The Brain Police
To the Fifth Estate:
The feature on the “Crisis in Health Care” (June FE) is O.K. However, I think it should include some coverage of the so-called mental health system. (The Brain Police wear white uniforms!)
Another facet of the medical end of things deserves mention, too. During the revolution, members of the peoples’ militia will not be covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Every hospital will probably have special security Pigs whose job will be apprehending wounded revolutionaries. Think about this.
If one of your comrades was wounded, would you want to trust him/her to Marcus Welby? (Adequate medical service is always a major problem for an insurgent force, especially in the early stages of the struggle.) I believe that thinking and communicating about this problem now will minimize its severity later.
The “Detroit Seen” column advocating non-voting was good. For the past couple of months I’ve noticed a new variety of street vendor in Boston. They carry huge clipboards, and they say to me: “Hello, sir, are you registered to vote in Massachusetts?” I always reply: “No, thank you,” just like I would to any other salesperson.
Desire is the heartbeat of freedom,
Brad Evans
Cambridge, Mass.
Racism in Boston
Fifth Estate Friends:
I read your issue with the article on racist attacks in Boston (May FE) and thought it was racist, off base and pointless. By no means have all the racist attacks in Boston been white against black. It goes both ways.
Assholes come in all colors. It would be just as easy to list some of the atrocious and brutal racist attacks against whites from certain blacks as it was for the authors of the article to list some of the repulsive racist attacks by certain whites against blacks.
I was really disappointed in the article. Despite its title the article seemed to be mostly concerned with attacking the Socialist Workers Party for calling off a demonstration. Why? What was the point of making a big deal of a SWP demonstration that never happened?
Freedom,
Tom Flittie
Cambridge, Mass.
The authors respond: Your letter shows an obvious misunderstanding of the dynamic of events which is taking place in Boston. This misunderstanding, we fear, is itself based on a racist insensitivity to the problem of survival and safety of black people in the streets of Boston.
“By no means have all the racist attacks in Boston been white against black. It goes both ways,” you write. Obviously you lack any sense of proportion. We pointed out in the article that white mob attacks had brought about indiscriminate violence against white people by black youths. This situation is quite understandable considering the lack of organized working class defense of black people.
To compare these random attacks with the organized, paramilitary lynch mobs in the white neighborhoods, with the brazen (and somewhat successful) recruiting of openly racist and fascist groups like the Nazis and the KKK, under the cover of such “community organizations” as the South Boston and Charlestown Marshalls, is to do exactly what liberal Mayor Kevin White did with his phony “Procession Against Violence.”
The question is not one of this or that isolated attack. Racism is an element of false, alienated consciousness which permeates the entire society, black and white. It is a question of a process which is taking place, the mobilization of a racist, fascist movement, the embryo of which is taking shape among the anti-bussing movement in Boston.
For the same reason, that of analysis, criticizing the SWP was important. We don’t know the outcome of a march which never occurred, but we do know that its failure to occur means giving the initiative over to the anti-busing mobs, which is exactly what is taking place.
Your whole letter smacks of liberalism and moral abstention. You pretend that a whole series of events in Boston never took place. It has nothing in common with a revolutionary analysis.
Violent-Illegal Party
China Book
Dear FE Folks:
In 1972 Vrousch, a French libertarian socialist, pro-situ group, published a pamphlet entitled Luttes de Classes en Chine (Class Struggles in China). It is a critical historical summary of social trends in China from a revolutionary perspective, including the oppositional activities of Chinese rebels. It contains concrete and specific criticisms of the Maoist regime and the world it has created.
We believe that an English translation of this pamphlet will be a valuable addition to the material on China available to English speaking revolutionaries. And so we have translated it and intend to publish it as soon as possible. We also have material which updates the pamphlet to April 1976. In its final form it is 80 pages long.
Class Struggles in China is ready to go to press; our only problem now is money for plates and paper. All those who want to see this pamphlet in print, please send contributions to Charlatan Stew, 264 Bowery, New York, NY 10012.
Yours for a new world,
R. Barnes
S. Kashdan
New York City
Communique
The following was received from the Prairie Dog Organizing Committee and is reprinted here in its entirety.
SMASH THE U.S. LABOR PARTY!
“In order to build a great socialist society, it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women.”
—Mao Tse-tung from his introductory note to “Women Have Gone to the Labor Front”
It is with such words that Chairman Mao has enjoined us to resolutely fight back the treacherous forces of social-regressivist apes who bandy about libertine pseudo-theories already betrothed to the dustbins of history through decadent purveyors of capitalist social-reaction still hoping vainly to triumph over the spirit of the people and their glorious revolutionary ideals.
More deadly than those writhing insects who openly proclaim their allegiance to anti-materialist dogmas are the parasitic hoodlums who pretend to befriend the people and support just struggles only to spread pernicious contradictions among the cadre. They seek to infiltrate under the banner and slogans of Marxism-Leninism. Any penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the act. They must be exposed and repulsed.
Emerging in the forefront of these perfidious bugs is the so-called U.S. Labor Party. L. Marcus and his motley lobotomized gangster followers have increased their attacks upon the heroic peoples of Asia, Africa and the Americas with shaggy fury bulging eyes and forelocks flying in the wind. They conspire to interject their scrofulous bodies into the vital organs of proletarian culture. But the righteous wrath of aroused workers shall in the end defeat them!
These groveling dogs of monopoly capital brutality plot to take over the United States by the diabolical scheme of subliminal brainwashing during television commercials, skillfully implanted by Nazi doctors controlled by radio transmitters hidden in L. Marcus’ glasses. But the clear clear light of Mao Tse-tung thought, redder than the reddest sun, has uncovered and revealed them!
The Labor Party wails impotently about drugs and “zombie factories” while claiming they desire to halt the use of narcotics sapping the strength of the working class. This is but a thinly disguised ruse to gain a monopoly for their own drug factories to fill their bloody coffers with the sweat drenched money of oppressed workers and minorities.
What explains such unparalleled viciousness, such degeneracy of Mariana Stapel who sleeps with creatures so unnatural as to defy belief even to those accustomed to the rank horrors of social-fascists?
These treacherous thugs who portray themselves as the vanguard party of workers in Asia, Africa and the Americas are in fact the hired stooges of the Catholic Church! They laughingly plot to deliver the masses into the clutching hands of the Rockefeller-Kissinger-Vatican cabal, but their doom is near.
Resist their treachery! Smash their lies! Agitate against them in the factories where you work! Confront them with their Catholic origins!
We the cadre of the Ecstatic Rodents of Red Mountain proudly join hands with our comrades in arms the Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Union and the American Association of University Professors in opposing this plot!
Cadre of the Ecstatic Rodent of Red Mountain
Seattle