CALIFORNIA, July 2 — Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends from all around the state met up for three days of activities and study during a camping trip in central California last weekend. Six students from the high school where a comrade teaches came on the trip. We started out at seven in the morning and drove six hours to get to the campgrounds.

During our quick stops for meals on the road, we met to discuss how to organize a study group around the current anti-immigrant racism in Arizona. The high school students took the lead and created questions to help keep the discussion moving. A few drew on their prior experience leading a discussion on a similar topic at a forum in Los Angeles.

At the campgrounds, after a refreshing dip in the river, we prepared dinner collectively before the study group, which went really well.

After the study group, we made s’mores and told ghost stories. Everyone got along really well. People partnered up to make the s’mores, since it turned out to be a two-person job. The high school and middle school students told stories to the younger children. The next day, we made breakfast together and continued our study group from the night before. This time, we also talked about communism: what is it and how do we achieve it? Once again the high school students impressed us all by helping to lead the discussion and asking questions. They also learned a lot. They said:

“At the camping trip we had a very good discussion about communism and what everyone thought it was. We also talked about what Barack Obama was doing and what he was supposed to be doing. Communism to me means making the world a better, more diverse place to live without all the differences.”

“The camping trip was really fun and a good experience for me, since I’ve never been camping before. It was good hanging out with other ‘races’ and hearing their opinions.”

Many of the teacher comrades who came were inspired by the work at this high school and felt encouraged to go back to their schools and bring up our ideas more openly with their students. The success at this high school was in part the result of a year-long curriculum that incorporated discussions on racism, sexism, working-class consciousness and the need for black students (like the ones who came on this trip) to unite with others and take the lead in the fight to change society for the better.

There has also been some limited work with the parents at this school. The grandmother of one of the students disagreed with us on the question of immigration. She believed that immigrants who come to the U.S. without documentation are criminals and should be punished, and that Latino immigrants were taking jobs away from black workers. The student was unclear on the issue and had a lot of questions about it. After a discussion with the comrade teacher, the grandmother agreed to let the student go camping, and the student has since spoken up in favor of helping all people, no matter what color. Another grandmother also reads the paper and agrees that her granddaughter should learn to fight the system.

This is only the beginning. The work with these students, and others, will continue throughout the summer and on into the next school year. Hopefully, this will result in these students taking part in the actions around the racist Arizona law (as well as other struggles) this summer. We have also asked them to join PLP. We discussed creating a PLP club at the high school next year that will take the lead in fighting the budget cuts and attacks from administration. The students are all open to participating in and leading these fights. We will update CHALLENGE as things progress. 

PARIS, July 13 — Europe’s bosses are driving to slash government budgets, shifting cash from the working class into their own pockets. How deep? A lecturer at Warszawski University in Warsaw recommended on state radio that, “Another way [to cut the budget] is to limit the amount of people who are getting compensation as a result of health problems or having been categorized as terminally ill or incapable to work. This is one area where a lot of government funds disappear.” Learning from the Nazis….

Karl Marx wrote in “Capital” about labor being the source of all value, that under capitalism, the value produced by living labor is divided into two parts: “an equivalent of the value of labor power” (which goes to the worker), and “surplus value” (which goes to the capitalist). The capitalist’s goal is to reap as much surplus value as possible, and “the rate of surplus-value is therefore [determined by]…the degree of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the laborer by the capitalist.” Europe’s bosses are out to squeeze as much of that surplus value as possible out of sweat of the continent’s working class.

The Bank Bailout

European governments went deep into debt when they spent $5.3 trillion bailing out the banks during the credit crunch, reported a European Union (EU) Economic and Financial Committee document (5/26). To pay off that debt, EU governments are now slashing social security programs and pensions and raising the retirement age. Thus, they’re transferring vast amounts of money from the working class to the finance capitalists and therefore, as Marx said, are increasing “the degree of exploitation of labor-power.”

Imperialist Rivalry

Consequently, European capitalists are increasing their profitability. “Unfair competition” squealed their U.S. rivals at the June 25-26 G8 summit in Toronto. “Nobel prize-winning economist and arch-liberal Paul Krugman said that the situation was getting out of hand and the U.S. government needed to take action. He said: ‘[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel says that budget cuts will make Germany more competitive but competitive against whom, exactly? You know the answer, don’t you?’” (The Guardian, 6/11)

Workers in the U.S. and worldwide can expect copy-cat budget-slashing from “their” capitalists, as the bosses in each country ratchet down their government budgets in a race to the bottom.

European Bosses’ Budget-Cut Assault

On June 17, the European Council — including the heads of government or state of 27 EU countries — mapped a coordinated attack to slash budgets affecting the working class, in its “Europe 2020” strategy. Among Germany, the UK, France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, and Portugal, between now and 2015, current and planned budget cuts will total $409.4 BILLION, as the vaunted European “social welfare” state gets slashed to ribbons.

This is resulting in two- and three-year government-worker wage freezes; frozen pension and welfare payments; pension cuts and two- to five-year increases in retirement ages; huge privatization programs across many government-run services; elimination of checks for child births and child benefits; cuts in government reimbursement for medicines and in unemployment benefits; closing of hospitals and schools (900 in Portugal alone!); and layoffs of teachers, nurses and other government workers into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

 “These cuts will result in significant harm to people’s health,” said David Stuckler, Oxford University Sociology Department. “It’s not just about doctors and medicines to care for the sick — social care and support are vital to prevent people from becoming ill.”

Racist Cuts

As a result of institutional racism, cuts in social security programs and pensions and higher retirement ages will hit black people and immigrants harder than native-born whites. In the UK, among youth between 16 and 24, the jobless rate for blacks is 50%, for whites it’s 20%. (Institute for Public Policy Research, January 2010) Proportionally, they will be hit harder by cuts in unemployment benefits, schools, and health care.

In Sweden, on June 9-10 two days of rioting erupted in the Rinkeby neighborhood of western Stockholm when immigrant youth were denied entrance to a local school dance. Mariam Osman Sherifay, chair of the Center Against Racism, said racism against Somalian and Turkish immigrants in Rinkeby is worse than ever. But the Swedish government — presumably “for budget reasons” — provides no funds to help them integrate into Swedish society.

In a number of European countries, “cost-cutting” is specifically linked to these attacks:

• Italy has made “irregular migration” a crime. Schoolteachers and local government workers are legally required to report “illegal” immigrants to the police. This prevents immigrants from gaining education and medical care. Local governments are allowed to create unarmed posses to patrol towns. This “may result in discrimination and vigilantism” against Roma families, according to Amnesty International’s 2010 report.

• In Germany, “illegal” immigrants and their children have limited access to health care, education and the courts in cases of labor rights violations.

* In 2008, Ireland cut funding 43% for its Equality Authority. The Equality and Rights Alliance says Ireland no longer has an effective body to oversee anti-discrimination policy. In 2009, non-Irish nationals were three times more likely than native-born to experience discrimination while job-seeking; black people were seven times more likely. (Economic and Social Research Group)

• Eight Roma women have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights for having been sterilized after giving birth in a hospital in eastern Slovakia. The racist sterilizations were presumably intended to reduce the Roma population and its potential use of government services, thus “cutting costs.”

Sexism

Institutional sexism means that women will suffer disproportionately from cuts in government services, lower pensions and higher retirement ages. In the UK, women are trapped in low-paid, part-time work. Two-thirds of low-paid workers are women. Average pay for full-time working women is 17% less than for men. Nearly a million more women than men live in poverty in the UK. Every year, 30,000 women lose their jobs in the UK simply for being pregnant. (All statistics for 2007, before the world economic crisis!)

In France, 50% of women don’t qualify for full retirement pensions, partly because they’re forced to quit work due to a lack of childcare, and partly because they’re forced — more so than men — to work part-time and temporary jobs. Of four million part-time workers, 82% are women. And now their small retirement checks will be cut even further.

Union Hacks Defend Capitalism

Union “leaders” have barely reacted to this massive attack on the working class. In Ireland, when the government decided on its austerity measures, “The Irish unions say outright that they deliberately shied away from widespread strikes for fear of sparking a bond market meltdown.” (Reuters, 7/7)

In the UK on May 24, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, fretted: “Taking any money out of the economy at the moment is dangerous, as there is a real risk of a double-dip recession.”

Bernard Thibault, head of France’s 711,000-member CGT union, worried that, “Austerity ... can be suicide for economic productivity.”

In Germany, Michael Sommer, chairman of the German Trade Union Federation, was tormented by the idea that, “The so-called savings concept of the federal government is a document [absent] of prospects and social imbalance. In view of the continuing crisis and demographic developments, it threatens the core of Germany’s sustainability.”

“Double-dip recession,” “productivity,” “sustainability” — these labor fakers are more concerned with saving capitalism than with protecting the working class!

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is planning protests and “possible” (!) work stoppages across the EU on Sept. 29 when EU finance ministers will meet. But on June 4, ETUC head John Monks still didn’t know how many unions or workers would join the protest. On June 9, Monks wrote to the EU heads of state and government begging them “to spread the reduction of national deficits over a longer and more realistic period.” He has no problem with stealing from the working class, as long as it’s done more slowly!

Communist Revolution

Clearly the working class cannot depend on these union hacks to defend it. The hacks’ very existence depends on the survival of capitalism. If you’re afraid of “hurting” the capitalist system, you cannot wage a meaningful fight against cutbacks. But as long as the bosses hold state power and control society, even gains against this assault will eventually be reversed. That’s why communist leadership is needed to turn this fight to roll back the cutbacks into schools for communism, to overthrow the whole capitalist system.

We make the whole cake. Why content ourselves with crumbs? Through communist revolution, we can create a society in which all the wealth created by our labor is shared by the whole working class

DETROIT, June 22 — The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) attracted about 15,000 activists of all backgrounds to Detroit, a city where the capitalist economic crisis has left the majority black population devastated by racist unemployment, lack of health care and poverty.  The Forum’s theme, “Another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary” expressed the hopes, dreams and passions of the thousands that attended.  However, after all the rhetoric of revolution, U.S. imperialism, and capitalism, the Forum failed to offer the only real solution of how to achieve this other world, by organizing for communist revolution to abolish the profit system.

There was no real struggle over ideas. Electoral politics, passing legislation, and developing “progressive”caucuses in the unions was still the order of the day. In a workshop on the rebuilding of Haiti, the panel proposed that the fight all progressive groups should support is the return of Aristede back into power. There was also a contingent of students from Puerto Rico who led a workshop on their successful worker-student alliance to stop tuition hikes at the State Colleges. Their solution is to annex Puerto Rico from the colonial claws of the United States and institute self-rule, to have Puerto Rican bosses rather than U.S. bosses. 

Capitalism’s world economic crisis has fueled the anger and the urgency that many expressed in the youth, education and healthcare workshops. Progressive Labor Party comrades and friends focused on these workshops, bringing up the devastation racist unemployment has on our class.  Our intention was to get the USSF to propose a march in Washington, D.C. against racist unemployment in October. Limited by our size and our involvement in the mass organization, we were not able to do that.

However, when we were able to participate in workshops where we knew people involved in areas where we were from, we succeeded in making new contacts, deepened ties with people that we knew, and got our literature into the hands of thousands who had never before read “Road to Revolution IV” and CHALLENGE.

Our participation in mass organizations is, and has been, the key to how we should be organizing workers, students and soldiers to the movement for communist revolution and against the racist system we live in. Building an egalitarian society based on from each according to commitment, to each according to need is powerful.

We are united as a CLASS, not as nations, countries, “races,” or ethnicities. We can build a better world where money and profit will not exist. A communist world is possible and it is still the only solution to imperialist war, fascism and inequality. Join PLP and build the fight for communist equality! 

July 14 — It’s hard to keep track of how many prime ministers (PM) Japan has had over the past five years. One after another has been dumped or given up because, like their U.S. counterparts, the country’s politicians have no solution to economic stagnation, poverty and underemployment. Voters handed Naoto Kan, the latest PM, a serious blow last Sunday as his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost control of the upper house of parliament in national elections.

Much like the U.S. voters who placed blind faith in Obama’s promises of real change — national health care, bringing troops home, etc. — Japanese voters wanted to believe in the promises made by the DPJ to end corruption, unemployment, and obsequious adherence to U.S. diplomatic policies.  On the surface this seems like yet another blow to the international working class. But with a communist analysis the “failure” of the DPJ can provide an opportunity to expose the bosses’ electoral shell game for the sham that it is and organize workers for communist revolution, the only real alternative to the horrors of capitalism.

Last September they voted the old ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), out of power, and for the first time since the end of World War II they voted in a new ruling party, the DPJ, whose leader Yukio Hatoyama, became the new prime minister. To stimulate the economy, Hatoyama had promised an end to exorbitant highway tolls and to provide cash subsidies to families with children. The DPJ had also promised to renegotiate a 2006 agreement with the Pentagon to transfer the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station (with 4,000 marines) near Naha to the Henoko district of Nago city, a more remote spot on the island of Okinawa. The agreement was worked out as a “response” to mass demonstrations against the Marine Corps after a brutal kidnap and rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three marines in 1995. Like Obama, Hatoyama has backtracked on all of these campaign promises.

In the fall 2009 election that brought Hatoyama to power, his party’s candidates on Okinawa won seats in parliament by promising to fight to get the base entirely removed from Okinawa. There was even talk of moving all the marines to Guam, where the Pentagon is planning a major expansion of facilities with the enthusiastic support of liberal U.S. Democrats like Hawaii’s Neil Abercrombie. On April 25, more than 90,000 people demonstrated in Okinawa against all the bases there. (More than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based in Okinawa.)

Ignoring popular demand and the plight of a fellow “liberal party,” the Obama cabinet adopted hardball tactics, attacking individual Japanese leaders and using the “North Korean threat” to publicly justify the military build-up in Northeast Asia to counter the Chinese build-up. Hatoyama caved in to the U.S. political assault and reneged on his promises regarding Okinawa. These failures caused a split in his own party, and he was forced to resign as prime minister in June, to be replaced by a middle-of-the-road party hack, Naoto Kan.

There are many complex issues involved in these developments. We see the bankruptcy of bourgeois electoral politics and the collusion of the far right (open fascists, the LDP) and the liberal upstarts.

We see the arrogance of the U.S. imperialists and the priority they place on maintaining an arc of bases facing their Chinese rivals. It is an open secret that U.S.-South Korean military exercises, including a U.S. Navy nuclear sub, threatening North Korea, were the real cause of the recent sinking of a South Korean destroyer. North Korea seems to be on the verge of collapse and, pushed by the Chinese imperialists, the country has fully moved to a market economy.

We also see blatant racism against Okinawans and other super-exploited Asian workers, including utter disregard for the needs of the people of Guam and North Korea by the imperialist powers. 

As earlier CHALLENGE articles have pointed out, neither electoral politics nor the weak-kneed revisionist parties like the Japanese “Communist” Party (JCP) or the Social Democratic Party (SDP) have any answer for the economic and social crisis in Japan, much less the threat of imperialist war.

The Japanese workers and youth need a clear revolutionary communist line like that of PLP. They have to rid themselves of confused ideas about nationalism and patriotism and the illusion that small reforms — moving a base instead of getting rid of all U.S. and native imperialists — can lead to positive and lasting changes.