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    David Koch, rival capitalist and little fascist

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    14 September 2019 282 hits

    David Koch, one half of the toxic Charles/David Koch billionaire brothers, died on August 23. The Koch brothers have been leaders of the domestic small fascist bosses challenging the big fascists who have historically run U.S. imperialism.
    These two wings of the ruling class are killers rushing towards a battle that will result in increasing fascism. Trusting either of them to liberate our class is a dead-end. Building confidence in our class by building a revolutionary communist movement to put the working class in power is the only way forward in the face of growing fascism.
    Domestic oil vs. Mid-East oil
    The Koch empire was built on oil refining, fracking, and petroleum products, mainly based on U.S. and Canadian oil and natural gas (Rolling Stone, 9/24/14). Koch Industries is one of the biggest family businesses in the world. However, even considering all of its extensive businesses beyond fossil fuels, it is still small compared to the big oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and BP. The big oil companies, founded on the blood-soaked imperialist exploitation of Mid-East oil, are each two to four times the size of the entire Koch empire, and together dwarf Koch industries (Owler.com).
    Wars over taxation and regulation
    The Kochs and other small fascist bosses have banded together over the last 30 years to fight the big fascist bosses around two major issues: cutting corporate taxes that go towards supporting the big fascist bosses’ worldwide military empire, and stopping government regulations that press the big oil producers’advantages and hurt  the smaller companies.
    When the Rockefellers and other big fascist U.S. bosses started the environmental movement (EElegal.org, 12/2016) to keep the domestic oil companies in check, the Koch brothers stood to take a massive hit.
    “The effects of [environmental regulations] would be measured over decades for Koch. The company has billions of dollars sunk into the complex and expensive infrastructure of crude-oil processing. If a limit on greenhouse gas emissions were imposed…The total dollar losses would likely be measured in trillions over a period of 30 years or more”(NY Times, 8/23).
    “No taxes and no regulations” became the battle cry of the Kochs. In the 1980s and 90s the big fascist liberal bosses were smashing unions, cutting benefits, eliminating job security and pushing racist lies to justify filling the prisons with Black workers.
    The Kochs sought supporters for their movement in the army of workers who were being devastated by this drive of the main wing U.S. bosses. In the face of increasing competition from other rising imperialists, the liberal big fascists had to crush wage levels and smash the New Deal social contract that had staved off rebellion of U.S. workers during the 1930s.
    Racism became the glue of the Koch movement
    The main wing liberal bosses emerged from their victory in the Civil War as the most powerful ruling class in history by mobilizing millions to fight slavery. But it wasn’t long before the liberal bosses betrayed the working class.
    The entire history of U.S. capitalism is built on the foundation of racism. From slavery to the racist terror of the KKK; from Jim Crow segregation to mass incarceration; from segregated schools to racist cops gunning down young Black men. Even the New Deal, hailed by liberals, mostly excluded Black workers (see book When Affirmative Action Was White). Within a few years of the defeat of the Southern ruling class and the end of chattel slavery, the big fascist liberal bosses let the KKK ravage Black workers in the South and allowed the defeated southern bosses to institute Jim Crow segregation.
    The biggest liberal bosses at the helm of U.S. imperialism have made their billions and built their political power by building racism to exploit, divide and attack the working class. The liberal bosses’ racist ideas pollute our children’s schools, permeate the entertainment our class consumes and fuel the bosses’ organizations used to control us.
    The Koch brothers used the racism cultivated through brutality by the liberal big fascists running U.S. capitalism against the liberal bosses themselves. At the heart of the Koch movements is open racism that paints Black and immigrant workers as the enemies of white workers. The Kochs didn’t create racism. They just recycled the same lies that the liberal big fascists used to justify “Stop and Frisk”, and to jail and terrorize millions of Black workers living in the cities controlled by the liberal big fascists.
    The Koch brothers poured hundreds of millions of dollars into openly racist movement that gave life to the Tea Party (Rolling Stone, 9/24/14) and successive formations culminating most recently in Trump’s mobilizing of racist voters to win the White House (NY Times, 9/6/2018).
    The liberal fascists are again asking for help from our class, and particularly from Black workers, this time to fight the Kochs and their small fascist partners. The liberal bosses’ mouth-piece, the NY Times, is running on all cylinders to build patriotism and unity with the liberal ruling class through articles like their 1619 Project on the role of slavery in building U.S. capitalism. The liberal big fascists are faking concern about racism because they need us to die in their battle for power. Like the scorpions they are, the liberal big fascist bosses will kill us once they have used us up, just as they have always done.
    Racist hypocrisy of liberalism provides the fuel
    Building openly racist movements has worked for the Koch brothers because of the profound and deep hypocrisy of the liberal big fascist bosses. As unions were smashed by the liberal bosses and rural industrial workers across the U.S. saw their wages slashed and jobs disappear, the Kochs directed workers’ anger at Black and immigrant workers as well as the wealthy liberals who have formed the backbone of the main wing bosses support in the major U.S. cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
    The wealthy “liberal elite” of the United States’s biggest cities, who deride white workers as uneducated racists, while preserving  New York City as the most segregated school system in the U.S. and the most unequal city in the world, were an easy target for first the Tea Party and later the Trump movement to rally against. The hypocrisy of the Democratic Party claiming to be against racism and inequality while working day and night to keep the working class segregated and exploited in the financial and media centers of the U.S. let the Kochs, and the rest of the small bosses’ fascist movement, make the most open and vile racist lies attacking Black and immigrant workers.
    Trump brought Koch movement into the White House
    The election of Trump, with 62 million people voting for an open racist, signaled a new level of success for the domestic bosses and the Koch agenda. While the Koch brothers had a public spat with Trump, he has delivered on their agenda while trashing the main wing bosses’ institutions. “The Koch network has gotten 85 percent of what it has always wanted out of the Trump presidency so far — especially the huge government-starving, upward tilted tax cuts, the evisceration of the EPA...cuts in social spending, and ultra-right judges who will eviscerate government regulatory capacities and further weaken liberal forces” (NY Times 9/6/2018).
    David Koch’s death will not lower the volatility. The threat posed by the Koch industry bosses and their fascist ilk poses a greater threat to the big fascist liberal bosses than ever before. The coming election in 2020 looks to be an extremely volatile event.
    Look for the battle between the factions to sharpen as pressure from a rising China puts more strain on the liberal big fascist bosses to use more fascist methods and attempt to mobilize the working class on their behalf to regain control of their bloody racist empire. Going along with them is death for our class. We can never let the bosses lead us. We must make the fight against racism a fight to liberate our class from the system that breeds it: capitalism. We must build the PLP’s working class-led communist movement to fight for communist revolution!

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    David Koch, rival capitalist and little fascist

    Information
    14 September 2019 258 hits

    David Koch, one half of the toxic Charles/David Koch billionaire brothers, died on August 23. The Koch brothers have been leaders of the domestic small fascist bosses challenging the big fascists who have historically run U.S. imperialism.
    These two wings of the ruling class are killers rushing towards a battle that will result in increasing fascism. Trusting either of them to liberate our class is a dead-end. Building confidence in our class by building a revolutionary communist movement to put the working class in power is the only way forward in the face of growing fascism.
    Domestic oil vs. Mid-East oil
    The Koch empire was built on oil refining, fracking, and petroleum products, mainly based on U.S. and Canadian oil and natural gas (Rolling Stone, 9/24/14). Koch Industries is one of the biggest family businesses in the world. However, even considering all of its extensive businesses beyond fossil fuels, it is still small compared to the big oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and BP. The big oil companies, founded on the blood-soaked imperialist exploitation of Mid-East oil, are each two to four times the size of the entire Koch empire, and together dwarf Koch industries (Owler.com).
    Wars over taxation and regulation
    The Kochs and other small fascist bosses have banded together over the last 30 years to fight the big fascist bosses around two major issues: cutting corporate taxes that go towards supporting the big fascist bosses’ worldwide military empire, and stopping government regulations that press the big oil producers’advantages and hurt  the smaller companies.
    When the Rockefellers and other big fascist U.S. bosses started the environmental movement (EElegal.org, 12/2016) to keep the domestic oil companies in check, the Koch brothers stood to take a massive hit.
    “The effects of [environmental regulations] would be measured over decades for Koch. The company has billions of dollars sunk into the complex and expensive infrastructure of crude-oil processing. If a limit on greenhouse gas emissions were imposed…The total dollar losses would likely be measured in trillions over a period of 30 years or more”(NY Times, 8/23).
    “No taxes and no regulations” became the battle cry of the Kochs. In the 1980s and 90s the big fascist liberal bosses were smashing unions, cutting benefits, eliminating job security and pushing racist lies to justify filling the prisons with Black workers.
    The Kochs sought supporters for their movement in the army of workers who were being devastated by this drive of the main wing U.S. bosses. In the face of increasing competition from other rising imperialists, the liberal big fascists had to crush wage levels and smash the New Deal social contract that had staved off rebellion of U.S. workers during the 1930s.
    Racism became the glue of the Koch movement
    The main wing liberal bosses emerged from their victory in the Civil War as the most powerful ruling class in history by mobilizing millions to fight slavery. But it wasn’t long before the liberal bosses betrayed the working class.
    The entire history of U.S. capitalism is built on the foundation of racism. From slavery to the racist terror of the KKK; from Jim Crow segregation to mass incarceration; from segregated schools to racist cops gunning down young Black men. Even the New Deal, hailed by liberals, mostly excluded Black workers (see book When Affirmative Action Was White). Within a few years of the defeat of the Southern ruling class and the end of chattel slavery, the big fascist liberal bosses let the KKK ravage Black workers in the South and allowed the defeated southern bosses to institute Jim Crow segregation.
    The biggest liberal bosses at the helm of U.S. imperialism have made their billions and built their political power by building racism to exploit, divide and attack the working class. The liberal bosses’ racist ideas pollute our children’s schools, permeate the entertainment our class consumes and fuel the bosses’ organizations used to control us.
    The Koch brothers used the racism cultivated through brutality by the liberal big fascists running U.S. capitalism against the liberal bosses themselves. At the heart of the Koch movements is open racism that paints Black and immigrant workers as the enemies of white workers. The Kochs didn’t create racism. They just recycled the same lies that the liberal big fascists used to justify “Stop and Frisk”, and to jail and terrorize millions of Black workers living in the cities controlled by the liberal big fascists.
    The Koch brothers poured hundreds of millions of dollars into openly racist movement that gave life to the Tea Party (Rolling Stone, 9/24/14) and successive formations culminating most recently in Trump’s mobilizing of racist voters to win the White House (NY Times, 9/6/2018).
    The liberal fascists are again asking for help from our class, and particularly from Black workers, this time to fight the Kochs and their small fascist partners. The liberal bosses’ mouth-piece, the NY Times, is running on all cylinders to build patriotism and unity with the liberal ruling class through articles like their 1619 Project on the role of slavery in building U.S. capitalism. The liberal big fascists are faking concern about racism because they need us to die in their battle for power. Like the scorpions they are, the liberal big fascist bosses will kill us once they have used us up, just as they have always done.
    Racist hypocrisy of liberalism provides the fuel
    Building openly racist movements has worked for the Koch brothers because of the profound and deep hypocrisy of the liberal big fascist bosses. As unions were smashed by the liberal bosses and rural industrial workers across the U.S. saw their wages slashed and jobs disappear, the Kochs directed workers’ anger at Black and immigrant workers as well as the wealthy liberals who have formed the backbone of the main wing bosses support in the major U.S. cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
    The wealthy “liberal elite” of the United States’s biggest cities, who deride white workers as uneducated racists, while preserving  New York City as the most segregated school system in the U.S. and the most unequal city in the world, were an easy target for first the Tea Party and later the Trump movement to rally against. The hypocrisy of the Democratic Party claiming to be against racism and inequality while working day and night to keep the working class segregated and exploited in the financial and media centers of the U.S. let the Kochs, and the rest of the small bosses’ fascist movement, make the most open and vile racist lies attacking Black and immigrant workers.
    Trump brought Koch movement into the White House
    The election of Trump, with 62 million people voting for an open racist, signaled a new level of success for the domestic bosses and the Koch agenda. While the Koch brothers had a public spat with Trump, he has delivered on their agenda while trashing the main wing bosses’ institutions. “The Koch network has gotten 85 percent of what it has always wanted out of the Trump presidency so far — especially the huge government-starving, upward tilted tax cuts, the evisceration of the EPA...cuts in social spending, and ultra-right judges who will eviscerate government regulatory capacities and further weaken liberal forces” (NY Times 9/6/2018).
    David Koch’s death will not lower the volatility. The threat posed by the Koch industry bosses and their fascist ilk poses a greater threat to the big fascist liberal bosses than ever before. The coming election in 2020 looks to be an extremely volatile event.
    Look for the battle between the factions to sharpen as pressure from a rising China puts more strain on the liberal big fascist bosses to use more fascist methods and attempt to mobilize the working class on their behalf to regain control of their bloody racist empire. Going along with them is death for our class. We can never let the bosses lead us. We must make the fight against racism a fight to liberate our class from the system that breeds it: capitalism. We must build the PLP’s working class-led communist movement to fight for communist revolution!

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    Communist revolution key to saving the planet

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    14 September 2019 249 hits

    Climate catastrophies, including recent forest fires and hurricanes, have energized students and others in the fight against climate change. Capitalism causes nature’s disastrous events because its profit-seeking goals preclude meeting , or even acknowledging, social needs. The most important step forward for the growing climate movement, therefore, is for the working class to mobilize a revolutionary communist party, Progressive Labor Party(PLP) that will lead the struggle to conquer capitalist power.
    Nevertheless, we must consider the role of the main wing of the ruling class (as represented by Laurance Rockefeller and his foundation, in the environmental movement). Rockefeller has funded the environmental movement since the 1960s, and in the 1980s emphasized global warming.
    The dominant section of the capitalist ruling class tries to use our fear of fossil fuels’ destructive power to keep the domestic rival bosses in check and pressure imperialist China.
    Emerging climate movement
    Greta Thunberg, a Swedish student, launched the #FridaysForFuture youth movement against global warming. Now, an international youth organization is spearheading a worldwide “Climate Strike” from September 20-27 to demand an end to the use of fossil fuels. In Washington, D.C., 250 students and workers protested outside the Brazilian embassy against the Bolsonaro regime’s tacit approval of the devastating Amazon fires. Mass protests are spreading across the world.
    At these events, people know that the primary cause of global warming is the capitalists’ drive for maximizing profits, which requires the disregard of the welfare of billions of workers and a catastrophic disregard of the impact of their greed on natural resources. But many have illusions about the role of governments; they believe that mass actions can force governments to promote  climate stability.
    Global warming caused by capitalism
    Today we are experiencing a dramatic departure from the natural evolution of our planet. Climate scientists understand that the current period of rapid warming is a result of human activity over the past two centuries, the period when capitalism came to dominate the globe. Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) to generate electricity, power transportation, and provide heating and air conditioning generates carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 and natural gas (methane) are the two greenhouse gases most responsible for trapping heat in the atmosphere.
    The global warming effect generates a feedback loop in which the atmospheric heat generates conditions that further accelerate global warming. Heated air holds more water vapor, which exacerbates the heat trap effect and causes more frequent and violent hurricanes and flooding. Thawing permafrost releases methane trapped centuries earlier, again adding to heat trapping. And as Arctic ice melts, the darker sea reflects less of the sun’s rays, absorbing still more heat.
    No solution within capitalism
    Capitalism hastens global warming because its inherent competitive drive forces all corporations to constantly expand production in order to maximize profits. Moreover, the capital invested in the fossil fuel industries is enormous and not something the capitalist class will surrender for the benefit of workers. Reversing global warming will be impossible until capitalism is abolished. Today’s capitalists control politicians. While the bosses are united in screwing the working class, their profit interests are divided. Politicians’ statements about the Green New Deal are meaningless since such initiatives will cost the capitalists significant profits; the concept of democracy for the working class is a sham.
    Revolution
    The best action for climate change is a working-class revolution for a worldwide communist system. Abolishing capitalism and replacing the current fascist leadership with a communist-led international working class will enable us to implement technical solutions to global warming. Renewable energy sources including nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power will replace fossil fuels as the working class determines the options most appropriate for their needs.
    Further actions that are unprofitable to today’s capitalists—such as forest renewal and preservation, and removing CO2 from the atmosphere—can be seriously implemented by workers in power. The working class will move mountains and resolve the climate crisis when it achieves political power through communist revolution and removes the capitalists and their profit system from the earth. Join us!

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    Revolutionary potential of CUNY students

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    14 September 2019 221 hits

    NEW YORK CITY, September 9— A part-time history instructor at the City University of New York (CUNY) offers a description of “back to school” first days. “Where does the anti-racist club meet? I want to join!” Two days in class and students are already showing a great interest in fighting back as well as an openness to communist ideas. Ten students signed up to join our Activist Club, 30 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed and students have been engaging in sharp and lively discussions about the history of the United States and the kind of future we want.
    On day one, we reviewed the early history of the U.S. from Columbus to the Civil War. After a brief summary of the events from 1619 (arrival of first Black indentured servants in Jamestown) to 1865, students pointed out that the main aspect of U.S. society was racism, whether the institution of slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the war with Mexico or the Civil War. A student posed the question: Can we ever stop racism? Students mentioned that racism was taught and learned and that we are not born racist. When asked to answer the question, almost the entire class thought we could not end racism. Would it take a revolution? Almost every hand went up. That was a good time to share CHALLENGE with the class.
    On Day two, we started to examine the Reconstruction era right after the Civil War and look at the great achievements made by Black workers and white workers in trying to build an equal society. We talked about the changes that were fought for and the hardships that were faced. There was a debate about which was more important, voting or owning land.  I was able to point out how politicians come to our community, one of the poorest in the U.S., seeking votes but that’s about it.  A few students challenged the idea that voting is the way to change society. One student said, “The change must always come from us, not from any politicians.” So that was an opportunity to discuss student organizing, challenging tuition hikes and other issues on campus (e.g., broken elevators, long lines to get ID cards, shortage of classes, and limited healthy food options in the cafeteria).
    We are looking forward to this semester on campus, discussing Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP’s) ideas with students and engaging in class struggle. We have a new study group that is discussing the history of our revolutionary communist movement and involving students in supporting the demand for higher wages for part-time teachers and challenging the bosses’ tuition increases.

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    Haiti education conference: ‘Fight to learn, learn to fight’

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    14 September 2019 246 hits

    Haiti, September 10– As a new school year begins across the northern hemisphere, ruling classes across the globe herd working class teachers and students back to classrooms and school systems designed to reproduce capitalist social relations: racism, exploitation, and poverty.  Communist teachers, parents and students are faced with a dual task: battle like hell now for immediate improvements in learning conditions while never losing sight of the larger fight for communist revolution.
    At a recent conference run by a local reform organization, the Haiti Adolescent Girls Network, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members provided a model of raising communist ideas inside the bosses liberal reform organizations.(see box). The stated purpose of HAGN is to “support the rights and emancipation of girls and young women in Haiti.”
      It was recognized by Beyonce for its work in 2013 (haitigirlsnetwork.org; www.beyonce.com) and is allied with the Abundance Foundation, and the liberal Harvard-based philanthro-MDs Steven Kahn and Paul Farmer.  Harvard was built by slave labor, financed by slave trading (Wilder, Ebony and Ivy), pioneered the racist pseudoscience of eugenics (Harvard Magazine, March/April 2016) and to this day remains  a nerve center the U.S. ruling class imperialist main wing. The same big fascists that invented napalm at Harvard, for the purpose of butchering workers during the Vietnam war. Now they want us to believe they are friends to Haitian girls, but our comrades and friends are not fooled.
    Liberal parasites prey on Haiti’s youth
    Under the Harvard-led liberal imperialist world order, education for the children of the Haitian working class is a disaster. 40 percent of children aged 5-15 don’t go to school at all, and 60 percent drop out before finishing primary school to help support their families.  Only 20 percent of eligible students go on to high school. Schools for the children of the working class lack toilets, running water, walls that reach the ceiling and libraries; in rural schools, the teachers are not trained and often have not completed secondary school
    In the coming school year, as liberal education bosses pose as fighters for education reform, comrades everywhere must fight to raise our Haitian comrades’ analysis of schools and capitalism, which holds true worldwide.

    *****

    No future for working class youth under capitalism
    Education in a society which prioritizes the production of wealth to the detriment of human beings has lost its sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. Such a society cannot really produce free or liberated women and men, integrated into their society and truly productive human beings. The preparation of the child so that she/he has a “secure economic situation” in later years is nothing but an illusion. Education does not guarantee anything under a system of exploitation—capitalism—for the masses of workers and their children! Daily, in fact, schools pass from what should be their objective, developing the student fully as a human being and cultivating the ability to realize her/his full potential, to the student becoming merely a cog in the wheel of the bosses’ system. And the schools are required to reinforce the inequalities of the system as a whole. They prepare individuals to be blind to what’s really going on, who cannot see the true from the false, the good from the bad.
    Children don’t all have the same opportunities in school. Your level of education depends upon what the bosses need you to become as an adult. If you are to work in a factory/sweatshop, basic reading, writing and math are all that is required. If you are to work in the fields, even less is required. If you will be needed to be a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor, then of course you will get more education.Those children who don’t even have the opportunity to go to school at all will become the unemployed workers of the future, working in the informal sector, selling a few loaves of bread or some carrots on the street.This is why the various churches, private institutions and the State want to control education: their interest is to see that school doesn’t let the children flourish as human beings who question this system based on exploitation and inequality and that is truly dangerous. It is thus necessary to really transform education, not just reform it, and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) will fight tooth and nail alongside students and their parents at all levels in the struggle for a better life, a decent life.
    But in the end, a system that is based on inequality, that creates rich and poor, bosses and workers, doesn’t deserve to exist. And that means we must fight for the destruction of the capitalist system that forges inequalities of all kinds, exploiting women and men, for the sole purpose of building or multiplying capital for a very small minority. So our struggle to end this exploitative and dehumanizing system embraces the transformation of education as well.Children are the adults of tomorrow, and you have a choice: resign yourself to being exploited or fight back , not just for yourself and in your hometown, but for all the children of Haiti and elsewhere around the world. Together we can fight back and win.

    1. AMLO’s capitalist role in Mexico— Workers need communism
    2. "A Mercy," a Marxist appreciation
    3. Ayotzinapa, a crime of capitalism
    4. Kashmir: nationalism & regional rivalry on the rise

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