Us Bosses Search Poltical Answers

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The defeat of both former front-runners-Kennedy and Reagan-in the recent lowa primary elections, and the growing likelihood that for the first time ever a Kennedy may be squeezed out of a Presidential candidacy, are an indication of the political confusion that now wracks the US capitalist class.

While Carter. has been The Tory government's enthusiasm for restoring full diplomatic relations with the bloodstained Chilean dictatorship ran into a problem last week.

A protest delegation from the Chile Solidarity Campaign met Foreign Qffice Minister Nicholas Ridley-only to hear nIm • question whether the Chilean. regime had actually carried out the torture of Dr Sheila Cassidy which, in 1975, had led to the withdrawal of the British ambassador.

When Abol Hassan BaniSadr goes to visit the mostazafin, the 'dispossessed' of south Tehran, he does not go alone.

With the newly elected president of the Islamic Republic' go armed officers of the army and police.

They are there not so much to guard against attack, but to symbolise in a concrete form the authority which Bani-Sadr is seeking to bring firmly within his ambitious grasp.

No other Iranian leader since the fall of the Shah has had the audacity to display such an escort, a living reminder of the brutal force employed against his subjects. by the "King of Kings"

But Bani-Sadr does not look for his support or protection to the Islamic muitia of the Pasderan. He seeks precisely to disarm them, and replace their power with reconstructed forces of repression, controlled directly by the central state authority.

It is this certain knowledge impassing his imperast rvals with his stern cold War pronouncements and his thumping $15 billion increase in military • spending, he has succeeded in establishing a readtionary base at home upon which he hopes to rebuild his hitherto shattered clectoral popularity.

Grain embargo

But all this is not wit hout cost. The much publicised ¿rain 'eln . embargo on the USSR will have As Shadow spokesman Peter Shore led a chorus of angry protest, the Foreign Office was forced to issue a further statement only 24 hours later declaring that it does believe Dr Cassidy's account of her, torture at the hands. of the junta.

But the new ambassador will nevertheless take up his post in Santiago as the liaison officer between the Tories and the savage Pinochet regime.

The British labour movement must renew the struggle for practical action in solidarity with the Chilean working class.

Bani-Sadr which has thrown the political forces within Iran into a new pattern of rivalries and alliances, with Bani-Sadr's driving motives as the dynamic centre.

Consolidate base

The first victories in this new phase of the power struggle have been won by the president to consolidate the base of his election triumph. i severe impact on prices and thus the cconomic plight of thousands of small US farmers.

Carter's restrictions on industrial trade with the USSR will have an impact on jobsand on the profits of corporations reluctant to see themselves squcezed out of • lucrative contracts with the Stalinist burcaucracy in which profits are actually guaranteed.

The new missile systems designed to pur the Soviet Union once more on the defensive are to cost in excess of $33 billion and desecrate thousands of square miles of desert and farming land.

And lus proparations to restore the dratt will alienate and radicalise whole layers of youth and students.

Reforms cancelled

The allocation of such resources to "defence" also mean the cancellation of virtually all of Carter's promised social reform measures even in the run up to the election.

And so grave is the cconomic crisis that in the tirst weeks of the year the predictions of the US budget deficit were rising at the giddy pace of $l billion per week and currently stand at around $40 billion.

The ORCD predicts that the Us cconomy will actually decline by Z'i in 1980 with all that means in terms of lost jobs and collapsing industrio One indication of this ST.M last weck's announcer nent by The Imam himself has installed Bani-Sadr in his position. despite insistent intrigues. But Khomeini has tionary Islamic bigots with the Stalinist Tudeh Party.

Chairman

Last week he also conf er red on Bani-Sadr the chairma ıship of the 'Revolutionary Coi incil' and full executive powers, with the right to assemble i new This heavy blow came atter the Council members had opposed unanimously (barring, of course, Bani-Sadr himself) the giving of such powers before next month's assembly Bani-Sadr's election has also brought a gathering threat to the Islamic students' in occupation of the US embassy.

The president has intensified we're FaLLING TEDDY more alr the Chryster Corporation of all-time record trading loss St.I billion in the last ycar.

This has prompted renewed speculation as to whether the Carter administration's plan to bail out the ailing car firm will ever reach fruition: its management predicts further catastrophic losses of $500 billion next year, and there are now hundreds of creditors all over the USA who could at any point trigger its collapse by simply calling in outstanding payments.

or US bankers the actual collapse of Chrysler is an increasingly favourable proposition. The auctioned-off assets of the firm would realise upwards of $200 million to be divided amongst existing creditors-whereas if Carter's plan is implemented the federal government would become the first-and effectively sole creditor to be paid off in the event of: the Corporation's eventual demise.

With even Ford reporting US car and truck sales down by 23%%, the problems of overproduction in a depressed market suggest that a whole range of vested interests may well combine even now to sink Chrysler in the hopes of restoring the profitability of the surviving US car giants.

Workers

In any event those suttering by each turn of Carter's policies ure the American working class, whose leaders remain tied to the bourgeois politicians of the Democratic and Republican Partics.

Some had looked to Kennedy as a more supposedly "pro-labour" candidate, and one ments within governments' boosted by Khomeini's recent statement on Afghanistan.

reticence of his attacks on the other 'super-power' ', the USSR.

condemnine 'the occupation of their country by foreign forces.

This turn has been greeted with silence by the embassy occupation, where it can scarcely have been welcomed. Nor have the Stalinists of the Tudeh party yet responded to this blow.

While the Maoist paper Randjbar has hailed Bani-Sadr as å l 'champion of the struggle against the social-imperialism of the USSR' with the Chinese UH... WE MUST aTion Gas noW!

LeT's Freeze waces UH... Prices, Too! mol BIG GovernmenT! no reGistration.

no DraFT! UH...

no SancTIons acainst iran!

aranst Iran H... ThY THe better able to stir some semblance of enthusiasm from alienated US workers-whose massive abstention in elections has grown year by year.

But now the patriotic huc and cry whipped up in the aftermath of Afghanistan scems to have pulled support behind Carter.

At the same time Carter's reactionary sabre-rattling has stolen the thunder of ageing Republican hard-liner Ronald Reagan: he was firmly defeated in lowa by the more "moderate" reactionary George Bush.

But one thing is certain: none of these leaders has anything to offer the working class.

To defend their class interests, US workers need above all to break their mass organisations from the twin bourgeois parties and fight for the building of i Labour Party on a programme of socialist policies. lating him on his election and •Soviet bureaucracy has been far less enthusiastic.

The Tudeh Party still mainImam' (i.c. Khomeini).

This blatantly counter-revolfor nis miness, prayers or mis mantinen foe hir recovery and praise for his The Guide of the Revolution' may have been touched, but was not visibly softened by this homage.

Khomeini's Santi-imperialist line' is now being used to tow Bani-Sadr's bandwagon to a position where the new president, the 'spiritual son' of the Imam, can dominate with all the repressive apparatus of a modern nation-state.

Wright -Providence Journal Butleti From back apparatus and 'law and order'without which they couldn't govern even if they were to win.

Imperialism, through Governor Soames is taking steps to meet the threat of the growth of a working class alternative to the politics of petty bourgeois reformism.

This action has involved giving greater support to the vicious activities of the army and the auxilliaries, and taking repressive measures against ZANU and ZAPU-particularly in those areas where centralised bureaucratic control from Mugabe and Nkomo has been unable to enforce adherence to the terms of the Lancaster House settlement.

The bulk of this repression will fall. on ZANU(PF), whose leadership has been weakened by years of in-fighting between the various petty bourgeois reformist factions.

The greater autonomy of the ZANU military cadres is the price paid by Mugabe for their support in his battle for leadership with Sithole between 197477.

Even with the full support of President Machel of Mozambique, Mugabe has been unable to eliminate all opposition within ZANU, largely because those most militant were inside Zimbabwe in armed combat with the Smith regime:

Nkomo With the frequent use of the jails and police of Zambian President Kaunda, Nkomo was able to assume a greater centralised control, but he too failed to suppress all the militants.

Whatever the eventual makeup of the neo-colonial government, one thing is certain-it is only by taking up the struggle for their own independent organisation and demands, that Zimbabwean workers will be able to defend their interests against whoever administers the capitalist state.

The way forward for workers is clear-their strength which forces the repressive state to seek compromise must now be directed to forcing those left-talking leaders who claim to be delivering them from imperialist repression, to withdraw from a sell-out, the sole objective of which is to stabilise the capitalist state.

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1980

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