Intensifying imperialist competition has saddled U.S. rulers with an impossible political mission. On the one hand, they must brutally crush their international rivals and enemies to protect their dwindling sources of profit. On the other, they must sustain their facade of law-abiding democracy to hold the ebbing loyalty of workers.

This dilemma explains why the New York Times — representing finance capital, the dominant faction of the U.S. ruling class — both praises and admonishes its presidential candidate of choice, Barack Obama. On May 30, the Times published a multi-page exposé of Obama’s assassination-by-drone campaign: “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” The following day it printed a cautionary editorial on the same subject (“Too Much Power for a President,” 5/31). 

Both the article and opinion piece portrayed Obama as an extremely capable if flawed leader. Taken together, they were more a fawning character study than a hostile critique.

U.S. capitalists face challenges to their global energy empire from al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranian bosses, and ultimately their Chinese and Russian rivals. In an effort to rally the rulers’ camp around Obama’s response to this challenge, the Times article depicted a fearless, remorseless warmaker who is prepared to cross any border to search out and murder U.S. foes. “[Obama] approves lethal action without hand-wringing....he has followed the metastasizing [growing] enemy into new and dangerous lands.” The newspaper also praised Obama’s “legal skills” in preserving George W. Bush’s military kangaroo court [judge, jury and executioner] and torture practices under the heading of “rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention.”

The Times spun Obama’s early threats to invade Pakistan as brilliant, farsighted militarism: “In a 2007 campaign speech...Mr. Obama had trumpeted his plan to go after terrorist bases in Pakistan — even if Pakistani leaders objected. His rivals at the time, including Mitt Romney, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mrs. Clinton, had all pounced on what they considered a greenhorn’s campaign bluster.”

Run-up to World War III?

Unfortunately for the U.S. imperialists, however, Obama’s drone killings create other problems, a point that’s been duly noted by the Times. One is the potential for a free-for-all, drone-dominated run-up to World War III. “With China and Russia watching, the United States has set an international precedent for sending drones over borders to kill enemies.” (See drones article, page 4.) Another is the foolish notion that drones can replace ground war. “Admiral Dennis Blair, the former director of national intelligence, said the strike campaign was dangerously seductive. ‘It is the politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness’” (NYT, 5/29).

The Times’ superficially critical editorial was aimed at the other segment of its readership, one that is equally critical to the imperialists’ wartime goals: the U.S. working class, and especially those workers who vote. In line with the bosses’ charade that they follow the rule of law, it focused not on Obama’s mass racist killing of Islamists, but on procedural issues: “[Obama] is a politician, subject to the pressures of re-election. No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners...without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle.” Since White House-ordered assassinations might seem open to question in an election year, the Times demands that an “outside” ruling-class authority rubber-stamp these atrocities.

The Morality of Mass Murder

To help consolidate the patriotic allegiance of its working-class readers, the Times portrayed drone-launcher Obama as a latter-day example of President John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage.” (In 1955, JFK published this ghost-written book to extol eight senators who took unpopular stands for the greater good of U.S. imperialism.) After weakly censuring bomber Obama, the Times editorialized, “To his credit, Mr. Obama believes he should take moral responsibility for these decisions, and he has read the just-war theories of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” (In the name of killing infidels, both of these saints justified and endorsed “just wars” by the main expansionist forces of their day.)

The “Secret Kill List” article went so far as to characterize Obama’s top drone advisor as a modern-day saint. State Department chief counsel Harold Koh was quoted as saying, “If John Brennan is the last guy in the room with the president, I’m comfortable, because Brennan is a person of genuine moral rectitude. It’s as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war.”

Of course, the Times, Obama and Saint Brennan have no moral problems with the long history of mass murder by U.S. capitalism, from the slaughter of Japanese civilians with atom bombs to the massacre of three million Vietnamese and, more recently, a million Iraqis.

Obama & Co.’s drone “morality” is proving a harder sell to people who actually live in their deadly robots’ sights. Liberal U.S. imperialists like George Soros are well aware of this problem. The multi-billionaire Soros owns and runs Human Rights Watch (HRW), which recently quoted a Yemeni activist: “These drone strikes are stupid policy....Every time they kill Yemeni civilians they create more hatred of America” (5/31). At the same time, these random killings breed anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in the U.S. and elsewhere.

‘Democratizing’ Drone Slaughter

Soros understands that Yemeni unrest might destabilize neighboring Saudi Arabia, the cornerstone of U.S. capitalists’ oil-dependent empire. He also understands that broader support for the U.S. cause is needed from the United Nations and the “international community.” Soros proposes that:

 To win Yemenis’ confidence, the U.S. should transfer command of all drone strikes from the CIA to the U.S. military and provide a detailed rationale of why its targeted killings in Yemen are legal under international law. It should insist on more transparency as well from the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which also reportedly conducts drone strikes in Yemen under a veil of secrecy approaching that of the CIA. That will not only give Yemenis information about U.S. strikes but also allow them to seek redress for any unlawful attacks (HRW, 5/31/12).

To that end, these preposterous proposals mimic those of the New York Times: Keep up the drone killings but make them “more democratic,” with stronger “legal justification” to placate the people being bombed.

Reject Bosses’ Elections and Racist Wars 

Capitalist “anti-war” measures inevitably mask a maneuvering toward greater slaughter. In reality, it’s the bosses’ system that propels imperialist war and wreaks untold horrors on the international working class. For the capitalists, war is no aberration. It is the logical extension of a profit system that feeds on misery and exploitation. War becomes necessary when the system’s day-to-day profiteering — from massive layoffs, social service and education cuts, and the legalized persecution of immigrants — is no longer adequate for the rulers’ needs. In turn, capitalist war escalates the racism and sexism used to justify the exploitation of hundreds of millions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as of black, Latino and immigrant workers in the U.S. 

For the U.S. ruling class to maintain its profits and its top-dog position worldwide, a president like Obama is ideal. While Mitt Romney is ready and willing to pursue the same murderous capitalist agenda, Obama is more capable of winning workers’ loyalty to the rulers’ class interests. The task for Progressive Labor Party, in unity with our supporters in mass organizations, is to blast through the capitalist fog of elections and lesser-evil candidates and expose the rotten system underneath.

Given the all-out ruling-class offensive, joining and building the PLP to organize a communist revolution is the only answer for the working class. It is the only means we have to free our class from history’s most vicious oppressive system. It is the only way to create a society without bosses and profits, run by and for the international working class. Join us!

BRONX, NEW  YORK, May 31 — The marshals stopped the march and instructed us to tighten our ranks and pump up the volume.  As we approached the 47th precinct the chants of “NYPD you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” and “Mayor Bloomberg you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” grew louder and louder.

“Haste, Haste, Haste” ”the  multi-racial crowd roared, calling for the racist killer cop who shot Ramarley Graham to death in his grandmother’s apartment on February 3 after kicking in the door.   The cops had no warrant and Ramarley had no weapon.

Led by Ramarley’s parents, supporters march every Thursday through the neighbourhood and to the precinct.  The parents and organizers of the march always make it clear that they are not only asking for justice for Ramarley but are commemorating the many other victims of police brutality and are fighting to prevent others from becoming victims.

At  the police station a PLP member was called up to speak.  He praised the parents for their courage in  waging such a  militant struggle, saying that they were an inspiration to the working class.  His major focus was on the role of the cops.  While some people say it’s just a few bad cops, we condemn the entire police department as protectors of the capitalist system.   Putting it in perspective he said that police around the world from the U.S., to China, to Syria  have the same role:  to suppress the workers from fighting back against their rulers.  

His speech was well received as were the many CHALLENGEs we distributed.   The last page was completely about the Ramarley Graham struggle (6/6/12). An article explained in detail how “leaders”  from the NAACP, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and the Service Employees International Union were trying to pacify the people.   They are organizing a mass march against the  “stop-and-frisk” policy but do not want to raise the issue of police brutality. Their plan calls for no speeches and a silent march!

Well, we will not be silent at the June 17th Father’s Day march or on any other day.   We call on all CHALLENGE readers to come to the weekly Thursday night vigils in the Bronx.  Raise the anti-racist struggle in your schools, unions, churches, and PTA’s.  Fight back!

 The documentary Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? is about the financial crisis that began in 2008. It continues to this day, with high unemployment, home foreclosures, and other aspects of capitalism that devastate workers’ lives. The documentary lays the blame firmly on the banks and compliant politicians for the fiasco. The format is mainly a series of interviews of people who expose the way banks have manipulated their financial control with the help of governmental rulings and deregulation. But the film tells only part of the story.

First, it shows the degree to which banks and big business owners are stealing virtually everything we produce with our labor. However, its main message is that the “heist” consists of a relatively recent move by big business, particularly banks. It traces this move to a 1971 memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by corporate lawyer Lewis Powell — shortly thereafter a Nixon-appointed Supreme Court Justice. In this memo Powell falsely claimed that there was a socialist attack on free enterprise and that big business needed to ward it off with extreme aggressiveness. It did, by mobilizing the full force of a friendly federal government to protect and magnify already swollen banking profits.

U.S. History: One Long Heist

While the filmmakers claim that this 41-year-old memo was the origin of the heist, can anyone remember a time in U.S. history when banks did not rob people to accumulate vast wealth? The so-called founding fathers were quite explicit that the role of government would be to protect their property from the mass of property-less people (what the Occupy Movement calls the 99%). The U.S. government was designed from the outset to protect the bosses from the workers. Far from a mere 41 years, this ongoing function of government is at least 223 years old. It has been punctuated by war on tens of millions of workers. 

Furthermore, by pointing the finger solely at the way big business buys politicians in order to dominate the rest of us, the film again misleads. It omits the fact that the owners of big business also determine school curricula, points of view in the media, levels of health care, funding of research through foundations, control over think tanks, and placement of government advisors from these think tanks who agree that world dominance by U.S. capital is the most vital function of government. In short, the capitalists rule through a class dictatorship. 

Rulers’ Ideas Their Trump Card

Control over not just government but all institutions in the society — particularly universities and secondary schools, as well as the media — means that the class of billionaires rules us through more than the military, cops, courts, prisons, and religious leaders. They rule through their ability to determine which ideas are permitted to flourish in the mainstream publishing, media, and educational outlets, and which ideas are to be punished (or threatened to be punished) by firings, imprisonment, and even assassinations. The degree to which these latter methods are less necessary today only reflects the success of the other methods in dominating the prevailing ideology.

While the film presents this as a conspiracy, class rule is far from a conspiracy. The overwhelming domination through capitalist ideology is the main thing that distinguishes class rule from conspiracy. Conspiracies do happen, but they are minor, fleeting, and almost trivial compared to the way the ruling class rules through ideological control — ideology that they firmly believe in, so they don’t all see it as domination.

Wars to Maintain Profits

One interviewee claims the problem is not profit itself, but rather excessive profits (implying some arbitrary unstated cutoff point between reasonable and excessive). He and the filmmakers miss the point that capitalism is driven by competition to seek not just profits, but maximum profits — making them inherently “excessive” sooner or later. Competition from other capitalist nations has led to endless wars and the slaughter of the working class to maintain profitability. The problem therefore is the profit system itself. Workers are victims of capitalist ideology. 

The problem for the world’s working class lies not just in thieving banks and politicians, but in the source of capitalist power that grants them the ability to carry out this theft continually. This source is the “excessive” profit-maximizing system itself, in which the rich necessarily get richer and most of us necessarily get poorer, as the bosses rob us on a daily basis. They protect and enforce this through their control of the state apparatus. 

500 Years IS Long Enough

For the last 500 years this has been the situation everywhere in the world where capitalism and its competition for maximum profits exist. PLP is building a worldwide communist movement of millions of workers and allies to destroy this system and its state and erect a workers’ state.

We strive to put the working class in control of an egalitarian system that allows us to satisfy all our needs collectively and through worldwide cooperation. Communism would be free of competition, profits, exploitation, and all the extreme miseries that the profit system produces. Join us today.

CHICAGO, May 23 — Strike was on the minds of some 6,000 teachers and paraprofessionals, joined by nearly 2,000 supporters, who took over several downtown streets here to demand that city students get better schools and to oppose the rulers’ all-out assault on students and teachers. The march followed simultaneous indoor and outdoor rallies, where, in a show of unity and solidarity, virtually every Chicago Teacher Union (CTU) member wore red CTU shirts.

The CTU contract expires June 30 and the Board of Education wants to increase class size, outsource art and music positions, increase work hours 20 percent for 2 percent more pay, introduce “merit pay,” decrease job security, and close more schools.

During the rally, members spontaneously shouted “Strike” and carried signs reading “YES,” foreshadowing a June 6 strike authorization vote (unannounced at the time of the rally). 

The ruling class here has been viciously attacking students and education workers for years. Recently, in Chicago and throughout the U.S., the attacks have ramped up as rulers, faced with trillions in war costs, feel the economic squeeze on their profits. Internationally, public education has been under attack for even longer.

Fighting A Racist School System

The ruling class wants to turn teaching into a revolving-door, lower-paid job. In line with their need to maintain racism that produces super-profits, they don’t want to spend money on educating poor, working-class black and Latino students. Defense of their empire is a more important priority. They’ve closed over 100 schools here, replacing them with charter schools. In what is still the country’s most segregated city, predominantly black schools suffer disproportionately from closures. 

Whether through charters or regular public schools, the ruling class wants to more finely craft the schools attended by working-class students so they better serve the rulers’ interests. Penny Pritzer, billionaire owner of Hyatt Hotels and others sit on Chicago’s Board of Education.

Education for Profits 

As one rally speaker revealed, Pritzer told an interviewer: “Students are entitled to get the skills in reading, math and science so that they can be productive members of today’s workforce.” She was talking about working-class students, not those in schools attended by her children or other children of the wealthy. “Skills to become productive workers,” she means teaching students the skills and ideology they need to become workers who make lots of profits for the corporations or become soldiers who fight to protect those profits.

Chicago education workers may challenge ruling-class plans by striking next fall. The politicians who serve the rulers thought they were preventing this by passing a law in 2011 requiring a 75 percent vote of the entire membership (not of just those voting) to authorize a strike. Now it seems highly likely that threshold will be met.

A strike opens up the potential for teachers’ union members to feel their power, to build multi-racial unity against the capitalists who control Chicago’s Board of Education. It can be a great opportunity for a militant, united, anti-racist fight against the children’s exploiters who run the school system. Anything less, in fact, will only embolden these fascists and encourage them to quicken the pace of their attacks on students and education workers.

However, a strike is not enough to stop these profit-driven attacks. Only communist revolution accomplish that and allow students to flourish in schools designed in their interests, not the bosses’.

New System, Not New Mayor

The CTU is still hampered by its reformist outlook. At the rally and march, for example, sellouts Jesse Jackson (Operation Push) and Randi Weingarten (American Federation of Teachers president) had front-row seats.

Marchers chanted, “The workers, united, will never be defeated” but also “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Rahm Emanuel has to go.”  Replacing the Mayor, electing the school board, or doing anything else short of overturning capitalism only ties workers more to this murderous system. Communist revolution really is the only solution.

PLP’s role in this fight is iadvancing, but still needs improvement. A serious group of teachers who meet regularly with the Party; a PLP flyer and CHALLENGES were distributed at the march; the level of discussion and struggle inside CTU and the numbers reading CHALLENGE have increased, creating the potential for more PLP supporters and members.

If a strike occurs, it will provide an even greater opportunity for PLP to become more deeply involved in this class struggle. We must be in it to win workers to realizing they can and must take power and run society.