BROOKLYN, NY, March 28 — A recent school forum about the threats looming for workers and their children in the public education system attracted 25 teachers and other school staff, including PL members, friends and CHALLENGE readers.

An opening guest speaker explained that for the entire history of class society, a small group of rulers has controlled the means of production and used the apparatus of the state to maintain that control and to keep power over the laboring classes. The tools they use to exercise this control include the military, the laws and legal system and cultural media, from fine art and literature to the movies and TV.

The public education system, since its inception, has been a pivotal means to control the ideas workers learn and believe. The bosses want the schools to keep workers and youth obedient by teaching them the ideology the system is built on: individualism, elitism, patriotism, racism, sexism and loyalty to the ruling class.

U.S. rulers have specific needs in the current crisis of the failing economy and threats from imperialist rivals. The rulers need to retool schools to produce patriotic workers who have more skills but will work for lower wages and fight in their widening imperialist wars. A pool of workers like this is necessary for them to compete with growing rivals like India and China.

The rulers are engaged in debate about what tactics will get these results, and their debate plays out in the “reforms” imposed on schools. These have included the standards movement, which under the auspices of “No Child Left Behind” has become primarily about testing and has been abandoned by ruling-class mouthpieces like Diane Ravitch as a failure.

Other strategies the bosses are trying out include the increase in charter schools, changes in teacher training, merit pay for teachers and business models for school management. All these strategies lead to more direct government control of schools which is another step in building fascism.  

The forum discussed how the Department of Education is moving charters or other new schools into buildings already housing a public school and pitting the parents and teachers against each other in a war over resources, funds and space. In these scenarios, the workers are encouraged to fight over which school is better and not look at the real enemy: the ruling class.

No matter which kind of schools our working-class children attend, charter or public, they are being taught ruling-class ideas, not the knowledge, skills and class-consciousness they need to make a revolution and a new society. No matter what reforms the rulers put in the schools, they cannot provide jobs for all the students who leave the schools with or without diplomas. Racism gives the majority of black and Latino youth only the choice between racist unemployment or fighting in the bosses’ imperialist wars.

Although one teacher described the situation as “depressing,” the response of the overwhelming majority was “what can we do about this?” Teachers wanted to discuss these ideas with students and make plans to fight back if specific attacks were imposed on our schools, along with starting a petition and letter-writing campaigns. The job of the workers in the school who are in, or close to, the Party now becomes to build on the class-conscious understanding and fighting spirit of our friends and coworkers.

As the results of Obama’s “Race to the Top” emerged, coworkers expressed more anger to us about the state of education. One of them fumed as she read an article about the subject, saying, “Look at what they are doing to us!” declaring her unity with PL’s communist analysis and the class interests of workers and students.

The forum allowed us to see where people stand so we can build relationships and engage them with us in struggle against the rulers. This is a long-term process, but a necessary one to build a fighting Party. We need to unite students, parents and teachers at our school, and around the world, to destroy the capitalist system and build communism. Only when workers rule the world can we create an educational system that teaches our youth what they need to run the world in their own class interest.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 21 — Over 250,000 working-class youth and families marched and rallied in support of the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) bill. The crowd was loud, spirited and hopeful, but at the same time wary. The Democratic Party, along with unions, churches and community groups, organized the event they called a “March for America.” It was no surprise that the marchers, led by SEIU president Andy Stern, were prompted to wave the U.S. flag and chant, “USA, USA.”

While the majority of the marchers echoed the bosses’ chant, a group of PL’ers and friends interjected working-class internationalism with the chant, “Workers’ Struggles have no Borders” and sold several hundred CHALLENGES.

Many immigrants want changes, because they know all too well how the long arm of capitalism — imperialism — decimated their home countries and forced many of them to trek dangerous routes to feed their families. PL’ers must expose how the proposed reforms fit into U.S. imperialism’s needs.

U.S. rulers need a much larger military and civilian population that is patriotic, or at least passive, and willing to “sacrifice for America” because they face mounting challenges to their top-dog status from rivals in China, Europe, the Middle East and South America. Their solution to these problems is to make ALL workers pay to save their economy and finance their wider wars.

Obama has pledged his “support for immigration reform that provides for national prosperity, national security, and a population that plays by the rules and a path to citizenship.” These “rules” mean immigrant workers will have to declare themselves criminals and pay fines and back taxes (from $10,000 to $20,000 per person). An ID system (E-verify) would intensify enforcement of fascist workplace rules, heighten armed military control of the U.S.-Mexico border and lay a path to citizenship that may take from 8 to 13 years.

CIR’s promise of “legalization” will keep the bait sweet enough to continue to attract millions of workers into a temporary worker status under the watchful eyes of government agents. Immigrant workers are victims of racist super-exploitation, which impoverishes the whole working class. It creates a “reserve army of the unemployed” which the bosses use as a club over the heads of all workers, including white workers.

CIR will tie immigrant workers to their jobs: their temporary status would depend on
maintaining employment. Get laid off — get deported. This policy would continue the U.S. history of slave labor under a liberal disguise. Then the only option for youth becomes joining the military to fight and die for U.S. imperialism.

Conveniently overlooked are two key elements of “reform”: the Dream Act and a guest-worker program. These are not “details to be worked out,” as the politicians and their lackeys proclaim. They’re real-life issues that will result in more raids and deportations as workplace regulations tighten, with more racist profiling and criminalization of immigrants. This would soften all workers for even sharper attacks on labor standards.

It is important to emphasize international working-class unity, particularly at workplaces, in communities and among youth. PLP pledges to fight racist attacks against immigrants and  refuse to hand over information about undocumented immigrants, while protecting them in any way possible. We pledge to link the pro-immigration fight to the one against racist unemployment. Activities to mobilize a successful May Day and build the revolutionary communist PLP are crucial _



PARIS, March 25 — Today a well-coordinated united, multi-racial action of militant trade unionists and undocumented immigrant strikers enabled the latter to occupy the former Galeries Lafayette warehouses here for six hours.

At 1 p.m. a “commando” team of 20 trade union activists walked quickly up the Rue Blanche. At the signal “Let’s go!” they ran to the renovation site and quickly broke open the gate. Then 63 undocumented workers invaded the site under the stunned eyes of the construction workers inside. The latter then left as the 63 undocumented workers settled in.

At 7 p.m., the police, without any court order, evicted the occupiers. The 63 workers marched out, chanting slogans from the construction site to the subway station.

The aim of the action was two-fold. First, it united the undocumented strikers, who work in small groups for many different subcontractors, allowing them to form a “critical mass” and realize their strength when unified into a larger force.

Secondly, it aimed at putting pressure on Bouygues Construction — which is renovating the warehouses — and is one of the big companies that employs undocumented workers and is blocking the across-the-board “legalization” of all undocumented workers. Worldwide, Bouygues Construction employs 52,600 workers and netted over one-third of a billion dollars profit in 2008.

It also exposes the international and racist super-exploitation of the mostly North African undocumented workers since the U.S.-based Carlyle group owns the warehouses. (Former president George H.W. Bush is one of its principal directors.) Carlyle invests in buyouts, growth capital, real estate and leveraged finance on six continents. Since 1987, it has invested $59.6 billion of equity in 952 transactions for a total purchase price of approximately $233 billion.

While capitalist bosses set up national borders and use them to divide workers and super-exploit immigrants, they have no hesitation to cross these borders themselves in their drive for maximum profits. Still another reason for workers to unite worldwide to destroy this thieving system and replace it with one run by and for the working class — communism. 

In one of the U.S. ruling class’s biggest swindles in history on the backs of the working class, the rulers have plundered Social Security (SS) surpluses of $2.5 TRILLION and used the swag to finance every U.S. imperialist war from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Now they want to plunder it still more.

A recent NY Times front-page article (3/24) reported that for the first time in decades the annual money being paid out in Social Security (SS) checks will exceed the amount coming in from current SS payroll taxes. It said that continuation of this trend will cause the SS Trust Fund to go broke, on “a long, slow march to insolvency.”

Already Alan Greenspan, “architect of the plan to rescue” SS 27 years ago, is saying, “When the level of the trust fund gets to zero, you have to cut benefits.” (NYT, 3/24) Actually it was Greenspan’s“rescue plan” that helped steal the $2.5 trillion from SS’s surplus.

But this is not an “SS crisis.” Rather it’s a crisis of capitalism in which the rulers try to “solve” it at the workers’ expense, both on the battlefield where working-class troops bear the brunt of the fighting and dying — while killing masses of other workers — and at home as the rulers steal from the workers to fund the killing abroad.

Johnson’s Scam to Bail Out the Vietnam War’s Budget Deficit

This huge robbery of workers’ taxes began in 1968 when the U.S. imperialist invasion of Vietnam was in high gear. The Johnson administration’s war expenditures were spinning the Federal budget into bottomless debt. Until then all SS payroll taxes were set aside by law into the SS Trust Fund, separate from the general government treasury, to pay benefits to future retirees.

By then the Trust Fund was running a surplus — its income from workers’ payroll taxes was exceeding the amount paid out to retirees. So the Johnson gang figured out a shrewd trick to “balance the budget”: “fold” the SS surplus into what would now be called the Unified Federal Budget. Never mind that it was “illegal” to spend Trust Fund monies for purposes other than Social Security. “By law, Social Security is excluded” from the budget; “in practice, it is included.” (“The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process”; Allen Schick, Brookings Institution, 1995) When it benefits the bosses, they always break their own laws.

This sleight-of-hand enabled Johnson to mask any deficit in federal spending generated by the enormous expenses of the Vietnam War. In “exchange” for stealing the SS surplus, the government would essentially give the Trust Fund paper “I-O-U’s,” notes equal to what it “loaned” from the Fund (plus interest). These notes became the “assets” of the Fund and laid the basis for what is now a $2.5 TRILLION debt owed to SS (NYT, 3/24). How it spiraled to that astronomical amount is still another story of the rich swindling the working class.

Greenspan-Reagan Plan to ‘Save’ the Baby Boomers’ Pensions Depletes Them Instead

By the early 1980s, with the Reagan administration’s military budget running wild, the federal deficit was skyrocketing. The Unified Federal Budget meant that any SS surplus — now part of this “Unified” Budget — could be used to pay for general operating expenses,  “everything from jet fighters to thumb tacks” (NY Times, 1/21/1990). So Reagan’s Greenspan Commission came up with the “solution” to save the Baby Boomer’s future pensions: jack up workers’ SS taxes.

The SS surplus began climbing sharply, recently running at $200 billion per year. “Since 1983, American workers have been paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits….So what has happened to [those trillions]? The payments have all been spent.” (NYT, 2/20/2004)

But, “If the proceeds of that tax [hike] were simply revenues for the [“Unified”] federal budget,…then the tax was nothing more than a way to increase the share of the burden borne by working people.” (“Social Security’s Future,” NY Times, 1/31/1995)

And what is now $2.5 trillion stolen from the SS surpluses has been helping to pay for the “general operating expense” of every U.S. imperialist invasion since — from Grenada to Panama to Somalia to Yugoslavia to Gulf War I to Iraq to Haiti to  Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Clinton Budget ‘Surplus’ A Mirage

These SS surpluses turned Clinton’s federal budget deficit into a ballyhooed “surplus” of $70 billion. As the NY Times then editorialized (11/9/1998), “the Government’s current budget surplus is a mirage. Last year’s budget surplus — about which both the President and the Republicans crowed incessantly — was due to a big surplus in Social Security. The rest of the budget showed a deficit of almost $30 billion.”

This highway robbery falls even more heavily on black and Latino workers. Because of centuries of inherited racist discrimination, their net worth (accumulated assets) was reported recently at one-tenth of the rest of the U.S. population. Therefore, they’re even more heavily dependent on Social Security pensions to survive any retirement years.

And with all the racist attacks on undocumented immigrants as “stealing from the economy,” the fact is that they pay SS taxes but get exactly zero SS pensions. They contribute hugely to a “Unified Federal Budget” which is then used to raid, jail and deport them while trying to cajole their youth into the military to fight and die in U.S. imperialist wars.

Actually, it was a communist-led, fiercely militant working-class movement that won Social Security for our class during the Great Depression. But it made the fatal error of not tying this fight to the one for revolution, enabling the ruling class to use its state power to whittle away and reverse hard-won gains. Today, as U.S. rulers, led by Obama, wage war abroad and destroy livelihoods at home, it’s clear they’re our class’s main enemy.

The past and coming Social Security swindle is nothing new for U.S. rulers. The bosses rob us every day of our lives, exploiting us at work while laying us off for long periods of unemployment. There’s only one way to end these horrors: building the PLP to a point where we can lead a workers’ revolution for communism, a society run by the working class that, once and for all, would smash capitalism’s exploitation, poverty, racism and wars for profit. J

War-bent Rulers’ Retirement ‘Reform’: Work Till You Die

Obama’s Afghan surge, costing $1 million per soldier per year, is gearing up for a major battle in Kandahar. Meanwhile, Social Security (SS) is starting to take in less than it pays out (see adjoining article). But according to the rulers’ Peterson Institute, “Ironically this is a good thing for America. [!] These types of problems are never dealt with politically unless the president and Congress have to. Now they do.”

This Institute boasts board members Standard Oil heir David Rockefeller, British Petroleum boss Tony Hayward, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, GM chairman and Exxon Mobil director Ed Whitacre, and Saudi billionaire Hutham Olayan.

These direct beneficiaries of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seek anti-worker “comprehensive Social Security reform, including gradual increases in the retirement age and an alteration [downward] of the benefits formula” (Peterson director C. Fred Bergsten in “Foreign Affairs,” November/December 2009). In essence, the cash-starved war-makers want workers either to die before they can collect from SS or to collect far less than they put in.

Obama Healthcare May Fall Short of Rulers’ War Needs

The rulers hope Obama’s new health plan will free up funds for their war machine but fear it won’t. Max Boot, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. rulers’ leading foreign policy think-tank, is worried “about the impact of ObamaCare on….’our’ global power. The United States currently spends… [for] ’defense’ $661 billion in fiscal year 2009….But that’s a pittance compared to what we spend on…Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid….almost 35% of the budget, compared with 17% for ‘defense.’” (Wall Street Journal, 3/25/10). Boot complains that this outlay saps U.S. rulers’ power to kill enemies. 

He warns his ruling-class masters that before they can wage the larger regional and global wars they need, they must first slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “[I]f we are looking at major threats to our global standing, we should not look at China, Iran or Russia. We have met the enemy and he is us — specifically, our ‘insatiable’ demand for entitlement spending.” Look out Social Security!