CHALLENGE, June 3, 2009

The dominant imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists is pressing Obama to emphasize ground warfare over air strikes in the widening Afghanistan-Pakistan battleground. The shift spells higher death tolls on all sides and even more U.S. troops than Obama’s surge of 21,000. Current U.S. strategy targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban with pilotless "drone" aircraft is unintentionally swelling enemy ranks.

The May 17 New York Times, the rulers’ leading mouthpiece, published an op-ed piece, "Death From Above, Outrage Down Below," by Andrew Exum and David Kilcullen of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). It warned, "Over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians....Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased." Over one million Pakistanis have been forced from their homes into refugee camps because of groundwarfare.

Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Exum and Kilcullen’s CNAS served Obama’s 2008 campaign as a "Pentagon-in-waiting." CNAS’s president, Michele Flournoy, is now an Undersecretary of Defense.

Obama Flip-Flops on Torture Photo-Op to Protect New War Leader

Consequently, Obama’s dramatic replacement of General David McKiernan with torture expert Stanley McChrystal as top general in Afghanistan launches a more effective killing campaign that implicitly criticizes Bush’s efforts there. Not since President Truman booted General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War (1952) has a president removed a warzone commander this way. The big switch — along with the White House christening of a new "Af-Pak" theatre of war— makes Afghanistan-Pakistan "Obama’s War."

McChrystal’s expertise lies in the quintessential U.S. ground force, "Special Operations." Early in his career he trained anti-Soviet forces in the CIA operation based in Pakistan that helped oust the Russians from Afghanistan, an effort that produced Osama bin Laden and later al Qaeda.

McChrystal also trained the Afghan warlords in a joint campaign to chase the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, forces he must battle once more, now that they’ve staged a come-back in several Afghan provinces.

He most recently oversaw Delta and Seal Special Operations units. These units train fascist armies and are used to torture and murder "enemy suspects" in prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, seldom distinguishing actual insurgents from innocent civilians.

Obama abruptly broke his promise to release pictures of the U.S. military abusing prisoners to avoid embarrassing appointee McChrystal, who gave the orders. [For an account of the war crimes committed under McChrystal’s command, see Esquire magazine, 5/7/09.] The CNAS’s Exum told MSNBC (5/12/09) that U.S. and Afghan casualties "are likely to go up" once McChrystal takes over.

Obama: Ruling-Class Hero

For the war-bent rulers, Barack Obama is proving the most effective leader since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in the 1930s, transformed his popularity during the Great Depression into mobilization for World War II. Obama hopes to accomplish something similar, as the rulers plan for conflicts far bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan, against China and Russia. Aided immensely by the rulers’ main ideology-shapers, the liberal media and universities, Obama enjoys sky-high approval ratings.

Meanwhile, the war machine he presides over slaughters more and more civilians in his escalating Af-Pak war. He has reopened Bush’s Guantanamo Military Tribunals, which deny all rights to anyone they care to label "enemy combatant," validating "evidence" extracted by torture. And Obama is prolonging the Iraq war he promised to end.

The rulers’ media constantly urges us to vote for the "lesser evil" (usually a Democrat) in their electoral circuses. Since millions are disgusted with both parties, the rulers use liberals to spread the illusion that they will "reform"the system’s more brutal nature and won’t be as "bad"as reactionary Republicans. As a "lesser evil" who carries out the rulers’ war aims, Obama tops all his warmonger predecessors — Johnson in Vietnam; Carter in the 1979 CIA Afghan war cited above; and Clinton in the Yugoslavia air-war massacre and bombings of Iraq.

Since ultimately only communist revolution can forever halt these endless imperialist wars, we must strive in our shops and unions, in strikes and mass protests in our schools and on our campuses, in churches and all mass organizations, to expose Obama’s regime as an unprecedented, all-out assault on the working class.

Within this class struggle we must show how the super-exploitative, racist capitalist system is the source of this constant assault, and that the elimination of the profit system — replaced by a communist society in which the working class reaps all the value it produces — is the only road to workers’ emancipation.

Building the revolutionary PLP is the key to that goal.

Killer McChrystal in Ivy League Club Helping Obama Carry Out War and Fascism

For the bosses, Obama favorite McChrystal’s ties to U.S. imperialism’s main faction round out his resumé as mass murderer. The liberal Brookings Institution calls him a "superstar." Just before he won his general’s stars, he served as military fellow at the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations, the rulers’ most influential think-tank.

McChrystal did a year-long stint at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. Belfer, part of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, boasts a long roster of members aiding the Obama regime, not only in military matters but also in his anti-working-class economic "restructuring" laying off tens of thousands of auto workers. This includes Defense Under-secretaries Ashton Carter and CNAS boss Michele Flournoy, banking czar Paul Volcker, Mid-East envoy Dennis Ross, National Security aide Samantha Power (who, while working for Obama in 2008, revealed his pledge to leave Iraq as a phony campaign promise), NATO ambassador Ivo Daalder, economic advisor Martin Feldstein, Homeland Security guru Rand Beers and others.

Students Say ‘Professor of Torture’ Must Go!

NEW YORK, May 7 — Students at Columbia University held a small protest today against torture and oil wars, and called for the firing of Professor Philip Bobbitt. Bobbitt is a Columbia law professor, former director of intelligence for the National Security Council and associate counsel to three presidents. He has written that the law should be changed to allow harsher interrogations, that juries should acquit officials accused of torture who are doing it to "save lives," and he was one of the leading ideological advocates of the invasion of Iraq and the need for the U.S. to fight a "long war" in the Middle East. Members of PLP went to the protest to sell CHALLENGE and expose the role of capitalism in breeding imperialist war.

CUNY Students, Stella Strikers Allies in Struggle

NEW YORK CITY, April 22 — Chanting "Education Is A Right, Fight, Fight, Fight!" and "Education Is Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up! Fight Back!" more than 300 students and supporters rallied at City College in Harlem today, the 40th anniversary of the 1969 City College strike and sit-in that brought Open Admissions and integrated the lily-white senior colleges of CUNY. At the administration building where police blocked entry they presented their demands to a Vice-President of the college.

The demands included no tuition hikes, budget cuts, or layoffs of campus workers; free tuition, open admissions, and quality childcare; and pay-cuts and a salary cap for the administration. Twenty striking workers from Stella D’Oro in the Bronx joined the students to offer their support, and were loudly cheered as they marched down the hill into the rally.

Teachers and students in PLP from CUNY and another college explained that capitalism in 2009 means deep economic crisis, global wars, and ecological catastrophe. The pay-cuts and tuition increases demanded of Stella D’Oro workers and CUNY students is a sign of what capitalism has in mind for our class. Our response to these racist attacks that fall most heavily on black and Latino workers and students must be to unite workers and students to organize for communist revolution.

The best feature of this rally was the collaboration of students with workers, who met jointly to plan a double rally: first at City College with the workers coming down, then at the struck plant with the students coming up. From the administration building, we marched, fifty or sixty strong, chanting "Workers and Students Will Never Be Defeated!" to the subway, and, still chanting and singing "Which Side Are You On?" and "Solidarity Forever," occupied a couple of subway cars on this "protest train."

From the elevated train we marched down the long iron staircase to the picket line, chanting all the way, greeted with smiles and cheers from the workers there. About forty students and workers spoke at the two rallies, many of them women taking leadership in both struggles. The MC at the plant site encouraged CUNY and other students to speak, and after a pause seven or eight came up, many for the first time, including one from New Jersey who had heard the strikers speak at her campus last week.

Our friends, both at Stella and at CUNY, understand that PLP fights like hell for our immediate needs, but is also organizing a Party to bring state power to the working class, so that we can use the value we create to benefit all workers internationally in a communist society. One worker at the CCNY rally told the students that the company’s demands for pay-cuts and their use of scabs was a "great social crime," which wouldn’t be punished until large numbers of students and workers united to fight for change. Another told the students that they had to struggle now so that "the capitalists won’t take hold of your lives and wreck them." Students told the workers with passion how much they appreciated their support, and how difficult it was for them to be a student and to work many hours every week to pay for rising tuition.

An Argentine filmmaker was at the rally with a new film on the Zanón ceramics factory that was seized and run by workers — the syndicalist dream of "a factory without bosses." Some of the Stella D’Oro workers were inspired by the film, and they all realize that they could, and should, be running Stella D’Oro without the owners and their agents. Workers can run the factories and students and teachers can run the schools, but only when they control the levers of power — the government and the military — with a communist Party. Today on the protest train, workers and students united had a brief glimpse of the world that is struggling to be born.

Stella D’Oro Strikers Pit Workers’ Unity vs. Bosses’ Wealth

GREENWICH, CT, MAY 11 — Two busloads of over 100 striking Stella D’Oro workers and supporters rallied in front of the headquarters of the private equity firm that owns Stella D’Oro, Brynwood Partners, demanding that the company rescind its plans for drastic cuts in the workers’ wages and benefits. One of the striking workers said, "The owners of Stella D’Oro have their fortunes, their tremendous wealth, their fancy homes and cars. But we have our numbers and our solidarity and our determination to fight and not give up." Worker after worker spoke of his or her determination to keep on fighting and not accept the company’s demands.

Workers and students told the strikers how their unity — not a single worker has crossed the picket line — and courage has inspired them and how they’re providing a stirring example of how to respond to the attempts to force workers to pay for the economic crisis.

Increasingly, more Stella D’Oro workers are viewing their strike as not just important for them but for the working class. Chants at the rally ranged from "The WORKERS united will never be defeated," to "Boycott Stella D’Oro," to "Same Enemy Same Fight, All WORKERS Must Unite."

The strikers have traveled all over NYC — to union meetings, to campus rallies, to high school classrooms — to spread news about their struggle and what it means for everyone today.

On the two busses every worker received CHALLENGE and read it, particularly the articles that featured their fellow strikers attending PL events.

LA Teachers, Students Walk Out Against Layoffs

LOS ANGELES, May 15 — About two months ago, Reduction in Force (RIF) notices were given to over 8,000 teachers in our school district, in essence laying them off for the next school year. About a month after that at a union meeting, PL’ers introduced a resolution for teachers to strike on May Day (May 1st). The union hacks suggested that we strike on any day BUT May Day. They said it would "distract from our issues" to march with the rest of the working class. (see article, page 4)

At one school, there was a "new teacher meeting" a few days after this union meeting. Almost all the new teachers had received RIF notices and were not interested in what the principal had to say about next year. They weren’t even sure if they would have a job next year! They wanted to know why the union wasn’t truly fighting for them. The union chair gave the company line, saying the union "had to think of all the teachers in the district" and not just those at one school. Of course, that school is majority working-class black and Latino students and almost a third of the staff got RIF’ed, while the rich schools only had two or three teachers laid off!

A PL teacher stood up and said that teachers didn’t have to rely on the union; we could do our own wildcat action on May Day, like the original resolution had proposed. The new teachers loved the idea! One said that the PL’er should be their spokesperson, not the union rep. They shamed the union rep so much that she had the teachers at the school vote whether or not they wanted to stay out for one hour on May Day, and 90% of the teachers voted yes!

May Day 2009 saw teachers (not to mention quite a few students) marching in front of the school for the first hour of the school day, chanting "The teachers united will never be defeated" and "Maestros luchando también están enseñando (teachers in struggle are also teaching)." There were quite a few political discussions amongst teachers about the system and the historical importance of May Day, especially those new teachers. One conversation centered around a recent murder/suicide committed by a laid-off worker at a local hospital who not only shot his boss, but also his boss’s boss before he shot himself. One teacher commented that if he was going to do it, he should have gotten the people at the very top. "And the system," was added. She agreed completely. She, and about five other new teachers are now getting CHALLENGE regularly.

The teachers went back inside the school after 9 am, but during 3rd period the students walked out in support of the teachers! They held up signs, marched around inside the school and even tried to march around the outside of the school before being threatened with tickets and having to come back inside the campus. About 200 students walked out. "Next time," they promised as they came back into class, "the walkout will be even better." What a day! What a May Day full of class struggle! Now we must make the rest of the year full of communist class struggle.

Racist Unemployment Is Capitalism’s Executioner

How sick is the capitalist profit system? When the loss of 540,000 jobs in one month is considered "a good sign"!

That’s how the economic pundits reacted to the government’s jobless figures for April, since they were allegedly lower than job losses for the previous two months. But even that figure is suspect (see box).

The fact is real unemployment — reported figures plus "hidden unemployment — has passed 30 million, over 20% (not the government’s phony 8.9%). The latter figure represents 13.5 million jobless. Then add the 8.9 million part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs, plus 5.8 million "discouraged" workers who have given up looking for non-existent jobs, plus at least two-thirds of the 2.4 million imprisoned for non-violent crimes, plus the hundreds of thousands of jobless youth who joined the military, plus those on welfare who are forced onto Workfare who are not counted among the unemployed. Add it all up, and it easily exceeds 30 million.

This is "the longest, most punishing recession since the Great Depression." (NY Times, 5/9; all statistics from that edition)

How sick is this latest capitalist depression? Consider:

• Nearly 10 million jobs will be needed just to get back to the "normal unemployment" at the start of the "recession" in 2007: the 5.7 million jobs already lost, plus the over 2 million jobs needed just to keep up with population growth, plus at least another 2 million jobs that will be cut before the economy may start growing again;

• Children in poverty will rise from 18% to 27.3% by 2010;

• Over 27% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, the highest on record;

• Wages have been stagnant, while millions have lost their homes and millions more are behind on mortgage payments;

• "The employment picture for…men and women with four-year college degrees or higher is the worst on record," now being labeled the "recession generation."

Racism’s Special Toll

As has existed for generations among the last hired and first fired, racist discrimination takes a special toll on super-exploited black and Latino workers. If the "hidden unemployment" cited above is included, joblessness among black workers is at 30% and among Latino workers it’s 22.6% (doubling the "official" figures). Poverty among black children (39.5% in 2007) will exceed 50% when the "official" unemployment rate hits 10%.

The brutal fact is that, "There are a lot of people who lost jobs [that] …are not coming back," according to Obama’s Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, especially in manufacturing industries like auto and steel. Many "are going to be economically desperate for many years" (Economic Policy Institute), especially when unemployment benefits run out (and only 40% of the jobless are even eligible at all), when tens of millions of workers with no health insurance fall sick, and when millions more who’ve lost their homes become homeless.

A 1971 Congressional study reported that for every 1.4% rise in unemployment, 30,000 workers die in the following five years. Amid this skyrocketing jobless rate, that means capitalism’s mass, racist unemployment will kill hundreds of thousands of workers in the near future. Truly the profit system is guilty of mass murder.

And this is in the "most advanced" capitalist country. Unemployment worldwide is in the hundreds of millions. Several billion try to survive on a dollar or two a day. This is besides the millions slaughtered in imperialist oil wars which will occur as long as imperialism exists.

No matter who’s in the ruling class’s White House, whether Republican Bush or Democrat Obama, unemployment and its gruesome consequences will go on and on, recession after depression….

Only the overthrow of the capitalist system by communist revolution, only a system without bosses and profits and racism and super-exploitation — communism — can free the world’s working class from the horrors of the murderous profit system.

Again… Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure

Even the "official" figure of a "lower" amount of lost jobs in April is suspect. The government hired 72,000 people last month, mostly temporary workers to gather the 2010 census. When much of that is added into the reported 540,000 newly-unemployed, the total is well into the 600,000s. Moreover, the figure for March of 663,000 has now been revised to 699,000 and the one for February was upped from the initially-reported 651,000 to 681,000. So what will this April figure become when it is revised in a month or two?

And none of these figures included the "hidden unemployed." So much for the "good news."

PLP Ties Communist Politics to Teachers’ Anti-Layoff Fight

LOS ANGELES, May 18 — "Teachers at three schools have already held illegal wildcat job actions protesting layoffs. The union leadership fears following the leadership of rank-and-file teachers," declared a PLP teacher at the May 6 House of Delegates meeting. On May 12, a judge, acting for the bosses, granted an injunction prohibiting a teacher strike, threatening fines and revocation of teachers’ credentials.

"We should have no illusions about the power of the state apparatus," another PL’er said. "The government is a weapon of capitalist rule against the working class. They’ll bring their full power against us by imposing an injunction, but we must be prepared to defy it."

Such speeches exposed the union president’s fear tactics. He warned that an injunction against a planned illegal one-day job action and potential fines of $1,000 per teacher would break the union. Teachers in PLP had joined with others to fight for a one-day strike on May 1, International Workers’ Day. Although we won support for this in many areas of the city, the union leadership, appealing to anti-communism and anti-immigrant racism, pushed through a counter-motion for a one-day strike on any day in May except May Day. Teachers voted by 75% for a one-day walkout on May 15.

But even this was too much for the mis-leaders. They caved in to the injunction, blocked the strike and instead organized civil disobedience. The union president and 40 teacher activists sat in at an intersection, were arrested and spent the day in jail, hoping to diffuse the anger of the teachers at being sold out. Many teachers called this "just theatrics."

The LA Times reported the union president’s proposal that teachers suffer a pay cut in exchange for retaining the jobs of the 2,600 laid-off teachers, while throwing 2,500 non-teaching employees to the wolves.

Instead of leading workers in a life-and-death struggle against the bosses’ system, the union leaders’ role is "negotiating" the attacks on public employees, trying to convince them that there’s no alternative to capitalism, fascism and imperialist war. As the bosses’ crisis deepens, they must bail out the banks and expand the war, leaving teachers to face huge layoffs.

The layoffs are racist, increasing class size and disrupting mostly black and Latino working-class schools, as are the cuts in the non-teaching staff, many of them black and Latino new-hires.

After layoffs were announced in March, teachers and students at three high schools held unsanctioned one-hour job actions against them, two of which involved over 90% of the faculty. Students in CHALLENGE readers’ groups gave leadership in forums, demonstrations and in the PLP May Day contingent.

Since teacher layoffs are not part of the contract, job actions are illegal. The union leadership failed to prepare the members for this and caved in to the injunction, provoking tremendous district-wide anger and frustration. The injunction claimed leaving students unsupervised for a day constitutes "irreparable harm." This implies a blanket prohibition of all teacher strikes.

Like Obama’s forced bankruptcy of the auto companies and the attacks on autoworkers’ jobs, wages and pensions, this is a fascist attack. As UAW mis-leaders help the bosses slam autoworkers, the teacher union leaders are doing the same by refusing to defy the fascist injunction.

While Obama counts on these mis-leaders to pacify workers and win them to patriotic sacrifice for the (bosses’) nation, communists prepare and call on workers to take the fight outside the bosses’ laws, with wildcats and non-union job actions, aiming to build forces for revolution.

The union leadership called for picketing before school and civil disobedience at the Board of Education. Teachers and students at many schools picketed in the morning, angry at the Board of Education, the judge, and the union leadership. All three — plus the bankers and bosses’ courts — represent the dictatorship of Capital, the capitalist class, attacking the working class to save a system which can’t meet workers’ needs but must use fascism and world war to preserve their blood-soaked profits.

We distributed CHALLENGE on the picket lines. This led to many important discussions with fellow teachers — who read the paper — about growing fascism, the bankruptcy of the union leadership, the dead-end liberalism of civil disobedience and the need for political leadership whose goal is communist revolution.

We rely on the working class, including teachers, students and parents. Our goal is to increase youth and workers’ understanding and hatred of the system, to build the long-term struggle to take political power from the capitalists. Our aim is a communist world, a workers’ dictatorship, where nobody starves and there no bosses, living in luxury off workers’ sweat. The victory is more CHALLENGE readers, militant study-action CHALLENGE groups, the Summer Project (see page 7), and a growing commitment to destroy this fascist system.

PL’ers Bring Red Ideas to Colombia’s May Day March

In Bogota, at one of the biggest May Days in recent years, thousands of workers marched down the main streets shouting their fierce rejection of fascist police, unemployment, low wages, budget cuts to social services, corruption and the rottenness of the whole Uribe government. The vast majority of marchers, while chanting against the genocidal President Uribe Velez, did not identify him as one of the many puppets used by this capitalist system, instead blaming him personally for the misery that Colombian workers endure.

Social democrats, liberals and opportunists, some disguised as communists, offered false promises and took the platform, not to bring a message of working-class solidarity and the need for communist revolution, but for their electoral speeches. Other groups of workers denounced the violation of human rights and the privatization of public institutions like the District University, the National University, and the telephone company.

These workers are honest and earnest in their desire for a better life, but they were missing a key point: the capitalist system is the real cause of all of our problems and only by destroying it can we hope to improve the lives of workers. The PLP supplied this missing ingredient by consistently denouncing capitalism and its degenerate, genocidal, corrupt leaders like Obama, Sarkozy and Uribe and their war policies against the working class in Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

Workers and students, employed and jobless, men and women, all gave revolutionary leadership protesting militantly with our PLP sign and flags. Before and during the march we enthusiastically distributed 3,000 fliers and sold CHALLENGE, showing communism as the only true solution. "It’s May Day, not a carnival!" and "Paramilitarism and racism hold Capitalism afloat!"; "Long live communism and down with capitalism!" and many other chants were shouted by our forces throughout the day, in a disciplined fashion. Many joined our chants while other passer-bys were astonished and asked for our literature. We explained our revolutionary line and how to stay in touch with us and asked how we could continue to send them CHALLENGE.

As we entered the plaza, singing the Internationale, we were attacked with tear gas by the fascist police. As in most years, this ended the march. Later there were confrontations with the police and several businesses were destroyed. These lasted several hours, and some were hurt while 117 were arrested. Here we have another example of the chaos that capitalism creates for workers.

The international working class urgently needs new revolutionary leadership to unify, organize and prepare the working class for its immediate needs and its future goals to destroy this bosses’ system and build the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a long, difficult struggle, but opportunities abound. We must take advantage of the economic crisis of this rotten, stinking capitalist system to bring a communist message to our working-class brothers and sisters. Everything we do counts! The future is bright for the working class!

Workers Storm Steel Bosses’ Meeting

LUXEMBOURG, May 13 — Angry steel workers attacked the Luxembourg headquarters of ArcelorMittal, world’s biggest steelmaker, during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday, setting off smoke bombs and breaking through the front door, protesting 9,000 layoffs. Buses brought 1,000 workers from plants in northern France and southern Belgium. Some hurled cobblestones and steel fencing, smashed windows and tore off a steel molding from the ornate 1920s exterior as riot police lined up to protect the head office.

Colombia’s TV ‘Reality Show’ Ponzi Scheme and Other Capitalist Evils

We know the importance of television and media in modern life as a communication tool. We can also see the how the bosses, conscious of the risks of using it excessively as a tool of repression, use it in a much more subliminal way now. In one case, they are doing this through "Reality TV".

Recently, a new TV show entitled "Inversiones el A.B.C." ("The ABC Investments") has been aired on a local Colombian TV network. The TV show is based on the real life story behind the David Murcia Guzmán (DMG) group. The DMG group is a controversial company disbanded in November 2008 by the Colombian government under suspicion of money laundering and using a Ponzi scheme. Essentially, they got people to spend 100,000 pesos on pre-paid cards they could use to buy various things distributed by the DMG group. They would then get their money back for buying the cards (and maybe even make a profit) only if they got others to buy a lot more cards.

Strangely enough, the majority of the working class here in Colombia did not feel robbed by the DMG group. They felt, rather, that the government robbed them when it precipitated the bankruptcy of the DMG group (acting under pressure from bankers and the U.S. Embassy). The government is now working hard to twist the necks of an important sector of the working class by using the media to show the incident from their perspective.

Why Are TV Shows So Important For The Bosses Right Now?

There are a lot of reasons why the government needs good publicity right now. Lately, the housing problem in Colombia has been getting much worse. According to figures from the Supreme Judiciary Council, the number of foreclosures in 1999 was 550,000 and 347,000 in 2003. According to figures from the organizations of victims of the financial system, there are over 500,000 families that have been evicted by the banks and 400,000 more arein the process of eviction. According to the World Bank, Colombia is the second largest country in concentration of wealth in the world, and five groups control 92% of the financial sector.

The pressure is mounting on this capitalist system, especially when it comes to the local systems. They act as a shield and protection for the global financial system. Because of this, the debt can be maintained even as the dollar falls. Here things happen with this very special formula: when the consumer price index (CPI) falls, the debt remains, but when the CPI rises, the debt rises.

For example, if you go to the bank and give them 100 pesos, hoping to have 105 or 110 if you save it, then the bank says that because of management expenses, card balances and taxes now you only have 80 pesos. Where is the motivation to save? There is none, and if another site, DMG namely, tells you that if you put those same 100 pesos in their pyramid scheme you can expect to get 200 back, then you’ll do it because you have to take the risk.

A survey of the International Youth Organization 2008 says: 120 million young people between 15 and 24 years of age in Latin America suffer an unemployment rate of 12.5%. In Colombia almost 30% of the youth are unemployed. This rate is increasing because of the bosses’ crisis. "It is said that only about 48% of children have access to Preschool. Also, teen pregnancy rates continue to increase reaching more than 20.5% in women 15- to 19-years-old and 16% of poor households living in precarious positions."

The Fight Against Sexism is Vital to Defeating Capitalism

PLP combats sexism, opposing the attacks against women and developing women leaders in our movement. We also continue to spread our communist analysis of sexism: that it is necessary for the bosses because it divides the working class and makes revolutionary struggle that much more unlikely. The fight against sexist ideas cannot be separated from the struggle against the system that creates them.

In a study of the Public Defense Organization and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Pasto, capital of Nariño, 43.3% of women reported having been the victim of physical violence and 70% did not report it or ask for help. Likewise, 19.7% were forced into sex acts or sex against their will. Sexual violence appears as a central strategy of territorial control. The attacks against women around the world are growing. While this system exists, where economic exploitation turns women into a commodity, women will be abused and disregarded both on a small scale to a much larger scale.

When asked: "Has a member of your family ever been physically forced to have sex or sexual acts unwillingly?," 11.1% of the population answered in the positive; 17.9% declared that sexual assault was the determining cause for moving away. Sexism increases oppression through economic, cultural and social means. Women earn less and are treated worse on a political level.

Sexism is not only the personal male chauvinism of a few right-wing and backward men and women or the outcome of the deployment of paramilitaries in the city. In Bogotá, the process of the exploitation of women is reflected in key areas of the formal economy (large projects) or the informal economy (drug trafficking).

For example, trade in San Andresito, money laundering in the neighborhood of Santafé, and other financial activities downtown all use the super-exploitation of women to make a profit. The steps they take are clear: infiltrate, control, prevent acceptance by the population or the institutions that have a presence in the area; create extensive networks in the neighborhoods, proliferate fear; execute the "Undesirable," and attempt total domination of the area. This practice is not new but now it is being done systematically against women workers.

All workers need to combat inequality as an integral part of capitalism. Attacks against women also keep their brother workers in chains. The divisions between men and women help employers cut our salaries. Victory for the working class requires that we break these divisions and join in the fight for equality by destroying the capitalist system. The working class needs to destroy sexism in order to defeat capitalism and build a revolutionary struggle for communism to eliminate the oppression of all workers.

Letters

Turning Shop Struggle into Class Consciousness

I work for a non-union auto subcontractor in the South. As car sales have fallen, the company has cut about half its workforce. Recently, the rest of us have been put on half-time. We work forty hours every two weeks and collect some unemployment. Many have had to pick up extra minimum-wage, under-the-table jobs.

Recently we received another reminder of what capitalism is when we lost eight of our 40 hours to a company "maintenance day." Managers and supervisors were paid to plan how to get even more work out of us, while the production workers were given an unpaid day off and left with a big hole in their paychecks. This became an opportunity to move my friends in the factory to higher levels of class consciousness.

I expressed my anger to another auto worker who works a part-time job with me. I suggested that we stop work, stage a kind of sit-down protest, to force the bosses to give us back our hours. After all, I pointed out, they still have a market for the trucks we make, and they can’t make them without us. My friend agreed, and argued that at this point "we might as well go out fighting." So we made a plan, and the next day we both talked to others at the factory to see where they stood.

People’s opinions were quite divided. Many were down for doing something. Some worried that if too few people agreed to the action that the managers would just step in and run the line. They pointed out that it had to be all of us or none of us.

Another close friend, who had helped write a letter of support for the Boeing strikers, criticized me for being "ungrateful" for the hours that we still had. I told her that "we can’t just be passive and let things get worse." Since she and I talk a lot about relationships, I used marriage as an analogy. When things are wrong there, she doesn’t just say, "Well, at least I have a relationship." For the same reason, we can’t just say "well at least we have jobs" since if we took such a passive approach, the problems for the working class would get worse.

A day later, the bosses announced that everyone who had gotten cut would be able to make up the lost days. We don’t know if they had heard of our plans, but that isn’t the main point.

Key were the discussions about how one can fight, about our role as workers, all of which are part of the struggle to build up a fighting class-consciousness. Some of my friends receive CHALLENGE, and this struggle helped me understand and push the limits of their understanding of what we mean by worker’s power, of a communist society without bosses. We still have a ways to go. Many of these workers were invited to May Day. Two came to a study group to consider our ideas more, and then came to May Day and helped prepare food. These are small steps, but they are the essential first steps on the road to communism.

As we fight for the loaves of bread to eat today
We can’t forget who built the factory,
Grew the grain and who bakes the loaves of bread for tomorrow,
The workers do.

Subcontractor Comrade

May Day Youth ‘Were On A Mission’

The following are excerpts from letters written by youth who marched with the PLP contingent in the Los Angeles immigrant rights march on May Day. Five of them joined PLP and many more subscribed to CHALLENGE, agreed to distribute CHALLENGES and/or be in a study group:

We stood together and stood out for the working class. Our red flags stood tall and angry, against the racist exploitation and mass deportations…. I, in red, stood for my immigrant parents, for my unemployed uncle, my little sisters’ future education and for my friend who was brutally assassinated when the cops didn’t decide to protect but to terminate. I stood for many.

The difference between our groups was that we were all one, like a big red flag. This May Day I was marching, holding a flag and chanting my lungs out. It was hard work, but you feel better about who you are and happy, because it’s not just for your benefit but many others as well…. I was glad that I went out to march on the street to support everyone, not just my Mom.

Our group was the most organized by far. As we walked down the street people could tell that we were on a mission and that mission was a revolution. We had our chants and vision set. We were organized and the most motivated group on the march.

The drums beating, the chants screaming and the red flags flying — there was no denying it, PLP.

The May Day march was amazing to me because I felt that I had a purpose to fight. I was there for workers and what we came for was to unite the working class together to overthrow the bosses and work together for each other and the things we need… The reason we stand out from the rest is because we didn’t get misled. We knew the true meaning of a May Day March; we held the red flag, not the U.S. or the Mexican flag. We marched in red; we told the truth about the people who died for their rights long ago in Chicago. Long Live May Day. Long live PLP.

We let people know the march was about the working class. We talked about CHALLENGE and we were the only ones with the red flag.

The working class has no bosses’ flag and no country. We fought for the red flag that represented all of the working class. It meant that we are all one and that we should unite to fight for a communist society where there is no poverty. I was on the security committee. My job was to keep the shape of our group — we organized how we should march.

From all the multiple crowds we were the ones popping out, the only ones with the red flag, which stands for revolutionary communism. I thought the march was really exciting and a really nice experience.

My friends and I joined together and got to the spot where the march was going to start. We helped distribute CHALLENGE and leaflets to explain the real reason for May 1st. When the time came to start marching, we started chanting. We all sounded like one. We were all organized. To me it was awesome that we were able to speak our minds and scream our lungs out. I’m happy I could assist the march and I really hope I would be able to go next year.

Red Youth

Fight Racism with Multi-racial Unity, Not As ‘White Allies’

I have worked with Jobs with Justice (JwJ) for several years and recently attended their class "Building Unity between Brown and Black." What a disappointment! There were segregated breakout sessions — "Black, Brown in the Workplace," "Black, Brown on Housing Issues" and "White Ally." I commented that this was very divisive and patronizing. The leader’s response was that JwJ was "trying something different." Racial segregation isn’t so "different" in America!

In the "white ally" session, I said I wasn’t comfortable with the separation. We’re all in the working class and need to fight racism together, especially in the unions! This emboldened some others to voice their concerns about this term. The facilitator argued that "white allies" couldn’t lead any anti-racist struggles, and should essentially be a cheerleader on the sidelines.

At lunch, two women union organizers for United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400 (one black and one Latina) told of how they helped workers win the union election at the Smithfield Ham Plant in Tarheel, NC. Last year Immigration, Customs and Enforcement raided the plant for immigrant workers. Five hundred Smithfield workers of all ethnic groups protested this deportation raid! I asked the organizers how they showed workers that solidarity was in their best interest. They canvassed union workers from Richmond, VA, down to Tarheel, NC, and many workers sent letters of support. Smithfield workers realized they were part of a larger group and gained strength from it.

A "white ally" in the audience asked the organizers about the role of "white allies" in the union struggle. They were baffled by the question and didn’t know how to respond. I spoke up and said that in union organizing, you don’t have white workers on the sidelines. One of the organizers explained that workers need to work together to achieve their goals. Afterwards, I thanked the union organizers for their presentation, and when I told them I had to get back to my "white ally" breakout group, they looked at me in disbelief. I told them about the John Brown/Harriet Tubman March in Harpers Ferry planned for October, and that we wanted to organize unions to go. They told me to keep in touch with them.

Later, I discussed the JwJ conference with two fellow union members who meet with me regularly to discuss CHALLENGE. Both agreed the "white ally" strategy made no sense. One said, "How can white workers fight racism by only talking to whites?" Both said it was important to have multiracial unity among workers to win anything from the bosses. I explained that when PLP talks with workers, we always try to go as an integrated group.

Apparently JwJ thinks that "black and brown" workers won’t be able to play a leading role in the struggle if there are any white workers involved. That notion itself strikes me as "white supremacist" thinking! Black and brown workers have often led class struggle, and white workers unified with them give the working class the greatest punch against the bosses.

D.C. Red

‘Liberal’ N.J. Mayor: ‘Who, me racist?’; ‘Yes, YOU!’

Donald Cresitello, mayor of Morristown, NJ, is a face of the growing fascist attack on undocumented workers. Two years ago, Cresitello hosted the anti-immigrant Pro-America group on the steps of city hall. The Party, many of its friends and even some townspeople, shut them down.

Several weeks ago, the American Friends Service Committee hosted a "Conversation with the Mayor on Section 287g," the federal law which allows local cops to be deputized as ICE (immigration) agents. Cresitello, a Democrat running for reelection, has long advocated that Morristown cops act as immigration cops. At this event, he tried to pose as a liberal, proclaiming that he wasn’t anti-immigrant, that he supported providing undocumented immigrants with a "path to citizenship,"that there would never be racial profiling in Morristown. He even claimed not to "care"about section 287g.

One audience member pointed out that racial profiling and section 287g are inseparable. She also described Cresitello’s effort to promote anti-immigrant racism in Newark. There, after three college students were murdered by a suspected undocumented person, Cresitillo asked to speak at the memorial service. Knowing his anti-immigrant rhetoric, the family refused to let him come, and told him that his racist ideas were not welcome. The immigration status of the murderer was irrelevant.

Cresitello quickly exposed himself. He jumped to his feet to denounce the story as false, and threatened that the speaker had better not tell this story in public again. But his red face, bulging eyes, and yelling made it clear to the audience that he was the liar and the same racist he always had been. After the forum, a number of people in the audience came up and thanked the speaker for what she had said.

An important lesson was learned that day. We must never let these racists pretend to be something other than what they are. We must be sure to confront them whenever possible and make sure that we in the working class are not fooled by slick lies. And we must never forget that communist revolution is the only way to end capitalism and its racist exploitation of, and terror against, of undocumented workers.

N.J. Comrade

Oaxaca May Day Marchers Defy Gov’t Flu Panic

OAXACA, MEXICO, May 18 — Just before May Day, Felipe Calderon’s reactionary Mexican government unleashed a nation-wide media campaign about the swine flu epidemic, generating a somber atmosphere and severe anxiety among the population. It appears the government has exaggerated the effects of this disease to divert attention away from the financial crisis and the bosses’ fascist measures to overcome it, which are deepening attacks on workers’ living conditions.

About 10,000 education workers from Section 22 of the Oaxaca teachers’ union and activists from organizations comprising APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca) marched on May Day. They defied the government and overcame its pandemic panic.

A group of 100 members and friends of PLP including farm workers from La Merced del Portrero marched wearing shirts saying: "We fight for a better world against wage slavery." In the five-kilometer (three-mile) march our group stood out with our militant chanting of our revolutionary communist slogans, despite the teachers’ union leadership pushing for a silent march wearing masks covering their mouths.

Slogans resounded through the city’s streets: "The crisis of the system has no solution, the only solution is revolution!"; "Fight, win, workers to power!"; "The flu, capitalism, the bosses — the same garbage!"; "Advance, Advance, Communism will triumph!"

Slogans on our banners and signs stood out: "The virus...and worst pandemic in the world is Capitalism — destroy it with Communist Revolution!"; and "Workers’ Struggles have no Borders!" The 5,000 leaflets and 300 CHALLENGES we distributed were well-received by the marchers and the public who watched.

Afterwards we had a very warm intense discussion, recognizing strengths and weaknesses in this experience. We could have been better organized, and didn’t explain the demands of the farm workers, among others. But our most important strength was our commitment to continue advancing the political work of PLP.

Only Red Politics Can Dump Dead-end of ‘Reforming Capitalism’

PLP members are often asked why we bring in communist politics into every working-class struggle. Why can’t we just fight for higher wages, getting U.S. troops out of Iraq or against racist police brutality? Why should we be concerned with the ideas that are motivating and leading these struggles and not just be content that workers are engaged in struggle against the capitalists and their governments?

There can be no advances for the working class without mass struggle, but recent events in Pakistan show that reactionary pro-capitalist ideas can make that struggle a dead-end for workers. Landless tenants are justifiably rebelling against wealthy landlords and the high taxes and corruption of the U.S. puppet Pakistani government (NYT 4/16/09), but the struggle is being led by Taliban forces that are using the workers’ anger to establish their own religious-fascist rule.

Politics and ideas are a matter of life and death for the working class. Even when communist or left movements have led struggles for state power, if the movements were based on reforming the system, all the gains of the workers were eventually reversed. The Vietnamese working class heroically fought and defeated U.S. imperialism under the leadership of the North Vietnamese communists. The movement focused on economic reforms instead of changing the underlying politics of society. Now, Ford and Nike super-exploit Vietnamese workers and full-blown capitalism with all its misery has returned.

In South Africa, communists led millions of black workers to overthrow Apartheid. The Mandela-led African National Congress (ANC) chose to share power with the old apartheid capitalists. The working class went along with this because the movement had promised that an ANC victory would improve conditions for the country’s black workers as opposed to defeating capitalism and its ideology. With a black-led government in power the shantytowns remain, health care is non-existent for millions of people, and black workers toil for the same minimal wages they had under Apartheid. Still the capitalists rake in billions in profits.

In El Salvador, many tens of thousands who considered themselves communists or leftists fought against the U.S.-backed government fascists. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the decades long civil war. But eventually the working-class forces went along with the FMLN becoming part of the government. Now the former guerilla leaders are sanctioning the exploitation of the working class. The seeds of this betrayal were sown by the movement building itself on making economic reforms as opposed to a political transformation of society.

These defeats of the working class were the result of reformism in the communist movement, the opportunist winning of workers to fight the bosses based on the idea that the communists would provide more than the capitalists. We are fighting for a society that will share scarcity and abundance based on communist politics, not material incentive.

Socialism in Russia and China had many communist aspects but they focused on material benefits and retained the money-based wage system. Eventually the individualism of a system based on wages led society back to capitalism. Even the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, that moved workers closer to communism than ever before, was undermined by its failure to break free from capitalist ideas.

Red Guards in China attacked privilege and inequality. But these advanced communist ideas that have so inspired our Party were undermined by the Red Guards’ inability to cast aside the "cult of Mao." Relying on an "all-knowing" leader rather than a mass communist party gave capitalist forces in the army and government a free hand to crush the Cultural Revolution.

These hard lessons show why communist ideas are essential to every struggle. Fighting against racism, nationalism, sexism, individualism, and selfishness, are necessary to build working-class unity and ultimately build a society without wages. Learning from the leadership of black, Latino and women workers, and showing that we don’t need the ruling class, are essential to our class gaining confidence in itself and in communism. To win in the long run our movement must have leaders today who are in the forefront of the class struggle and are self-critical about their weaknesses. Communist leaders must fight for the interests of the working class, take risks, and not seek personal gain from the movement.

Communists understand that the government’s "state power" is a weapon of the capitalist ruling class. This understanding is necessary to keep our class from relying on "lesser-evil" politicians whose job is to sabotage workers’ struggles. Armed revolution for communism to smash capitalism is the only lasting solution to workers’ oppression from a capitalist treadmill where reforms are given and taken back. From this the bosses bank their profits and shed workers blood in endless imperialist wars.

The movement we build today will shape the society we build tomorrow. There are no shortcuts. The only road to victory is winning our class to communism.

30 Generations of Racism =Billion$ for Bosses

For years, CHALLENGE has been reporting that the U.S. ruling class needs racism and its resulting discrimination because it nets hundreds of billions in profits from the lower wages paid to black workers (including Latino workers in the last century), dragging down the wage levels of ALL workers. Institutional racist inequality has spanned 30 generations — from slavery to post-Civil War legal segregation, enforced by KKK terror — to current racism. Now reports reveal this generational racism means that for every dollar of assets accumulated by white families (home and auto ownership, government subsidies, savings, pensions, among other factors), black families have only 10 cents worth of assets!

This doesn’t mean that white working-class families are so well off. The average in the above comparison includes upper-income white families, far more numerous than upper-income black families. Actually, the Federal Reserve’s "Survey of Consumer Finances" reports that overall the net worth of the average U.S. family today is less than it was in 2001. (Washington Post, 3/23/09) However, racist discrimination enables the bosses to net super-profits from the differential in income and assets denied to black families as compared to white families.

The biggest single factor in accumulating assets is home ownership. Historically, black families have been far less able to "reap the benefits of government support and tax-paid subsidies, which help...build assets. During the Depression [of the 1930s]…the Home Owners Loan Corporation was established "to rescue families from home foreclosures, but not a single…loan went to a black or Hispanic family….

"The black section of Detroit was simply excluded. After World War II, GIs received government-subsidized home mortgages….Of the 67,000 mortgages issued under the GI Bill in New York and northern New Jersey," only 100 went to black veterans! (Washington Post)

This discrimination is just as marked today as revealed in the home foreclosure swindle. "Payday lenders and other shady financial dealers…have preyed on [black and Latino] people fueling the economic and foreclosure crisis. African Americans…were more than three times as likely as white borrowers to be steered to high-interest loans, even when they qualified for a prime loan."

Moreover, U.S. tax-code rules, "Have strengthened…those who already have assets. You can get a tax deduction for interest on home mortgages of up to $1 million….But if you own a home and make too little to itemize [on one’s tax return], the mortgage interest doesn’t help you at all."

Concludes the Washington Post writer Meizhu Lui, "The over-hyped political term ‘post-racial society’ becomes patently absurd when looking at these economic numbers." The super-profits accumulated from this racism helps the ruling class pay for imperialist oil wars abroad, and they use racism to justify attacks on Arab and South Asian workers at home and worldwide.

The depressed assets of black and Latino families make it more difficult for them to obtain health insurance and therefore access to adequate healthcare, as well as to avoid bankruptcy from uninsured medical bills. This lack of assets lessens their ability to gain legal assistance when needed and to pay the rising tuition of their children’s education.

This generational racism keeps their children in a downward spiral. "The biggest predictor of the future economic status of a child is the net worth of the child’s parents." But as indicated above, historically black families have received less "government support and tax-paid subsidies for their asset-building activities." The GI Bill sending veterans to college after World War II was overwhelmingly denied to black vets, stemming from their discriminatory position in the then segregated armed forces.

This gap in assets or net worth is widening. The 10 cents referred to earlier was 12 cents in 2004. "These African American losses appear near-permanent, the result of the deindustrialization of the United States — the destruction of the black blue-collar workforce." (Black-White Wealth Gap Continues to Widen in U.S., by Joshua Holland, posted on AlterNet) This is especially true of the mass layoffs in basic industries like auto and steel.

As CHALLENGE has reported, the bosses are shifting their profit-making production from higher-paid, formerly unionized plants to non-union subcontractors spread across the South, Southwest and California, paying black, Latino and immigrant workers less than half the wages of the older plants, with no benefits. Given this drive for super-profits, especially based on racism, the wages and conditions of the entire working class are suffering. Racism hurts ALL workers, even as it hurts black and Latino workers the most — just as the bosses’ economic crisis hurts all workers, while oppressing black and Latino workers even more.

Since black households "earn less than 60 percent of median white income," says the above AlterNet posting, "At the pace of catch-up since 1968, according to a report issued…by United for A Fair Economy, ‘it would take 581 years’ [for black families] to achieve income parity." But that will never arrive; it will only help to reduce white family income.

It is only through the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist profit-driven society and its state apparatus, and the establishment of communism — without bosses, profits, a wage system and racism — that the entire working class, which produces all value, will receive the full fruits of our labors according to need.

That’s "communist parity."

Information: Print