Tempest in a Cracked Pot
In the throes of a paranoid fantasy worthy of the crackpot Fuehrer of the U.S. Labor Party, Lyndon LaRouche (a.k.a. Lyn Marcus), the sectarian opportunist Workers League has proclaimed that the recent blizzard was actually a “cover for military maneuvers” (“State of Siege in Boston,” Bulletin, 14 February 1978)!
The article, reverberating with Sturm und Drang and Healyite crisis mongering, interprets the removal of snow from Boston streets by the National Guard as a military takeover and a “virtual state of siege for millions of residents.”
While the National Guardsmen, who are serving as armed thugs of the capitalist state against striking miners in southern Indiana, were undoubtedly guilty of abuses, clearing roads, arresting looters and even riding around in “jeeps, trucks and bulldozers as tall as a house” do not add up to a military coup - not even if they shovel the snow in uniform.
In the hysterical view of the Workers League, the street-cleaning operation was:
“a dress rehearsal aimed at disciplining the working class. Its main fear is not a snow storm but the power of the organized working class expressed in the miners strike.”The state does indeed fear the power of the organized working class and it will respond to threats to its authority with military force - real military force, not tractors and dump trucks! It is genuinely pathetic that the Workers League cannot tell the difference between a military maneuver and a clean-up operation.
Incidentally, the National Guard was also used to clean snow from the streets of New York. At one point, 15 military vehicles were massed in front of the national headquarters of the Spartacist League. What does the Workers League make of that?
