India: Youth and Workers Rage in Protest

Millions of students and workers protest all over India against the gang rape of a 23-year-old student, who has come to symbolize the systematic violence against women. The police thugs fight protesters with batons, barricades, guns, arrests, tear gas, and water cannons. 

All those outraged about the young woman — who was gang raped, tossed off of the bus, and then left for dead — need to join PLP in order to destroy sexism and the brutality that it engenders. We point out this struggle isn’t about just about revealing the failure of the world’s largest “democracy,” but that this is a consequence of  sexism, an ideology that capitalism needs in order to preserve its stranglehold on the world. PLP pushes for the necessity of armed struggle in order to defeat capitalism. The need to struggle against sexism is at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle for communism.

PARIS, December 31 — Official statistics show a staggering 5,242,000 unemployed or underemployed in France, or 18.5 percent of the working population (in a population one-sixth of the U.S.): 3,132,600 jobless, 1,484,600 part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs and another 624,500 kept busy in training programs and government-funded make-work programs. These “official” figures exclude those who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs altogether!

Older workers are among the hardest hit. Raising the retirement age has meant a 16% year-on-year increase in unemployment among workers over 50.

Racism Spawns Joblessness

Like all capitalist societies, France enforces racism. Here the targets are Arab and black immigrants from Africa, and their French-born descendants. In 2005, the Natixis bank refused to promote a black employee because of his skin color. Seven years later, the courts have just ordered Natixis to pay him 47,700 euros in compensation.

This extremely rare case involves an executive. One can imagine the chances of an ordinary worker obtaining redress for racist discrimination. Consequently, it isn’t surprising that the official statistical bureau, INSEE, indicated in October that the unemployment rate among African immigrants and their French-born children is three times the national average.

In a new blame-the-victim argument, Louis Maurin, founder of the supposedly-neutral Observatoire des Institute, tried to explain this away by saying certain immigrant populations have no social network that can steer them to a job.

In reality, capitalism needs racist unemployment. It acts as a brake on the wages of all workers, thus generating additional profits for the bosses. Indeed, a 2010 INSEE study shows that during the world financial and economic crisis worker income in France has practically stagnated, essentially due to unemployment.

Super-Exploitation of Immigrant Workers

Another source of super-profits is the 35,000 immigrant workers from European Union countries like Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain. A 2006 EU directive allows French bosses who hire them through temp agencies in their native countries to provide those countries’ much cheaper legally-mandated benefits package.

In theory, French bosses still have to pay them France’s minimum wage, 1,400 euros a month. In reality, there are only 31 gendarmes to enforce the law in all of France. Unions have discovered cases of workers paid only 600 euros (US$774) a month for working 6- and 7-day weeks.

The 2010 INSEE study also reports that since 2007 a growing number of jobs are limited to a few hours a week. Young people under 25 are especially forced to take these jobs. Consequently, they only work 43% of the number of hours worked by everyone else. They remain economically dependent on their parents, increasing the stress on working-class households. And since retirement pensions are pegged to hours worked, they will only qualify for a marked-down pension.

But the Socialist government has already announced it will reduce future pensions for the 40,000 private-sector teachers by an average of 100 euros (US$130) a month. This is a first step to cutting future pensions for the 712,000 public-sector teachers and eventually for all workers.

All this has workers justifiably angry, so the Socialist government is pretending to act. Recently it’s created jobs for the future aimed at young people who are virtually totally unskilled, and promises another 100,000 jobs by the end of 2013. Even if true, it won’t change much when over five million people are looking for a job.

Even worse is establishment of a special work contract for young people, entailing less job security, lower wages, lower benefits and so on. The resulting super-exploitation of young workers adds to the brake on wages for all workers.

Now consider all the groups French bosses single out for special treatment: older workers, black and Arab workers, workers from other EU countries, private-sector workers, public-sector workers and younger workers. There’s a pattern: an attack on one group always produces super-profits from that group and also ratchets down wages, benefits and conditions for everyone.

What do all those groups have in common? They’re all workers. That’s one of the main messages communists advance: We’re united by a common class interest in destroying this capitalist system that creates unemployment and all kinds of racist discrimination. Making that unity a reality is a big step towards a communist revolution and a communist society where we all can work and share the fruits of our labor.

Sharpening competition for resources, markets, and labor are driving U.S. capitalists toward war with their Chinese, Russian and Iranian rivals. As each nation’s imperialists maneuver for the upper hand, they must impose more deadly fascist conditions on their working class while clamping down on any opposition. Workers throughout the world are being squeezed by austerity policies to pay for the inevitable wars to come.

U.S. bosses are at a huge disadvantage here. They rule a population of 315 million, while their foes have a combined 1.5 billion from which to raise armed forces. Seeking a racist remedy for their shortage of cannon fodder, defenders of the U.S. empire are seeking support from countries historically exploited by the imperialist powers. 

In November, the pro-Obama Center for a New American Security (CNAS) published a report called “Global Swing States: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and the Future of International Order.” CNAS lists Chevron, GE, JP Morgan Chase, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. Defense Department among its supporters. The think tank’s report proposes a U.S.-led world war alliance that could draw on more than two billion inhabitants.

The global Swing States report covers the immediate steps needed to begin building the mega-coalition. While skirting direct mention of a third world war, it unmistakably alludes to one. In “the worst case scenario,” according to the report, “a renewed international order will withstand Chinese pressure.” “If the global order fragments,” it ominously warns, members of this proposed grand alliance “will suffer the consequences.”

“International order” and “global order” are code for U.S. imperialism. Global Swing States begins by wistfully — and falsely — recalling that the predominance of U.S. imperialism after World War II (outside the Soviet bloc) derived from globally admired virtues. The U.S., CNAS says, selflessly created and fostered international institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The paper identifies five areas where U.S. imperialism supposedly served as a beacon — and where it could now bolster ties with its new mega-allies, assigning specific roles to each. They are finance, trade, maritime “freedom,” nuclear non-proliferation and human rights.

But reality contradicts the bosses’ rosy interpretation of U.S. “leadership” on every front. The IMF and World Bank ensure loan repayments to U.S. bankers by enforcing austerity programs that deepen the impoverishment of workers in some of the poorest lands in the world. The WTO gives U.S. bosses access to ultra-low-wage labor, from Haiti to Vietnam. “Freedom of the seas” means continued U.S. Navy control, which has included sanctions, of worldwide energy and the shipping of goods. Nuclear treaties guarantee that the lion’s share of these weapons remains in the hands of U.S. rulers, the only ones ever to use them. 

As for human rights, U.S. bosses have long since surpassed Germany’s Nazis as world record holders in murder and abuse. The Pentagon’s civilian death count soars from the atomic bombing of Japan (250,000), through Korea (one million), Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia (five million) Serbia (tens of thousands), Iraq (one million from sanctions and direct invasions), Afghanistan (hundreds of thousands and counting, with Obama’s drone strikes).

Then there are the uncounted mass deaths from U.S. interventions in Guatemala, Chile, and the Dominican Republic; the installation of the fascist Shah in Iran; CIA directives that led Indonesia’s rulers to massacre one million; the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, leading to decades of fascist rule; support of apartheid in South Africa; supplying Saddam Hussein with weapons and intelligence in his war with Iran (another million dead), and on and on. 

In the U.S. itself, the capitalists arrest and imprison or deport millions of workers, mainly black and Latino, every year. State-sanctioned racist executions by lethal injection or cop’s bullet are a routine occurrence. The looming fiscal cliff cuts (see page 8) point toward even more austerity and exploitation. 

As the embattled U.S. ship of state takes on water, CNAS urges the rulers of Brazil, India, Indonesia and Turkey to board and to drag workers with them. Global Swing States envisions Brazil as a potential pro-U.S. force in a world war, operating on both sides of the South Atlantic: “Geographically, Brazil dominates South America; it shares a border with every country on the continent except Chile and Ecuador. In addition, with a coastline that extends far into the South Atlantic, Brazil economically and culturally bridges South America and West Africa.”

In India, CNAS recommends that the U.S. “back New Delhi’s aspirations for maritime leadership in the Indian Ocean.” In another “worst case scenario,” this strategy to gain India’s naval assistance for U.S. control of China’s oil supplies could entail the deployment of millions of Indian ground troops. 

Indonesia straddles the Malacca Strait, the passage for all Chinese oil imports from the Middle East. It also faces the South China Sea, where China makes highly contested territorial claims. In one phony anti-war passage, CNAS suggests that Indonesia benefit ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell by joining the U.S. in setting redlines that China must not cross. The penalty would be war. Says CNAS, “Corporations that rely on this waterway for transit…have a vested interest in the peaceful management of current frictions. As non-claimant states, the United States and Indonesia are uniquely positioned to facilitate a South China Sea Corporate Caucus.”

Egypt lies torn between Islamic and military rule. Netanyahu’s Israel, though armed to the teeth, is small and unreliable. As a result, U.S. rulers are counting more and more on Turkey (pop. 75 million) as a long-term ally in holding onto Middle East energy assets in opposition to the similar-sized Iran. CNAS praises Turkey’s “increasingly hard-line position” against Iran stooge Syria in “imposing sanctions, severing diplomatic ties, giving material aid to the Syrian rebels and taking direct military action against the regime’s forces.”

Imperialist alliances shift and change, however, which complicates the U.S. rulers’ plans. Moreover, they are assuming that the international working class will roll over and play dead in the face of intensifying exploitation and increasingly likely carnage. But workers are already striking against austerity and taking to the streets in Bangladesh, Pakistan, France, China, Spain, Portugal, Haiti, Egypt and South Africa. We can see the same thing happening in the U.S. in Wisconsin, California and Chicago.

Communist class consciousness can thwart the U.S. rulers’ global militarization by sparking international rebellion. Progressive Labor Party is organizing working-class internationalism in more than twenty capitalist countries. PLP is confronting the bosses’ racist attacks on black and Latino workers and youth in cities across the U.S. Building the Party in all of these areas and in mass organizations is the key to the ultimate overthrow of capitalism and the smashing of the bosses’ state. Only communist revolution will emancipate the working class from the rulers’ exploitation, mass unemployment, racism, sexism and war. Only then will society be run for and by our class. Join us!

HAITI, December 7 — In three Haitian towns of St. Marc, Port-Au-Prince, and Gonaives, the spirit and the struggle of the November student demonstrations and national teachers’ strike continues. In all three, students went on strike and marched—the banner in the picture declares the demands: “Unite and fight injustice, high cost of living, insecurity, poor learning conditions, and MINUSTAH troops and their cholera.” 

Calling it charity, an insulting hand-out that falls far short of what they need, students refused the 18,000 gourdes (427 USD) one-time grant the President, Martelly, offered. Instead, they burned the grant applications and demanded instead decent campuses, transport, and health insurance. “We don’t need any $427 from a kidnapper,” they chanted, referring to a recent kidnapping case involving Martelly’s administration.Students call on everyone to unite to fight against injustice, the rich, insecurity, poor study conditions, cholera, and the UN troops.

On December 5, they also protested government sexism — it has protected an ex-minister of justice accused of raping his secretary. A PLP study group has been formed among some leaders of these actions.

The teachers’ union, UNNOH, has also continued meeting to plan further action after their two-day strike, including a national meeting of regional delegates. The promised negotiations with the Minister of Education have been delayed, showing the need for more direct action. The teachers received significant strike-fund help from a handful of North American and Caribbean teachers’ unions, and notice of their strike appeared in the French teacher/student union SUD. 

International solidarity is still needed and PLP members continue to build it. As the Latin American slogan has it, “¡Esta lucha va llegár a la guerra populár!” These struggles, if communist leadership is built within them, will lead to an all-out workers’ war on the bosses’ system.