U.S. imperialists’ face-off with Iran’s nuclear-bent bosses is escalating towards war. At stake is control over the Middle East and its increasingly strategic energy resources. According to CNN, Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “is quietly leading the ongoing military planning for an attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons in the event the president gives the order to do so” (12/20/11).

In the latest round meanwhile, Obama tried to slap tighter financial sanctions on Iran unless it gave up its nuke program. In turn, Iran’s naval brass threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz. Virtually all of the oil and gas exports of Iraq and Kuwait and more than half of Saudi Arabia’s pass through that waterway sails. All of these resources are dominated by U.S. and British oil giants.

Then Obama sent an aircraft carrier group through the strait while the Iranian navy practiced maneuvers nearby. Obama also pointedly announced a “$30 billion sale to Saudi Arabia of advanced-model U.S. F-15 fighter jets and associated weapons systems” amid “recent irrational behavior by the Tehran government” (Voice of America, 12/29/11). In direct response, Iran “test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile near the strategic Strait” (VOA, 1/1/12). Iran warned it would not accept return of the aircraft carriers.  

China-Russia-Iran Axis Speeds Ayatollahs’ A-Bomb

Iran’s rulers have since eased off shutting Hormuz, since its closure would also deprive themselves of oil export revenue and cut off their main customer, China. But aided by the anti-U.S. coalition, they remain determined to build a bomb. The Washington Post (11/7/11) reported:

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles....Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction....Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea [both heavily influenced by China — ed.] also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability.

Rockefeller Ruling-Class Wing Chanting ‘Bomb Iran’

Consequently, calls in the U.S. for blasting Iran’s nuke plants have recently expanded from the Israel lobby to the highest capitalist circles. The imperialist, Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) speaks for its funders: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. A CFR headline in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs says it all: “Time to Attack Iran.”

The article’s author, Matthew Kroenig, has Obama’s ear. From July 2010 to July 2011, he was a special adviser in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, “responsible for defense strategy and policy on Iran.” A nuked-up Iran, Kroenig warns, could hamstring future U.S. invasions of energy goldmines Saudi Arabia and Iraq: “With atomic power behind it, Iran could threaten any U.S. political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region.”

U.S. ‘Surgical’ Strike Could Go Global

Ruling-class mouthpiece Kroenig absurdly proposes a moderately deadly “hit and run.” He ignores the realities of the sharpening imperialist rivalry and the related and growing importance of oil, the lifeblood of capitalism, especially in its cheap and highly profitable Middle East form:

Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war. Faced with that decision, the United States should conduct a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, absorb an inevitable round of retaliation, and then seek to quickly de-escalate the crisis. Addressing the threat now will spare the United States from confronting a far more dangerous situation in the future.

U.S. bosses, however, face problems in their attempts to avoid a more widespread armed conflict. First, the U.S. military is already stretched thin. It must defend more than seven hundred bases worldwide, and is especially dependent on an all-volunteer army. Second, Iranian retaliation might be more drastic than Kroenig thinks. “Iran said Monday it had successfully test-fired a long-range missile during its naval exercise in the Gulf, flexing its military muscle to show it could hit Israel and U.S. bases in the region if attacked” (MSNBC, 1/2/12).

Then there are the inevitable entangling interests and alliances of capitalism. Another Rockefeller-bankrolled think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), identified these “regions of competition” as inseparable from the oil dogfight now centering on Iran: “Gulf Cooperation Council countries [including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and U.S. Fifth Fleet host Bahrain], Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and Asia, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil” (Iran and the Threat to ‘Close’ the Gulf, CSIS website, 12/29/11).

Wider wars will likely result from a U.S. attack on Iran. Planning the attack and awaiting Obama’s order, General Dempsey said, “Any [Iranian] miscalculation could mean that we are drawn into conflict, and that would be a tragedy for the region and the world” (CNN, 12/20/11).

U.S. rulers have employed direct military action in the Middle East since 1979, when Iran’s Islamist oil barons booted out Shah Reza Pahlavi, the Exxon/Rockefeller puppet whom the U.S. CIA had installed in power. U.S. influence in this cornerstone of its worldwide empire continues to erode. In response, U.S. rulers must forcibly claw back strategic lost territories, like Iraq and Iran, and militarize for its inevitable confrontation with strengthening imperialist foes China and Russia. Whether they can accomplish these goals in the face of their own internal disunity is another question (and the subject of coming CHALLENGE articles). Their struggle is further complicated by the worldwide economic crisis that threatens both U.S. and European stability.

Working Class Must Rise Up Against Capitalism’s Mass Murder

The global scramble for energy profits has already killed millions of working class Iraqis and thousands of their working class brothers and sisters in the U.S. military. This imperialist competition is killing still more in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Chinese and Russian involvement and the nuclear wildcard, an Iran oil war could prove far deadlier still for the international working class.

The only way to stop the worsening murder and misery inflicted on our class by oil-soaked billionaires is to destroy the profit system itself and replace it with working-class rule. Tens of millions of workers throughout the world are already resisting the bosses’ attacks. Strikes and demonstrations are on the rise in the Middle East, the European Union, Latin America, China, Pakistan, India, and — with the Occupy movement — in the U.S.

But to smash capitalism, the root cause of this misery, requires communist leadership to point the way. It’s not enough to replace one set of capitalist murderers for another; the entire, horrific profit system must be replaced with workers’ power. A new system must be erected to produce for workers’ needs, not bosses’ profits — the source of racism, sexism, mass unemployment, poverty and unceasing wars.

That new system, our Party’s ultimate aim, can be won only through communist revolution.

Recent CHALLENGE articles about fascism’s growth in Haiti (see issue 12/14/11) and its attacks on the Occupy movements worldwide inspired me to report recent efforts to build PLP amid growing fascism in Chicago.

I am a laid-off black schoolteacher here, among the disproportionate number of laid-off black teachers. These racist layoffs and those of all groups reflect the economic and political crises of capitalism.

Global fascism and its imperialist wars make workers’ lives miserable, attacking the working class in many ways. One tactic is forcing government employees (teachers, health workers, among others) to accept lower living standards — reduced wages, skimpier benefits and lousier working conditions. For teachers, this includes layoffs, denied pay raises (or lower pay scales, inducing them to move to a growing number of higher-paying charter schools), more expensive health care coverage and increasingly poor working conditions.

In education, one such condition is overcrowded classrooms. More students per teacher are cheaper for capitalists, whose gain is the working class’s loss in schools. Classroom overcrowding reduces the quality of education for students, often implemented in a racist way. Black and Latino students, already enduring racist oppression, are stuffed into learning environments ill designed to meet their needs.

Then there’s the increased repression of those who fight these attacks. Because of my activism on the local school Council, the administration took special measures to eliminate my position and lay me off. My co-workers elected me to be a

teacher representative on the Council. I and other community members challenged the principal’s hiring of an extra administrator/assistant principal (to terrorize teachers) and an armed off-duty cop (to terrorize students). Standing up to these attacks ensured my trip to the reassigned teacher pool.

The fact that the administrators are black shows that racism is not about the perpetrators’ color but rather about the racist conditions they help enforce.

The school is now battling closure. Staff members, food service and custodial workers will lose their jobs. Students will be forced to attend schools miles from home. Some will cross dangerous gang territories and/or attend schools where academic ratings are even lower than their current school. School bosses are funding newer computer technology in the “closing” building, preparing to re-open it as a charter or “selective enrollment” school which won’t serve the students of this area.

Community organizations are campaigning to keep this school and several others open. These efforts are well-intentioned, carried out by honest people, knowledgeable about organizing. Parents wanting a good education for their children and grandchildren are joining this effort. Unfortunately, they’re organizing around capitalist liberal principles that will fail at best, and at worst will lead workers away from PLP’s revolutionary communist principles.

Both before and after my layoff I’ve distributed CHALLENGE to several school staff members and won some workers to continue distributing the paper in my absence. I still meet with school staff and have remained active in the community organizing efforts. One teacher has attended a Party club meeting and I’ve had political discussions with others. I’ve also encouraged a few 8th graders and their parents to read the paper and check the PLP website.

I will continue to build relationships with co-workers and friends and increase distribution of CHALLENGE and other PLP documents. I’ll write more for CHALLENGE, enabling my friends to see that our conversations are part of a global movement to free the working class from the bonds of capitalism. We want to win people to see that education under capitalism only serves the system. It can never provide for workers’ needs. I’m committed to building my confidence in the workers and the workers’ confidence in our Party that is theirs to join and build.

WASHINGTON, DC, December 1 — Progressive Labor Party members today joined a bold group of activists rallying in front of the DC Department of Health to demand housing for the city’s 922 people with AIDS. They are living in shelters or from couch to couch. In a chant aimed at the federally funded program called Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), we called out:  “Housing yes! Racism no! HOPWA wait list has got to go!”

Demonstrators from DC Fights Back and the Metro Washington Public Health Association held signs shaped like homes and took over the sidewalk and median strip. People with HIV need secure housing to adhere to lifesaving medications that reduce the spread of the virus. Homelessness kills!

During World AIDS Day, many organizations hold vigils, educational events, and offer HIV tests and condoms. Meanwhile, liberal politicians make hypocritical pledges they have no intention of fulfilling. All the bosses’ politicians care about is the disease’s destruction of a labor market that they could exploit for profit, especially in Africa.

PL’ers argue that we should use the day to fight racism and build a movement to overthrow the capitalist system, which has created the conditions that has spread the HIV virus among the most exploited people in the world.  Condoms and health education may help prevent the spread of HIV, but communism can eliminate the exploitation and poverty that concentrates HIV in the poorest neighborhoods.

Capitalist media goons stigmatize and marginalize people who live with HIV, especially black and Latino workers, women, the mentally ill, and the poor.  The bosses use fear, biases and racism to justify not spending money for jobs, health care, and housing. Workers who fall into the stigma trap weaken working-class unity against the bosses.

Underlying most stigmas is racism. While most poor people in the U.S. are white, the media projects a black image of poverty, making it easier for white workers to blame poor people for their problems. In fact, it is capitalism that attacks black families with double the general unemployment rate and triple the poverty rate. Fighting racism is crucial in building global working-class solidarity.

Communism offers a society that expects everyone to contribute their energy and talent to each other without exploitation.  It promotes collective responsibility and a sense of community for everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation, or gender.  With communism, people can live happier and healthier lives, not resorting to drugs for self-medication or settling for relationships based on economic necessity and inequality.  A society based on economic justice and equality can create the stability and security people need to end HIV.

This July, 30,000 people will attend the International AIDS Conference in DC.  We invite friends and members to join the “global village” and the mass mobilization on July 24 to call for communist revolution to end AIDS.

The “Eurocrisis” is first and foremost about the failure of capitalist over-production as well as about inter-imperialist rivalry. French and German bosses are fighting to make sure their own bankers are not stuck with losses coming from the inability of other European governments to pay their debts. Chinese bosses are looking for opportunities to gain greater economic influence on the European continent. And U.S. bosses are worried about the possibility that the Eurocrisis will trigger a second worldwide financial crash. To analyze the current crisis, we must first look at how current European power relations developed. 

After the mass destruction of World War II, the main political goal of U.S. bosses was to limit post-war communist influence in a devastated Europe. According to General Lucius D. Clay, Deputy Governor of the U.S. Occupation in Germany: “There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand.” Although crudely anti-communist, this quote shows why the U.S. backed the resurgence of what was then the West German economy in 1946. French bosses, the long-time enemies of the German ruling class, were initially opposed to this move. But by 1950, under U.S. pressure, they went along. 

In 1952, Stalin had written, in Economic Problems of Socialism: “To eliminate the inevitability of war, it is necessary to abolish imperialism.” Marxist analysis of capitalism showed workers how big economic crises led to mass destruction of productive forces in imperialist wars. But liberal and social democratic politicians claimed that the various national bourgeoisies could reconcile their differences peacefully. To that end, European economic unions like the Coal and Steel Community (founded in 1951) were promoted as a way for countries to avoid the terrible consequences of war. These unions, however, were maintained within the context of U.S. dominance.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and German reunification, European bosses began asserting their independence. The European Union (EU) was formed in 1993. In 1999, eleven EU countries, led by France and Germany, established a common currency, the Euro, in a subset of the EU known as the Eurozone. Now a majority of EU countries use the Euro.

The EU’s bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), is supposed to represent the interests of all seventeen 17 EU member countries. But the reality is that both Germany and France wield huge power over the ECB. Germany contributes most to the ECB’s capital and has the biggest banks in Europe. The ECB policy of raising interest rates in the midst of a sharp economic downturn has damaged the economies of smaller EU countries, but benefits Germany.

Thirsting for maximum return on investments, European banks put an enormous amount of capital into the U.S. upsurge in housing before the 2007 crash. As the U.S. housing market collapsed, these profit-driven bankers moved money into the purchase of “sovereign” bonds issued by various EU governments. Between the second quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2009, EU banks shifted $827 billion into bonds issued by Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain (New York Times, 11/11/11). The banks reaped huge amounts from interest and made tens of millions of dollars underwriting these bonds.

In 2009, a new Greek government admitted that previous administrations had lied about the size of the country’s budget deficit. German and French bosses used this admission as a pretext to impose a vicious austerity regime on Greek workers as a condition of any EU bailout. In reality, most of the “bailout” money sent to Greece has wound up in the pockets of the French, German and other bankers who bought Greek “sovereign” bonds.

Despite these measures, the worldwide capitalist economy has yet to recover from the crashes of 2007-2008. Short of war, capitalism has no choice but to shift the burden of the bankers’ losses to the working class. Smelling blood, the world’s biggest banks and other bondholders are seeking to turn the sovereign debt crisis into a net gain by attacking living conditions for workers throughout Europe.

Bond interest rates in Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal have soared. This in turn has forced local bosses in Italy and Greece to install “technocrats” (direct servants of the bankers) as government leaders, and has brought a conservative, pro-austerity government to power in Spain. All of these bosses have a mandate to attack the workers in their countries even more sharply.

But far from solving the capitalists’ problems, austerity regimes can only make them worse. Several European economies are now forecast to be in deep recession before the end of this year, making it even more difficult for their governments to cover their debt payments to the bankers.

The five countries whose sovereign bonds have been downgraded owe a total of $2.2 trillion (New York Times, 10/22/11). If they were to default on this debt, German, French, and U.S. banks would sustain some of the biggest losses. According to billionaire George Soros, this “deflationary debt trap” will lead to a “self-reinforcing process of disintegration” — that is, a global financial collapse (Huffington Post 12/5/11). Meanwhile, Chinese bosses are sitting back, hoping to pick up the pieces after the crash. 

The capitalists’ current path could bring the world to a depression like the one of the 1930s, which led to World War II. Once again, the bosses’ economic crisis will compel them to re-divide the imperialists’ markets and resources and destroy productive capacity. For the international working class, the only solution to the bosses’ inevitable wars is a communist revolution.