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Oil tensions aggravate U.S. splits and imperialist rivals
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- 17 May 2020 333 hits
Oil is the capitalist rulers’ most vital industrial and military commodity. Since World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, it has kept tanks moving, planes bombing, and factories exploiting workers’ labor. Time and again, the bosses have gone to war for control over oil in the Middle East, from the Suez Crisis to the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars. So it’s no surprise that the recent crash in oil prices has aggravated tensions among competing imperialist powers, moving them that much closer to all-out global war.
Capitalist overproduction, geared for the capitalists’ never-ending dogfight for maximum profit, is fundamentally irrational and chaotic. Even when oil demand dropped off a cliff with the Covid-19 pandemic, companies still had to keep pumping the commodity out of the ground. In April, with buyers scarce and global storage facilities near capacity, a barrel of oil briefly had a negative price—producers had to pay buyers to take it off their hands! As of mid-May, crude oil prices were still at a 20-year low.
In the communist, borderless future that members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fight every day to secure, energy production will be centered around the needs and safety of workers. Decisions about when and where and how much to produce will be based not on profit or imperialist competition, but on what’s best for the international working class.
Split in the fascist U.S. ruling class
The economic misery enveloping the world, deepened by the crash in oil prices, has sharpened a split within the U.S. ruling class. The Small Fascists, who support and fund President Donald Trump, are aligned with domestic energy companies at mortal risk from plummeting demand. Two of these companies, Whiting Petroleum and Chesapeake Energy, have already filed for bankruptcy, and hundreds more may follow (Quartz, 4/3). Many of them produce oil by the costly “fracking” of shale deposits, and were already drowning in debt. From 2006 to 2014, 16 publicly traded shale oil companies outspent what they produced by more than $80 billion (New York Times, 4/20). “At current prices, not one of the 100 largest fracking operations in the country can turn a profit” (Quartz, 4/3).
The bosses of these companies are mobilizing Trump’s racist “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) base in a desperate attempt to save their profits. The American Legislative Exchange Council (backed by the Small Fascist Koch family) and the Michigan Freedom Fund (linked to the Small Fascist DeVos family) have organized gun-toting protests at state capitols. They’re demanding an immediate reopening of local economies, even as thousands of people are infecting one another and dying of Covid-19 every day.
While the heavily armed white demonstrators with swastikas, nooses, and Confederate flags are repulsive, the other side in this fight is no friend of the working class. The liberal Big Fascists, who trace their origin to John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil monopoly, are spearheaded by multinational oil and finance capital companies. To protect their long-term profits, they are pushing for a slower emergence from the pandemic lockdown. Since deep-pocketed giants like ExxonMobil are better equipped to wait out a price squeeze than smaller domestic companies (Motley Fool, 4/27), they can pretend to care about workers’ health while they watch their competition wither and die.
In fact, the Big Fascists and their liberal politician puppets are planning for even deadlier, wider-scale wars with global rivals China and possibly Russia. Let us not be fooled. None of the bosses or their stooges—from Trump to Joe Biden and Barack Obama—care about workers’ lives. They simply have different strategies for how we should be sacrificed on the altar of capitalist profits.
Oil crash roils geopolitics
While the historic, pandemic-driven reduction in energy demand lies at the root of the oil price crisis, the virus is not solely to blame. In early March, when the global economy was still up and running, Saudi Arabia and Russia launched a price war that flooded the market with millions of additional barrels of oil. Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested that Saudi Arabia, a once-reliable U.S. partner, was intentionally driving U.S. shale oil producers out of business (CNBC, 3/31).
Accelerated by the isolationist and incompetent Trump, the U.S. rulers’ loss of influence in the Middle East, even with so-called allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, is a clear sign of their decline as the world’s number-one power. As China and Russia seek to fill the void, the region is becoming even more unstable. The twin crises of overproduction and the falling rate of profit, which Karl Marx showed to be inherent properties of capitalism, are intensifying imperialist competition. For the bosses, there is one sure-fire way to resolve their contradiction: a war that demolishes much of the world’s productive capacity. In other words, the bosses will gladly sacrifice the lives of millions of workers to “reset” their crisis-riddled system and start fresh.
Communists understand that capitalism can’t ever be reformed to meet the needs of our class. The profit system must be completely destroyed and replaced with one that’s run by and for the working class—a system that CAN meet our needs.
Main rivals on the rise
The two main challengers to U.S. dominance could emerge from this crisis stronger than before. U.S. sanctions against Russian oil forced Russia to diversify its economy, leaving it “in very good shape to cope with lower [oil] prices” (Bloomberg, 3/6). China, a net importer of oil, generally fares better when prices are low. Further, the Chinese government willingly supports its national oil companies to keep them solvent.
Combined with the economic disaster of the pandemic, the latest conflict over oil could accelerate the U.S. bosses’ decline and make them all the more eager to enlist U.S. workers for World War III. On April 28, the U.S. sent the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry to sail near the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the contested South China Sea. Two days later, the U.S. flew two Air Force B-1B bombers over the South China Sea in a provocative show of force.
Oil greases the wheels of global capitalism. As long as they remain in power, the bosses will continue to send millions of workers to fight and die to protect the rulers’ profits. They will keep on burning oil and other carbon-based fuels, the source of catastrophic climate change. For the workers of the world, there is only one alternative: communist revolution. Only when we have wiped the capitalists and their murderous system from the face of the planet will we be safe from their plunder, pandemics, depressions, and oil wars. Join PLP and help make revolution a reality!
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The Petrostates crash
The crash in oil prices is devastating the less powerful “petrostates,” nations that rely on petroleum revenue to run their economies. In Iraq, oil revenues—which make up 90 percent of budgetary income—plunged by nearly half for March, even before Covid-19 fully crushed demand. “This fiscal collapse has dire implications for the country’s struggle to stave off ISIS, for Iraq’s ability to stand up to interference by its neighbors…” (Bloomberg, 4/29). After sinking trillions of dollars and murdering hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers in the genocidal Iraq War, the U.S. may have no more control over the region than it did before its invasion in 2003.
In fact, according to the International Monetary Fund, every country in the Middle East except Qatar requires oil to sell at a minimum of $60 per barrel. Over the past month, the average price of Brent Crude has been a hair above $20 (Bloomberg, 4/29).
MEXICO, May 1—This year, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) collectives in Mexico met to commemorate a virtual May Day because of the Covid-19 pandemic. We met with comrades and friends from Mexico City, Oaxaca, and two collectives from the State of Mexico, as well as friends from Argentina and Colombia. We were able to analyze the health crisis and the impact it has had on workers worldwide. What is prevailing is the inequality generated by capitalism and its profit system.
The situation worldwide is similar because it is governed by a system that does not care about people's lives. We flew the flag of communism and the need to create and continue working in an international party. Since, under this system, the life of any worker, no matter their job, is not guaranteed.
We made an urgent appeal to not miss the opportunity to join the fight against this capitalist caused pandemic. Working from our respective trenches, we can build a communist party. We also called on women, men, and youth to fight shoulder to shoulder from anywhere in the world to achieve a revolutionary communist army, where life will be the priority.
NEWARK, NJ, May 2—It is difficult for workers to organize as a result of the current pandemic, but it’s not impossible. So how do we move forward and continue celebrating May Day? This year in Newark, we organized our first ever May Day motorcade in the Black and Latin working class neighborhoods where Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) we are deeply rooted, to express the communist line “The Only Solution Is A Communist Revolution!”
“Capitalism is the Disease! Communism is the Cure!” That was the theme of this motorcade and was used as a slogan to sharpen struggle with workers and students amidst a deadly pandemic that has already killed close to 10,000 workers in NJ and disproportionately affects Black, Latin and women workers in Newark and around the world (NJ.com, 5/9). For the 25 PL’ers and friends that joined, by car, on bikes and through Zoom, it was as exhilarating as it was a learning experience.
Communists lead class struggle
Unlike other reformist motorcades around immigration and rent strikes that took place downtown, PLP not only brought our politics to the Black and Latin neighborhoods of Newark where we have a base but called out capitalism for exacerbating this virus and incited workers to unite as the cure. Workers along the sidewalks raised their fists, cars beside us honked their horns in response to PLP’s communist politics displayed along the cars and antiracist, antisexist messages blasting from our speakers. We remixed popular songs from classic May Day chants, “The workers united will never be defeated! Who are we? PLP! Raise those red flags, raise them high, PLP is marching by! La migra, la policia, La misma porqueria. Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite.”
Along the route, comrades stopped at lights or would slow down to sell CHALLENGE through windows while wearing masks and gloves to protect themselves and others. At the end of the route we entered the Stephen Crane Village Apartments, a public housing unit consisting of Black, Latin workers, and students. While teens ran to one of the car windows to take a CHALLENGE, the front of our Motorcade for Communism was met with a police motorcade for capitalism. “No good cops in a racist system” we chanted while facing a potential confrontation with the growing state’s fascist police.
Preparations and practice for class war
PLP and workers from the Newark Water Coalition collectively made a plan for the route, flyers, translations, posters, chants and who to contact if the racist cops started to make any arrests. For those who were unable to join, they followed the motorcade via Zoom. Some comrades and friends also rode on bikes beside the motorcade to be on the lookout for fascist pigs who would take any reason to disrupt working class fightback.
The route, practiced the week before by two comrades, included residential streets, a supermarket, two low-income housing units, and two hospitals. Flyers in both English and Spanish were passed out along the streets of Ivy Hill and North Newark where we’ve been organizing for decades and hung up on poles days prior to May Day. Cars were suited up with communist signs about the racist nature of this pandemic and some comrades even taped the front page of our May Day—Workers Day issue of CHALLENGE to their cars.
Preparing for this motorcade for May Day was useful to boost the morale of PL’ers, friends and workers alike–we acknowledged the dangers of the pandemic while still encouraging each other to push the limits of a disastrous capitalist crisis in order to move us toward a worker-led revolution.
A communist world is essential
This may be a dangerous time for many reasons - but there is great opportunity as well. Workers are angry, the fascist underbelly of capitalism is even more exposed and it is up to us to struggle against reactionary ideas. Having collectivized historical analysis, lessons from years of fighting back and most importantly, the potential of an angry working class hungry to fight to win, building for a communist world is essential. The motorcade showed how workers along the march were happy to see and hear communist ideas put forward by a multi-racial, multi-generational group of protestors in cars and on bikes. Join the fight for our world, not run for profits for the bosses, but run by the working class, for the working class!
LOS ANGELES, May 1—“When they say get back, we say fight back!” The coronavirus is causing some of the most horrific attacks on the international working class that we have seen in decades. Yet in the spirit of fightback against this racist profit system, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here organized a 25-car-strong motorcade to celebrate May Day 2020. While practicing the proper health measures, we were determined to find a way to honor the revolutionary history of May Day and be a beacon of light for our class. The fight against capitalism must continue no matter what external conditions may exist!
Workers take to the streets by any means (safely) necessary
We protested with a motorcade through Inglewood and Los Angeles that included three rallying points symbolic of our fight. As cars filed in to the meet up location, they received packets with maps and information on protesting while maintaining covid-precautions. We decorated our sound truck and leading car with red flags, signs opposing racist gentrification, and a 6-foot banner commemorating Alex Flores and the fight against racist police that we have used in our Flores Friday marches. Cars were also adorned with signs like “Capitalism Kills.” We were covered by masks and gloves yet the spirit of May Day was all around us.
Supporters came from many areas of work outside of the Flores family struggle and tenants work including high school teachers and students, healthcare workers and those involved in a local jail fight. Chants rang from our sound truck which set the tone that on May 1st, the international working class will fight back! Led by two PLP members and the sister of Alex Flores, we made our way to the first rallying point. The first target was an apartment building that was being deliberately allowed to deteriorate by the landlord because it sits in the shadow of the massive Rams football stadium being built across the street, the unmistakable symbol of racist gentrification. As our chants, “racism means… gentrification means, we got to fight back” rang out, passersby and cars driving by raised their fist or chanted in support!
Speakers called out the landlord by name, describing their horrible living conditions, including an immigrant worker and tenant we are working with who have a history of celebrating May Day in Mexico. The sister of Alex Flores, who has been fighting against the racist police murder of her brother for the last six months, gave a sobering speech about the role of police in our society. A comrade called for those fighting racist police murders and gentrification to join Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist world. He offered a moving metaphor asking those listening to think about “contact tracing” (a method to contact those who could be spreading an infectious disease). Listeners were asked to apply that logic over the last 500 years to the source of all ills, whether it be unemployment, police murder, gentrification, or imperialist war, back to capitalism.
As we left Inglewood and entered Los Angeles, we received massive support from workers in front of their homes, walking down the street or driving by in their cars. The working class of South Central is clearly fed up with ridiculously high rents, killer cops, and many other aspects of capitalism.
Uniting mass work on May Day
In preparation, Progressive Labor Party united the work within a tenants’ mass organization with the fight we’ve organized with the Flores family against racist police murder (see CHALLENGE, 4/15). Our theme for May Day 2020 was communism is the solution to a capitalist system that kills workers in our homes and in the streets.
We connected these struggles politically in the planning meetings. For example, in one of the meetings, a PLP member stressed how the police are used to oppress the working class whether it be through physical violence in the streets or the sheriff’s department evicting families from their homes. A friend from the tenant’s organization wanted a particularly heinous landlord and the broader issue of gentrification to also be included in the list of targets. The proposal was for May Day to call for the cancellation of rent and to abolish the police with the understanding that we can only do this by smashing capitalism.
The fight for Flores lives on
The third leg of the motorcade took us to the neighborhood of Alex Flores where we have been protesting weekly for the last six months. An entire family on a small street jumped and screamed in their front yard as we passed by. We coursed through the neighborhood, taking small streets that we had been canvassing over the last couple of weeks and passed the corner where another person was killed less than two weeks ago by LAPD after a car chase. We have yet to get in contact with anyone from their family at this point. We continued to Newton police station, where we have marched every Friday since November, ending on a spirited note.
From start to finish, it was four hours long, longer than anticipated. Unfortunately, this meant that many people left the motorcade before getting to the end. Nevertheless, we pulled off a major feat by seizing the streets in this period of “sheltering at home” and stretching clear across the city, connecting two key struggles. It was clear that workers are receptive and are searching for answers. We must continue to build the fight for a communist world!
Bronx: ‘Share the fire for justice’
The following are reflections from the City University of New York (CUNY) students in the Bronx about celebrating May Day 2020 with each other about how to fight the disease of capitalism.
It’s often easy to forget our innate right to resist, in a world meticulously designed to imprison the masses. Free will can seem like a distant myth. May Day is a beautiful reminder that resistance is our birthright. The survival of our families depends on our courage to resist. I am grateful to have been a part of the gathering and look ahead to a future that cares for all.
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My first Labor Day with the communist movement was very different from any other May Day. Despite the new faces that were also part of this virtual conference, the joy and connection of the truth was evident. The truth was the one that through songs, dances and poems, we were able to share with each other the fight against the disease of capitalism. A disease that can only be cured with an injection of communism. On May 1st we celebrate not only the fight for workers’ rights but also to be part of the cure for a system of oppression that continues to keep the 99 percent down. We will rise up and proclaim freedom from unnecessary wars, social classes, racism, poverty and oppression. This past May Day the communist movement celebrated the cause of this struggle, we the workers.
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May Day was an amazing experience. I got to meet people who shared the same fire and desire for justice. I was able to see the different and unique ways they share their message through their art. I’m also able to learn new terms such as “racial politics”. I also think that even though it was my first time I was able to participate. Even though this May Day was virtual, I hope the next May Day will be in person. This in person May Day might even top off the virtual May Day experience!
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Red Greetings!
I participated in my first May Day 73 years ago. Our Party, having overcome any and all conditions in organizing for our international working-class holiday, I find that today’s march contains probably the biggest hurdle we’ve yet encountered in battling the virus of capitalism.
It’s great to realize that our Progressive Labor Party has won so many young people to fight for communism. Truly, you are the future.
On May Day, I celebrated my 90th birthday yesterday and our celebration is the happiest present I could receive!
HAPPY MAY DAY, comrades, and continue building our multiracial revolutionary communist Party!
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We organized in the interest of students
Capitalist education has always failed working-class students, and right now the disaster of online learning shows that very clearly. In New York City, online classes began on March 23 and today there are still large numbers of students without devices that allow them to connect to their online classes, families with no wifi, families whose parents are essential workers so older children become the caretakers to younger children, teenagers working full time to support their families after layoffs, and children dealing with the illness and death of family members. But the Department of Education just keeps moving along, insisting on business-as-usual, just remotely. Disgustingly, some families have even had Children’s Services called on them because their children have been “absent” too many times!
Some teachers in my school have committed to NOT going with business-as-usual, and have moved away from our typical curriculum—to bring political discussion to our classes, exposing the racist, anti-working class nature of the ruling class’ response to Covid-19, to do our best to provide emotional support to our kids, and to help them find ways to fight back and fight for the schools they deserve.
One student decided to survey students about whether remote learning was working or not working and shared with teachers a document with criticism and suggestions for improving the situation. She was later attacked by several other teachers for doing so, and some of us jumped to support her, and fought to keep the student’s voices in the picture. They had gotten to her and she wanted to quit, but with some struggle, she decided it was more important to make sure that student’s voices are heard.
We now have a small team of students and a few teachers producing a weekly newsletter being sent out to the whole school. It is a weekly update from student surveys about what’s working for them and what they need, links to news articles, as well as some fun things. Everything is determined by students, as they fight to shape what their learning environment is during this time. Moving forward, it will expand, keeping as its focus that students will fight to shape their school and that teachers & administrators should be listening, and that students can fight back against this racist, capitalist system.
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Mexico: workers amidst a pandemic
Just like the rest of the working class, healthcare workers are insecure and have no rights,and they are the first to catch the virus due to the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Here is the real “Achilles Heel” that can send us to the abyss and deepen the negative effects of the pandemic in Mexico.
The government talks about “leveling the curve” and “staying home” in order to contain the virus and prevent the collapse of the health system. When in reality there are other factors that can cause the collapse prematurely, but are not taken into account:
1) The lack of PPE for healthcare workers has seen an increase of cases in different hospitals in the country.
2) Several doctors’ and nurses’ protests and rallies denouncing the lack of safety and supplies, that could eventually lead to a series of “massive strikes” in hospitals.
In reality our health system collapsed long before Covid-19 appeared in our lives. Years and years of neglect, instability and privatization have translated into a lack of personnel and shortages in protection, medical equipment, and the lack of general supplies. That is what we had before the current medical emergency which has in turn made them one of the highest risk groups for infection.
The institutional rhetoric, mounted on this base, has transformed them into “heroes” and “heroines”, in other words, “the front-line soldiers” that must sacrifice for their “sisters, brothers and country”. Over the weeks the media, of course, and all social networks reproduce this discourse without analysis or criticism.
The government is happy with the rhetoric, as it scatters and distracts from the real issues. We suffer from the cuts in public health budgets, the deterioration of the infrastructure, and the lack of access to health services for most of the population. We need to stop “romanticizing” the precarious and risky conditions healthcare workers are forced to work under for the moment. Doctors, nurses and public health workers in our country are not heroes or heroines; they are workers that are being exposed, for decades to a series of political injustices, from low salaries to the lack of the most basic labor rights.
We must not forget that when these workers have fought for their rights they have been strongly repressed. So, instead of reproducing the discourse, we need to demand that the government immediately provide the supplies and infrastructure these workers need. It is the only way to save lives. And it is the best way to prevent the system from collapsing. The government could redistribute the funds for the mega projects like the Tren Maya or the Santa Lucia Airport, that, needless to say, should take a back seat to healthcare.
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Virtual May Day in the midwest
I attended another Progressive Labor Party (PLP) May Day. This year it was virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. We talked about how we all are fairing during this crisis. Later, we shared stories from our 1st May Day gatherings from years ago. There was also a presentation on the class struggle as it emerged out of primitive communism to our 21st Century capitalist world. Also, we discussed how the global Covid pandemic will affect revolutionary work, and how it’s fascist to force meatpacking workers back to work to die by the bosses and president Trump in the name of profits. We discussed the need to be involved where there are workers and win them to join PLP.
It was also not lost on anyone how global capitalism is an artificial system of inequalities that took a virus to open the eyes of millions of workers globally that capitalism does not work for our class. We need to get out this message of communist revolution as the way out of this capitalist hell. We ended our Zoom gathering by singing the Internationale.
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