The hands of friendship stretch across a bust of Patrice Lumumba at
the University of Friendship in Moscow, which bears the name of the
African liberation leader. The university is host to over 6,000 students
from 95 developing countries who are receiving an education free of

charge.

Economic ills require new

U.S. economist Edward Boor-
stein told an audience in Van-
couver last week that the twofold
problem of unemployment and
inflation ‘“‘has created a situation
like a man with a painful ulcer —
he wants to take aspirin to kill the
pain but he knows that aspirin will
only make the ulcer worse.

“So he does nothing — just as
president Carter and prime
minister Trudeau have done
nothing to cure our economic ills.’’

A noted economist who has
served as an advisor to both Fidel
Castro of Cuba and President
Allende of Chile and has written
two books based on those assign-
ments, Boorstein touched on a
number of issues in his lecture
Wednesday, sponsored by the
People’s Co-op Bookstore.

At the centre of his address were
the economic problems afflicting
both Canada and the U.S. — and
government solutions which have
attempted to solve those problems
at the expense of working people.

Boorstein cited the experience of |

the Nixon wage controls which the
former U.S. president imposed
shortly before an election cam-
paign in a bid to salvage an in-
flation-ridden economy.

“The control system was the
same as yours, Boorstein said,
pointing to the similar control pro-
gram imposed by Trudeau in this
country, “‘it controlled wages while

‘Holocaust’ revealed the horrors
of fascism but vital gaps remain

More violence and corpses than
in an entire television season
where being packed into four
nights on the NBC screen recently
in the mini-series © called
“‘Holocaust.’’ Yet the story of
history’s most monstrous
deliberate mass murder is as
important to tell as it is painful to
hear.

So vast was the Nazis’ ex-
termination campaign, between
1935 and 1945, shooting, burning
alive, and gassing six million Jews
and millions of other nationalities
that the account paralyzes the
imagination and so Gerald Green,
the script-writer, to make the
statistics come alive, focused: on
two middle class German families
as human illustrations of the
monumental inhumanity.

Excellent actors like Rosemary
Harris and Fritz Weaver held our
anguished attention for three hours
in the first episode, titled “‘The
Gathering Darkness,’’ but already
we could notice, as the web
tightened around the family of Dr.
Josef Weiss, the prosperous Jewish
physician in Berlin in 1935, that
there were vital gaps in this history
of horror. ae

Well described in the first TV
episode was the growing terror and
the false optimism as the Nazi
Party captures government power.

The second night brought us
something of the thrilling story of
the Warsaw ghetto resistance.

All this is to the good. But where
is any mention of how this Nazi
Party, so tiny at first, expanded
into a world menace? The basic
impression is that the source of the
nightmare was Hitler’s maniacal
hatred of Jews.

One Nazi officer is heard to say
that England and France, being
Christian nations, would not be
serious foes of the campaign to
annihilate the Jews. The Nazi
movement is painted as only a
throwback to the pogroms that

accompanied the Crusades of the
Middle Ages.

We in the U.S.A. need study
guides that will fill in the truth, the
whole truth about the Nazi horror.

We need study guides about how

the Nazis in Germany were
financed by the Krupps and other
monopoly capitalists to save
capitalism in Germany and
throughout the world.

The TV viewers who saw

“Holocaust”? should be informed
about the desperate efforts in the
1930s of the Communist parties
throughout the world, including the
large Communist Party of Ger-
many, to build a united front with
Socialists and all who cherished
democracy to block the Nazi
menace. Nothing of this is men-
tioned in ‘‘Holocaust.’’ And there is
silence on the efforts of the Soviet
Union for collective security,
rejected by the Western
“‘democracies”’ despite Hitler’s
proclaimed aim to annihilate ‘‘non-
Aryans” and enslave the world.

No help was given in those days
by the radio networks to the
worldwide movement against war
and fascism.

The people should realize today,
if ““Holocaust’”’ is to help save the
world from fascism or from
nuclear war, that’ the western
“democracies’’ were blinded then,
as are the cold war proponents
today, by their desire to crush
socialism and to overthrow the
Soviet Union. Every move of Hitler
was welcomed by the capitalist
powers in the 1930s if it seemed to
bring the German war machine
nearer to the Soviet border.

The climax of this conspiracy of
the monopoly capitalists was the
Munich pact of 1938 which threw
Czechoslovakia to the Nazi wolves
in order to edge the Nazis further
eastward.

After Hitler invaded Poland in
1939 and claimed intentions of
going no further eastward the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 12, 1978—Page 10

British government, in a panic,
declared war on Germany, though
it did nothing to implement the
declaration until the Nazis invaded
France.

Pearl Harbor pushed the U.S.
into the war against the Rome,
Berlin, Tokyo axis, and the
alliance created defeated fascism
and brought into being the United
Nations. But Truman’s cold war
launched new anti-Soviet efforts,
countered today by the movement
for detente.

It was all a world struggle from
the start, but ‘‘Holocaust” played
down the world involvement. In its
final scene it has the young central
character on his way to Israel. This
isolated hope is no solution to a
world problem any more than was
the hope for victory by heroes of
the Warsaw uprising. It was the
Red Army that rolled back the
Wehrmacht and smashed the death
camps.

—Ben Levine ™

price control was just a lot of bull
— and statistics in U.S. over the
period of controls bear that out,
just as they do in Canada.”’

But the problem is that controls
are like a ‘compressed spring,”’ he
warned. ‘“‘When they come off, all
hell can break loose.’’ .» .

In the U.S. the effect was to
create what Boorstein described as
“the worst economic recession in
the post-war period.”

Although Canada already faces
crippling unemployment and infla-
tion that continues to spiral
following the three years of the
Trudeau controls, the problems
are compounded in many areas of
the U.S.

“Black unemployment is twice

. the average rate, but among black

teenagers it is often as high as 86
per cent,” Boorstein emphasized.

“A whole generation is rising to
adulthood without jobs and without
any prospects of jobs.”’

A dollar crisis which has reduced
the Canadian dollar to less than 90
per cent of face value has ag-
gravated economic difficulties in
this country — and by more than
just direct effects, he noted.

Although the lower dollar value
has spurred exports, thereby
creating windfall profits for many
corporations, it has added new
hardships for working people since
they are forced to pay more for
imported goods. ~

But to add to the hardship, do-
mestic manufacturers and pro-
ducers raise their own prices to
meet those of their foreign com-
petition.

Boorstein cited the case in the
U.S. of the big auto manufacturers
which saw the increased costs for
imported cars such as Datsuns,
Toyotas and Volkswagens as an
opportunity to raise the price on
U.S.-made cars.

“So the dollar crisis fuels in-
flation,’’ he declared.

Boorstein’s comments on the
energy problems facing the U.S. as
well as the crisis of such major
cities as New York also provided
some pointed lessons for this
country which is just beginning to
feel the impact of similar, -short-
sighted policies.

He likened the U.S. reaction to
the energy crisis to someone
“going up on a diving board,
strutting around a bit and then
diving.

“Only halfway down does he ask,
‘How much water is in the pool?’ ”

Boorstein pointed out that the
crisis was created because energy
resources were used irrationally
and wastefully, without any con-
cern for planning.

The U.S. based its entire
economy on the automobile and

‘medicine says economist

EDWARD BOORSTEIN... 4
major depression in the U.S. is not
to be ruled out, U.S. Marxist
economist contends.

then set out to destroy good publi¢ _
transportation systems, he sal@ |

“In Los Angeles, they had a good
public transit system — but the

automakers saw to it that it waS

dismantled to ensure that every’
thing was directed towards cars.

Although it is often developet®
rather than auto manufacturers
which pursue a ‘‘cars-only’”’ policy

in Canadian cities, the effect is the
same — a dearth of efficient publi¢ /

transit systems. :

And the lack of government
funding for transportation, {0

housing and for other social ne

is a similar problem in bo
countries, Boorstein noted. “And
at the same time, billions are beiné
spent for armaments.”

For that reason, he emphasized,
the most pressing need is to shift |

the billions now being spent of
military budgets to social needs.

“Tf-that is not done, the state of /

the U.S: economy can only get
worse — and a major depression ©

not to be ruled out,” he warned. -
Boorstein stressed that thé

capitalist economies ‘are at ? —
major junction. And the old ways —

‘don’t lead anywhere any more.

“The long term answer is social —

ism,” he said. “But in the short
term, the struggle to force gover
ments to shift military expendi
tures to social needs can help 10
create a political movement whi
is. needed in the fight for
socialism.”

In the U.S., he noted there aré
the beginnings of change. ‘‘We se
stirrings in the labor movement —

the coal strike is an example — |

such as we have not seen in maby
years. We hear new voices 1
Congress which are seeking to shift
the military budgets. And we se

new stirrings in the communities

where coalitions of blacks an
whites are emerging.

“Together they can change gov”

ernment policies.”’

“A good collective
sense of humor,.. .””

— Vaughn Palmer,
Vancouver Sun

BARGAIN IS BACK...

for two special concerts this spring
ease |

“The group takes it cue’

from optimism. This is

one commodity they
have plenty of...”

—Bill Kelly,

Surrey Leader

SURREY

Concert and Dance

Surrey Arts Centre.
Adm. $3.50

Bargain at Half the Price

Saturday, May 28, 8:00 p.m.

Bargain at Half the Price

Friday, June 9, 9:00 p,m.
Queen Elizabeth Playhouse
Adm, $4.00; $3.00 children

VANCOUVER

and
Flying Mountain

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT PEOPLE’S CO-OP BOOKS AND PACIFIC TRIBUNE