy is always on the prowl. The vices of bureaucracy become manifest under various forms: there are certain government officials who hire students even though they know very well that it is forbidden to hire students -- that is, if a student is in financial trouble we prefer to grant him a scholarship, or a loan, instead of a job which will turn him into a bad worker and a bad student -- some organizations hire ‘students at will; some offices and departments have violated the laws of the. struggle against bureaucracy by hiring additional | ‘personnel.
Finally, I take this opportunity to sound the alarm, to tell the bureaucrats that we are-on the alert; to tell the revolutionary comrades in the Commissions for the Fight Against Bureaucracy that these Commissions have shown signs of bureaucracy and therefore they must be de-bureaucratized.
We can count upon the people's énthusiasm, with the enthusiasm of all the women in this. country, with the enthusiasm of every one of us, to promote plans, to promote woman's creative work, and to develop the country's economy.
By the same token, we would never do this while on the one hand we call upon the women to work in our fields, to send their children to nurseries, to get up at dawn, and to go to work and create material goods, and on the other hand we allow bureaucrats who have not the slightest idea of what productive or creative work means, free spenders of the people's money, free spenders of money they have not earned by the sweat of their brow, to go around wasting money.
And it is not only money that they waste. They do something worse than just wast-
ing money: they are wasting intelligence and. human beings. Because if one of those bureaucrats who could do his job with the help of twenty people goes round inventing organograms, and creating positions to be occupied by eighty additional people, without turning out any paperwork, or worse yet, producing papers that become veritable stumbling blocks, bottlenecks, this bureaucrat, this antisocial entity, this enemy of the Revolution, is doing something worse than just spending one hundred thousand, or one hundred and. fifty thousand, or two hundred thousand pesos. What does it take to produce one hundred thousand pesos' worth of onions, tomatoes, strawberries, milk, beef, grapes, sugar, or what have you? How much does it take? How much work, how much sweat, how many acres of land, how many hours, how much sacrifice? And what does it take for a bureaucrat to waste 100,000 pesos, to pay 100,000 pesos, to pay 100,000 pesos in unnecessary salaries in payment for abstract work? Gan anyone call himself a revolutionary, a socialist, a communist, or a participant in a proletarian revolution if he is ignorant of the work involved in producing one liter of milk, or a tomato, or a grain of coffee, ora pound of malanga?
When I want to find out who is a revolutionary and who is not a revolutionary, I am guided by the following criterion: Does this man know how much it costs to produce any of these things? Does he know that in order to produce a liter of milk a man has to get up at 2.a.m. and work until dawn in the milking of cows, or run around the pastures day and night, taking care of the animals, in order to produce one or ten or one hundred liters of milk? Does he know the value of that effort? Can he appreciate the product of work, and does he know how to appreciate human beings?
I would say that such a bureaucrat not only wastes 100,000 pesos -- and perhaps it would take 100 women an entire year of work to produce 100, "000 pesos -—- an amount he wastes on a single payroll; he not only squanders the 100,000 pesos; even worse, ‘he wastes 80 people; he misuses the work of 80 persons, wasting both their intelligence and their energy.
Can we say that there is no more bureaucracy? Yes, there has been a campaign against bureaucracy, but nonetheless, bureaucracy exists. Does this mean that there are no more bureaucrats? There are still bureaucrats, and many of them, most of them, do not know what a peso represents; many who have no. conception of what it means to produce a peso's worth of milk, meat, vegetables or fish; and that is really what they throw away, what they waste. This is hardly revolutionary; this helps absolutely nobody. I believe that the greatest harm one can do another person is to make him do work that is useless, to make a person do a job where the uselessness of his efforts are all too Clear. to him. And this explains why a woman can feel useful and happy cultivating a tomato plant, planting a coffee bush in a nursery. She can feel happy at such tasks.
There are still a lot of people with petty-bourgeois mentalities. Can one have proletarian awareness and yet be blind to these things? No! To act so is to retain ~ petty-bourgeois viewpoints, habits and ideas. This petty-bourgeois mentality still infests our socialist administration but the proletarian spirit advances more rapidly every day throughout the entire nation. In contraposition to that spirit, to reaction-
ary, conservative, and petty-bourgeois tendencies, the proletarian spirit which we see from one end of the nation to the other, is advancing. The people enthusiastically enroll in productive tasks; the people constantly develop awareness. And the pace at which we develop our awareness -~ I repeat -- determines the ground we gain in the battle against the petty-bourgeois mentality, and our freedom to proceed full steam ahead in our proletarian Revolution, of our socialist Revolution, of our communist Revolution. (APPLAUSE)
And I only wish to add, enthusiastically:
Long live the women of Cuba! (APPLAUSE)
Long live the revolutionary spirit, the revolutionary discipline and the revolutionary dedication of Cuban women! (APPLAUSE)
Long Live the feminine Revolution within the socialist Revolution! (APPLAUSE)
Patria fo) Muerte! . .
Venceremos! (OVATION)
CANADIAN TROTSKYISTS DEMAND SLL ANSWER ON TATE CASE
{The following is” the text of a letter which the League for Socialist Action addressed to the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League in London. The letter deals with the beating of Ernest Tate in front of a meeting held under the auspices of the SLL. This was first reported in World Outlook December 2, 1966. Subsequent developments have been reported in succeeding issues.
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1 Cumberland Street
Toronto 5, Ontario
January 1, 1867 To the National Committee of The Socialist Labour League
Comrades:
We are astonished to see that you have not responded in any positive way to the appeal issued by the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and which you acknowledge receipt of in the December 3 issue of your official organ, The Newsletter. They asked you to place your national secretary on trial and that you expel from your ranks everyone involved in the hooligan attack against Ernest Tate outside your meeting at Caxton Hall on November 17.
For our part we do not question for one moment that Comrade Ernest Tate is telling the truth when he states that he was viciously assaulted as he was attempting to encourage those attending the meeting to purchase, so they could study, a pamphlet entitled Healy “Reconstructs" the Fourth International. As a leader of our movement, the League for Socialist Action, he informed us that a group of persons. known to him and other witnesses as members of the SLL, and under the direction of your national secretary, assaulted him and gave him such a working over that he had to be hospitalized. It was only by good chance that he was not killed and appears to have suffered no permanent injury.
You see, we know Comrade Tate. We know him as a revolutionary socialist, as a Trotskyist of the highest integrity and the firmest dedication to the cause of the international working-class movement that bears the name of Leon Trotsky and numbers within its ranks such fearless fighters as Hugo Blanco.
Aside from the political and moral credentials of the accuser, and they are impeccable, your political committee published a statement in your official organ on August 20 that sustain his charge. It is in fact a directive to members of your movement to act as Tate claims they did against him. It declared publicly in your name that, "We shall not hesitate to deal appropriately with the handful of United Secretariat agents who hawk it-around the cynical fake-left in England." Since then your paper, in its November 12 issue, reported an incident where a revolutionary was beaten-up and thrown out of a meeting where your national secretary was the featured speaker because
he wanted to defend his organization from the attack and revilement that had ‘been leveled at it throughout the meeting. Instead of denouncing the assault of this revolutionary and his associates, the Newsletter approved. It seems clear to us that these incidents sustain Tate's charges.
Even should you believe that Tate has concocted his story, and that others, such as the Voix Ouvriére, have concocted their stories for reasons unknown to us, it is obvious that you yourselves must initiate the action suggested by the SWP or some alternative action which will make it possible to ascertain the truth of Tate's charge.
Failure to do so, you must admit, tends strongly to affirm the truth of the charges leveled against your national secretary and certain members of your movement.
Do not think that this is a small matter, an incident that will blow over or that can be permitted to be overlooked by serious revolutionary socialists committed to the herculean task of building a new society. And do not justify your failure to act along the lines of the SWP proposal with any kind of rationalization that to do so would be a form of capitulation to the pressure of the SWP, that it would amount to some kind of "win" for the SWP, which for many months now you have been abusing in the columns of your press.
This would truly be spite that amounts to cutting off your own nose to save your face. ,
Even should you feel that the SWP has taken up this matter, not at all in the interests of world Trotskyism, but for some petty factional consideration -- and nothing whatsoever in our long and close association with the SWP permits of such an interpretation -- you should seriously consider how your failure to act will be interpreted by all those across the world who consider themselves to.be Trotskyists. Think what it means to those sections of the British left who have already heard or will yet hear of this accusation. Think what it means to the internal life of your own movement.
We take it for granted that you are familiar with the longstanding and tested policies adhered to by any movement that calls itself Trotskyist in respect to the denocratic rights of members of this movement, of working-class opponents, and even of exponents of views that can be said to be petty-—bourgeois opposition views. Our movement has always stood for a full and free discussion of ideas. It has always rejected absolutely all attempts of any kind to infringe on, to curtail, or to suppress this process in any way, not to speak of violent physical suppression. We have taken this stand not at all because it has long been the Trotskyists who have been denied a hearing, whose rights have been trampled on, suppressed, and whose activists have been beaten up and even murdered. We have taken this stand because the movement required to carry out the task that we have set ourselves cannot be built on any other principle -- because no characterizations of us or our ideas hold any terror for us, because we have nothing, not anything to hide.
: If you have any doubts in this respect we would refer you to the conduct of the SWP in collaboration with Trotsky himself in respect to one James Burnham. And since the Newsletter on occasion has seen fit in its personal vendettas against leaders of the United Secretariat to dip far back in the history of such sections as the French -we would refer you to Trotsky's intervention in the Molinier incident.
Instead of responding to the SWP's very simple and logical request that you face your national secretary with Tate's charges, that you place him on trial, you have allowed your leadership to go to the courts. Not to a court of labor and socialist opinion composed of trade unionists, socialists, whose collectivity would assure impartiality and the determination of the truth, but to the bourgeois courts, the courts of the class enemy.
The first result of this violation of elementary working-class principle has already heaped ignominy on you. What. satisfaction there must be in knowing that you have succeeded in wringing 21 guineas out of two working-class papers for having published a letter by Tate protesting the assault on him, and in winning the threat of worse should they comment on the Tate incident!
We cannot help but recall to your mind when you were taken to court, and the capitalist judges handed down awards against you. In the tradition of working-class solidarity with victims of capitalist court injustice, when you were the victim we responded to your appeal to the full limit of our resources. We welcomed your national secretary on our platform. We launched a special financial drive through the ranks of our members and sympathizers and gave you a very large sum of | money. :
And now having forced, with bourgeois court orders, the working-class press of Britain into silence, your victorious solicitors have, upon the advice of Gerry Healy, threatened our comrade with a court injunction restraining him from circulating information relevant to his case, including the contents of this letter, we assume, or suffer the consequences. You should know that no single issue in Canada today, not wages, not working conditions, but court injunctions unites the ranks of the working-class opposition to capitalisn.
Let us assure you that we are as fully behind Comrade Ernest Tate as we were behind you when you were being harassed by the courts. We will not have him silenced and we will aid him in his efforts to the fullest extent of our resources.
What a legacy of hatred for your movement, what awful precedents are being set by the course that your leadership launched you upon by their action in front of your meeting just last November at Caxton Hall. Where will you go from here? What was the logic of the course that was set then? Are you prepared to send Comrade Tate to jail for defiance of a court injunction? Stop now! Turn back! Act on the suggestions of the SWP -- or you will be forever lost to the ideology of which you claim to: be the sole practioners.
Comradely ,~~
Ross Dowson
Executive Secretary
League for Socialist Action
AMERICAN STUDENT YOUTH SCHEDULE SPRING ANTIWAR MOBILIZATION
{On December 28-30, an important gathering of representatives of some 37 different student groups and 17 local independent committees to end the war was held in Chicago. The 257 delegates included representatives from Canada and Puerto Rico. After an intensive discussion, it was decided that a’nationwide strike against the war in Vietnam is not feasible at this time but that a nationwide mobilization of*students could be carried out. Agreement was reached on organizing "Vietnam Week" April 8-15. This will be a week of intensive campus antiwar activity, culminating in massive demonstrations in New York and San Francisco on April 15. Student youth from all over the country will converge on the two centers to voice their feelings against the role of the U.S. in Vietnam. The following is the text of the call issued by the Chicago conference. ]
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"They have made a desert and called it peace." -- Tacitus.
It is two years since the U.S. government began bombing North Vietnam. For two years the U.S. government has continued to escalate the war and spent ever increasing sums of money. In Vietnam the war is being paid for by the increased shedding of the blood of American and Vietnamese soldiers, and the ever increasing killing of Vietnamese civilians. At home the war is being paid for by increased food prices, increased tuition, and the ever increasing disruption of the lives of American youth. This poses a challenge to those Americans who for the past two years have been striving to bring the horror of the war to the attention of their fellow Americans: for now large segments of America can be reached with the message that the war is a barrier both to their own individual happiness and to the fulfillment of the American dream of a nation with liberty and justice for ail.
We must respond to this challenge by confronting our fellow students and our professors with the truth about the war and its perverse effects upon our society:
We must face the true nature of the war. It is first of all a war of aggression against the people of Vietnam, who seek only to exercise that right of self-determination for which Americans fought in 1776. It is a racist war, a murderous war against a colored people. It is an illegal war fought in our name but without our consent. It is but one symptom of a diseased society, a symptom that must be ended if it is to be possible to begin treating the disease itself.
We must face the true nature of the draft system. It is that system by which the war machine is nourished by the blood of young men. It is that system which makes the war possible. It further perpetuates a system of racism in the United States. It calcu-
latedly penalizes the’ poor. It.is used by the government to crush the aspirations of American racial minorities. It ’converts the classroom into an arena in which the losers are: sent out to kill and be killed and the winners must live with the knowledge that their "success" in school may mean another's death on the battlefield.
The war in Vietnam makes it clear that the administration of this country with the complicity of the colleges and universities prefers to train Americans to become instruments of war instead of enlightened human beings.
We, the Student Mobilization Committee, urge all those. students who wish to oppose the criminal war in Vietnam to dedicate themselves anew to the task of ending the war. Specifically we propose that April 8-15 be designated as Vietnam Week. We urge national student action during Vietnam Week which will.culminate in the transportation of as many students as possible to New York and San Francisco as part of the general Spring Mobilization of the antiwar movement on April 15. Finally, we propose that the focus of End the War in Vietnam Week be on: (1) Bringing the GI's home now; (2) Opposing the draft, and supporting the right of individuals to refuse to cooperate with the military system; and (3) Ending campus complicity with the war effort.
It is especially appropriate that we American students, fighting for the right to determine our own future, support the right of self-determination throughout the world and call for international opposition to the war in Vietnam, which denies the right of self-determination to the people of Vietnam. %
"TRISH MILITANT" SCORES HEALY IN ERNEST TATE CASE
[The following item, under the title, "Healy Goes to: Court," appeared in the January issue of the Irish Militant.]
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Different sections of the British working class movement adopt different attitudes to the repressive arms of the capitalist state machine. One organisation which evinced outright hostility at the whole legal apparatus and contempt for the "collaborators" was the Socialist Labour League, led by Gerry Healy. Their publications are replete with fulminations against any "socialist" who dares have truck with any capitalist institution. ,
Now Peace News and Socialist Leader recently published a letter from Ernie Tate, manager of the Marxist Pioneer Bookshop, alleging that S.L.L. members had, at Healy's instigation, beaten him up. What was Gerry scourge-of-—the-fake-lefts Healy's reaction? He went whining to his lawyer and dispatched writs in all directions.