In serving the U.S. ruling class, two factors guide Barack Obama’s policies in the greater Middle East: controlling oil profits, and preparing for a future inter-imperialist war. This explains what Obama did in Libya — and what he hasn’t done in Egypt.
Unlike Libya, Egypt doesn’t have much oil. But it does have the Suez Canal, a vital waterway for the world’s main cheap oil reserves. The bulk of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi and other Europe- and North America-bound oil exports travel through the canal. Most of it goes under the U.S. and allied British brands of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. In addition, U.S. Navy warships depend mightily on the canal. The Pentagon’s World War III planning counts on it. If the canal were to be shut by anti-Western insurgents, oil exports would need to detour thousands of miles around the southern Horn of Africa to reach their destinations.
And it’s pertinent to note that Egypt’s armed forces keep the Suez Canal open.
U.S. Rulers See No Evil in Egypt
When Obama ordered the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya, he hid behind a “responsibility to protect” Libyans from dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Left unmentioned were Libya’s considerable oil reserves, which are coveted by Big Oil. But since the July 3 coup in Cairo, the U.S. president and his capitalist bosses have looked the other way as Egypt’s military murders hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets. In fact, the U.S. continues to provide the same bloodstained junta with its annual $1.5 billion supply of military hardware, made by profiteering U.S. arms-makers.
Why the inconsistency? Because workers’ lives have no value for capitalist rulers. The bosses are steered by profit alone. Obama’s raid two years ago was spurred not by Libya’s 5.7 million suffering inhabitants, but rather its 1.6 million daily barrels of oil. Then as now, the needs and limits of U.S. imperialism — not any concern for our class — dictate the bosses’ deadly Middle East gambits.
Besides trusting Egypt’s military tyrants to safeguard the Suez Canal, the U.S. rulers have assigned them two other important jobs. The generals are charged with preventing Arab states’ attacks on U.S. ally Israel, and also with curbing the spread of anti-U.S. al Qaeda-led Islamic forces inside oil-rich monarchies in the Exxon-Chevron-BP-Shell sphere. Ousted president Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, wasn’t up to these tasks. No sooner did Morsi get the boot than the petroleum-soaked princes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates pledged $12 billion to prop up Egypt’s military brass.
Bosses’ Plan B: Let Syrian Workers Die
Meanwhile, as strife in Syria has killed over 100,000 and left millions homeless, no vow to rescue the afflicted can be heard from the White House. Another country with limited oil but vast geopolitical significance, Syria hosts a Russian naval base and has strong alliances with U.S. foes China and Iran. U.S. rulers would love to be rid of Bashar Assad’s pro-Moscow/Beijing/Teheran regime. But at the same time, they fear strengthening the militant Islamists who hold the upper hand among the Syrian rebels. As a result, Obama has abandoned his phony “responsibility to protect” and chosen to let the bloodshed continue.
Plan A for the U.S. in Syria was to use defecting officers and Islamist fighters to bring down Assad and then install a pro-Western government. But given the unexpected strength of the Syrian army and the unreliability of the opposition, Obama & Co. have apparently turned to Plan B: Let the war drag on in the hope that the two sides will weaken or even destroy each other.
Anthony Cordesman, based at the U.S. ruling class’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, confirms this cynical approach. He proposes that the U.S. can protect its huge geostrategic stakes in the Middle East by limiting military aid to Syria to small arms, at least for now, he states (Washington Post July 22):
If Assad succeeds in crushing the opposition or otherwise maintains control over most of Syria, Iran will have a massive new degree of influence over Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in a polarized Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite. Minorities [millions of refugees] will be steadily driven into exile. This would present serious risks for Israel, weaken Jordan and Turkey and, most important, give Iran far more influence in the Persian Gulf, an area home to 48 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. If Washington arms the rebels and they still lose, the United States will at least have shown its willingness to make decisions and honor its commitments. It will have shown it will make good on its words and support its allies.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, the ultimate insider, concurs. As he told the U.S. Senate on July 18, “I am in favor of building a moderate opposition.” Dempsey cites U.S. budget constraints on broader U.S. action in Syria, which would require “thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces…needed to assault and secure critical sites.” These costs, Dempsey later wrote to the Senate, could average “well over $1 billion per month” (which he thinks is excessive).
Main Capitalists Prep for Broader War
Dempsey’s reluctance to over-spend isn’t just aimed to appease the anti-tax, anti-deficit Republicans. It follows the lead of the dominant liberal wing of U.S. bosses — the ultra-imperialist finance capitalists like JPMorgan Chase and Exxon Mobil — who have far bigger fish to fry than Syria. Their top spokesman, Richard Haass, president of their supremely influential Council on Foreign Relations think tank, called for “refraining from direct armed intervention in Syria’s current civil war” (New York Times, 6/22/13). Haass said U.S. rulers should capitalize on their current military lull (after the Iraq and Afghan drawdowns) to make long-term preparations for potential world war with their imperialist rivals. “Most important, we should step up efforts to maintain stability in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, where this century’s great powers could easily collide,” Haass declared.
All of these ruling-class servants dismiss the impact of their imperialist policies on the international working class. None of them are concerned how their wars in the Middle East and South Asia destroy workers’ homes, bomb workers’ schools and hospitals, maim workers’ children, and kill millions in the process.
The capitalists’ profit-driven system breeds mass unemployment and poverty, burns workers alive in garment factories, wrecks the minds of soldiers forced into war, and uses racism and sexism to divide the working class and weaken its ability to challenge any of these horrors. At the same time, workers are forced to pay for the wars that slaughter them. They bear the brunt of capitalism’s world economic crisis through cuts in wages, social services, and healthcare, and through long-term unemployment. The bosses’ never-ending drive for maximum profits falls on workers’ heads from Greece and Spain to Pakistan and Bangladesh to Turkey and Brazil and Mexico. U.S. workers are far from immune. Most vulnerable of all are immigrant workers who move from one capitalist country to another, searching for the promised “better life” but falling under the heel of exploiters with every border they cross.
Communist Revolution, the Only Solution
The rulers do worry, however, about the revolutionary potential of the working class. That’s why they are intensifying their fascist attacks in every corner of the globe. Hitler’s Third Reich was a tea party compared to what the world’s capitalists have in store for us.
But the international working class is not taking this offensive lying down. Workers have taken to the streets throughout the world — striking, fighting the bankers’ austerity attacks, rebelling against a siege of racist murders of youth like Trayvon Martin.
The rulers try to divert workers by offering electoral choices of various ruling-class stooges, from Obama to South Africa’s Jacob Zuma to Haiti’s Michel Martelly. They use these sellout reformers to try to divert our class from the one real solution to the hell of capitalism: communist revolution. Only communist revolution can create a society run by and for the working class. And it can only be achieved by building a mass communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead it.
It is imperative for all PL’ers and friends, wherever PLP groups are organizing, to spread our communist politics among workers and youth in every mass organization we’ve joined. By starting with tens and hundreds, we’ll eventually reach thousands and millions. What everyone does counts.
Only communism can rid the world of bosses, profits and wars. Only communism can end racism, sexism and mass slaughters. Capitalism is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Communist revolution will bury it forever.
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Trayvon Verdict Means: Fight Against Racism, For Communist Revolution
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- 31 July 2013 368 hits
WASHINGTON, DC, July 21 — After the racist acquittal of George Zimmerman who murdered teenager Trayvon Martin, PLP’ers took to the streets here with many other outraged workers and students. Twelve hours after the verdict, PLP assembled over a dozen organizers to leaflet and mobilize workers in the Stoddert Terrace neighborhood in Ward 7 against the acquittal. This bullhorn rally moved through the community where PL’ers have been active for over two years, reaching scores of residents with flyers and speeches. Some young workers called for Zimmerman’s head! Many understood how serious the racist offensive in the U.S. is today.
This racist assault includes not only police and vigilante murders of young black people but also the mass incarceration and slave labor of prisoners who are mainly black and Latino; Congress’s effort to terminate food stamps; and the Supreme Court’s recent reversals of affirmative action and voting rights legislation. Locally, affordable housing is disappearing as gentrification takes hold, with the connivance of corrupt city officials. Meanwhile, the bosses have launched new attacks on the mainly black Metro transit workers.
A week after the July 20 rally, the Peoples Coalition of Prince George’s County, Maryland, organized numerous local groups for a bold 10-mile “Justice for Trayvon” march. It left from the County and strode militantly through DC’s working-class communities, ending at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Cheer ‘Justice for Trayvon’ Marchers
Almost 100 workers and students made this arduous march, in the best tradition of the Civil Rights movement. Residents cheered and drivers blared their horns in solidarity. Marchers joined Dorothy Elliott in vowing to re-open the 20-year-old police murder of her teenage son, Archie Elliott III. He was shot at 21 times of which 14 bullets struck him while he sat handcuffed in the front seat of a squad car. The two cops who murdered Archie have never been punished.
PLP marchers also circulated a petition demanding that the Metro transit system reverse its recent policy of refusing to hire anyone with any kind of criminal record. Metro is eager to racially stigmatize its mainly black drivers. It has even fired workers who have worked for Metro for many years simply because they had a record before Metro hired them! Some marchers received CHALLENGE for the first time and were interested in hearing about PLP’s global involvement in workers’ struggles in Haiti and elsewhere as well as our role in building a revolutionary communist movement in the D.C. area.
Expose Sharpton’s Respect for Jury Decision
After a brief rally at the DOJ, the Peoples Coalition decided to march to a nearby rally organized by Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) to bring the Coalition’s militant fighting spirit to the hundreds gathered at a local courthouse. The NAN leader preached passivity, declaring his support for the “rule of law” and for respect for the jury’s decision even while disagreeing with it.
Sharpton’s organization, known for falling in line with President Obama, had told the Coalition to change its plans and join them. In response, an organizer for the Peoples Coalition declared, “We’re autonomous and independent of the Civil Rights leadership and the Democratic Party. Therefore, with all due respect, we take no orders from Rev. Al Sharpton or any Civil Rights leader. Our orders come directly from the masses, our energy, loyalty and activism is on direct behalf of the masses.” The Coalition thus brought a message of militant struggle, enthusiastically received by those at the NAN rally.
Capitalism’s Profit Drive Root of Racism
But even the message of the Peoples Coalition was incomplete. It did not address how racism is a foundation for capitalism’s drive for maximum profits and how it uses racism to super-exploit black workers and to divide and drag down the entire working class. The struggle against racism can only be successful when its root — the exploitative capitalist system — is overthrown. There can be no accommodation with capitalism if racism is ever to be finally eliminated.
Actually, if Zimmerman had been convicted, the rulers and their flunky misleaders would only use it to claim “the system works,” while hundreds of other youth continue to be victims of racist murder.
The next day PLP members and friends joined a Speak-Out for Trayvon organized by a teacher at a local literacy program. She had visited Stoddert Terrace the weekend before the rally and wanted to move towards more action. Over 50 people attended to discuss how racism affected their personal lives through racial profiling, intimidation and stereotypes. They want to fight back by:
- abolishing the “stand-your-ground” laws
- divesting in banks that fund private prisons
- boycotting Officer Friendly visits to schools and working with youth
- focusing the August 24 March on Washington on Trayvon and the bosses’ criminalization of black youth.
Speakers also attacked capitalism as the source of these problems. PLP members invited the group to our bi-monthly study/action group meetings to discuss how we can re-organize society based on communist principles.
The bold actions of participants in all of these events have laid the foundation for further progress, both ideological and practical, in the struggle against racism and for communist revolution.
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Chicago: Antiracist Trayvon Marchers Welcome PL’s Ideas
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- 31 July 2013 356 hits
CHICAGO, July 14 — Supporters of Trayvon Martin gradually gathered at what first looked like a lonely intersection. News crews and photographers were first to arrive but slowly and steadily students and workers began arriving. The march organizers were college students who were outraged and emotionally affected by the verdict.
Progressive Labor Party members started speaking with the people and distributed 250 CHALLENGES and 700 PL leaflets. All were well- received and 17 contacts were made.
As the crowd grew one could sense the disbelief over the verdict, the anger over another injustice. Reforms, non-violence and prayer were part of this demonstration’s intended message.
However, with every step of the march PL’s message resounded throughout: To fight back and see that the present system is killing us — that racism and cops are tools for the bosses to maximize their profits. The message was so loud cars driving by would honk in support and keep in pace with our chants to let us know that our message was coming across.
As the march approached its destination, PLP members and friends continued to distribute CHALLENGES and flyers, highlighting the key struggles around nationalism, racism and non-violence. The 300 marchers heard the speakers answer the question, “What do we do from here?” with a call for non-violence and prayer and to sign an NAACP petition, reflecting the outlook of the outrage of the organizers, not the protestors.
We had a banner reading, “It’s time for Communist Revolution.” That’s our class’s only alternative to racist cops, courts and their racist laws.
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Mexico’s Education Reforms Net Bosses Millions, Push Rulers’ Ideology
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- 31 July 2013 415 hits
The rulers’ latest education reforms show how the state and the law serve capitalist interests against the working class. Privatizing education enables a handful of millionaires to turn the educational system into a commodity and get rich from the labor of hundreds of teachers and millions of students and parents.
Education is not just a business for the ruling class; it’s also an important way to control workers ideologically. Their education reforms will promote even more individualist, racist and fascist that ideology the bosses need.
Reforms Push Individualism
The use of evaluations promotes individualism because teachers must focus individually on getting their students to pass standardized tests to “guarantee” their jobs. The imposition of quotas means that those who pay the most get a “better” education. This fosters individualism and racist inequality. The students are trained within the individualist criteria of competition, which is what eventually the bosses need for them to produce in the labor market.
Reforms Are Racist
By using standardized tests, without concern for the cultural, social and economic differences of certain regions, indigenous and marginalized communities will be at a disadvantage and as a result will be evaluated in a racist manner and found lacking. This sets them up to receive fewer resources and increases their poverty and oppression.
In Mexico, the capitalists have concentrated their educational investments in the country’s most industrialized nothern regions. Their decisions generate profits, and do not respond to the needs of the working class. As a result, the southern region has been left behind educationally, which is racist. The educational reforms will worsen this situation by assigning resources based on the results of the evaluations.
The reforms will be used to discredit public education and promote private education. This, in turn, will foster an increase in racist inequality.
Reforms Are Fascist
The bosses need a working class that’s easy to control, is productive but with a minimum of technical training. The reforms, through evaluations, try to standardize our youth with a fascist and competitive ideology.
In the capitalist jungle only the “most capable” survive (meaning those who get “better” evaluations) — those who follow the system’s ideology. That’s fascism. Our youth will be forced to work for miserable salaries under repressive conditions. The reforms create the ideological basis for these conditions.
The Education We Need
Reforms like these are implemented around the world to undermine the working conditions of education workers, break their collective contracts, their benefits and their unions. But particularly this is an attack against the youth and their parents, against the whole working class!
The purpose of these reforms is to reproduce capitalist ideology and allow a handful of millionaires to make a bundle in the education business. We must confront these attacks with the international unity of the working class.
We workers need an education based on principles favorable to the working class — scientific, collective, comradely and which promotes solidarity. Education must be focused on solving the problems and needs of our class. That can only be achieved in a communist society in which workers hold state power. To achieve that, we must destroy the capitalist system with a communist revolution.
For that goal we must build a communist party, not a bosses’ electoral one. This party must fight the bosses’ attacks like these reforms, and must train and educate the working class to build a new society.
The role of the teachers is essential to reach this goal because they have the potential to promote the unity of the whole working class to wrest power from the oppressive ruling class. The teachers also have the opportunity to challenge the individualistic, racist, sexist and fascist ideology that capitalism promotes among parents and students. This struggle is essential to destroying the capitalist system.
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Robbing Detroit’s Workers Proves Capitalism’s Bankruptcy
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- 31 July 2013 385 hits
DETROIT, July 26 — There are many lessons to be learned from the city of Detroit being forced into bankruptcy. The bosses and the media they own would have us believe that good wages, health care and pensions are the cause of every financial crisis. But the Detroit bankruptcy is an attempted “Smash and Grab” by the bosses to steal $3.5 billion in city workers’ pensions and $5.7 billion in retiree health care. The bankruptcy will enable a federal bankruptcy judge to impose further cuts to city services and to void union contracts.
If they pull it off here, there is an estimated $3.5 trillion in city and state pensions around the U.S., $134 billion in New York City alone. With union leaders committed to their bosses’ success and politically wedded to the profit system, the bosses have driven down wages, destroyed private-sector pensions, doubled the “normal” unemployment rate, attacked the pensions and healthcare of retired auto and steel workers, and are out for more. Every attack can be “doubled” when applying it to black, Latino and immigrant workers. Which brings us to Detroit, with an 80% black population.
Charlei LeDuff of the Detroit Free Press wrote in the New York Times (7/25), “Of Detroit’s debt of at least $18 billion, about $7 billion is secured by collateral like casino revenues and utility taxes. That means creditors — read: big banks — will get paid. Of the remaining $11 billion or so in unsecured debt, about $9 billion is owed to retirees and current municipal workers…These debts come in the form of promised pension checks and health care benefits, all backed by a false, unsecured promise. These are the people who are likely to lose out.”
Thanks to the Bush and Obama bailouts and billions in UAW concessions, the auto bosses and bankers are once again making billions in profits. Yet Detroit is a hollowed-out shell. Banks and auto companies make profits, cities don’t. The latter provide services, and that costs tax money. Soaring racist unemployment, half the population it had in 1970 and lower wages all add up to reduced income tax revenue. The bosses and Obama are not about to bail out Detroit.
Chrysler’s Jefferson North plant on Detroit’s east side, in the midst of mass poverty and surrounded by barbed wire, is producing $2 billion in annual profits (NYTimes, 7/15). Most workers in the plant make $12/hr. and have no pension, reduced health care, and the union is in the midst of a 5-year no-strike contract. These workers cannot afford the $50,000 Grand Cherokees they build. When they go home, many have no street lights. If anyone in their family should have a medical emergency, they cannot count on an ambulance showing up.
The racist profit system can never guarantee a future for the international working class. For decades, Detroit and its auto workers led the whole working class in winning a higher standard of living, from decent wages to home ownership, from retirements you could live on to some of the best health care coverage for U.S. workers. These hard-won advances often required violent mass struggle, from the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike to the 1967 armed rebellion against racist police terror. These victories have been wiped out. As long as the bosses hold power we will be fighting for crumbs and that can never be guaranteed. Only a PLP of millions leading tens of millions more can crush the bosses and build a communist society to meet the needs of the international working class.
