HAM, FRANCE, September 21 — At 2:00 a.m. on September 17, the four Constellium executives held by angry metalworkers escaped from the plant. The workers are fighting mass layoffs and eventual closing of the facility (see CHALLENGE, 9/5).

 A high-ranking gendarme came to the factory gate and talked to the workers to divert their attention. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the plant, a team of gendarmes cut through the metal fencing and helped the bosses escape by squeezing through the hole in the fence and racing down the railroad tracks in the middle of the night.

The local union leader said the workers are “nauseated by management’s attitude.” He added that “There was no dialogue. We didn’t obtain any concrete improvement.”

On the evening of September 16, a representative of the central government attempted to obtain the liberation of the bosses in exchange for the promise of negotiations, to be held three days later at a hotel 20 miles away. The workers rejected the offer as a stalling maneuver.

“Now we know that we would never have seen them at that…meeting,” the union leader commented. Today, the workers voted against a company offer of a 15,000-euro bonus (US $21,000) for each laid-off worker.

The workers want a commitment to keep the factory open. The plant makes aluminum structures and windows. Constellium plans to lay off 127 of the 207 permanent workers. Forty temporary workers will also lose their jobs. The subcontractors that do work for the Ham plant are expected to lay off 170 of their workers.

The workers’ courageous and militant action to defend their jobs merits praise. But they need to set their sights higher. Instead of accepting the continued rule of their heartless bosses, they should organize for the long-term goal of communist revolution.J

In actions that inspired the world’s working class, millions of Egyptian workers and students filled the streets of Cairo and other major cities in January demanding the head of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who ruled Egypt since 1981. Workers’ strikes in key industries, such as oil, textile, transport and on the Suez Canal were crucial in persuading the military to abandon Mubarak, forcing him out.

Sadly, nine months later the workers’ and students’ hopes have been dashed. The absence of communist ideas and leadership and the consequent reliance on the dead-end capitalist notion of reform as the key to ending workers’ oppression doomed the movement from the beginning. Consider:

• One of the most widespread demands was raising the minimum wage, which has remained at $6.30 A MONTH since 1984. In the last ten years, national output (GDP) per person has doubled from $250 a month to $500, but the increased income has all gone to those in the top 10%. The new military government has steadfastly refused to raise the minimum wage. Nor has it raised pensions: in its last year, the Mubarak government raised the minimum pension (what most retirees get) from $9 a month to $24.

• Another key demand was the right to organize independent unions, student groups and political associations. The military government did allow the formation of new political parties if focused only on the upcoming elections. But meanwhile, it has viciously repressed protests. Rather than abolishing the hated military tribunals and the fascist “emergency law” (in place since 1981), the military government has used them more than ever. About 12,000 civilian protestors have been brought before military tribunals, with over 99.9% given long prison sentences — ten times the pace under Mubarak. Workers protesting unsafe working conditions and low wages have been especially singled out for attack.

• The January protests demanded a government more accountable to the people. The great “accomplishment” of that Papyrus Revolution (as it was called) replaced an 82-year-old Air Force general (Mubarak) with a 78-year-old Army general (Mohamed Hussein Tantawi), the head of the new military government!  And these honchos have carefully designed election rules to ensure that the same old elite is re-elected to Parliament. Dissolution of the old ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), mattered little. In the old system the local bosses in each city and town would buy their election, often as “independents” who, after winning, simply rejoined the NDP. The new system will produce the same result; in fact, probably most of the old Parliament members will remain.

Workers and students have lost because they relied on capitalist “democracy.” For months under the new government, they poured into the streets in the hundreds of thousands. But the military government out-waited them.

By contrast, the fascist Muslim Brotherhood is advancing from victory to victory. The military government has been making lots of changes reflecting the Brotherhood’s agenda, allowing it partial power in exchange for Brotherhood cooperation in crushing the workers’ and students’ movement. This deal was on full display in July and August, when Brotherhood-linked thugs — the “Salafist” religious fundamentalists — and the military attacked protestors on alternate days.

Most Egyptians reject the Brotherhood’s religious extremism. The military government has been forced to use the Salafist thugs for its dirty work, especially the racist campaign against the Copts, the 10% of Egyptians who are Christian. They have traditionally suffered tremendous racist discrimination.

The ruling classes everywhere use racism to secure political and economic control. But Egyptians who turn out in the streets have repeatedly demanded more jobs, higher wages and better public services, not religious extremism. Only communist leadership can move these militant reform demands into revolution.

Egypt’s experience shows how much a communist party matters. Just think of the difference if Egyptian workers had a revolutionary communist party which could organize millions of workers to target the heart of Egypt’s ruling class (instead of concentrating on Tahrir Square). That party could have turned this part of the Arab Spring into a glimpse of a worker-led communist society.

PHILADELPHIA, September 15 — “Racism? You’ll never stop it, never!” declared a retired hospital worker, echoing a pessimism many workers feel. But the promise of communist revolution is that the overthrow of capitalism removes the reasons racism exists. The lower wages paid to black, Latino, and immigrant workers generate billions in extra profits that the bosses can’t do without. Racism also allows the bosses to divide the working class. Communist revolution against the class- and profit-driven system of capitalism is the first step in building the world without racism that most of us want.

At a meeting between the nursing bosses and the nurses, a black nurse with long years of service at a large teaching hospital spoke up against laying off the nursing assistants. Shortly afterwards, she was fired. Hospital workers were shocked and outraged.

The fight against the firing of this veteran black nurse shows how we can’t back down from fighting racism and that the bosses will increasingly use fascist terror. As in other cities, the bosses at this hospital are increasing their attacks on patient care and the hospital workers. On at least one hospital floor, the bosses terminated all the nursing assistants.

PLP members have a long history at this hospital and immediately organized against the firing. We described the firing as racist and an example of fascist terror to scare the workers, especially nurses. We tied this racist firing to the recent police murder of the son of another black co-worker and described both as examples of fascism on and off the job.

Some workers, however, thought we shouldn’t mention that the nurse is black or that the firing is racist. This opinion was expressed by both black and white, mainly nurses. Their main concern was that mentioning that the nurse is black and bringing up racism might alienate the doctors who also wanted to fight the firing. Working-class union members, on the other hand, saw the firing as clearly racist and agreed with our response. And interestingly, the nurses who disagreed with us about the firing being racist nonetheless participated in the actions we called for.

When our organizing became evident, the bosses tried to defend the firing by claiming that there was more involved than we knew, which supposedly justified the firing. Most workers thought this was a lie. So-called “friendly” nursing bosses repeated this claim but never offered any evidence. Yet even this pathetic defense illustrates a bigger truth.

It’s the bosses who kill and hurt more patients, who cut healthcare funds, benefits and staffing and who close hospitals. Of course they won’t be fired. Under capitalism, the rich bosses hold state power and run the government. Only communist revolution can give these real criminals the “pink slip.”

A week ago, the fired nurse was re-hired. But now the bosses are going after the workers whom they think led the fight for the fired nurse’s job. Today, the bosses alleged that narcotics were “diverted” by another nurse, Wesley, who was ordered to have a Breathalyzer and urine test and leave the hospital. The results of the urine test were negative.

Wesley did not “divert narcotics.” Wesley does have a long history of building multi-racial unity to fight for better conditions for patients and workers. Wesley did support organizing against the racist cop killing of the son of another hospital worker. Wesley did help organize the fight to reinstate the fired black nurse.

The hospital workers know Wesley well and did not waiting for the test results. The day after Wesley was ordered off the premises, a leaflet appeared all over the hospital calling on workers to demand that Wesley be brought back to work immediately. Workers are calling Wesley to offer their support.

Although the nurses are not unionized, Wesley has strong ties with Local 1199 union members. The leaflet urges them to call on the union and organize members to defend Wesley. The nurses who worked in the unionization drive with Wesley are urged to demand that the nursing union also support him.

As long as the bosses hold state power and remain in control, they will overturn any victories we might win. In 2012, the hospital bosses want union give-backs in benefits and pension that will hurt this 1199 local, which that is primarily black. These cuts will be as deadly as mass lynchings.

This experience shows that the bosses will fight us tooth and nail when we fight to protect a worker’s job or protest against a racist police killing. Let’s get off this capitalist merry-go-round and instead organize all our fights, big and small, with the goal of overthrowing capitalism once and for all. Capitalist racism and fascist terror can end — but only with communism. Join PLP.

Obama’s Ground Zero remembrance left out two names tied intimately to the 9/11 atrocity and its deadlier aftermath: Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Just two years before the attack on the World Trade Center, the two ex-senators had co-chaired a top-echelon ruling-class panel that envisioned terrorist attacks “galvanizing” the U.S. for imperialist war abroad and fascist measures at home. Launched by President Bill Clinton in 1998, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) studied ways to ensure U.S. global dominance through the following 25 years.

Democrat Hart and Republican Rudman, along with other high-ranking politicians, generals and admirals, proposed a sweeping militarization of government and of society at large. At the time, the rulers’ media kept Hart-Rudman largely under wraps. CHALLENGE, however, repeatedly exposed its deadly schemes well before 9/11. Ten years on, Hart-Rudman’s shortcomings and successes for the bosses are worth assessing. They help us gauge our class enemies’ need and their ability to conduct mass slaughter.

In 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor turned mass U.S. opposition to “foreign wars” into mass support for U.S. entry into World War II. On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon after the FBI and CIA apparently failed to connect the dots from existing intelligence. Ten years later, there is no shortage of theories to challenge the official narrative: Did U.S. rulers deliberately ignore warnings of the 9/11 strikes? Were they actively complicit in planning the attacks? We may never know the true story, but it’s clear that the bosses saw the usefulness of a 9/11-type incident to rally U.S. workers behind a drive for war and fascism:

[T]he United States should assume that it will be a target of terrorist attacks against its homeland....Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers....If the stakes rise in such a fashion, one thing is likely to become vividly clear: The American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so, if they believe that fundamental interests are imperiled (Hart-Rudman report, 1999).

The hijackers, who cloaked al Qaeda’s oil-profit motive in religion, represented only a few thousand sworn U.S. enemies. They hardly matched the 1941 menace of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan and Italy, an Axis of millions that waged world war across Europe and Asia. Within the U.S., this global assault spurred huge voluntary enlistments and acceptance of a military draft, resulting in an armed force of 14 million in a U.S. population just one-third of today’s total. By comparison, the flurry of post-9/11 flag-waving accomplished relatively little: the fascist Patriot Act, plus a series of racist attacks against Arab and South Asian immigrants. U.S. rulers continue to rely on an economic draft for their war machine, with unemployment impelling youth to enlist for the lack of jobs.

Recalling the fleeting wave of 9/11 patriotism, the rulers’ New York Times mouthpiece echoed Hart-Rudman in lamenting, “People wanted to be enlarged, to be called on to do more for country and community than ordinary life usually requires....to be absorbed in some greater good....But America has not been enlarged in the years that have passed” (9/10/11). In sum, the attack failed to generate the popular response that Hart-Rudman had anticipated.

Anti-Government Bosses’ Tea Partiers Hinder Obama’s Fascist Effort….

Opposition to new or restored taxes, hardened by the New Depression, has dashed the Hart-Rudman vision of capitalists gladly parting with their “treasure.” This reflects the battle between two factions within the U.S. ruling class: the Rockefeller-led wing that maps long-range strategy to keep U.S. imperialism on top through wars for the oil interests it represents; and its current adversary, domestic capitalists like the Koch brothers, who organized and funded the Tea Party and are driving the Republican Party away from any bipartisan strategy.

In opposition to Obama, the bosses who don’t profit directly from U.S. military action overseas are thwarting Hart-Rudman’s prescription for more centralized control over members of the ruling class. They are blocking government regulations to discipline capitalists and bankers who intensified the current economic crisis in their drive for short-term profits. They’re also resisting Obama’s bid to increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for the enormous cost of imperialist wars.

….But As H-R Detailed, Potential Grows for U.S. Military Action in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China

On the other hand, Hart-Rudman has proved effective in helping to fabricate pretexts for invading Iraq in 2003, and possibly Iran in the near future:

U.S. policies could fail to prevent more serious threats from arising, and the United States might then increase its military presence either to support a beleaguered Israel, to contain the rise of a regional hegemon [Iran], or prevent certain countries [like Iraq] from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. From such a failure the United States would risk, or go to, war.

Ex-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal was a major backer of Osama bin Laden during the latter’s U.S.-led anti-Soviet Afghan campaign in the 1980s. He now issues alarms against U.S. rejection of the Palestinians’ bid for statehood in the United Nations: “American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region. Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has” (New York Times, 9/12/11).

Hart-Rudman foresaw loss of leverage over Saudi Arabia as an intolerable catastrophe:

An anti-American regime in Saudi Arabia, one so antagonistic that it would refuse to sell its oil abroad, is not very likely. But were it to come to pass and be allowed to stand, it would represent a major blow to the liberal economic order brought into being after World War II.

From Afghanistan to Libya, subsequent U.S. invasions, backed by a shifting array of allies, reflect Hart-Rudman’s insistence on locking up hydrocarbon sources:

[U]ninterrupted supply of oil from the Persian Gulf, and the location of all key fossil fuels deposits will retain geopolitical significance....The United States will be called upon frequently to intervene militarily in a time of uncertain alliances.

Hart-Rudman’s prediction of likely World War III scenarios completes its picture of U.S. rulers’ looming concerns:

Interstate wars will not disappear over the next 25 years. Developed nations will be loath to fight each other, but as proven in 1914, neither the bonds of interdependence nor a taste for affluence can guarantee peace and stability indefinitely. Major powers—Russia and China are two obvious examples—may wish to extend their regional influence by force or the threat of force.

What Hart-Rudman Did Not Foresee

But Hart-Rudman neglected to consider the working-class backlash to the U.S. rulers’ wars. Workers at first seemed to support Bush’s “shock-and-awe” attack on Iraq, based on the fraudulent allegation that Saddam Hussein’s regime had developed “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear weapons. But as this became exposed as a lie, and U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties mounted, a majority in the U.S. turned against the war. Initial support for the attack on Afghanistan also has fizzled after 10 years of grinding conflict with no end in sight.

Resistance to these wars has been heightened by the “Great Recession,” another factor Hart-Rudman didn’t account for. Workers now see trillions spent for imperialist wars while tens of millions of unemployed walk the streets and social programs are cut or scrapped altogether.

For the working class, meanwhile, all is not lost—not by a long shot. The main U.S. capitalists have yet to ensnare most workers in their ideology of militaristic imperialism. Restoring the draft remains extremely unpopular. Enlistments of young black workers have declined despite that group’s 46 percent unemployment rate. Meanwhile, racist police attacks continue to rage against black and Latino youth. This is the “democracy” they’re being asked to defend?

Communist Leadership Crucial

The most critical obstacle to Hart-Rudman’s fascist vision will be the fight-back of the working class, both in the U.S. and internationally. While workers have remained relatively passive in countering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the fascist attacks on their jobs and living conditions, there are encouraging signs of renewed resistance. We can see this domestically in the Philadelphia hospital workers’ fight against racist firings (see page 1), or in the leadership given by Progressive Labor Party to the Stella d’Oro strikers last year in the Bronx, or in the militant defense of their jobs by West Coast longshoremen against the shipping bosses (see page 1).

Internationally, PL is spreading communist politics in a score of capitalist countries on five continents. The Party has been active in the mass strikes and demonstrations of workers in Pakistan (see page 4). In Haiti, PLPers are building the Party there to combat rulers’ ideas that divide the working class (see page 8). PL is also playing a role in workers’ struggles in Mexico and Israel/Palestine.

In the scheme of things, these are small glimmers of resistance in a dark night of mass racist unemployment, unchecked attacks on wages and healthcare, and genocidal imperialist wars. PL has a long way to go in building communist-led class struggle, but the potential exists for a true international communist party. Our job is to win workers worldwide to the opposite of Hart-Rudman: to the communist outlook that rulers fear most. Profit-driven terrorism, racism, unemployment and war will end only after our class—the working class—seizes power for itself and hoists the red flag of revolution