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.

HAZOR HAGLILIT, ISRAEL-PALESTINE, November 12 — After declaring Israel an independent state in May 1948, the racist Zionist bosses faced a problem they call: “The Demographic Problem.” Despite expelling some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and demolishing around 540 of their villages, 20% of the population of the newly created State of Israel, were Palestinian Arabs. The majority of Palestinians, within Israel, were concentrated in two areas: The Triangle (Central Israel) and the Galilee (northern part of Israel). In those areas, Palestinians constituted the majority of the population. In order to change this, the Zionist government started a racist campaign to “Judify” the Galilee.

The heart of the project consisted of creating new settlements called “Maabara” (transitional camps — mostly tents and huts made of wood and metal sheets.) These settlements were populated by Jewish immigrants, mostly Jews from Arab countries and from North Africa.

Jewish Immigrants Source of Cheap Labor

The new immigrants served as cheap labor for local industries set up by the government and the bosses. The new settlers  increased the Jewish population in the Galilee which led to a Jewish majority. The new settlements populated “The Frontier” in the north and south and could serve as cannon fodder and as a first barrier in case of an invasion by a neighboring Arab country. The Zionists gave these settlements a special name calling them a “Development Town”(Ayarat Pituach). Shderot in the South, known as a target for Kassam rockets from Gaza, is one of them, while Hatzor Haglilit is one in the north.

The policy of the Zionist bosses was similar in most of the “Development Towns.” A cheap labor force was at hand so the government, with money from local taxes and donations from rich Jewish bosses overseas, gave grants and subsidies to local bosses who established industrial factories in those towns. They employed the local new immigrants at a minimum wage making millions of dollars, while maximizing their profits. As a result of this policy the “Development Towns” turned out to be towns owned by the local industry. Most of the town’s life revolved around the factory. In Hazor Haglilit it was Vita Inc. producing pickled vegetables in cans.

During the “high” periods the bosses collected hundreds of millions of dollars which they refused to share with local workers who produced this wealth for them. But during the “down” periods the workers were the first to suffer the consequences. Competition from similar industries, cheap imports of the same product and rising costs of production decreased the profits of the Vita Hagalil bosses, and brought the company to the verge of bankruptcy.

Another Industrial enterprise, “Hazi Hinam” seized the opportunity and with financial aid from the government acquired the plant at a bargain price and profited from it for a while. After making a fortune for a few years, the management of Pri Hagalil (ex Vita Hagalil) decided on reorganization, code word for laying off workers. Once again Hazor workers had to pay the price for capitalism striving to make maximum profits.

During November 2011, 100 workers of Pri Hagalil received pink slips. One of the workers, 53 years old, was summoned for a hearing before being laid off. He said “I am shocked, I don’t know what I am going to do. I have worked for Pri Hagalil for 30 years, I have seven children but they told me they would leave Hazor, there is no future for them here.”

Solidarity is Crucial

Upon being fired, the workers of Pri Haglil went on a wildcat strike picketing the plant’s gate. The workers realized that without solidarity with the fired workers they are next in line. The bosses of Pri Hagalil had already declared their intentions to move the Plant to Naharia (30 miles away) where operating costs and local taxes are lower.

A retired worker of Pri Hagalil summed up the situation: “Every time new bosses arrive to “salvage” Pri Hagalil, they get financial support from the state, and draw enormous salaries [for themselves]. After a while they start the layoff process until the government shows up again with financial support which, once again, ends up in their pockets.”

All workers in historic Palestine, Hebrews and Arabs alike, should learn from the case of Hazor Haglilit. Capitalism is a ruthless, vicious economic system developed by the bosses for their sake. We in PLP support all Pri Hagalil workers’ demands. But even if there are victories, they can be reversed at any time by the courts, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and the other bosses’ state organs. It is only a question of time before they shut the plant, moving it to Naharia where they can extract higher profits.

The bosses treat the workers like the pickled cans they produce: Open them, use them and throw them away. Only in a communist society producing for need rather than for profit will all workers have humanity. Under communism everybody would contribute according to commitment and the total product would be divided based on need.

Workers need to build the revolutionary communist PLP to put an end to the capitalist system  — a dictatorship of the bosses — and build communism — the dictatorship of the workers to serve their needs.