“The real number of unemployed or underemployed people in the U.S. is a stunning 26.9 million,” (LAT, 11/30), although figures below indicate it’s closer to 35 million.

“The term ‘reserve army of labor’ is vintage Karl Marx” admits the LA Times. “But,” it continues, “let’s not hold that against it if it’s on the mark. These workers are on reserve; they are standing ready to work. And their sheer numbers make them an army.”

The ‘8.6%’ Scam

The bosses’ media spouts a “drop” in the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.6% (from the previous month’s 9%). Obama hails this as a sign of economic recovery. But this spurious figure results from the fact that 300,000+ workers who gave up looking for non-existent jobs are no longer included in the labor force and therefore are not counted as unemployed. According to such fraudulent figuring, if a few million more workers give up looking for these non-existent jobs, the jobless rate might “drop” to 6%!

Shadowstats.com reports that this “drop” in the jobless rate “actually signaled ongoing economic collapse…not the ongoing recovery heralded by the Administration and…Wall Street,” given the “swelling ranks of ‘discouraged’ workers.”

Not only does the government’s 8.6% jobless rate not include part-time workers who want but can’t find full-time jobs, nor “discouraged” workers who’ve given up looking for work after 26 weeks (which would raise the rate to 22.6% — Shadowstats.com), but it also excludes:

• Part of the massive prison population of 2.4 million being released from jail but also can’t find jobs amid the bosses’ economic crisis;

• GI’s recently returning from the rulers’ imperialist wars whose jobless rate is over 20%;

• Students “holing up in colleges and waiting for the economic storm to pass” (LAT);

• First-time job-seekers among high school and college graduates for whom there are no jobs;

• “Discouraged” workers who have been jobless for more than a year and who the Clinton administration re-defined in 1994 as “no longer discouraged”: the long-term unemployed;

• Workers on welfare who cannot seek jobs, lacking day-care for their children;

• Hundreds of thousands of youth who joined the military as the only “job” they could find.

Add all that up and the LAT’s “stunning 26.9 million” is closer to 35 million.

Unemployment’s Racist Factor

Within this massive misery is the fact that black and Latino workers have double the jobless rate of the working class as a whole. The government admits that even the low-ball figure of 8.6% rises to 15.5% for black workers (NY Times, 12/5), a rate that actually lies somewhere between 30% and 50% depending on the city, when considering the other factors outlined above. Growing out of centuries of racist discrimination, these workers became the last hired and first fired.

The mass hiring of black workers in the auto industry resulting from the black rebellions of the 1960s got wiped out in the 1980s recession when the pro-boss auto union “leaders” agreed to mass layoffs to “save the industry” — again the last hired and the first fired. This set white workers up for the kill when Obama became the savior in bailing out GM and Chrysler, leading to the layoff of thousands of long-time workers. This enables these companies to net profits during the Great Recession. Under capitalism, the bosses’ government exists to enforce the profit system. (See box below.)

Of course, capitalism’s reserve army of unemployed is mounting worldwide, from Britain to Mexico to France to Spain to South Africa to India to Italy to Bangladesh to Pakistan and on and on. The “Arab Spring” was a rebellion by workers demanding jobs. This international crisis is intensifying the rivalry of the imperialist powers as they compete for cheap labor and resources, especially oil and gas — an economic war whose “solution” inevitably leads to world war as it did in 1914 and 1939.

Marx’s “reserve army of the unemployed” is part of a working-class army that, when led by communist ideas, can overwhelm and overthrow the tiny number of billionaires who now run the world in their drive for maximum profits. This is the ruling class’s greatest fear.

Progressive Labor Party is fighting to marshal our class into a mighty force that will drive the money-changers out of their Wall Street temples and bury them with communist revolution. This can produce a society without bosses and profits, run by and for workers who produce all value, and who will distribute the fruits of our labor according to the needs of our class.

Joining and leading this PLP-led army can truly change the world.

CHICAGO, November 23 — The Occupy Wall Street movement came to Chicago State University (CSU) today as the Independent Student Union (ISU) led 75 students and faculty to occupy the president’s office for two hours.

An ISU leader listed local campus issues and explained that Illinois owes CSU $15 million, including $3 million in state grants. During the following speak-out, many students, tired of being disrespected and given the run-around, detailed the university’s failure to facilitate registration; to properly process withdrawals from a class (leading to Fs on the transcript); to repair crumbling infrastructure; to treat students with respect; to raise funds; and to improve communications with students.

A married couple, both CSU students, brought their children, showing them by their example that we need to unite and fight back. The father told President Watson that his administration was damaging CSU’s reputation by not providing a student-friendly environment. A student brought her mother, a CSU alumnus, who remembered that students had the same complaints when she was attending.

Support from Purdue

A transfer student, about to graduate, was incensed over the lack of recognition for maintaining a 4.0 average. Students who came from Purdue U. Calumet to support the occupation described their campaign against a racist professor on their campus.

In reply, a dean scolded students for blocking the doorways, thus displaying the patronizing, racist attitude about which students were complaining. When Watson was asked who was recording the meeting, he looked around in vain for his staff to step forward. At other times administrators were visibly agitated and aggressive, furious that black students would have the nerve to challenge their authority. The black administrators were failing at their main job — enforcing racism and keeping black students “in line.”

Watson, who is black, serves the CSU trustees, who serve the capitalist class. Their system is in crisis. The bosses’ profits are in danger. Tax revenues are falling because workers can’t get jobs. Meanwhile, Gov. Quinn, supported by Democrats and Republicans, plans to give a $250 million tax break to Sears, the Board of Trade and The Mercantile Exchange while keeping $15 million slated for CSU.

This is a racist attack on black and Latino students (the vast majority at CSU). In capitalist society bosses only fund education when it is profitable. In a communist society, workers and students will work together to educate all of us so that we can better serve the working class.

‘Don’t Follow the Rules’

When administrators tried to take over the occupation and make excuses, faculty members and students insisted the administrators step back and listen, just as the faculty was doing. Later a student representative to the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the dean of student affairs attacked ISU for failing to work through “proper channels.” A communist teacher replied that the best thing about the occupation was that it did not follow the channels that keep students under the thumb of the administration. He said that the occupation and the students’ anger about being disrespected was an assertion of power and of self-respect, the essence of working-class democracy.

We in PLP congratulate CSU students for breaking the rules. We encourage students to resist any efforts of the racist black administrators to use nationalism to try to win students’ support — “don’t mess up our black thing.” We urge ISU to continue to break rules and empower other students and to adopt a broader social justice perspective, progressing from airing grievances to striking at racism and other injustices at the core of capitalism

CHICAGO, December 3 — More than 500 black, Latino, and white parents, students, education workers and other working-class Chicagoans, including PL’ers, assembled today at a local school to say, “We’re fired up; we won’t take it no more!” Earlier in the week, Chicago Public School (CPS) officials had announced the racist closing or restructuring of 21 schools. Since 2001, CPS has already closed 44 schools, “turned around” 17 more, and opened 80 charter schools in their place.

The overwhelming majority of the closed or reorganized schools are predominantly black or Latino. These attacks disrupt the lives of students, especially the disproportionate numbers of homeless children who attend them. The immediate aim of today’s conference, representing thousands, is to stop these proposals.

As many declared, the responsibility for these actions lay with the politicians at City Hall, the capitalists on the Board of Education, and the bank and corporation directors. They expressed their disgust with the  CPS spokespeople who claim that the changes will help prepare every student for college. In reality, students who move from one school to another generally do no better academically, and sometimes do worse.

The real motive for these actions is the money that comes from privatization. The ruling class has decided to spend less on educating poor black and Latino working-class students, in order to boost profits in the developing education business sector. Their plan for our children consists of unemployment, war, prison, and at best a low-wage, dead-end job, not college.

Students Aren’t Just Test Scores

Turnaround and charter schools are also models for the teaching of capitalist ideology. As conference speakers pointed out, many education workers at community-based schools, those targeted by CPS, take pride in serving the children and their families. They aim to provide support when loved ones die or become ill, or unemployed or lose their house. They nurture the emotional, artistic, and physical aspects of the child, as well as the intellectual. This is not what the capitalists want for our children.

The speakers declared that students are not just a test score. The ruling class has always used schools to promote capitalist ideology: patriotism, individualism, and racism. Now more than ever, as the U.S. faces unparalleled competition worldwide, the rulers need future soldiers and workers who support their exploitative profit system.

Many charter schools, along with the Academy of Urban School Leadership schools that manage most turnarounds, take an authoritarian approach to education — just what the capitalists ordered. They will use the common core standards to consolidate the approved ideology and fire teachers whose students fail to absorb it.  This approach prizes discipline, parroting the teacher, and the mastery of capitalist lies. Creativity and critical thinking, learning about the world in order to change it are out. The rulers want a cheaper, more profitable, more managed education for workers’ children.

Many conference attendees realized that stopping this round of closings and turnarounds is no long-term solution; the capitalist system will find other ways to attack us. It was clear that attentees shared a strong desire to build a militant, anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement. But there is not yet much agreement around rejecting electoral politics and building a movement for the violent overthrow of capitalism. A worker-run communist society is appealing to many, but many still hold the illusion that we can get there peacefully.

Progressive Labor Party members are patiently building support for our ideas, though with uneven effort and uneven results. By spending more time with fellow education workers, struggling together against CPS, working together in activist groups, and supporting each other personally and politically, we will make small breakthroughs that lead to bigger ones. The world our children need and deserve is ours to win.

NEW YORK CITY, December 9 — Today,  there was a breakthrough in the long struggle to force Columbia University to live up to its commitments to the West Harlem area that it has destroyed in order to build a new campus. Columbia promised to create 7,000 new jobs, but no one from the community has been trained or hired yet by the fake “Employment Information Office” just south of 125 Street.

At our past actions at this center to demand these jobs, we involved a few Columbia students and a small number of community residents and local church members. This time we had a very spirited demonstration, complete with drums and noisemakers, with a group of about 60, including 30 students, some supporters from Occupy Wall St, more church activists and members of the Coalition to Preserve Community, which has fought the expansion for years.

The marchers’ energy and militancy was exciting to the participants and passersby alike. We started at the gates of the Columbia campus where the NYC police and University security had previously tried to stop us from marching to the middle of campus; this time they didn’t even try.

Inside the main quadrangle, we gave speeches in the “human mike” Occupy style. Community members unaccustomed to public speaking gave rousing talks about their experiences with unemployment and housing displacement. A comrade exposed Columbia’s ties to imperialist war, how the School of International Affairs supported the architects of genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Clinton’s Secy. of State Madeline Albright, and how the University trains the future leaders of U.S. capitalism.

After our campus demonstration, we marched up Broadway towards the “jobs” office. On the way we encountered teachers in the Precollege Division of the Manhattan School of Music who were picketing to demand union recognition and a living wage. We joined them for a short while, causing the administrators to look out their windows in horror. After getting some contact names, we continued to our destination.

The cops were ready with their barricades to pen us in, but we didn’t oblige and left them standing in the pen instead. Inspired by our unity and spirit, we proceeded to the church where hot soup awaited us.

After getting to know one another, a comrade and church leader told the students about its long history of anti-racist struggle uniting students and workers. The students were so interested that they requested an ongoing series of discussions after winter break. Nearly all of them eagerly took CHALLENGE with its articles analyzing the Occupy movements.

Certainly Occupy has inspired many, who were angry but cynical, with the spirit of activism and fighting back. As CHALLENGE pointed out, the movement’s weaknesses have been its lack of a class analysis and revolutionary perspective, and failure to emphasize multiracial and worker-student unity.

We certainly saw an emphasis on unity and working-class leadership on our march. Now we’ll continue our struggle with the students to build ties with campus workers. One student from the City University of New York also attended, and building unity with this more working-class school is also important. As we continue this campaign, it’s surely possible to win many students and workers to see the need to overthrow capitalism.