Los Angeles, October 17 — This week the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) House of Representatives passed a teacher’s motion to support healthcare workers fighting for union recognition at local clinics (see page 4). This effort is part of an ongoing struggle on a local high school campus to mobilize teachers, parents and students to fight against attacks on public education. These attacks represent some of the sharpest attacks on the working class as the ruling class continues to shove the crisis of capitalism onto workers who need education and healthcare.
Responding to these attacks is also an opportunity for our class to learn to fight collectively and to build class consciousness. Seeing how all workers are going through the same struggle is the first step to realizing that it’s the whole system of capitalism that’s the problem. Even though some bosses make things
particularly harder for workers, all bosses must exploit us to make profit.
For example, a new principal was recently hired at the local high school campus. Her immediate actions focused on escalating attacks on teachers and students at the behest of the school district. She is forcing the counselors to push students into the classes at exactly the class size limit set by the union contract. This means, when a student wants to change class there are no spots available because they are at their limit. They are eliminating Advance Placement classes or combining classes, effectively making teachers teach an extra class for no extra pay. The principal is doing exactly what the district wants because this is the best way to exploit education workers.
On a broader scale, the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) has spent an estimated one billion dollars on iPads for every student, which they are now in the process of taking back because students were able to crack their security codes.
Meanwhile, teachers and staff in the district haven’t gotten even a cost-of-living raise for more than six years. Thousands of teachers were laid off and displaced in the last few years, and very few are being hired back. Most are working as substitutes in the same position they previously filled as a full-time teacher! This is more of the same exploitation for maximum profit. The teachers and staff are fed up. A strike seems very probable this school year, but the district and union hacks are doing everything in their power to stall.
Union leadership has largely cooperated with the school district in facilitating the attacks on teachers and students. PLP is stepping up attempts to mobilize students and teachers to fight back. At the school, a few teachers have begun distributing a newsletter highlighting the attacks and pointing out that all of this is exploitation. In the process, there has also been talk among the faculty about asking all teachers to participate in some form of civil disobedience, such as calling in sick all at once, or refusing to follow a fascistic “no-pass” policy. There are some attempts to get parents and students involved in the fightback, but all of this has been slow going.
Right now, students, faculty and alumni are working together to gather letters of support for a teacher who was unfairly dismissed. These are all just small steps in the process of building class consciousness and leading class struggle. Workers of all types, including healthcare workers, education workers and others, must learn how to work together to build working class power. Only then can we take on our true enemy — capitalism.
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Hitler Deja Vu? French Fascists Growing Amid Bosses’ Crisis
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- 31 October 2013 377 hits
PARIS, October 27 — Vicious racism remains the hallmark of the National Front. The party’s candidate for the municipal election in Rethel, in the Ardennes, published a picture on her Facebook page comparing justice minister Christiane Taubira, a black woman, to a monkey, calling her a “savage.”
But this disgusting racism — which has always been used by the bosses to divide the working class — has not turned off many voters from the fascist party. The National Front won a recent by-election in Brignoles, in southern France, confirming the growing strength of the fascist party under Marine Le Pen, who succeeded her father as party leader in 2011.
Le Pen presents herself as the “French Reagan” and attacks “big government.” In 2012, she won 18% of the vote, the party’s best score ever in a presidential election.
It is becoming increasingly possible that the French fascists will be voted into national government legally, as has happened in governing coalitions since 2000 in Austria, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands.
Fascist Party Growing Fastest
Le Pen has continually repeated the slogan “the National Front, the biggest party in France.” It appears to be becoming an electoral reality. In one opinion poll on voter intentions for the May 2014 European Parliament elections, the National Front won 24 percent of the vote. The right-wing UMP won 22 percent and the Socialist Party 19 percent. The Left Front, a coalition of the Party of the Left and the French “Communist” Party, won 10 percent and the Trotskyites 2%.
The National Front is the only party whose projected share of the vote is growing significantly. Support for the governing Socialist Party is collapsing; 50 percent of factory voters say they’ll vote for the National Front.
There is a widespread racist anti-immigrant movement in France, being pushed by the National Front and supported by many leaders of other parties. It blames immigrant workers — not capitalism — for the mass unemployment.
While the National Front is attracting millions of voters (over 6 million in the 2012 presidential elections), its membership remains relatively small, claiming 65,000 in 2013. The National Front is having a hard time finding enough candidates for the municipal elections. In a time of high unemployment (5,473,000 unemployed, a 19.3% unemployment rate in September), the chance of a job as city councillor will attract opportunists who in turn will boost the party’s ranks. The resulting dynamic could make party membership shoot up.
The three right-wing parties that support French “democracy” are credited with 33% of the vote. If nothing changes between now and the 2017 presidential elections, they will need to form a coalition with the National Front in order to form a governing majority — and support for this from right-wing UMP leaders is growing.
Fascists on Campus
Fascist organizations are now attempting to penetrate campuses nationwide. In early October, the National Front leafleted the university in Le Mans. Action française universitaire, a fascist youth group, pastes up posters at the University of Bordeaux.
Action française universitaire proclaims on the front page of its newspaper that “the leftists now know that it’s a life-and-death fight if we catch them.” On June 5, Clément Méric, a member of Action antifasciste, was beaten to death in a clash with fascist youth in Paris. In one week in October, two Paris members of UNEF (a student union aligned with the Socialist Party”) were assaulted and threatened with rape by a fascist. In World War II, France succumbed to Hitler in six weeks, especially due to support for Nazi racist policies.
While there have been many militant actions and strikes by workers in France, including anti-fascist demonstrations, the absence of a real communist party pointing the way to smashing the fascists is evident. In World War II, communists led the Resistance movement against the Nazis. But since then the betrayal of the old communist movement, which collaborated with capitalists, has been devastating for workers here.
Only a revolutionary communist party can lead workers away from fascism. Until that happens, workers will continue to suffer the evils of capitalism. Fascism is the tool that the bosses turn to when they can’t solve their capitalist crisis. This underscores the need for a communist solution.
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Big U.S. Bosses Backed Nazi Blitzkrieg and Holocaust
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- 31 October 2013 404 hits
In a short 2009 book titled Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust, author Edwin Black describes how a number of bosses of major U.S. corporations, and their companies, collaborated with Hitler’s plans to conquer Europe and the Soviet Union in World War II (1936-1945). Indeed, Hitler himself admitted that without GM’s provision of trucks, the German army would never have been able to inflict the blitzkrieg (literally lightning war) against Czechoslovakia, Poland, and all the other countries in Europe that came under the thumb of the Nazi war machine.
The bosses Black names include GM’s Alfred Sloan, IBM’s Thomas Watson, Henry Ford, and the foundations created by Andrew Carnegie, the Harriman family, and John D. Rockefeller, and more. This is a veritable list of the founders of modern U.S. capitalism. At that time Sloan and Ford headed the auto industry, and Carnegie had created the industry-dominating U.S. Steel Corp. Rockefeller and his family not only dominated the oil industry but also major banks. Harriman built one of the largest rail empires. Watson’s IBM practically created the modern office machine industry.
The first two-thirds of Black’s book deals with the U.S. eugenics movement (a fake science calling for “purification” of the “white race” by various means) in the early 20th century. The Nazi Holocaust killed millions of Jewish, and Roma peoples and others. Not only did the Nazis racist ideology support this “cleansing,” but the Nazi war machine used them as forced labor to build their weapons. The Holocaust had another purpose as well: by imprisoning and killing communists and other working-class leaders, they aimed to keep workers from rebelling and overthrowing them. This unmitigated horror rested firmly on the U.S. eugenics movement that large numbers of intellectuals and major capitalists promoted and that Hitler so admired. Ford, Carnegie, Harriman, and Rockefeller were major funders of this movement.
Eugenics was a racist attempt to either exclude immigrants from a number of countries or sterilize or kill those deemed unfit, such as those who were forced to commit petty crimes to survive or those with mental illnesses. The premise was that by selective marriage and breeding — backed by laws passed in many states — a master race could be developed that would rid the country of the elderly, weak and disempowered, and particularly the black, brown, and Jewish working class. In addition, immigrants from many countries were deemed inferior by this movement, including Irish, Italian, and Eastern European workers. Hitler’s Holocaust was patterned on the eugenics movement, to which many German bosses and intellectuals contributed and for which Hitler gave high praise.
Early in his career in the 1930s, Hitler awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle prize to racist Henry Ford, multibillionare industrialist, particularly for his contributions to the fascist vilification of Jewish people. Ford published The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. World War II saw the killings of tens of millions of workers and others. The Nazis’ ability to pull this off was due in no small part to the build-up of racism in mid-20th century U.S. and Europe. Through the eugenics movement, racism helped to disarm, divide, and weaken the working class, world over, except in the Soviet Union.
The last portion of the book describes the material support to the Nazi’s war machine by GM, through its German subsidiary Opel. When GM was accused of aiding the enemy, Sloan hid behind the claim that it was a German company that provided the blitzkrieg trucks, yet Opel was wholly owned and operated by GM.
Black’s final chapter features the story of IBM’s development of the recording system that the Nazis used to keep track of whom they had killed and whom they had yet to kill in the death camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and scores of others. They admitted that without IBM’s help they could not have carried out such a systematic and monumental plan of gruesome and horrendous murder and genocide. Black earlier wrote a much longer book about this episode, titled IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2001).
None of the capitalists involved in aiding the enemy in this fashion ever paid for their crimes. And their present-day counterparts continue the same racist and fascist actions today, only without openly supporting Nazi-like ideology. Now, as then, only a communist revolution can bring the working class to power and end this horror once and for all.
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DeBlasio’s Job: Keep Workers in Check for the Bosses
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- 31 October 2013 367 hits
Elections under capitalism are a hoax to keep workers worldwide dreaming of a change of conditions in their lives and New Yorkers are no different. The city’s municipal workers are without contracts and haven’t had raises in years. Hospitals are closing, leaving millions of workers without access to accessible healthcare. The NYPD continues to shoot black and Latin youth at will. Schools function as prisons for our mostly black and Latino student population. With more militaristic charter schools opening and so-called failing schools closing, students and staff are displaced. More and more workers are homeless. As the NY Times recently pointed out, many workers must work two or three jobs and still can’t afford the exorbitant rents. Many have no jobs at all.
Due to the racist nature of capitalism, black and Latino workers bear the brunt of these racist attacks. The gap between the super-rich and the working class, employed and unemployed, grows wider all the time. In New York, the racist inequalities of capitalism are on full and brutal display.
Meanwhile, many workers in the city are eagerly awaiting the November 5 mayoral election. Why? Because the Democratic candidate and probable winner, Bill DeBlasio, talks about racism and proudly shows off his interracial family. He talks about taxing the rich to provide prekindergarten for all. Because he got arrested at a demonstration to keep one of Brooklyn’s largest hospitals open. Because he says he wants to end the racist stop-and-frisk policies of the New York Police Department.
But no matter how worker-friendly a picture he paints, DeBlasio has a job to do for the bosses who control city government. Like all politicians, his assignment is to keep their capitalist system running as smoothly as possible.
In the current economic crisis, with the U.S. on a permanent war footing against its imperialist rivals, belts are being tightened at every level of government. It is the mayor’s job to keep New York and its workers in check for the bosses. That means city worker salaries must be kept within the limits of the budget. It means schools must teach students capitalist propaganda more efficiently. It means the NYPD must maintain its role as a cutting-edge force in security and surveillance, along with shooting black and Latino youth. It means that real estate profits and Wall Street interests must come first to keep the billionaires’ investments flowing into the city.
Since winning the Democratic Party primary in September, DeBlasio’s campaign fundraising events read like a who’s who of the U.S. ruling class, from $25,000-a-plate breakfasts brokered by Hillary Clinton to pow-wows with the top brass of Citigroup, Viacom, Goldman Sachs, and the law firms that serve them. He met with BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager and a major shareholder in Massey Energy, the capitalists whose criminal negligence and greed killed 29 West Virginia miners in 2010. He’s been hard at work to set these bosses’ minds at ease that his pro-worker public statements were nothing more than campaign rhetoric.
The main danger of liberals like DeBlasio is that they put a friendly face on the rulers’ racist, anti-working class policies. They play a critical role in building fascism and sending unemployed students off to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. DeBlasio has already lulled many workers into believing they don’t have to organize or fight back. Once their “friend” is inaugurated, this thinking goes, he will keep the hospitals open, end the test-based evaluation of teachers, sign contracts granting raises, and put a stop to racist police brutality.
Obama, DeBlasio:
Capitalist Stooges
But workers have been on this roller coaster before. Not so long ago, Party members and friends wore buttons saying, “It’s not just Bush, it’s capitalism.” We worked hard to convince workers that Obama could never solve our problems because he was bought and paid for by the ruling class. The five years since then have proved us right, as Obama has plunged the country more deeply into war and economic crisis, bailing out GM and the banks while tens of millions remain jobless.
We can’t let slick liberal politicians like Obama and DeBlasio win our friends, classmates and coworkers to believe that elections can save them from the disasters of the profit system. As communists, we know that capitalism contains a basic contradiction: Workers don’t earn enough in wages to afford the products they produce. We know that capitalism relies on racism and sexism to keep workers divided. We know that no capitalist politician — Asian, Latino, black, or white — can change those hard realities. We know that any small concession they make will be taken away in a heartbeat, whenever the bosses feel the need to increase their profits to compete with China, Russia, and other imperialist powers.
Even after DeBlasio is elected, we must continue to share this message with other workers and students. We must expose the politicians’ hoax everywhere we encounter them. As our friends become disillusioned by the liberal misleaders’ results, we must help them to see that the only alternative to the capitalist trap is to unite and build a whole new system — to fight for a communist revolution.
BROOKLYN, NY, October 21 —“Justice for Kyam Livingston — killed in a Brooklyn cell” echoed outside the courthouse that holds the local Central Booking where Kyam Livingston was left to die in a jail cell. The crowd filled with anger demonstrated here, demanding justice and the names of the killer cops on duty who refused to help Kyam as she and other inmates cried for help.
The Justice for Kyam Livingston Committee will continue to be active and hold demonstrations on the 21st of each month — the day of the anniversary of her death. (More next issue.)
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PROVIDENCE, RI, October 29 — A multiracial crowd of anti-racist demonstrators booed the NYPD racist Police Commissioner Ray Kelly off the stage at Brown University here today, forcing the cancellation of his lecture on “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City.” Before his scheduled appearance, students and others marched outside the hall carrying signs that said “Stop police brutality” and “RAY [CIST] KELLY.” Inside the hall chants arose to “Stop stop-and-frisk,” alluding to the Mayor Bloomberg-Kelly racist policy of annually harassing hundreds of thousands black and Latino youth completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
“Residents of East Flatbush, Brownsville and East New York don’t feel safer than they did in 2001,” said Danny Echevarria, a Brown student from Brooklyn. “Instituting systematic racism in New York City is a disgrace,” another student chimed in. Another student rose to slam the NYPD and accused Kelly of discriminating against blacks and Muslims.”
Choi, a history major from the Maryland suburbs of Washington declared, “We do not at all support Ray Kelly’s stop-and-frisk policies and…want to stand in solidarity with communities the police have targeted.”Kelly had barely started speaking when chants filled the hall drowning him out. The protest continued for more than 20 minutes until Kelly fled the stage.
