Source:
The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 2, 10 January 1949, p. 2.
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The maritime workers in Australia are helping the Indonesian people in their struggle against Dutch imperialism by a boycott on Dutch ships.
In Sidney, the longshoremen voted not to work any Dutch ships. In Melbourne, work is banned on all vessels bound .for Indonesian ports in Dutch hand’s.
The tugboat workers refuse to handle Dutch ships, making it difficult for them to dock; and the Ships Painters and Dockers Union will not perform any repairs.
The militant Australian maritime workers have thus set a magnificent example for organized labor everywhere. Similar action by American trade unions would help slow down the war machine of Dutch imperialism and assist the Indonesian people in hurling back the foreign invaders of their land.
The Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Fourth International has been translated into Chinese and published as a pamphlet by the New Banner Group.
The Second World Congress, which met last year in Paris, deliberated on the danger of another war and the problems facing the working class throughout the world in organizing revolutionary struggle against the reactionary forces preparing that war.
The main conclusions of this second congress of the world Trotskyist movement were drawn up in the form of a Manifesto addressed to workers everywhere. It was published in serial form in The Militant last summer.
The New Banner Group does not officially belong to the Fourth International. The official section in China is the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The Western Powers on Dec. 28 announced that they had set up an International Authority for the Ruhr which excludes Soviet participation. The nations included are the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg; that is, the powers now meeting in secret in Washington to draw up a far-reaching military alliance for war on the Soviet Union.
The new set-up for Allied rule of the Ruhr thus widens the breach with Moscow and marks another step in the preparations for World War III.
As usual, this is pictured as a peace move. It is intended “to assure disarmament and demilitarization of Germany,” claims the agreement. And the Authority is told “to prevent persons who furthered the aggressive designs of the Nazis from acquiring ownership, interests or positions of direction and management in those industries.”
However, the real aims are different from the public pronouncements. N.Y. Times correspondent James Reston, commenting from Washington on the step, declares that U.S. authorities are thinking in terms of a possible Russian war within a year or so. Whatever the timetable may be, the Ruhr is of enormous importance in preparing for this war. As the forge of Europe, it is vital to the production of either peace or wartime goods.
Under Allied domination, the Ruhr industries will inevitably be geared into the war machine now under construction. The first step is to speed the wheels of the Ruhr industries. Even if major emphasis is placed for a time on civilian needs, this can quickly be changed in accordance with the military requirements of the occupying powers.
Significantly, the Ruhr agreement does not repudiate the infamous Law No. 75 promulgated by General Clay on Nov. 10. This law, under guise of breaking up German cartels, called for German trusteeship of certain industries. General Clay followed up Dec. 14 with an order to return certain coal mines and steel companies to their former capitalist owners.
Like the commutation of the sentences of former prominent Nazis, this was an obvious political gesture designed to hearten and encourage the German capitalist class as prospective allies in the projected assault on the USSR.
Clay’s decree brushed aside the state constitution approved by the military government which provided for the socialization of these industries in accordance with the popular vote taken on this issue. Socialization of the Ruhr industries would place this key industrial region in the hands of the German people and destroy the power of the capitalist class to divert it to war production.
But that would throw a kink into the war plans of Anglo-American imperialism. That is why they forestalled socialization by decreeing an “International” authority as a transition to returning the German capitalists and Nazis to full power in the Ruhr.
The December 1948 issue of Die Internationale, magazine of the German Trotskyist movement, has been received by Pioneer Publishers.
The table of contents is as follows: Germany as the Object of World Politics; Notes on the World Situation; German Economy after the Monetary Reform; Is There a Von Paulus Army?; The Sixth Plenum of the International Executive Committee and its Resolutions; France Faces a Decision; The Yugoslav Question and the Crisis of Stalinism; Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution (Trotsky); The General Strike of November 13; A Classic Marxist Work on the Jewish Question; Correspondence of Die Internationale.
Copies of the magazine can be obtained by sending 25 cents to Pioneer Publishers, 116 University Place, N.Y. 3, N.Y.
Last updated on: 29 February 2024