Millions of workers worldwide celebrated May Day 2014, the international working-class holiday rooted in the earliest fights for communism more than a century ago. The Progressive Labor Party is carrying forward this tradition in more than twenty countries on five continents. Despite the bosses’ efforts to bury this tradition in a wave of nationalism and imperialism, millions of 2014 May Day marchers advanced their anti-capitalist demands. They showed the potential of the working class to organize for communist revolution.
War Is ‘Good’ — For the Bosses
Meanwhile, the bosses are urgently proclaiming that war is good. On April 25, the ultra-imperialist Washington Post printed an op-ed piece headlined, “In the Long Run, Wars Make Us Safer and Richer.” Through ten thousand years of conflict, the piece read, “humanity has created larger, more organized societies that have greatly reduced the risk that their members will die violently. These better organized societies also have created the conditions for higher living standards and economic growth. War has not only made us safer, but richer, too.”
But who is “us”? The group enriching itself through war is the tiny, profiteering capitalist class, not the billions now struggling to survive on one to two dollars a day. And who is safer? Not the tens of millions who died in World War I. Not the more than 100 million who died in World War II. Not the tens of millions more slaughtered in the imperialists’ proxy wars since 1945.
Rulers Go Nuclear?
The ruling class’s war mongering is most apparent in the spiking tension between Washington and Moscow in Ukraine and beyond. Pro-Russian forces are widening the combat zone against the U.S.-backed government in Kiev. U.S. troops are positioned to defend what may be Putin’s next targets in the Baltic region — and to set a “trip wire” for a potential nuclear war, Barack Obama’s high-stakes revival of NATO’s mid-20th-century Cold War doctrine (see CHALLENGE, 4/7).
During the Cold War (1947-1991), the U.S. stationed hundreds of thousands of troops at the edge of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Europe. Any conflict could have been used to justify massive U.S. retaliation. Today Obama is taking a similar tack against the Russian imperialists among the U.S. rulers’ leading rivals for profits. On April 26, Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite rehearsed the trip-wire scenario by greeting 150 U.S. paratroopers: “The numbers are not important. If just one of our guests is harmed, this would mean an open confrontation, not with Lithuania but with the United States of America” (Reuters, 4/26/14).
On May 2, according to the New York Times, “46 people died as a result of street battles between pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine groups....in Odessa, far west of the country’s restive eastern region.” As the leading mouthpiece for the U.S. ruling class, the Times worried that this violence was “a measure of how far events have spiraled out of the authorities’ control.” CNN (5/4/14) chimed in, “This unrest raises the prospect of Russia becoming even more involved, whether that involves taking over all or parts of the region peacefully as it did with Crimea or as part of a full-scale military conflict.”
Losing influence in the Ukraine — a conduit for Russia’s oil and gas pipeline to the west — terrifies U.S. bosses. So does Putin’s threat to “liberate” ethnic Russians by taking over other former Soviet bloc countries. Unlike Ukraine, these nations now belong to U.S.-led NATO, making the stakes even higher (For the origin and role of NATO, see CHALLENGE, 4/7.)
Oil War Heating Up
U.S. and Russian capitalists are also squaring off in the Middle East. According to a May 1 article published by the BBC, “Iraq: A Proxy Battleground in a Regional War,” “sectarian” killings have tripled over the past year. The BBC attributed this escalation to a struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for supremacy in the Gulf: “Shia officials openly accuse Saudi Arabia of financing Sunni extremists in the region, whereas Iraqi Sunnis often accuse the government of Nouri al-Maliki of power-grabbing to help Iran advance its regional agenda.”
But this is only the surface of the story. Behind Saudi royals and Iranian ayatollahs is the competition between
ExxonMobil and Russia’s Lukoil to dominate Iraqi oil supplies. Exxon’s transactions with Saudi Arabia represent the biggest deals in the history of capitalism. So it is no surprise that the all-time biggest arms sale, now under way, links Washington and the Saudi rulers. On the other hand, “Iran’s current leaders are feeling increasingly comfortable with President Vladimir V. Putin’s anti-American and anti-Western stances,” as reflected in a recent Russia-Iran $10-billion energy deal (NYT, 4/29/14).
Iraq’s warring sect leaders, bankrolled by Saudis and Iranians, have their own oil-fueled agendas, from jobs patronage to revenue sharing. But the imperialist forces backing them are locked in a larger fight for a much bigger prize.
In mid-March, Russian oil giant Lukoil celebrated the start up of the West Qurna-2. The Iraqi oilfield...was quite likely the world’s biggest untapped field, with recoverable oil reserves believed to be in the neighborhood of 20 billion barrels” (Forbes, 5/3/14).
The Victims: Five Million Iraqis
Russia’s oil barons have made this critical inroad without firing a shot in either U.S.-led war on Iraq. But Maliki’s coziness with Iran and Russia is driving Exxon — for whose benefit four U.S. presidents displaced or killed five million Iraqis — to destabilize his regime. To the consternation of both Maliki and Putin, Exxon is defying Baghdad’s dictates by drilling and exporting crude from Iraq’s renegade Kurdish region.
As U.S. rulers seek continued control of Middle East oil to keep rival imperialists in check, they are also accelerating their campaign to guarantee domestic energy supplies against the growing probability of trans-oceanic wars. The imperialist Brookings Institution think tank praises the U.S. energy industry’s foresight “as it consumes more home-produced oil and turns to sources of supply from its own backyards, notably from Canada, Venezuela and Mexico. Brazilian supplies, which are estimated to be among the world’s largest, could dramatically reinforce this trend” (“Fueling a New Disorder? The New Geopolitical and Security Consequences of Energy,” Brookings, March 2014).
In addition, “the federal government will build its first gasoline storage reserves in the New York Harbor area and in New England. Together, the reserves will hold about a million barrels of gasoline.... the fuel is intended to be held back in case another disaster cripples regional fuel supplies.” This is code for the contingency of a global inter-imperialist conflict.
Workers’ Trump Card: Fight for Communism
The bosses’ crucial obstacle is the refusal of the international working class to serve as cannon fodder in the rulers’ next bloodbath. Today, workers in Ukraine and Russia are of central importance. But our resistance must include workers on every continent, workers who are already fighting back against the ravages of capitalism. Class struggle is raging worldwide, from workers in China striking against their Nike exploiters, to garment workers in Bangladesh fighting the bosses’ deathtraps, to workers in France, Spain and Greece opposing international capitalism’s imposition of austerity programs, to students and workers in Haiti refusing to accept the fascism inflicted on them by U.S. rulers and their local lackeys, to the slum dwellers in Brazil defending their homes in battles with the cops, to students, teachers and workers in U.S. cities standing up to the racist attacks in their schools and workplaces — all this indicates the working class will not accept the ruling class’s assault lying down and will continue to rebel against the latter’s onslaught.
The inter-imperialist conflict must be transformed into a class war against the bosses’ system. Capitalism must be overthrown and replaced with a communist society — of, by and for the working class.
Indispensable to that goal is the leadership and growth of the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party. As communists, we must dedicate ourselves to lead the world’s workers to bury the profit system, the cause of all the problems suffered by our class. Join us!
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Cuomo-de Blasio Racist Transit Contract Taking Workers for A Ride
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- 09 May 2014 538 hits
NEW YORK CITY, May 5 — Workers here are under attack. Masses of city employees are slaving away under expired union contracts. The principle of “No contract, No work” — meaning if workers hadn’t won their demands when their contract expired, they would strike — now seems like ancient history. Gone is the militant, communist leadership that once steered NYC unions towards challenging capitalists’ constant drive to maximize profits off our backs. Instead we have union mis-leaders telling workers for years to hold on for a new, “better” mayor. Recent events have shown that putting faith in union hacks and politicians will get us nowhere!
On April 17, transit workers found they were among the first to be sold out. A deal struck between Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 mis-leaders and NY State Governor Cuomo “The Cutter” raises the cost of workers’ health insurance, lengthens wage-progression to five years (up from three) and only grants pay raises that are really cuts because they’re below inflation. It provides the bosses and their lackeys years of “labor peace” with a five-year contract (also up from three).
This is a racist contract which attacks a mainly black, Latino, Asian and immigrant workforce, and is especially bad for those newly hired who are even more predominately from those groups. Since it will take even longer to get to top pay, the contract will encourage hire-and-fire attacks (especially in already unstable jobs like bus drivers). However, this racist sellout will affect all new transit workers, will further divide the new from the old and thereby weaken all.
While Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) unions bargain with the State, the amount that 38,000 TWU Local 100 members earn sets a pattern in the city for all workers, especially other MTA workers who are in Amalgamated Transit Union locals. This is clear from the April 30 deal announced by Bill “Cutbacks” deBlasio and the United Federation of Teachers. The sexist teachers’ contract, which attacks a mainly female workforce, allows for nearly the exact same pay raises that fail to match inflation and represents a longer-than-usual contract.
To be clear, gross totals of inflation for 2012 and 2013 were 3 percent, while pay raises were only 2 percent. New York workers are well aware of this, especially thanks to the Rent Guidelines Board, which has jacked up rents 5.25-7.25 percent in those years!
The cuts in real pay and benefits in store for the rest of the city’s workers could be even worse. Much of this stems from the fact that while the bosses steal trillions of dollars from public and private sector workers’ labor, they spend these monies on imperialist wars. Capitalist politicians are professional liars when in comes to blaming one another for lack of funding for schools, transit and healthcare that workers need.
As workers we need the PLP to grow, to become strong enough to lead workers, students and soldiers away from not only the bosses’ politicians but also from the treadmill of reforms. While it’s good to fight to make workers lives better now, capitalism operates to take away what meager gains we win through higher taxes, mass racist unemployment, two-tier wage systems and outright wage-cuts. That’s why learning to fight the bosses is even more important, so we can ultimately overthrow the capitalist class and take power for ourselves. A communist system could meet all workers’ needs, destroy racism and sexism, homelessness, imperialist war and wage slavery.
NEW YORK CITY, May 5 — The UCLA Civil Rights Project just named New York as the state with the most segregated school system in the U.S., with New York City leading the way.
Racist disparities between students of the same age show us each day how unequal our society is. An Annenberg Foundation report of September 2012 found that in black and Latino neighborhoods only 10% of students graduate “college ready.”
The current contract proposal for NYC teachers is — like those before it — a contract ON the mainly black and Latino youth of the NYC school system. The offer of $5,000 to teach in “hard-to-staff” (read black and Latino) schools is a capitulation to racist segregation, to the notion that separate can be made more equal. Teachers must reject this contract because separate can never be made equal.
This contract ought to be rejected also because it contains increased avenues for the Department of Education and principals to sow division among teachers by offering merit pay. If this contract passes, a small number of teachers will be anointed as ones with the responsibility for coming up with new and sustaining effective teaching practices.
Teachers must reject this contract because our union refuses to fight for a reduction in class size. Yes, it is true the raises are paltry and don’t even keep up with inflation. However, that is not the reason to vote this contract down. We should vote no because we need to send a strong message that we stand in solidarity with the interests of our students. The 2012 teachers strike in Chicago had mass support because the teachers were demanding better conditions for everyone in the schools, not just money for themselves. This kind of working-class solidarity is necessary but not sufficient to bring about the changes we need, which can only be satisfied by communist revolution.
We ought to use this contract vote to truly examine our priorities as educators. Good teachers do not show up to work every day merely for the money, but because we care about equality for the students.
Capitalism wreaks havoc on the lives of our students and it is a never-ending struggle to teach well. The only way out is to band together with students and their families to fight the bosses’ racist, segregated school system. In this fight we tie ourselves to a long tradition of struggle, a tradition that has given birth to revolutionaries committed to the fight for communism. From each day on the job, to local strikes to general strikes to insurrection to the seizure of power, the banner of the struggle for an education our students deserve is emblazoned with the slogan: FIGHT TO LEARN, LEARN TO FIGHT.
HAITI, May 1 — On May Day, comrades joined the May Day march with more than 1,000 participants: workers, teachers and students. We distributed hundreds of flyers and led chants.
The march started at the SONAPI (free trade zone industrial park) and wound its way to the Champs de Mars, a large public park in front of the National Palace where tens of thousands of workers lived in tents for more than two years after the 2010 earthquake.
The police attacked the march and one marcher was punched in the eye and two students were arrested. One, a close friend, was beaten in the police precinct. In response, students at the Faculté d’Ethnologie organized a two-day strike on campus demanding their release; there were also several days of street demonstrations, which were attacked by the cops.
Other comrades participated in a speak-out of garment workers, a way to share the daily misery experienced by workers and to press for their demands for an increase in the minimum wage.
In the countryside, a comrade organized a meeting on May Day with 20 farm workers, led by one who is close to Our party. Later in the town’s public square, we showed a documentary film with more than 500 people. There was a lively discussion afterwards, in which communist ideas and our Party was discussed. In another town, a comrade organized a May Day rally and is engaged with other residents of the area in a struggle to take over for public use certain infrastructures left by an NGO.
WASHINGTON, DC, May 1 — Today 150 marchers gathered at Malcolm X Park to celebrate May Day and reaffirm their determination to fight back on all fronts against racism and capitalism.
One speaker, formerly imprisoned, described the racist horror of mass incarceration and how background checks, even after someone’s release, makes it impossible to find a job and support yourself. A Metro bus driver called on workers to unite against racism and sexism everywhere as part of the revolutionary struggle, and noted a small victory against racist background checks at Metro.
Another noted the recent successful unionization of adjunct teachers at two local universities. A tenant organizer called on everyone to come to a city-wide tenant organizing meeting as part of the battle against racist displacement through gentrification. A PL’er described the modern-day racist offensive of mass incarceration and mass deportation, and how only by building a revolutionary party, not limited to reform efforts, could we hope to succeed in the long run.
With PLP red flags snapping in the breeze and our bold May Day banner at its front, the march surged down 14th Street to the White House, with over 300 copies of CHALLENGE distributed to workers who saw the march pass by. At the White House, we observed a handful of racists who had gathered to oppose the May Day march, completely protected by a phalanx of cops and a metal barricade to defend them from angry protesters. They remembered how the racists were clobbered the year before by May Day marchers! Finally, the police loaded the racists into a police van and drove away — another example of cop-Klan solidarity with racists.
The day ended with bold speeches against the backdrop of the bosses’ White House, condemning the politicians and the capitalists for their imperialist wars, their racist attacks, and their destruction of the environment, and with a pledge to redouble our efforts in the coming year to smash capitalism!
