PLP Confronts Anti-Immigrant Fascists
a href="#Stock Drive Will Spur War Drive, Squeeze Workers’ Lives">"tock Drive Will Spur War Drive, Squeeze Workers’ Lives
Liberal Gore Spins Global Warming for Global War
a href="#Workers Eager to Talk Communism with Summer Project PL’ers">"orkers Eager to Talk Communism with Summer Project PL’ers
a href="#Oaxaca: Militant Workers Lose Participating in Rulers’ Electoral Dogfight">"axaca: Militant Workers Lose Participating in Rulers’ Electoral Dogfight
- a href="#Vote to Repudiate — Gift for the Capitalists">"ote to Repudiate — Gift for the Capitalists
- PRI, PRD, PAN: ?All Short for Racist Bosses
Garment Workers Teach Racist Bosses A Lesson!
Schedules, Bathrooms and Communism
But There Is Another Side To Work
a href="#Only Workers’ Power Can Challenge War-maker Teledyn">"nly Workers’ Power Can Challenge War-maker Teledyne
Industrial Workers: Key Revolutionary Force
a href="#Angry Workers Must Organize vs. Bankers’ NYC Fare Hike">"ngry Workers Must Organize vs. Bankers’ NYC Fare Hike
a href="#Demonstrators Hit VA’s Criminal Medical Care">"emonstrators Hit VA’s Criminal Medical Care
Russian GM Workers Prepare to Strike
a href="#Workers’ Suffering Becomes ‘A Tourist Attraction’">Work"rs’ Suffering Becomes ‘A Tourist Attraction’
Katrina Victims Welcome Red Ideas
Industrial Workers, Soldiers Crucial For Revolution
LETTERS
- Japanese Teachers Confront Fascism
- a href="#Iraq GI’s ‘Worry about getting home alive’">Iraq"GIs ‘Worry about getting home alive’
- Fulfilling Potential As An Industrial Worker
- Editorial Short on Specifics,Long on Assertions
- a href="#‘White Flight’ No Myth">‘W"ite Flight’ No Myth
a href="#Jamaica’s Deadly Election Circus">"amaica’s Deadly Election Circus
Striking Miners Derail Scab Train
- Dems Strut, but doubletalk on war
- ‘None of the above’ to the Oval Office?
- Media saw Va. Tech, not inner city
- In US 1890s Chinese fought ID law
- Gov’t spies infest US Muslim areas
- Stressed Iraq vets become suicidal
- US no help to Afghan school-agers
- SICKO avoids race and class issues
a href="#Deadly Racism Sparked ’67 Detroit Uprising">"eadly Racism Sparked ’67 Detroit Uprising
Dinner Marks 40th Anniversary of 1967 Detroit Rebellion
PLP Confronts Anti-Immigrant Fascists
MORRISTOWN, NJ, July 28 — A multi-racial group of over 200 anti-racists assembled on the streets here to fight back against the growing anti-immigration movement. Pro-America Society organized other racist organizations to rally on the front steps of Town Hall to promote Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello’s plan to utilize Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This section, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by Clinton, gives local police officers the training and power to deport undocumented workers.
Cresitello’s lies and actions have placed him at the head of the anti-immigration movement in New Jersey. Cresitello told the Newark Star-Ledger (5/16), "I am fighting for the protection of the residents not to have drunken and disorderly people in their neighborhoods, raping their women, breaking into their homes, raping and murdering their children. I don’t mince words."
These racist lies have won some working-class people to follow this fascist movement, but they have also emboldened many to oppose Cresitello and this movement. Before the rally, PLP members leafleted apartment complexes in the working-class part of town and got many positive responses from its residents, some even remembering us from 2000 and 2001 when we demonstrated against the neo-Nazi Richard Barrett.
At today’s event, some residents joined our chants, spoke on the bullhorn and held PLP signs reading, "Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders — Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras." One person, employed at the supermarket where the rally was held, came outside and got on the mic, equating the Pro-America group with terrorists. Other workers in the supermarket also came outside, held our signs and joined our chants.
Although PLP was forced to hold its demonstration across the street away from the rally, other anti-racists made their way into the rally and were able to disrupt the speakers. About a minute into the first speaker, two of the anti-racists held up a banner reading, "No Racist Deportations (No Deportaciones Racistas)" and began chanting loudly. Simultaneously, two other committed anti-racists attempted to jump the barricades to get to the sound system. Their bold move motivated others to stand up against racism.
About 15 minutes later, a group from the National Organization for Women (NOW) began holding signs reading "STOP RACISM NOW" while inside the racist rally. Eventually the cops forced them to leave, but not without a fight from this group of multi-racial women. These actions excited the group of anti-racists across the street, causing them to chant even louder.
PLP was able to build relationships with the local Morristown residents as well as with other students and workers from the area. We distributed over 200 CHALLENGES/DESAFIOS and 300 leaflets at the rally. But more importantly, the PLP displayed the leadership that is necessary to lead the working class. Many of the pro-immigrant liberal groups had their rally two miles away, instead of actually confronting the racists. PLP has always fought back against racism. Not only was its presence known, but more significantly, many were exposed to communist ideas and showed a great deal of class consciousness.
During the rally, over $600 was raised to support the two people arrested after jumping the barricades earlier in the day. This demonstration of working-class unity shows the potential that we as a class have in fighting for a society without racism. But we still must develop, both as a Party and as a class.
Cresitello and the Pro-America Society are just fronts for a wider, and now growing, fascist movement built by the ruling class. They want to scapegoat immigrants for "terrorist" threats and the bosses’ growing economic attacks and repression suffered by ALL workers to pay for and justify the endless oil profit wars. So just singling out these racists is not enough. The media that promotes these ideas, the cops that protect these speakers, the courts that give them the permits and then go after those that try to stop them and the government that passes laws like Section 287(g) are all part of a wider system that has promoted racism since its inception.
It’s important to disrupt these racists’ rallies to prevent them from spreading their anti-working class ideology, but fundamentally we need to understand that capitalism—the system that promotes it — must be destroyed. Towards that goal, we must organize millions to fight for communist revolution. Join us!J
a name="Stock Drive Will Spur War Drive, Squeeze Workers’ Lives">">"tock Drive Will Spur War Drive, Squeeze Workers’ Lives
"Don’t worry," the media told us, the world’s stock markets’ recent slump is just "an adjustment." They’re probably right — but that’s exactly why we should worry, on two counts. First, each market adjustment ends up attacking our class economically. Second, the slump’s consequences will intensify the ruling class’s need for military victory in the Middle East.
Two problems in the credit market triggered the slump. At one end is a mass of defaults in the home mortgage industry. (Still worse, the racism involved in the sub-prime mortgage robbery — see CHALLENGE, 5/19) — puts black and Latino workers at a further disadvantage, as well as affecting white workers.)
At the other end, there was a failure to raise money to support major takeovers — Chrysler in the U.S. and Alliance-Boots in Britain. Consequently, interest rates are expected to rise.
That would mean more money will be squeezed from the already almost empty pockets of the working class. Families living in homes with variable interest rates will pay more; families using credit cards will pay more; and companies will tend to slash hiring, affecting job growth. One way or another, stock market adjustments hit the working class economically.
Dig deeper, though, and a more disturbing picture of the U.S. economy emerges. Between 1994 and 2004 consumption (what people spend) grew faster than income (what people earn), so we borrowed more. The U.S. economy expanded based on consumer debt.
That borrowing came mainly from home refinancing. Between 2001 and 2004, for example, 45% of first-time homeowners refinanced their homes, buying items with the borrowed money, so the economy grew. As shall be seen, it’s very important for the U.S. economy to grow.
This brings us to the war in Iraq. As CHALLENGE has pointed out, that war is not just about oil but also concerns "U.S. global primacy." That primacy rests in part on the ability of the U.S. Dollar to act as a worldwide reserve currency. As a result, the U.S. government and economy gain all sorts of advantages, including the ability to finance its massive military.
Three things prop up this worldwide role of the U.S. Dollar: the strength of the U.S. armed forces; the fact that oil is traded in U.S. dollars (known as petrodollars); and the size and continued expansion of the U.S. consumer market. All three are vitally important because, for the first time since World War II, the U.S. Dollar has a rival — the Euro.
The Euro is more valuable than the Dollar and therefore more attractive to governments worldwide. Because the stock market slump signals a slowing down of the U.S. economy, the Euro will look even more attractive. This undermines the continued role of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s premium reserve currency.
In turn, that pressures the U.S. ruling class to at least prevent defeat in Iraq before maneuvering to assert its military dominance over the Greater Middle East. A weakening domestic economy forces a more assertive military policy. While the declared objective might be to "secure Baghdad," the real objective is to secure U.S. primacy relative to its imperialist rivals globally. The forced adjustment of the U.S. stock market should be seen in that light.
We workers, too, could make "an adjustment." The bankers and financiers can raise their interest rates but we had better raise our rate of distributing CHALLENGE. As the seeds of a war for world primacy are being sown, we need to sow seeds that will grow a different crop — communist revolution.
Liberal Gore Spins Global Warming for Global War
Without even tossing his hat into the presidential ring (yet), Al Gore is significantly advancing U.S. rulers’ ever-expanding war agenda behind a liberal guise. Gore’s campaign against global warming is rallying millions of well-meaning people to side with capitalists who seek, not to save the planet, but to control its profit-producing resources by armed force.
As U.S. imperialists, facing strengthening rivals, sorely need more young people in uniform, Gore’s movement promotes mass support for drastic government action. U.S. rulers are counting on climate change to cause worldwide crises that require "humanitarian" military intervention. They hope the crowds at last month’s Live Earth concerts — Gore organized the Washington, D.C. event — will help furnish the ground troops.
If linking global warming and global warfare seems far-fetched, consider a report entitled, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, published in April by 11 retired generals and admirals under the auspices of the Center for Naval Analyses. These war-makers long for an environmental pretext for invasions beyond Iraq and Afghanistan: "Climate change will provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror...droughts, violent weather, ruined agricultural lands...more poverty, more forced migrations, higher unemployment. Those conditions are ripe for extremists and terrorists."
For top U.S. brass, a grip on Mid-East oil remains crucial. Amid any future turmoil, it says, "Military planning should view climate change as a threat to the balance of energy access, water supplies and a healthy environment, and it should require a response." Geostrategic considerations are paramount. "Deploying troops affects readiness elsewhere; choosing not to [deploy troops] may affect alliances. And providing aid in the aftermath of a catastrophic event or natural disaster can help retain stability in a nation or region, which in turn could head off U.S. military engagement in that region at a later date." And get ready for World War III. "[T]here is always the potential for regional fighting to spread to a national or international scale." It’s no accident that Gore’s bandwagon especially demonizes carbon-spewing China.
Al Gets Rich From Blood and Gore In More Ways Than One
It is the main, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists that brings Gore back into the limelight, even as it lines his pockets. The driving force behind his popular movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC trustee Laurie David co-produced the film. NRDC chairman F.A.O. Schwarz, Jr., serves as senior counsel at the Wall Street law firm Cravath, Swain and Moore, which represents imperialist heavyweights J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Chevron. Larry Rockefeller is an NRDC trustee. And, with the big boys’ help, Gore has become a financier in his own right. He has teamed with ex-Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood to form Generation Investment Management, which focuses on strategic, long-term investing, consistent with the rulers’ war aims. Its nickname, "Blood and Gore," is particularly appropriate.
"Earth-Friendly" Pols Lead Bosses To Riches, Workers To Barracks
Major capitalists have long used "Save the Earth" movements to tighten their grasp on natural resources. Teddy Roosevelt pushed "Conservation," which restricted rival upstarts’ access to timber and minerals. To this day, the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund, outfits run by top bankers and industrialists, limit access to their multi-million-acre woodlands to "approved" giants like International Paper and Weyerhauser. President Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the game to a new level, by creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a vast quasi-military organization that put Depression-era youth to work improving parks and forests. The CCC aided mobilization for World War II. Though in a different economic and political climate, FDR had the same goal as Gore: to foster the false image of government as "savior" and "protector."
The liberal rulers may yet launch candidate Gore. Feeble Democratic frontrunners Obama and Clinton have serious electability problems, due partly to U.S. capitalism’s persistent oppression of black people and women and partly to the candidates themselves. Electoral politics is to a great extent a popularity contest. Remember Gore did get more votes than Bush in 2000. Furthermore, if Iraq remains a big issue, as is likely, confessed imperialist hawks Obama and Clinton will be on shaky ground with an increasingly war-weary public. Gore has greater credibility here. He could dust off his pre-war 2002 speech which warned Bush not to go in as he did. It, in fact, distilled the liberal Council on Foreign Relation’s recommendations for a massive, allied invasion and occupation force. But Gore could use it to pass himself off as a war opponent.
We can’t predict whether or not Gore will run. But we can say for sure that global warming and global war are both products of the profit system. At the company level, industries burn environmentally destructive coal because it rakes in more profits. For U.S. bosses to remain competitive on the international level, they must wage regional oil wars and prepare for global conflict. Voting for this or that candidate won’t change either reality because they all serve capitalism. But it would be wrong to dismiss the well-intentioned people in the movement Gore claims to lead. Communists in the PLP must work among honest people who might follow Gore and expose his real goal: restoration of the draft for wider imperialist wars. J
Bosses Use Wage Slavery to LOWER Minimum Wage
The Democrats are making a hullabaloo about the "big" 70¢ increase in the federal minimum wage, from $5.15 an hour (where it’s been for ten years) to $5.85. But, believe it or not, the purchasing power of this latest "increased" rate is BELOW what the minimum wage provided 50 years ago!
According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, the 1956 $1.00-an-hour minimum wage was worth $5.77 in 1996’s purchasing power. In 2006, the purchasing power of the current $5.15-an-hour rate had fallen to $4.04, or 30% BELOW what the minimum wage was worth in 1956!
So this is the scam that the Democrats are trying to put over on the working class, that raising the rate to $5.85 an hour is "increasing" the minimum wage when it actually will still be far below what that minimum was worth in 1956. To gain a true increase, the rate would probably have to be somewhere around $20 an hour, taking into account inflation over the last half century.
But the new minimum wage rate is nowhere near what a working family needs to provide for the necessities of life. Right now, the new $5.85 rate would mean an annual income of $12,168 (if one worked the entire 52 weeks). That is $5,000 BELOW the federal poverty level for a family of three ($17,170)!
The millions of workers who earn these minimums (and below) are among the super-exploited from whom the ruling class rakes in super-profits. A great proportion of these workers are black, Latino and immigrants, due to the racism that puts these workers at the bottom of the wage heap. No wonder the rulers are trying to present the military as an option to get out of this super-exploitation and mass unemployment that hits them when they graduate (or drop out of) high school. And no wonder some liberal politicians and the Pentagon are pushing the DREAM Act to get the most exploited group, undocumented immigrant youth, to join the army as a seeming "way out" of this capitalist morass, only to die (and kill other workers) in the bosses’ imperialist war in Iraq for control of oil
Capitalism’s wage system, further fueled by racism, can never provide security for the working class. The bosses’ drive for maximum profits will always drive down wages. The "fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work" is a myth. The only way for workers to gain fairness for our labors is to get rid of the profit system that, by its very nature, must rob workers of most of the value we produce. It is that surplus value which provides the profits the bosses reap.
With communism, without bosses and profits, the wage system will be abolished altogether. Workers will share in a system based on real fairness: from each according to their commitment, to each according to need. That’s what PLP fights for.J
a name="Workers Eager to Talk Communism with Summer Project PL’ers">">"orkers Eager to Talk Communism with Summer Project PL’ers
LOS ANGELES, July 29 — A group of workers outside a subcontractor factory who read our leaflet titled, "Industrial Workers Hold the Key to Ending Racist Exploitation," wanted to talk after work. "We only make the minimum wage! Is this a union?" asked one of the group of Asian immigrant workers. We answered, "No. This is bigger than a union — it’s an international revolutionary communist party, with the goal of ending all racist exploitation for good with revolution for workers’ power."
"Great!" exclaimed a worker. "How can we be in touch with you?"
After reading the top of the leaflet (about workers being able to produce without the bosses), sellers heard a worker headed into work say, "This is about us."
"Here’s $5 for the paper," said another worker who returned to buy it after hearing others at work talking about it. Workers have eagerly taken hundreds of CHALLENGES and thousands of leaflets during our PLP Summer Project here. At one site, workers inside opened factory windows to get the communist literature.
A close friend who leafleted for the first time at a garment factory said, "I couldn’t believe seeing parents and children walking into the factories together. It was difficult hearing about speed-up and unsafe working conditions." She plans to keep leafleting.
We’ve begun to spread communist ideas to industrial workers, who are essential to the fight against capitalism and imperialism, who have the power to win the fight to destroy capitalism with communist revolution, workers’ power.
Some young comrades sold their first CHALLENGE/DESAFIOS. At one sale, we handed newspapers through car windows and still felt a sense of unity and a strong connection with the workers. We felt their disgust with the system and their interest in our politics as they grabbed the paper from our hands once we said "DESAFIO, periódico Comunista."
"For the first time I felt part of our effort to empower workers and students, including ourselves. I can honestly see industrial workers leading the struggle to overthrow capitalism; for the first time I saw their true potential," said a volunteer.
Our activities have also succeeded in involving many new people, with students and workers discussing communism. Throughout the week students and others distributed leaflets and CHALLENGES in schools, at factories and on the streets. At a neighborhood sale, black, white, Latino and Asian workers enthusiastically bought CHALLENGE, reading about the fight against racism and capitalism on the shop floor.
Many new faces were present at a kick-off Project BBQ. Participants cooked together and socialized, while discussing upcoming activities. One comrade introduced the Summer Project. "With the U.S. ruling class preparing for more oil-profit wars and wider wars against capitalist rivals, rebuilding domestic industrial production is crucial to their plans. Southern California has seen a surge in industrial subcontracting factories; the number of industrial workers locally has swollen to one million. A strong worker-student-soldier alliance around PLP’s politics can begin to lay the groundwork for working-class revolution and communism. Our summer activities can be a first step in the direction of building communist leadership among industrial workers and students."
At one study group, 20 comrades and friends discussed the role of immigrant workers. A comrade replied to a high school student’s question, saying: "Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of military personnel policy at the Pentagon, has said that the DREAM Act is a ‘very appealing’ way to get new recruits. The DREAM Act, in other words, sends undocumented youth, most of whom don’t have the resources for higher education, into the military where every day more soldiers are needed to fight for Mid-East oil."
A forum on the relationship of industrial workers and soldiers to communist revolution explained the growing importance of industrial production to the U.S. ruling class as inter-imperialist rivalries sharpen. We saw how industrial workers and soldiers are vital to the struggle to turn the bosses’ wars into a revolution for communism. Others spoke of the need to win industrial workers in their own families to join this fight. Finally, we discussed the necessity of a party, the PLP, and the need to build it internationally.
a name="Oaxaca: Militant Workers Lose Participating in Rulers’ Electoral Dogfight">">"axaca: Militant Workers Lose Participating in Rulers’ Electoral Dogfight
OAXACA, MEXICO, July 16 — Teachers, farm workers, residents and students, members of APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), violently confronted the police, the military and the goons of the capitalist class represented by the killer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Oaxaca’s governor. This year, APPO planned a traditional celebration of the "Popular Guelaguetza" (Mutual Aid) in the auditorium of the "Cerro de Fortin," which is where the confrontation occurred. Over 40 workers and youth were either detained, injured or disappeared. A 60-year-old person is near death.
A week later, the bosses tried to celebrate the "Official Guelaguetza" with several thousand attending, including many members of the State’s ruling PRI party, and police dressed as civilians, but thousands of angry workers and youth didn’t give them a moment’s peace.
Since this struggle began in May 2006, there have been 19 assassinations of activists and hundreds of arrests and disappearances. The mass movement has not only survived but has been strengthened in the face of the fascist attacks and the movement’s own internal weaknesses.
In every action thousands have been mobilized to fight back, showing tremendous hatred of the oppressors. The mass struggle is like a laboratory, gauging the strengths and weaknesses of the movement that has dared to challenge the capitalist class in Oaxaca and Mexico City. This struggle has crossed borders, becoming an inspiration for millions of workers worldwide. We’re fighting to transform these experiences into a school for communism.
a name="Vote to Repudiate — Gift for the Capitalists">">"ote to Repudiate — Gift for the Capitalists
The leadership of Section 22 of the SNTE (teachers’ union) and the other organizations are organizing "a vote to repudiate" the policies of the PRI and the PAN (see box for definitions). This reformist effort aims to follow up the PRI’s local electoral losses to weaken Ruiz Ortiz and eventually vote him out, which would benefit the PRD candidates. This supposedly would make bourgeois democracy supposedly function for the working class, building dangerous illusions in the system and trying to set back the revolutionary ideological advance of the masses.
The irony of all this is that the same hated Ruiz Ortiz has placed some of his supporters as PRD candidates, while other PRD candidates are ex-leaders of the PRI who fell out with them, like Juan Diaz Pimentel (Ex-Secretary of Governing) who aspires to be Oaxaca City President of the City of Oaxaca.
For their part, the revisionists (phony leftists) and opportunists of the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR) and members of the Communist Party of Mexico have joined the bosses’ electoral circus as candidates to become deputies, thus betraying the movement. They justify it by saying they’re taking advantage of the electoral process as "one more legitimate form of struggle."
Workers shouldn’t be fooled. Bosses control all these parties. Capitalist elections won’t change the nature of racist, imperialist exploitation of the working class. Bosses use elections to fight among each other to determine which faction will control state power to better serve their particular interests. They use workers in this bosses’ dogfight to make us believe that changing one ruler for another will serve us.
PLP’s important role is to help sharpen the class struggle, developing understanding of the need to destroy the entire capitalist system; expose those who would lead workers down the bosses’ path of capitalist elections; and build a base and recruit for communist revolution, making use of CHALLENGE and communist study-action groups. J
PRI, PRD, PAN: ?All Short for Racist Bosses
PRI is the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for over 70 years, exploiting millions.
PAN is the National Action Party, in power now, the most right-wing sector of Mexican politics.
PRD is the Revolutionary Democratic Party, basically the liberals, most deadly because they try to win workers to believe capitalism can work for them.
Garment Workers Teach Racist Bosses A Lesson!
"To teach all of you who didn’t do it right, I’m deducting a half hour’s wages for every day you didn’t punch in and out," barked the arrogant, high-handed secretary.
This hit the workers in the garment factory like a bucket of cold water. The bosses hadn’t paid us double time for working Saturday or Sunday, as they had promised. We worked July 4th, a paid holiday for other workers, but not for us. And to top it off, now this!
Workers’ indignation exploded. Word got around that something had to be done. Immediately, six of us went to the office to protest. The supervisor made believe he hadn’t heard anything about it. We told him, "We’re not animals and no ‘mistake’ on our part justifies this treatment. Besides, it’s our labor that gets the production done."
"To teach all the lackeys and their masters that we workers have to be respected," we told ourselves, "We’re going home!" It was a small demonstration of the fact that the bosses need us, but we don’t need them. If we don’t work, there’s no production and without production there’s no profit.
The following day, my co-worker, his wife and I stayed home in protest. When we returned, the supervisor was furious. "I can’t put up with this any longer. You’re fired!" he told me. My friend’s wife told him that if they fired me, the two of them would quit. "I have nothing against you or your husband," the supervisor told her, "but this guy talks too much about politics and I don’t like it." "If you fire him," the woman insisted, "we’re leaving too."
The supervisor was baffled. With production backed up, he couldn’t afford to do without the couple. Since there had been a history of struggle in the factory, he also feared others might strike to support us — and he was right!
He called the owner who, not wanting to risk a work stoppage, decided no one would be fired and that she would raise the pay of the two workers by a few cents per operation.
Later that day, a co-worker in another section said, "I just wanted you to know that our section agreed to stop work to support you if they fired you."
This modest example shows what workers can do when they’re united and bold. The unity, decision to fight, and support of our co-workers resulted from my spending a lot of time with the couple who so firmly supported me, joining them in social activities and having political discussions on the way to work and at their home over dinner. This was crucial in creating indestructible political and social ties combined with communist ideas that are necessary for the long-term fight for communist revolution.
The workers’ solidarity in this struggle is central to workers’ mobilizing not only against this attack, but, in the long run against the whole profit system that forces workers into wage slavery. Workers’ unity is key to this fight and to replacing this bosses’ system with workers’ power, communism.
Several participants in the struggle read CHALLENGE, some regularly, others irregularly. My next step is to build a CHALLENGE network by asking the regular readers to help distribute the paper to others. In this way we can convert these little struggles into real schools for communism for all workers.
Schedules, Bathrooms and Communism
San Francisco—"On Thursday during the morning commute, the trains from all the rail lines were pulling into the Embarcadero every 30 seconds…And then, without notice, a driver briefly parked his train at the platform and took a bathroom break. Three streetcars behind him had to wait."…The schedule didn’t recover for hours…"Not that I begrudge him," said MUNI Director Ford…, "but at this time, during the morning commute? It’s not good." (SF Chronicle 4\13\07)
According to the bosses, basic human need is "not good" because it disrupts the orderly delivery of workers to the downtown financial district. They blame workers for their own failure to provide enough relief to maintain the schedule!
Bay Area mass transit drivers are demanding meal and rest breaks, a demand won by most workers about 70 years ago. With service cuts and speed up, drivers can go all day with no real breaks. By union contract, drivers pick 12 to 14-hour schedules with an unpaid break in the middle, some working 10 straight hours. Management requires these long days so one driver can cover two rush hours. Drivers sign up for a long day to meet their bills. Drivers may live better than non-union workers but they still are wage slaves.
"We are losing our humanity to become ‘7 day rollers,’" remarked a driver during a meeting to organize against these killer schedules. Another said, "It’s like that bad dream where you keep running, but just can’t get anywhere. It seems endless! You feel POWERLESS!" Another commented: "Sometimes passengers insult me…line supervisors put me down, like I’m late on purpose! All I want to do is a good job…to feel like a human being, not a machine herding cattle."
A PLP member said, "This has always been a fight because transit managers set our schedules within the limits of a budget. A small, parasitic class of rulers profits off the majority and wages international wars for control of resources. Their priorities don’t include enough money for services, like transit and have nothing to do with the needs of drivers or riders. Capitalism encourages a ‘blame the victim’ mentality, so schedules often result in conflict between workers. Capitalism cannot meet the basic needs of working people. You win something here; they take it away there! Changing the Mayor or the General Manager won’t solve this. Only a revolution can end this nightmare."
But There Is Another Side To Work
Within these complaints lies a kernel of potential collectivity. These battles, waged along side long-time friends, give PLP drivers the opportunity to discuss "human nature and communism." Some co-workers argue that people are naturally selfish so communism can never work. We point out another side to work that they, themselves, experience. Many transit workers try hard to serve the people; stopping for someone on a cane, waiting for a "regular" running late or helping another operator. These personal interactions fly in the face of management’s schedule. They give the job meaning. This tendency would be much stronger in a communist society where all culture supported it and schedules will not make drivers choose between waiting to pick up older people and getting a break. The current campaign is a way for drivers to reclaim some sense of humanity.
These tendencies towards collectivity will help lay the basis for a new society. We have to destroy capitalism to realize this potential. A communist world is possible based on organizing every aspect of society to fulfill the needs of the working class.
Part II of this series: Political Economy of Transit; USA and International.
a name="Only Workers’ Power Can Challenge War-maker Teledyn">">"nly Workers’ Power Can Challenge War-maker Teledyn
Teledyne Reynolds in Los Angeles has been making parts for military airplanes since 1948. Today it supplies specialty wires and cables to companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Its parent company, Teledyne Technologies, Inc, did over $35 million in no-bid contracts directly with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Department of Energy last year. Current wars have driven Teledyne’s sales up by 22.9 percent, to $248.3 million in the first quarter of 2007, with an average of nearly $7 million in profit per month.
"My mother worked in that factory for years, until she was injured," commented a college student. "So did my aunts and most of my female relatives. There were hundreds of workers, most of them Latina immigrants. They didn’t have a union, and the pay was pretty bad." No wonder the profits are so high!
This working-class student is enthusiastically reading CHALLENGE-DESAFIO "I’ve read that paper over and over," he said, "and each time I learn something new." He has agreed to take extra papers for his friends and relatives, and to help to bring communist ideas to industrial workers. We will all learn something new from these workers through this important effort.
a name="Who Rules Teledyne – and the U.S.">">"ho Rules Teledyne – and the U.S.
Teledyne is linked through its ten-member Board of Directors to many other defense manufacturers: Hughes Electronics, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Alliant Techsystems, Allegheny Technologies and BEI Technology. Several members also hold influential offices with the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Defense Industrial Association.
The members of the board also have strong ties to the major banking interests which control industrial capitalists’ ability to maneuver financially to maintain their profits. Frank V. Cahouet is the retired chairman and CEO of the Mellon Bank Corporation. Others are currently officers for Millenium Partners hedge fund (which is tied to Citigroup through Solomon Smith Barney), Mellon Financial Corporation and AEGIS Insurance Corporation.
These same imperialists play an important role in making sure that cultural and educational institutions serve the needs of their class. Michael T. Smith, Teledyne’s co-director, is also a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. Roxanne Austin ran DirecTV for Hughes. One board member is the former president of Carnegie Mellon University, and other directors are trustees for Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Providence College and one of the Claremont Colleges.
Industrial Workers: Key Revolutionary Force
All companies make profits by exploiting workers’ labor: without the workers, the factories could not produce any products, but the workers make far less wages than the price for which those same products are sold. Defense industry companies like Teledyne Reynolds also make it possible for U.S. imperialists to keep themselves in power and to try to fight off imperialist rivals in Europe and China. That puts industrial workers, like the immigrant women at the Los Angeles Reynolds plant, in a key position both economically and politically. Their power to shut down production threatens not only the bosses’ profits, but the bosses’ ability to wage war and maintain their empire.
At the same time, the imperialist rulers are relying on the sons and daughters of immigrant industrial workers — to join the military and fight their bloody racist profit wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. To turn the potential into a real force, these workers and soldiers from L.A. to Tehran to Beijing have to lead the international working class in the battles to end their oppression as wage slaves or cannon fodder for the bosses’ profit wars. We in PLP have to win them to become revolutionary communist activists. We are planting today the seeds of communism.J
a name="Angry Workers Must Organize vs. Bankers’ NYC Fare Hike">">"ngry Workers Must Organize vs. Bankers’ NYC Fare Hike
NEW YORK CITY, July 27 — "Keep the fare down, bastards!" shouted a subway rider at the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) CEO Elliot Sander as he handed out flyers aiming to justify still another hike in transit fares and bridge tolls. When Sander whined to rider Jean Callahan about MTA "deficits," she shot back, "I’m angry….What are we supposed to do? How are we going to survive?"
Anger is mounting among workers here who may be facing a $2.50 fare in the near future. Having suffered an increase to the current $2.00 not even two years ago, now we’re expected to look back on that as a "bargain."
This anger must be organized. Workers should be raising the demand for no fare hike in their unions and mass organizations, even calling for a fare rollback to be paid for by the bondholders who profit in billions off the transit system. Transit workers should support this demand and together with the working-class riders organize mass demonstrations and protests against the MTA, exposing the whole fare scam (see below). In Sao Paulo, Brazil, a few years ago angry riders burned buses and trains, fed up with lousy service and ever-rising fares.
The "deficit" Sander complains about is created by the billions being paid to rich bondholders who’ve been sucking the transit system dry for decades. The interest on these bonds are the profits reaped off the backs of the transit workers’ labors and the working-class riders who are expected to keep these bankers’ coffers overflowing. Meanwhile, the alleged "deficit-ridden" MTA had a SURPLUS of $940 million last year. The Authority is always crying "wolf" while it keeps piling up these surpluses.
Before 1948, when the fare was a nickel, transit system expenses were paid from the general city treasury, so at least the costs were spread around. But then the Authority was established which mandated that all operating expenses be covered by fares. Immediately the fare was doubled and continued to rise periodically until it reached its current $2.00, an increase since ’48 of 4,000%!
This new gimmick has been used by all Mayors — Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives — to pit transit workers against riders so that whenever the workers who keep the city running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year asked for a much-needed raise, the city bosses would blame the increase on the workers, using their divide-and-conquer technique. The crucial importance of the transit workers was demonstrated even in their short-lived 3-day strike in December 2005, an action that was supported by a majority of the city’s working class.
The rulers never ask the big department stores, shopping malls, the bankers, the real estate interests or the bosses of every company in the city to pay for any rising costs. None of these profiteers could function if the transit workers didn’t bring all their employees and customers to these destinations.
Hundreds of thousands of workers earning poverty wages (see article on minimum wage, page 2), will now be asked to shell out even more money to get to their low-wage jobs. These workers are overwhelmingly black and Latino, as are the transit workers, so the bosses figure that the racism which permeates capitalism will enable them to get away with this highway robbery.
The fact is the ruling class is spending $12 billion of our tax money every month to carry out their imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the greater glory of the likes of Big Oil and Haliburton. That money is used to kill our sons and daughters and 650,000 Iraqi workers while workers here must ante up for a transit system that shoots billions into the bank accounts of the wealthy Wall Street investment houses.
And the sorry fact is the workers’ "leaders" in the Transport Workers Union do nothing to expose this tie-in between the bankers, the MTA and the tens of billion spent on the bosses’ wars. Only communist leadership can do this job, because we fight for a system in which there would be no fares, no "deficits," no bankers’ profits from interest. Workers who produce all value would use part of that value to enable everyone to ride a free transit system. The "bastards" who profit from transit fares would wind up six feet under.
a name="Demonstrators Hit VA’s Criminal Medical Care">">"emonstrators Hit VA’s Criminal Medical Care
SEATTLE, WA., July 28 — "We’ll be able to defeat imperialism when soldiers turn the guns in the other direction," said the moderator, leader of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), at a forum of 150." Two hundred and fifty demonstrators had just marched around the nearby Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital demanding, "Fund the Wounded, Not the War!"
VA workers and doctors, Vietnam and Iraq veterans, students, teachers and supporters from throughout the city marched in this multi-racial, working-class area chanting, "Black, Latin, Asian, White: Workers and Soldiers Must Unite!"; "What the Hell is Congress for, Fund the Wounded Not the War!"; and, "We Don’t Want Your Racist War!"
The IVAW leader, himself injured by a rocket-propelled grenade in Ramadi, invited all to join him and his fellow vets, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and comrades to visit Ft. Lewis to recruit soldiers to fight imperialism.
His class-conscious stand against imperialism inspired people much more than calls to pressure liberal politicians. The forum panel reflected this struggle of ideas. A VA doctor spelled out the medical crimes against soldiers, including the hundreds of thousands of unresolved claims as well as the destruction of the Iraqi medical system. He praised the recent recommendations of an "expert" panel to fix the VA system and asked everyone to write their elected representatives to enact these reforms.
The Vietnam era veteran followed with his experience fighting racist medical care at Madigan Hospital at Ft. Lewis some 35 years ago. Suffering similar racist medical attacks, he described how active-duty soldiers united with other medical workers in Seattle. He documented company-wide and post-wide rebellions led by a multi-racial chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). He described Army attempts to crush this resistance with a court-martial that itself erupted into a rebellion. Within a year a Congressional hearing concluded all of VVAW’s charges against the Army’s medical system were correct, made reform recommendations and promised action. Nothing changed.
"Fast forward 35 years," he concluded. "Same racism; same imperialism! More reports on bad medical care; more commissions; more recommendations and more promises from liberal politicians. We can expect the same result: nothing of importance."
"If I’ve learned anything in the last 35 years it’s that a profit-driven system — let’s call it by its proper name, capitalism — can’t survive without racism and imperialism!"
That’s what most of the young people wanted to hear. Discussions continued for an hour after the forum. A black counselor said inadequate medical care was even worse for black and Latin soldiers. Points raised in the panel about soldiers rejecting patriotism and nationalism in favor of anti-imperialist working-class solidarity were debated relative to today’s movement. Many students involved in kicking recruiters out of local schools said they agreed that the prime aim now is to get anti-imperialist students in the Army, to organize soldiers from within to fight against imperialist war and to rebel against the brass.
They also agreed that anti-racist struggle uniting black, Latin, Asian and white, men and women in the same organization could lead to the sharpest, most militant fights against imperialism. Indeed, the prime value of those Ft. Lewis rebellions was winning soldiers to a revolutionary outlook.
Many of these young people were interested in communist revolution. Dozens of CHALLENGES were sold. Every copy of the PLP pamphlet "Red-led GIs Blast Racist Brass" was given out. Many asked to have it mailed to them. A number of students from other states wanted copies to show local IVAW chapters back home. The local chapter plans to discuss "chapter building," using this same pamphlet as an aid.
The struggle to take anti-war activists to Ft. Lewis will continue. Some of these same vets and supporters will attend the upcoming Veterans for Peace conference in August. This will be a great opportunity to reach out to veterans and their families with a revolutionary communist strategy for active-duty soldiers.
Russian GM Workers Prepare to Strike
TOGLIATTI, RUSSIA July 30 — Workers at the giant AvtoVAZ (GM) auto plant got fed up with their meager wages and wrote management demanding a weekly raise to 25,000 rubles (nearly $1,000). Currently an average assembly line worker makes about $300/week. If their demands aren’t paid attention to, workers threaten an August 1st strike.
This unrest is not formally led by either of the two unions at the plant, (ASM is the official union and Edinstvo — Unity — is independent). The ASM union already accepted a 4.6% "raise," actually a cut since the July inflation rate in the region was 4.8%, and says workers should be "happy." But many disagree. They want to stick to their threat to shut the line down August 1, to force the company to treat workers with respect and pay attention to their problems.
Workers are not just up against GM and the auto bosses, but AvtoVAZ management comes from Russia’s arms-exporting monopoly, with close ties to the Kremlin. They are the war-makers and arms merchants that are trying to blast Russian imperialism to the top of the heap. A strike against them would have profound political implications.
The bosses have already figured that out and at a recent plant managers’ meeting, General Director Artiakov said he wouldn’t tolerate a strike even if it meant sacking half the workforce. Then AvtoVAZ had the police arrest one of the strike committee leaders, a young leftist worker Anton Vechkunin. He was detained and taken by police right from the locker room after second shift. Two days later his mother was told over the phone that Anton was arrested "for resisting a police officer." This arrest of a trade union activist shows how the state police serve the factory owners, and the Russian workers need to form a mass communist party and prepare for a second Russian revolution.
A strike remains a real possibility since workers are sick and tired of their worsening situation and eroding wages while the Russian car market is booming.
We call on all trade union, community, workers’ and left-wing organizations to show international solidarity and demand Anton’s release! E-mail Governor Titov of the Samara region at: governor@samara. ruJ
a name="Workers’ Suffering Becomes ‘A Tourist Attraction’"></a>"orkers’ Suffering Becomes ‘A Tourist Attraction’
Most people would be shocked at what I saw in New Orleans. The huge difference between the rich and poor neighborhoods was disgusting. The rich ones had cookie-cutter mansions with manicured lawns, huge fountains and beautiful gardens. In the Ninth Ward and other working-class neighborhoods, the houses are rotten-looking and broken down. Nothing has been cleaned or fixed for two years.
In addition, people are making money off the devastation. A radio station was advertising that they were "rebuilding New Orleans one hit [song] at a time." Then, while looking at the levees in the Ninth Ward, we saw tourists in taxis and buses taking pictures of broken houses. One bus was labeled "Celebration Tours." Instead of repairing the damage, the bosses have made this a tourist attraction and are raking in over $35 a person.
Local business obviously cares more about making money than about workers’ needs. We saw lots of outrageous phrases and signs written around town. One on a wall said, "Looters will be shot." Another on a truck said, "U loot, we shoot." They obviously want to terrorize working-class people and show who’s boss.
One might think everyone in New Orleans would be united because the disaster happened to everyone, but the rich only care about themselves and leaving the working class to rot.
Slap-your-boss Volunteer
Katrina Victims Welcome Red Ideas
Seeing New Orleans for the second time, little has changed since last year. The house I gutted last summer in the Ninth Ward was empty; it still hasn’t been rebuilt. Across the street, an elementary school was still empty and boarded up. It seemed like the only building open in the whole neighborhood was another school which has become a police station. Obviously the city government wants to build a larger police presence here but doesn’t care about workers’ houses or education.
Selling CHALLENGE was one of the most important things we did. Many of us had never sold door-to-door before; we learned a lot. We saw workers separated by "race" and racism, but all are being exploited.
Most workers agreed that the government had helped the rich while neglecting and abusing workers. This made them more open to a society based on need, not profit.
Although the mistreatment might make it seem workers would accept communist ideas, I was still really surprised at the workers’ positive response to our politics. This reinforced my commitment to PLP and my belief that communist revolution is possible.
Slap-your-liberal Volunteer
Industrial Workers, Soldiers Crucial For Revolution
During PLP’s New Orleans Summer Project about 40 educators, students, a military veteran, and a transportation worker participated in a study group on the Party’s industrial and military work.
We discussed the importance of soldiers, defense industry workers, auto workers, healthcare, transportation, communication and sanitation workers to making communist revolution and running a communist society. During the revolution, communist-led workers need to cripple the bosses’ ability to make profits and then turn the guns on the bosses. After the armed struggle for power workers will need their work experience to organize production based on need.
The group debated whether we in the U.S. are living in a revolutionary period. Some thought yes but most concluded that while revolution is possible eventually and we in PLP are in a revolutionary organization, masses of workers need to unite to fight racist divisions and the lack of class and communist consciousness in preparation for fighting an armed struggle against the bosses for state power.
We discussed how the Party must be involved in industrial and military work in a non-revolutionary period. While workers aren’t in armed revolt, there is still a need to fight the bosses’ attacks against our working and living conditions and to recruit and in the middle of many such struggles, to build ties with thousand of workers now in order to forge a mass PLP of millions in the future.
Lastly, we asked everyone whether they’d considered organizing in industry or the military work now or eventually. Many of the youth gave serious thought to this Party focus. About nine students and young workers committed to consider doing it themselves.
Both students and young educators had reservations about dying and killing for the ruling class. A red veteran explained that our Party’s struggle is to raise communist ideas with soldiers and to win them to join PLP. (A successful revolution needs to win soldiers to turn against the war-makers). He compared it to workers in factories having to participate in making profits in order to win their fellow workers to communism. Abstaining from the military or individually refusing orders isolates us from the other soldiers and leaves non-communist soldiers no alternative but spontaneous rebellion or fascism.
One young participant of the study group, a junior in high school, said soldiers are the bosses’ eyes, hands and backs. "We do everything. They only tell us what to do. We do it. If we [communists] have the guns, we’ll have the whole world."
One weakness was not discussing the importance of educators in recruiting Party youth to industrial and military work, but overall the study group was a success.
A Comrade
LETTERS
Japanese Teachers Confront Fascism
At the National Education Association convention, PL teachers found evidence of rising international fascism. Fifteen-hundred teachers from across Japan face dismissal for refusing to stand and face the flag during the playing of the Japanese national anthem. A 1999 law designated Hinomaru and Kimigayo the official national flag and anthem, respectively, of Japan. Hinomaru represents Japanese fascist imperialism and its war crimes of WW II and is used by current right-wing thugs in Japan in the same way that the swastika and the Confederate flag are used by Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Fifteen-hundred dissident members of the Japanese Teachers Union (JTU) have repeatedly violated an October 23, 2003 directive of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, which requires that all teachers rise, face Hinomaru and sing Kimigayo at ceremonies. They have faced increasingly repressive discipline for refusing, including 6-month suspensions.
These teachers direct their struggle against their government’s attempts to militarize society and against their own union’s collaboration with Prime Minister Abe who has referred to Japan as the 51st state of the U.S. The directive of Oct. 23rd coincided with the decision to send Japanese troops to the battlefield for the first time since 1945 to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The teachers say it "was meant to make patriotism the core of education and to bust the JTU."
The JTU dissidents want to return to the JTU’s founding slogan: "Never send our students to the battlefields again." These JTU rebels see a parallel between the Oct. 23rd directive and the No Child Left Behind legislation in the U.S., which seeks to direct students into the military. They accuse the JTU of forsaking class consciousness and again collaborating with the government’s plans to militarize Japanese society for wars of aggression in Asia. They believe that teachers are workers and can fight state power. They call for unity between U.S. and Japanese unions.
We salute our brothers and sisters in Japan for their sharp struggle against the state. However, unions are reform organizations, which ultimately must compromise with the state. We need PLP, an international communist party dedicated to leading workers and soldiers to state power through revolution. We believe that soldiers and industrial workers are in the best position to fight for state power. Teachers are in a position to develop the class consciousness of their students and educate them to the need for a communist society. Then, when the ruling class puts rifles into the hands of class-conscious soldiers and puts the means of war production into the hands of class-conscious workers, they will be sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
A Teacher
a name="Iraq GI’s ‘Worry about getting home alive’"></a>"raq GI’s ‘Worry about getting home alive’
(The following is an excerpt from a letter a GI wrote to a family member from the front lines.)
How are you doing? My handwriting will be sloppy. My index finger is broken. It’s pretty rough over here. Every month we lose about 12 guys in our battalion.
The first weekend here I was shot at, RPGed (Rocket-Propelled Grenade) and mortared, all in a single firefight. Right now they’ve got me driving a tank. At least if I get blown up it will knock me out instead of killing me. I’m never coming back here again….I cannot wait to see you guys again....
The Forward Operating Base (FOB) is small. We have one chow hall, one Post Exchange, or store and one phone center. There’s really nothing to do in my off time except watch movies and read. They got me rolling out every day and we get contact [with the insurgents] every day. I haven’t killed anybody yet.
Being the driver, I finally got to see Iraq. The U.S. blew the whole city to hell. What they haven’t destroyed is slowly being destroyed day by day. Everybody except Iraq Army (I.A.) hates us. The only reason the I.A. likes us is because we support the Shia. The majority of them are part of Shiite militia. But we’re in a Sunni majority city, so pretty much all the civilians hate the U.S.
The insurgents pretty much control the city. There are parts where U.S. personnel can’t go; people have died going there. It’s no longer under U.S. control. When you raid a house, two others will be abandoned. The third would be filled with elderly women and children. Military-age males are nowhere to be found, a classic example of urban guerrilla warfare.
The majority of combat soldiers worry about getting home and staying alive. That’s all you care and think about. Fobits [an insult for soldiers and civilians who don’t leave the base] don’t care because they know they are coming home and they don’t see the sharp contradictions outside the wire. They only worry about long phone lines or if they can use the internet or is the FOB on blackout. The combat soldier who goes outside the wire all the time has the mindset of, "it’s either me or them and fuck them." I’m not saying all soldiers share this either-or mentality. But all soldiers suffer some form of alienation here, especially myself. It’s been a sharp contradiction of what I thought I would be doing and what I am doing.
(That’s the first letter. I wrote my cousin explaining that if all that soldiers cared about was surviving, they’d rebel and go home. I told him I think people are more fearful of being punished and losing rank and pay for rebelling than they are of surviving. My cousin responded with another letter….To be continued next issue.)
Fulfilling Potential As An Industrial Worker
I think our party is trying, with moderate success, to deal with the coming of world war and the development of fascism. The understanding of the necessity for a concentration in the military and industrial workers in our political work has proven hard to accept in practice. In fact, it was hard to accept for me too, as a student.
I think my main internal contradictions that made me nervous about doing industrial work were between my idealist ideas of what it meant to be an industrial worker and my materialist ones, and between my individualism and my communist collectivity in concern to what was politically needed.
For instance, like all working-class students, I knew that my choice to become an industrial worker would significantly alter my lifestyle. I knew I wouldn’t have as much free time, and I’d likely make less money. I’d be subjected to the direct pressure of the bosses in an openly racist and sexist environment. So I felt hesitant since my individualist side was keeping me focused on some illusion that I was "sacrificing" myself to this. Also, I had false fears that my training as a college student would make me fundamentally incompatible with the life of a manufacturing worker. Other Party members had similar fears, that implied that students were "middle class" and therefore likely "couldn‘t handle it". These dangerous ideas did nothing but cause me unnecessary fear. They made me feel like if I did the work, I’d drown.
These two contradictions could have kept me from doing the work. However, the struggle put forward by comrades helped me understand the life of an industrial worker. These comrades helped me pick out classes at a trade school where I interacted with many workers. Also, they encouraged me and some others to organize a cadre school where our ideas were discussed with some factory workers, and where we had a BBQ that allowed us to get to know one another a little. These comrades prepared me for interviews and helped me find a job so I could get my feet wet.
These activities helped me see the potential of our class more clearly. They combated my bad ideas. They really demystified what being an industrial worker was like. That I wasn’t that different, and as a working-class student, I could in fact do the work – and that I’d actually enjoy doing it – politically, that is. No one loves being a wage-slave!
The potential is definitely right in front of me. I’ve spent time with some fellow workers outside of work. One worker even defended me against some other young workers’ racist ideas. With all of these possibilities the ruling class is definitely in danger, but only if we do the work.
A young worker
Anti-Immigrant Racists?Mirror Nazis
I was at the rally in Morristown on July 28. While I was on your side of the barricades most of the day, I was able to walk around and talk to the people who attended the Pro-America Rally. This was the first time that I actually spoke to them, and since they thought I was sympathetic, they spoke rather truthfully. Listening to them speak really did make me think about how the Nazi party first organized among the "middle class." The people at the rally spoke about two main things:. 1) Corporate greed and how major corporations have taken over the schools as well as the government and that all they care about is profit. 2) How "illegals" aka Latin workers, are sneaking into the country and sucking up all of the resources and taking away jobs from honest, hard working "Americans."
The Nazis used the same methods when they were first organizing. The 26 points of the Nazi platform were very similar to a lot of what these people were saying. Hitler and the Nazis in their 26 points claimed to give the death penalty to "usurers and profiteers" and the "establishment of a sound middle class" just to name a few of these points. The comparisons between Latin workers now and Jewish workers then are also very striking.
While there may seem to be differences among their appearances, in essence they are the same. The anti-immigrant movement is a fascist movement and I am glad that CHALLENGE says that. While there are times that fascism may be used too liberally, I think we are in a period where it is more dangerous not to say it than to overstate it. Many people don’t think that what happened in Germany and Italy can happen here. While they may not have soldiers goose-stepping down the streets, the ideas and structures are beginning to be put in place, and I think most of the time CHALLENGE has correctly identified them. Keep up the good work.
Anti-Fascist Reader
Editorial Short on Specifics,Long on Assertions
A CHALLENGE front-page article (8/1) correctly emphasized the crucial role industrial workers must have in building for communist revolution. Many very important political points were made, but overall the article needed to communicate those points better for workers reading the paper.
The article covers many issues, but mostly in abbreviated fashion. Unexplained references to "Delphi, New Orleans, citizen vs. immigrant workers" are used to describe how bosses maximize their profits leading to the statement the "capitalist wage system requires inequality." Inter-imperialist rivalry and fascist slave-labor conditions are leading to World War III. Workers produce all the value, but bosses steal most of it; bosses need workers to fight wars, but workers need to survive and that "contradiction" can only be resolved by communist revolution. Later the article (with no specific references) warns not to "rely on liberal politicians, all of whom represent bosses’ interests."
These are all admirable ideas, but presenting them in "shopping-list" form is mostly useful in communicating them to those who already agree. To build a mass party, CHALLENGE should reflect that broadening goal. Articles should stay on point and have well-explained concrete examples. Arguments need to be built step by step in explaining PLP’s political analysis, rather than presenting take-it-or-leave-it assertions of political conclusions.
A better example is the recent article on hospital organizing in Philadelphia [CHALLENGE, 7/18] that described ideological interaction between PL’ers and other workers in a down-to-earth manner that made PLP’s politics more relevant to workers’ life experiences.
It doesn’t matter how good PL’s political analysis is if it isn’t successfully communicated to industrial workers (and others).
A Comrade
a name="‘White Flight’ No Myth"></">‘W"ite Flight’ No Myth
The article about segregation in public schools has a factual error. It was a 1948 Supreme Court decision [not after 1954 as the article stated] that ruled restrictive covenants were unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court neglected to provide for any enforcement of its ruling. States and cities kept using them. They were institutionalized by the banks and the FHA, but were defined as a "private" agreement. So the practice, as described in the article, was effectively the same.
In addition, the article uses the term "myth of white flight." This requires some explanation. It seems the author means that the "myth" is that white workers fled cities from the end of World War II through the end of the 1960s because of their own, inherent racism. That is, workers spontaneously chose to live in segregated communities. That is a myth, as the article shows how government policies, and banking interests, created the conditions for the movement of workers from city to suburb.
But it would be incorrect to deny that masses of white workers left the city in that period. The actual shift in population is not a myth and a significant motivation for the move was racism. Workers came to see the city as dangerous, overcrowded, dirty – all euphemisms for the fact that black, Latin and immigrant workers were concentrated there.
Once again, the bosses were successful in creating and fostering racist divisions that continue to divide and hurt the working class.
It would be useful to see more articles on the complex ways in which segregation continues to be fostered in this country. Many people still believe that the problem is primarily white racism and do not understand the role the ruling class plays.
A reader
a name="Jamaica’s Deadly Election Circus">">"amaica’s Deadly Election Circus
It is election time in Jamaica, and green and orange flags tell you which neighborhood "belongs" to which of the two leading ruling parties here (the Jamaica Labor Party and the People’s National Party). In the poorest neighborhoods of Kingston, you have to be careful what color shirt you put on in the morning. Almost every day, there is a news report of at least one person being murdered in political violence, mostly the poorest of the poor.
The politicians go on TV every night calling for peace. However, many workers believe that behind the scenes, these same politicians supply the flags and the guns for the political warfare.
As one worker put it, "The rich big shots aren’t killing each other. They are setting the poor sufferers to fight and die…When will the sufferers wake up and see they are being used to kill each other while the rich get richer?"
Unemployment is rampant. The IMF and World Bank have destroyed agriculture to the point that it is cheaper to buy imported U.S. farm products than locally grown ones. United Fruit wasn’t satisfied with owning almost all the banana production in the world, so with the help of Bill Clinton, they changed international trade policies to destroy the Jamaican banana industry, which used to employ thousands of workers. By dumping powdered milk on the Jamaican market, subsidized by the U.S. government, the bosses also destroyed the local dairy industry. And the list goes on.
The government doesn’t spend any money to maintain basic human necessities, from medical care to education, roads and bridges, even water. A few weeks ago, nurses at Kingston Public Hospital went on strike because the hospital had no supplies—not even Panadol (pain reliever)! Schools are so overcrowded they are on two shifts, and the buildings are crumbling. In the weeks before the election, the government rushes to do a little patchwork on the roads, to give a few people a few weeks of work in exchange for their vote.
Elections here, like in all capitalist countries, are a big circus where the bosses decide who will control the government for their own particular interests and those of the imperialists they serve. They try to fool us into believing that things will get better if we change which politician is oppressing us. Workers and youth are very mad here. So the politicians get us to turn that anger against each other. A revolutionary communist party is needed here, in the rest of the Caribbean and around the world, to turn our anger into working class unity to get rid of capitalism.
When we workers run society, we will run it for the benefit of all our brothers and sisters, on the communist principle; "From each according to their ability and commitment; to each according to their need." There will be no rich and poor, no money, and no inequality. Blacks will not be on the bottom of the heap like they have since slavery. Racism will be crushed, women and men will be equals, and the most oppressed will be the leaders.
Striking Miners Derail Scab Train
SANTIAGO, Chile, July 29 — In late June, 28,000 miners struck subcontractors for CODELCO, the state-owned copper corporation and world’s biggest copper producer. The strikers are demanding permanent full-time jobs and a bigger share of the wealth they’re producing for CODELCO, which is profiting from the high price of copper in the world market (pushed up by demands from China, India, etc.)
But Michelle Bachelet’s "socialist" government has responded by sending riot cops to attack the strikers. The latter are being threatened with harsh homeland security-type legal actions and sellouts by hacks from some unions that collaborated with CODELCO’s scheme to divide the workers.
The unions representing 14,000 permanent workers have not supported the walkout, but many of their members have refused to go to work. In the El Teniente mine, strikers have attacked the buses transporting workers, shutting it down. The Salvador mine, to the north, has been closed for over a month after strikers blocked the roads leading to it. In the Andina Division of Codelco, in the northeast near the Andes Mountains, train lines were sabotaged and a train carrying 800 kilos of concentrated copper was derailed.
While Bachelet’s "socialist" government threatens the workers, the "Communist" Party, which influences many union leaders, is trying to use the strike to "push the government" to "serve the people." The "C"P continues its long history of betrayal, trying to convince workers to trust "progressive politicians" like Bachelet. This is the same "C"P which disarmed workers politically when Salvador Allende was in power, pushing the myth of "peaceful electoral transition to socialism." This trapped the working class into believing that the bourgeoisie and its fascist generals could accept workers taking power. Pinochet, along with Kissinger, the CIA and corporations like IT&T, shattered that illusion with a fascist coup on Sept. 11, 1973.
Today workers must not repeat this mistake. The key question in all these struggles is to turn them into schools for communism, forging a revolutionary working-class leadership to fight for communism.
REDEYE On the News
Dems Strut, but doubletalk on war
The Democrats, delighted by the wounded Bush presidency, believe this is their time. Like an ostentation of peacocks, an extraordinary crowd of excited candidates is gathering in hopes of succeeding Mr. Bush.
But such a timid crowd!
Ask a potential Democratic president what he or she would do about the war, and you’ll get a doctoral dissertation about the importance of diplomacy, the possibility of a phased withdrawal (but not too quick), the need for Iraqis to help themselves and figure out a way to divvy up the oil, and so on and so forth.
A straight answer? Surely you jest. (NYT)
‘None of the above’ to the Oval Office?
More good news for the Republican Party: A new AP poll reveals that its most popular presidential candidate is "none of the above…."
Indeed, the AP poll raises the further question of what would happen if the GOP declined to nominate anyone. It’s not clear…that an empty chair in the Oval Office could do any worse a job of governing…. (NY Post, 7/19)
Media saw Va. Tech, not inner city
….An agonizing issue…has been largely overlooked by the national media — the murder of dozens of [Chicago] …public school students since last September….
You’ve probably heard more than you wanted to about David Beckham and Posh Spice in recent days, but not a lot about the deaths of these children and teenagers in Chicago. Black, Latino and poor, they are America’s invisible children….
…There was tremendous grief across the country when the massacre at Virginia Tech happened last April….But with 34 schoolkids dead in Chicago since the beginning of the last school year,…"for the most part, there has been silence." (Bob Herbert, NYT)
In US 1890s Chinese fought ID law
In "Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans," [Jean Pfaeizer] tells the story of the "thousands of Chinese people who were violently herded onto railroad cars, steamers or logging rafts, marched out of town or killed," from the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountains…."
…Confronted with the requirement , in the Geary Act of 1892, that Chinese immigrants carry an identity card proving they were in the country legally or else face deportation, thousands refused to submit to what they called the "Dog Tag Law," thus undertaking what Pfaeizer says was "perhaps the largest organized act of civil disobedience in the United States."
….Pfaeizer….also notes that [today] thousands of immigrants, thousands of people born in the United States to parents born abroad, and thousands of others are marching through the streets of Los Angeles, Houston and New York, refusing to be temporary people, transients, braceros, guests or sojourners." (NYT, 7/29)
Gov’t spies infest US Muslim areas
It is no secret to the Muslim immigrants of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that spies live among them.
Almost anyone can rattle off what they regard as the telltale signs of police informers. They like to talk politics. They have plenty of free time. They live in the neighborhood, but they have no local relatives.
"They think we don’t know, but know who they are," said Linda Sarsour, 26, a community activist…..
Many see the police tactic…as proof that the authorities — both in New York and around the nation — have been aggressive, even underhanded in their approach to Muslims. (NYT, 5/27)
Stressed Iraq vets become suicidal
To the Editor:…
My daughter runs a hotline for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the soldiers with no physical wounds but who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and for the most part have returned home to find no work, broken marriages and very little available care or counseling…90 percent of these men and women are suicidal. (NYT, 7/28)
US no help to Afghan school-agers
In Afghanistan 7 million children do not attend school…. "It’s a continuous battle. The situation for children here is worse than is ever reported. Schools are being burned, water sources poisoned, there are no teachers for those schools that are open. The idea of universal education for every child in Afghanistan is just that, an idea. We are so far away from this becoming a reality…."
…35% of schools are nothing more than tents.
In a country where more than half the population of 32 million is under 16, 60% of children don’t go to school; 80-85% of these are girls. (GW, 7/27)
SICKO avoids race and class issues
Moore says up front in ["SICKO"] …that he is not focusing on the nearly 50 million people who have no access to care at all….Unfortunately, by giving cursory treatment to race and class, he avoided tackling the most intractable problems in this country’s health car system….
This is the reality I see every day as an ER doctor: Large groups of people — mainly those from communities of color, and those who are poor and uninsured — are not receiving basic care that can make all the difference. (Liberal Opinion Week, 7/18)
a name="Deadly Racism Sparked ’67 Detroit Uprising">">"eadly Racism Sparked ’67 Detroit Uprising
"I spent a year in Vietnam and then came home to realize that was not our fight. Our fight was here in Detroit, not trying to help Uncle Sam in Vietnam." — Black Vietnam Veteran, 1967
"When they sent troops from the 82nd Airborne into our neighborhood, it was clear that the U.S. government had declared war on our community." — Black resident of Detroit, 1967
On Saturday night, July 23, 1967, two black Vietnam veterans were welcomed back to Detroit by about 80 of their friends and families at an after-hours club at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue, on the city’s near west side. Shortly before dawn, the police department’s Vice Squad raided the club, having already raided four such clubs that night. But at this one, the club’s patrons were not about to go quietly. As they were shoved into police cars, someone in the growing crowd of onlookers threw an empty bottle at a squad car. Thus began the "most sustained and violent urban rebellion in modern U.S. history." (Babson, p. 167)
Within several hours, the angry crowd had grown to 3,000. They began breaking store windows and looting stores along 12th Street. The rebellion that followed lasted nearly a week and terrified Detroit’s ruling class. It took more than 10,000 state and federal troops (including the 82nd Airborne Division, rerouted from Vietnam) to quell the uprising. By the end, 43 people were dead, 347 seriously injured, 7,000 arrested, and at least 1,300 buildings were burned.
What caused this rebellion, what did it lead to, what are its lessons? Clearly the police raid was the immediate spark, but the underlying reasons lay in the conditions existing in this city, the United States and worldwide in the mid-20th century.
Detroit had been the center of the automobile industry since the early 1900’s, with tens of thousands of workers toiling in dangerous, back-breaking conditions, earning huge profits for their employers. The city became a magnet for European immigrants and for Southern whites, who flocked there seeking a steady paycheck. Similarly, thousands of blacks migrated to Detroit from the South in the first decades of the century, both to escape its brutal segregation and grinding poverty, and also to land a job in one of the many factories supporting the auto industry. The industry was finally unionized in the 1930’s, led by the Communist Party, whose members and allies waged heroic and fierce battles, culminating in the sit-down strikes of the mid-1930’s.
But even with the victories of the United Automobile Workers, racism remained rampant throughout Detroit. Residential segregation was nearly ironclad. When blacks tried to move outside the boundaries of the dangerously overcrowded ghettos called Paradise Valley and Black Bottom, they were physically attacked by frenzied mobs of racist whites. In 1943, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history took place, when 10,000 whites rampaged through the streets of the black community, beating blacks and overturning their cars.
In addition, "until well after World War II, Detroit’s major hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and theaters either were closed to blacks or relegated them to separate areas." (Locke, p. 53) Detroit was a Northern stronghold of the KKK.
"Hardly any of the auto plants hired many blacks until the labor shortages of World War II. (The exception was Ford, which had a special policy of using large numbers of blacks as an anti-union ploy.) During the war, blacks were hired by the tens of thousands for the dirtiest, most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs. Many of those jobs were taken away during the recessions of the 1950’s." (Georgakas, pp. 27-8) Outside the auto industry, black Detroiters were relegated to the lowest-paying jobs — elevator operators, porters and janitors. In 1966, of the 1,845 apprentices in the Detroit Building Trades Apprenticeship Program, only 26 (barely1%) were black.
The Detroit police department had a long history of brutality and discrimination against black residents. During the 1920’s, many Detroit cops were Klan members. During the 1943 riot, "the police openly sympathized with the white mobs and behaved especially brutally towards blacks." (Sugrue, p. 29). In the early 1960s, the police department’s "Tac Squads," each comprising four officers, had a reputation for harassment and brutality in the black community. Cops routinely degraded black youths verbally and arrested and beat them. White cops often killed black residents in cold blood.
When, in 1948, the Supreme Court found the restrictive covenants that enforced residential segregation unconstitutional and blacks began to move from the ghetto, whites began to leave the city altogether, moving to the surrounding suburbs in large numbers. In the decade from 1946 to 1956, the Big Three auto companies spent $6.6 billion, building 25 new plants in suburbs surrounding Detroit. The city of Detroit lost 134,000 jobs between 1947 and 1963.
By 1966, Detroit had already lost more than 240,000 people and was losing 20,000 per year, as white residents fled to the suburbs. With the loss of residents, businesses and factories, Detroit’s tax base plummeted. The unemployment rate among black men was double that of white men; for black youth, it was 30%. Black schools in the city were severely overcrowded and severely under-funded. In grades 1-8, there was only one textbook for every two children. (Progress Report, p. 46)
So, when the police raided the club on 12th Street on July 23, for many black residents, it was the last straw in a long history of systematic discrimination and abuse. They took to the streets in massive numbers to protest the brutal oppression and exploitation that had always been a way of life in the city.
(Next: the rebellion and its aftermath.)
Sources/Suggestions for further reading:
"Detroit, I Do Mind Dying," by Dan Georgakas and ? Marvin Surkin
"Working Detroit," by Steve Babson
"Arc of Justice," by Kevin Boyle
"Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post ? war Detroit," by Thomas J. Sugrue
"The 1967 Riot," by Hubert G. Locke
"People in Motion," by William M. Gilbreth
"A City on Fire" – HBO documentary
Report on the National Advisory Commission on Civil Dis? orders (Kerner Commission Report)
Progress Report of the New Detroit Committee
Dinner Marks 40th Anniversary of 1967 Detroit Rebellion
DETROIT, MI July 21 – "My aunt called my mother and said, ‘Stay off of 12th St., there’s a riot.’ I told my brother, ‘Anthony, get up. There’s a riot on 12th St.’ ‘Get outta here,’ he said. Anthony went back to sleep. I went to the riot." That’s how a black worker opened his remarks to more than 60 workers and youth at a dinner marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion against racism.
"And let me tell you about hatred," he continued. "We all grew up hating the police. They used to break up our softball games in the alley when we were only 7 years old! They used to harass us, and tell us what streets we could and couldn’t walk on. They used to lock us up. We grew up hating them."
He drew a map on the blackboard and described the military tactics used to ambush the police and engage the army. He showed how a 100 block area was never retaken by the army before they withdrew.
The very integrated crowd, that included guests from as far away as Chicago, treated themselves to an afternoon of good food and revolutionary, anti-racist talks and culture. The feeling of unity was so strong that at dinner, before the program even began, one woman looked around the room and asked, "Are there going to be more events like this?"
After everyone enjoyed an international dinner, the program began with a talk about the historic events and racist conditions leading up to the rebellion. That was followed by a poem, written and performed by a woman who was 12 years old and living on 12th St. when the rebellion erupted. She was followed by a young man from Chicago who did two anti-racist poems.
Then a skit was performed, with a newscaster reporting on the events of the rebellion, surrounded by poetry and young people taking the roles of some of the 43 victims killed during the uprising. They spoke about who they were, how they lived and how they died.
A Ford worker, from UAW Local 600, who also lived through the rebellion, spoke about the upcoming auto contracts. He made a commitment to oppose the plans of the bosses and union leaders to cut jobs and slash wages asking, "If these jobs go, what are our children going to do?" He was followed by still another young poet, who gave another example of the vast talent waiting to be tapped by a growing revolutionary movement.
After the program, we had an open discussion from the floor, and that’s where things really got good. An airport worker brought revolutionary greetings from his co-workers who endorsed a union resolution honoring the ’67 rebellion. A PLP member spoke about how as a youth he was moved by reading about the armed anti-racist self-defense group, Deacons for Defense. He said that the significance of the Detroit Rebellion was that the rebels took on the bosses’ state power, cops, National Guard and army, and how that points the way to communist revolution.
A woman who is a leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization livened things up saying that she was in the largest union, the union of the unemployed. She described the wave of silent and often invisible racist cutbacks resulting in tens of thousands of unemployed families living with no running water or electricity. She said she "would be damned if I walk another picket line" of union workers demanding a raise when they have followed their union leaders and "left the unemployed behind." Her stinging criticism and call for working class unity between employed and unemployed was well received by all, including Ford and Chrysler workers.
Then we heard from the brother mentioned above. After the program ended, old friends and new mingled and talked and everyone left with a copy of CHALLENGE. PLP has shared the fate of Detroit here, suffering some hard times in recent years. But if this dinner is any indication, we may be on the way back.
- Crucial Step to Communism . . .
Industrial Workers Must Fight
Racist Warmakers - PLP's History in Industrial Class Struggle
- Abolish the Wage System
- PLP Youth Serve Working Class and Bring Red Ideas to New Orleans
- Latest Liberal Revolt vs. Bush Aims At Wider Wars
- Workers' Strikes Shake Latin America's Bosses
- New Orleans: The New Las Vegas?
- Students Lead the Way in Fighting Fascism
- Liberals' Health `Reform' Aim: Save Bosses Billions
- $600 Billion for War, $2.3 Million Cuts
for Transit - Racist Rulers Made Their Own Laws to Maintain School Segregation
- Banks' and Realtors' Redlining, Blockbusting Segregates Housing
- FIGHT FOR HARLEM HEALTH CARE
- Students in Tanzania Strike Against Higher Education Cutbacks
- Shipbuilders Face Racist
Warmakers' Renewed Attacks - LETTERS
- REDEYE REDEYE
- PLP History:
Anti-Vietnam War Era Big Leap Forward for PL - LESSONS 0F '67 NEWARK REBELLION:
TO ERASE RACISM, DESTROY CAPITALISM
Crucial Step to Communism . . .
Industrial Workers Must Fight
Racist Warmakers
[Overheard on the shop floor] "We are the engineers, machinists and janitors, but you know what the worst part is? We're the ones making all the parts that pay for the fat bonuses of the management."
"We could totally run this place without them; they are only here to whip us anyway...."
Workers in basic industry produce and transport cars, tanks, guns, airplanes, steel and more. Despite the fact the bosses tell us we're marginal, workers in basic industry are central to capitalism's march to war. For example, the U.S. bosses are struggling to train more machinists and all industrial workers to make parts for aerospace and ships.
In "peacetime," the bosses steal most of the value we produce, netting profits to enrich themselves. They maximize their profits by super-exploiting workers, driving down wages (Delphi), dividing us by racism (New Orleans), sexism and nationalism (citizen vs. immigrant workers). The capitalist wage system requires inequality. Under capitalism, there will never be equal wages.
Today, this inequality has increased drastically. Intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry with China, Russia and the European Union for control of oil and markets drives these competing capitalists to lower workers' wages to prepare -- and pay -- for wider war. Subcontracting in auto and aerospace plants, racist wage differentials for black and Latin workers, non-union shops with long hours all constitute fascist slave-labor conditions, used to increase production for expanding war, leading to World War III. The conditions imposed by the bosses in these subcontracted plants drag down conditions in the entire industry. Unity between all workers is a must!
The industrial working class is growing worldwide. Today workers globally have been striking back against capitalism's oppressive conditions: auto workers throughout Europe and Russia, shipbuilding workers in Mississippi, teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, miners in Chile, general strikes in Peru and the Dominican Republic (see page 3) and German railroad strikers who paralyzed that country.
When organized, the industrial workers have the potential to lead all workers to unite to destroy wage slavery. Workers produce all value without the bosses. The bosses' profit comes from stealing most of the value workers create. They cannot fight their inevitable wars for profit without working-class soldiers and the weapons workers make. The workers' need to survive stands in direct opposition to the needs of the bosses to maximize their profits.
Communist revolution to destroy capitalism and its wage system is the only way to resolve this contradiction. Then the working class will run society in our own interests, producing to meet the needs of the international working class, not the rulers' profits. Industrial workers have led the way in fighting for revolution under communist leadership. In 1917 in Russia, workers at the Putilov Works (a large weapons factory) used the weapons they produced to fight for the Russian Revolution.
WORKER-STUDENT ALLIANCE
Students have played an important role in fighting against imperialist wars and racism. However, students alone cannot end these capitalism evils. During the Vietnam War, students in the U.S., Mexico, and worldwide, inspired by the heroism of Vietnamese workers and peasants, organized mass, militant actions against the imperialist war and the system that caused it.
In 1968 in France, students -- influenced by the worldwide movement opposing the U.S. imperialist invasion of Vietnam, China's Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the students' own participation in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria -- struck nation-wide against repressive government actions in the schools. Tens of thousands marched in the streets, attacking the cops. The working class was watching. Thousands of workers had been striking over the previous 12 months. A protest against wage-cuts led to a sit-down strike in a Nantes aircraft factory. Soon a tidal wave swept France, a country of 50 million with 14 million industrial workers. Within ten days, ten million workers had shut down the country; de Gaulle was begging German bosses for tanks. Students and workers were meeting, supporting each others' demands. A real worker-student alliance was born. (See Progressive Labor Magazine, February 1968.) Unfortunately the struggle was betrayed by the reformist politics of the French "Communist" Party and the country's union misleaders.
Workers and students should organize class struggle in their shops and on their campuses against racism, imperialist war and for their class interests. They should organize for a worker-student alliance to build working-class unity. We can't rely on liberal politicians, all of whom represent bosses' interests.
Revolution for workers' power won't occur spontaneously. A communist party with a revolutionary communist outlook and a deep base among industrial workers, soldiers and students is needed to destroy racism, imperialism and capitalist exploitation for good! When workers are won to communism, no power on earth can stop them!
IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE IS THE KEY
The bosses work overtime pushing racism, nationalism, patriotism and reform, especially now when they need fascism at the workplace. They push voting to convince workers -- especially those with the most revolutionary potential -- that capitalism can be reformed. Union leaders help the bosses institute slave labor conditions, as the United Auto Workers is doing to tens of thousands of auto workers. Coming immigration laws would codify slave labor for immigrant workers in subcontracted plants producing parts for weapons.
Communists participate in reform fights to win workers to see that reforms will not end the injustice of capitalism. The ideological struggle is crucial to exposing the bosses' system and to show that the working class and its allies are capable of organizing a revolution to take state power and run society without bosses. Building CHALLENGE networks and groupings among workers, soldiers and students lays the basis for a mass party and a future communist society.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Let's make that step a sure one by bringing communist politics to industrial workers, building the PLP, building an alliance between workers, students and soldiers to achieve communism, a society where we produce and share based on need, not profit.
PLP's History in Industrial Class Struggle
From our very inception, PLP has always based the building of a revolutionary communist party on immersing ourselves among industrial workers. From barely one year old when organizing the 1963 nation-wide campaign to support the armed, wildcatting Hazard, Kentucky miners; to the work among transit workers in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago; to the organization in 1973 of the first sit-down strike in auto in 38 years at the Chrysler Mack Avenue plant in Detroit; to the auto plants of Southern California, New Jersey and Mexico; to a generation of leadership of Boeing workers; to organizing walkouts as garment workers in NYC and LA; among farm and packinghouse workers in California's San Joaquín Valley; among steel workers in Gary, Indiana and Chicago; brewery workers in Colombia; submarine-building shipyard workers in Groton, Ct.; to our present activity among subcontractor workers -- concentrating on bringing communist politics to the industrial proletariat has historically been the hallmark of the Progressive Labor Party.
Abolish the Wage System
The wage system was born with capitalism. It creates the illusion workers are being paid a "fair price" for their labor. In reality, bosses pay workers only a fraction of the value they produce, what Karl Marx called a "subsistence wage." The bosses keep the rest, what is called surplus value. This is capitalism's dirty secret, enabling the bosses to become the rich and powerful rulers of society and the world.
The wage system forces workers to permanently sell their labor power to the capitalists in order to survive. This wage slavery tells workers they are "free" because if they don't like one boss, they're always "free" to look for another. But in reality workers must sell their labor power to some boss or starve. The bosses decide who works and who doesn't and what the prevailing wage will be. This power forces billions to live on less than a dollar a day and condemns millions of our class brothers and sisters to death by starvation.
The union movement's slogan has been "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" as well as "equal pay for equal work." But there can be no "fairness" or "equality" when the wage system enslaves, dehumanizes and divides the working class. The internal laws of capitalism force all bosses to maximize profits in order to survive as capitalists. Their choice is: either grow richer and bigger by becoming more competitive or go under. This impels the bosses to super-exploit workers, drive down their working conditions and pay less to some than to others by dividing them using racism, sexism and nationalism. The capitalist wage system is outright thievery. The working class, as Karl Marx said, must fight to "abolish the wage system."
In its place, the working class will build communism, where all workers will contribute their labor for the good of the international working class and share the fruits of that labor according to need, in times of scarcity or abundance. Communism relies on the strength and commitment of the united working class.
PLP Youth Serve Working Class and Bring Red Ideas to New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, July 16 -- Over 40 PL'ers and friends came to this city to serve our class in a continuing time of need while offering workers the only solution to end racism and the misery of capitalism they face -- communism. The week-long project was led by young, emerging multi-racial future leaders of PLP.
The racism behind the capitalist-created disaster in New Orleans is still evident. Two years after Katrina hit, most of the working class has still not returned to the city. In the Lower Ninth Ward the only thing growing is the overgrown grass covering whole neighborhoods destroyed by racist neglect.
Over the week we planned to reach as many workers as possible -- including Mississippi shipyard workers whose earlier strike we had supported (see below). We brought our message of communism, covering much of the city door-to-door selling CHALLENGE to workers who've returned to the city, inviting them to a PL forum. We found that while some of these workers consider themselves "middle class," reality set in after the government, the insurance companies and the rest of the system's leeches screwed them over for profits. We also met a lot of "day laborers" from Latin America at bus stops or who slept under bridges. They recounted their struggles to find jobs and the constant harassment from residents as well as from the state. One worker who was in the FMLN sang us revolutionary-spirited songs from the 12 years he spent fighting in the civil war in El Salvador.
We also helped rebuild the home of the mother of a friend of the Party, which brought our friend closer to PLP. All the workers we met were invited to our forum on the need for communist revolution and were asked to relate their struggles and interaction with the Party.
Our forum was a huge success. Two of the New Orleans workers described how they were inspired from being with a group of young committed revolutionaries. One of the most moving speeches came from the friend whose mother's house we worked on. She said that try as she might to find fault with our Party, she couldn't find a single one. We hope she will continue to work with us.
Many project participants spoke about the comradeship they felt during the week's activities, inspiring them even more to work with the Party in their hometowns. The main speaker analyzed the effects of inter-imperialist rivalry on the working class and especially of the need to fight racism between black workers and Latin workers being pushed by the bosses here.
Afterwards we went for a snack at Café du Monde. When one waiter remarked to our large multi-racial group that wanted to sit together, "Are you Mexicans or something," a comrade made a speech and we collectively decided not to return.
While in New Orleans we were privileged to enjoy a BBQ with the Pascagoula, Miss. shipyard workers who halted the U.S. imperialists' warship repairs in a month-long strike for higher wages. These workers were very appreciative of our support for their strike and thanked us for our continuing efforts to help rebuild New Orleans.
These workers taught us a lot and also learned much from us about their potential -- along with soldiers and students -- to create a new system based on communist ideology.
This summer project re-enforced our commitment as future leaders to take our experience back to our shops, schools, campuses and mass organizations to continue the fight against capitalism for communist revolution.
Latest Liberal Revolt vs. Bush Aims At Wider Wars
Liberals are stepping up a phony "Out-of-Iraq" campaign that, in fact, advances U.S. imperialism's broadening war agenda. On July 12, the Democratic-controlled House voted for withdrawing most combat troops from Iraq by next April 1. A handful of liberal Republican senators, supposedly "breaking party discipline," now openly criticize Bush's war policy. The liberal New York Times began its full-page July 8 editorial, "It is time for the United States to leave Iraq." But the Times' imperialist cheerleader Thomas Friedman soon revealed the real motive for the liberals' call for retreat: "Tehran will no longer be able to bleed us through its proxies in Iraq, and we will be much freer to hit Iran -- should we ever need to -- once we're out."
The liberals understand that the Iraq chaos drains U.S. military capacity to face far greater threats to its control of Middle Eastern oil. Soon-to-be nuclear Iran is openly hostile. Already nuked-up Pakistan teeters on the brink of a fundamentalist Islamic coup, as does oil's grand prize, Saudi Arabia.
SHEDDING IRAQI AND GI BLOOD NO SIN TO LIBERALS
Liberals claim to be outraged that Iraq can't meet a series of "benchmarks," such as creating a competent police force and army and holding local elections. But what angers U.S. liberal rulers the most is Iraq's failure to get its vast oil reserves flowing into Exxon Mobil's tankers. Before the 2003 invasion, the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the James A. Baker Institute had jointly issued a report detailing the oily windfall awaiting U.S. rulers. It spoke of U.S.-controlled, $18-a-barrel Iraqi crude gushing at a rate of "6 million barrels a day by 2010." Washington would thus wield tremendous economic and political power over its foreign rivals and dependants.
Today, however, the oil price hovers above $70, which harms the U.S. economy, increasing the federal defecit and therefore weakening the dollar. Meanwhile, it enriches U.S. oil-producing foes like Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And Iraq averaged only 1.96 million barrels a day in the fiscal year ending July 1, dashing U.S. hopes to use Iraq as a swing producer that could dictate the world price.
Kurdish officials' recent refusal to back Iraq's pending oil law (which hands the lion's share of profits to Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell) tells only half the story. Mimicking imperialists, local capitalist warlords are battling for the oil treasure. The AP reported (7/9): "The Iraqi oil industry was subjected to nearly 160 attacks by insurgents and saboteurs last year, killing and wounding dozens of employees and reducing exports by some 400,000 barrels a day, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Monday. [He] said that 198 Oil Ministry employees had been killed and 124 wounded by violence in the past years."
FAILING TO PUMP IRAQI CRUDE
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE
Iraq's reserve 300-billion barrel oil treasure makes it too valuable for U.S. rulers to simply abandon. Furthermore, doing so would only embolden Iran, Syria and especially Al Qaeda, whose main mission is to take over Saudi Arabia. So, U.S. liberal rulers are searching for another approach. The Capitol Hill revolt against Bush forms part of U.S. imperialists' new plans. Anti-Bush Republican senators like Lugar, Warner, Domenici, and Voinovich seem to be taking orders from Gen. William Odom, former head of President Jimmy Carter's National Security Agency. He told the Times (6/24/07), "The endgame [reversing Bush's failed policy] will start when a senior senator from the president's party says no, much as William Fulbright did to LBJ during Vietnam."
Odom, who helped make the Mid-East and its oil fields a major U.S. war theatre, advocates a tactical retreat from Iraq, followed by a massive World War II-style allied invasion of the region. Odom warns, "If [Bush] ignores... legislative action...impeachment proceedings will proceed in the House of Representatives. (Harvard University, Nieman Foundation, 7/7/07).
`OUT-OF-IRAQ' LIE MEANS U.S. WAR MACHINE STAYS
Make no mistake. The liberals seek U.S. military supremacy, not peace. The House Democrats' deadline, April Fools Day, unwittingly betrays their insincerity. Their resolution calls for keeping a "limited presence" of U.S. troops in the country. The Times' editorial cites a need for permanent U.S. bases: "The United States could strike an agreement with the Kurds to create those bases in northeastern Iraq. Or, the Pentagon could use its bases in countries like Kuwait and Qatar, and its large naval presence in the Persian Gulf, as staging points."
The latest Foreign Affairs, the CFR journal, foresees Iraq leading to a general Mid-East conflagration and, ultimately, World War III: "In addition to waging irregular warfare against insurgents and terrorists, the United States must prepare to deal with several mid-size states that possess substantial conventional forces and will likely soon have small nuclear arsenals. Looking further ahead, China's rapid economic growth and technological progress could eventually transform the country into a genuine peer competitor, able to challenge U.S. military predominance in Asia, if not beyond."
Politicians don't serve the working class. They serve capitalists who benefit from war's murder and destruction. Instead of relying on politicians, we should expose and attack them as part of building a revolutionary communist movement that can put an end to wars for profit.J
Workers' Strikes Shake Latin America's Bosses
Peru: General Strikers Sing Internationale
On July 11, workers, peasants and others organized a massive general strike in Peru against both the government's economic and political policies and the U.S.-led Free Trade Agreement, claiming it will just benefit big international and local corporations at the expense of urban and rural workers (as happened in Mexico). The Lima march ended with thousands of workers and youth singing the workers' anthem, The Internationale. President Alán García sent riot cops and the army against the strikers and marchers. But protestors blockaded the Pan American highway in Arequipa and thousands seized the Juliaca airport, 525 miles south of Lima, canceling all flights.
In Cuzco, Peru's main tourist attraction, teachers, transport and many other workers blocked the main entry and exit to the city, forcing closure of train service to the Inca city of Machu Picchu (recently declared one of the new Seven Wonders of the World).
Herminia Herrera, a striking teacher, died after being beaten by cops during a July 6 teachers' march. The teachers are striking against a new law making it easier to fire them. Many militant teachers are wary of a sellout by the union leadership, led by "Red Fatherland" (a fake-leftist group). That leadership, which at first supported the candidacy of current President Alán García, calling him a "progressive," is now pleading with José Chang, Minister of Education, to sit down and talk. Meanwhile, President García signed the law and has threatened to replace striking teachers with scabs.
While the angry workers' actions continued after the general strike, President García blamed it on "the buried ideology of communism," ordering more cops to attack them, killing 18, injuring many more and arresting 160. This repression has been very sharp against miners in the economy's key metal industry. In mid-June, cops attacked miners striking the subcontractor silver and lead mines, killing four strikers. Contract miners also struck the Chinese capitalist-owned Shougang iron mine. The strike leader is still under arrest. And area peasants have joined workers striking the Southern Copper Company's three mines, protesting the mine company's poisoning of the water there.
MINERS WALK OUT IN CHILE
On July 13, miners ended their strike against the Collahuasi copper mine, owned by a consortium including Sxtrata PLC (Swiss-British-owned), Mitsui from Japan and Anglo-American from South Africa. They won some of their economic demands. But copper miners in the state-owned Codelco mine are now in their strike's second week. (See CHALLENGE, 7/18)
The militant Codelco strikers have blocked scab shipments and fought riot cops. The copper industry is reaping record profits from high prices resulting from the great demand for the metal, especially from rising economies in China and India. But the copper bosses refuse to share more of their profits with the miners. Michelle Bachelet's "socialist" government has joined the attacks on these workers, refusing to recognize the demands of the subcontractor strikers, battling the state-owned Codelco. Meanwhile, the national copper miners' union leadership has refused to organize an all-out strike of all miners, include the permanent workers in Codelco, to really put pressure on the bosses.
NATION-WIDE STRIKE IN THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
On July 9, a national strike hit the Dominican Republic, in a day of protest against the government of President Leonel Fernández, whose ruling party (PLD) began as a "leftist" national liberal one and has turned into a free-market, imperialist-friendly outfit. The country's workers and youth are fed up with constant blackouts, lack of water in many neighborhoods, unemployment (one of the highest in the hemisphere), government corruption and crime (led by drug gangs protected by cops and high-ranking military officers). Thousands have died in the last decade crossing the dangerous Mona Channel to try to reach Puerto Rico to escape the poverty in the Dominican Republic. Ironically, Haitian workers have also fled even worse conditions in Haiti to be super-exploited by bosses in the D.R.
Unfortunately, the strike and other protests are usually used by the opposition politicians to win votes for the 2008 Presidential elections. The previous government of Hipólito Mejia, hated by the masses, saw many such national strikes used by the current ruling party to win the 2004 elections.
All these struggles, and many more, across Latin America show that capitalism, in its current free-market format or in any form, is incapable of satisfying the basic needs of workers, peasants and youth. Some politicians try to take advantage of the masses' hatred of the current crop of pro-U.S. free-market governments as a means to take power and seek deals with other imperialist blocs (Europe, China and even Russia). Others claim that "Bolivarian socialism" (with lots of capitalism) is the answer. But even in Venezuela, where Chávez has used the oil bonanza to give workers some small reforms, capitalism and poverty still reign.
In Brazil, Lula, a former auto and steel union leader, promised to rule for the workers when he took power. But he has only served the powerful, rising Brazilian bourgeoisie (like the Petrobras oil giant now hated by workers in Ecuador and Bolivia for its exploitation similar to Exxon-Mobil, Shell & Co.).
The only answer is to turn these conflicts into schools for communism. It's a long, hard fight, but out of these struggles workers and their allies must forge a new revolutionary communist leadership to prepare for the difficult but needed battle ahead to destroy capitalism.J
New Orleans: The New Las Vegas?
Our Summer Project began by viewing the levee systems in Lakeview, the Lower 9th Ward, and the French Quarter. We saw the superior, complex levees in rich neighborhoods like Lakeview and the French Quarter. Most of the houses are repaired and renovated, some undamaged. In Lakeview, the government put metal braces on their palm trees. In the Lower 9th Ward and other working-class neighborhoods, the levees are barely thicker and taller than the ones that failed during Katrina. Most of the houses are completely destroyed or were bulldozed.
Volunteers who were here last year were shocked that the Lower 9th Ward still looks like a wasteland. We saw houses that we gutted last year, now boarded up and still uninhabitable. We were angry and disappointed. We put so much hard work into fixing those homes. We realized that the ruling class doesn't want people to return to these neighborhoods and doesn't care about the people they displaced.
During the week, we saw military police and the New Orleans Police Department crawling all over, harassing residents just standing outside. One man told us the cops frisked him because he was gutting his mother's house and couldn't prove he lived there. We said police brutality was one way the bosses attack workers and gave him CHALLENGE. He took an extra one for his mom and gave us $5.
That worker also said the government is mailing his neighbors notices to their homes saying they must attend a hearing within four months to claim their houses, but since most people haven't returned to their homes yet, it's almost impossible for them to know about the hearings. According to this worker, when people miss them, the government seizes their homes. He also told us that a company was buying out some of his neighbor's houses. He felt helpless about the company trying to buy out the neighborhood and putting casinos in place of their homes to "make New Orleans the new Las Vegas."
The working class is under constant attack by the bosses. One college cafeteria worker told us that in her neighborhood contractors would call immigrantration agents on pay day, so that workers would be deported and the contractors wouldn't have to pay them. Even though racism keeps workers divided, this woman said she wished she could do something to help these workers. We want to continue conversations with her and get her CHALLENGE regularly.
We met some migrant workers who live under a bridge. They go days without eating, don't always get paid for their hard work, and send the little money they earn home to their families. They all took CHALLENGE and talked for hours.
Some of us were surprised about how open most workers were to the communist ideas. One migrant worker said, "Workers of all countries need to unite because we're hungry while there's so much food sitting in the supermarkets that we can't afford." Workers are angry not only at the U.S. government, but also at capitalism in general. We must make a plan to be able to maintain contact with these new CHALLENGE readers.
While workers had mostly good ideas, many still have illusions about capitalism and religion. One construction worker told us that "there are a lot of sinners in New Orleans. God had to wash them away." He said the government had bad people and that they didn't respond quickly enough after Katrina but didn't answer why god didn't wash the bosses away.
We saw how religion didn't fix people's houses, lives or families, but rather the exact opposite: how it brainwashes workers, keeping them from fighting back. We definitely saw that capitalism will always screw workers as much as it can, and the bosses will never serve our interests; that a communist revolution is the only way that we can destroy a system which leaves workers to rot and die while tourists sit partying and getting drunk in the French Quarter.
We will continue to struggle with workers and ourselves in the constant battle between capitalist and communist ideas. This project has energized us to work even harder in order to organize as many workers as possible to overthrow capitalism and replace it with communism, a need-based system without money that won't murder millions every year for greed.J
Students Lead the Way in Fighting Fascism
NEW JERSEY, June 26 -- Twenty-five high school students and 30 teachers and workers gathered to oppose the U.S. ruling class' concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay and the Military Commission Act, which gives the President the right to arrest and detain anyone for however long they want without having to show any evidence. The event, organized by the students of a local Amnesty International chapter, was significant because it marked the beginning of a relationship the students are building with the anti-war community and its largest organization, New Jersey Peace Action. It resulted from a year of political struggle to get students to take leadership organizing events in the town.
While at the event, the students wore local T-shirts that read "Fight Back Against Racism, Sexism, Nationalism, Exploitation, Imperialism, Torture, and Apathy" and carried signs that read "Guantanamo Bay + Military Commission Act = U.S. Fascism." The students wrote and distributed flyers to their classmates saying more needed to be done than just protesting Guantanamo Bay and the Military Commissions Act. These are just two examples of the U.S. ruling class' drive toward fascism. U.S. bosses -- squeezed by their opponents like China -- need to discipline workers.
The leaflet also warned not to rely on the Democrats, citing that both New Jersey Democratic Senators, Lautenberg and Menendez, voted for the Military Commission Act. The students cited capitalism as the real enemy, because the competition inherent in this system causes imperialist wars and fascist policies at home.
Many students agreed with the flyer and took and read CHALLENGE, but other demonstrators were peace activists from the '60s and '70s who still believe in the Democrats and Barack Obama. The national leadership of Amnesty International, one of the organizing groups for that day's events nationwide, used the slogan "The America I Believe In Leads the World on Human Rights." But the history of the U.S. ruling class throughout the 20th century shows the exact opposite to be true. Capitalism can never allow the ruling classes to put human needs before the pursuit of profit.
PLP has played an important role in exposing these young organizers to communist ideas. With more work and struggle, these students will hopefully become future leaders of the Party and the working class.J
Liberals' Health `Reform' Aim: Save Bosses Billions
LOS ANGELES, CA -- California politicians, unions, and liberal activists are using Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko" to promote "single-payer" health care reform. In June the "It's Our HealthCare" coalition held a series of rallies in six cities to support pending health care reform legislation.
Moore spoke in LA to about 150 people mainly from ACORN, SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW, California Nurses Association, and other unions -- many of them paid staff. He said that "Something is fundamentally wrong when we spend more on healthcare than any other developed country and get less back." LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urged the audience to see SICKO and said that health care is a basic human right. But then he said that the healthcare system is in crisis and that "the burden cannot rest solely with employers."
These comments reveal the real reason why health care reform is on the agenda. It's not because of all the true, terrible stories workers are telling about their situations. It's because major U.S. industrialists, pushed harder and harder by other imperialist competitors, can't maximize their profits while paying health benefits (including for retirees) that were fought for back when the U.S. was a rising power. At the same time "National Health Care" (the illusion of a system where all workers receive some kind of affordable insurance) will be a rallying cry to build patriotism at the very time workers are under sharper attack.
"Because health care expenditures come either out of business' profits or get passed on to consumers as higher prices, U.S. companies put themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared, at least, to every other country in the industrialized world," wrote Jonathan Tasini, president of the Economic Future Group. His example was General Motors, "the once-proud gold standard of American industry whose bonds' credit rating has plummeted to junk status.... GM will spend $5.6 billion this year on health care for its employees and retirees -- more money than it shells out for steel for its cars -- which means every GM car we buy costs $1,500 more because of health care." He quoted GM's CEO Rick Waggoner saying, "Our $1,500-per-unit health care expense represents a significant disadvantage versus our foreign-based competitors. Left unaddressed, this will make a big difference in our ability to compete in investment, technology and other key contributors to our future success."
The biggest imperialists need to discipline the highly profitable health care insurance industry in the greater interest of their class as a whole. Commented Tasini: "Corporate America is shredding its own global competitiveness because it can't shake the death grip of an anti-government ideology. This short-sighted ideology leads big business to shun single-payer national health insurance, which could save businesses hundreds of billions of dollars." A national single-payer system -- for example, extending Medicare to everyone as recommended by Physicians for a National Health Plan -- would get some workers more help with health care expenses but would also be a way of rationing health services for everyone except the rich. It would be a way to shift the burden -- as Mayor Villaraigosa suggested -- from employers to working-class taxpayers, while supposedly building confidence in the government.
So the health care "Road to Reform" will make the capitalist system work better for the bosses at the expense of the workers. It makes no sense to talk about health care as a "basic right" as long as we live under this system hell bent on war and fascism, where the bottom line is the rulers' profits. In this period of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry we can expect the bosses to continue to attack our standard of living, and then send our youth to their wars. Liberals like Moore, Villaraigosa, the New York Times, and the "Change to Win" unions are trying to use their "Road to Reform" to win workers' loyalty to this deadly system. Workers need to shed illusions in this bosses' road to reform and join PLP's road to revolution.J
$600 Billion for War, $2.3 Million Cuts
for Transit
Transit workers in a suburb of San Francisco already face long, stressful schedules and poor working conditions. We have to wait until the end of our line to use the bathroom - a filthy Portapotty. As one driver put it, "I feel like an animal, degraded, disrespected . . . next thing they'll want us to wear a catheter!" He's not exaggerating by much. The city council now wants to institute $2.3 million worth of service cuts and layoffs, drastically affecting the quality of life for transit workers and their passengers.
Recently, I helped organize fellow workers to attend a city council meeting to fight back against these changes. I was able to explain that the capitalist priorities of war for profits stood in the way of our immediate struggle.
For two hours, workers and riders told about the hardships that would result from the city eliminating 90% of Sunday service and four daily routes. Retired workers said they would be prisoners in their homes on the weekends without public transit. Single parents would be unable to get to work or their kids' daycare. Drivers predicted unsafe, crowded buses resulting from route cuts. Many said the bosses sacrificed the needs of the mostly black and immigrant working class while pandering to the mostly white upper middle class who ride the ferries.
Despite all the evidence, and the fake sympathies of the transit managers and city council members, the "facts" meant that the budget would not allow the city to maintain the services and the jobs.
I was able to put budget-talk in its place. Where were the figures about the budgets of the laid-off drivers or the riders needing to call a taxi to get to work? Their figures didn't account for the budgets of the banks who have stolen millions from this city's workers though predatory, racist "sub-prime" lending practices. Hundreds of workers' homes have been foreclosed. The $600 billion spent on the murderous war in Iraq has helped no workers while profiting oil bosses whose refineries spew filth over this suburb but whose CEOs have not directed any profits to transit.
Finally, I gave out CHALLENGE, commenting that the whole capitalist system was murderous to workers and needed to be replaced by workers' power. I can now follow up with those who organized with me. Continued contact is the "fertilizer" for the small revolutionary seed that I planted with my speech.
I recognized this war could - like Vietnam - be a flashpoint for revolutionary consciousness. There will come a time when we can honor the military for fighting for the working class rather than for the interests of U.S. imperialism, when soldiers become part of the movement to overthrow capitalism.
Transit Red
Racist Rulers Made Their Own Laws to Maintain School Segregation
(CHALLENGE, 7/18, analyzed the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits school districts' ability to maintain integrated schools. It noted that U.S. rulers wanted the original 1954 Brown decision because segregation laws throughout the South made the U.S. look bad in its efforts to defeat communism worldwide. The following will explain why schools have remained almost completely segregated despite the 1954 Court decision, and how the ruling class appeared to end a racist practice while still promoting racist segregation.)
The Brown decision ended only the legal segregation in the South. The more prevalent segregation, however, that still exists today, is "de facto" segregation based on where people live. If white people, for example, choose to live in a single community, then their children will attend the same community school. No one from the community will be banned from the school but still the school will be all white -- segregated, apparently by choice.
The ruling class, which always benefits by creating racist divisions within the working class, deliberately promoted this type of segregation. One weapon used was the "restrictive covenant." Deeds of sale contained restrictions on who could buy the property. The restrictions always banned sales to black and Jewish people and sometimes included other groups and immigrants. Banks required these covenants before approving mortgages. They were enforced by state and local laws. The U.S. government required them in all sales involving the post-World War II GI Bill that enabled millions of workers to become first-time home-owners. Every arm of the government and financial system enforced restrictive covenants.
The myth of "white flight" -- that white workers raced to leave the cities and live in the suburbs because they are inherently racist -- took hold. The truth is rooted in these restrictive covenants. Many workers wanted to live a nicer life in the suburbs and the "flight" would have been a multi-racial one except that only white workers were allowed to go. Anti-racists fought such covenants, and although the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled them unconstitutional after the Brown decision, by then the damage was done. By the 1960's, suburban housing patterns were entirely segregated, and so, therefore, were the schools.
Restrictive covenants were made illegal and then discarded when blatant government-sponsored racism became an obstacle to U.S. imperialist goals in Africa. When housing segregation wasn't sufficient to maintain school segregation, U.S. bosses turned to providing so many government services to private schools that the real cost of sending a child there became affordable to many workers. Now, even as neighborhoods became somewhat more integrated, the choice became private vs. public schooling. Again, many more white workers could pay the now affordable private-school tuition.
Federal laws subsidized private schools, upholding taxpayers' "rights" to have their money used no matter what school their child attended. Private-school students were bused to school on public school buses. Public school budgets were required to provide private schools with services like school nurses, special education specialists, speech therapists and others. Today we live in a two-tier system of private and public schools where parents pay only a fraction of the true cost of a private-school education. This obstacle to the united fight of the entire working class for better public schools exists almost entirely because of government policies.
The Civil Rights movement led many workers looking at housing segregation patterns to question what kind of education their children should experience. While enormous numbers of workers were misled into a racist desire to keep their school segregated, some launched campaigns to integrate urban and suburban schools through busing plans to defeat the housing patterns by transporting students to create racial balance. Urban parents supported plans for diversity that examined the racial balance of individual schools. But these plans were doomed.
First, they never could address the parallel system of private schools that were exploding in number. Second, such plans relied on government enforcement -- the very ruling-class government that needs to maintain racist divisions and only gives lip service to the fight for integrated schools. The recent Supreme Court case is simply another reminder of this harsh reality. (A future article will analyze the complexity of school busing.)
We can never look to the capitalist system, and its government, to fight for the working class.
Banks' and Realtors' Redlining, Blockbusting Segregates Housing
When restrictive covenants weren't enough to maintain segregated housing, the banks and real estate interests had other racist practices to fall back on. Redlining--where lines were literally drawn on city maps on a block by block basis determining where black families would be allowed to buy or rent--was enforced by realtors and banks who would not give mortgages to blacks attempting to buy outside the areas "lined" for them.
"Blockbusting" was perhaps the most vicious of the racist tactics as it encouraged and preyed on the fears of white working and middle class homeowners in the areas where some integration had actually taken place. Realtors spread rumors that black families moving into a previously all white neighborhood would decrease property values (and home ownership was often each family's main asset even if they were usually heavily mortgaged). Well-financed real estate interests would buy the houses from white owners at bargain prices and then resell them to black families at higher prices made possible by the difficulty that black families had in finding any homes that they were allowed to buy.
Banks then completed the rip-off by charging black families twice the mortgage interest rates paid by the previous white owners--a precursor of the "sub-prime" racist banking exploitation reported on in recent CHALLENGES. Racism, profits and capitalism--you can't have one without the others.
While black families were hurt the most by the housing racism, white workers often lost much of the equity in their homes when racist pressures and fears overcame their class consciousness. When racism wins, all workers lose.
FIGHT FOR HARLEM HEALTH CARE
NEW YORK CITY, July 16 -- Parishioners at St. Mary's Church at 126th St., including several CHALLENGE readers, are leading the fight to reopen the Manhattanville Health Center, a public clinic down the block, which was closed over five years ago. Although it was said to be shut for renovation, only the façade was ever completed. The politicians claim there is no need for the clinic because visits had fallen at this and other clinics.
However, the city's own statistics lay bare the racist burden of poverty and poor health in Harlem. The death rate is 40 percent higher than in the city as a whole, and the poverty rate is 50 percent higher. Twenty-four percent of Harlem residents do not have a primary source of health care and 11 percent use the ER for emergencies. HIV deaths are more than double the rate in NYC; cancer is the leading cause of premature death.
Clinic visits may have fallen, but two main reasons were cuts in services provided and managed Medicaid. The latter assigns Medicaid patients to a particular provider and does not allow them to go elsewhere. Since many patients never receive or don't understand notices asking them to choose an MD, they are assigned one and never know it. When the need for health care arises, they will be turned away from any other source of care, except in life-threatening emergencies.
Although the racist burden of poor health and health care persists in Harlem, the city has a new plan -- to decrease the population. Columbia University, located below Harlem on 116th St., is planning a massive expansion to 17 acres above 125th St, including a level 3 biotech laboratory. The expansion will dislocate many small business and low-income housing units. They have also expressed interest in taking over the clinic, with their interests, not those of the community, in mind.
Only a militant struggle by the community and allies at Columbia has a chance of limiting the University's expansion and rescinding the health cuts. Hundreds turned out at a Community Board 9 meeting last week, including some of our St. Mary's group. The Church activists are also planning a demonstration on July 26 and mobilizing for the next Board 9 meeting. A group of Columbia students has produced a pamphlet exposing the expansion plan and will work on one about health care. High school students and church members are surveying local residents to document problems with getting health care.
Some liberal and Democratic politicians are also opposing Columbia's plan, but that is not enough. Even though militant community action stopped the University's plan to build a gym in Harlem decades ago, that did nothing to decrease poverty, unemployment, housing shortages or racism. Capitalism's need for a divided working class, low-wage workers, high unemployment to keep wages down, and an ever-expanding army for endless imperialist wars insure that conditions will not improve. That is why we must not only build this struggle, but use it as a tool to expose the system and train new leaders for the fight for communism, where the health care of all workers and their families will be number one priority and racist elitist institutions like Columbia University won't exist.
Students in Tanzania Strike Against Higher Education Cutbacks
DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, July 15 -- Students at Dar es Salaam University in Tanzania struck for four weeks this past June against a new policy that would drastically cut government subsidies to higher education. Students at several other public universities also supported the strike. The new policy would require students to pay 40% of their tuition and cut their mandatory summer fieldwork allowance in half. (Summertime field-work is an academic requirement for all students). Even though the policy change would only affect new students, everyone at the University fought back, showing that thousands of students, not directly affected, were won to the idea of solidarity. For those students who come from families living on less than $1 a day, this new policy would force them to drop out of school. Marching under banners that read "Revolution for Changes" and attacking favoritism to the wealthy, the students forced the government to back off for now.
Two years ago, the government cutbacks attempted to end free higher education. When students protested, the police beat them. This time, the Vice Chancellor Mukandala, who has built lavish mansions around Dar es Salaam, threatened to expel striking students. During the strike, he told Parliament that "higher education should only be for the few -- for those who can think critically." At the same time fewer high school students than ever passed the Form 6 exam, which means they won't be allowed into college. This plan to cut back spending on higher education by letting in fewer students (as well as making it unaffordable) is part of the World Bank's agenda with developing nations worldwide.
As inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies, institutions like the World Bank are using Structural Adjustment Programs to make trade arrangements even more favorable to the world's most powerful capitalist countries. Trying to expand the markets for the imperialists, they are forcing countries like Tanzania to cut government spending. Ending free higher education as well as other services to the working class have become a requirement for foreign investment.
Students told CHALLENGE that they "know what is going on" in their country. Government leaders drive around in expensive cars, they control the media and spend tax money on building new soccer stadiums, all at workers' expense. One student, Bernadetha Rushabu, says the purpose of university education here is to create more such corrupt leaders who serve the rich rather than the "sons and daughters of peasants." Both students interviewed agreed that the strike had radicalized them and most students at the University.
After the country became independent from Britain in 1961, its most prominent leader, Julius Nyerere, tried to impose "African-style socialism." But it failed because he tried to reform capitalism. After 1985, "free market" capitalism began abolishing these reforms. In today's Tanzania, expensive malls are built while millions suffer from malnutrition and unemployment and die unnecessarily from HIV/AIDS. A common theme among the students and working people of Tanzania today is that corruption is ruining their country. Corruption, however, is a direct result of the government embracing the capitalist values of selfishness and greed. Under capitalism, the "free market" gives the bosses the legal right to rob and exploit workers and students.
By fighting back, Dar es Salaam University students are learning important lessons on how the government, the media, the police and the university work together to protect the profits of both the imperialists and the local capitalists. Students and workers everywhere should take the lead from the courage of the Tanzanian students. The building of the communist PLP can help break with the widespread cynicism caused by the failure of trying to reform capitalism and by the collapse of the old communist movement. Workers and students, unite to smash capitalism and imperialism!
Shipbuilders Face Racist
Warmakers' Renewed Attacks
PASCAGOULA, MS., July 16--Today they buried 32-year-old Harvey Packer, a welder and member of Boilermakers Local 693. Harvey had 10 years at the Northrop Grumman shipyard here and was one of 7,000 shipbuilders who staged a month-long strike last March to stop the bosses' from taking big health care cuts from workers and their families. Harvey died of heat exhaustion on Monday, July 10, while being recertified at the Training Center (all welders must be recertified every 30 days to keep their Navy certification). Temperatures outside were over 110 degrees. Inside that welding booth, with no ventilation, it was at least 20 degrees hotter.
This is the most glaring example of what life is like for workers here since the strike ended. Workers have faced a series of firings, demotions, layoffs and other reprisals. The bosses are going back over records to review and scrutinize all claims for medical leave, workers' comp, and past time cards. There have been layoffs and firings. Workers face harassment to make up for production delays caused by Katrina, the strike and the reduced workforce. A week after the strike ended even ten supervisors were demoted, nine of them were black. Workers are now subjected to having their cars searched in the parking lot, including the use of dogs. One Latino worker with over twenty years seniority was fired for allegedly having one marijuana joint in his car. After "winning" his job back through the grievance procedure, the company still refuses to take him back.
But this is more than just retaliation. Behind the strike and behind the latest wave of deadly attacks lie growing military and commercial challenges to the U.S. shipbuilding industry, especially from Europe and China.
About a week after the strike ended, Navy Secretary Donald Winter slammed the industry for not investing in U.S. shipyards. He said the Navy had "eroded its expertise in shipbuilding and systems engineering," and "developed a bad habit of relying too much on contractors." He ought to know. Winter is a former Northrop Grumman corporate vice-president and also served as president of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.
He said the industry must "rethink its production processes... Otherwise, [we] will be stuck with outmoded and inefficient production lines...The current level of investment...is nowhere near adequate to meet our needs today, nor is it sufficient to bring American facilities up to the world-class standards that are evident in a number of European and Asian shipyards." In other words, Northrop Grumman workers are victims of the inter-imperialist rivalry, the struggle between the world's capitalists for markets, resources and cheap labor. And no amount of grievances, contracts or even strikes can smash imperialism and its endless wars.
Workers here must join PLP and help turn it into a mass international communist party, leading millions of industrial workers, soldiers and youth to communist revolution and the seizure of power. The strike last March, against the largest employer in the state, showed the potential power of industrial workers to smash the racist war makers. They shut down a major war contractor in the midst of losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving the Navy unable to move three ships under construction. A growing circle of CHALLENGE readers here will open the door to revolution, here and well beyond.
LETTERS
Colombia Bosses' Attack Can't Stop Fight-back
Day after day Colombia's working class is a victim of violence, repressed and murdered by a corrupt bosses' dictatorship. This rulers' terror policy -- supported by the bosses' media, church, courts and their paramilitary death squads -- demonstrate bosses' "rule of the law." Amnesty International says Colombia is one of the most dangerous places for workers' struggles. Colombia's National Trade Union School documented 2,245 murders, 3,400 death threats and 138 forced disappearances of trade unionists from 1991 to 2006.
Multinational corporations like Chiquita Brands, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Drummond Mining have paid death squads to kill militant workers. A landmark trial is starting in Birmingham, Alabama, accusing Drummond of paying paramilitary thugs to kill two union leaders at the company's La Loma coal mine in northern Colombia in 2001. These murders occur alongside massive attacks on jobs, education, health and other past gains workers won through many sharp struggles.
Capitalism considers workers and their families just another commodity to be used, sold and thrown away, reaping huge profits for the bosses. The anti-working class, racist judicial system sanctions these abuses. Now the few working-class students reaching the universities are also being attacked with tuition hikes forced by the government's education budget cutbacks. (See CHALLENGE, 7/18)
The anti-riot cops (ESMAD) have viciously attacked the students' mass protests against these cutbacks with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber bullets, raids of our schools, arrests and even disappearances. The paramilitary has infiltrated our marches. It mirrors killings in Iraq, Mexico, Palestine and El Salvador. Government goons have murdered young fighters like Oscar Salas, Nicolas Neira and Giovanni Blanco fighting to transform society.
But young students, children of the working class, continue with our struggle, raising our fists, fighting alongside parents and teachers during the massive marches protesting the cutbacks. We're showing that the bosses' fascism cannot stop the growing anger and class struggle. PLP members are involved in these actions against cutbacks and privatization of public education. We fight in the schools and the streets, while trying to build our Party as the long-range answer to this murderous capitalist system. CHALLENGE readers and friends are playing an important role. We understand that we are the future of our movement and of the working class, and believe firmly that "those who died fighting live in all of us."
A Student, Colombia
9th Ward Mirrors Rulers' Plan
for All Workers
As a group of students and I toured the levees in New Orleans, capitalism's effects on the city's working class were all too apparent. The Lower Ninth Ward once housed several generations of mostly African-American working-class families. Now it's a ghost town, littered with boarded-up houses and empty residential lots.
The levee system that was supposed to protect the homes in the Ninth Ward from Katrina was far too weak but has been replaced with one just as deficient. On the other hand, the levee system protecting the French Quarter and the city's business district is much stronger and more intricate.
Under capitalism, profit and property are always put ahead of human lives. In the aftermath of Katrina, more than 1,500 workers lost their lives while 250,000 were displaced from their homes. Today, two years later, the majority of these working families continue to be scattered across the country, with no resources to return or to rebuild their homes and lives.
Adding insult to injury, a new memorial built in the heart of the devastated Ninth Ward claims that the rebuilding is "moving forward as promised." Two erected walls painted red symbolize the supposed rebuilding of the community. In the window, a sign from Liberty Bank reads "I am coming home! I will rebuild! I am New Orleans!" But actually the memorial's two walls seem to be the only rebuilding that's occurred in the last two years. All around the memorial, half-collapsing houses and condemned buildings expose the bosses' lies that "all is back to normal" in New Orleans.
The misery in the Ninth Ward reflects the U.S. ruling class's plan for the entire working class. The imperialist wars for profit and empire the U.S. bosses need to fight rival capitalists will mean more blood and suffering for all workers. Only a multi-racial, international communist movement fighting to end the fascism and imperialism crucial to the capitalist war machine will deliver real change for workers, students and soldiers. PLP is working to build this movement, and our work in New Orleans continues to be crucial.
The summer project allowed us to meet many workers open to our ideas because of the first-hand experience with the effects of racism and capitalism. We must introduce communist ideas and continue to support their struggles against fascist attacks.
West Coast Comrades
PL'ers Share Red Ideas With Katrina Victims
During PLP's summer project in New Orleans we've had many great, learning experiences rebuilding homes and talking with the city's working-class residents. One highlight was our conversations with Latino immigrant day laborers we met while selling CHALLENGE outside hardware stores.
We explained that students, teachers and workers from across the country came there to express our solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters who, after two years of racist neglect by the U.S. government, are still struggling to rebuild their homes. We also shared the Party's analysis of how capitalism puts profits before the needs of the working class, how currently due to an increased inter-imperialist rivalry, the U.S. ruling class is more concerned with funding their wars for oil profits in the Middle East than helping workers.
After Katrina, these day laborers came to New Orleans because they were promised good jobs reconstructing the city. But when they're lucky enough to be picked off the street for short-term jobs, mainly rebuilding projects, they face severe exploitation and anti-immigrant racist abuse. For instance, sometimes they work for weeks, only to be threatened by employers who tell them to leave without pay or deal with the immigration service and possible deportation. The workers said some residents refer to them as "guerrillas" who live in the streets, "taking over the city" and taking jobs from residents who badly need them. The residents making these accusations were black workers, reflecting the bosses' attempt to create a racial division between Latino and black workers as a way of developing fascist control over the U.S. working class that suffers most during times of intensified imperialist conflict.
The day laborers responded well to our communist politics. They agreed with us about the need for revolution, and asked how they could learn more about our Party and how we could help them organize themselves.
These workers are experiencing the worst capitalism has to offer. Many who are homeless also have to deal with loneliness, depression and despair. Some have resorted to alcohol and drugs for comfort. But meeting the Party and learning about our politics of revolution and workers' power seemed to raise their spirits and give them hope.
Several participated in a forum during our project. One worker in particular was reenergized, and spoke to a young, multi-racial audience about his lifelong commitment to communism and how he fought for the FMLN (a national liberation group, now turned electoral) during the civil war in El Salvador. He explained that despite the FMLN leadership's betrayal of the Salvadoran workers' struggle to overthrow the fascist government, he still considered himself a revolutionary communist. After meeting our Party and learning that there's an organization that truly fights in the interest of the working class, it strengthened his hope for a communist future. When an older comrade joked that she was "too old to fight," that it was up to youth to take the lead in building the revolutionary communist movement, the worker quickly responded, "You can still carry a rifle."
We plan to stay in touch with these workers and return in the near future to continue meeting more workers and sharing our communist politics, particularly the need for multi-racial unity among all workers in the fight against capitalism and imperialism.
Red Youth
SICKO Faith in Dems Won't
Fix Healthcare
CNN's recent Wolf Blitzer interview of Michael Moore has become a popular video on the internet. Moore is correct that Blitzer -- who was a journalist in Israel and associated with the pro-Zionist AIPAC lobby -- failed to investigate Bush administration lies about invading and occupying Iraq.
However, the main reason to watch the interview is for Moore's thinking on which Democrat would best represent the government-paid national health plan he calls for in his movie "Sicko." He mentions Kucinich, who he obviously realizes is a maverick with no major ruling-class support. So he suggests that those favoring national health insurance without private insurance companies write to Hillary Clinton and request her support. Moore says Hillary was "very brave" for raising the issue 14 years ago and hints that she might do so again.
In the film, Moore also presents Hillary Clinton, then the "first lady," as courageous but neglects to mention that her 1993 plan involved employer-based payment to privately-funded HMOs, a far cry from removing profit from health care and from the single-payer system of Canada or Britain. Moore's film is contradictory about Clinton. First he implies that the Republicans and the big insurance companies "shut her up" and killed her plan, but then he acknowledges that she later received large campaign donations from those very same companies.
However, Moore hasn't given up on her or the Democrats. So beyond being an argument for social democracy rather that social revolution, "Sicko" fails as even a strong reformist film, because the party he believes will fight for a decent health care system -- one not run for profit, which covers everyone and provides a high level of care -- shows little inclination to do so.
A Reader
Bosses Want Racist War,
Not Street Fighting
I was interested to read in Challenge (7/4) about the Oakland teachers' "walk against violence." I attended a somewhat similar "peace walk" and community meeting in a smaller California city, called in response to a series of gang-related killings of black and Latin youth. The walk of about 100 people, led by a group of mothers organized at the Y, stopped at three sites where young people died. It had a mainly religious tone, building small memorials and offering prayers at each site. The community meeting was organized by a group of pastors, who brought together a "panel" to respond to comments and questions from the audience of about 150.
The difference was that both the mayor and the police chief took part in these events, so the description of "racist indifference fostered by the rulers" in the Oakland article doesn't exactly apply here. In part this may be due to these local rulers being committed to the gentrification of the city, which is further along than in Oakland. They don't want the crime rate to lower property values! That in itself -- together with decades of racist neglect of the public schools, which have mainly black and Latin students even though the city is about half white -- shows their profound indifference toward working-class families who can't even afford to live in this city anymore.
But I think something else is going on. With the decline of U.S. imperialism with respect to its many rivals, the main section of the ruling class understands that it needs to mobilize youth -- including unemployed urban working-class black and Latin youth -- for war production and the military. That kind of violence suits them fine! But the young black men at the community meeting were 100% against the Iraq war and had no interest at all in joining the military. They almost all hate the cops. Such profound alienation among unemployed black youth is actually against the racist bosses' core interests.
So, at least in this area, we are seeing more liberal efforts to involve youth in "stopping the violence." The police chief made a point of disagreeing with those who said the violence was "racial" and pointed out that there were as many "brown-on-brown" and "black-on-black" attacks as cross-racial ones. Maybe, but he and the pastors in charge seem to have missed the several dozen Spanish-speaking women who walked out of the meeting because there was no interpreter. A lot of work needs to be done to build multiracial working class unity here!
Then a Y organizer told the youth to "stop hating on the cops -- we all have to work together." That didn't go over too well: half a dozen youths jumped up to respond to her. There wasn't too much enthusiasm for other bogus suggestions like "restore prayer to the schools" and "get the youth back into church" either. On the other hand, people responded well to the idea that it's the racist war system -- not black and brown youth -- that causes the most violence against workers.
The Challenge article from Oakland is right on target when it points to the murderous nature of capitalism, which considers workers' lives cheap - not only in the USA but in every capitalist society on earth. And it's true that PLP needs to win workers away from passivity and to the understanding that we are a potentially revolutionary class. Whether we and our friends organize anti-racist actions ourselves or whether we participate in those organized by others around ideas like religious pacifism, we need to put forward communist ideas to the workers and youth involved in them.
California Red
REDEYE REDEYE
US uses Nazi war crime methods
The president's terminology concerning the still-secret "enhanced interrogation techniques" that he insists are "crucial" to American success, according to the conservative writer Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic magazine, was originally Nazi. It was used to describe SS and Gestapo practices that in 1948 were determined to have been war crimes subject to the death penalty. (William Pfaff, Tribune Media, 6/22)
Media quiet on capitalist crimes
Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet....
[Perkins writes] This empire "is as ruthless as any in history....It has enslaved more people and its policies and actions have resulted in more deaths than those under the imperial regimes of Rome, Spain, Portugal, France, England and Holland or at the hands of...Adolph Hitler, and yet its crimes go almost unnoticed.... (NYT, 7/15)
New Orleans renters are frozen out
Hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt, in fact, and the local and federal governments have done almost nothing to make it possible for low-income renters....to return....
For thousands of evacuees like Ms. Cole, going home to New Orleans has become a vague and receding dream....In bleak circumstances, they...have nothing to go back to. (NYT, 7/12)
Black capitalism = black exploiters
Her patience snapped in May when men in red boiler suits came to demolish her home....
They promised me a house, but they say, "Wait, wait, wait," said Mampane. "So I am waiting. But it is not right to come and knock down the house I have before they build me a new one. This is what we expected from apartheid, not from our own government. I think they have forgotten us...."
Hundreds of...protests have spread across South Africa, fueled by anger at the slow pace of change. Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, the poverty gap here remains among the largest in the world....
Where the fault line between the haves and have-nots once ran almost exclusively along racial lines, the ANC's policy of BlackEconomicEmpowerment has created a class of super-rich blacks, many of whom have links to the ruling party....
Smuts Ngonyama, a former spokesman for President Thabo Mbeki, asked to explain why he received shares in a private company while working for the government, said he did not join the struggle against apartheid to remain poor. Tokyo Sexwale, one of the few ANC leaders to have declared that he is running to succeed Mbeki, has also been forced to defend his extraordinary accumulation of wealth. (GW, 7/6)
US equal opportunity is a myth
In America, there is more than a 40 percent chance that if a father is in the bottom fifth of the earnings' distribution, his son will end up there, too. (NYT, 7/13)
US succeeding in wrecking Iraq
Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraq health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. (NYT, 6/25)
How wages can kill communism
Switzerland was holding a referendum about where to put nuclear waste dumps. Researchers went door-to-door...and asked people if they would accept a dump in their communities. Though people thought such dumps might be dangerous... 50 percent of those who were asked said they would accept one. People felt responsibility....
But when people were asked if they would accept a nuclear waste dump if they were paid a substantial sum each year (equal to about six weeks' pay for the average worker), a remarkable thing happened. Now...only about 25 percent of respondents agreed. The offer of cash undermined the motive to be a good citizen....
The offer of money, in effect, told people that they should consider only their self-interest. (NYT, 7/2)
Laws won't help workers' strength
Firing employees for endeavoring to form unions has been illegal since 1935 under the National Labor Relations Act, but...employers have preferred to violate the law -- the penalties are negligible -- rather than have their workers unionize....And even when workers vote to unionize, companies can refuse to bargain with them and can drag out the process for years -- indeed, forever....When unions win representation elections, 45 percent of the time they then fail to secure contracts from employers. (LAT, 6/20)
PLP History:
Anti-Vietnam War Era Big Leap Forward for PL
PART X -- CONCLUSION
(Part IX described the last gasps of the movement against the war in Vietnam: the mass upsurge over Nixon's 1970 invasion of Cambodia and the National Guard's murder of four demonstrators at Kent State University, and the ensuing demonstration in Washington D.C. It also highlighted the 1968 racist murders of African-American student protestors at South Carolina State University and then Jackson State -- two weeks after Kent State. The need to intensify the struggle against racism thus emerged as one of the key lessons PLP learned from its participation in the anti-war movement.)
SDS was essentially a single-issue reform organization. It rose to prominence over the war in Vietnam and declined as revisionism (abandonment of communist principles) transformed People's War into armed struggle for tactical advantage through U.S.-North Vietnam negotiations.
Throughout the war, the Progressive Labor Party, which had launched the first mass demonstration against the war in 1964, played a crucial ideological, political and practical role within SDS and the anti-war movement in general. PLP gained experience, advanced its political line and recruited large numbers of students and others to its ranks. Many remain Party members and leaders nearly four decades later. Most importantly, the primary lessons emerging from this historic period of struggle are as valid today as in the 1960's and 1970's, despite many changed circumstances:
*Wars waged by the profit system, whether in Vietnam or Iraq, are neither "mistakes" nor "aberrations" but rather the inevitable products of imperialism at a certain stage of its development. They will rage as long as we allow the profit system to survive.
*The main danger to working-class interests is political and comes from within. Revisionism and nationalism killed People's War in Vietnam, as they destroyed the once-mighty working-class rule in the Soviet Union and China. The only antidote to revisionism is a revolutionary communist perspective, on both long-range goals and issues of the moment. PLP did not fully understand this point during the Vietnam period (we retained an erroneous belief in fighting for socialism instead of directly for communism until the early 1980's). But the experience gained from political and practical struggle during the Vietnam years enabled us to break with nationalism and many important aspects of revisionism and to set the stage for further political advances, notably the document "Road to Revolution IV" a decade later.
*Students can start a movement and can play a vital role within it. However, only the working class has the potential power and the need to transform and lead society. Winning students to ally with workers is thus paramount at every stage of the process.
*A revolutionary communist, pro-working-class perspective requires the constant application of Marxist-Leninist analysis and dialectics, as well as the courageous determination to take initially unpopular positions. Communists are trail-blazers, not camp-followers.
PLP had to fight very hard for aspects of its line during the Vietnam period. Events later proved these ideas to be correct on every major question: opposing the war in the first place, calling for the U.S. to get out of Vietnam rather than to "end the bombing" and "negotiate," identifying Ho Chi Minh and his cronies as revisionists, attacking nationalism, condemning the Paris "peace" negotiations as a betrayal of People's War, etc. This lesson is as important as ever today, symbolized by the current presence of Nike, Ford & Co., invited into Vietnam to profit from the exploitation of Vietnamese workers.
*Class struggle and militancy are inseparable from the battle over correct ideas and politics. As this series has shown, PLP's ideological credibility and strength varied directly with the tactical leadership it provided in scores of battles on campuses from Harvard to San Francisco State. Our success in fighting for our line accompanied our determination to fight the ruling class.
*Liberal politicians and ideologues were then, and remain today, the primary external threat to workers, pro-working class students, and revolutionary communists. The liberal JFK started the Vietnam War. The liberal LBJ prolonged it. Like Bush today, the Republican Nixon justifiably emerged as the politician everyone loved to hate, but the liberal Democrat, "Clean Gene" McCarthy, administered the main body blow to the anti-war movement by successfully channeling student militancy into a dead-end electoral trap. Democratic Party politicians and the bosses for whom they front are setting a similar trap for millions opposed to today's oil war in Iraq. One of PLP's major tasks will be to win large numbers of the war's opponents to break away from Clinton, Obama, Edwards, et al. No capitalist politician is for peace: scratch a liberal and you'll uncover an imperialist butcher.
*Fighting hard over ideas also requires the skill to work with people with whom we have serious disagreements. Everyone, including us, has reformist ideas to a greater or lesser extent. People with bad ideas aren't necessarily enemies. We didn't adequately grasp this concept during the Vietnam period. Fighting the corrupt, right-wing leadership of the SDS National Office was necessary, but in the process, we managed to alienate a significant number of people we could have neutralized if not won over. This may seem like ancient history, but it really isn't. Work in mass organizations is more difficult and complex today than ever, in a period when success is measured by recruits in the single digits. Revolutionary work demands that we perfect the art of struggling over principle while at the same time giving as many people as possible the opportunity to embrace communist ideas and PLP.
*Less talk, more action: FIGHT RACISM!
LESSONS 0F '67 NEWARK REBELLION:
TO ERASE RACISM, DESTROY CAPITALISM
NEWARK, N.J., June 27 -- An integrated group of over 500 people viewed the documentary film "Revolution `67" here tonight. July 12-16 marks the 40th anniversary of the rebellion, and an abridged version of the movie was recently shown on the PBS program "P.O.V." The movie uses actual footage taken before and at the time of the rebellion, pictures from contemporary magazines, and interviews with Newark residents, politicians, community activists, and a few historians to paint a picture of the economic and social conditions that existed in Newark at that time. It is a useful movie, especially for young people who are unaware of the dynamic character of that period of history.
The film is strong in accurately describing what occurred as a "rebellion" against racism. It graphically portrays the N.J. rulers' brutal response -- the deployment of state police and then National Guard units into the city resulting in the racist murder of at least 24 city residents, the arrest and/or wounding of thousands of others, and the trashing of many black-owned stores by the cops.
The film also exposes the racist mythology pushed by the bosses' press at the time -- including the New York Times -- that there were large numbers of "black snipers" firing at the cops and Guard, in what was termed a "race riot." This lie was used to justify the murder of black people. None of the cops, including one caught on camera by a Life Magazine photographer, were even indicted for these horrible crimes.
That said, the film's main weakness is hiding the truth that the whole capitalist system -- widespread unemployment, cop terror, racist housing segregation, etc -- was behind the diverse causes of the rebellion. Newark's manufacturing bosses, in search of maximum profit like so many others in the North and Midwest, began leaving the city in the late 1940s and 1950s. Large numbers of black farmers and agricultural workers from the South began coming to the city for jobs at about the same time. Some of these "migrants" found jobs; many did not.
Blacks moving north found government-encouraged and bank-funded barriers dividing newly-built suburbs from cities with older housing stock. White workers, many of them World War II veterans, whose parents had migrated to the city in the late 1800s and early 1900s, began leaving Newark and other cities in droves. Once Newark's population was mostly black, city services and infrastructure deteriorated sharply. Banks, slumlords and real estate speculators -- with police violence backing them up -- earned extra profits by collecting mortgage interest and rents while at the same time abandoning any pretense of doing necessary maintenance or repairs. Housing segregation -- the material basis for post-Jim Crow racism -- became the stake in the heart of the black and white unity which had emerged under communist leadership from the titanic struggles of the working class during the Great Depression.
Capitalism created the oppressive conditions that made Newark and other rebellions against racism inevitable. Then, after the rebellions, liberal capitalists helped create and fund misleaders from the black community whose job it was to direct black workers into anything but an attack on the capitalist system that caused these problems. These misleaders convinced black workers that racism could be eliminated through reform. Some of them are interviewed and portrayed favorably. Nationalism was also used to fool workers into backing politicians who would protect "their" interests.
The movie also distorts the role of "white radicals" in causing the Newark rebellion. Tom Hayden, a founder of SDS who left the organization before the rebellion, is shown as a key leader, when in reality the uprising was a spontaneous response to systemic racism. The rebellion, however, did occur in the context of a growing movement against racism and imperialism, which included an SDS increasingly influenced by our Party.
PLP has always made the fight against racism an essential part of our leadership of the working class. We have always said that capitalism's need for profit, and to divide those whom it exploits, made slavery and modern-day racism inevitable. Only a working class united against racism has the potential to seize power from the class which promotes it. And only a communist revolution that destroys the material basis for the exploitation of our class can ever consign the bloody history of racism to a distant memory. Join us!
Katrina, Racism and the Need for Communist Revolution
Anti-Racists Hold Line vs. Fascist Minuteman
a href="#New Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims">"ew Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims
- Want More Lethal Boots On The Ground
- Liberal Pols Need Draft But Afraid To Say So
- a href="#‘Humanitarianism’ Masks War Agenda">‘H"manitarianism’ Masks War Agenda
a href="#Court’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules">"ourt’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules
Fight Over Pensions, Union Rules Becomes School for Communism
Communist Ideas Inspire the Working Class At Oaxaca Mega March
NJ Human/Legal Services Workers Fight Attacks on Immigrants
Boeing and Subcontractor Workers, Unite! The Nuts and Bolts of Industrial Fascism
Mexico: Fired Delphi Workers Fight for Severance Pay
a href="#As Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…">"s Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…
a href="#Iraq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War">"raq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War
a href="#Colombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks">"olombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks
a href="#Chile: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors">Ch"le: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors
LETTERS
Nixonite Feared SDS/PLP in 1970 Postal Strike
a href="#Film Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children">Fi"m Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children
Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Felt on Factory Floor
- US Iraq plan: Leave without leaving
- Loan-shark profits now go to big biz
- Soldier to vet — a disaster journey
- CIA bad old days? US today is worse
- Roosevelt task: rescue US capitalism
- ‘Nothing to live for,’ so Russians drink
- Fine art of government hypocrisy
- Child labor ‘deep-rooted’ in China now
a href="#PL History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp">"L History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp
a href="#Racist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges">"acist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges
PLP Promotes Communist Politics at Social Forum
a href="#Why Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?">Wh" Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?
Katrina, Racism and the Need for Communist Revolution
Nearly two years have passed since August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina exposed the vicious racism of U.S. capitalism to the world. Today, New Orleans’ population is barely more than half what it was, and 213,000 black workers and their families have been unable to return. Thousands of New Orleanians live in gutted-out houses with no electricity and must rely on volunteers for food. Death rates have risen 47%, due to the closing of hospitals and the ciy’s unhealthy conditions. There are no plans to rebuild the lower Ninth Ward, previously home to 20,000 working-class black people, among those the ruling class and their government left to die. Those residents had weak, low, non-maintained, non-functioning levees which easily flooded, while rich neighborhoods, the French Quarter, commercial shipping and the business district were protected with high, strong levees that worked.
The New Orleans Housing Authority and HUD have spent tens of millions of dollars tearing down 5,100 structurally sound public-housing apartments. Fewer than 700 of the 109,000 families who applied for federal housing assistance have received it, even though Louisiana received $10 billion in federal money.
In Biloxi, Mississippi, the government quickly aided the casinos, but the working class is still waiting.
These horror stories and others show that capitalism is about profits, not about serving the people. Local businessmen recruited tens of thousands of migrant workers to the Gulf Coast, promising good wages and working conditions. Instead, these mostly Latino workers are living out of cars or in tent cities. As usual, the rulers have attempted to pit black and Latino workers ("old slaves and new slaves") against each other.
The ruling class has used Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath to build racism in other ways as well. Most people remember the pictures of white families "finding food" and black families "looting" after the storm hit, the exaggerated stories of crime, and the utter disregard for basic human needs of mostly black families in the Superdome and Convention Center. There were also the shocking stories of black flood victims, denied access at gunpoint, to bridges out of the city. Recently, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes have taken that racism a step further, passing ordinances to keep black people from building houses there. (Much of this information is from Bill Quigley, in Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley02262007.html)
The capitalist leaders, from the mayor to the governor to the president, who refused to lift a finger to evacuate the more than 100,000 trapped black workers from the city, are still doing nothing. Working-class students, church and union members and others, however, have poured into New Orleans to offer what assistance they can. While Hurricane Katrina revealed the vicious racist core of the capitalist system and exposed U.S. bosses and politicians as merciless killers, it also showed the heart and soul of the working class and its potential for unity. This summer, PLP will again go to New Orleans — to volunteer, yes, but also to introduce the idea of communist revolution. Those affected by the ravages of capitalism in New Orleans have much to gain from joining PLP and helping to destroy the capitalist system. In its place, the working class will build an egalitarian communist society, in which all contribute what they can and receive what they need.
Glimmers of a communist future have shown themselves in the aftermath of Katrina. A multi-racial group of shipbuilders, led by black workers, struck last March in Pascagoula, Mississippi, against the warmaker Northrop-Grumman with some demands based on compensation for post-Katrina government neglect. Many workers in New Orleans selflessly risked their lives to rescue relatives, neighbors and strangers. They shared the meager provisions they had. Armed black youth organized society based on need. They provided protection and resisted threats and attacks from cops. Workers outside the New Orleans area raised money, collected needed items and organized relief. Many traveled to the devastated area to work in shelters, tend to the sick and evacuate people to hospitals. In a consciously anti-racist way, many sought out the most neglected populations and provided whatever help they could. This summer in New Orleans CHALLENGE readers and friends have an opportunity to be part of this positive movement. Join Us!
Anti-Racists Hold Line vs. Fascist Minuteman
LOS ANGELES, CA, June 23 — Coming on the heels of the police attack on pro-immigrant protestors at MacArthur Park, over 500 people — black, Latino and white — confronted the Minutemen and one of their leaders, Ted Hayes, in South Central LA (historically a black neighborhood, with more Latinos moving in).
Hayes, who is black, has drawn much publicity telling black workers that immigrants are to blame for high black unemployment, trying to split the two groups. But the large turnout of black workers and youth at today’s demonstration shows that many workers are rejecting these fascist lies. PL’ers came with CHALLENGES, leaflets, red flags and posters. As one youth who sold CHALLENGE said, "The bosses are trying to divide us, but today the multi-racial unity of the working class was stronger."
The Minutemen led a procession of about 50-75 anti-immigrant demonstrators along half of Crenshaw Blvd, headed for Leimert Park. The 500 anti-racists took the other half. Our communist leaflets and CHALLENGES were eagerly grabbed. We denounced the police for protecting the racist Minuteklan, blamed capitalism as the source of the racist attacks on the working class and expanding war, and called for communist revolution by a united working class to end these evils.
Residents were angered when they saw a cordon of cops protecting the Minuteklan, Hayes and a handful of black supporters. Many area residents, especially black workers and youth, joined the protest. Some yelled, "Ted Hayes, you’re an Uncle Tom." When we chanted, "Leimert, MacArthur Park, New Orleans, Smash the racist War Machine!" many joined the chant.
The cops said if we didn’t stop using the bullhorn, they would arrest us. Then a group of black youth, with their fists in the air, took the bullhorn and yelled "F#@+ the Police." Many joined in chants of "Racism is the bosses’ tool. We won’t be divided and we won’t be fooled!" Residents cheered when someone said, "If the police weren’t here, the Minutemen wouldn’t last two minutes."
When the racist filth arrived at the park entrance with a permit to rally, black, white and Latino workers blocked them. Many locked arms and yelled, "Hold the line" to make it clear to the Minutemen and the cops alike that they would fight against the racists entering the park. The cops put on their riot gear. More people joined the line. Their anger was clear, so the cops decided not to clash with the multi-racial crowd, especially in the wake of the May 1 police attack on people in MacArthur Park.
The Minutmen were at a corner of the street surrounded by their cop protectors for two hours while workers and youth chanted and jeered them and the cops. Hayes used his sound system to attack the black workers demonstrating against him, calling them racist names — proving that racism against immigrants and against black workers are all part of the Minuteklan — angering the crowd even more.
At this march, PL’ers re-connected with some former co-workers and friends. This opens up many opportunities for the Party and reflects long-term work in fighting racist capitalism.
U.S. imperialism finds its empire not only in decline but being challenged by rising rival imperialists. But the agenda of the Minutemen and Hayes is secondary to the liberals’ agenda of winning black and Latino working-class youth to nationalism, patriotism (loyalty to the rulers) and support for imperialist war. The liberal bosses, fronted by the likes of Clinton, Obama and Villaraigosa, have a life-and-death need to rely on these very same working-class youth and workers in the war industry and in the military that the Minutemen are attacking. They need a lot more cannon fodder for their wider wars. Therefore, the big imperialists want to pass the Dream Act (funneling immigrant youth into the military, promising citizenship) as a first step to instituting the "national service" draft for all youth.
Only revolution for communism, not reform, will defeat the fascists, big and little, and put the united working class in power. J
a name="New Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims">">"ew Liberal Think-Tank Pushes Rulers’ War Aims
Hillary Joins Killers Perry, Albright at Opening
Liberal imperialists have just launched a new think-tank that makes the main issue in the 2008 presidential election rebuilding the U.S. military for deadlier conflicts. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), headed by war criminals William Perry and Madeleine Albright, seeks "to develop strong, pragmatic, and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values."
In Washington on June 27, White House hopeful Hillary Clinton, praising hosts Perry and Albright, who had helped her husband bomb Bosnian, Serbian, and Iraqi civilians, delivered the center’s inaugural address. Some view the CNAS as a shadow policy apparatus for Hillary. But it supports no single candidate, compelling them all to address the primary task of U.S. rulers, preparing for wars beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
Want More Lethal Boots On The Ground
In her speech, Clinton lauded the authors of a 56-page CNAS study, "Shaping U.S. Ground Forces for the Future: Getting Expansion Right." Calling for an immediate addition of 100,000 foot soldiers to the Army and Marines, it says, "the U.S. military must become a truly ‘full-spectrum force,’ as proficient in irregular operations as it is in conventional war fighting." The Pentagon needs to get much better at combating underground Islamist insurgents throughout the Middle East, says the CNAS.
Meanwhile, the U.S. brass must plan for an eventual great-power clash with China, Russia, India or Europe — or some combination thereof. One crucial mission the report identifies is invading the U.S. empire’s crumbling cornerstone, Saudi Arabia, remarking, "deploying U.S. forces to operate in regions where it has vital interests." As noted in the liberals’ 1979 Carter Doctrine, "vital interests" means U.S. oil companies’ access to Mid-East crude.
Liberal Pols Need Draft But Afraid To Say So
But U.S. rulers face a quandary at home as stark as the challenges from foreign rivals: where to get the troops? The CNAS understands that candidates have to simultaneously demand and soft-sell militarization. "While the U.S. military has been mobilized since September 11, 2001, the nation has not. Perhaps the most consequential step the next president could take would be a Kennedy-esque call for all Americans to contribute in some way to the nation’s security, including by serving in the military."
After Vietnam, it has been hard to attract recruits to U.S. imperialism’s war machine, other than committed racists and the desperate poor. Mere mention of a draft (to which the rulers will ultimately resort) would torpedo any candidate. John Kerry’s "national service" plank helped doom his 2004 bid. The CNAS hopes a second 9/11 will answer its prayers. Yet another paper from this fledging, but prolific, policy factory, "After an Attack: Preparing Citizens for Bioterrorism," hopes terrorists will provide another chance to put the nation on a war footing.
At the CNAS kick-off, Clinton reiterated the liberal imperialists’ calls for "strategic redeployment" from Iraq, that is, a regrouping for a massive Mid-East assault to counter "looming challenges in the region." Decrying the failed Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld "go-it-alone" approach, she hailed "strong alliances that can apply military force." To build popular, international support for U.S. "moral authority" to lead invading coalitions, Clinton suggested humanitarian fig leaves. Disaster relief efforts, and action against genocide, human rights abuses, and even global warming, she said, could justify to the world, and thus ensure the success of, future U.S. overseas military adventures. Hillary welcomed the Pentagon’s recently-created Africa Command, which uses the plight of Darfurians and others to legitimize U.S. military presence in the Horn of Africa, a strategic world oil-shipping choke point.
a name="‘Humanitarianism’ Masks War Agenda"></">‘H"manitarianism’ Masks War Agenda
Clinton echoed the sentiments of another new think-tank piece, "America and the Use of Force: Sources of Legitimacy" from the liberal Brookings Institution. Written by Brookings fellow Michael O’Hanlon, who is also a CNAS adviser, and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment, it laments that, "In the wake of the Iraq war, the United States is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. [F]or it is questionable whether the United States can operate effectively over the long term without the moral support and approval of the democratic world."
Acknowledging that the United States may resort to military action more, not less, often in the future, it describes the "paralysis" of the United Nations Security Council, in which U.S. adversaries China, Russia and France brandish vetoes. The paper sees charity work as U.S. imperialism’s saving smokescreen. "Violence and chaos in Cuba following the death of Castro could prompt a US-led international intervention both to avert a humanitarian disaster and to ensure a desirable transition from the US point of view."
For global war, it envisions "creating a Concert of Democracies" that includes NATO and other possible allies, of varying might and loyalty, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. O’Hanlon and Kagan conclude, "There is an effective and viable alternative to multi-lateral paralysis and unilateral action — working with our democratic partners in NATO and around the world to meet and defeat the global challenges of our age."
Clinton is not alone in embracing the rulers’ ever-expanding war agenda. CHALLENGE has written of Obama’s true-blue imperialism. Future articles will deal with pro-war liberals like Edwards, Richardson and Al Gore. As they try to justify coming bloodshed, we should bear one point in mind. The profit system that the liberals represent and defend has no moral legitimacy. Capitalism is based, and thrives, on theft, brutality and mass murder. Capitalists steal workers’ labor in the form of profits. They rely on police, courts and prison terror to enforce their will at home. They slaughter millions in wars carving the world into spheres of influence. Electing a Democrat won’t end the carnage. Building a party that organizes for wiping out this deadly system through communist revolution is a far better choice.
a name="Court’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules">">"ourt’s Schools Decision: Racism Rules
On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling banning public schools from using "race" as a factor in integrating schools. Seattle and Louisville used the "race" of potential students to maintain a balance of diverse students within their districts’ schools. White parents sued both cities, claiming their children were discriminated against.
The Court used the very arguments from the famous 1954 case which ended legal segregation in schools, Brown v. Board of Education, to now ban using "race" to maintain integrated schools. In the Brown decision, "race" was the only basis on which children were assigned to schools in the segregated South. Therefore, the lawyers opposing segregation stated that, "No state has any authority…to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens." (NY Times, 6/29) That 1954 statement was quoted by the Court majority in this current decision as "proof" that efforts to use "race" now to keep schools integrated violated the intentions of the people who fought to win the Brown case! (Of course, the rulers at many government levels virtually ignored this ruling and actually re-segregated the schools, their status today. See next CHALLENGE on this history.)
This ruling has angered and disappointed many honest people who believe the myth that Supreme Court decisions are based on the law and not on political opinions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The original Brown decision was decided by a Court very aware of how bad Southern legal segregation looked worldwide while the U.S. was engaged in an ideological battle against communism — which promised true equality. The decision was a message to the world that capitalism could offer the same promises as communism.
That was a lie then and remains so today. Capitalism absolutely relies on racism for super-profits and as a means to divide the working class. The fact that these two lawsuits were brought by white parents is significant. Rather than uniting as a multi-racial force demanding better schools for all students, workers are tricked into believing that some other "race" is getting a better deal. Meanwhile, the bosses are sucking money away from schools to finance their war budget.
The most dangerous lie is that voting will solve this disgusting Court decision. The Democrats will use this case to campaign for the workers’ vote in the 2008 election. Much will be made of the particularly racist character of Bush’s three Supreme Court appointments: Scalia, Roberts and Alito. Those three, plus the vile Justice Thomas, represent the views of "neocon" conservatives. CHALLENGE has exposed how this group is making a mess of the main liberal ruling-class wing’s broad imperialist plans.
While this is certainly a problem for these liberals, we should have no illusions. Racist, overcrowded, under-funded public schools will not improve through voting for any candidate or changing the Supreme Court. They will improve only when the system has the best interests of all workers as its goal. That system is communism, not capitalism. J
Fight Over Pensions, Union Rules Becomes School for Communism
PHILADELPHIA, PA.— "Our pension is the best! I’d give up 1% of my raise to protect it!"
"But why are we workers always the ones giving stuff up? The bosses on the Board of Trustees are some of the richest people in the region. How come they never give anything up?"
"Well, the revolution isn’t here yet! We need to give up something to help the pension fund get past this crisis."
"But we already gave up stuff to help the pension fund get past the last crisis! And we keep paying more to help our Medical Benefit Fund with its never-ending crises. And we keep losing jobs with the hospital’s continuing budget crises! It’s always a crisis for workers under capitalism!"
This battle of ideas (with a group of workers who are among the union activists and militants at our hospital) will continue over the next few weeks as the hospital workers union calls for union members to approve diverting one percent of our raise to "protect" our pension fund.
Compared to other workers’ pensions (or lack of pension) our pension is truly one of the best. When combined with Social Security, it has allowed the largely black custodians, dietary workers, nursing assistants and others to have the same income or better as when they were working. The union training fund offers opportunities to workers of all ages to become a nurse or x-ray tech, for example, instead of remaining a custodian or dietary worker. Racist unemployment has left a huge number of black workers in horrible poverty in this city. As critical as many union members are of the union leaders, they nonetheless deeply value the reform accomplishments of the union over the last several decades. The mainly black union leadership has also fairly skillfully used the ideas of black nationalism to keep the union members’ loyalty.
So winning these workers to communist revolution requires persistence, sensitivity, true friendship, an effort to understand the struggles of workers’ everyday lives and a good sense of humor — even as all these "accomplishments" are being taken away from us, particularly in this era of endless imperialist wars and unending capitalist financial crisis.
Two months ago workers organized a benefit for a union member disabled because he needed a transplant. Three hundred people came to a catered dinner and show that included 50 entertainers. The audience and the entertainers were multi-racial, black, Latin, Asian and white; the Vietnamese hip-hop group was one of the favorites of the night! The event was a tremendous success despite a propaganda campaign by the right-wing union delegates and the sexist ideas of some of the male union members that such an ambitious affair couldn’t be organized by a committee of almost all women, and particularly women from housekeeping and nursing. The point that such a benefit would be unnecessary under communism was also made to many workers.
A month later a larger group of union delegates and union members marched on the union hall to protest the efforts of a right-wing union delegate and the hospital bosses to slip a non-union member into a job over a union member. In the ensuing screaming match, a union official was forced to admit her "friend" made a mistake. In the end, the union member got the job.
Actions like these build morale and confidence and strengthen our ties with the workers participating. But it can be a double-edged sword that keeps workers thinking that reform fights are all we need — just with more workers and more militance. That’s why we pointed to the recent CHALLENGE article from Mexico that reported on hundreds of thousands of workers marching and protesting.
Those are numbers we in this hospital dream about right now. The article made the point that without a revolutionary communist outlook, even large numbers of workers, no matter how militant, can still be trapped in capitalism and under the heel of one "lesser-evil" boss or union leader or another. Small groups or large, whether the reform fight wins or fails, the primary victory is when more workers become communists.
Union activists at this hospital are discussing what we should propose to the union members regarding our raise and the pension fund: Do we support the union leaders’ proposal? Do we strike? Are we organized to strike? How do we use this to better organize the workers to strike? How do we build better ties with the non-union workers, doctors and nurses? And most important: how can all this build for communist revolution?
Communist Ideas Inspire the Working Class At Oaxaca Mega March
OAXACA, MEXICO — On June 14, a year after the major battle in Oaxaca between the striking teachers and the army, more than 600,000 people participated in a Mega March in the streets here. The workers of Section 22 of the teachers’ union and the members of APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Qaxaca) are continuing the struggle.
PLP prepared for this event in discussions and meetings and participated in the march, leading chants and distributing thousands of leaflets exposing this rotten capitalist system. The comrades added a revolutionary character to the march, while calling on teachers, youth, students and workers to join PLP.
The following weekend was filled with Party activities. Young students and friends of the Party participated in a communist school. It included a deep discussion on the Party document "Road to Revolution IV," inter-imperialist rivalry, and an analysis of the movement in Oaxaca that inspired many workers around Mexico and the world.
One youth participant asked to join the Party, committing herself to strengthen the political work among women workers. Others agreed to continue participating in more PLP meetings.
Knowing that students and workers accept our ideas and literature motivates us to continue organizing, writing and discussing the Party’s ideas in order to recruit other workers to PLP.
Given that the road to revolution is a long one, we must redouble our efforts, with building confidence and deepening relations among the workers as our main task. Understanding that the working class is the only class capable of generating value, and that the bosses only suck the blood of the workers without producing even what they eat, we can organize to build a world without bosses and exploitation! LONG LIVE COMMUNISM!
NJ Human/Legal Services Workers Fight Attacks on Immigrants
NEWARK, NJ, June 20 — Human services and legal services workers today discussed attacks on undocumented immigrants and what to do about them; the fight against racism; the war in Iraq; and the DREAM Act (see below). These workers were delegates to the National Joint Council (NJC) of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW Local 2320, held in Las Vegas.
This action was the culmination of a six-month-long campaign within a local union branch. A resolution was circulated in the branch pledging resistance to any law which required workers to turn in undocumented immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security, placing this call for action squarely in the context of growing racism, fascism and guest-worker slavery. It condemned both the openly fascist HR 4437 passed last year, which criminalized undocumented immigrants and those who support them; and the DREAM Act, a proposed law which promises residency to young immigrants in return for service in the bosses’ military, meaning fighting and dying in imperialist wars to control oil.
There was a lively debate within the local branch. Some of our clients are undocumented, with citizen or permanent resident children, so this was not an academic question. Many legal workers were not aware of the racist history of immigration law, of the use of guest workers in low-wage industries, of the need for fascist laws in order to mobilize the U.S. population for war, and of the history behind the struggle of the abolitionist movement to wipe out slavery. All these issues and others were debated during the campaign.
A weakness was insufficient discussion about the role of borders under capitalism. However, the need to destroy the profit system with a communist revolution has been discussed with many union members. During the debate over the resolution, more people saw CHALLENGE and other communist literature for the first time. More people in the local branch moved into action against racism. Several attended three different rallies — one to protest racist talk radio, one against racist police murder and the third to oppose attacks on immigrants.
Quite a few branch members supported open "resistance" against any law requiring them to collaborate with the bosses’ Homeland Security by turning in immigrants. The final version of the local resolution removed that language, instead pledging to continue the fight against racism by protecting immigrants "to the fullest extent of the law." However, the debate caused many members to deeply examine what principles they were willing to uphold.
After the local branch asked the NJC to consider the resolution, one of the union’s national leaders asked the local to remove the language opposing the DREAM Act before the NJC, saying we shouldn’t upset our "friends" in the immigrant rights movement who support it. The local branch voted to keep this opposition. Ultimately, the NJC voted to remove only the language opposing the DREAM Act. But that vote was preceded by a sharp and extended debate. Afterwards, many delegates came forward to congratulate the delegate who introduced the resolution and stood up for its content.
A key lesson in this battle was that the final language of any pledge or resolution is less important than the political struggle and debate involved in it. The working class is one class internationally. An increased understanding among workers, soldiers and others of the need to build a movement to smash racism and unite workers worldwide, and the role of communists in that fight, is a step forward on the road to communist revolution.
Boeing and Subcontractor Workers, Unite! The Nuts and Bolts of Industrial Fascism
SEATTLE, WA.—"It’s amazing what it comes down to," said Mike Bair, the Boeing vice president in charge of the multibillion-dollar Dreamliner program. "We’re getting to the point that every bolt is important." (Wall Street Journal, 6/19) The company can’t get enough fasteners, which connect airplane sections, from its primary subcontractor, Alcoa. This saga of the lowly fastener reveals the development of industrial fascism. The bosses have no other viable alternative.
The Boeing manager of a large subassembly plant admitted the company can’t get fasteners on time because subcontractors can’t hire enough machine operators "at the rates they are willing to pay." (See article Page 7 on similar subcontracting factory) When Boeing workers complained about forced overtime because of the last- minute arrival of fasteners, our CHALLENGE readers started discussions about what to do on the shop floor.
The company knew about this problem for a long time. They’ve been sending managers down to these subcontractors nearly every week.
Boeing is just greedy and has lots of money, some said. If we apply some serious pressure, Boeing will "do the right thing" and grant concessions to these underpaid workers.
Our comrades argued for a different approach. The logic of capitalism is that if you can’t even get desperate workers to work under these horrible conditions, then you just make workers more desperate.
This is doubly true now. U.S. imperialism’s weaknesses have become apparent in the last few years, highlighted by the Iraq debacle. The ruling class knows it must re-industrialize for the bigger wars ahead if they hope to remain top-dog. They must re-tool on the backs of lower-paid, mostly non-union subcontractor labor. These new industrial sweatshops employ huge numbers of black and Latin workers.
Today, the majority of industrial workers are non-union, centered in these subcontractors. These subcontractors drive down everybody’s working conditions. In Seattle, new hires start at an average of $12.72/hour — less that half the wages of veteran employees. The time it takes to make maximum pay has increased from 5 years to 15.
Unfortunately, the main contradiction in the world today is between U.S. imperialism and fast-charging imperialist competitors. As long as this contradiction holds sway, we can expect this racist exploitation to intensify. If you want to know what fascism looks like, just ask these super-exploited subcontractor workers.
We can only change this dynamic by changing this contradiction. The working class must take on the bosses’ system with communist revolution. Every new CHALLENGE reader, every new party member helps us wage the long battle to break out of this imperialist nightmare.
Boeing And Subcontractor Workers Unite!
To intensify class struggle, we are building a campaign around two demands for our contract next year. Inside the factory, fasteners are called standards because they are built to predetermined standards. The company must not be allowed to accept any standards from plants that don’t meet minimum labor standards. A related demand is that starting wages be raised and the time to maximum pay be shortened.
The capitalist wage system inexorably increases wage inequality. Throughout this campaign, we must win those with whom we fight this inequality to the need to smash capitalism.
As one friend said, "I’m an older guy. I’d like to retire with a decent pension, but what really matters to me is what happens to the next generation of workers — our kids." Such class-consciousness will help us build our revolutionary movement.J
Mexico: Fired Delphi Workers Fight for Severance Pay
REYNOSA, MEXICO, June 30 — Last year, Delphi fired 250 workers here, many of them single mothers. Their excuse? "Failure to buy expensive safety shoes." But the real reason was Delphi’s aim to slash production and the workforce. Delphi, one of Mexico’s largest private employer, has refused to pay these fired workers severance pay mandated by law. To top it off, on April 27 the local labor board said it "lost" the paperwork for the severance pay demand.
On May 1, a militant group of workers picketed the board before joining many other workers marching on May Day against the bosses and their union hacks who sign contracts favoring employers. This action made the paperwork "miraculously" appear.
These workers need the kind of international solidarity and support the world’s working class so much lacks in order to make a reality of the communist slogan "Workers of the World, Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." E-mail messages to:
a name="As Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…">">"s Fascist Auto Contracts Loom . . .Two-tier Chickens Come Home to Roost…
DETROIT, MI June 28 – "We’re selling out our children and that’s what bothers me the most." That’s how a Delphi worker in Saginaw, Michigan summed up the new four-year deal between Delphi, GM and the UAW that will accelerate the fascist restructuring of the entire auto industry. The new deal cuts Delphi wages by nearly 50%, closes factories and increases workers’ healthcare costs. It will also spread the two-tier system to GM by reassigning about 1,750 Delphi workers to GM at the lower wages and benefits paid to Delphi workers.
Of the 17,000 UAW members at Delphi, only 4,000 earn GM wages. Most of them voted for a two-tier wage system in 2003 that created a workforce of permanent workers with lower wages and temporary workers. Now the chickens have come home to roost. For the first time, second-tier workers will vote to cut the wages of more senior workers. Those making GM wages will see pay cuts from $28 an hour to $14 or $18.50 an hour. They will also have their health benefits slashed to match those of workers hired under the two-tier wage system. This is the legacy of the pro-capitalist union leaders.
GM will pay more than $8 billion for buyouts and "buy-down" payments to soften the blow of the huge pay and health cuts. Workers who take a buyout must leave by September 15. GM will cover those costs with nearly $2 billion in annual savings once Delphi’s costs are "competitive."
Delphi will keep only four UAW plants, and negotiate new "competitive work rule" local contracts within 60 days. It will sell four plants, transfer ownership of three to GM or a third-party designated by GM, and close at least 10 more plants. GM and the UAW agreed to cut retiree health care, eliminate 30,000 jobs and close 12 U.S. plants in 2005.
Casting a growing shadow over the "competitive costs and work rules" is the Chinese auto industry. "China’s auto parts exports have increased more than six-fold in the last five years, nearly topping $1 billion in April…More than half of these auto parts go to the United States…" (New York Times, 6/7)
CHALLENGE has reported the stories of Delphi workers fighting back in Cadiz, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, plus the strikes of GM, VW, and Renault workers in France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Romania and more. Recently there have been auto strikes in India and South Korea. In May, PLP participated in an international auto workers conference in Germany with workers from 17 countries. All of these struggles reflect the need, and potential for auto workers to unite our struggles globally.
A fighting communist movement can turn international class struggle into a school for communist revolution. We can build personal ties across all borders, support each others’ struggles, and use those struggles to launch our own. The best the pro-capitalist union leaders can do is pay lip service to internationalism because when push comes to shove, the UAW serves GM and Ford, IG Mettal serves Daimler and VW, and the Japanese Auto Workers union serves Toyota, Nissan and Honda. This nationalism/patriotism has led us to where we are today, and will ultimately lead us to war as our bosses fight for markets, resources and cheap labor.
We need to build PLP-led groups around CHALLENGE in every factory we can. These groups should be active in the reactionary unions (if they exist), organize workers to fight back, and oppose the nationalism and racism of the union leadership. These groups must take the fascist conditions being imposed by the rulers into full account. Auto workers have the ability to reach around the world, build international solidarity and spread the revolutionary communist politics of PLP. This is the answer to the future of wage cuts, fascism and war that the bosses have in store for us.
a name="Iraq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War">">"raq Vets Mobilizing Active-Duty GI’s Against The War
GREENBELT, MD., June 23 — Over 50 Iraq war vets, GIs, and supporters held a cookout to kick off the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) summer bus tour. The tour will visit at least six military bases over a two-week period to recruit GIs to the anti-war movement. GIs from two military bases near Washington, D.C. were invited by word of mouth and through leafleting to attend the gathering.
A barbecue was also held in Norfolk, Va., at a park in a working-class black neighborhood which helped to diversify the audience. Although starting out mostly white, the barbecue became multi-racial as guys from the basketball court came over to have some food and chat about politics and struggle.
The launching of an active-duty IVAW chapter at Ft. Meade was announced at the cookout. Several active-duty airmen, sailors and soldiers detailed the incompetence of the chain of command and the need to end the war in Iraq.
Adam Kokesh and Liam Madden, two Marine veterans under attack by the brass for wearing their uniform and making "disloyal" statements (see CHALLENGE, 6/20 both urged the active-duty GIs there to join IVAW. During the cookout it was revealed that the brass had just filed similar charges against Reverend Yearwood, leader of the anti-war "Hip Hop Caucus" and an honorably discharged army chaplain. He must report to Georgia for a July 12 hearing at which he could be given a less-than-honorable discharge from the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve, essentially a civilian status in which a GI discharged from active duty has no chain of command and no drills but has a negative effect on future job applications).
Yearwood is a prominent speaker on the anti-war circuit, but his liberal political electoral strategy is misleading and dangerous. For example, at a recent address given to the Washington Peace Center, he called for people to become "solutionaries, not revolutionaries," belittling the efforts of those seeking to build a revolutionary mass movement against capitalism.
The bus tour’s stops in Washington and Norfolk demonstrate the effectiveness of base-building among the active-duty GIs. The GIs from both cities came from the Appeal For Redress, an initiative in which we’ve been active. We must continue to build among these active-duty soldiers, demonstrating the weakness of the liberal IVAW strategy, thereby giving our friends the only solution to this capitalist nightmare, a communist society!
Despite the bus tour’s success, we struggled with the organizers on two fronts, firstly to see themselves as organizers, not "media-stars." Their vision is for local folks to do all the work for them so that when they come to town, they can talk to media, take photos and give speeches. This is a top-down approach, which mirrors the imperialist/capitalist military and society we’re struggling to transform.
The goal must be for the bus participants to enter towns and help empower the already existing organizing occurring among the active-duty GIs, industrial workers, students and our class as a whole. Instead of talking to media, we should be outreaching in the community against the repression of the brass and the bosses!
Secondly, the bus participants need to diversify and represent the GI Movement as a whole, which spans the so-called "races" and encompasses women.
A successful struggle against imperialist war will require mass resistance by GIs against the brass, in alliance with industrial workers fighting their corporate bosses, all led by revolutionary communists. The mass movement against the war, including IVAW, is quite far from implementing this strategy. Individual resistance is still the norm. While bold, such actions do little to concretely challenge the power of the brass and the bosses they serve. However, among IVAW members, active-duty GIs, and many supporters, there is growing discussion about how to move beyond such individual actions to concerted resistance, and about the need to link the fight against the brass and the war to the broader struggle against racism and the capitalist system.
PLP members engaged in these debates are working hard to bring more GIs from their military units into the mass struggle and into PLP’s ranks to better advance revolutionary strategy. PLP believes that the only solution means becoming a revolutionary communist, for only when the capitalist system is destroyed along with its inherent drive for maximum profit and control over the world’s resources as part of that drive, can we have a solution in the interests of the world’s workers.
a name="Colombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks">">"olombia Mass Marchers Battle Uribe’s Fascist Cops, Cutbacks
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, June 25 — Chanting, "The people are right when they say education health should be first"; "Let’s take to the street to dump Uribe’s paramilitary government," thousands of students and others have been protesting here against social services cutbacks by the right-wing government of President Uribe, the darling of the paramilitary narco mafias and President Bush. His new National Development Plan forces public universities to pay a high percentage of their employees’ pensions. This will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a major blow to public higher education.
Mass meetings at the National University here discussed the repercussions of such government plans. Since May 2 a permanent strike has been under way. Public universities in other regions have joined the struggle.
In Bogotá, six mass marches united campus workers, students, parents and some professors. The marches not only attacked the social services cutbacks, labeling it a privatization plan, but also attacked the firings of workers and the crimes of the paramilitary gangs who enter the universities. The marches were attacked by ESMAD (anti-riot cops) with their armored vehicles, tear gas, pepper gas and water cannons. Many students were arrested and injured, while also fighting back with sticks, rocks and their fists.
Because of the mass protests, Uribe and his Education Minister lied to the press, claiming their budget plan aimed to actually raise the university budget and the quality of education. But tuition will jump 300% to cover the colleges’ pension plan payments, and many working-class students won’t be able to go to college. Already many students have become street vendors to pay for their education. With the new tuition hike, 80% of working-class students will have to drop out.
As the protests grew, Uribe called a so-called Town Meeting, where he was asked many questions and offered no answers. He just said students were "using" the protests to carry out "terrorist" actions. He then ordered the re-starting of classes and the tearing down of the protesting student camps. But students were not intimidated by the threats and decided to continue the struggle.
Wasserman, the National University president, and faithful servant of the IMF-World Bank policies, officially shut the school a month after the struggle began, restricting the students’ entry to the campus, aiming to weaken the struggle and divide students. PLP members and CHALLENGE-DESAFIO readers in these colleges are working very hard to continue the fight. Giving up now will doom public education.
Our Party is fighting to win students to understand that these sharpening bosses’ attacks stem from the current state of world capitalism, with its endless imperialist wars, fascist repression and massive economic attacks against workers and youth. We’re fighting to recruit more workers and youth to our Party, and build the kind of red leadership needed to destroy this system which values paramilitary death squads above the needs of the sons and daughters of the working class.J
a name="Chile: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors"></">Ch"le: Need Intern’l Support for Miners’ Strike vs. Subcontractors
CHILE, June 30 — On June 25, some 28,000 miners, members of a newly-formed union, struck the subcontractors of the state-owned copper corporation here, Codelco. The death of a miner working in El Teniente sparked the walkout. The strikers blocked highways leading to the many divisions of Codelco, the world’s biggest copper producer. Instead of responding to the strikers’ demands, the bosses treated them like criminals and attacked them with riot cops. The strikers fought back, burning eight company buses. Codelco lost $10 million on the strike’s first day.
This is an important strike, not only for these miners but for millions of workers worldwide because they’re demanding that subcontracted workers become permanent and receive the same benefits as the main corporation’s workers.
They’re also demanding medical benefits, housing and bonuses, to share some of the bonanza the company is enjoying because of the high price and worldwide demand of copper. The miners refuse to be treated as second-class workers, and want permanent status.
There are now 80,000 contract workers in Chile’s copper mines, three for every permanent worker. The copper industry was nationalized during the Allende government, but beginning with the fascist Pinochet regime through the current "Socialist" Concertation government, the industry has been privatized bit by bit. International corporations now also make big bucks off these miners’ labor.
There are subcontracted workers in all industries throughout Chile and the world. Many are not in unions. Those in unions are divided among different unions, like the "regular" miners and the subcontracted ones. So the demands of these strikers must be supported by the international working class. As capitalist globalization (imperialism) creates more division of labor, lowering wages worldwide, workers need a revolutionary anti-capitalist internationalist strategy. That’s the kind of leadership PLP offers. Join us! J
LETTERS
Nixonite Feared SDS/PLP in 1970 Postal Strike
The bosses, our class enemies, sometimes see the stakes more sharply than we do. The article "PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike" (CHALLENGE, 7/4) faults the PLP student leadership’s "weakness on the crucial issue of class consciousness." On the other hand, H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s chief of staff, truly understood the significance of a worker-student alliance.
The Nixon administration was depending on "the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class" to sabotage the strike. On March 20, 1970, Haldeman’s diary reads: "Postal problem settled in late afternoon when union leaders agreed to get workers back in, then negotiate."
But the following day Haldeman had to write: "The settlement didn’t work, because rank and file won’t go back, have rejected leaders..." He added: "Threat now is of radicalization, a national strike, other walkouts, i.e. Teamsters, Air Traffic Controllers, etc., to cripple whole country at once." An effective worker-student alliance could have been a ruby spark in that explosive situation, and Haldeman moaned to his diary: "... and now SDS types involved, at least in New York."
But there was no explosion. On April 2, a satisfied Haldeman gloated: "Settlement day. Postal agreement. Knew we had it at noon when [Assistant Secretary of Labor] Usery made deal with [AFL-CIO president George] Meany, but had to go through motions of negotiating session."
In addition to the lesson in CHALLENGE — that criticism and self-criticism are essential in developing class consciousness — there are two other lessons: The treachery of the union misleaders knows no bounds, and even our smallest actions are full of potential.
Old enough to remember Nixon
a name="Film Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children"></">Fi"m Feeds Classless ‘We’ to Starving Children
Globalization has sharpened the contradictions of capitalism; people are seeking explanations for, and solutions to, the problems they’re facing. The capitalist market has responded to this demand with a new generation of documentary films. In them, thanks to the financial viability offered by the TV and DVD markets, filmmakers enjoy greater freedom to present their personal take on the catastrophe that is capitalism.
But these films only offer reformist solutions, ones that never attack the cause of the problem — capitalism. Recent examples include Darwin’s Nightmare and Supersize Me (both 2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and, of course, all the Michael Moore films.
"We Feed the World," made by Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer in 2005, is another such film, now showing in most European countries but still seeking a U.S. distributor. It was financed on a shoestring budget by the six-employee production company Allegrofilm and shot by a one-woman camera team. Consequently, Wagenhofer had complete editorial control, but never gets past reformism.
There are still many good reasons to see this film with your friends. There are entrancing (if romanticized) images of Rumanian farm hands and French fishermen and fish merchants working and taking pride in their work — images resembling old Soviet movies, except for the lush color.
More importantly, the film provides a wide-ranging criticism of the food industry. It does a very good job of revealing the market forces that are eliminating small-scale fishers and farmers and replacing tasty wholesome food with bland processed food. ("Our children will never know the true taste of a tomato.") It furnishes plenty of useful statistics, like: "52% of the world gross domestic product is controlled by 50 multi-nationals."
The film also links the feast in the developed countries and the famine everywhere else. Gigantic corporations are chopping down the Amazon rain forest to plant soy beans, used to fatten European livestock, while Brazilian farmers starve. European-subsidized foodstuffs cost one-third the price of African produce, driving African farmers to become super-exploited undocumented farm workers in Europe. All this is documented with sometimes stunning images.
The film features grandfatherly Jean Ziegler (a communist 50 years ago but now a Social Democrat). This UN special reporter on the right to food thunders that "every five seconds a child under ten dies of starvation. A child that dies of starvation is in effect murdered." But the only answer the film can muster to the question, "Why are they starving?" is a cowardly, "We can’t or won’t feed them." Who or what is the film concealing behind that "we?" It is the capitalist class and the capitalist system!
In short, see this film together with your friends, but take some revolutionary communist politics along with you.
A Film Buff
Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Felt on Factory Floor
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — "That’s it. We aren’t doing any more set-up work if they don’t give us set-up pay. If we stop, production stops coming from those machines. They can stop running for all we care, let ‘em sit," Graciela told me as she marched back from talking to Emilio at his machines and confirming they would stand together through this struggle. "What do you think they’ll do to us?" she continued.
"I think you should fight these bastards!" I replied. They need us more than we need them. Besides who will do the work if you don’t? Not me."
The machines sat silent on the factory floor, producing nothing nor any profit for over a week.
As inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies factory workers are increasingly facing off against the bosses’ attempts to produce more for less and remain competitive (profitable), especially in weapons production. By 2015, China aims to compete with Airbus and Boeing, the world’s two aerospace giants. They launched their most advanced fighter jet ever, and showed they can defend against U.S. spy satellites by downing one of their own with a single missile. Russia is cutting defense industry deals with EADS (Europe’s largest defense contractor), Italy’s Finnameccanica and has consolidated practically its entire aerospace industry into a single state-owned corporation, attempting to strengthen its war production capacity. The imperialist bosses are preparing for major wars against one another.
For industrial workers inter-imperialist rivalry means increased production goals, fewer benefits, longer hours, lower wages and anything else the bosses can do to increase efficiency and profitability since the survival of the every imperialist’s arms industry in the global market is directly linked to its ability to produce at low costs for their wars.
Workers aren’t taking this lying down nor standing alone. In the above factory struggle no one touched the machines on any shift. It forced the bosses to meet with them about their demands.
The production leader in charge of their area commented, "These people aren’t here working their lives away because they want to, they’re here because they have to be. They [the bosses] should just give them what they want. They deserve it. If they’ve decided they won’t do the work I’m not going to make them." He didn’t touch the machines either!
As always the bosses tried to divide the workers, agreeing only to meet with them separately. They were told they "weren’t qualified enough" to be paid for work they were already doing. This enabled us to point out that the profit system’s inter-imperialist rivalry and wars caused this attack, and how we are vital to stopping it.
But most importantly we talked about the Party and CHALLENGE. "Why won’t they just pay us what we deserve if they lose money when the machines aren’t running," Graciela asked later. "The system isn’t set up for that," I explained. "It’s not about what you deserve or need, it’s about their profits. That communist newspaper I was reading showed the way we’re exploited at this plant is the future for all factory workers because the bosses need to produce cheaply for their profits and wars."
Since this struggle Graciela and I have become much closer friends through barbecues and family gatherings, and have had many more discussions about the ruling class, their plans for immigrant workers, racism, sexism, communism, you name it. Graciela and another factory worker we met through her are now regular CHALLENGE readers, have joined a PL study group and are considering joining the Party. There will be more struggles.
Industrial workers and their families are at the heart of capitalism’s contradiction: the need to increasingly exploit those that fight in, and produce for, their wars. The bosses understand that increased exploitation of these workers is not a choice but a necessity for their imperialist ambitions, producing sharper struggle. But struggle for what?
A crucial way forward for our Party is in the factories, bringing communism to these workers, and to building CHALLENGE networks and PLP, eventually turning these schools for communism into struggles for communism.
REDEYE
US Iraq plan: Leave without leaving
Meanwhile in Iraq, the American plan to withdraw U.S. troops beginning this year now exists in a version that disregards whether the surge works or not. A big part of the U.S. force would be pulled back into the big, fortified U.S. bases already prepared. The rest would be shipped home….
This reduced, "permanent" American force in Iraq would supposedly intervene from its bases to support the Iraqi government (assuming that it survives) and Iraq’s (by then privatized?) oil industry installations, and to operate against al-Qaida. (William Pfaff, Tribune Media, 6/14)
Loan-shark profits now go to big biz
Corporate America has decided there’s gold in draining the low-income masses of what little they have. Loan sharks and con artists once dominated this territory, but big businesses have moved in and are proving to be far smoother than the mugs who break legs. Their legal fine print can trap the uneducated in outrageous debt contracts without rousing the authorities….
As Business Week notes, the thing being sold doesn’t matter. It’s just the "bait" to saddle someone with punishing loan terms….
Payday lenders offer workers cash advances on their next paycheck. Wells Fargo and US Bancorp have entered this booming business, charging annual interest rates of 120 percent….
Milking America’s poor is now a global opportunity. (Creators Syndicate)
Soldier to vet — a disaster journey
More than one million men and women…have been cycling home all too anonymously from two war fronts, wounded and otherwise damaged and not making much noise yet.
Their troubles range from the mushrooming brain traumas from roadside explosions to outdated benefits to the costs and cares of World War II….
The government’s backlog of benefits claims to the hundreds of thousands, with the data transition from soldier to veteran status a computer disaster….
At home there’s homelessness on the rise for veterans who also discover that the GI Bill can’t cover the cost of public college. Their unemployment rate is three times the national average. (NYT, 6/18)
CIA bad old days? US today is worse
Comparisons between different historical eras are always tricky. With an incomplete account of C.I.A. misdeeds in its first quarter century from the so-called family jewels….Such a comparison is inevitably flawed….
"These documents are supposed to show the worst of the worst back then….But what’s going on today makes the family jewels pale by comparison." (6/27)
Roosevelt task: rescue US capitalism
Part biography, part policy study, this highly readable book recounts how Franklin D. Roosevelt reinvented the presidency….Roosevelt [Jonathan] Alter writes, resuscitated American capitalism…. (NYT, 7/1)
‘Nothing to live for,’ so Russians drink
Almost half of deaths among working-age men in Russia are caused by drinking illicit alcohol….Increased alcohol consumption has been linked to rising mortality in the early 1990s during the transition from communism….
"I started drinking heavily when I left the Russian army at the age of 25….
Ultimately it’s a disease of the soul. Men and women drink in Russia because they don’t have any spiritual goals. They have nothing to live for." (GW, 6/22)
Fine art of government hypocrisy
The BBC’s Yes Minister…episode titled "The Moral Dimension" [showed] a major sale of British electronics was won by bribing the purchasing country’s finance minister….
"You’re telling me," said a shocked [minister] "that winking at corruption is government policy?"
"Oh, no, Minister," Sir Humphrey assured him, "That would be unthinkable. It could never be government policy — only government practice." (GW, 6/22)
Child labor ‘deep-rooted’ in China now
Chinese newspapers are constantly peppered with accounts of the death and injury of child laborers, and of disputes that arise because of unusually low wages, or the withholding of pay….
"In order to achieve modernization, people will go to any ends to earn money, to advance their interests, leaving behind morality, humanity and even a little bit of compassion, let alone the law or regulations, which are poorly implemented," said Hu Jindou, a professor of economics at the University of Technology in Beijing. "Everything is about the economy now, just like everything was about politics in the Mao era, and forced labor or child labor is far from an isolated phenomenon. It is rooted deeply in today’s reality…." (NYT, 6/21)
a name="PL History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp">">"L History: Protest of Kent State Massacre Anti-war Movement’s Last Gasp
In the spring of 1970, the anti-war movement seemed to be gaining in vigor, numbers and militancy. Campus demonstrations continued, many of them sharp. Less publicized but even more significant, rebellion within the military, including desertion, "fragging" (GI killings of officers) and outright defection to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, gave the bosses and brass fits.
However, this appearance of strength belied a fundamental political weakness, which was to prove decisive in the movement’s unraveling. The class consciousness that would have supplied the only antidote to the treacherous negotiations between U.S. imperialism and North Vietnamese nationalists never gained the force necessary to turn the movement in a revolutionary direction. This was due to the strength and influence of revisionism (the presence of ruler’s ideology within the ranks fof the working class) in the former Soviet Union, China and Vietnam, and also to our Party’s numerical and political weakness. This weakness manifested itself in a number of ways, none sharper than our failure to mobilize significant support for the national strike of U.S. postal workers in March (see CHALLENGE, 7/4).
By the 1968 U.S. presidential election, every candidate, even the openly racist George Wallace, had promised to stop the war. Nixon won narrowly against the Democrat Humphrey, promising that he had a "secret plan" to do so. To press for tactical advantage at the negotiating table, he announced on April 30 that the U.S. had invaded Cambodia, thereby widening a conflict he had sworn to end. Mass outrage was swift and widespread. Millions demonstrated on campuses throughout the U.S, many violently.
Kent State University was one. By May 3, 1,000 National Guardsmen occupied the campus. On May 4, the Guardsmen attempted to break up a large anti-war demonstration. The protesters refused to leave. The Guardsmen opened fire, killing four students — two participants and two bystanders — and wounding nine others.
Five days later, between 100,000 and 150,000 demonstrators marched on Washington to protest Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State murders, a fraction of the half million who had marched on the U.S. capital less than a half-year earlier. PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance remnants of SDS organized another "Warmaker-Strikebreaker" demonstration at the Department of Labor, to break away from liberal politicians and attempt to turn the movement toward the working class. Fifteen thousand people participated in this illegal action, twice as many as those who attended the break-away action in support of General Electric strikers at the same site the previous November.
A nationwide student strike ensued, involving over four million students at more than 900 U.S. colleges and universities.
But this was the anti-war movement’s last great gasp. The negotiations and revisionism had disarmed the movement politically. Outrage and anger at the bosses’ limitless talent for atrocity, while necessary, were not sufficient to maintain the offensive. Only PLP stood in the way of a fatal marriage between the movement and the liberal wing of the ruling class, and PLP was not strong enough to reverse the process. By 1968, for all intents and purposes, this marriage had already been consummated. The war and the movement would continue until 1974, but, thanks to the class treachery of the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese leadership, the U.S. ruling class had managed to maneuver its way out of the most colossal military defeat in its history. J
(Next and final installment: Lessons of PLP’s experience in the movement against the war in Vietnam.)
a name="Racist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges">">"acist Media Play Down Cops’ Murders at Black Colleges
The massacre at Kent State quickly gained international notoriety, with photographs of the dead and wounded sparking worldwide indignation. All the victims were white. This was not, however, the first time that the bosses’ state apparatus had murdered young people on a college campus.
On February 8, 1968, cops opened fire on an anti-segregation demonstration at the historically black South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, killing three young men and wounding 27 others, all African-American. None of the cops was convicted of anything. This was the first incident of its type on a U.S. campus, and because of racism, it received little media coverage. The PLP organized protests and solidarity actions on campuses where it had a presence throughout the U.S.
In the wake of Kent State, another murderously racist police action occurred at an historically black campus, this time Jackson State, when on May14-15 cops fired 460 rounds at student protestors in less than a minute, killing two and injuring 12. Again, there was significantly less publicity than at Kent State 10 days earlier, and again, despite "hearings," inquests and "commissions," there were no arrests, mush less convictions.
One of the anti-war movement’s main shortcomings was its weakness in fighting racism. The PLP-led Worker-Student Alliance’s "Less Talk - More Action" proposal at the 1969 SDS convention was proving prophetic. The time had long since come for the PLP and its allies to address this vital strategic question. J
PLP Promotes Communist Politics at Social Forum
ATLANTA, July 2 — Some 10,000 people gathered this past weekend in the U.S. version of the World Social Forum. It was a dangerous exercise in disguising capitalist reform politics as "progress" by misusing powerful working-class ideas (like anti-racism) while spouting "revolutionary" phrase-mongering).
Workers, vets and youth attended hundreds of workshops and lectures over the three-day gathering. Many positive trends were revealed among class-conscious participants, including a broad, but under-developed hatred of capitalism. Many recognized the significance and importance of organizing migrant and immigrant workers, workers in New Orleans, fighting the brutality of racism and sexism, and linking issues.
"The government tried to kill us. They wanted to get rid of the poor so that they could build casinos and homes for the rich," said two New Orleans residents speaking at the forum. "You can’t count on these politicians to come and solve the problems we have!" They agreed with, and took, CHALLENGE from a PLP member who pointed out that while rebuilding is important, as long as capitalism exists workers and their homes are in danger.
Other PLP’ers also had some success, distributing 900 CHALLENGES and lots of buttons worded in Spanish, "Workers Have No Borders." We set up a PL table and talked with many interested people. Unfortunately, most of the convention followed a more misleading program.
The primary goal of most workshops was teaching new ways to compromise principled and honest feelings to generate "success" — "changing the system from within." In one workshop about youth and environmental activism, participants were discouraged from thinking about what to do if the military defended capitalist investments since such topics would "just depress people" and were not part of the planned role-playing activity. Such mis-leadership derails revolutionary class consciousness and encourages compromising with the murderous bosses.
Coalition-building with the bosses was the order of the day, encouraging us to "frame the issues" within the confines of capitalism so that "we can really achieve something." This usually doesn’t even lead to short-sighted success in this era of major social cutbacks to pay for the bosses’ endless wars and police state. It means only disaster for any real social changes and for the need to fight all the bosses (Republicans or Democrats, liberals or Neo-cons). PLP brought the only real long-term solution: organize for communist revolution.
Many workshops were based on identity politics, stressing the differences between workers and youth and teaching organizers to encourage these racist divisions. The practice of "caucusing" — separating workers into "race" or gender groups — reinforces racism and sexism, and does nothing to promote the kind of unity needed to fight the racist rulers. "White-skin privilege," not capitalist ideology, was blamed for racism.
Black and Latino youth were often encouraged to struggle for "success" (making it in the system) and to beg for recognition of workers’ rights. These sorts of goals will fail and leave our youth defeated, or will just train future misleaders.
Workers can’t beg for their rights from a government that protects the profits of racist war-maker corporations first and foremost. Our message to Forum attendees: reformed capitalism is a dead-end, not progress. The only advance is to vanquish capitalism. That can only be done with communist revolution. Join PLP! J
a name="Why Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?"></" />"hy Did Miami Herald ‘Discover’ Racism in Latin America?
A recent Miami Herald series on black people in Latin America featured several countries: Nicaragua, Brazil, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The articles pointed out the obvious, that racism exists against black people in those countries and throughout Latin America. No disagreement there. Of course, the Herald fails to identify the cause of racism.
Before the rise of capitalism, people were not divided or even enslaved because of their skin color. Racism was born with capitalism. The emerging capitalist class developed it for five centuries to justify the economics of slavery of Africans, the massacre of black and Indigenous people in the "New World" and as a political weapon to divide whites from the direct victims of racism. So as long as there is the capitalist profit system there will be racism, even if it takes different forms in different regions of the world.
Statistics show that blacks in the region — as Indigenous people — are more likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read poorly and to live in substandard housing. Authorities are only now starting to count the black population, but the World Bank estimates it’s anywhere from 80 million to 150 million, compared with 40.2 million in the U.S.
The most interesting part of the Herald’s series concerns black people in Cuba. Again, coming from the Herald, which — along with its Spanish version, El Nuevo Herald — is a mouthpiece for anti-Castro right-wing politics, one has to take what it says with a grain of salt. But there is racism in Cuba, not as much as pre-1959 when the U.S. controlled the island, or even as strong as in Miami itself, but there is racism. The Herald admits this: "Many black people still support Castro, saying that without him they would still be peons in the sugar cane fields. One black Cuban diplomat said he had no hope of an education, and his grandmother no medical care for her glaucoma, until the revolution came along."
But the article adds: "‘Everyone is not equal here,’ said Ernesto, 37, as he dodged traffic on a Havana street. Tall and athletically built, he once hoped to be a star soccer player. He now gets by selling used clothing, and said he’s continually hassled by police just because he’s black."
In last year’s book, "100 Hours With Fidel" by French-Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, Castro admitted that while the revolution had brought progress for women and black people, discrimination endures: "Black people do not live in the best homes; they’re still . . . performing hard jobs, sometimes less-remunerated jobs, and fewer blacks receive family remittances in foreign currency than their white compatriots," he said.
The Herald says that the new push for change concerning racism in Latin America is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil-rights groups via globalization — the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once-isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.
Of course, that’s not the "solution" to racism in Latin America or the U.S. The same black politicians and MTV-BET culture pushed by the Herald haven’t dented racism very much in the U.S., where 70% of the 2.2 million prisoners (the world’s biggest jail population) are black and Latino; where the infant mortality rate among black children in some Southern states is worse than in some of the world’s poorest countries; where racist police brutality is a constant; where racist unemployment is an epidemic in cities like Detroit and Oakland.
U.S. bosses, through the Herald and their politicians and mass media, seem to be trying to use racism in Latin America as a weapon against their rivals in the region. One reason, anti-U.S. politicians like Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Hugo Morales and Ecuador’s Correa have made inroads among the masses is because of the hatred dark-skinned workers, peasants and youth have for Latin America’s old racist ruling classes. So the U.S. media and politicians are pushing the BIG LIE that if dark-skinned workers and youth in Latin America follow the U.S. model (which they claim is constant ‘improvment’), not the Chávez model, racism can be alleviated.
The reason racism persists in Cuba despite many advances since 1959 is because state capitalism dominates Cuba. The fight against racism is a long one. But to destroy it the first premise is to eliminate its cause: capitalism in all its forms. Then, in a communist-led revolutionary society without the economic or political basis for racism, a sharp ideological struggle will be waged against any form of racism and all types of discrimination.J
- A Working-Class World Is Possible...Only by Fighting for Communism
- Liberal Warmakers Ousting Inept Neo-Cons
- NUCLEAR HIT ON U.S. JUST WHAT RULERS NEED
- Venezuela: Workers' Power and Bankers' Profits Don't Mix
- South Africa General Strike Shows Racism Cannot Be Ended Under Capitalism
- Racist Police Terror in NYC Schools
- Marches Protest Genocide Killing Oakland's Black Youth
- Mass Unemployment Behind Black Youth Genocide
- A system that murders its youth so casually deserves to be destroyed with communist revolution.
- International Autoworkers' Unity Must Link Layoffs to Bosses' Wars
- Youth Meet to Strengthen Communist Ideas and Practice
- Warmakers' DREAM ACT is Nightmare For Immigrant Youth
- Imperialists' Fight for Oil Behind Hamas-Fatah Civil War
- LETTERS
- PLP at May Day in Manizales, Colombia
- Mass Arrests of Youth by NYPD at Puerto Rican Day Parade
- `Reform' Would Tax Immigrants, Send Youth to War
- Work in Unions, Bring Workers Red Politics
- Pentagon Dumps Toxic Waste into World's Oceans
- Italian Immigrants Then, Latino Immigrants Now
- `Sanctuary' Groups Need Action, not `Legality'
- New Campus Group Spreads Pro-Worker Politics
- REDEYE
- PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike
- THE HAZZARDS OF DUKE
- This system has got to go.
Factory Worker's Experiences Carry Over Shop to Shop
A Working-Class World Is Possible...Only by Fighting for Communism
The U.S. Social forum is meeting in Atlanta, Georgia with the theme Another World is Possible. We in the Progressive Labor Party believe that indeed another world is possible only through smashing capitalism and its racist warmaking profit motive.
Since the fall of the old international communist movement capitalists have launched an unprecedented political, economic and ideological offensive against the world's working class. The working class has fought back with great ferocity but always through channels poisoned by cronies of the bosses or with rotten capitalist ideas. Workers have been taught they can only "work within the system." Capitalist "reformers" aimed to discredit the idea of violent revolution to smash their state and replace it with a workers' state -- communism.
Racism's Different Forms: Always Used Against Workers
From its birth, capitalism has used the idea of racism to divide and weaken the international working class and hold the system of wage slavery together. The idea of "race" was invented by bosses to divide black slaves and white indentured servants who were beginning to rebel against their masters in the Southern colonies. Now while black, Latino and immigrant workers are shouldering the main burden of U.S. imperialism in decline, all workers' jobs, wages, pensions and healthcare are being devastated. Racist ideas that are pushed in school and media are used to convince workers to blame other workers for their problems instead of the bosses.
Many workers saw through and fought to smash these racist ideas, from the times of the slave rebellions through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. As a response to anti-racist anger, bosses began to push the theory of "white skin privilege" which blames white workers for hundreds of years of capitalist oppression, asks them to feel guilty about their relatively better treatment from the system, creating the illusion that white, black and Latin workers are not part of the same class. It is sim-_ply the mirror image of the traditional racist ideology, and it is just as dangerous for the workers who believe it.
Fighting Nationalism andSmashing Borders Crucial
Another ideological weapon the bosses use against workers is nationalism, loyalty to the ruling capitalists. Nationalism asks workers to see members of our own class as enemies because they live across a border. This idea seeks to conceal from workers our one exploiting class enemy, capitalists, no matter their skin color or language.
Historically, all countries were born from the slaughter and coercion of workers by ruling classes fighting to gain new territory for exploitation and profit. The workers' role was to fight and die and kill other workers for "their" bosses.
Capitalist-created borders have had disastrous effects. For 60 years, Israeli and Palestinian workers have been marching behind their rulers to their deaths. "Undocumented workers" in the U.S. and Europe face massive repression because they're from different countries. These bosses' borders divide workers and induce them to pledge allegiance to their local ruling class, maintaining the latter's class rule.
Don't Vote! Organize forCommunist Revolution!
The bosses tell us, and many workers believe, that we can fix the system by voting. First only rich white male land-owners voted; then through political struggle most white men, then women, and finally black workers gained the right to vote. After 220 years most workers, except immigrants, have the "right" to vote in the bosses' elections. The result of all this voting? We live in a society where racist cops terrorize our cities, where one in three young black men is in the criminal justice system, where women suffer degrading sexism and bosses' wars for profit threaten the lives of workers worldwide. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain or Giuliani is President (they all are for wider imperialist wars), or if the Governor or Mayor is black, Latin, or white. We still have capitalism.
Under capitalism, the government and elections are controlled by the capitalist class, the rich rulers who control the factories, mines, mills and offices. They use all electoral parties to maintain their profit system. Their interests are directly opposed to the well-being of the working class. Our labor produces all goods and services, all value, and creates the profit the bosses steal. No matter who we vote for, they still own everything and control what we produce.
The rulers use elections to fight over which capitalist faction they represent will control the government to fight for their particular interests. They also use elections to distract workers from the depth of the rot that is the capitalist system, using them as they use racism and nationalism to control our loyalties. They hope that we will sign on to their ideological program: blame workers of other colors (or ourselves), commit ourselves to "our" ruling class and believe that we are changing things by participating in elections or reform movements controlled by various capitalists.
The problem with all of these "solutions" is that they all maintain a system where the ruling class survives by exploiting the working class. However "democratic" they look, the bosses are living off our labor power. The only way to truly and permanently end this is to destroy the entire class system. We need a world with only one class, the workers. Under a communist system, the workers would control their own labor power instead of serving as wage slaves to the bosses. We call this a dictatorship of the proletariat: instead of the racist warmaking bosses' dictatorship we all suffer today, under which they use the farce of voting to mislead us, the workers would make all the decisions collectively. This is not an easy idea, and it is not one any boss or politician will buy into, but it is necessary. We workers, students and soldiers must be prepared to fight for the future we deserve.
Liberal Warmakers Ousting Inept Neo-Cons
Liberals pursuing a strategy of wider wars are exercising increasing control of U.S. military policy. Defense Secretary Gates, who took over neo-con Rumsfeld's post, recently chose Admiral Michael Mullen to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The liberal NY Times' June 13 editorial, "Good Choice for the Chiefs," praised Mullen for his long-range planning: "He has tried to reshape maritime strategies for a new era of unconventional threats and challenges. He has particularly pressed the idea of multiplying America's strategic reach by cooperating with other navies against common threats...."
MULLEN BUILDS SHIPS FOR FAR-FLUNG U.S. INVASIONS
Mullen's imperialist outlook makes him the darling of liberal U.S. rulers. As Chief of Naval Operations, he spearheaded the development of new types of ships geared specifically for ground invasions, unlike carriers and submarines. Mullen boasted to the Senate last month of the DDG 1000 destroyer now under design, "This multi-mission surface combatant, tailored for land attack and littoral [coastal] dominance, will provide independent forward presence and deterrence and operate as an integral part of joint and combined expeditionary forces."
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), another Mullen pet project, actually in production, has a similar mission. This shallow-draft vessel can support troops close to the shores they invade and even go up rivers. The Armed Forces Journal (12/21/06) foresees the LCS's usefulness in the looming U.S. conflict with China, "It may well be the ship best-suited to defeating the threats that face U.S. security partners along the Asia littoral.... China is engaged in territorial disputes with almost all of its maritime neighbors....The countries of Southeast Asia know that persistent instability along their coasts ultimately invites foreign intervention." The ships, however, might sooner see action in Saudi Arabian, Iranian or Pakistani waters. Mullen made the DDG 1000 and the LCS the Navy's top spending priorities.
Along with providing the hardware liberal war-makers need, Mullen grasps their international and domestic ideological requirements. Bush's decision to invade Iraq with few allies sank the U.S. in world opinion. As keynote speaker at the liberal Brookings Institution's forum on "The U.S. Navy Beyond Iraq -- Sea Power for New Era" (3/3/07), Mullen said, "The United States can't do this alone in the future." He spoke, perhaps with too much optimism, of a "thousand-ship" U.S.-led international fleet and played up the Navy's "humanitarian" efforts, like tsunami relief. Aware of an acute shortage of liberals in uniform, Mullen, a Harvard Business School alumnus, promised to boost ROTC on Ivy League campuses. "Having a service which only comes from the red states is a very bad formula," he said.
LIBERALS BAKER AND HAMILTON BACK IRAQ CARNAGE, SEEK WORLD WAR PROVOCATION
Another sign of the liberals' growing influence is Bush's ultimate acceptance of the December 2006 recommendations of James Baker's and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group. "Speaking at a White House news conference, Bush for the first time fully adopted the blueprint outlined in December by the Iraq Study Group." (Los Angeles Times, 5/25/07) The "surge" it called for is now escalating the death toll among both Iraqis and GIs. Ever compliant with Pentagon budget demands, Democrats, too, are mimicking Baker and Hamilton, who said on June 11, "They would not cut off funding for the war." (ABC News, 6/12/07)
While they seek to subdue Iraqi insurgents and get the oil flowing again, Baker and Hamilton know that it will take more 9/11, Pearl Harbor-style attacks to mobilize the nation for the broader wars the rulers must wage. [See box.] The Army continues to miss its recruiting quotas. Hamilton thus welcomed a second 9/11 in eerily positive words. "He also warned that whether it's good policies or sheer luck, future attacks on U.S. soil were imminent." (ABC) Baker, openly favoring U.S. aggression, "said the United States needed to strengthen its defenses and `be prepared to go on the offense.'"
Hamilton helped formulate the Hart-Rudman reports that, beginning in 1999, spelled out 50 recommendations for transforming the U.S. into a war-waging police state that could survive the next few decades in the face of growing threats from would-be imperialist rivals. Hart-Rudman is similar to but more explicit than Baker and Hamilton. Both warned of and hoped for a "hostile attack upon our homeland" after which "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." Bush blew the first 9/11 opportunity. Skilled liberal architects of world war are replacing inept neo-con bunglers who can't manage a regional conflict, let alone militarize a nation, intensifying the move to wider wars.
The working class must be on guard against these liberal war-makers. We in PLP must win workers, soldiers, students and youth to join and build PLP, to see that the only way to free our class from this imperialist bloodbath is to organize for communist revolution.
NUCLEAR HIT ON U.S. JUST WHAT RULERS NEED
On June 12, the NY Times published an op-ed article called "After the Bomb," outlining the steps the U.S. government would have to take if terrorists attacked a U.S. city with a nuclear weapon. But this was hardly a speculative piece. Its authors, William Perry, Ashton Carter and Michael May, have played key roles in U.S. war planning. Perry and Carter were secretary and assistant secretary in Clinton's Pentagon. May helped build the U.S. nuclear arsenal as director of the Lawrence Livermore labs.
In essence, they call for fascism: direct federal control over all police and fire departments, enforced imprisonment or evacuation of urban populations, and a centralized, bunker-protected presidential power structure. A reader's letter responded (6/17/07) with what the writers failed to say: "None of us can imagine the depth of rage and desire for vengeance that would sweep this country if the United States were attacked with a nuclear bomb. I have to believe that even the most liberal president would retaliate against someone with nuclear weapons." These liberals hope a terrorist ten-kiloton blast can win the U.S. public to full-scale war.
"After the Bomb" emanates from an April "The Day After" workshop convened by Harvard and Stanford. Its members included serving and retired generals and admirals, homeland security officials, think-tank bigwigs, professors and journalists. The Rockefeller-allied Carnegie and MacArthur foundations funded the project. Perry and Carter, its directors, have been seeking a "galvanizing" incident at least since 1997, when they served on Harvard's Catastrophic Terrorism study group. It envisioned that "an act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America's history." The 1997 group helped pave the way for Hart-Rudman. With the rulers' overriding mobilizing task still unfinished, the same liberal foundations are bankrolling "The Day After." Having no shortage of enemies, the rulers needn't orchestrate such an assault themselves.
Venezuela: Workers' Power and Bankers' Profits Don't Mix
(In our previous issue, 6/20, we discussed "freedom of the press" in Venezuela after the RCTV's open broadcast license was not renewed because of its open support for a right-wing anti-Chávez coup in April 2002. We explained how there's no such thing as "free press" under capitalism, how the mass media is increasingly run by a few conglomerates worldwide which dictate the news and entertainment we receive.)
The rightwing opposition, and its supporters in the media internationally, accuse the Chávez government of "going communist." Many honest workers and others believe Chávez's "Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st Century" will lead them to liberation from capitalist oppression. We in PLP don't believe it. Sure, Chávez has used the oil bonanza to help give workers and students some reforms. Sure, the old ruling class and the imperialists would prefer governments that in the past stole the oil bonanza and drove workers into deep misery. But in essence, capitalism is still alive and kicking in Venezuela, and big time.
Two recent articles make that quite clear. The NY Times (6/15) reports "Boom Times for Bankers in Venezuela," showing how increased public spending and the oil boom generating a rising economy have been very good for bankers: "In marathon speeches peppered with quotes from Marx and accolades to Che Guevara, President Hugo Chavez repeatedly vows to do away with capitalism in Venezuela. But it turns out that Mr. Chávez's economic policies have been generating a boom for those most capitalist of institutions -- Venezuela's banks."
Business Week magazine (6/25) repeats this theme: "You might call it business' love-hate relationship with Chávez. Local and foreign companies alike are raking in more money than ever in Venezuela. Two-way trade between the U.S. and Venezuela has never been higher. Venezuela exported more than $42 billion to the U.S. last year, including 1 million barrels of oil daily, and imported $9 billion worth of American goods, up 41% from 2005. But since Chávez declared President George W. Bush Public Enemy No. 1, Americans prefer to keep a low profile, even though the 1,100 member companies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Venezuela employ 650,000 workers. `Consumption has been going through the roof, and commercial relations between the U.S. and Venezuela are still workable, but on the political front there is confrontation,' says Saade [Chamber of Commerce president]. `American business is caught in the middle.'"
Can a "reformed" capitalism liberate workers? Capitalism, whether it's free market or "Bolivarian" and nationalist á la Chávez, is still based on exploiting workers' labor. Maybe Chávez can provide some reforms to workers, and make alliances with U.S. rivals (Russia, China, Iran), but in essence it is still capitalism. And since it is capitalism, the reforms -- which have not really made a major indent in Venezuela's poverty rate -- could be taken away for many reasons (the oil bonanza weakens, the worldwide economic crisis hits harder, and so on).
Meanwhile, the Chavista project to build the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela is basically a capitalist-nationalist outfit that will unite workers, "nationalist business-people," union hacks and high government officials, but workers will not rule. It mimics Argentina's old Peronist Party: a bureaucratic top-down organization led by pro-Chávez careerists and bosses. This is the opposite of a real revolutionary workers' party, based on never uniting with any bosses or union sellouts, on fighting for real workers' power (communism) and the destruction of all forms of capitalism.
We in PLP fight for this kind of real revolutionary party wherever we have forces. We must try to bring our communist politics to workers and youth in Venezuela who have illusions about Chávez. This means working in the mass organizations where these workers are involved, but fighting hard to shatter their deadly illusions in Chavismo and his fake "Socialism of the 21st Century."
South Africa General Strike Shows Racism Cannot Be Ended Under Capitalism
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, June 15 -- Two days ago, a massive strike of over 500,000 workers rocked this country. Unions are demanding a 10% pay rise. The government has agreed to a mediators' proposal of 7.25%.
Thousands of workers in red and yellow T-shirts danced and sang liberation songs through the streets of this city, the country's economic capital. BBC reported that marches occurred in 43 major cities and towns. In Pretoria, an estimated 10,000 people marched to the union buildings, the president's official home. In Cape Town workers picketed parliament. In the port city of Durban, protesters were also out in big numbers and those businesses that had opened shut down, fearing violence. The nearby city of Pietermaritzburg was as empty as a Sunday. Most taxi, bus and train services countrywide supported the strike, making it difficult for many private sector workers to get to work.
The African National Congress (ANC) government has sent dismissal notices to 600 strikers, including many nurses. It has also instructed banks to recall a full month's salary payments of striking public servants -- many of whom were due to be paid today (Business Day, 6/15). The paper added that this is expected to fuel protesters' anger because they will be denied wages for all that time worked. The government has also sent soldiers to striking hospitals and schools. Military medics are now scabbing on hospital workers.
The COSATU union federation, whose leaders are part of the government, just like the SACP (South African "Communist" Party), are using the strikers as part of a power struggle inside the ANC government. Both groups support the candidacy of Jacob Zuma to lead the ANC in the group leadership's December election. Whoever leads the ANC will become its presidential candidate in the 2008 elections to succeed current President Mbeki, the present ANC leader. Zuma is just another opportunist who was Mbeki's second in command until 2006 and has not opposed any of the government's anti-working class, free-market privatization measures.
The SACP ministers in the government are actually responsible for some of the attacks against the strikers. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, for example, a SACP leader and its deputy chair until 2002, is the public service and administration minister. She was the one who issued the injunction preventing nurses and other health workers from striking.
Charles Nqakula, SACP chair, is the government's minister of safety and security. He heads the state's armed bodies and was responsible for the police assault on strikers a week before the general strike. Another SACP leader Ronnie Kasrils, heads the government's intelligence services. No doubt he will be very busy mobilizing the secret state agencies to combat "subversive" workers.
How did these forces who fought Apartheid become the best guardians of capitalism? Millions of workers and youth in South Africa and worldwide opposed and fought the super-racist Apartheid regime and its capitalist and imperialist backers, who made huge profits off the racist super-exploitation of the black workers here. Many of these anti-racist fighters wanted a communist-led revolution to smash capitalism, the source of racism. But the ANC and SACP leadership were not organizing real revolution. (Remember how David Rockefeller and the U.S. bosses welcomed Nelson Mandela as a hero some two decades ago?) So the big bosses, realizing they needed some small cosmetic changes to keep their racist system basically intact, made a deal with the ANC -- knowing the latter would maintain the profit system -- and dumped the old Apartheid rulers.
The ANC leaders have proven to be great managers of capitalism. A few black politicians and aspiring bosses have done very well, but life for most black workers is still very harsh. Poverty rates have risen. The key lesson of this struggle is that racism cannot be ended as long as capitalism rules, no matter the color or label of the rulers.
Racist Police Terror in NYC Schools
NEW YORK CITY, June 16 -- CHALLENGE readers have long known of the police reign of terror inflicted on black and Latin working-class youth in their neighborhoods. Now the NYPD -- which took over school security in 1998 -- has stepped up the abuse of students, and of staff who defend the students. With arrests in and around city schools growing, the stories are horrible: a 13-year-old arrested for writing graffiti on a desk earlier this year, and 30 Bushwick, Brooklyn students arrested on the street walking to a wake for a friend.
In March, the NY Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) published a report entitled "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-policing of New York City Schools." Based on that report, Bob Herbert has written two columns in the NY Times: "Poisonous Police Behavior" (6/2), and "School to Prison Pipeline" (6/9). Herbert also reports on arrests of students nationwide for childlike behavior -- a 6-year-old arrested in Florida when she had a tantrum in kindergarten, a 7-year-old arrested in Baltimore for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk.
Both Herbert and the NYCLU detail the use of metal detectors and abusive, nasty security agents. They note that predominantly white schools don't have metal detectors or the same degree of NYPD abuse. They report on the "good kids" being harassed and arrested, kids who've never been in trouble.
The bottom line, as both Herbert and the NYCLU point out, is racism. For a long time, PLP'ers have fought the terror in NYC schools, terror caused not by students but by School "Safety" Agents and the NYPD. We've led struggles against the first metal detectors at Bushwick High School and fought in other schools against the installation of cameras in hallways. We've pointed out how black and Latin students have been criminalized but not white, middle-class students. All this is part of growing U.S. fascism. Students are being taught to obey the authorities, and that the metal detectors and NYPD will "protect" them from other students who might hurt them.
Liberals like the NYCLU and Herbert are getting a big play in the rulers' biggest media mouthpiece. The rulers are worried that if police continue to harass students nationwide -- criminalizing behavior that is not criminal -- students will become angry at government authority in general, just at the time that the bosses need more working-class youth for their expanding imperialist wars.
The NYCLU calls for turning control of school security back to the Department of Education. This is the agency which has designated numbers of schools as so-called Impact Schools, turning them into armed camps. These liberals are calling for better policing and hands off the "good kids." They want at least some youth won to the system, not turned off and angry.
We in PLP, of course, want to win all students to fight the rulers' racism, reflected in the metal detectors and NYPD in the schools. This summer we will involve youth in many activities so they can learn, in struggle, how racist police terror is part and parcel of the bosses' system. We train youth to be political organizers since we see black, Latino, white and immigrant youth as a treasure that will guarantee the future of our Party and of the struggle for a system that eliminates racism: communism.
Marches Protest Genocide Killing Oakland's Black Youth
OAKLAND, CA -- It was three days after the massacre at Virginia Tech. A girl's scream of anguish swept down a corridor here. Her 16-year-old friend D., a fellow student, had just died in the hospital from gunshot wounds he had received the night before.
Earlier CHALLENGE had reported on a front-page story in Oakland's daily, The Tribune. "Youth's number 1 killer -- Murder," the headline had read. In Oakland black males, like D., are murdered at a rate of 186 per 100,000.
In classes this day, though, we were not so much dealing in statistics as in raw pain, unending loss. "Except," one teacher observed in the after-school emergency staff meeting, "among those students who were not in D.'s social circle. They seemed emotionally removed, almost empty."
The teachers pondered this a while. Then they realized what in reality we already knew. Black life in official USA has little or no value.
Virginia Tech has about 25,000 students. Assuming no more killings, 32 out of 25,000 will have been murdered this year. That gives us a rate of 128 per 100,000 for one year. Compare that to Oakland's rate of 186 per 100,000.
Compare the media coverage of Virginia Tech's tragedy to Oakland's bigger and more continuous tragedy. The students who seemed emotionally removed were expressing what the larger society had already modeled for them -- the death of young black males is of no particular importance.
The teachers at the school were self-critical. While they called themselves Social Justice Teachers, they questioned what they had done. The teachers decided as a staff not to mimic the larger society's indifference. That Sunday they organized a walk against violence. They took a route that weaved through the heart of the inner-city neighborhood our school serves. Some two hundred parents, students and teachers participated. The high point came when they arrived at D.'s home and his mother came out to join us. What a powerful statement. Here were fellow students, teachers, community members taking time out to note that D.'s short life was important, had value. It was a tiny gesture, of course, but they stood as a David against the Goliath of racist indifference fostered by the rulers in official USA.
Inspired by the moment, there was a call for a march on City Hall. The following Wednesday, after school, students and teachers marched on City Hall. We demanded, and eventually got, a meeting with the mayor.
Of course, two small marches will not change the world. In fact, as far as government action goes, nothing seems to have changed. The cynics are quick to point this out. But there has been a change. This tiny group of teachers, students and community members now see themselves as actors (rather than observers) opposed to this gigantic, genocidal crime that is being played out in Oakland and similar cities nationwide.
Mass Unemployment Behind Black Youth Genocide
Officially it is called homicide, but fratricide or genocide would be more accurate. The accompanying article notes that Oakland, California's black male youth (15 - 24) have a murder rate of 186 per 100,000. Other major cities probably have similar statistics. It's such a huge problem it seems to paralyze reaction.
We're told it's black-on-black crime. Such a description simply leads to hand-wringing. But a report by the Alameda Public Health Department, "Violence in Oakland," says 86% of the suspects and 75% of the victims were unemployed. So it's actually black-unemployed-on-black unemployed crime. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to devise ways of lowering the murder rate.
But doing nothing except adapting to this genocidal murder rate cheapens the lives of all workers and youth. Like it or not, we're a class, a potentially revolutionary working class. If, through passivity, we endorse the cheapening of life "over there," we get the cheapening of life over here. This partially explains why, in the richest of rich industrial countries, millions die prematurely from lack of health insurance, why deaths from U.S. industrial accidents are far higher than any of its rival industrial powers, why the U.S. can lead the industrial nations in its heartless cuts in social programs just to pay for imperialist war. In the USA, working-class life is cheap.
PLP wants to organize to protest these homicide-genocides. At the very least, unions in the city could down tools as each youth murder is reported. Schools could organize demonstrations to protest their students being gunned down. Agitating and organizing around such actions can help the working class see our own strength while helping PLP'ers introduce CHALLENGE with its revolutionary communist ideas in a positive, active setting.
A system that murders its youth so casually deserves to be destroyed with communist revolution.
NEA Delegates Must Defend Students Against Racist Attacks and War
Teachers are meeting the first week in July in Philadelphia for the Representative Assembly (RA) of the National Education Association. This is the convention of the biggest union in the country, 10,000 schools workers, in a crucial position in society. It occurs when the war in Iraq is tanking. Democrats, even as they attack Bush, are planning for a broader war to counter rival imperialists over control of Middle East oil profits. Reorganizing schools to better win teachers and students to support imperialism is crucial to the ruling class's plan of preparing the society for this broader war.
In the schools this war plan includes having military recruiters in the schools; a junior ROTC to track students into the military; surrounding students with a prison-like atmosphere with metal detectors and cameras to spy on them during school hours; advocating the "Tough Choices, Tough Times" proposal which, at 16, will push especially black and Latino students into trade school or the military if they don't pass certain tests; teaching the rulers' false view of history which pushes anti-working class, nationalist and racist patriotism, loyalty to the bosses' flag.
Teachers have a choice. We can support the Democrats, the patriotic path of least resistance, leading us to collaborate in their imperialist plans. Or we can join with students and their families, to build a movement to turn the bosses' wars into a revolution to get rid of imperialist wars and racist exploitation for good.
Why do we call the Democrats a party of war when they criticize Bush based on the war in Iraq? The Democrats attack Bush because of poor planning and too few troops in Iraq, not because they disagree with the need for wars to control the oil resources of the Middle East. After all, it was Democratic President Jimmy Carter who declared Middle Eastern oil crucial to U.S. national interests and worth going to war for. Democratic presidential front-runners, Edwards, Obama, and Clinton all say that "all options are on the table" in regard to a military attack on Iran.
This is because the United States ruling class faces fierce competition from other imperialist rivals, E.U., Russia, and China. All conflicts, from Venezuela to Darfur to Gaza, and especially in the Persian Gulf, relate to that sharpening rivalry, which will inevitably lead to World War III. Democratic and Republican politicians both support the long term goal of maintaining U.S. power in the world by any means necessary. This requires reorganizing society to prepare for the imperialist war made inevitable by the inherent competition of the capitalist system. Teachers must reject both the parties of imperialist war.
To prepare for war bosses need to reindustrialize the U.S. to solve the crisis they face in shipbuilding, tank production and steel supplies. More war requires American students to be trained as everything from engineers to welders and machinists so weapons can be produced domestically. No Child Left Behind is part of this plan. Standardized tests and curricular "reform" which de-emphasize creativity and critical thinking about the current situation and instead concentrate on basic skills, technical education, and patriotism are preparing students to be part of the war machine. Punitive, racist measures in low-achieving schools disempower teachers and aim for the rulers' agenda to be carried out without opposition. Increasingly repressive security measures are part of the fascist control that war will require.
Here at the RA and in schools and locals around the country, teachers must organize to fight against the conversion of the schools into adjuncts of the imperialist war machine. Organizing together with students and their families is necessary to build a broad opposition to this fascist war agenda. But make no mistake about it -- building a "peace movement" will not stop the march to wider war because capitalist competition inevitably leads to inter-imperialist war.
Our students will be called upon to be cannon fodder, and exploited workers for the war machine. But workers, teachers and soldiers can become revolutionary fighters against dog-eat-dog racist capitalism. teachers must join with our students and their families, especially industrial workers and soldiers, to build the Progressive Labor Party. Our party pledges to unite workers of all ethnicities who will lead the working class to counter the racist wars of capitalism with a revolution to build a communist society. While the bosses plan to use our labor for their profits and deadly wars, communists plan a future where the labor of teachers and all workers will be for the benefit of the workers of the world. Only such a movement can tap into the vast power and creativity of the working class to fight for our own interests rather than those of Exxon Mobile. Join us!
International Autoworkers' Unity Must Link Layoffs to Bosses' Wars
STUTTGART, GERMANY May 20 - "The fight against racism is at the heart of building international solidarity." That's how a black woman UAW member from Detroit addressed the almost 400 auto workers who today wrapped up a three-day conference on building international solidarity. Besides the large contingent of German workers who hosted the event, auto workers were represented from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the U.S. and more.
They came from Daimler, VW, Bosch, GM-Opel, Ford, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Most were permanent, union workers. Many were either non-union and/or temporary (contract) workers. It showed the enormous potential of industrial workers to reach around the world and not be bound by the bosses' borders. The backdrop for the conference was growing strike actions across Europe as GM plans to slash thousands of jobs. One of the high points of the conference was a GM Solidarity Charter that will be used to build solidarity among rank-and-file GM workers around the world. Reports from striking Opel workers in Belgium and fired mass leaders at VW in South Africa and Toyota in the Philippines helped set the tone.
But just as the numbers and international character, the participation of youth and women and the general enthusiasm showed the potential, there were also serious limits. This was mainly in the "trade union" politics of the conference. The main line was that around the globe autoworkers are divided by nation and by job status; permanent vs. contract. The conference call was to overcome these divisions and unite to take on the bosses and reformist union leaders by going on the offense and fighting for a 30-hour work-week to create more permanent full-time jobs.
PLP members argued that nowhere are the challenges to U.S. imperialism more apparent than in the auto industry and the Iraq war. We were the only ones to introduce the war and inter-imperialist rivalry into the conference. We said that the social contracts that have existed in the U.S. and Europe since the end of World War II are over and that global auto production has created a global race to the bottom for autoworkers. Workers must be armed politically and prepared for a future of sharper attacks and increasing poverty and productivity, and wider wars for markets, resources and cheap labor.
We also raised the need for workers to fight racism. We talked about how black workers have borne the brunt of the setbacks for U.S. auto bosses in Detroit, Flint, Toledo and other cities, while 15,000 non-union suppliers have sprung up across the South, paying half the auto wages to black, white and immigrant workers. Delegations from Spain and France also spoke about the need to fight racism, and many people talked to us about the issue, but it was never a key part of the outlook of the conference.
We distributed about 50 CHALLENGES, renewed some old friendships and made new ones. We look forward to working with the auto workers' council while struggling over the political outlook that will prepare the international working class for the seizure of power and communist revolution.
Youth Meet to Strengthen Communist Ideas and Practice
MEXICO -- With the goal of analyzing and understanding PLP's ideas, an enthusiastic group of youth organized a two-day communist school. Students, homemakers, workers and teachers, members and friends of the Party, participated. The theme was PLP's document "Road to Revolution 4." Questions arose provoking discussion on racism, world wars, the history of the communist movement, and others. The presence of Party friends involved debate that clarified our position on other political organizations.
The main ideological struggle arose on: (a) the error of fighting for socialism as the road to communism viewed through the Russian and Chinese experiences; (b) the necessity to abolish the wage system under communism; (c) discussion of the sectarian, nationalist struggle of indigenous movements that exclude a great part of the working class; (d) the need to analyze writers with revolutionary ideas, instead of learning by rote; (e) the importance of not just studying communist ideas but actually building the Party in practice with the working class.
We discussed the principal of from each according to his/her capacity and to each according to his/her needs, agreeing that the word "commitment" could be substituted for "capacity" because it more clearly represents communist principles.
A teacher from another country at the School lauded the participation of these youth as showing "solid work and with much potential." On the slogan "from each according to his/her commitment, to each according to his/her needs": it's based on political commitment, more important than "capacity." Those most politically committed will contribute more than those less committed, even if they have the same "capacity." We struggle to motivate more and more workers and students to achieve greater political commitment.
The school's camaraderie helped those participating with the self-criticism of the activities carried out in the clubs. During the self-criticism, the need was stressed to read and learn from history and social movements to better carry out the ideological struggle and the building of the Party, including a vision of the communist system for which we fight.
We learned how to analyze the current situation and to explain PLP's ideas to friends of the Party. They have shouldered more responsibility as their understanding has grown, clarifying many doubts and beginning to read the Party's literature.
These activities helped show the comrades that there are people around the world who are fighting to destroy capitalism and build a communist system. Join PLP.
Warmakers' DREAM ACT is Nightmare For Immigrant Youth
PLP holds that the anti-immigrant reform bill the U.S. bosses are trying to pass is all about war and fascism. The latest twist that this proposed legislation has taken in the Senate proves the validity of this analysis.
Stalled by the rulers' bickering, Bush made a special visit to the Senate to get them to resurrect the bill. But anyone acquainted with it, and its many last-minute amendments introduced by both parties, would conclude that the chances of the bill passing in this session of the Senate are very slim, if not impossible. Then why resurrect it?
The reason is war. The Pentagon and the liberal imperialists hope that the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, one of the bill's provisions, could pass. They are counting on it to help boost badly-needed military recruitment for wider war. Even as Bush was on his way to Washington to help revive the bill, Bill Carr, Pentagon acting deputy Undersecretary of Defense, said, "Talk is already taking place to see if at least the DREAM provision of the stalled bill can proceed." (American Forces Press Service, 6/11/07) "He said the measure should become law because it would be `good for readiness' -- especially at a time when the military...is struggling to attract high-quality recruits." (Boston Globe, 6/16)
This provision from its very inception was hailed by the rulers, their politicians like Obama, Clinton, and McCain, spokesmen like Michael O'Hanlon and Max Boot from the Council on Foreign Relations, and leaders in the pro-immigrant organizations like MAPA, Lulac and the National Council of La Raza as a "humanitarian" bill enabling "non-privileged" undocumented students to go to college, who otherwise, (because of their immigration status) would be unable to. They all ignore or downplay the bill's military aspect.
There are some 350,000 undocumented minor immigrants who according to Carr, would serve in the short run, with "the bill applicable for an estimated 750,000." (Boston Globe, 6/16) "If you have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist. And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen" (which may very well require residency first).
To earn citizenship these youth would have to serve two years in the military or complete at least two years of college. However, "amendments to the bill would render such students ineligible for some federal aid, including Pell Grants, and require colleges to enter undocumented immigrants into the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System." (Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/30/04) To entice legal residents and (if DREAM passes) undocumented youth to join the military, Bush has issued an executive order allowing non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of active duty military service. But getting it takes a lot longer. Some soldiers, forced to do more than two tours in Iraq, are still waiting for their citizenship.
The bosses may very well eventually pass this bill and their immigration reform. The passage of DREAM is important to them because they will use it as an excuse to pass legislation to force all U.S.-born and legal resident youth to serve in the military. Eventually, their need to hold on to their blood-soaked oil empire in the Middle East will spawn bigger and more lethal wars. The rulers will have no alternative but to institute the draft. The now apparent passivity of the working class will eventually turn into unrest and rebellions. Danger and opportunity awaits us. We must live up to the challenge and continue to organize the youth, workers and soldiers for communist revolution.
Imperialists' Fight for Oil Behind Hamas-Fatah Civil War
The civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority security forces in the Gaza strip has brought even more instability to the Middle East. There are now two separate Palestinian "states." Hamas now runs the overcrowded Gaza strip while the Fatah-Palestinian Authority runs the West Bank. The U.S., Europe and Israel have decided to back Fatah with money and weapons (the Israeli army controls a good chunk of the West Bank already). Meanwhile, the Palestinian masses are suffering starvation, mass unemployment and more misery and terror from the Israeli army.
The Western imperialists and Israel are to blame for much of the situation. The London Financial Times (6/19) editorialized: "The West's attitude has been hypocritical. First, the U.S. and Europe encouraged elections, but when Hamas won, they cut off direct aid. Now the European Union is likely to resume direct aid to an emergency government [Fatah-Palestinian Authority] set up by decree."
The FT then adds: "...the movement [Hamas] won the last Palestinian elections because Fatah was seen as incompetent and corrupt....The harsh reality is that the Middle East will never be stable until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved."
The inter-imperialist rivalry over the oil-rich Middle East and beyond is behind this instability. The imperialists' only solution is war: currently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza, and Iran is in the cards. Even though the Israeli rulers like to see the Palestinians kill each other, in the long run this instability also affects its interests and those of its U.S. backers.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has proven to be as inept in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as it is in Iraq. As Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group has correctly noted, "Almost every decision the US has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged." It is strengthening Iranian-armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, making them more popular among the masses. Condoleezza Rice's many trips to Tel Aviv failed to get the Israeli rulers to make a deal with Fatah, basically because of Israeli intransigence.
Israel now has a real powder keg on its border: "Naturally, Israel won't tolerate the installation of a radical Islamic structure at its doors; even in the past the Jewish state favored Hamas to counter the then all-powerful Fatah." (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-923742@51-909163,0.html). In the 1980's, Israel helped Hamas sabotage the first Intifada.
The sad reality is that there is no "two-state" solution to the Palestinian question or any solution to the Middle East powder keg as long as capitalism and imperialism create wars and fascist and religious terror to cover their battle for the region's oil profits. The only solution -- even if it now seems somewhat distant -- is organizing a revolutionary communist movement to unite all Palestinian and Israeli workers and youth to break with Zionism, fundamentalism, nationalism and all local and imperialist bosses.
LETTERS
PLP at May Day in Manizales, Colombia
On May 1 in Manizales, Colombia, as internationalist communists we exposed the nationalist electoral forces. About 1,000 workers, teachers and students participated in the May Day event. We sold DESAFIO and distributed over 1,000 leaflets, pointing out that the only solution to the capitalist hell is communist revolution.
A comrade from our militant PLP group described the meaning of the red flag symbol of international working-class power, recited a poem by Maria Cano, a rebel woman who fought here for the shorter work-week and is known as the flower of the working class. PLP also paid homage to the Martyrs of Chicago whose murder by the bosses gave birth to May Day, the international working-class holiday.
Our challenge to the bosses' ideas inside the mass movement occurs in the context of the class struggle. The working class must be led by real revolutionary communists, not by social-democrat reformist traitors to the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long live the international working class!
A Comrade in Manizales, Colombia
Mass Arrests of Youth by NYPD at Puerto Rican Day Parade
The NYPD always manages to worsen anything. The cops arrested over 200 people, mostly youth, along the route of the June 10 Puerto Rican Day parade, one of the city's largest annual ethnic celebrations. The cops' excuse was they were making a sweep of "suspected members" of the Latin Kings gang. But most of those arrested were young people with no gang affiliation.
Afterwards, parade organizers blasted the cops' tactics. One 16-year-old Catholic HS student, son of a fire department lieutenant, was arrested because he was with a group of youth with yellow t-shirts promoting the Def Jam record label. Apparently, the Latin Kings' colors include yellow.
In the past, the parade leaders had allowed the Latin Kings to march, but denied their request this time. "Technically, we told them their application was late," one parade official told Daily News columnist Juan González. But that official and several others connected to the parade leadership revealed yesterday that their committee has been under intense pressure for the past year from City Hall and the NYPD to exclude the Latin Kings and other street gangs from the parade.
However, the problem stemmed from the NYPD's and City Hall's racism, not from the suspected gang members. Since the 2000 parade, when dozens of women were sexually assaulted in Central Park after the parade had ended, the cops have taken a hard line against all youth at the parade. Although those attacks were not connected to any gang activity, one former parade official said, "The NYPD keeps using the excuse of terrorism and public safety to get us to remove the Latin Kings from the parade."
Gonzalez's column stated, "Previous parade committee leaders had sought to reach out to the alienated young Hispanics who gravitate to violence-prone gangs. They figure you can't reform gang members if you don't treat them as members of society.... But whether you think the Latin Kings should have a right to march in the parade or not, that still doesn't excuse indiscriminate police sweeps in a huge crowd of perhaps two million people. To those of us who have decades of experience going to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, this kind of heavy-handed treatment by police has become maddeningly routine."
Again, the racist cops always manage to worsen any situation. But they can't help it since it is in the nature of any police department to be racist and terrorize innocent people, particularly Latino and black youth.
A Former Parade Marcher
`Reform' Would Tax Immigrants, Send Youth to War
"Immigration reform" means an attempt to maintain absolute control over the immigrant community as well as citizens across the U.S. The CHALLENGE article (6/6) made several good points, such as noting that under this bill not all 12 million undocumented immigrants would qualify for documents. But even though the politicians failed to agree on a bill, Bush is trying to resurrect it and it may very well return with many of its original provisions. One of these states that those who do qualify may have to pay retroactive taxes. At this moment it is unclear whether that means payment from the time they started working in the U.S. to the present. Even if it was for, say, the last three years, it would mean for every year of non-payment of taxes, there would be a 15% penalty on the amount of income that was declared.
Considering that the bill provides for these workers having to leave the U.S. at some point, how will they raise the money if they must return to their country of origin where there will be few jobs (in Mexico due to NAFTA and in Central America due to CAFTA)? All this because of regulations imposed by U.S. rulers and reinforced by local capitalists which is what drove these workers to emigrate to the U.S. in the first place.
As if these retroactive tax payments were not enough, the "reform" demands that these workers learn English or be denied services here. One amendment to the bill says: "Unless specifically provided by statute, no person has a right...to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English. If an exception is made... [for] a language other than English, the exception does not create an entitlement to additional services in that language or any language other than English."
So, if a person is unable to learn the language because she/he was out of the country, or is aged, this appears to make them "unqualified." Will services be denied to senior citizens because of such an amendment? Are the rulers trying to eliminate more and more programs so these funds can be used in wars to kill other workers across the ocean?
U.S. rulers will expand their imperialist wars, probably to Iran or Venezuela. So they need to exploit workers even more to pay for these wars, and also to use undocumented immigrants as cannon fodder in the wars. The ruling class is having trouble controlling its oil empire, forcing it to make alliances with or concessions to other bosses.
The tax burden on immigrants in any possible bill is like holding out the possibility of some form of "legal" status and then taxing them for allowing them to find needed work (which some believe will lead to other benefits U.S. citizens have in health and education, many of which are shrinking anyway). Meanwhile, it will give the bosses the right to spill the blood of immigrant children in Iraq and elsewhere. The rulers want to enslave immigrants for the rest of their lives, paying for imperialist wars that benefit only the rich while workers are being screwed in a multitude of ways.
A Latino immigrant worker
Work in Unions, Bring Workers Red Politics
In the letter "Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe" (CHALLENGE, 6/20), "A reader in Germany" is right in saying that "today in Europe, unions have become instruments of capital, opposing a communist strategy for workers."
If you combine that sad fact with low union membership rates -- 55.6% of workers in Belgium, 25% in Germany, 12.8% in the U.S. and 9.7% in France, according to the report "OECD employment outlook 2004" -- you might conclude that communists shouldn't bother with trade unions at all.
But abandoning the unions would be a big mistake. I think Lenin's words in "Left-Wing Communism" (1920) still ring true today: "To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of the workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie ..." In Lenin`s opinion, communists must wage a ruthless struggle "until all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism have been completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions." (By "leaders of social-chauvinism," Lenin meant the sort of nationalist union leaders that "A reader in Germany" condemns.)
Of course, communists mustn't limit their work in unions to union struggles. Lenin added that "we wage the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to attract the working class to our side. To forget this most elementary and self-evident truth would be stupid."
Finally, Lenin pointed out why we've got to struggle to win union members to communism: "It is impossible to capture political power (and the attempt should not be made) until this struggle has reached a certain stage."
(I'm not quoting Lenin because I think he had all the answers, but because I think he's right on this particular point, and to encourage CHALLENGE readers to study his book.)
A reader in France
Pentagon Dumps Toxic Waste into World's Oceans
Dailypress.com (Virginia) details how the U.S. Army has "dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the ocean, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled ships." There are at least 26 dump zones off the coast of 11 states and countries ranging from Japan to Norway to New Zealand.
Why are the bosses' press and environmental movements taking hold of this subject now? "Federal lawmakers are demanding the Army reveal everything it knows about where it dumped chemical weapons into the world's oceans," because these dumps may hinder the expansion of oil exploration. The U.S. ruling class has spent trillions on wars to control the world's supply of oil. This lust for profits, not environmental concerns, is what drives the U.S. rulers' policies.
The capitalists ordered these dangerous weapons to be dumped into the ocean from the end of World War II up to 1970. Records of the locations "are sketchy, missing, or were destroyed. The Army hasn't reviewed the World War I-era records, when ocean dumping of chemical weapons was common."
Brankowitz says that "short of a major research effort that would cost a lot of money, we've done the best we can." The U.S. ruling class has spent trillions on wars to control the world's supply of oil. They "can't" find a safer alternative to dumping toxic waste from a nuclear weapons testing area into the ocean, but they have hundreds of billions for the war in Iraq and, eventually, Iran. The contradictions facing U.S. capitalism constantly expose just how genocidal the criminals of the U.S. ruling class really are.
The environmentalist movement is blaming the U.S. military, but it was the bosses' failure to defuse the weapons they used to kill millions of workers that caused this tragedy. Capitalism has poisoned our world for centuries. Only when communist cooperation has replaced the endless drive for profits will workers be able to protect the environment for our class and our children. Fight Back!
Red Environmentalist
Italian Immigrants Then, Latino Immigrants Now
Recently, CHALLENGE reported on a May 1 demonstration for immigrant rights in Morristown, NJ. Immigrant laborers there, like elsewhere across the country, are victims of racist discrimination and harassment. Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello complains about the town's laborers "problem." NYC's El Diario-La Prensa (June 16) reports on a book, "New Neighborhoods, Old Friends," by James Constanzo, which details the treatment and situation of Italian immigrants who came to Morristown a century ago and its similarities to today's immigrant laborers from Latin America. Mayor Cresitello's immigrant descendants lived under the same rotten conditions suffered by today's laborers. They also used to hang out on corners looking for jobs, just like today's laborers.
"It is interesting that those who persecute immigrants today are the descendants of those victims of the same type of discrimination. The difference is that today they want to kick us out of town, spreading fear," said Pedro Labrador, a Morristown resident.
The book notes that from the end of the 19th century the new Italian immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, were ferried to New York City, and those with relatives in Morristown took a ferry to Hoboken and then a train to Morristown. Many were hired for regular jobs, but about a dozen or so stood at the corner of Speedwell Ave. and Flagler St. looking for work in construction and gardening. Today's laborers do it on Morris Street and on Lafayette and Speedwell avenues.
The Italian immigrants were hired for the worst jobs with the lowest pay possible. They were also accused of "making noise on the streets, drinking in public, committing crime," etc. They suffered verbal abuse, were segregated because of their nationality and for not speaking English, just like the attacks on today's immigrants.
From 1880 till 1924, when immigration quotas were established, over five million Italians entered the U.S. In the early 20th century, some 60 rich industrialists moved to Morristown, returning the town to its glory days from when, in 1777, George Washington established his Continental Navy headquarters. But discrimination continued against the new Italian immigrants. The book quotes Rose Vigilante, who said that in 1910 she worked in a laundry, where Irish workers ironed rich people's clothes on the first floor, while Italians were relegated to the basement, ironing pillow covers and bed sheets.
It's quite clear that racism against immigrants is as American as slavery against blacks and mass murder of Native Americans. Politicians, racist thugs like the Minutemen and Goebbels-like media stars like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly are parroting the same racist lies used over a century ago.
Congratulations to the PLP members and other anti-racist workers and youth who fight racism in all its forms. That's the only way to end this long-lasting monster and its creator, capitalism.
A Red Immigrant
`Sanctuary' Groups Need Action, not `Legality'
Recently I spoke at an immigration forum at my church, where I was asked to provide "the big picture." I spoke of our world of "expanding wars for imperialist dominance, increasingly racist and repressive policies in the name of national security and a society becoming fully and legally militarized." I exposed the current immigration bill and how much of it has already been put into practice.
I made suggestions to widen and sharpen the fight- back. I called for a sanctuary movement, inspired by the abolitionists who illegally saved runaway slaves. Education, health, social service and legal workers must pledge not to reveal the status of immigrants. We must "shut down" racist vigilante groups and stop attacks on day laborers. We can organize demonstrations at the U.S./Mexico border to advance working-class solidarity. I asked participants to consider a working-class, internationalist outlook based on these ideas: workers struggles have no borders; we are workers, not illegals; and tear down the wall.
Two speakers explained the "New Sanctuary Movement" in 25 U.S. cities. In the "Old Sanctuary Movement" of the 1980's, congregations "hid" Guatemalans and Salvadorans fleeing the death squads from U.S. immigration officials, but the "New Sanctuary Movement" is limited to supporting those facing deportation hearings. Faith communities can "sign on" to these levels of commitment: 1) to educate the congregation and adopt pledges of support, 2) to advocate changes in immigration law, 3) to help immigrants by finding "good" lawyers, writing letters, going to their hearings and possibly giving public sanctuary inside religious facilities for immigrants facing deportation. However, the movement opposes "hiding" immigrants, "underground" activity or "blocking" doors against immigration officials.
I was the only one to suggest that we should not trust the "legal process," facing today's high levels of racism and repression. We need to open discussion about "fear and risks," because a real commitment to "sanctuary" isn't a question of legality, but of "indignation, justice and working-class solidarity." We must be prepared to "take action, take steps to fight back, otherwise it will be too late."
The "New Sanctuary Movement" involves many honest people. But its leadership's narrow perspective greatly limits its usefulness and disarms its participants politically and tactically, tying them (often unknowingly) to the fascist maneuvering of capitalism's ruling class. Communists in this movement must build relationships, fight for communist ideas and lead class struggle based around those ideas. Let's do it!
Another red churchmouse
New Campus Group Spreads Pro-Worker Politics
(The following updates the June 20 CHALLENGE article entitled "Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Atacks.")
The new student group established by the majority of students who left the nationalist organization because of its reactionary politics has formed multi-racial alliances across campus clubs, stressing anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics rather than cultural or religious identities. It has tried to expose the divisive "multi-cultural" ideas of the campus Cultural Center that predictably supports the right-wing position of the nationalist organization. The latter has tried from the beginning to stop our militant actions.
Study groups on topics such as imperialism, racism, sexism and reform vs. revolution were scheduled weekly, inviting new students and members to discuss the political aspects of campus organizing. This fight for anti-imperialist politics and multi-racial unity has sparked a number of rallies against the war and recruitment on campus by the military and other police agencies. There have also been documentary screenings of "soldiers-speak-out" films to involve vets on campus, and films about worldwide labor struggles.
The group also planned a modest but successful campus May Day rally and celebration that again stressed multi-racial unity and the need for all workers, students and soldiers to unite against imperialism and the fascist capitalist system.
Since the break from the nationalist organization, CHALLENGE readership has risen. The new group has produced an increased level of struggle on campus against imperialist wars and racist super-exploitation, one that promises to continue into our Summer Projects and the next school year.
REDEYE
Looking behind the `war on terror'!
...The war on terror is a two-sided coin. One side reads: "Global War on Terror." The other side reads: _"Anything goes." (Bill Press, 6/3)
Primary's `pro-labor' Dem is a fake
...Edwards's antipoverty ideas....themselves, far from being radical or populist, basically sound -- there's no other way to put it -- Clintonian.
In fact, the more you talk to Edwards, the more apparent it is that the populist label doesn't quite fit. While he talks incessantly about economic injustice, Edwards isn't proposing anything...that would strike a serious blow against multinational corporations or the top tier of American earners. Even in his rhetoric, Edwards seems to deliberately avoid stoking resentments or pitting one class against another....
... "He evinces a lot of concern for the middle class and middle-class anxieties. But he's not in any way attacking the rich or corporations....He's not explaining one fundamental fact of modern economic life, which is that the very rich have all the money."
When I asked Edwards if he blamed large corporations or the wealthiest Americans for inequality, he appeared briefly confused by the question.
"No -- no," Edwards repeated, shaking his head. "I just don't think blaming helps, to be honest with you. What's the point?" (NYT, 6/10)
Capitalism's joblessness ruins teens
From January through May, according to the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, "the national teen employment rate averaged only 33.1 percent, tying for the lowest employment rate in the past 60 years."
The youth labor market in the U.S. has all but collapsed....
"That's why people go on the hustle," said one young man. "Got to get the money somewhere." (NYT, 6/16)
If college brings you $ -- banks get it
As college tuition has soared past the stagnant limits on federal aid, private loans have become the fastest-growing sector....These loans carry variable rates that can reach 20 percent, like credit cards....Students are pilling up debts as high as $100,000....
"When a student signs the paper for these loans...we're indebting these kids for life." (NYT, 6/10)
Scratch a war, find a profit motive
A report by the anticorruption organization Global Witness found that profits from smuggled and mishandled cocoa had helped pay for the civil war that has split the country for the past five years. It said that at least $118 million from the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer, was used...to fuel the conflict and enrich its leaders. Valuable mineral resources like diamonds, oil and gold have spawned and fueled vast conflicts across Africa for decades. (NYT, 6/9)
People find democracy a false hope
This is election season in the Middle East. Syria just held presidential and parliamentary elections. Algeria held parliamentary elections. Egyptians will be asked to vote next week on a new upper house of Parliament. There will soon be elections in Jordan, Morocco and Oman, followed by elections in Qatar....
...Elections, it appears, have increasingly become a tool used by the authoritarian leaders to claim legitimacy.
"There is a state of depression and lack of trust, or faith, among the Arab masses in the regimes and little belief that these elections can lead to the change aspired to"....
"Yes," replied Hussein Jaffal, 31, "there is democracy, but there are no freedoms."
It is that view that seems to be spreading.... "Democracy itself has lost credibility as a way of government," said a Western diplomat based in Algiers....
"The system is rigged to bring to power people who are already in power,".... (NYT, 6/7)
US rulers can junk the `rule of law'
The case of Li Guirong, a graying 50-year-old who now hobbles on crutches, reflects China at its worst -- government by thuggery. But each time I start this column. I feel that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have pulled the rug from under me. Do I really have the right to complain about torture or extra-legal detentions in China when we Americans do the same in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba?
I keep remembering a heated conversation I had...in China years ago. I reproached an official for China's torture and arbitrary imprisonment... "If you Americans ever faced the threat of chaos, you would do just the same," he said.
"Impossible!" I replied.
Yet I owe him an apology, for he has been proven right. The moment we did feel a threat, after 9/11, we held people without trial, and beatings were widespread....(NYT, 6/7)
PLP History: Lessons for Today: SDS Failed to Support 1970 Postal Strike
(Part VII described the massive anti-war march on Washington and the PLP-led illegal breakaway demonstration on November 15, 1969, at the U.S. Labor Department backing 147,000 striking General Electric workers. PLP now directed its strategic focus toward building a campus worker-student alliance as a step toward unity between students and the industrial working class.)
SDS: Part VIII
During the 1969-70 academic year, the war in Vietnam raged on. Massive student protest, much of it militant, continued at campuses across the U.S. Desertion and outright defection rose to unprecedented heights within the U.S. military.
Meanwhile, beneath this surface of mounting class struggle, the betrayal of people's war in Vietnam was already under way. As early as 1968, Vietnamese leaders had begun negotiating a deal that would allow U.S. imperialism to re-gain at the bargaining table much of its battlefield losses. However, the deadly fruit of this class collaboration had yet to ripen.
After the split at the June 1969 convention, SDS chapters began building the campus worker-student alliance (CWSA) under PLP's leadership. Despite many political weaknesses, it launched important, useful political struggles over the next few years. In November 1969, when the Harvard administration was still reeling from the previous spring's student strike, SDS members there organized a sit-in protesting the university's racist hiring and pay policies.
The Columbia SDS chapter organized a significant struggle to demand funeral benefits for the family of a campus worker decapitated during a preventable elevator-shaft accident. After initially attempting to avoid all responsibility and after a disciplinary hearing intended to punish student protestors -- which the protestors turned into a trial of the university's racism -- the Columbia administration eventually caved in. Important struggles uniting students and campus workers erupted at Yale, UCLA and many other campuses.
Under PLP's leadership, SDS held a successful convention at Yale and, in the fall of 1970, organized more than 1,000 workers and students to march through Detroit and picket the General Motors headquarters to support striking GM workers. The Party continued to grow and to improve its political line, further distancing itself from revisionism -- the old communist movement's betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, allowing rulers' ideology within the ranks of the working class -- with the publication in 1971 of Road to Revolution III.
However, amid these generally positive developments, events exposed a glaring political weakness within the CWSA and the PLP student leadership. On March 17, 1970, a wildcat strike began in Branch 36 of the New York Post Office. Within days, it had become a national strike, involving more than 200,000 workers at nearly 700 locations.
The strike was essentially "illegal," but because other government workers threatened to join it if President Nixon prosecuted the strikers, he limited his attack to impotent efforts at scabbing, including use of the National Guards and Reserves of all the major military services. This proved completely ineffective. Many of the Guardsmen and Reservists were workers themselves, who carried out acts of sabotage in sympathy with the strikers. The U.S. mail system was absolutely crippled. Wall Street and the normal functioning of business were severely affected. (E-mail and the internet did not exist then.)
The postal strike provided the newly pro-working class SDS with an unmatched opportunity to organize solidarity demonstrations and actions, particularly on campuses where it had chapters. Yet, except for a few small, perfunctory actions of this type and a small demonstration in downtown Manhattan, we did little to support this historic strike.
With 37 years of hindsight, we can make a sober, balanced self-criticism of our inability to rise to this occasion. Part of the problem was objective. SDS was primarily a single-issue organization, whose dramatic rise was tied to protesting the Vietnam War. Vietnamese workers and peasants were being sold out, and the anti-war movement was dying at the time of the postal strike, although it had not yet become conscious of its demise. Leading massive solidarity actions commensurate with the postal strike's importance may therefore not have been in the cards.
But attributing our dismal performance to "objective conditions" would be foolish and irresponsible. The truth is that the PLP student leadership failed to grasp the postal strike's profound significance, took a business-as-usual approach to a situation that called for extraordinary aggressiveness, and in so doing, revealed its own significant weakness on the crucial question of class consciousness.
The Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong once said that a minimum of ten years' practice, struggle and criticism-self-criticism were necessary to turn an intellectual into a good communist. At the very least, our feeble response to the postal strike proved him right on this score. The main lesson here, as in so many other cases, is that we could have done more -- a lot more. However, reiterating this self-criticism after so many years can enable our young comrades and friends to absorb this lesson and to act accordingly when future opportunities of this type arise, as they inevitably will.
(Next: Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, the Kent State massacre and the May 9, 1970, March on Washington.)
THE HAZZARDS OF DUKE
Capitalist justice is racist to the core. On the one hand, a North Carolina prosecutor was disbarred for wrongly charging three white middle-class Duke lacrosse players with rape (although the case never went to trial). But a Chicago prosecutor could wrongly charge and convict more than a dozen black men, and have them serve about 100 years collectively, even though their "confessions" resulted from torture in a South Side police station. This prosecutor turns out to be none other than the current Mayor Daley who has since been elected over and over again!
This system has got to go.
Factory Worker's Experiences Carry Over Shop to Shop
"Hey dude, are you working at your grandparent's house this weekend?" asked Greg.
"Yeah, man," Chris replied," I'm going tomorrow and Saturday."
"Wow, what are you guys doing, remodeling or something?" Carlos asked.
"No we're cleaning out lots of stuff that my grandparents have collected over the years," Chris explains. "It's been almost thirty years so they have a lot of stuff to go through and throw out. Yeah, it's hard because we're getting them ready to sell their house and move them into one of those senior apartment places."
"Man," said Greg, "it sucks the way old people are treated in this country. Other cultures would have three or four generations in one house helping each other pay the bills and take care of the family's kids and elders."
"Yeah," Chris replied, "I'm glad we're able to do it with them before it's too late. "It's definitely brought the family closer together, I guess anytime we go through something tough collectively we get closer. Many people all over the world face these problems. This system isn't set up to meet workers' needs. As long as you can work for the boss, you're `useful.' But then they cast you aside and social security isn't enough."
This is even truer as the bosses cut benefits to pay for more wars.
After several months working in a new shop I had this conversation on our break with an inter-racial group of young industrial workers -- two white workers, one Mexican, one black and one Asian. We don't have great conversations every day. It's taken some time to just start having serious exchanges about more important stuff. Of course, we chat about the weather or about what we did over the weekend, all part of this puzzle called organizing, but we must always remember why we're in these shops.
We do want to make friends, without whom we can't recruit workers to the Party. On the way we should always be aware of the political limits and how we can struggle to expand them. Sometimes we want to push things along so quickly we forget most people don't necessarily have many serious conversations regularly with their co-workers. That takes some time and struggle. Sometimes it's also difficult to be self-critical and realize that maybe we're restricting the limits in the way we struggle.
This conversation really helped me think about how this group has taken shape and to compare it with other experiences in my old shop. I tend to be impatient, to rush things, which often short-changes my co-workers and the Party. I move on too quickly, forgetting that the limits are less than where I want them to be. We learn through our mistakes and can share our lessons through CHALLENGE to help others in their organizing. Reviewing these experiences can really help us better understand ourselves and our organizing.
From working in these factories I've learned much about what the working class is and who I am as a worker and a communist. The experiences have expanded my tactics as an organizer for the Party. They continually shape my theories and practice after careful analysis and discussion with my PLP club. Particularly, my experiences have taught me to apply a dialectical approach, to look at both sides of the contradiction and understand when to use different political tactics, to be effective in bringing workers closer to the Party.
An Industrial Worker
Save Darfur For Whom? For U.S. Rulers’ Oil Empire
Cindy Sheehan: Quitting Struggle Won’t Stop War-Making Dems
700,000 Strikers Hit South Africa’s New Economic Apartheid
Wanted For Murder: Racist NYPD KKKop
Liberals Use ‘Peace’ Movement as Cover for Imperialist War
Vets Support Anti-War GI Against Marine Brass
Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Attacks
Arab-Jewish Unity Answer to U.S.-Zionist Racism
Venezuela: ‘Free Press’ Brawl Masks Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Profits
Rulers Use JFK ‘Plot’ To Terrorize Workers
Communism: Only Liberation of Women and All Workers
Imperialist Square Off at G8 Meeting
GM-Russia Workers Fight Heat, Also Need Revolution
Portugal General Strike Hits Anti-Worker ‘Reforms’
LETTERS
U.S. Bosses Behind Colombia’s Death Squads
GI’s Say They’re ‘Spilling Blood for Oil’
PLP Foresaw Vietnam’s ‘Capitalist Road’
Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe
MTA-TWU Collusion Murders Transit Workers
Immigrant Students Reject Bosses’ Lies
- Iraq war detested on black website
- Sarge says troops want out
- Black America not fooled on Iraq
- No profit, so emergency rooms shut
- Oil-imperialism is bi-partisan
- Harvesters rob Mexico’s poorest
- Cuba health care ‘deserves credit’
PLP History: PL-led Action Linked Vietnam War to Strike-breaker GE
Chad: Another China-U.S. Bosses’ Oil Battleground
Capitalists’ ‘Inborn Superiority’ One More Ruling-Class Myth
Save Darfur For Whom? For U.S. Rulers’ Oil Empire
On campuses and in religious groups across the U.S., a movement is growing against horrendous atrocities inflicted on the people of Darfur. The Save Darfur Coalition unites a host of organizations opposing the Sudanese government and its henchmen, who have murdered, raped, starved and tortured hundreds of thousands and made millions homeless. Unfortunately, however, the earnest efforts of rank-and-file Darfur activists will ultimately be wasted.
The movement does not attack capitalism’s ceaseless competition for profits, which underlies the Sudan slaughter, as it does the Iraq war. Additionally, the dominant leaders of Save Darfur represent the main imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists, who cynically seek to transform mass indignation over Darfur into popular support for the wider wars they require. The strife in Darfur results from the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China over Sudan’s oil, the Mid-East oil export routes Sudan commands and jockeying for geo-strategic and public-opinion advantage in the run-up to global conflict.
On one level, the U.S. is battling oil-thirsty China for Sudan’s reserves. U.S. giant Chevron first discovered relatively small oil deposits in Sudan in the 1970’s but soon pulled out because an ongoing civil war there made the venture not worth the risk. Since then, oil companies from France, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and China have moved in, made far bigger finds, and conspired with Sudan’s emerging al-Bashir dictatorship to shut the U.S. out. China now takes the lion’s share, 60%, of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels-a-day of oil. The U.S. started a comeback in the early ’80s by funding a rebellion against the Khartoum government. John Garang, a graduate of the U.S. Army’s special forces school at Ft. Benning, Georgia, led the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army and symbolized the pro-U.S. rebel movement until his death in 2005. In addition to funding Garang’s brutal proxy militia, since 1996 the U.S. has sent $20 million of military equipment to neighboring Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to put further pressure on the Sudanese government. But installing a pro-U.S. regime would merely turn the petroleum profit spigot westward and do nothing for Darfur’s destitute working class. Exxon Mobil’s pipeline operations in nearby Chad, for example, have evicted thousands of farmers, stealing dirt from the dirt-poor.
War Criminals Lead Liberal Darfur Movement
Liberal, war-making imperialists are asserting ever tighter control over the Save Darfur Coalition. The NY Times (6/2/07) reported that a split pitting advocates of military action against relief workers resulted in the ouster of coalition director David Rubenstein, a spokesman for the latter. The Times made it clear that John Prendergast, another Save Darfur director and senior advisor to the International Crisis Group (ICG), had blessed the firing, "Prendergast...said the changes that the board decided to make were part of an effort to reorganize and re-energize the movement."
Cindy Sheehan: Quitting Struggle Won’t Stop War-Making Dems
Cindy Sheehan’s decision to quit the anti-war movement has saddened many activists. Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, made a bold move when she started Camp Casey outside Bush’s ranch almost three years ago. Sheehan’s principled stance galvanized many people into action at that time. However, Sheehan’s approach, though honest, did not address the root cause of imperialist war and was doomed to failure.
Sheehan believed that if enough people rose up against the Iraq war, the Democrats would get elected, and then be forced to act to end the war. She thought that various "anti-war" organizations led by the Democratic Party really could have the class interests of U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi people at heart. And she thought a hard-hitting campaign, combining massive civil disobedience, media publicity and disrupting "business as usual" could succeed.
The Democratic Party is not just "part of the problem." Their operatives and allies are the main agents of the class enemy within the ranks of honest anti-war forces. The Democratic Party has generated far more wars in U.S. history than the Republicans. They completely supported Gulf War I. Clinton and Secy. of State Albright’s sanctions on food and medicine between the wars killed a half million Iraqi children (a "price worth paying" replied Albright to a reporter’s question). The Democrats voted overwhelmingly to support the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Iraq. They’ve voted to fund the war ever since, with no strings attached.
The Iraq war, like all other wars in the recent period, is a product of imperialism. Communists say that imperialism is a stage of capitalism where the whole world has already been divided up amongst the biggest powers. Under imperialism, bosses from one country try to control resources, markets and labor in order to dominate rival bosses from other countries.
In Iraq, that resource is oil. These fights between bosses begin in smaller countries, like Iraq and Lebanon. Usually, they result in the biggest thieves facing off against each other in major wars, which can kill tens or hundreds of millions of workers. So imperialist wars are inevitable under the capitalist system, and won’t end until the working class and its allies wipe out that system.
Nothing less than a communist revolution, which changes production for profit, to production and distribution for need, will change the root cause of imperialism and its wars. Media campaigns are a vain attempt to enlist the services of organizations which support the capitalist system to fight that same system. The rulers can handle civil disobedience and even mass, militant protest. Only breaking the "rules of the game" and organizing to smash the profit system will threaten their class rule.
Sheehan is right that the U.S. is becoming (actually has become) a "fascist corporate wasteland." She’s right that the so-called "left" that supports the Democrats is no left at all. We admire her courage, and understand her exhaustion from all the attacks and betrayals she’s experienced. But now is the time to deepen our ties within the anti-war movement, especially with those considering breaking the bounds capitalism has established. We need to show how the fight against imperialism and the fight against racism are inseparable.
Cynicism and passivity only serve the capitalists. We must prepare for a long and brutal fight to destroy the war-makers who use our — and our children’s — "blood and treasure" to achieve their greater profit goals.
U.S. Rulers Fund Both Parties
While Republicans get a majority of corporate campaign contributions, the main capitalists insure Democrats get their share.
Corporation Percentage to Total Democrats Contributions
Goldman Sachs 61% $3,348,816
JPMorgan Chase 56% $2.009,121
Microsoft 56% $1,995,492
NewsCorp (Murdoch) 55% $ 943,682
NY Life Insurance 52% $1,102,025
Citigroup 51% $2,368,516
UBS AG 50% $1,909,551
700,000 Strikers Hit South Africa’s New Economic Apartheid
JOHANNESBURG, JUNE 1 — Thousands of public sector workers in South Africa marched as part of a strike by some 700,000 workers demanding a 12% pay hike, rejecting the government’s 6% offer. Inflation alone is at 5.5% so the "raise" would have been ½%. A 40-year-old-teacher from Dr. B. W. Vilakazi High School in Soweto told the BBC, "As a teacher I’m earning peanuts."
Workers’ anger was stoked recently by an official body’s recommendation that President Thabo Mbeki receive a 57% salary increase. "They live in luxury, we still stay in poverty," hospital cleaner Flora Simakuhle said, referring to politicians. (South African Business Day newspaper, 6/1) "Fifty-seven percent for fat cats and 6% for poor hard workers. Shame on you," read one placard brandished by a picket at a Johannesburg hospital.
The strike closed schools, hospitals, public transport and other public services. The usually traffic-jammed streets here were almost empty.
Capitalist oppression and its racism can never be ended under any bosses’ government. The African National Congress (ANC) rulers have proven that. Many workers are seeing that the ANC serves capitalism, just as the old racist Apartheid regime did. The workers’ anger and pressure have forced the unions to organize the strike and mass protests, but the union leadership will jump at the first opportunity to sell out the militant workers.
Millions of South African workers and youth thought they were fighting for a revolutionary government when they fought the old Apartheid regime. Their heroic struggle against racism inspired workers and youth worldwide. But the ANC led by Nelson Mandela and its allies in the "Communist" Party of South Africa betrayed them. The task now is to build a revolutionary communist leadership and fight for the only true emancipation from racism and capitalism: communism, which will eliminate the profit system, the cause of racism and exploitation. We in PLP say that a revolutionary workers’ movement in South Africa, with its powerful working class, could lead the way to liberate workers and youth all across Africa from the living hell they suffer.
Wanted For Murder: Racist NYPD KKKop
BRONX, NY, June 4 — PLP members and friends have continued to denounce the fascist NYPD’s brutal terror inflicted here on Fermin Arzu (picture right), an unarmed 41-year-old immigrant worker from Honduras.
KKKop Raphael Lora shot him in cold blood, firing five shots into his car. Again it was shoot to kill as one bullet pierced Arzu’s heart and lung. As CHALLENGE reported (6/6), we quickly responded to this racist incident, visiting the family of brother Arzu, distributing CHALLENGES and leaflets and making several contacts.
We then found out about and went to a vigil the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend. It began with mostly politicians and journalists, but slowly grew to a throng of approximately 150 angry demonstrators. CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed to the entire crowd. The leaflet contained a picture of KKKop Lora with the slogan, "WANTED FOR MURDER!"
Workers in the neighborhood responded well to the leaflet and took extra copies to distribute to family, friends and co-workers. One worker couldn’t agree more, as he pointed to the "WANTED" picture, declaring, "This is what I’m talking about. People can’t be afraid of these bastards! We need to take them head on!" He then took a bunch of leaflets and distributed them to eight of his friends at the vigil, while exchanging phone numbers with a comrade.
Arzu’s memorial service occurred the next day. PLP held a bullhorn rally and CHALLENGE sale two blocks from the funeral home. Even though the cops shut down our bullhorn, over 200 papers and 300 leaflets were distributed to workers and students in the neighborhood. Some thanked us for being there because the bosses’ news media had been scaling down coverage of this recent slaying. "It’s good to see the truth for once!" commented one commuter as he read through CHALLENGE and a leaflet.
The brutality of this murderous attack recalls the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, shot 41 times by cops while reaching for his wallet. Arzu was reaching for the glove compartment, likely to retrieve his license and auto registration. As with Diallo, the police are now searching for "evidence" to justify their murder.
Meanwhile, KKKop Lora boasted, "I’m just doing my job." (NY Daily News, 5/20/07) This arrogance only fuels our class hatred toward the cops and the capitalist system they serve and protect.
Now that the family has returned from burying brother Arzu in Honduras, we will continue to rally and march with masses of workers in the streets. However, we must not allow liberal misleaders to diffuse our anger! Al Sharpton and other politicians will try to dazzle us with a call for "justice," "independent investigations" and "sensitivity training" for cops. But history has shown that essentially nothing will be done to punish this killer.
This fight will NOT be won in the capitalist courtrooms but only when all our forces are mobilized in the streets, on our jobs and within many mass organizations. With fists in the air, we will join with workers outraged over this brutal killing, and meanwhile note that none of this fascist terror will end until we organize a communist revolution to eliminate the profit system. J
Liberals Use ‘Peace’ Movement as Cover for Imperialist War
NEW YORK CITY, May 7 — While a modest step forward for our anti-war group, the rally today posed a big question to students, faculty and campus workers. Do we want peace or do we want communism? Behind the "peace movement" lurks an apology for capitalism. If we can "end the war" (whatever the current war is), all will be well; "we’ll take back the country, America will be America again."
This deeply-held idea, often not conscious, is profoundly mistaken. It takes capitalism for granted as the unending framework within which we fight for reforms, instead of highlighting capitalism itself as what needs to be fought. Capitalism will survive military defeats like Vietnam, only to go on to future wars like Iraq. It will survive economic depression as it did the 1930s, only to proceed to the bigger economic crashes looming today. It will survive everything except communist revolution. And if the Party’s ideas fail to drive the revolution forward, capitalism will survive even that, as in Russia and China.
The Party’s role at the rally suggested a different idea: forget "peace," fight for communism. The lesson of the war is that we must build a movement to end capitalism itself, not just one of its endless wars.
We had mixed success in this role. Proletarian internationalism was front and center in a huge banner a student made linking the deaths of student-soldiers from our campus to the deaths of 111 students at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and the 32 deaths at Virginia Tech. Poems read linked struggles from the Caribbean to Iraq to Palestine/Israel. We chanted, "Workers’ struggles have no borders!" "¡Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!"
One speech gave the Party’s analysis of imperialism. While the word is more common now, the analysis is still fuzzy and people think its details are not that important — "let’s just end the war." But that will still leave imperialism in control, preparing for more wars.
This rally helped build the Party and moved a modest step towards fighting for communism because there was a struggle within the group to have a militant rally rather than another educational event; because study groups are forming where the Party’s ideas can directly challenge the ideology of "peace movements." The battle of ideas proceeds.J
Vets Support Anti-War GI Against Marine Brass
On June 4, the Marine Corps demonstrated its commitment to intimidating anti-war actions by active-duty GI’s and veterans in recommending a general discharge instead of an honorable discharge for Adam Kokesh (pictured right). This means he may lose over $10,000 in educational benefits and suffer a stigma in the job market. Adam had already been honorably discharged from active service after spending two tours of duty in Iraq, and was part of the Individual Ready Reserve, a civilian status (no pay, no drills, no chain of command).
Adam has boldly denounced the Iraq War effort since his discharge, cursed the brass, and participated in a series of street theater actions organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. These actions, dubbed "Operation First Casualty" and described in CHALLENGE (April 11, 2007), were efforts to bring Baghdad to the streets of major U.S. cities by conducting patrols and interrogations similar to those conducted in Iraq.
Over 200 anti-war protestors from Kansas City joined a busload of veterans and others who left Washington, D.C. to attend this hearing and testify on Adam’s behalf. Many on the veterans’ bus read CHALLENGE with interest during the two-day trip. Building the revolutionary movement advocated by CHALLENGE, not only against the Marine brass but against the entire system of imperialism, is the only way to get the results the working class needs in this period.
Two more Marines are facing disciplinary proceedings for the same reason, and so building a stronger GI movement with civilian solidarity is increasingly important as the imperialist war in Iraq continues to murder thousands of our brothers and sisters, Iraqi and U.S. alike.
Red Vet
Campus Political Struggle Backs Immigrant Workers, Fights Nationalist Attacks
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — As we fought to organize about 200 immigrant workers responsible for all of the campus landscaping and food services, the school administration attempted to attack us by appealing to the cultural nationalism of our mass organization. The administrators argued that because these workers were predominantly Latino, this should only be "a Chicano issue."
The conflict with the organization’s reformist leadership stemmed from our exposure of their — and the organization’s — link to the school administration’s exploitative and imperialist agenda. As the attacks intensified, we decided to sharpen all the contradictions that surfaced from our political activities.
The conservative leadership at first tried to attack the most vocal individuals — those who called for an anti-imperialist and multi-racial struggle — condemning their politics as "divisive" and "outside the scope of the group’s objectives." But many students within the group had been won through struggle to aspects of communist politics and to support a revolutionary, anti-imperialist position. Building around these politics protected us from the leadership’s fascist attacks.
We began our counterattack against both the administration and their crony student leadership — many of whom received jobs at the school from their administrative masters in exchange for their political loyalty. We were accused of "infiltration" — bringing in "foreign" ideas — and excuses were made for abandoning the workers’ struggle on campus. We were viciously attacked as being too militant and therefore putting the administration’s funding of the organization at risk. This occurred once we linked the racist administrators and the self-interested reformism of the cultural nationalist groups to their use of tuition hikes and outsourced super-exploited immigrant labor to maximize profits, and funding of the U.S. imperialist war machine.
This racist attack aimed to stop our multi-racial organizing by explicitly excluding Muslim, Asian and other students who were won to support the super-exploited immigrant workers. The plan backfired, exposing the inherent racism of cultural nationalism. The students we had won politically realized the importance of understanding racism and exploitation as a product of capitalism, bringing them closer to revolutionary politics.
After the leadership’s several failed attempts to expel us from the organization, a majority including us decided to leave the group. Some argued that we should stay in order to further build the membership’s revolutionary potential. But too many objected to continued involvement with a student organization that preaches progressive action but practices racism, sexism, self-promotion and support of capitalist exploitation and imperialism.
The step to leave was a response to the successful communist work within the organization and caused almost half the membership to realize that revolution, not nationalism and diversity, is the road to end imperialism, racism, and capitalist exploitation. We then formed a multi-racial group with a pro-worker and anti-imperialist outlook. Many are CHALLENGE readers and we are planning to invite these students to go a step further, to join PLP.
Communist politics can only be developed and evaluated through struggle and practice, real-life experiences, whether personal or by learning from others’ experiences. That practice provides the working class with communist politics. To build a communist revolution to end capitalism, practice is primary.
Arab-Jewish Unity Answer to U.S.-Zionist Racism
A mass protest was to take place in Washington, D.C. on June 10 against the 40-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Not only are the Palestinian masses reduced to living on 22% of their former land, but they’ve been deprived of much of their water, farmland, employment and freedom of movement. Continuous warfare afflicts not only the region but fuels world conflict.
The thorny question facing the growing number of Jewish, Arab and other activists in this movement is what should we fight for? Is it enough to demand that the occupation end, the Israeli settlements be dismantled, or a "Palestinian state" be established? This issue requires considering the role of racism and nationalism in Israel’s history and the current struggle between Israel and Palestine, as well as the growing inter-imperialist rivalry as the main source of endless wars in the oil-rich Middle-East.
The original influx of European Jews into Palestine was a response to their racist persecution in Europe and the nationalism of the late 19th century. The massive increase in immigration after the Holocaust also largely reflected the refusal of Western nations to accept Jewish refugees. In addition, the U.S. and Britain were glad to have an enclave of people with "Western values" and ties in the Middle-East, which was rapidly gaining importance as the major source of the world’s oil.
Instead of going to "a land without people for a people without land," the Jews arrived in a densely populated area. In 1948, the UN gave 78% of the land to Israel, when Jews comprised only one-third of the population and owned only 6% of the land; 750, 000 Palestinians, half the population, were brutally expelled from their homes. In the 1967 war, the Israeli rulers seized the remaining 20% of Palestine and has occupied it ever since. Now the Israeli-built Wall isolating Palestinians, the checkpoints, the ban against Palestinians working in Israel and other indignities have reduced Palestinian workers and youth to a state of desperation.
All this would have been impossible without the Zionists’ racism. Instead of learning from centuries of anti-Semitism that racism breeds genocide and divides poor peoples against one another, the Zionists used the same ideology to suppress another people. Meanwhile — now as throughout history — the wealthy bosses and rulers use these ethnic divides for their own advantage. The U.S. rulers arm Israel to the teeth, not out of love for Judaism, but to maintain bully-power over the oil-rich nations and their potential allies in the area. So-called threats to Israel from Iraq and Iran are excuses for wars in the U.S. interest. Ordinary Israelis suffer the costs of occupation in lives lost, morality destroyed and social services cut to finance the military, all tolerated only because of anti-Arab racism.
Despite the fortitude displayed by Palestinian workers and youth in surviving the occupation, strife is now growing between the corrupt Fatah movement, and fundamentalist, nationalist Hamas, neither of which promises a just future for Palestinians, or lead an effective resistance. Palestine is also a class society, and needs a mass, revolutionary anti-racist communist-led movement of workers to create a society in their own interests.
Therefore, whose side are we on? Leftist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe says South Africa is the model. But, although Apartheid is gone, the condition of the majority poor black population is worse than before. The same corporations that supported Apartheid still control the economy (see page 3 on strikes in South Africa). Racism was born with capitalism and only its destruction can end racial and national oppression.
While we march against the evils of occupation, we should understand that only a world without bosses and their imperialist wars will end these evils of the profit system which pit workers against their class brothers and sisters and their interests. History provides many examples of struggles uniting Arabs, Jews and others in the region against their common exploiters.J
Venezuela: ‘Free Press’ Brawl Masks Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Profits
The bosses’ media, liberals and conservatives, from the NY Times, representing the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, to CNN, the Washington Post, Univision, Telemundo, Fox News, El País (Spain), and Televisa (México), have all cried crocodile tears over how the Chávez government has trampled "freedom of the press" in Venezuela by not renewing the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas TV (RCTV). Thousands of students and others, mobilized by the right-wing opposition to Chávez, have held many street protests denouncing this "attack" on the freedom of the press.
First of all, "freedom of the press" doesn’t exist. Increasingly, a few monopolies control the mass media worldwide. The NY Times itself owns several newspapers (like the Boston Globe), TV channels and radio stations. Viacom owns CBS; GE owns NBC and Telemundo; Disney owns ABC; the Rupert Murdoch worldwide media empire owns Fox, and so on. In Mexico, Televisa (which owns part of the U.S. Univisión TV network) and TV Azteca have a monopoly on most TV stations there and are fighting any attempts to break it. Venevisión is owned by Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who also supported the 2002 anti-Chavez coup but later made a deal with Chávez (mediated by Jimmy Carter) and didn’t lose his license.
This is similar in all capitalist countries. These media giants only broadcast the news that best serve the interests of their owners and the capitalist class they represent. They don’t allow any real dissident views (pro-working class or revolutionary communist ideas).
RCTV — which didn’t lose its cable license — called for and supported the April 2002 coup that overthrew Chávez for less than two days. In less than 48 hours, the putchist government began banning all opposition (media, political groups, etc.) RCTV tacitly supported this. Since then, RCTV has urged another coup against Chávez. After the failed 2002 coup it helped organize the right-wing strike that tried to sabotage the Venezuelan oil industry.
RCTV — like El Mercurio newspaper and other media in Chile, aided by the CIA to overthrow the Allende government — basically wants a Pinochet-style regime to replace Chavez’s nationalist anti-U.S. government. The U.S. bosses’ problems in Iraq have made it easier for Chávez to ally himself with China, Russia, Iran and other U.S. imperialist rivals.
Millions of workers and youth support the Chávez government since they hate the old pro-U.S. bosses (most of the anti-Chávez protestors are middle class). They think Chávez really represents their desire for a society without the growing and racist inequality spread by the old bosses who stole the oil bonanza before Chávez took power.
Even though Chávez has given workers some crumbs, including medical care in poor neighborhoods courtesy of 20,000 doctors sent by Cuba, capitalism is still thriving in Venezuela, and Chávez has no intention of changing that. His idea of "Bolivarian 21st Century socialism" is basically capitalism with some reforms for workers but with plenty of imperialist investments (including Exxon, Gazprom, Chevron, Total, China’s oil company, Petrobras), but with the PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil company) controlling a majority share.
The workers’ and youths’ faith in Chávez is a dangerous illusion. It hampers not only the fight against fascist coup attempts by the old bourgeoisie (disarming workers politically into believing in some "good" bosses and military officers), but also fosters the belief that capitalism with some crumbs (á la Chavez) is the solution.
Again, the workers and youth must fight the old bosses and all imperialists and capitalists. Amid this struggle, they need to break with all illusions about Chávez and his populist nationalism, and fight to build a real revolutionary communist party, for a society where workers really rule.J
Rulers Use JFK ‘Plot’ To Terrorize Workers
BROOKLYN, NY, June 5 — From Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, from Iraq to Somalia, when U.S. rulers decide to apply the "terrorist" label to an individual or group it’s an indication that all bets are off; any and every form of violence and torture becomes legal, necessary and justifiable. Recent revelations about a "terror" plot to attack fuel lines leading to JFK airport in New York City mark what could become a new phase in the "War on Terror" as four men from Trinidad and Guyana have been accused. Guyana borders Venezuela and Trinidad is just offshore. U.S. imperialists would love a pretext to deploy military forces closer to their main supply of domestically consumed oil. (A refinery on Trinidad handles Venezuelan oil shipped to the U.S.)
Police agents monitor and entrap many individuals into violent plots. Even according to reports in the bosses’ media, if such a plot did occur, it appeared to have been directed every step of the way by an FBI informant. The FBI and foreign intelligence services closely monitored the individuals involved in the 9/11 attacks, but 9/11 happened anyway. The main goal of this police activity is not to guarantee the safety of workers who die in terror attacks but to sow fear and suspicion within the working class. They want to push even more anti-immigrant racism and also scare us into running to the capitalist state for protection. Fascism is built on fear.
Our PLP club’s response to the JFK plot centered around producing this article for CHALLENGE at our meeting and reviewing recent CHALLENGE distribution practices in order to struggle for greater circulation of this issue in our schools and among friends. Many members of our club and many of the teachers and students at the schools where we function come from the Caribbean. We must not be caught off-guard by stepped-up police harassment and terror in our neighborhoods.
We know that Democrats and Republicans united as one to launch and condone massive attacks against Arab workers after 9/11 and we are working to undermine any illusions among our close friends that the liberals will save us. CHALLENGE teaches us that Hillary Clinton and General Odom are planning even larger wars in the future.
The concept of "an attack on one is an attack on all" is a key element of class consciousness we aim to nurture in our schools as a response to this latest turn of events in our area. The bosses may be free to build a base for broadening the scope of their imperialist "war on terror" but they are powerless to prevent us from exposing their schemes to thousands and trying to organize against them.
Communism: Only Liberation of Women and All Workers
(PLP members and friends distributed 3,000 of the following leaflet during a massive march held in Oaxaca, México, on International Women’s Day — see reports in June 6 CHALLENGE. Significantly they used this occasion to draw key lessons from the massive, militant struggle of brave teachers and other workers in Oaxaca.)
International Woman’s Day
To the militant people of Oaxaca and the working class of the world:
The celebration of "International Woman’s Day" had its origin in the need to free working-class women from the triple capitalist exploitation that they suffer worldwide [as workers, women and their skin color]. These struggles were led by communists in Germany, Russia and the U.S. and women in other countries, who suffered attacks, jail and murder.
Today we recall with revolutionary fervor another annual anniversary of these events, and the fact that the present situation demands that women and men, members of the same working class, walk together shoulder to shoulder in common struggle for the liberation of the working class from capitalist slavery, since there’s no difference between the class interests of the sexes, and any divisions are only bourgeois liberal distortions and lies that do great harm to the unity of the working class.
The struggles constantly occurring under capitalism to improve the situation of the workers and their allies, independently of the reform results, teach us lessons of great courage, militancy, solidarity and unity in the battles against the government and the ruling class, our class enemies. They present examples of the tactics that gave us favorable and unfavorable results; they build anger against the bosses and often against the sellout leaders and opportunists; and, mainly, they clarify the real role that the state plays as the defender of the bosses’ interests and as their repressive arm against the working class, as happened in the recent struggle in Oaxaca.
We must learn from our successes and our mistakes. To involve ourselves exclusively in the struggle for immediate reforms and leave things there does not help the workers and students advance politically and ideologically. It limits us to the reform arena, helping the bosses’ system to function better. That’s why we must make it clear that:
1. The struggles or protests for reforms are imposed on us by a system that doesn’t serve our interests.
2. We need to fight against the whole system that exploits and oppresses us;
3. We need to build the general staff of the working class, its revolutionary Communist Party, the PLP.
4. We need to fight directly for COMMUNISM, the society of equality, without wage slavery or borders; where all will work to satisfy the needs of the community, not for money. To each according to their commitment, from each according to need. DEATH to the BOSSES! The workers’ struggles have no borders! JOIN PLP.
Imperialist Square Off at G8 Meeting
HEILIGENDAMM, GERMANY, June 6 — The G8 meeting of the world’s leading imperialist countries began today amid a growing dogfight among these bosses, while anti-globalization protestors were viciously attacked by the thousands of cops protecting the gathering.
A few days ago an angry Putin warned that Russia won’t stand idly by while the U.S. sets up a new "defense" shield missile program in the Czech Republic and Poland. Putin sees this as a direct threat to Russia’s survival. Meanwhile, Russia tested two new intercontinental ballistic missiles which can penetrate this shield.
Another major contradiction arose over climate protection. Prior to the meeting, Bush rejected German ruler Merkel’s plan to slash emissions. Additional conflicts appeared over Iraq, China, Iran and Africa. Workers and youth should expect nothing from the imperialists, the cause of all the workers’ major problems, endless wars, economic attacks, racism and fascism.
GM-Russia Workers Fight Heat, Also Need Revolution
TOGLIATTI, RUSSIA, May 31 — Today five workers at the GM-AvtoVAZ plant refused to work as temperatures in the paint shop climbed to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees centigrade)! Despite the company’s claim to have installed air conditioning in the paint shop, nothing was done to prepare for the hot summer.
Workers must work eight to ten hours in the shop’s steaming heat, not the most pleasant and healthy place to be, and it’s only May. Today workers’ patience reached its limit and they refused to return to work until something was done about the heat.
That caused a big stir among the plant’s management. Even though the bosses have not yet recognized the workers’ union, the stoppage prompted them to quickly negotiate with the striking crew. Fearing the job action might engulf the factory and spread further, they first tried to intimidate the workers but that failed. Finally after negotiating for two hours, management promised to launch the "mystery" air conditioning system as soon as possible and not discipline the workers who stopped the line.
The hot Russian summer is looming. It remains to be seen if management keeps its promise. If not, then next time it will involve many more than just five workers. They’re starting to rise up.
Auto workers worldwide, especially GM workers, should support the struggle of the Russian GM workers. While GM eliminates over 40,000 U.S. jobs and contract talks approach this summer, U.S. GM workers should add to their list of demands that GM recognize the Russian union.
But more to the point, industrial workers have the ability, more than any other workers, to reach around the world and build international solidarity across all borders. We can build worker-to-worker unity based on PLP’s revolutionary communist politics and make "Workers of the World, Unite," a reality.
Portugal General Strike Hits Anti-Worker ‘Reforms’
LISBON, PORTUGAL, May 30 — The Confederation of Portuguese Workers called a 24-hour general strike to protest the anti-working class reforms introduced by the "Socialist" Party government of Prime Minister José Socrates. The strike was very effective even though another major union federation refused to support it. It affected subway services and was joined by postal, sanitation and health workers and teachers. The government wants to cut public spending and make it easier to hire and fire workers, even though unemployment tops 8.4%, the highest in two decades.
Again the so-called "socialist" governments are as anti-working class as any other capitalist rulers. All governments under capitalism, no matter what they call themselves, must serve the bosses. This era of growing capitalist-imperialist crisis and rivalry means making workers pay for the bosses’ problems.
Delphi Automotive Systems Attack Portugal’s Workers
Delphi is an example of this. It’s planning to cut 524 jobs, half the work-force, in its Guarda plant. Workers here average 550 Euros ($720) a month. GM, Delphi’s original owner, bought the plant in 1989 from Renault. The jobs to be cut will be those producing electric cable for the Twingo, a Renault model. Delphi also has another plant in Castelo Branco. Last December, GM itself shut down its Azambuja assembly plant, leaving 1,200 workers jobless. These kinds of mass job cuts, along with the government cutbacks, led angry workers to the May 30 general strike.
Meanwhile, Delphi continues with its international rampage against workers. In Mexico, the company is demanding wage cuts. In Cádiz, Spain, the workers’ struggle continues against Delphi moving its operations to Poland, where labor costs are lower. Women workers have organized regular marches to the plant in Puerto Real, Cádiz, protesting the loss of 4,000 jobs and denouncing the local government for doing nothing about the plant closing. In the Port of Santa María, also in Cádiz, workers at Nimalsa, which supplies Delphi, are protesting the firing of nine workers.
Autoworkers worldwide face a major offensive that requires a different kind of leadership than that given by union sellouts like those of the UAW, CAW (Canada) and IGMetall (Germany). For example, a Peugeot internal document published in "l’Humanité" (5/29) foresees massive use of subcontracting to countries with the lowest labor costs. Auto parts manufactured by subcontractors represent 75% of the production cost of every Peugeot car. Its goal is to triple the subcontracting done in low-cost countries (which now provide only 10% of the subcontracting production).
Peugeot bosses have established a cost threshold: to get parts contracts for cars assembled at Sochaux, the "lucky countries" must have a per capita Gross Domestic Product of $14,000 dollars. Slovenia is out of luck; it has just exceeded that threshold. So Peugeot will move the contract to low-wage "paradises" in Asia and elsewhere. Thus, to stay in business, subcontractors in the Sochaux area must move to those other areas, cutting thousands of jobs in France.
GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, VW, and Honda are employing the same tactic. For workers, following the reformist and nationalist union sellouts — who usually blame workers from other countries for the job cuts — is suicidal. A new kind of international leadership must be forged based on the communist slogan of "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite!"
It’s not an easy task, but it must be done. Since it is the profit system that creates these problems, the fight must not be limited to economic demands, but must be directed against all aspects of capitalism: racism, imperialist war, nationalism, sexism and so on. Based on this kind of leadership, workers will learn how to fight for their own liberation from the hell of capitalism, joining and building a mass revolutionary communist party to fight for a world without bosses; join the PLP to make that possible!J
LETTERS
U.S. Bosses Behind Colombia’s Death Squads
For the poor workers and peasants of Colombia’s Choco region the African palm tree is a curse. Clodomiro, a 51-year-old resident of this area, tells how 10 years ago a death squad gang appeared at 10 AM and made everyone lie down, men on one side and women on the other. They shot up in the air for about an hour and cursed everyone. Then they raised the heads of some and cut them off with machetes. Some with their hands tied in the back were shot dead. They killed 12 people that day.
They left at 3 PM and said if anyone stayed in the village by 6 PM they will not be responsible for their lives. Everyone fled. Fifteen days later some returned and the death squad killed three more. They told an older man, Isaza Tuberquia, they wouldn’t touch him, but they killed him also. They also threatened all the children. They even cut off the heads of dogs because the dogs were barking too much.
Clodomiro owned some land and some cows and grew bananas and yucca. He lost everything and was warned not to return. Along with 25 other families, he moved to another village. They live as refugees in total misery, like tens of thousands others across Colombia.
The village was a dead town, but was surrounded by many activities. A ferry was established. Bulldozers demolished the villagers’ homes. After a while the African Palm tree changed the landscape. Clodomiro’s land and those of other former village residents are now full of the African palm tree. When Clodomiros came to see his former home, the cops asked for ID, arrested him and accused him of being part of the guerrillas. Those who accompanied him, including a priest, did a lot of pleading with the cops to release him. This is the nature of capitalism here in Colombia.
Recently it was discovered that Chiquita Brands, Dole, Coca Cola and other multi-national corporations paid the death squads to protect their properties. High-ranking officials in the Uribe government (who recently visited his buddy Bush in the White House) have been forced to quit because of links to these paramilitary death squads. The government has legalized paramilitary and drug lords’ ownership of millions of acres stolen from people like those killed in El Choco. Production is now geared for export and biofuel instead of the needs of the workers and peasants here. The country’s poverty rate is 83%.
As long as capitalism exists we will have such mass murders (Clinton gave the first approval to Plan Colombia which supplied billions to Colombia’s army for waging war against these rural workers and peasants.) We need to build our Party here in Colombia even more, to transform these massacres by the racist-fascist local bosses and their goons, and the imperialists behind them, into a revolutionary war for workers’ power.
A Comrade in Colombia
GI’s Say They’re ‘Spilling Blood for Oil’
Junior Cedeño, a 20-year-old GI from the Bronx, NY, was one of 127 U.S. soldiers killed in May (Associated Press), the third highest toll for any month since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Alex Jiménez, another New York GI (from Corona, Queens) is still missing, being one of three GIs insurgents kidnapped in mid-May. Both are sons of Dominican immigrants.
Cedeño’s parents are angry about their son’s murder. "We are crushed. This has destroyed my life," said Junior’s father, Ramón Cedeño, adding: "The only goal of President Bush is oil in exchange for innocent lives." (El Nacional, Santo Domingo, 5/30). He shows an understanding of the real nature of this imperialist war, one shared by more and more GIs and their families.
Mr. Cedeño said, "My son told me that in his military base soldiers were questioning the war among themselves, asking what were they fighting for. They were saying the war reflected the stupidity of President Bush, and that they were spilling blood for oil."
Cedeño’s parents are also angry because the two soldiers the Army sent to inform them of their son’s death only spoke English. Junior’s stepmother, Mary Caraballo, had to find a translator in the neighborhood, saying it was very insensitive to send people who couldn’t speak Spanish.
The pain the families of all these GIs feel for their dead loved ones is multiplied many times over by the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed (1,951 Iraqis were killed in May, a 30% increase from April according to Reuters), all sacrificed on the altar of profits for Exxon, Halliburton, BP, Shell Oil, etc. Smash the imperialist war-makers!
Juan Rojo
PLP Foresaw Vietnam’s ‘Capitalist Road’
Your recent articles on SDS and the book review on how GIs rebelled against the imperialists during the Vietnam War are very useful. They recall a history from which today’s anti-war workers, students and soldiers must learn. Unfortunately, another aspect of this history is how millions of workers and peasants in Vietnam and Southeast Asia must now struggle against returning imperialist companies. Vietnam is now attracting foreign investments and winning commerce away from countries like China and India.
The May 29 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that when the British recruitment agency Harvey Nash PLC began scouting for an offshore hub for its new software-development business six years ago, Vietnam wasn’t an obvious choice. While countries such as India, the Philippines and South Africa already were latching onto the outsourcing phenomenon, Vietnam still was in the business of trying to make shoes, bicycles and clothes cheaper than anybody else.
But when Nash’s inspection team returned from Hanoi to assess its options, Vietnam had become the top contender. Now, when outsourcing wages and job-hopping are rising in India, Vietnam offers lower wages. Today, Nash employs 1,500 people across Vietnam through its own business and its partnership with FPT. Since opening up its economy in the late 1980s, Vietnam’s economy has expanded mostly through agricultural exports and low-wage manufacturing. During a visit to Hanoi last year, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said there was no reason Vietnam couldn’t follow India into software development and other forms of outsourcing.
Last year’s decision by Intel Corp. to build a $1 billion semiconductor factory near Ho Chi Minh City was a turning point of sorts for such efforts. It was a sign that major high-tech companies were comfortable channeling large amounts of money into Vietnam.
Its industrial land is cheaper than China’s. Wages are about one-third lower than in China’s industrial coastal regions. Its population of almost 90 million, half under 30 years old, means Vietnam’s talent pool is deep and increasing.
The WSJ emphasizes that "the fact that Vietnam is controlled by the Communist Party isn’t a concern for most investors. Adam Sitkoff, executive chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi, said Vietnam’s leaders have closely watched China’s development and are following Beijing’s strategy of opening up the economy to investment while maintaining a tight hold on political power."
When PLP criticized the Vietnamese "communist" leadership while protesting the U.S. genocidal war against workers and peasants there (the Pentagon and local fascists murdered three million), many condemned us for "daring to criticize the leadership of a people fighting U.S. imperialism." However, these weren’t right-wing criticisms but rather based on a revolutionary communist understanding of what the Vietnamese leadership was doing with its nationalist and compromising politics. Reality has proven us correct. First came imperialist vultures like Nike, Ford, Toyota, etc. Now it’s the outsourcers looking for even cheaper labor. That’s why we say anything short of communism is no liberation for workers and their allies.
An Anti-war protestor, from Vietnam to Iraq
Communist Strategy for Workers in Europe
Concerning the article "VW Betrayal: The Other Shoe Drops" (2/20): Of course workers in Europe have the right to fight against exploitation and for improved working conditions. But I question their ways of doing so.
Volkswagen is experiencing its biggest restructuring since World War II. As always, the bosses say layoffs make the company more competitive. But as CHALLENGE points out, in reality VW just wants to steal bigger profits from our labor, and there are many places in and out of Europe where labor power is cheaper than in Germany, Belgium or Spain. But VW is not "betraying" workers; rather, this is the law of capitalist exploitation, always to pursue maximum profits. Capitalism doesn’t know and cannot act in any other way!
How should VW workers fight this strategy? CHALLENGE is right again, that "workers must organize this solidarity themselves, not rely on union misleaders," because we all know that today in Europe unions have become instruments of capital, opposing a communist strategy for workers.
We must change the way workers in Europe think today about strategy. Exploitation remains, whether we work 40, 38 or 35 hours, whatever our wages. Why should I work more hours for more pay to increase my own exploitation and the boss’s profits? That’s not communist strategy.
The unions’ strategy is to try to make workers think they should limit their fight to retaining the "benefits" European workers have enjoyed since the Cold War, the 35-hour week, health and unemployment benefits, etc., conditions which ruling-class strategy is bent on dismantling. But these have never existed for most workers around the world. Do we believe European salaries and benefits are paid because the bosses think we deserve it? No, the opulence of European society is based on centuries of exploitation over the rest of the world.
The European working class, misguided by the phony "left" leaders of the "communist" and socialist movements, has simply taken its part of the "pie" too. By looking only at Europe, unions cover this up.
Any class struggle in Europe should understand this global inequality among workers. The fight cannot only be for a better life and better working conditions in Europe, in one factory, in one place, in one land, forgetting what is happening to workers in other lands, forgetting workers’ international solidarity.
European unions idealize work under capitalist conditions as if improved working conditions were the ideal expression of a worker’s existence; they mystify the nature of work. Moreover, class struggle doesn’t stop at the factory gates; it permeates all of society.
Do we think we’ll produce the same VWs on the same assembly lines after the defeat of capitalism? That would repeat the same mistake the communist movement made in the past. Or will we create new forms of work without the wage system, without commodity production, without national borders and inequality, where new forms of workers’ solidarity on an international scale will be part of work itself?
Reject the way unions limit the struggle to "benefits" in Europe while workers starve in other lands; reject, destroy the capitalist system of production and its whole way of understanding work, life and value. That’s the goal of communist strategy.
A reader in Germany
CHALLENGE COMMENT: We didn’t mean to imply in our headline to the article that the VW company was selling out, but rather that the union hacks sold out the workers. As the reader correctly says, workers in Europe (and worldwide) need a communist strategy of internationalism and anti-capitalism, something alien to most union hacks. Communist workers must make red politics primary in all struggles. They also need to fight racism. There are millions of immigrant workers and their children in Europe who suffer racist super-exploitation (one reason behind the November 2005 rebellion of black and Arab youth in France). Also, the gains made by most European workers were not given by the bosses; they were won by class struggle and the leading role played by communists. The bosses, fearing the popularity of the Soviet Union after World War II, also granted workers some crumbs. Unfortunately, the communists of Western Europe back then were influenced by reformism. Instead of fighting to destroy capitalism, they tried to reform it.
MTA-TWU Collusion Murders Transit Workers
As CHALLENGE reported in its last two issues, most daily subway track work entails correcting numerous minor or major emergencies, and is performed with disregard for safety of maintenance personnel. They work alone or in groups of two or three without proper flagging. The latter requires the posting of sets of caution lights or flags 500 feet away from a flag person who is positioned 100 feet from, and in clear sight of, the work crew. The flag person is equipped with a red light and a portable train stopper which is attached to one of the rails on which the train’s wheels run. The train stopper can engage the train’s emergency air brakes and bring it to an abrupt stop. On express or curved tracks, even more sets of lights and additional flag persons are required to bring these 100-ton, enormously powerful and fast trains to a safe stop before running into a work crew.
This short-handed, unprotected emergency track work with flashlight flagging "protection" is a mockery of real safety, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) own rules and casualty figures, and eventually becomes a suicide job, resulting in the horror described in CHALLENGE (6/6) about the death of a transit worker. The MTA bosses’ racism towards the lives of the overwhelmingly black and Latino workforce and the Transit Workers Union’s collusion with the MTA by not organizing workers to refuse to work without proper flagging is what is murdering these workers.
Retired Track Worker
Immigrant Students Reject Bosses’ Lies
"I’m a citizen of the world," said an immigrant student in a discussion about immigration and the recent May Day events. The more than 30 students who participated were inspired and committed to learning more by reading and distributing CHALLENGE. The fight for communism requires a daily struggle and our day-in and day-out struggles ensure a bigger participation in the Party’s activities. We have been distributing 100 papers each issue.
Before the May Day march the bosses’ press presented a series of different articles, some denouncing, others defending the need for immigration reform. We reproduced many of these articles and used them in our classes. From these articles we developed lessons involving discussions about the real reasons for the bosses’ immigration reforms. We evaluated and criticized these plans as attempts to guarantee immigrant military service and servitude in the war industries.
After the police attack in MacArthur Park, "The Sentinel" (having a primarily black readership) had two articles arguing that California represented the new Birmingham. Instead of water tanks and attack dogs the police used rubber bullets to disperse the protestors. One article implied that the ruling class was after the "hearts and minds" of immigrants, just like they wanted to win the support of black workers in the 1960s during the Cold War.
The ruling class needed the loyalty of black workers and so pushed and led the movement for civil rights. Similarly they need the loyalty of immigrant workers and are now letting the media talk about a "new civil rights movement."
Immigrant students are faced with two paths: being part of the capitalist system or trying to destroy it. Join other workers in organizing in the war industries and the army to build a mass movement that will ultimately take power and establish a communist society.
Red Teacher
Fewer Heroes, More Organizers
The exciting, international May Day reports give us optimism about the possibility of humanity embracing and fighting for Communism. But how will this historic change be realized? How do we go from workers grabbing leaflets and chants to the recruitment of millions into a revolutionary movement?
Distributing 9,500 communist leaflets in Mexico City is great news, but there must also have been a huge amount of planning, conversation, coffee and education leading up to that event. A detailed report on the long-range plan for recruitment of two or three of the leafleters would be even bigger news!
Instead of so much attention to what ruling-class forces are up to, we need to focus on documenting comrades’ specific work of base-building and communist education, so that we can learn effective practices from each other.
It is great to read that PLP organized well-received contingents in Mexico City, Paraguay and Colombia. But how? What did the day-to-day work look like? What kinds of plans have been made since?
Exactly how are we going to ultimately organize the communist mass movement that will help us make a revolution? We need to know what plans were made and what happened, in greater detail, so that we can review our own work and offer feedback.
How do we make sure that revolutionary politics compete with the distractions of capitalist culture in our workplace discussions in a cynical period? Rather than keeping the difficulties of base-building to ourselves, we could use them as a priceless opportunity to educate other workers about the process of change We must be able to explain how recruiting one or two new communist leaders over a prolonged period can be of historic importance to our class. Our articles need to begin with these issues. Our paper should emphasize recruitment and communism rather than oil politics in Iraq in or cuts in social services
It’s not enough to expose capitalism in all its injustices and brutality. It’s not enough just to arouse the working class. We need to figure out exactly what is needed to win.
Red Rider
*****REDEYE REDEYE****
Iraq war detested on black website
"This is not a black people’s war. This is not a poor people’s war. This is an oilman’s war."
Gregory Black, a retired Navy diver who last year started the web site BlackMilitaryWorld.com, said that quote sums up what he too hears from African-American veterans of Iraq.
"African-Americans detest this war….Everybody kind of knows the truth behind this war…. It’s basically about oil, basically about money. It’s an economic war." (NYT, 5/10)
Sarge says troops want out
"In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war," said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described "conservative Texas Republican" and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. "Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me." (NYT, 5/28)
Black America not fooled on Iraq
…African-Americans by far lead the way in calling the war a mistake. According to Gallup, 85 percent of African Americans say it was a mistake, compared to 53 percent of white Americans….
"African-Americans are always more sensitive to anything that smacks of neocolonialism, which this war did smack of…" (NYT, 5/10)
No profit, so emergency rooms shut
…New Orleans may have it worst, but emergency rooms everywhere are drowning in patients. Mandated to care for the uninsured, they are increasingly unprofitable. So although the influx of patients has grown, 500 emergency rooms have closed in the last decade….Waiting rooms [are] filled more than six hours per day. (NYT, 5/26)
Oil-imperialism is bi-partisan
It is formal doctrine that the U.S. must be militarily dominant everywhere so as to fight "extremism."
It must also control areas of strategic significance, possessing energy resources. Whatever happens inside Iraq, to its government and society, American forces can be expected to fight to remain in the four huge strategic bases that have been constructed in that country….
The U.S. will also stay in the Middle East so long as its ally Israel maintains a policy of colonization of legally Palestinian territory….
This is bipartisan policy. You have only to listen to the debates of the declared Democratic candidates. Whatever happens in Iraq, the troops will not be going home. (William Ptaff, Tribune Media, 5/20)
Harvesters rob Mexico’s poorest
Before planting and harvest time in the United States it has been common for local recruiters fan out across Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers. The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that comes with it.
"That line of corruption touches both countries," said Baldemar Velásquez, the president of the union. "And the people at the bottom in Mexico end up paying the price." (NYT, 5/24)
Cuba health care ‘deserves credit’
"Sicko," the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system….
How could a poor developing country — where annual health care spending averages just $230 a person compared with $6,096 in the United States — come anywhere near matching the richest country in the world?....
Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on aging, has traveled to Cuba….He said…the Cuba system emphasizes early intervention. Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing disease rather than treating it….
"I know Americans tend to be skeptical," he said, "but health and education are two achievements of the Cuban revolution…they deserve some credit…. (NYT, 5/27)
PLP History: PL-led Action Linked Vietnam War to Strike-breaker GE
(Part VI described the factional fighting of the various right-wingers who split from SDS after the June 1969 Convention, including the "Weather Underground," and then PLP’s leadership in SDS in building a "flesh and blood" campus worker-student alliance which became the basis for forging ties between industrial workers and the anti-war movement.)
SDS — Part VII
By 1968, every faction within the U.S. ruling class knew they had to find a way to leave Vietnam. The student anti-war protests were troublesome, but the real problem was the refusal of working-class GIs and sailors to fight this bosses’ war. This took many forms: desertion, defection, anti-war organizing — including publishing 144 underground papers — inside the military and outright mutiny, for which a special term, "fragging" (enlisted men killing their own officers), was coined.
But U.S. rulers had two important political trumps. First, the North Vietnamese leadership had agreed to sit down at the bargaining table with Kissinger, Nixon, & Co. even though it was winning the war. So anti-imperialism and revolutionary struggle had been reduced to a bloody caricature: all the fighting and the heroism of Vietnamese workers were being cynically manipulated as negotiating ploys. Second, the betrayal of communism by North Vietnamese nationalists gave a shot in the arm to U.S. liberal imperialists and their allies within the pacifist movement.
This was the context for the November 15, 1969, anti-war mobilization in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, 147,000 General Electric workers had just gone on strike. GE was and remains one of the rulers’ largest military contractors. The PLP leadership saw the strike as an opportunity to take a principled class position in the face of liberal imperialist politicians’ pacifism and North Vietnamese leaders’ criminal opportunism. The idea was to encourage the anti-war demonstrators to rally at the Department of Labor on November 15, to back the GE strikers.
To do so legally meant getting approval from the D.C. cops. The latter said their approval depended on getting a green light from the Student Mobilization Committee, the main march’s official organizer. The Committee was a sordid alliance of the anti-war movement’s worst elements: the U.S. "Communist" Party, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party, the liberal politicians and media stars (Jane Fonda, et al.) for whom the "C"P and the Trots fronted. PLP had frequently exposed the rotten politics of this "troika," and the troika had no intention of authorizing a pro-working class action with revolutionary implications.
So PLP and its allies decided to organize the Labor Department rally as an illegal breakaway. The anti-war demonstration was the largest in U.S. history, probably involving 500,000 participants. Under PLP’s leadership, several hundred students and others circulated among the crowd to distribute leaflets and make bullhorn speeches calling for the Labor Department rally. The March leadership worked feverishly to prevent the rally, attempting to intimidate potential demonstrators with threats that the cops would attack it and otherwise baiting it.
But their tactics didn’t work. By mid-afternoon, 7,000 people had massed before the Labor Department. The rally took place as planned. The chant: "Warmaker, Strikebreaker, Smash GE!" thundered throughout parts of downtown Washington. Speeches called for unity with GE strikers, the deepening of the Campus Worker-Student alliance and, most importantly, for continuing to build on-campus struggles against the war with this perspective.
As the PLP leadership was ending the rally, a tall, bearded man in the crowd, obviously a police provocateur, threw a rock through a window in the Labor Department building. Hundreds of heavily armed and armored D.C. cops swarmed out, trying to push the demonstrators away. Simultaneously, a stream of Yippies, druggies and anarchists came running down Constitution Avenue, giving the cops an excuse to tear-gas the entire downtown area.
But the pro-working class demonstrators didn’t panic. Their politics gave them a sense of clarity and purpose, enabling them to make an orderly retreat, find their busses and return home to fight another day.
The March Committee’s political attack and the cops’ physical provocation had failed abysmally. PLP and its allies had managed to flout the U.S. ruling class, its liberal agents and its police by organizing a significant, illegal pro-working class action with minimal casualties. This spirit of defiance is more relevant than ever today, in the face of the rulers’ growing police state.
Chad: Another China-U.S. Bosses’ Oil Battleground
In 2006 China imported 6.5 million barrels of oil a day and its demand is increasing at an estimated 30% annually. At that rate China will surpass the U.S. in 4-5 years as the world’s biggest oil importer. Therefore, Africa is important to China and the central region between Sudan and Chad is crucial.
Currently China imports an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa and is using its $1.2 trillion reserves to buy Africa’s vast raw material wealth. It provides African governments multi-billion-dollar loans with no strings attached, and in some cases without interest or as simple grants, while building hospitals, schools and roads. China is the largest foreign investor in Sudan. It owns 50% of a refinery and has built a pipeline to Port Sudan where 8% of China’s oil is shipped. It also just bought a 45% stake in a large off-shore Nigerian field, where previously only Anglo-American oil majors operated.
But U.S. and Chinese interests are also clashing in neighboring Chad. Chevron just built a $3.7 billion pipeline from Doba in central Chad, near Darfur, to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast for oil shipments to U.S. refineries. U.S. imperialists are scheming to control all of Central Africa’s oil, and together with its newly-built base in Sao Tome/Principe, 124 miles off the Gulf of Guinea, control the oil fields from Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria. This is the same area where China is focusing its diplomatic and investment activities.
Crucial to the U.S. bosses’ plans is Chad’s president for life, Idriss Deby, a long-time U.S. lackey. Through him they armed and trained John Garang’s Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (see Darfur article, page 2). But, like all capitalists, profits are the name of their game. Unhappy with their small share of the U.S.-controlled oil profits, in early 2006 Deby and the Chad parliament decided to seize more of the oil revenues. When the U.S had Paul Wolfowitz cut off World Bank loans to the country, Deby responded by creating Chad’s own oil company and threatened to expel Chevron for not paying taxes. He demanded a 60% share in Chevron’s Chad pipeline.
They finally came to terms with Chevron but have decided to diversify their investors. China has now entered Chad with billions of dollars and has begun to import its oil. Chad’s oil minister claims that Chinese terms are "much more equal partnerships than we are used to having."
Thus, the U.S.-mounted genocide theme in Darfur, with backing from Hollywood big guns like George Clooney, is just their fig leaf to gain popular support for their real genocidal plans: control of African oil which is intensifying the potential for war with China.
Capitalists’ ‘Inborn Superiority’ One More Ruling-Class Myth
An article in the August 2006 issue of "Scientific American" magazine shows again that everyone is capable of learning and developing skill in any field that they are motivated to try (with a modified approach perhaps needed for brain damaged individuals, or those with physical disabilities). "The Expert Mind" by Philip E. Ross cites studies showing that developing complex skills depends on hard work, study, and early self-perpetuating motivation, rather than on any innate differences between experts and amateurs.
A Hungarian educator, Laszlo Polgar, trained his three daughters in chess for as much as six hours a day from early childhood. His encouragement of extreme amounts of concentrated effort and work enabled his now adult daughters to achieve international master and grandmaster status. He also proved that boys/men have no monopoly on chess, and that girls/women who are trained early can achieve the highest levels. But mainly he confirmed that it was a matter of training rather than "innate skill," since there was nothing in their family history that would have led anyone to predict the development of chess "genius".
The findings apply also to musicians, sports figures, etc. Ross gives the examples of Mozart (the child prodigy composer of the 1800s) and Tiger Woods (the most successful golf professional) whose parents got them interested and involved at extremely early ages. Their early successes led to increased motivation and increased hard work that in turn led to further successes. The development of extreme skill is a friendly "vicious circle" that has no relation to inherited characteristics.
These findings bear on the failure of capitalist schools to train children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Ross says that the important question is not "Why can’t Johnny read?" but rather "Why should there be anything in the world he [or she] can’t learn to do?"
The false claims that better chess genes produce better chess players (or better genes produce better anything) are criminal lies made to convince us we don’t have the "inborn" potential to develop the skills necessary to seize power.
Capitalist rulers want us to believe that workers are inferior at birth and that capitalists rule due to their inborn superiority. Thus the capitalists can hide behind the modern equivalent of the "divine right of kings"—the "birth" right of capitalists to rule and exploit the vast majority of us.
The international working class can — and, under the leadership of PLP, eventually will — develop the collective skill to checkmate these "kings" and in their place become the rulers of our world.
