Page 4-Wednesday, February 13, 1980--The Michigan Daily
UrSdpigan :3axIQ
Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom
Of radicals and sugar twisties
Vol. XC, No. 110
News Phone: 764-0552
01
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Studentsand the campaign
y ESTERDAY'S newspapers
carried a report that students
may have had considerable impact on
the outcome of the Democratic
caucuses in Maine,. If the report is true,
or even if politicians are simply made
to believe that it is,. the current cam-
paigners might just find themselves
with no choice but to add the student
constituency to the list of groups whose
needs and desires they must consider.
Students have more than sheer num-
bers to offer: They are one of the few
interest groups that candidates can
count on for active canvassing, phone
calling, door-to-door hustling, and
propagandizing in general. But Ken-
nedy and Carter are not simply going
to take for granted that grappling for
the student vote is a worthwhile pur-
suit; ' they have to be shown that
students are ready and willing to do the
tedious work requisite for garnering
support. In exchange for a promise of-,
inexpensive student labor, even - the
president's ruffled war feathers might
be seen to relax into a more tidyI
arrangement. The political system,
faults and all, can be made to work for
student interests, notably on such
issues as plans for registration and the "
draft and nuclear energy. We
might as well play the game-it's the
only way we'll win any of the prizes.
It's been twelve years since student
activism was generally recognized as
having had strong impact on a
presidential race, and it took candidate
Eugene McCarthy to attract it. Though
perhaps none of the candidates
possesses the charisma that McCarthy
displayed, there are certainly more
than enough issues on which clear and
relatively solid student opinions will
emerge. Once the candidates are
through jumping from right to left and
back again, and have settled into more
or less consistent stances on the issues
important to students, the combined
strength of youth can be thrown behind
the gentleman closest to the ideal.
As I entered the Fishbowl, the sounds I
heard were familiar.
"Hate capitalist ;imperialism!" cried a
spokesman for the Revolutionary Communist
Youth Brigade. "Help destroy American
puppeteering of capitalist czarist activities!
Support the overthrow of U.S. totalitarism!
Buy a donut! Get your coffee right here!"
Being a sucker for sugar-glazed twisties, I
purchased two donuts and some Sanka, alone
with my secretthat I could be of no assistance
to overthrowing U.S. totalitarianism, at least
not until I finish graduate school.
HAVING AN HOUR to exercise my free
time, I took an inconspicuous seat against the
glassed-in bulletin boards, facing the doors to
the fishbowl. It was 10:01 a.m. I watched with
interest people greeting each other, bodies
squeezing through the crowded area, and the
frantic attempts to get coffee before class
started. I opened up my magazine and
prepared for a relaxing hour.
I quickly became aware of more cries from
the crowded fishbowl.
"But the Workers Vanguard!" went the
chant offered by a couple of radicals. "Crush
oil companies! Stop corporate profiteering!"
1 took a huge bite of my donut, a true sensory
pleasure with the daily minimum
requirement of calories.
Suddenly, a young bearded man with a
faded lumberjack shirt and Tito sunglasses
approached me. I hid myself quickly in my
magazine. Maybe he won't see me, I thought
to myself.
"EXCUSE ME," he said. I pretended not to
hear. "Hello?" he persisted. Slowly I looked
up.
"Buy a copy of Workers Vanguard!" he
suggested. "Read how oil companies are
raping the land and the people. Stop corporate
profiteering!"
"But I already have some reading
material," I replied, lifting my Fortune
magazine so he could see it. "And besides," I
argued, "if I buy a Workers Vanguard, will
corporate profiteering really stop?"
Probably not, he said impatiently, and
before he could continue I expressed my sin-
cere desire to be left alone with my glazed
twistie and rapidly-cooling Sanka. As he left, I
shook my head with disgust, and resumed
"..
By Nick Katsarelas
reading about Exxon's quarterly sales.
WITH ONE MORE bite, I devoured my first
donut and moved on to the second. As I flicked
some sugar specks off of the alligator on my
shirt, I noticed some more commotion near
me.
"Join the Young Socialist Alliance!" went
the cry. "Kill capitalist yelling dogs! Nuke
the bourgeois!"
I stared at the bespectacled malcontent
wearing a faded lumberjack shirt who was
doing most of the yelling. He saw me and
began walking over. I spun around, preten-
ding to read the flyers taped on the bulletin
board behind me.
After a couple of minutes, I slowly turned,
only to find the bespectacled malcontent
standing over me. My eyes pleaded with
him for mercy.
"CRUSH THE RACIST Carter regime!" be
demanded. "No thanks," I replied, cowering.
"Down with Carter's racist policies," he
continued. My conscience struggled with me
to fight back. I fought back.
"Anyone who doesn't know the difference
between racism and ethnocentricism is no
partner of mine in the class struggle," I said.
"Comrade, I beg your absence."
He paused, bewildered, and then walked
away dazed.. My hands trembled. Per-
spiration beaded on my forehead. My Sanka
was cold.
I COULD TAKE no more. I rose and began
gathering my things. Out of the corner of my
eye, I saw another merchant selling her
wares. She firmly grasped a Daily Worker in
-one hand, and thrusted a clenched fist into the
air with the other.
"Protest the draft! Kill war mongers! Sup-
port Soviet intervention! Hate U.S. attempts
to intervene in Soviet internal affairs!"
Suddenly, the Daily Worker saleswoman
was next to me. "May I talk to you about the
workers' struggle, comrade?" she asked. I
gave in. "Lay it on me, sister," I answered,
and made room for her next to me. She was a
grim-faced brunette wearing a faded lumber-
jack shirt.
SHE ASKED ME if I were aware that
thousands of union organizers have been
secretly executed by the U.S. government.
But before she could finish, I broke in. W
"Hey, didn't I meet you at a mixer at Brown
a couple of years ago?" I asked. "Don't you
remember, our fraternity kept chanting,
'Delta Chis, on the rise,' and then you girls
from Wellesley left when we shouted, 'Alpha
Phis, just can't please'?"
"Oh, my gawd," she said, blushing in true
Wellesleyian form. "I thought I recognized
you!" She looked around nervously, then
caught herself.
"Yes, but the workers' struggle .. ," she
stammered.
"YOU'RE LINDA SUE Pemberton, aren't
you?" I pressed. "Sure, your dad gave our
lacrosse team a party on your yacht."
She laughed, tossing her long brown hair
seductively across her softly-sloping
shoulders. "Daddy used to play on Brown's
lacrosse team," she gave in. We made small
talk.
"I'll trade you the rest of this donut for a
free copy of the Daily Worker," I said. "It's
deal," she answered, shaking my hand. We
both. threw up our heads and laughed,
savoring the spirit of the moment.
Radicals, too, I thought to myself, are
suckers for glazed twisties.
Nick Katsarelas got three D's in four
chemistry classes and is no longer pre-
med. His column appears on this page
every Wednesday.
Four freedoms fade as
China moves backwards
W HO KNOWS what evil lurks in
hehearts of totalitarian rulers?
Who can tell what rationale governs
the on-again-off-again freedoms gran-
ted by.the government of the Peoples'
Republic of China to its citizens?
Chinese dissidents must have been
mightily confused by the reversal in
the recent trend toward freedom of
speech. It seems only yesterday that
China's "four freedoms" were first
unveiled. They permitted nationals
who would quarrel with governmental
policy to usi several avenues of ex-
pression, ostensibly without fear of
reprisal. The four rights granted were
those to put up wall posters, speak out
freely, air views fully, and hold great
debates.
Maybe the problem lay in the
Chinese government's expectations of
what sort of views would be aired upon
theannouncement of the new "four
freedoms." -Perhaps the government
expected all the debate and discussion
to focus on the positive side of the
Cultural Revolution and the advent of
Marxist doctrine in the land. And in-
deed - from the communist's point of
view - the recent revocation of speech
"privileges" is understandable. How
dare the dissidents question the valor
and efficacy of the progress toward
Communist goals? And in a forum
R" provided by the leaders themselves, at
that.
So gradually, the freedoms have
been slipping away, occasionally
pushed along by harsh state action. It
started with the imprisonment of Wei
Jingsheng, a well-known activist, for
counter-revolutionary activity. Then
the "Democracy Wall," where signs
and leaflets espousing diverse points of
view had been posted, was put out of
commission. Next the authorities
began coming up with assorted
methods of making life difficult for the
editors of the opposition periodicals.
that had been springing up. And this
week, a Communist Party get-together
is slated which may produce even
more clever techniques for repressing
democratic activity.
Ah, well. There's always the Party's
People's Daily. It's a fine publication,
really. And it manages to steer clear of
those awful negativistic ideas.
Editorial policies
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
Why SYL backs Soviet Afghan moves
r r s
I + , " 7
Unsigned editorials ap-
pearing on the left side of this
page represent a majority
opinion of the Daily's Editorial
'*
~
Board. Letters and columns
represent the opinions of the
individual author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the attitudes
or beliefs of the Daily.-
To the Daily:
In a factually distorted, anti-
communist letter in the January
31 Daily, Seth Moldoff challenged
the Spartacus Youth League
(SYL) to explain why we support
the Soviet Army in Afghanistan
and what we mean by calling for
extending the gains of the
Russian revolution to the Afghan
peoples. We gladly take the op-
portunity to do so.
In Afghanistan, the Kremlin
bureaucracy has been forced for
purely defensive reasons to take
up a genuinely Red cause, for on-
ce. We rejoice as Russian tanks
roll over the rag-tag mullah-led
army. The insurgents are backed
by the CIA, Khomeini, and
Pakistan. The rabidly anti-Soviet
but equally, Stalinist Chinese
bureaucracy also supports the
mullahs who are fighting to
defend the bride price, the veil,
usury, serfdom, and perpetual
misery.
The victory of the Islamic in-
surgents would mean the per-
petuation of- feudal and pre-
feudal enslavement well into the
last quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury. The Spartacus Youth
League is against fathers selling
their daughters to prospective
grooms like chattel slaves,
against shooting teachers who at-
tempt to bring literacy programs
to women, and against poor
peasants being tied to the land of
rich farmlords. We are for
spreading to the Afghan masses
the social and economic gains
that were won not only in Russia
in 1917, -but in the French
Revolution two centuries ago.
For that reason we called for the
military victory of the Kabul
regime when the mullahs took up
arms last spring.
The deployment of Soviet
troops and the confirming of the
insurgents' imperialist ties alters
both the terms of the co flict and
the possibilities of the outcome.
The Russian army will have little
trouble in routing the mullah in-
surgency. But what happens af-
ter that? In the absence of any
but the most rudimentary
proletariat the essential
ingredients for the liberation of
the Afghan peoples must come
from outside this over-
whelmingly tribalist region. If
the country is effectively incor-
porated into the Soviet bloc this
can today be only as a
bureaucratically deformed
workers state. Compared to the
present conditions in Afghanistan
this would represent a giant step
forward.. .
the gains that women have made
in, the- Soviet East to see what
proletarian liberation of these
pre-capitalist areas has meant.
The October revolution
proclaimed the full equality of
women. Bolshevik cadres in the
Asian regions where the mullahs
held sway struggled, often at the
cost of their liveito draw women:
out of their enforced seclusion.
In the 1920. , the combined ef-
fects of an economically back-
ward Russia beseiged by hostile
imperialist powers, the
predominance of the peasantry,
and the failure of proletarian
revolutions in Western Europe
took its toll. Although fought to
the end by Trotsky's Left Op-
position, a privileged
bureaucracy with Stalin at its
head usurped the political power
of the working class, destroyed
workers democracy, and sought
appeasement with imperialism.-
rather than its overthrow. Yet the
fundamental economic and social
gains of the October revolution
remain. Trotskyists to this day
unconditionally defend the,
Russian degenerated workers
state against all attempts of
capitalist restoration while
calling for a proletarian political
revolution to oust the
bureaucracy, and a return to
democratically-elected soviets
and the revolutionary road of
Lenin and Trotsky.
The work of the Bolsheviks
among the peoples of the east suf-
fered tremendously with-the
Stalinist political coun-
terrevolution in the twenties, but
women in the Muslim areas of the
USSR have vastly more social
gains and real equality than in
any Islamic country. For this
reason, the soldiers of the Soviet
units in Afghanistan are
recruited from the Uzbecks and
Tajiks. If "fiercely independent
Afghanistan" is about to suffer
horrendous national oppression
at the hands of the Soviets, why
can Moscow use Muslin-derived
troops without fear? Obviously
because the soldiers know they
are better 'Off than they would be
under the Afghan mullahs or
Khomeini.
We do not have a knee-jerk
reaction to support Soviet troops
wherever they are deployed, for
all too often they are used by the
Stalinist bureaucracy for coun-
terrevolutionary ends. In
Hungary in 1956 the Kremlin sup-
pressed a working class political
revolution in which workers were
demanding workers democracy
within the confines of a workers
state. In Czechoslavakia in 196k
the Kremlin sent in the troops ti
clamp on a bureaucratic
stranglehold and cut short poten-
tially revolutionary ferment.
Both of these invasions were
neither in the interests of the in-
ternational working class nor of
the defense of' the October
revolution.
The point about Afghanistan is
that the Soviet Union is fighting a
just war and we take a side. The
road to a socialist future *
economic plenty and inter-
nationalist equality lies in a
proletarian political revolution to
oust the parasitic Stalinist
bureaucracy which must be
linked to international socialist
revolutions from South Asia to
the imperialist centers. But in
this war, in the face of the im-
perialist uproar over Soviet
military intervention against t
mullah-led reactionaries 1
Afghanistan, Trotskyists do in-
deed proclaim, "Hail Red Ar-
my!"
-Irene Rhinesmith
Spartacus Youth League
Feb.9
ABA affirmative action stance assailed
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To the Daily:
I am appalled and outraged at
the attitude you took in your Sun-
day, February 10 editorial in
which you stated that affirmative
action need not be one of the
criteria for ABA accreditation of
law schools around the country.
I mean, what is an education
for-to, give a person the
necessary credentials so that
New Agenda
To the Daily:
The anonymous attack on the
Ann Arbor Committee for a New'
Jewish Agenda in your letters
column (Daily, Feb. 9) com-
paring them to the Spartacus
'League and the Revolutionary
Communist Party was com-
pletely inaccurate and
deliberately misleading.
A non-Jew, I attended a recent
film and discussion introducing
the committee to the Ann Arbor
community. A very wide range of
political views were expressed
during the discussion, and the
moderators emphasized that
committee people were in
disagreement on many fun-
damental issues.
dnvn_ lnntvna isnoh o ni
s/he can step out into the world
the way it is and make lotsa
bucks and maybe a big name, or-
is it to open minds to ways we can
live better together and keep the
planet fit for human habitation
for generations more and even
beautify it in the process?
And what's this about ". .
social and political
gains-however worthy-that
the ABA accreditation
guidelines were never designed
to promote"? What is the whole
gamut of law-law school ac-
creditation guidelines, laws
themselves, the practice of
law-for, then, except to keep
those with power in and those
without power out?
And while I'm writing, I must
say I didn't care much for yo*
small news article in the
"Today" column on how to
register for the draft. How can
you take such a happy-go-lucky
attitude towards the first step in
killing and mutilating our fellow
humans and our planet? (At least
that is what has always happened
in wars in the past, but perhaps
this one will be different.)
Well, lest you think I'm takin
a negative attitude towards the
Daily, let me close by saying that
I generally find the Daily quite
acceptable.
-Rose Siri
Feb. 10
Greene camp responds
To the Daily:
Marc Abrams' letter to the
Daily on Feb. 9 grossly distorts
the nature of the Earl Greene
campaign. I told Daily reporter
John Goyer early last week that
he could meet with me and
examine our list of volunteers
and call them if he wished. Mr.
Goyer said he felt it would not be
necessary to examine them and
he said he would use this -fact in
his story on the Second Ward
to draw attention away from
Stacy's- total lack of th
qualifications necessary to be
member of the City Council.
We need to limit ourselves in
this campaign to the issues'and
not to the internal workings
of campaign organizations.
Doing so would serve the primary
purpose of an election camy
paign-educating the voters.
-Phil Bokovoy
Campaign Manager,