On April 19, India’s capitalist rulers, quietly urged on by U.S. President Obama, successfully tested a long-range ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead. The New York Times, the U.S. rulers’ leading mouthpiece, immediately boasted that the missile was “capable of reaching Beijing and Shanghai.” This account fostered the growing possibility of a third world war, probably nuclear.

An intensifying arms race embroils India, China and the U.S. It stems from growing competition among imperialists for global market share amid limited resources, especially energy. Capitalists, organized as nation states, need to threaten their rival exploiters with the deadliest military force possible. They must also have allies ready for the inevitable day when their jockeying for profit sources — like oil from the Middle East — explodes into global armed conflict.

At present, China’s and U.S. bosses are on a military collision course. In population, China outnumbers the U.S. four to one. So U.S. rulers must count heavily on troops from India (pop. 1.2 billion) to stem Chinese advances. In 2005, Admiral Michael Mullen proposed a multinational, U.S.-led “Thousand Ship Navy,” with a large component fleet from India to police China’s oil trade. Last year, however, “Indian Defence Minister A.K. Antony ruled out India joining such a group unless it is under a U.N. mandate” (Defense News, 5/25/11).  

World’s Workers Would Be Main Victims of Nuclear War

The fact that the next world war will kill tens of millions of workers never enters into the equation for these imperialist rulers. They only consider how their overwhelming stock of weaponry, both conventional and atomic, will give them the upper hand in their drive to exploit the greatest possible number of the world’s workers.

India’s recent rocket test reveals U.S. rulers’ desperation to enlist India’s billion-plus workers as “coalition” cannon (or nuclear-bomb) fodder in a coming war.  As the Times (4/19/12)  explained, “The Obama administration... is now cultivating alliances with Asian nations and redirecting its strategic and military focus toward Asia to manage China’s new military clout.” 

Most of Obama’s current crop of foreign policy advisers hails from the Rockefeller-funded Center for a New American Security (see CHALLENGE, 4/25). This think tank endorses an anti-China “India Initiative” because the economic, political, and military rise of India “is reshaping world politics and promises to make India both a true global power and one of the most important bilateral partners for the United States.”

After the launch, U.S. stooge and NATO head Ander Fogh Rasmussen said that the trans-Atlantic alliance did not perceive India as a threat. The Nation, a Pakistani newspaper, pointed to Indian efforts to catch up to China: “Only recently, India ordered 126 fighter jets from the French firm Dassault, one of the biggest arms deals in the recent past. Furthermore, New Delhi has purchased nuclear submarines from Russia and is seeking to modernize its tank fleet. In 2011, the country was the world’s biggest purchaser of arms” (4/21/12).

For now, China and the U.S. both profit from the arrangement by which the U.S. buys Chinese goods while China buys U.S. Treasury bonds. But this harmonious dynamic can’t last much longer. Ultimately, these two powers may very well settle their economic rivalry in imperialist war although other imperialist powers like Russia can become involved. China’s burgeoning industry will soon require tens of millions of barrels of oil per day, more than its sole oil-rich Middle East ally, Iran, can supply. China won’t forever endure being a mere buyer of Saudi crude, which is controlled by Exxon Mobil. Nor will it indefinitely tolerate the U.S.-paid mercenaries guarding Chinese wells in Iraq.

Beijing’s bosses, already building naval bases in Pakistan and Burma, are taking further steps to counter U.S. dominance of Indian Ocean oil routes from the Middle East. Three Chinese warships are patrolling the Red Sea against “pirates.” With blue-water aircraft carriers and submarines already in shipyards, “China’s defence spending could overtake America’s after 2035” (The Economist, 4/7/12).

Repercussions Likely from Al Qaeda and Russia

Zbigniew Brzezinski envisions the Indian navy and army helping to “encircle” rising China (see his 2012 book, “Strategic Vision”). As National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski was the architect of the Carter Doctrine. It stipulated that control of Middle East oil supplies was in the strategic interest of the U.S. and had to be protected at all costs, by military means if necessary. This policy has been adopted by all subsequent U.S. presidents.

But Brzezinski offers three cautions against “a formal U.S.-India alliance.” First, a treaty might entangle the U.S. in a land war even less winnable than Korea and Vietnam: “It would increase the likelihood of U.S. involvement in potentially prolonged and bitter Asian conflicts.” Second, “It would increase Moscow’s temptations to take advantage of a distracted America drawn into wider Asian conflicts to assert Russian imperialist interests more firmly in Central Asia and central Europe.” Third, it might heighten “the appeal of anti-American terrorism among Muslims.”This includes Pakistan, India’s arch enemy. 

Asian Nuke Threats are U.S. Bosses’ Best Hope to Maintain Profits

U.S. bosses prefer nuclear weapons — their own, India’s or NATO’s — as an end run around costly ground wars that favor their enemies in Asia. Their defeats in Korea and Vietnam have made them cherish their genocidal 1945 atomic slaughter at Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the more. These atomic bomb strikes against civilian populations served U.S. rulers well. They were a powerful warning to Stalin’s Soviet Union — then without nuclear weapons — that it would face similar destruction if it challenged U.S. post-World War II global supremacy.

By any sane estimate, conventional U.S. forces, however technologically superior, would fail miserably in assaulting China’s mainland. That’s why Obama keeps his thumb (and those of his Indian allies) on the nuclear trigger to check China’s advances, uncaring that its use would kill millions of workers.

But the one factor that all imperialist bosses tend to ignore is the potential strength of international working-class solidarity. After all, the ruling class and their henchmen constitute barely three percent of the world’s population. The world’s working class, when organized and led by a revolutionary communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, represents the exploited billions whose interests run exactly counter to their exploiters. The same workers compose the imperialist armies that can be won to turn the guns on their oppressors. Without their rank-and-file soldiers, the bosses are powerless.

This is the internationalism that we celebrate on May Day. And this is the force that can destroy the racist system of capitalism and usher in a new world run by and for the working class. Crucial to this goal is the building of the communist PLP. Join us and march on May Day!

AUSTIN, TX, March 24 — Over 4,000 protestors descended on the state capitol to stand against cutbacks in education. Though the march was smaller than last year’s rally of 12,000, the crowd was much more militant, and the forces around the Party have grown substantially.

PL teachers and workers organized nearly 30 students and several parents to travel from surrounding cities to Austin. On the ride, one teacher organized students to make signs. After lots of discussion, one student made the connection between imperialist war and the budget cuts to education. Her sign declared “Less bombs, more schools!” Others made signs attacking the local school board and their decision to gut college readiness programs like AVID. One sign read “RIP Our Future” with the word “AVID” on the tombstone.

We also discussed how instead of begging the bosses to “Save Our Schools,” we should use slogans like “Students, Teachers, and Parents Unite to Fight School Cuts.” The latter declaration separates us from the enemy, the administrators and local school board members. One teacher pointed out a contradiction: even though the school board president and superintendent attended the rally, they are the ones implementing all the cuts.

At the march grounds, busloads from all over the state began assembling: student teachers in training all the way from the University of Texas, El Paso, and teachers, students and parents from Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. A student drumline in the front of the march set the militant tone. As the march proceeded, the chant promoted by the organizers “Save our schools” was seen by many as too weak. Many friends of PLP were won to chant the more militant, “When they say cut back, we say fight back! Cut back! Fight back!” When a group of students started the “Fight-back” chant, others around began joining in. Rally organizers quickly drowned out our calls to “Fight back” with their calls to “Give me a V, give me an O, give me a T, give me an E!”

The students who attended saw a distinction between the liberal call to “VOTE” and the calls in the PL leaflet for working-class unity and communist revolution. PL’ers sold the latest CHALLENGE and passed out over 500 PLP leaflets.

One student who read the PL leaflet said that he did not believe a passage that said schools are more segregated now than in 1968. A teacher who is a friend of PL’ers but not yet in the Party defended the leaflet, informing the student that the leaflet was correct and that racism in education is getting worse, not better. 

In the end, students gained a valuable experience, reporting that they never knew there were so many people who were angry about the cutbacks in education and the new state exam called STAAR. For many of these students, this was the first march they have ever been to, and they now have more of a fighting spirit.  

Many of the Party’s flyers and papers ended up in the hands of the students who traveled to Austin and many more were brought back to students, teachers and parents who were unable to attend. Over the next few weeks we are making plans for a study group around the flyer and other anti-cutback materials. Students are also organizing to confront local board members at the next meetings about the planned cuts. 

The rally against the cutbacks in education was a huge success for the Party. As we move forward to May Day, we hope to gain many new fighters for the working class!

ROXBURY, MA, April 4 — The discussion topic, “We All Are Trayvon Martin,” drew the largest turn out this semester for Pizza and Politics.  Many students came for the first time, looking for some direction as to what they could do about this racist murder.  Students expressed their outrage at the lack of justice this system offers to black workers.  There was a sense of frustration at all the marches and symbolic hoodies, knowing that no matter how large the outcry, the crime could not be reversed nor would Trayvon be the last victim. 

The media was also roundly condemned for its role in criminalizing black youth, spreading ignorance, and distracting us from reality.  Everyone present knew how commonplace racist violence is, especially when committed by the police, and they were somewhat confused by the enormous attention this particular case was getting.

The discussion then veered away from blaming the system toward blaming the victim.  Students were criticizing black youth for dressing and carrying themselves like ìthugsî and this spread to a general critique of black youth for not ìknowing themselvesî well enough and being immature.  These points were answered with a class analysis: 

Capitalists maintain racism, sexism, and other capitalist ideas to keep the working class confused, divided, and more easily ruled.  Filling our heads with lies ensures that workers will passively accept wage slavery as “the way it is.” Keeping one section of the working class worse off than another not only makes billions of super-profits for the bosses, it is the main way they are able to  hide the 1 percent’s complete robbery of our class. Despite the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement and a black president, the system keeps racism alive because it is the economic foundation of the bosses’ system and weakens the working class’s fight-back.  

Becoming numb to racism is a dangerous tendency that comes from a sense of powerlessness.  One of the roles of communists is to provide students and workers with an opportunity to express their anger and fight-back against every outrage of the capitalist system.

Distributing this issue of CHALLENGE (4/25) — “Youth Indict Racist System” — will enable us and our friends at Roxbury Community College to turn talk into action. PLP’s goal of tearing down capitalism and building a communist society provides a long-term solution for the suffering that racism causes.

BROOKLYN, NY, April 9 — Radiology department technologists at a major medical center here turned the tables on the bosses, forcing them to back   down from their speed-up plan.

Three days ago a manager told five technologists that starting immediately our lunch-hour would be cut in half, from 60 to 30 minutes. Our 7-hour work-day incorporates two 15-minute rest periods which would now be eliminated. We have a 60-minute unpaid lunch-hour. So they intended us to work a 7½-hour day with no additional compensation, clearly violating our union contract with S.E.I.U. Local 1199.

Ten workers in radiology are regular CHALLENGE readers and are overwhelmingly black and Latino. They respond favorably to our strong anti-racist stands. Our department union delegate is a PLP member. After several discussions, we deemed the bosses’ plan unacceptable and collectively decided to fight this attack.

This morning the union organizer — who has a long history of corruption — entered the main work area with two managers and met with the technologists. The organizer said we would not lose our two rest periods but would have only 30 minutes for lunch.

The PLP delegate, who had been excluded from the meeting where this deal was cooked up, loudly stated that this was an attempt to add 2½ hours to our work-week without pay and we would never accept that. Worker after worker rose to challenge the bosses and denounce this deal.

The managers were in disarray and four workers pulled the organizer aside to let him know he was on the wrong side and he better get his facts and act straight. We immediately instituted a slowdown which brought the ultrasound and x-ray work to a crawl. An hour later we heard that the bosses had temporarily backed off their plan. Two hours later it was dead in the water.

This attack may have been a trial balloon to gauge whether they could impose longer hours on the other 1199 technologists in the lab, in obstetrics and in cardiology. It’s been 20 years since this kind of unity and militancy has occurred in our department. It resulted from dedicated organizing work by key CHALLENGE readers and other workers who have responded to our calls for action. We’re attempting to use the momentum from this struggle to organize hospital workers to join the April 28th May Day march in Brooklyn.

We realize this victory will be short-lived since the bosses still have the upper hand in this institution and in society. Nonetheless, it can spark the beginnings of a rising communist movement at the hospital.

Much work remains to be done. New PLP members must be recruited and step up to the plate. CHALLENGE sales must be expanded several fold from the current 24. Visiting workers at home will be crucial to further advance.

We must win workers to see the Progressive Labor Party as their party and as the leadership necessary to smash the bosses’ dictatorship over every aspect of our lives. Only egalitarian communism will provide health care and sustenance to all workers, another reason to fight for communist revolution.