- DOCKERS REBEL
Black and White Longshoreman Battle 600 Cops - Red Leadership = Put Workers on Road to Revolution
Dockers Rock Class Struggle Rolls - Ecuador: Presidential Musical Chairs Plays Bosses' Tune, Diverts Mass Uprising
- Taking State Power = Key to Workers' Victory
- Racist Research a Smokescreen for Liberals Attacks on Youth
- CHALLENGE Sparks Debate Among L.A. Garment Workers
- Welfare "Reform" Hits Workers Too; Alliance Needed
- Salvador Strikers Must Organize Against Boss-Union Gang-up
- Brooklynn Hospital Workers Sick of Bosses' Layoff Disease
- Truth Swept Away in `Hurricane' of Lies
`The Hurricane' and the Injustice System - French Bosses Dre$$ing Leaves Bad Taste in Rocky's Mouth
- UNAM Stikers Must Break with all Bosses
- AOL-Time Warner: Old Money.Com
- Letters
DOCKERS REBEL
Black and White Longshoreman Battle 600 Cops
CHARLESTON, South Carolina, Jan. 21 -- A multi-racial rebellion of 600 black and white longshoremen sent three cops to the hospital here yesterday when the workers fought 600 police protecting 20 scabs who were working the jobs of union dockers. For several hours in the early morning of January 20, this city's waterfront resembled a battlefield as workers hurled everything they could lay their hands on at the bosses' cops and state troopers. Eight workers were arrested for "trespassing."
The dispute leading up to yesterday's rebellion has been simmering for years, from Charleston to Houston, New Orleans, Baltimore and other southern ports. Stevedoring outfits were offering scabs to shipping companies at lower-than-union rates to load and unload cargo. Union members in the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) here had deep fears their jobs were threatened. Finally they decided to take direct action.
Starting last month, a Danish shipping firm, the Nordana Line, contracted for scabs to unload its ships. Members of ILA Local 1422 have been working Nordana's ships for 22 years and had even given concessions to keep its work. But now Nordana was refusing to negotiate over its use of scabs.
Then, on January 2, union longshoremen stormed the terminal where a Nordana Line ship was docked, overturning equipment and roughing up some scabs, forcing the ship to leave early without its full cargo. By January 19, with another Nordana ship headed into port, the situation boiled over.
At 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, the 19th, a force of 600 city cops, State troopers, deputies from the Charleston County Sheriff's Office and the departments of two other near-by cities began assembling at the State Port Authority terminal where a Nordana ship was slated to dock. Buses filled with cops followed by armored vehicles passed through terminal gates. A helicopter circled overhead. More than 200 of the cops wearing riot helmets and carrying clear plastic shields and long wooden clubs formed a line along the terminal entrance.
As the cops waited, 1,000 longshoremen held a closed-door meeting at 6:00 P.M. in their union hall near-by. Many declared they "were fighting for their jobs."
An hour later the Danish freighter Nordana Skodsborg appeared, and 20 scabs went aboard to start working. Soon two union pickets appeared in front of the 200 cops guarding the terminal.
At midnight, 600 longshoremen returned to the union hall for another "meeting." Soon they were streaming out, moving towards the terminal chanting, "ILA! ILA! ILA!" and carrying signs, bottles and wooden clubs. They marched right up to the line of 200 cops, inches away, waving signs and shouting threats.
Immediately a hailstorm of rocks, bricks, logs, and other missiles rained down on the cops. The Police Captain was hit by a railroad tie and sent to the hospital for seven stitches. At 12:15 A.M., the dockers knocked over a police floodlight, plunging the area into darkness. While the police helicopter circled with its spotlight, the rebellious workers continued their barrage.
Then two State Highway Patrol squad cars were driven directly into the rear of the crowd of angry longshoremen, dropping shock grenades and slamming into one worker. The other squad car was pelted with debris. At 12:45 the cops ordered the crowd to disperse or be arrested. They fired guns containing bean-like projectiles at the retreating workers, although some held fast and overturned a TV van. The cops then fired tear gas, moving the workers back to the union hall. By then the rebellion had ended, and at 7:00 A.M. the Nordana ship was loaded and sailed.
While the workers had failed to halt the scabs, they did put the ruling class of Charleston on notice that they would no longer take the robbing of their jobs by scabs lying down. Expecting the workers' challenge, South Carolina Attorney-General Condon answered back with the fascist announcement of what he described would be "a comprehensive plan for dealing with dock workers' violence" that involves "jail, jail and more jail." He said "union members who don't like our right-to-work laws" will not be allowed to "riot in the streets."
But as one union longshoreman who has worked the docks for six years told the Charleston Post-Courier, "This is not the first time jobs have been chiseled away from us. Something has to be done."
Editorial
Red Leadership = Put Workers on Road to Revolution
Dockers Rock Class Struggle Rolls
There are many lessons to be learned from the multi-racial rebellion of 600 longshoremen in Charleston, SC. One is that the class struggle, the life and death conflict between bosses and workers, between those who own everything and those who produce everything, rages daily. No matter how much the bosses blabber about "good times" and record profits, the real bottom line is that their enormous wealth comes directly from their ability to squeeze more and more out of the working class. The South Carolina State Attorney-General said it plain, that "union members who don't like our right-to-work laws," will face "jail, jail and more jail."
They always try to obscure the class struggle, up to and including the recent march of 50,000 against the racist Confederate flag in Charleston. The open racist politicians refer to this flag of slavery as "white heritage." The liberals opposing the flag are hypocritically trying to turn the masses' anti-racist sentiments into votes for Gore & Co. This is the same crew that ended welfare, filled the prisons with black men (to become slave laborers) and have launched dozens of military strikes around the world to advance U.S. imperialism. The dockworkers, perhaps somewhat inspired by the recent march against racism, have turned the spotlight back on the class nature of society. Black and white workers, fighting black and white cops, led by a black police chief!
Another lesson is, there are limits to everything. While the bosses literally get away with murder, this won't last forever. The Charleston dockworkers prove again that the working class is filled with anger, capable of rocking the bosses and their cops, and is open to much more, including the building of a mass revolutionary movement for communist revolution.
The fact that the bosses continually commit their crimes does not mean they have won the working class to all their plans. Although they have a huge arsenal and can kill a lot of people, they haven't overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome." They fear they may have an unreliable army that is leery about fighting, as well as a working class that has to be threatened or bribed with temporary or shallow improvements, to be taken away at a later date. When workers realize this, often they choose to fight back, many times massively. This is the history of the working class throughout the world. Just look at some of the larger events in only the last third of this century, even just here in the U.S.
* In Newport News, VA. In 1967, 15,000 black and white shipbuilding workers took over the waterfront in a mass rebellion for a decent contract and against the blood-sucking merchant/loan sharks who were bleeding them dry.
* Pick-ups in their fight for equal treatment against the racist city bosses, scabs, cops and the National Guard.
* In 1970, a quarter million black and white postal workers shut down most mail delivery from New York to San Francisco, defying Nixon's wage freeze and forcing him to call out the National Guard.
* In Detroit in 1973, 200 black and white autoworkers, led by the Workers Action Movement and PLP, organized the first sit-down strike since the 1930's, fighting unsafe conditions at Chrysler's Mack Avenue plant.
* In Washington, D.C., in 1978, over 1,000 rank-and-file miners, representing tens of thousands on a nation-wide strike, seized their national union headquarters, demanding ouster of their sellout president.
* In New York City, in 1980, 30,000 black and white transit workers struck all subway and bus transportation, bringing the city to a halt in fighting for a decent contract
* In 1989, 25,000 rank-and-file miners in ten states wildcatted to back striking Pittston miners fighting benefit cut-offs of retired and disabled miners and scabs stealing their jobs. They burned scab trucks, exploded company offices, surrounded company buildings with thugs inside and defied federal injunctions.
* In Los Angeles in 1990, hundreds of mostly Latin janitors fought attacking L.A. cops in a struggle to defeat the bosses' contracting-out swindle.
Now this century begins with the dockers' rebellion in Charleston. Workers are still choosing the option of fighting back. But an essential ingredient has been missing in these mass working-class struggles: turning them into a revolutionary solution to our class's problems. We saw a glimmer of that in the recent election of a PLP member to the executive board of San Francisco MUNI transit workers as their contract approaches. But all these struggles, while heroic and directed against a variety of ruling class forces, are still attempts to change conditions within the bosses' profit system, capitalism. Unfortunately, this keeps workers on the treadmill of reform. Holding state power, the bosses always find a way to wipe out these reforms.
We need to opt for the revolutionary solution--overthrow of this oppressive system and its replacement by communism, led by the communist PLP. There has never been, nor will there ever be, anything else that will end bosses, profits, sellouts and a wage system that forever keeps the workers of the world in all levels of misery. Then and only then will the working class determine what to produce and how to share according to need.
If we are to have a more significant impact on a rising wave of struggle that Charleston may be signaling, we must be more deeply immersed in the unions, churches and other mass organizations, so we can lead more class struggle while fighting for the political leadership of the working class.
Ecuador: Presidential Musical Chairs Plays Bosses' Tune, Diverts Mass Uprising
QUITO, Ecuador, Jan. 25 -- This past weekend witnessed a mass uprising led by the indigenous group CONAIE, supported by military officers. Thousands of workers, peasants and youth, most of them Indians, took over the Congress when the soldiers protecting the politicians inside sided with the protestors. The politicians fled like chickens and the protestors formed a new government: a triumvirate formed by a colonel (later replaced by a general), a lawyer and a CONAIE leader. The triumvirate called for President Mahuad's resignation. A few hours later, General Mendoza, after talking with the U.S., betrayed the other two, sided with the Military High Command and deposed the Junta. They then forced Mahuad to resign and named Vice-President Noboa President.
Ecuador, like many other countries in Latin America, is ripe for revolution. The 12 million people here Ecuador can no longer live in the old way. The country is on the verge of hyper-inflation, the average wage is under $10 a month, throwing most people into abject poverty, and it has had six different governments in three years. But a REAL revolution--to overthrow capitalism--needs a mass communist party. That is the missing ingredient in Ecuador.
All this might be an acute, but not unique, example of what is happening in most of the world today. It is a direct result of the crisis of overproduction, which sharpens the capitalist-imperialist dogfight over who is going to control the world's markets, cheap labor and natural resources (especially oil).
Oil is Ecuador's main export. Overproduction has kept oil prices low for several years (until recently when its main producers agreed to curtail production by about five million barrels a day). For Ecuador this has meant billions in lost revenues, drastic cuts in social services, high unemployment and hyper-inflation. To make matters worse, the European Union (EU) has barred imports of Ecuadorian bananas, the country's second main export. This is also because of overproduction (the EU can get more than enough bananas from its ex-colonies) as well as a reflection of inter-imperialist rivalry: U.S. companies own Ecuador's bananas.
The political in-fighting is also a product of the rivalry between the U.S. and EU imperialists for control of Latin America. Deposed Harvard-educated President Jamil Mahuad was a U.S. lackey. He favored imposing the U.S.-controlled IMF austerity programs (to bleed the workers dry to pay U.S. bankers). He also wanted to privatize the government-run industries (oil, electricity, mining, etc.) so the U.S. bosses could buy them cheaply, and he made the U.S. dollar the country's currency (which helps U.S. bosses compete against the Euro).
The organizers of the first coup represent those Ecuadorian bosses who want to ally with European imperialists. Colonel Lucio Gutierrez, Antonio Vargas and Carlos Solorzano were the original triumvirate that deposed Mahuad. Gutierrez represents the middle officers of the armed forces who are populists and nationalists (anti-U.S.) like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They are against U.S.-pushed neo-liberalism, and sympathize with the reformist indigenous and workers movements.
Antonio Vargas, the leader of the indigenous movement CONANIE, is against the IMF, privatization and the "dollarization" of the currency. Izquierda Democratica (a social democracy party) supports the demands of the indigenous movement.
But this movement is no threat to capitalism. The leaders are using the just aspirations of the Indian masses and anti-racist forces to pursue their personal goals and those of the bosses. As Vargas puts it: "We don't demand anything; all we want is to change the country....eliminating all the corruption that exists. We are an absolutely pacifist movement and I think that thanks to it, a civil war was averted. We never attacked private property....[and] will show that the people could get power without voting and without violence, thanks to their will expressed in the streets."
The second coup saw the U.S. bosses recouping their lost ground. With threats of isolating the new regime and the backing of the armed forces' high command, they installed Vice-President Gustavo Noboa as President. Noboa will continue implementing Mahuad's program, especially his "dollarization."
U.S. bosses have temporarily recovered the upper hand here. But the situation is very fragile. Two factors will certainly intensify: the anger and hatred of the masses, and the inter-imperialist dogfight. Ecuador's problems are not unique. Peru's are similar. Venezuela is drifting further away from the U.S., and so is war-torn Colombia. Ecuador and Peru are crucial to the U.S. bosses' plans to invade Colombia, if need be. Both are proving to be very unreliable. This might force the U.S. to go it alone. This is a sharpening situation.
Instability and capitalists' desperation do not bode well for the working class. No imperialists or capitalists, be they European, Asian, Latin or U.S., will benefit the working class. No politicians or pseudo-revolutionaries, be they Gutierrez, Vargas, Mancayo or Chavez, can lead the working class to its liberation.
PLP Red Flags Raised During Mass Struggle
The PLP grouping here participated in the protests led by the indigenous group, organizing a student march in solidarity with the struggle against the rulers and calling for communism as the only solution. We raised our red flags in the mobilizations around the university, attacking all forms of capitalism (free market and otherwise), in spite of being attacked by opportunist reformist forces for openly raising the fight for communism.
The PLP grouping here has a huge task ahead of it. We can and must grow in the middle of this deepening crisis and provide the missing ingredient workers and peasants need to get out of this living capitalist hell: communist revolution.
Taking State Power = Key to Workers' Victory
QUITO, Jan. 26 -- The PLP in Ecuador participated in the Indigenous-led revolt which shook this country last week (see adjoining article). These are the lessons we've learned, which apply to workers, peasants, soldiers and students worldwide:
* Capitalism is falling apart everywhere, but it won't collapse unless we build a mass communist movement to bury it.
* The bosses' armies are not as faithful to capitalism as it may appear; many soldiers can be won to fight for a workers' society.
* Only a mass, armed revolutionary struggle can establish a new social order benefiting the interests of workers and peasants. We must never negotiate with the class enemy. If we don't take power when we can, we lose.
* The mass media are tied lock, stock and barrel to the capitalists; they lie and distort our struggles to favor their masters.
* By themselves, the Indigenous people (30% of the population) cannot achieve emancipation. They need the support of the rest of the working class. The hammer and the sickle represents the unity of workers from the cities and the countryside.
* Communist revolution is the only road towards workers' emancipation.
* It doesn't matter how many times the bosses change presidents or economic models under capitalism, workers will always be exploited as long as the bosses rule.
* The so-called democracy of capitalism is actually the class rule of the bosses. It can never act for the majority of people.
* Only when the working class led by a communist party leads the revolutionary movement will we achieve emancipation for our entire class.
* Only a communist society--where production is geared to the needs of the masses of people--can benefit the interests of workers and peasants.
* We need an international mass communist movement, uniting workers, students and soldiers of all ethnic groups and countries, to free us from
the living hell of capitalism.
Racist Research a Smokescreen for Liberals Attacks on Youth
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 24 -- Candida's and Jose's daughter, Maria, went to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center here complaining of being tired. She ended up in a panic disorder study at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Researchers promised her $75 and a counselor if she "helped" them in a study. Maria, who has no history of psychiatric disorders, waited two months for the counselor's name.
Researchers didn't send consent forms in Spanish, though Candida and Jose speak very little English. They obtained Candida's consent by phone, then signed her name on the consent form. The mother, who was at work, requested that the lab part of the test be postponed until she could be there. But she was told that they wanted to complete the test in one day so that her daughter wouldn't miss school. Maria was then surprised and frightened when she was subjected to a 15-minute "carbon dioxide" test to see how quickly she would panic. Researchers were studying the "association between abnormalities of ventilatory physiology and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents."
The article about the study, titled "Ventilatory Physiology of Children and Adolescents With Anxiety Disorders," was published in February 1998. The first name listed among the researchers is none other than Daniel Pine, one of the NYSPI researchers (together with Gail Wasserman) of the fenfluramine study on 6-10-year-old black and Latin boys. Under "Subjects and Methods" the authors write: 15 children or adolescents without psychiatric histories "were recruited to the study through advertisements." "Subjects were evaluated through parent interviews by one of three clinicians..." All subjects and their parents were then "clinically interviewed by one of three child psychiatrists..." During the carbon dioxide challenge "parents remained in adjacent rooms..." Proper procedure, slick, but all lies in Maria's case and probably in others.
Racist-Based Research, Isolated From Society
Many of the researchers at NYSPI, located in the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center complex, are from Columbia University. This institution, heavily backed by the Rockefellers, is a bastion of liberal education. It presents one-sided, racist or lying conclusions, like: 20% of children in the U.S. are mentally ill during sometime in their lifetimes. Violence, aggression and hyperactivity are primarily biologically or genetically determined. Medication and therapy are preferable but medication alone is preferable to therapy alone.
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center has instituted clinics and "teen screens" in the public schools in NYC, mainly in the largely latin and black District 6 in Upper Manhattan and in high schools in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. NYSPI's Dr. Timothy Walsh patronizingly speaks of their "obligation to help the community" and the "strong support of people in the community." Those people are mainly school administrators and some local politicians and professors.
To some degree, the clinics and surveys provide basic health services. But other aspects are dangerous for the working class. One is mass "diagnoses" of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in children. When Juana's son, Roberto, was "diagnosed" with ADHD she protested and wanted information before putting him on the widely prescribed drug, ritalin. The counselor in his elementary school in District 6 then threatened to call child services to report her for child endangerment. Afraid, Juana complied. Since then she has investigated her child's needs and is ready to speak out about how she was treated. She has contacted local activists.
Teen screens, or surveys, in high schools are also being used to "identify" students with so-called violent, aggressive or negative disorders. One Bronx high school student, whose only "behavioral disorder" was that he didn't pass two classes, was referred to a study at NYSPI. Teachers at that school protested, the "teen screen" was dropped for the moment and the father angrily removed his son from the proposed study at NYSPI.
Activists in NYC have been protesting these studies for a number of years, pointing out the bogus science involved, the racist nature of the research, the abuse of consent and the danger to the subjects. We have spoken at a number of organizations and churches. On January 16, parishioners at a NYC church debated the issues following a service at which one activist was the speaker. On February 14 we will speak at the social justice group of a large church. We are building support in District 6 and have been asked to speak at a leadership meeting of PTA presidents in the district and at a local PTA meeting in an elementary school.
Communist members of the Progressive Labor Party are consistently giving leadership. We point out the fascist nature of the studies and why liberal institutions are their main backers. We insist on relying on the working class to fight back. We go to legislative hearings and court cases. But we warn that it is a dangerous illusion to believe that the new rules and legislation currently being proposed in Congress and backed by institutions like NYSPI and Columbia University will protect research subjects. Fascism can present itself cloaked in liberal sentiment and design. We discover its content in the stories of Maria, Roberto and the Bronx high school teenager. These children and their families, as well as other workers and professionals, are now acquainted with the PLP. They are learning the value of communist leadership and why the working class must one day destroy capitalism with its racism and fascism.
CHALLENGE Sparks Debate Among L.A. Garment Workers
LOS ANGELES, CA -- When the bell rings at 7:30 AM, work officially begins at Jeans Inc. a garment factory. Some workers, facing the worst conditions and dreaming of big fortunes have already been doing piece-work for an hour. Those who now arrive at the official starting time find no work and must wait for more to be parceled out. The foreman and his assistant don't organize a sharing of the work, nor do they care about those who arrive on time. Their only concern is guaranteeing the profits and orders of the boss.
During breaks you can routinely see small groups of workers in the parking lot. At first we only focused on jokes, personal comments and sports in one of these groups. As some months passed, the discussions became more political; communist ideas began sparking big debates. Who said workers aren't interested in communist ideas? If they could see how long and emotional these discussions are!
"We workers are the creators of all the wealth, even though we're poor," said a PLP comrade. "That's true, but we don't have anything because we're stupid," answered Joaquin with a cynical tone. "No, friend, poverty is created by capitalism," another worker replied. This was the start of a long discussion.
Days later the comrade brought copies of the CHALLENGE editorial which detailed the millions of deaths caused by U.S. imperialism during the past century. He told them to read it slowly and they'd talk about it afterwards.
The next day the discussion continued. "This article only talks about the deaths caused by this country, not the others," said Carlos referring to the other imperialists. The PLP'ers agreed that all bosses are murderers, that only a communist society can change things. "We need a society without money or borders, where production will be based on the needs of the workers and not profits, since these are the things that cause wars which kill workers."
Manuel, who was listening attentively, said, "This is kind of crazy." "No," Carlos interrupted him, "I think it's intelligent. The only thing is it's negative. What you have to do is think about yourself and your kids and stop going around defending others who in the end won't appreciate it." Another worker commented, "No, he has an ideal, and with this ideal, it's possible to do anything."
These political discussions have united us more as workers and have created the opportunity to distribute more CHALLENGES. Now these discussions are planned and sought out. The comrade constantly brings in articles from the bosses' papers and from CHALLENGE, which will tend to spark discussion and debate. The next step toward recruiting these workers to PLP and communist revolution is to invite them to march on May Day, May 6, in San Francisco.
Welfare "Reform" Hits Workers Too; Alliance Needed
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 24 -- U.S. bosses have a plan to win workers here to patriotic support for their imperialist aims. Their main tactic is to aim workers' anger over sweatshops, prison labor and the poisoning of the environment everywhere but inside the U.S. In that way, the ruling class--which has murdered and enslaved more workers than any other imperialist--hopes to win our hearts and minds.
PLP has a plan as well. We want to fight against the politics of accommodation with the growing threats of war and fascism in the unions and increase the level of struggle against the bosses' attacks. In that process, we can unmask the liberal politicians and their friends in the mass movements and prove them to be the main front for the bosses' goal: fascism and war. We need to relate big issues like world war and fascism to the nuts and bolts of union contracts and to the policies we're ordered to carry out on our jobs.
In NYC, the contracts of some 300,000 city workers are about to expire. Workers are angry after a five-year pact that allowed racist Mayor Giuliani to replace 20,000 union-rate city jobs with slave labor Workfare. Some 40,000 men and women are being forced to work off their welfare grants. That contract froze workers' wages and benefits for two years and enacted give-backs. Workers see danger in the mass removal of needy families from public assistance rolls. The billion-dollar surplus in the city coffers comes directly from these attacks on the working class.
Angry workers didn't want to knuckle under to these attacks. For example, teachers in the UFT voted down a tentative contract. AFSCME DC 37 workers did as well. However, the leadership of the 120,000-member district council rigged the vote count and declared the contract "ratified." Without a strong communist-led movement in the unions, the bosses and their junior-partner union leaders had their way.
Communists need to give leadership in these contract fights. Workers don't want to forgo pay raises to fill up the bosses' war chests. They don't want their social service jobs to be used to force the homeless and unemployed into slave labor Workfare programs. Communists can unite with other workers around these issues. We can start by building strike committees in the offices and schools where we work. We can propose union-wide strike mobilization committees in our unions and/or in union caucuses. We can fight for contract proposals to end Workfare, prohibit below-union wage interim job proposals, and protect workers who refuse to sanction or illegally close welfare cases. Within union Political Action Committees we can build the fight against New York State's Taylor Law which makes any strike by government workers illegal. We can explain why this is a fascist law and why the demopublican politicians and union leaders want it.
Communists in the PLP have long understood that in schools, welfare offices, city hospitals, etc., government workers must unite with the working class people they serve. Be it teachers and students, welfare workers and clients, hospital workers and patients-in this class unity is the power to defeat the bosses. Nowhere is the need for this unity clearer than in the "welfare industry" where an attack on welfare clients is also an attack on welfare workers. If the figures in the adjoining box make it clear that these new and harsher measures have been affecting NYC welfare clients, then mass layoffs (which are hitting New Jersey welfare workers in Essex County) are likely to affect NYC welfare workers soon.
Before World War II, when the Nazis were building fascism in Germany, the civil servants played a pivotal role. They enforced racist fascist laws, bought into the bosses' ideology and sent their sons to willingly fight and die for fascism. Workers in the U.S. can make a different choice. With leadership from the PLP, we can become a bastion of struggle against the bosses' fascistic attacks. We can start fighting for our class needs by joining together to march with our international brothers and sisters on May Day, and by joining the PLP in building a Red Army to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a communist society.
THE WELFARE SQUEEZE
In 1994, 14.5% of all welfare clients sought fair hearings because they felt unfairly treated by NYC's Human Resources Administration; 89% of such hearings were won by clients that year. By 1999, 44.9% of welfare caseloads sought fair hearings and still 83% won their appeals. In 1993, 27.3% of new applicants were rejected for assistance. In 1999, this had risen to 51.7%. Finally, welfare rolls in NYC dropped from 1.1 million to 600,000 in the last five years. Of this number perhaps 70% were children (NYC Management Reports, 1999).
Salvador Strikers Must Organize Against Boss-Union Gang-up
SAN SALVADOR, -- "Señor Flores, don't fire my daddy!" exclaimed an eight-year-old child at the press conference of the 221 employees fired from the ISSS (Salvadoran Social Security Institute). But of course, his plea was ignored. For the bosses, workers are only part of their profit machinery; we're just commodities they hire and fire at their convenience. These 221 workers were fired because the bosses had personal differences with them and used the strike as the excuse to get rid of them.
It's been more than two months since the strike of 10,000 workers at Social Security began. The first demands were to follow the agreement signed on December 8, 1998, which promised a pay hike. The bosses have shown one more time they're at war against the working class. They'll sign a thousand agreements, and ignore them when it suits their class interests.
A little history: elections for union leadership had been scheduled for December 16, 1998. Oscar Aguilar (an anti-communist lieutenant of the bosses) had felt threatened by a new group of militant workers who opposed the openly sellout nature of the union. Aguilar's leadership group, planned, together with the boss, had planned to stop them.
Eight days before the election, Aguilar and the then Social Security Director, Dr. Castillo, announced a "big victory" for the union, a pay increase. And on the 16th,--surprise, surprise--Aguilar & Co. won the union election.
Then the new Social Security director of Social Security arrived, along with another surprise, the bosses had planned for the workers. The new director declared management had never signed any agreement for a pay increase. They no longer needed the support of the union, which had played its role of pacifying the workers.
Now, almost three months into the strike, a Social Security worker says, "The only thing that keeps me going in this struggle is the desire to get the fired workers their jobs back. The union leadership has sold out, and only used us to keep their jobs." It's hard to fight the cynicism that workers fall prey to because of these unions, but we must be clear that the unions are capitalist tools to keep the workers under their control.
The present Social Security director claimed that both the workers' union and the doctors' union have agreed to privatization in many documents. She says she's surprised that now they say they're against it.'
The workers and doctors of Social Security have carried on this reform struggle conscientiously, but have been led by sellout, pro-capitalist leadership. We must stop following that road, being easy prey for the bosses because of such traitorous leadership.
PLP has always supported workers' struggles but has always said the only solution to the crisis of capitalism is to fight for workers' rule, where there are no bosses. The agreements between unions and bosses are only one form of delivering the lives of the workers into the hands of the capitalists and their system of profit and exploitation.
Brooklynn Hospital Workers Sick of Bosses' Layoff Disease
BROOKLYN, NY, Jan. 24 - Last month at a Brooklyn hospital, over 200 workers marched to the Top Dog's office (CEO) declaring our refusal to accept even a single layoff. When he heard the workers were on their way, he became "invisible." But the message was clearly delivered to his secretary.
The bosses had listed 40 workers for layoffs. Their explanation? The hospital was in "financial trouble." In this case, the layoffs had nothing to do with Medicaid cuts, which were rescinded. It had everything to do with competition between hospitals for profits.
In this hospital, health care workers are told every day to take care of crowded wards and keep a safe and clean environment for the patients. A committee was established and leaflets were distributed informing the workers about the bosses' plan. So far, the committee has found jobs for some workers in other hospitals. The remaining workers threatened with layoffs were placed in other hospital departments.
Meanwhile, the Local 1199 union leadership was working jointly with the New York Hospital Association bosses to expand the Health Reform Act and bar any cuts for three years. However, this would not stop hospitals from laying off workers, merging or closing altogether. They're still capitalists, competing against each other for profits.
Despite "poverty" cries, the hospital CEO's got huge salary increases last year. To top it all, they're subcontracting work out and bringing in low-paid workers. That's where working jointly with the bosses gets you, a "promotion" to lieutenant of the capitalist class.
In the last few years the capitalist health care system faced many crises, with more to come. The federal Balanced Budget Act of 1997 included $3 billion in Medicare cutbacks to hospitals in New York State. The HMO's denied reimbursement for health care services, claiming that many were not medically necessary. The growing number of uninsured workers has passed 43 million.
The drive for profits and the competition between the hospitals, the insurance companies and the capitalist-run government places profits perilously above patients' needs.
But there is another alternative for the working class: fight to build a mass communist party in the 21st century to lead a communist revolution. Then we'll have a health care system for the entire working class without wages and profits.
Truth Swept Away in `Hurricane' of Lies
`The Hurricane' and the Injustice System
Almost every Hollywood movie is politically bad. Almost without exception the working class is shown as stupid, crooked, laughable, and/or immoral. So when a movie deals with racism and the U.S. "justice" system, hold on to your wallet.
A lot of people think "The Hurricane" is a good movie. As far as acting, photography, drama, it's okay. But this is supposed to be an historical political film, and using history and politics as measurements, the movie fails dismally. In fact, it's a lie.
Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, a ranking boxer in the 1960's, was arrested and convicted for murdering three people in Paterson, New Jersey. A young fan, a bystander, was also sentenced with Carter to life in prison.
I lived near Paterson then. Everyone knew the case was a frame-up. It was during the strongest period of civil rights and anti-imperialist war protest, and politically Carter was considered a pretty decent, outspoken guy. A perfect target for the cops.
Few believed he would ever get out. They knew the case was fixed against him, as it is against so many, especially young black men.
Through the years, Carter's lawyers got him a new trial and tried to appeal his convictions. After over 20 years, long after it was proven that the cops' "evidence" was manufactured and testimony was lied and paid for by the cops, it was too scandalous a case to be ignored. It had support from famous people like Bob Dylan. The convictions were overturned. Whatever other political considerations, it had become too embarrassing to ignore.
The Hurricane, though brings in alternative versions of these facts. In the film, several people from Canada take up Carter's cause and force the legal system to release the two convicted men.
But though he did have supporters all over the world, all the facts had been known for years. There was no real new evidence found, because the state really didn't give much of a damn what most working class people know too well: there is rarely justice for the working class.
Norman Jewison, the director of this movie, smeared romance and mystery over very bald-faced facts. (In a recent Nation magazine, one of Carter's lawyers, who worked for free for years to get Carter out, presented convincing evidence that the Canadians had nothing to do with the overturning of the case. They were just supporters, like many Carter had had for years.)
This distortion may be excused by the needs of drama. But why did the movie lie? Because if the frame-up actually was known all along, then the government kept these two men in jail against all the phony "rules" only the rich really ever benefit from.
Hollywood leaves us with the conclusion that, in the long run, "the system works." Even if it took 20 years, he got out. But anyone with any degree of political smarts knows Hurricane Carter is not the only prisoner convicted for something he didn't do. There are people in jail who are guilty, but there are tens of thousands who were simply caught in the injustice system. The movie tries to convince us we live in a country where rules matter. (And once Carter was released, what happened to the people who framed him? Nothing, because it wasn't "a few racist cops" who did it; it was the system itself!)
Nothing that appears in a film is an accident; it's no accident that the American flag is shown flying over the courthouse when Carter is freed.
This director seems addicted to lying. Back in 1967, the height of the civil rights era, just after Carter's conviction, the director made "In the Heat of the Night." Cops and sheriffs all over the country were killing and beating demonstrators. Guess who the surprise hero of the movie turned out to be? Right, a racist southern cop, who came to realize he had to support the black people he hated. Oh, give us a break!
Another one of his films was "A Soldier's Story," a truly horrible movie which claims that rampant racism in the U.S. army during the 1940s also was cured by a vigilant "justice system." I'm not making this up.
But it's not this one director. The problem lies in a system that robs us of our working class histories and its heroes.
We have to learn and tell our own story.
French Bosses Dre$$ing Leaves Bad Taste in Rocky's Mouth
The new year is barely a few weeks old and rivalry among imperialist bosses for control of Persian Gulf oil and gas has already sharpened significantly. Now it's the French energy barons who are thumbing their noses at Exxon Mobil and U.S. domination in general.
On January, 14, French military chief Pélissier announced a plan to hold a series of military exercises along with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, during the first half of February. The bosses of all these Gulf countries are trying to break away from U.S. rule. French oil and gas companies have interests that differ sharply from Rockefeller's. The major French companies, Total and Elf, want to end U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iraq. These sanctions have murdered a million Iraqis, mostly children, since 1991. But that's not the concern of the French oil companies. They want the sanctions ended because they're anxious to take full advantage of multi-billion dollar investment deals they inked several years ago to rake in oil profits from both Iraq and Iran. U.S. competitors China and Russia also have a stake in similar deals. The French arms industry is now the Persian Gulf's third biggest supplier.
These arms sales make fat profits for French death merchants. But the contracts are mainly connected to French strategic energy interests. Because French oil giants have a large investment in Qatar's South Pars gas fields, France and Qatar signed a "defense co-operation agreement" last October, which will station French military forces in the region.
These joint military exercises and agreements like this one aren't harbingers of peace. The fight to control Persian Gulf oil, which is still the cheapest and most plentiful in the world, is getting sharper. Of course, the French military machine isn't capable of taking on the U.S., and the exercises don't mean that a major showdown is imminent among the big imperialists. But, like other recent developments, these events indicate a very general long-range trend.
The scramble for oil super-profits increasingly pits the U.S. against every other major capitalist power. The French-led joint exercises planned next month are both straws in the wind and an attempt to test the waters. U.S. rulers aren't going to sit idly by while Exxon Mobil's most important competitors from Russia and France scheme to hack away at U.S. command of Persian Gulf energy.
The build-up toward an inevitable military confrontation between the U.S. and other imperialist powers is a slowly maturing process. It won't happen overnight. However, renewed oil wars in the Persian Gulf are another matter altogether. Every one of the four major U.S. presidential candidates has foreign policy advisors who advocate U.S. ground action to take over Iraqi oil. This is the biggest hidden factor of the current primary campaign. Imperialism always leads to war. Rockefeller's next expedition, to make Iraq safe for Exxon, and to keep France's Total and Russia's Gazprom out, can't lie too far in the future.
UNAM Stikers Must Break with all Bosses
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 24 -- The referendum organized by the Administration of UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) on the future of the 9-month old UNAM strike is a fraud in the purest "PRI" (ruling party) style. It was organized to justify repression against the students. The government reported that the students "voted overwhelmingly" to end the strike. They used coercion and inflated figures to get the result they wanted.
The CGH (Strike General Council) countered with a mass meeting to demonstrate that the strike continues to have the support of hundreds of thousands of workers, students and teachers in Mexico City. The striking students declared that they won't give in and will continue to defend their demands. It's expected that in the coming days the State will act to violently break the strike.
PLP urges U.S. students to organize rallies against the fascist attacks on the striking UNAM students. We fight for working-class internationalism.
Five of the student demands involve stopping the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of working-class students. The sixth demand, for a representative body to run UNAM, reflects the fight between various capitalist groups who are fighting over the University.
This fight over UNAM reflects the struggle for power among the bosses in the upcoming presidential election. It's becoming clearer that this struggle revolves around two conflicting ideas about the university and the country. One is the free-market model maintained by the current rulers, who have been joined by the liberal PRD. The PRD has stopped being the leading representative of the nationalist bosses' sector. They now support the privatization advocated by the neo-liberals and their imperialist cohorts.
The PRD is now doing the capitalists' dirty work that was traditionally done solely by the PRI. The PRD is leading campaigns to disqualify students, defending the proposals of the Dean of the University and preparing the ground for repression of the strikers. The PRD is also trying to show its imperialist partners that it, the PRD, is more trustworthy and efficient in privatizing the Metro (Mexico City subway) and in beginning the privatization of the electric company. It's no accident that Juan Sanchez Navarro, powerful businessman and the PRD's ideological leader, has given his support to PRD candidate Lopez Obrados for Mayor of Mexico City. This makes it likely the PRD will continue to govern here.
The nationalist option, abandoned by the PRD, has been adopted by other activists in the strike leadership body. The group of advisors to the student leadership body continues to try to frame this strike as one " "in service of the nation." They talk of the broad struggle against the technocrats in power who serve the World Bank and the IMF. This rampant nationalism is a trap for the working class. It means fighting to liberate ourselves from one group of capitalists only to fall into the clutches of another equally criminal group of exploiters. These nationalists attack the World Bank to make themselves and their allies look good. But they want to control state power themselves, and to mislead students and workers into supporting them.
The student strike can win a big victory if students understand that scientific education serving the workers can only be achieved by getting rid of all capitalists and imperialists. Then more students will concentrate on organizing together with the workers to fight for communism. This is the alternative offered by PLP. Join us! There's no "lesser evil" capitalism or imperialism. Free Market capitalism or nationalism (state capitalism): they're both deadly for the workers of the world!
AOL-Time Warner: Old Money.Com
America Online recently bought out media giant Time Warner. And Charles Schwab, an investment firm working largely through the internet, has taken over the blue-blooded U. S. Trust.
While it may seem that high-tech upstarts are making big inroads into the Eastern Establishment, the opposite is true. The main Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class actually came out on top in these deals. The biggest capitalists are tightening their grip on the economy and the media so that they can better compete with their foreign rivals and, when the time comes, go to war against them.
The New York Observer (1/17) declared Time's chief Gerald Levin the clear winner: "Mr. Levin has maneuvered America Online's pretty-boy chief executive, Steve Case, into becoming the Wall Street poster boy for Time Warner itself. And this in turn, Mr. Levin hopes, will enable Time Warner to shed its image as a media dinosaur and reposition itself as a `new media' Internet company. He'll still effectively control the company in spite of Steve Case's title as chairman of the board."
Significantly, AOL-Time will have its headquarters in New York, under the watchful eyes of the bankers, and not in Virginia where AOL is based. The move targets Time Warner's overseas competitors. The day after it was announced, a German AOL director quit. He represented the German media giant Bertelsmann,which has been battling Time for control of Britain's $20-billion EMI recording operations. Time has just taken it over.
Time Warner stands squarely in the Rockefeller camp. "Saving Private Ryan," which said that killing and dying for U.S. imperialism was sweet and beautiful, typifies Time Warner's message. The merger gives the rulers' main wing millions more outlets for such murderous lies.
In both the Time-AOL and Schwab-U.S. Trust combinations, the supposed "acquirers" wind up losers by grossly overpaying for their "prey." As analysts discover the truth of the new arrangement, AOL's stock is falling and Time's is rising.
On U.S. Trust, the Observer (1/24) notes: "It was a sale that was not a sale. The old bank serving the let-them-eat-cake class now gets to have its cake and eat it, too. San Francisco-based Schwab is paying a whopping 64 percent premium for the company, yet U.S. Trust is retaining its name, its workforce, its board of directors and its New York headquarters. Founded in 1853, U.S. Trust is America's oldest trust company. It managed the fortunes of the Astors, Whitneys and Rockefellers."
Beleaguered as they may be, the heirs of these robber barons remain in power. Our Party's goal is to remove them through the ultimate hostile takeover, communist revolution.
Letters
Red Parent Gives Bosses Principle an "F"
A couple of weeks ago, another parent and I talked to the principal of our sons' high school. I am the president of our PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Association) there, and because of previous struggles that the PTSA has waged, I make it a practice to almost never speak with the principal.
The discussion started off about a fundraiser the PTSA is organizing for the students' scholarship fund. It then veered toward the topic of our next PTSA meeting, standardized testing. I expressed to her the frustration that parents felt when they picked up their children's last report cards. Our students still are not doing well in math and science.
I asked her about tutoring programs for the students. She said she provided tutoring on Saturday, but no students showed up, so it was a waste to pay teachers to just sit around. "The parents are not making their kids come, so what can the teachers do?"
I told her she could not just blame the parents. I didn't think there are any parents out there who want their children to fail. We must to find some way to get the students the help they need and the PTSA wants to help in whatever way we can.
The only thing she could enthusiastically come up with was for our PTSA to organize a student trip to Cook County Jail to impress upon them that this is where they could end up if they don't watch out. Sandy (the other parent ) immediately told her, "I expose my sons to positive experiences, not negative ones." The principal unenthusiastically agreed to have a table at report card pick-up to sign students up for tutoring on specific dates. Can you believe she trains new principals?
After leaving her office, the principal-in-training (who attended our discussion) approached me when we discovered we have a mutual friend in the PTSA from his previous high school. He said he thought our conversation with the principal was interesting. However, he thought she was right about not expecting the school system to change.
I told him they were both absolutely wrong. "There is a political and ideological fight going on in the schools as well as throughout capitalist society. We as parents should instill in our children the idea never to accept the status quo. That's the principal's job. Our job as parents and my role in this PTA is to fight for our children to learn how to change the world, and to involve ourselves in fighting inside these schools. You never know when people will understand what's really happening, especially as contradictions sharpen."
He then responded by saying, "So you're a `smoke eater'?" I looked at him and said with a slightly light-weight attitude,"What's a smoke eater?"
"Well," he said, "I had a friend who was a teacher and his role in the school was to suck up all the smoke so everyone could see clearly." I looked at him more thoughtfully, this time dropping the attitude and replied, "Yes, I guess so. We will have to talk again." This conversation really made me appreciate our responsibility as communists in the mass movement.
Midwest Smoke Eater
Go Postal Against Racist Conditions
I was talking to a friend the other day, a black worker who works at the Postal Service's Irving Park processing center in suburban Chicago. He's thinking of trying to find another job because of the horrible conditions.
He told me that the bosses there ordered all the NTE custodians (89-day employees) to work their 8-hour shift as custodians, then work another four hours MANDATORY OVERTIME on the mail. When they finish at 3 A.M., there's no bus service back to the city.
His analysis is correct--the bosses are able to get away with these attacks because many of these NTE's are young black and Latin workers who desperately need these $7/hour jobs to survive. The union refuses to represent them, so they're stuck. "Do what you're told or get fired, there's 1,000 other workers waiting for your job," is what the mostly black racist supervisors tell them.
However, there is something we CAN do. Number one is to get our newspaper CHALLENGE to as many workers as possible. That's the only way workers will understand why these attacks are happening. Second, we need to spend time with the workers, build strong ties, personal and political. Third, we must be active in the union, to be able to help lead all the struggles and conflicts invovling these postal workers. This way, we can expose the union leaders not merely as sellouts, but as active agents for the bosses.
Chicago Postal Worker
In Memory of Charles T. Morris 1927-1999
Charles T. Morris died of a heart attack on November 1. His life was an inspiration to all who knew him and an example for working people everywhere. Born to black working class parents in New Orleans, Charlie's family moved to Oakland, California when he was still a boy. Due to financial necessity, he bad to leave school and get a job to help support his mother Thus began a struggle against racism and adversity, which he faced with courage throughout his entire life.
He was drafted by the Army to fight in the Korean War as a young man. He fought with all black 24th Infantry Division and spent most of his time in heavy fighting on the battle lines. He saw a lot of death and had to kill others himself in order to survive. He seldom spoke of his experiences there, being of a very modest and unassuming nature. He was in the Army when Truman issued his order desegregating the Armed Forces. He participated in some of the many rebellions that the black soldiers organized to protest the discrimination they faced.
He came home, married and raised a family. He worked two jobs most of his adult lift, retiring from his day job at Alameda Naval Air Station after 37 years, while working at Del Monte Cannery on the night `tuft for 27 years. All through these years he fought back against racist discrimination, filing (and winning ) many grievances on the job. At one point, after the war, he was attending some dances that were organized by the Communist Party of the USA and as a result the FBI came knocking on his door. They produced pictures of Charlie at the dance. They told Charlie that these people were communists. He was unimpressed and kept going to the dances anyway. The FBI kept coming back. Finally they asked him if he owned a .38 caliber revolver. Charlie was contemptuous . He said, "Why do you ask me that question? You already know the answer. I have a .38 and it's registered-- that's how you got the information in the first place." So the FBI agent said, "We want to know why you own this gun." Charlie's answer came right back, "Because I_m a black man living in America." After that, the FBI stopped coming.
At his funeral, a long line of people got up to speak about how Charlie had helped them. He became a surrogate father for the kids next door after their father died. He did chores for people all the time--people who were struggling to survive in his neighborhood. He was especially good with youth, always advising them to work hard, get their education, and stay out of trouble. He was a loving father to his children. He drove his grandchildren to school and picked them up every day. It became clear from the many people who spoke at his funeral that Charlie was a beacon of strength to all who knew him.
Charlie's qualities reflect the best that is in the working class--borne of centuries of struggle against oppression if you neded help, Charlie was there. You didn't have to ask him. He was a man of his word. He asked nothing for himself. He met his responsibilities faithfully and without fail. He was kind and gentle, but if you needed correcting he would tell you so in a straightforward manner.
We will miss Charlie Morris. And we'll take inspiration from his example.
May Day 2000: Let's Bury Capitalism in the 21st Century with Communist Revolution
a href="#Rocker Pitches Rulers’ Racism, Workers Hit Back">"ocker Pitches Rulers’ Racism, Workers Hit Back
Big Media Megamerger = Keep Workers UNinformed
Chicago Communist Teacher Under Fire, Fight Racist Board of Ed
46,000 March Against Confederate Flag of Slavery and Racist Lynching
a href="#Workers Rebel in Haiti Against Murderous U.S. ‘Democracy’">Wo"kers Rebel in Haiti Against Murderous U.S. ‘Democracy’
Rulers Send Army to Attack Mass Strikes in India
Learning Math Helps Understand and Transform the World
AFL-CIO Anti-China Policies Cover for Prison Labor in the US
FMLN Wants to Become Next Hangmen of Workers in El Salvador
Welfare Layoffs Plus Mass Cutbacks = More workfare
The More You Learn The More You Can Learn
LETTERS
Challenge, Good Bedside Reading
Millions for (Sports) Stadiums, Nickels for Houses
How to Win MLA Members to Subvert Bourgeois Culture
Editorial 1: May Day 2000 --
Let's Bury Capitalism in the 21st Century with Communist Revolution
The first MAY DAY in the 21st century symbolizes the turning of this century into a fight for a communist revolution. May Day is that day of the year when our Party mobilizes all our working-class brothers and sisters worldwide under one flag—the red flag of workers’ power. We demonstrate our needs and demands, especially our commitment to bury capitalism in this century.
It is a great building time for the Party of the working class. Many workers and students join the Party on or around May Day. It is the living proof of a multi-racial organization fighting for communism. May Day is also a time when we organize social events—visiting our friends, raising money on our jobs and organizing campaigns to help raise political and financial support for our working class international holiday.
The bosses all over the world celebrated the emerging 21st century with a display of fireworks, in an atmosphere of music and dancing in the streets. The bosses’ "resolutions" were for "peace and prosperity" for the capitalist system, but the reality reveals the conflicts within world capitalism. The political, economic and military competition among the capitalist countries is growing sharper, leaving millions of workers in poverty, millions homeless and dying from starvation. With the fights for markets and raw materials around the world, we can surely see that this century opens with inter-imperialist rivalry as the dominant contradiction. This will inevitably lead to a third world war.
In the U.S., conditions for the working class in the 21st century will worsen. We already see more subcontracting and slave labor programs lowering workers’ living standards. The bosses are expanding an even cheaper source of labor—imprisoned workers. By the year 2005, they aim to have hundreds of thousands of prisoners—possibly one million—producing for bosses’ profits.
Meanwhile, as the genocidal racist attacks on black workers continue, we will see even more black workers imprisoned in the 21st century. However, as millions of working-class brothers and sisters enter the U.S. this century, we can build a mighty tidal wave of multi-racial internationalism. We will march on May Day as one army under one flag and led by one Party to build the fight for communist revolution that will fight the rulers’ fascist attacks.
Editorial 2: a name="Rockr Pitches Rulers’ Racism, Workers Hit Back">">"ocker Pitches Rulers’ Racism, Workers Hit Back
On December 27, an Atlanta Braves pitcher, John Rocker, showed his racist, fascist face when he was interviewed for Sports Illustrated. Rocker lashed out against "too many foreigners" on New York City streets speaking different languages and then spewed forth some more racist filth.
The firestorm of debate that followed in the media has tried to isolate Rocker as ignorant, stupid and moronic. Baseball commissioner Selig "sentenced" the pitcher to be examined by a psychologist. This labels racism as a "mental illness."
Is racism "psychological" or a problem of "ignorance"? Absolutely not! Under capitalism, racism is the bosses’ main weapon to divide workers. The Rockefeller-led ruling class in the U.S. uses racism to super-exploit millions of black, Latin and Asian workers, which acts to limit white workers’ wages. Rocker’s rantings come from all the racism that exists in capitalism. And Rocker isn’t the first in the last several years to have a "slip of the tongue."
• In 1994, liberal President Francis Lawrence of Rutgers University said that black and Latin students don’t do well on the SAT exams because of their "inherent genetic inferiority." Coincidentally, The Bell Curve, by Nazis Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the rage for all the fascists and liberals, was the book arguing the same thing.
• CUNY President Herman Badillo just last year told an educational conference that Mexican and Dominican youth are filling school space and learning nothing because they are mostly from the mountains and rural areas and, in the case of Mexicans, mostly Indians, "with no history of education." (N.Y. Post, 9-23-99)
• Just a few weeks ago, Queens College President Alan Swenson, regarding student’s low testing scores said, "S--t in, s--t out."
The bosses’ drive for profits and control of markets, competing fiercely against other imperialists, requires the open police brutality of the NYPD and LAPD who kill and terrorize black, Latin and immigrant workers like Amadou Diallo, Roberto Close and Tyisha Miller. They need the imprisonment of two million workers and youth (two thirds black or Latin). They need the racist sterilization of Chicago mothers addicted to crack, and they need the imprisonment of homeless workers in NYC.
These racist attacks keep the working class divided and not fighting back, helping to keep profits up.
Words don’t exist in a vacuum. They just don’t pop into the head of racists like John Rocker. He, like others, has been won to believe that black, Latin and Asian workers are "inferior" to white workers. He’s of the same stripe as the murderous Ku Klux Klan, the NYPD or the Clinton Administration which forces millions of workers into slave labor Workfare programs.
Whenever a racist word is uttered, PLP and our friends will be there to attack it. Whenever fascists like the Ku Klux Klan rear their racist heads, we’ll be there to smash them. And whenever bosses launch racist attacks on our class, in the shops, schools or communities, we’ll be there to expose and fight it.
Why? Because we want to unite the working class to build a new society—communism—that will smash racism once and for all. There’s no such thing as "worker-friendly" capitalism, which the liberals promise every Martin Luther King Day. Racism will never be destroyed under capitalism. The bosses require it to remain in power and they will never give it up until they’re smashed. We should organize our friends, co-workers and fellow students to march on May Day to show the bosses that the workers united will never be defeated and that the working class, led by Progressive Labor Party, will end racism once and for all.
Big Media Megamerger = Keep Workers UNinformed
Now More than Ever, CHALLENGE Must Be Your Newspaper
AOL and Time-Warner’s recent megamerger will create another huge monopoly in the mass media. What the bosses have done to the other news sources (newspapers, TV, Radio), they are now rushing to do to the internet. For capitalism, "free press" means freedom to spread lies and distortions of the real world, while making huge profits. News reporting, as distorted as it used to be in the past, has now given way to treating all news as entertainment. The mainstream mass media is making the National Enquirer looks like a serious paper.
But that is the job of the capitalist press: keep workers misinformed and distracted from the real cause of their problems.
There is an alternative: CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. The job of this newspaper (and its internet version at www.plp.org) is the opposite of AOL-Time, etc. It is to show workers the real nature of capitalism (racism, exploitation, war, sexism, inequality, etc.), and the solution: organize to smash it and build a worker-led world where production and distribution are according to need for the working class (communism), not profits for a few (capitalism).
CHALLENGE’S main problem is that we are too small; we don’t reach millions and millions of workers to counter the bosses’ media lies. That is a problem every reader can help solve. Here are some suggestions:
(1) Buy a sub for a friend (only $15 a year).
(2) Order a weekly bundle to distribute 5, 10, 20 or as many papers as you can among fellow workers and students.
(3) Show our web page to your fellow workers and students who have access to the internet.
(4) Send us your letters, comments and articles about local struggles, as well as pictures and cartoons.
Make CHALLENGE-DESAFIO your source of news for the new millennium. Write to us at PO Box 808, GPO, Brooklyn, NY 11202, or e-mail us at
Chicago Communist Teacher Under Fire, Fight Racist Board of Ed
(This is a copy of a letter I sent to students and teachers at my high school, CVS (Chicago Vocational H.S.), to let them know about the Chicago Board of Education’s plans to fire me.)
January 14, 2000
Dear Friend,
Yesterday I was on the bus ready to go on a field trip when I was asked to report to the principal’s office. She informed me that the Board was coming to serve me with papers and I had to wait there and couldn’t go with my students on the trip. The Board (Paul Vallas) told me I was to report downtown. There I found out that this Wednesday, Jan. 19, they plan to suspend me without pay. Sometime after that they want to fire me.
In my opinion, they are firing me because I am a communist. I am a good teacher and the schools need math teachers. But they are willing for the students to suffer because they want to make sure that only the ruling class viewpoint is in the schools. Communists are organizing to overthrow the capitalist system. Paul Vallas and his flunkies don’t care whether or not students learn to think on their own, or make decisions based on hearing different ideas. No, they want to make sure the students are indoctrinated with patriotic ideas.
There are seven charges against me. Three of them involve a former CVS student who attended an anti-KKK rally with me and hundreds of other people in Beloit, Wisconsin. She was arrested at the rally, although she never had to go to court and nothing happened to her. Her guardians knew where she was going, but the Board still says I’m responsible and should be fired for what happened over a year ago. Three of the charges are about distributing communist literature and encouraging students to go to meetings and rallies. The last charge is totally ridiculous. It says I had coed sleepover parties at my house. I’m sure they will be forced to drop that charge because it is a complete lie.
What’s happening is not just about me. It’s connected to a whole trend in society towards a police state, or fascism. They’re locking people up, especially young black men, constantly. They’re making it illegal to stand on the street corner. There’s an increase in racist groups like the Klan. Lots of companies are merging and becoming bigger and more powerful, at the expense of the working class. Wages are going down. Homelessness is growing. Those in power want to get rid of communists, who are organizing against this fascist government. But they won’t stop just with just going after communists. Today it’s me and another CVS teacher, Mr. Bernal (his termination hearing, on similar charges, is Jan. 25, 26, 27). Tomorrow who knows what teacher or students they’ll go after?
If you would like to discuss this more, please call me at home. Some students and teachers are writing letters to the Board or circulating petitions protesting its efforts to fire me. If you decide to do that, please send me a copy of the letter or petition. I intend to fight them. I want to teach, and I want to be at CVS. If you want to help me, give me a call.
Love,
Carol (Ms. Caref)
46,000 March Against Confederate Flag of Slavery and Racist Lynching
COLUMBIA, South Carolina, Jan. 17 — To the tune of We Shall Overcome, about 46.000 marchers sang "The flag is coming down today." The largest march in this city’s history united veteran organizers of anti-racist marches and young people who had never marched before. Some 10% of the marchers were white workers and youth. They were demanding that the Confederate flag be removed from the state capitol building. The turnout surprised even the NAACP, which organized the demonstration.
The flag, which was used by the pro-slave Confederate States during the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, is a symbol of the worst racist scum (KKK, neo-Nazis, etc.) The few thousand racists who rallied here a week before in support of flying it claimed it represents "Southern Heritage." But to anti-racists—black and white—it is like the Nazi Swastika; it’s a symbol of racist lynching.
The Other Bosses’ Flag Is Also Racist
But during the march today, the NAACP waved another symbol of mass murder and terror, the Stars and Stripes of the U.S. bosses. Under this flag, the U.S. has committed atrocities all over the world, murdering tens of millions (see CHALLENGE, 1/12, for a history of U.S. imperialism’s crimes). The NAACP is trying to use the anti-racist anger of workers and youth to win them to die for the Stars and Stripes when their masters in the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class go to war to protects their oil profits.
Workers have only one flag: the red flag of revolution for workers’ power—communism. That’s the flag we’ll be waving high on May Day. We in PLP invite all those anti-racists who hate slavery and racist terror to march with us in Washington, DC and San Francisco on May 6 for a world without capitalism—the cause of racism.
a name="Workers Rebel in Haiti Against Murderous U.S. ‘Democracy’"></">Wo"kers Rebel in Haiti Against Murderous U.S. ‘Democracy’
FORT LIBERTÉ, Haiti, Jan. 15 — Remember when Clinton ordered U.S. troops to invade Haiti and depose the military butchers in power there. Clinton said he was bringing "democracy" back to Haiti’s poor workers and peasants. Clinton’s buddy, Jean. Aristide, the liberal priest-turned-politician, was returned to power. He had been overthrown a few years earlier by the military. Several years have now passed. Most of the U.S. and UN troops have now left, and conditions for most people here have gone from bad to worse.
This week, this city, near the border of the Dominican Republic, witnessed a mass rebellion after one of the few remaining U.S. soldiers shot and killed a 14-year-old youth. A UN military vehicle was burned and several cops were injured along with many civilians.
It all began after one of the "zongledó" (night burglars), who control the nights here, robbed a motorcycle. The local cops responded and, as usual, shot the owner of the motorcycle. Angry demonstrators stoned the police station. UN military personnel shot at the demonstrators. A U.S. soldier, part of the UN forces, shot and killed a local youth among the protesters. Others protesters were also shot by the UN troops.
Now, according to the Dominican Republic’s newspaper, the Daily El Nacional (1/16), "This town is practically in the midst of social convulsions. Many of the social services are paralyzed, including transportation through its streets and roads (which are regularly in such bad shape that it is quite a task traveling through them)."
Next time someone proposes an imperialist invasion to "help the people," think about Haiti. Nothing short of fighting for communism can ever help the masses anywhere.
Rulers Send Army to Attack Mass Strikes in India
NEW DELHI, India, Jan. 19 — The government called out the Army and Navy to confront striking dock, power and oil workers as well as state and postal employees, all are part of the biggest strike wave in recent times.
Port workers, who handle a quarter of a billion tons of cargo per year, brought shipping activity in eleven ports across the country to a complete halt. The Army and Coast Guard moved in to scab. The workers are demanding a 106% wage increase.
The government of the state of Uttar Pradesh began firing striking power workers and hiring scabs as that walkout entered its sixth day. Over 2,000 workers have been arrested, but the strike intensified and the state’s electric power crisis has escalated, threatening service across the entire north of India. The Army has taken over power stations.
Oil workers have struck to force implementation of a recommended wage hike and postal workers are planning a nationwide strike in March for the same reason.
A walkout by thousands of state workers in Jammu and Kashmir entered its second month. They are demanding back pay and benefits due them, Troops have moved into the large cities. The Indian rulers did not hesitate to use the troops fighting pro-Pakistani separatists in this area to scab. Over 300 strikers have been arrested.
India has long been touted as a "great Asian democracy," but as always under capitalism, when workers attempt to fight for a little better life, the ruling class brings the full weight of its state apparatus to bear on the class that produces its profits. Is there any better "advertisement" for communism?
Learning Math Helps Understand and Transform the World
In mathematics as in all areas taught in schools under capitalism, there is a major contradiction between what we as the working class need to learn and what the ruling class needs for the schools to accomplish. Understanding the role of mathematics involves at least five major questions:
Why is the study and understanding of mathematics important for the working class?
Now that the Rockefeller-led Old Money forces are solidly in charge, what does the ruling class especially need for the working class to learn, or not learn, in studying mathematics and how is math education used to build racism and anti-working class ideology?
Why do students in the U.S. find learning mathematics so hard, even compared to students from other countries?
How should we as communists teach differently and what results should come from that difference?
How will mathematics be taught under communism?
Each of these questions contains many others.
Why Is Mathematics Important?
If asked this question (or why is arithmetic important), many, if not most workers, would reply, "So that you don’t get cheated by the boss or store owner." I remember as a child watching my mother sitting at the kitchen table on payday adding up her hours and production (she was paid partly by piece-work) to be sure her paycheck was "right." She had no calculator, just pencil and paper. But while she was certainly no revolutionary, like most workers she understood that a boss would cheat you out of your hard-earned pay. Of course, communist politics makes clear that the boss lives by stealing what is produced by—and rightfully belongs to—the working class.
The working class needs to understand mathematics both for the immediate and pragmatic reasons as well as for the more long-range and ideological ones. It is important for workers to be able to calculate our paychecks, know how much change we should get from a store, have some idea of what we are paying when we buy on credit and to do other day-to-day survival mathematics.
For many jobs today, including those in transit, manufacturing and other places that are crucial for communist organizing, getting the job requires passing a math test. We want workers, including young comrades, to have a chance to pass these tests and get these jobs.
It is important for workers to read and write CHALLENGE articles and flyers and other information that will help in gaining an understanding of the world and how to change it. For the same reason it is important to understand math. Charts and graphs give quantitative analyses of things that are happening in the world. Quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes. Likenesses and differences in world events are sometimes made clearer by using numbers. Today the schools are not teaching many working class youth the basic understanding and skills needed to do the above.
The study of mathematics can also be part of the study of dialectics. As discussed in a CHALLENGE article a few years ago, calculus was developed as a way of quantifying and understanding change. In the study of different geometric figures and their properties, students see the importance of likenesses and differences. Later in discussing the role of communist teachers, we will analyze this more deeply. (To be continued)
AFL-CIO Anti-China Policies Cover for Prison Labor in the US
LOS ANGELES — "When I was in Seattle, I saw a sign that said, ‘Is prison labor OK in the U.S. and not in China?’ Where I work, they use prisoners to clean the buses. Those jobs used to go to full-time union workers. The AFL-CIO leadership said that they support prison labor here as long as it's done ‘fairly.’ There’s nothing fair about paying someone 23 cents an hour to do work that was done by a full-time, paid union worker."
This statement caused quite a stir at the meeting of the Fair Trade network. It was part of a debate in which one of the participants said, "We must make opposition to China’s entry into the WTO [World Trade Organization] the issue of the year. If China is admitted to the WTO, it will lower labor standards for the whole world." Another person shot back that the U.S. bosses are responsible for lowering labor standards all over the world. We shouldn’t end up blaming Chinese workers supporting the U.S. bosses’ plans for a war for world domination.
Another person declared, "We can’t let the AFL-CIO leadership build a racist campaign against China in the name of U.S. workers. There are more people in prison per capita in the US than any other country in the world."
The group decided to hold a forum about this issue before deciding on its position. An article in the Los Angeles Times (1/12) bolsters the "fair traders" position. It claims that in the upcoming congressional debate about trade with China, the AFL-CIO will be fighting not only for protectionism but also for needed reforms and independent unions.
Prison labor is growing in the U.S. by leaps and bounds. Workers need to sharpen the fight against prison labor here, especially its racist character—two-thirds of prisoners are black or latin. We must expose the "human rights" lie behind the fake concern about conditions for Chinese workers. "Independent" unions mean pro-U.S. unions. The truth is that from China to the US, the problem is capitalist greed for profits. Chinese socialism led back to capitalism. The solution is not tariffs and trade wars, which ultimately lead to shooting wars. The solution is to re-build the international communist movement to destroy the profit system from Shanghai to LA.
FMLN Wants to Become Next Hangmen of Workers in El Salvador
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, Jan. 18 — The campaign has begun to "elect" the new hangmen who will tighten the noose around the workers’ necks. In March, mayors and deputies will be elected for a three-year period—2000-2003. According to the latest polls, the FMLN (the former guerrilla movement) has a big lead in the campaign for mayor of the capital city while the ARENA party has a small lead nationally in the elections for deputies. The polls predict even lower overall voting than in last year’s presidential elections, when 65% of the population stayed away.
"The FMLN is one more instrument of the system, and the capitalists must be very happy since the FMLN candidates run for office as leftists and rule as rightists," declared Dagoberto Gutierrez. Gutierrez is ex-commander of the FMLN and has been replaced by Shafick Handal in the leadership of the FMLN because of his "extreme leftist" ideas. The FMLN’s participation in the elections is now old news, and the expectations that were generated by the FMLN in the mayoral and deputy elections have brought nothing but disillusionment. Their only accomplishment was to legitimize the arms with which capitalism kills the working class.
The electoral parties are having trouble fooling the workers. They have launched a fierce campaign in all the media to win people to vote. Politicians of the right and of the phony left are hugging old ladies in the marketplaces and kissing children in the slums. Their actions are ridiculous and grotesque, these candidates, who have never in their lives eaten in the market place, much less lived in a slum.
The electoral parties represent the interests of different groups of bosses, the pro-U.S. imperialists or the pro-European imperialists. But the essence of all of them represents capitalism. It doesn’t matter which party wins; the workers always lose. Privatization, super-exploitation, poverty, hunger and repression are parts of the process by which the local or imperialist bosses squeeze their profits out of the working class.
To end this capitalist hell, workers—voters and non-voters—must join the Progressive Labor Party and help organize a real communist revolution, which sets the working class free once and for all.
The communist Progressive Labor Party has been trying to win workers to see that there are no "lesser evil" candidates—that elections, and those who participate in them, only serve to maintain this rotten system. We are telling our class brothers that this system’s problems are structural. As long as the wage system exists, there will be no change.
Workers, students and teachers, join the Marxist -Leninist study groups of CHALLENGE, the organizing newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party.
Don’t Vote! Organize for Communist Revolution!
Welfare Layoffs Plus Mass Cutbacks = More workfare
NEWARK, NJ, Jan. 18 — The development of fascism in the welfare system has given PLP one more chance to present our communist alternative. Essex County, NJ, contains the extremes of wealth and poverty in this "boom" capitalist economy. The three largest cities in the county—Newark, Irvington, East Orange—are all mostly black, with high unemployment. Despite the fact that Essex has many wealthy suburbs, the county also has 25% of the total number of welfare families in the State (30,000 as of 1994).
Now comes "Work First, New Jersey"(WFNJ). Clinton’s welfare law, signed in 1996, contained many attacks. But WFNJ goes the feds one better. WFNJ limits a family to 12 months of emergency shelter payments no matter how long that family is on welfare! So in New Jersey, 1998 and 1999 have seen an orgy of benefit terminations, mass "sanctioning" of clients who miss appointments, cutoffs of emergency shelter payments, and wholesale denials of benefits to immigrants. This was particularly true in Essex County.
Thousands of families have been slashed from the rolls. Many of those adults are working in $6- and $7-per-hour jobs with no medical benefits. Now Treffinger, the Essex County Executive, has announced the layoff of 66 welfare workers, 62 of whom are black. Racist Treffinger says that the welfare bosses did such a good job cutting families with children off welfare that they no longer need these "surplus" welfare workers. But he made sure his political hacks were hired from the outside into welfare department management positions just before the layoffs were announced.
Unfortunately, when WFNJ was first passed, many welfare workers were fooled into supporting it, or at least passively accepting its racist, anti-client provisions. Let this be a lesson to all welfare workers: WHEN YOU
Help The Bosses Attack Clients, You Are Slitting Your Own Throats
Welfare workers should draw a line in the sand and refuse to carry out all Nazi-like policies such as mass sanctioning, helping to take kids away from their parents, and forcing clients onto slave labor Workfare. (Will these laid-off welfare workers themselves now be forced onto welfare, be put on Workfare, then into their old jobs to work for their welfare checks?)
A PLP member and some friends attended a rally against racist layoffs called by the union and the local NAACP. He spoke briefly, and promised to bring out more workers to support this struggle against racism. The Party will make this struggle part of our developing campaign in welfare in the NY-NJ area. Welfare cutoffs and slave labor Workfare are part of the bosses’ fascist drive to lower wages and beat their competition.
Only communist revolution can put an end to a system which must create mass poverty in order to save the profits of the bosses. Communism will eliminate capitalist laws like WFNJ and never again allow one group of workers to be used as a club over the heads of the whole working class.
The More You Learn The More You Can Learn
BOOK REVIEW: The Myth of the First Three Years: A New Understanding of Early Brain Development and Lifelong Learning by John T. Bruer
There is a common myth about child development: a child’s first three years are a window of opportunity for learning. This determines the child’s ability to think, reason and learn, as well as its artistic abilities, throughout its entire life. If you miss this opportunity the child’s intelligence will be stunted for life.
This myth affects funding for public education, both pre-school and Kindergarten through 12th grade. It supplements the equally pervasive myth that intelligence is limited by what you inherit from your parents. Most parents, teachers and psychologists are influenced by both these myths.
Bruer is a neuroscience researcher. His book explodes the myth that there is anything special about the first three years in terms of windows of opportunity, except for the basic sensory functions of sight, hearing, etc. He confirms the report in the December 1, 1999, issue of CHALLENGE that learning is a lifelong property of the human brain, and shows that almost nothing has a window of opportunity that closes at a certain point in life, let alone in early childhood.
Only those brain functions that are common to the entire human species, such as sight, hearing, and other basic sensory functions, have windows of opportunity that close at a certain point. If a baby is blind or deaf, it may never develop normally, even if the vision or hearing are later corrected (other than exceptions like Helen Keller).
However, for all brain functions that are specific to different cultures--such as speaking particular languages, music, math, reading, writing, science, philosophy, political understanding, etc.--there are no critical periods. These culture-specific brain functions remain available for learning and modification throughout life, and indeed improve as one gets older.
There is no fixed capacity. The more you learn the more you can learn. Rather than being like a bucket that gets filled to a certain capacity, intellectual ability is something that can constantly be expanded.
Bruer identifies three strands to the myth: (1) relationships among rapid nerve and synapse (connections) formation, 2) critical periods of development and learning, and 3) enriched environments. The first is part of neuroscience and the other two behavioral science.
Bruer shows there is no support from neuroscience for any links between the rapid nerve/synapse development (which goes on from a couple of months old to maybe 2 to 16 years, depending on the part of the brain) and critical periods of learning or effects of enriched environments, despite repeated claims to the contrary in the media and in professional journals. He shows that learning takes a great leap forward not during, but at the end of, the rapid nerve/synapse formation, but when it finishes.
In fact, following a stable period from about 2 to 8 years old, the predominant change in the brain is pruning, i.e., shedding unnecessary nerves and synapses. Learning after this stable period involves as much reducing the number of connections as increasing them, if not more so. Less is more. The myth that larger brains are more intelligent is just another lie.
While Bruer doesn’t say so, a ruling class that needs to transfer money from, say, education to war, needs a myth to win the working class’s acceptance. A myth that says that the schools can do nothing to improve a child’s learning capacity after age 3 clearly marks school-funding as a waste. The ruling class is willing to put a few more crumbs into pre-school programs like Head Start in exchange for cutting much more massive funds for K-12.
The myth further justifies keeping workers in boring, repetitive, low-paying jobs since their "mental capacity" can't do anything more challenging anyway. A lie with more widespread and vicious effects is hard to imagine. And if the working class can be sold on the idea, all the better for the ruling class, since workers then have no one to blame for their oppressive conditions.
Bruer does not point out that the myth has severe racist connotations. The myth holds that since black and Latin children in the U.S. are most severely deprived of funding in the early years, they will therefore be the "least intelligent." The myth also says that the environment of the U.S. white middle-class is what all children need. This implies that all other societies are less intelligent. Blinded by their own myth, the U.S. ruling class was taken completely by surprise when Vietnamese peasants crushed the vaunted Special Forces in the 1960's and '70s. (Their answer was to slaughter millions. That also didn't work.)
Liberals like Hillary Clinton and the New York Times (1/16) push for more funding for the formative period—the first three years—while hiding behind the myth in order to support the cutting of funds for older children. Professional liberals are the main enemy of the working class because they appear in the guise of friends of the workers’ children.
The idea that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks may or may not apply to dogs, but it most certainly does not apply to people. This is very good news for a communist movement that hopes to win the entire world’s working class to a new outlook, and away from our capitalist upbringings. Belief in this outlook should help all, but especially, communist teachers to be among the leading forces fighting for the teaching of math, reading, writing, and all basic skills for children of the working class. Communists in general, even without neuroscience, know that people are capable of change throughout life. The destruction of the myths reviewed here is a powerful confirmation of the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism and one of its primary concepts that there is constant change in all things.
LETTERS
Challenge, Good Bedside Reading
Here is a donation ($20) for the newspapers that you have been sending me. I know its not much, but hopefully later I can send more. This is the best paper that I have read for a long time. PLP reports the honest truth. I am still learning about socialism, so I am a little slow in responding to the great articles in CHALLENGE. I go to bed reading CHALLENGE. I would be interested in a study group at CSULA. It is easier for me to get there, and I am a student there too.
In Comradeship
B
TV Promotes Nazis
Last week I watched a TV documentary on Nazis in America showing George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the U.S. Nazi movement. There is a campaign to make the viciously anti-communist McCarthy look good. The show described how the American Nazi Party was a big supporter of McCarthy. The supposed "historians" and "intellectuals" like Buckley, who are reviving McCarthy as a hero, are merely revealing more about themselves. They are fascist scum just like Rockwell & Co.
The film also had a lot about the Aryan Nation Compound and the racist vermin who visit there, many of them young people who are well-indoctrinated in Nazi ideology and then follow it to carry out acts of terrorism. We looked up the National Alliance on the internet and saw its suggested reading list, including three books by Solzhenitsyn. The best-selling book these days is "The Turner Diaries" by William Pierce, head of this group and a friend of the deceased Rockwell.
These guys are waiting in the wings to carry out, in their own words, "the biggest ethnic cleansing" in history. The rulers will keep them there as they may need them, while pretending to be "against" them. An article in today’s paper talks about the growing gap between rich families and the so-called middle class families and the working poor and others. The economic boom mostly helps the rich, but look out when the blast goes up to the top.
RR
More on Cradle Will Rock
(The last issue of CHALLENGE contained this paper’s review of Cradle Will Rock. The following letter is a young comrade’s comments)
Cradle Will Rock criticizes culture under capitalism. Politically this makes it a good movie to see with one’s friends. Of course, since we’re dealing with Hollywood, it’s important to consider why a movie like this is considered "safe" enough to release, and therefore also note the negative aspects.
Here are some of the good aspects: first, the movie portrays individual leftists in a positive way. The characters played by Hank Azaria, Emily Watson and John Turturro to stand by what they believe, put on a play intended for the "masses" and risk their memberships in the union. Other actors followed their example and joined in. In the case of Watson and Turturro, they were willing to risk losing their own homes/shelter for their principles.
Second, the movie has a subplot containing a ventriloquist skit done by Bill Murray’s character. The skit is symbolic because it shows how artists are merely mouthpieces for the ruling class. In addition, the destruction of the Diego Rivera mural demonstrates how the ruling class attempts to control and dictate much of what we produce. They make us dependent on them because they pay us. Through its characters, the movie makes it clear that, armed with political consciousness and support, people will fight back and change their attitudes about communism.
Lastly, the movie depicts historical alliances that have existed between the ruling class and fascists like Mussolini. A steel boss buys paintings from Mussolini’s mistress, played by Susan Sarandon, and so funds fascism in Italy. Sarandon has sold out, is openly aligned with Mussolini and is called a "Jewish fascist."
Some of the negative aspects: first, the film is a liberal criticism of censorship of art and freedom of expression. As communists we must make it clear that capitalism censors anything with leftist content to preserve the status quo. Culture under capitalism is produced, fashioned and funded in the interests of the ruling class. For example, government cutbacks of 20% throw many out of work; the army shuts sown the theater scheduled to show The Cradle Will Rock; and actors and musicians participating in the banned play will lose their union cards.
Revolutionary art is meant to inspire workers to fight back. This threatens the ruling class and is considered dangerous.
The movie portrays unions as mostly positive structures with poor leadership. In the movie the actors are threatened by their union but the play that they perform suggests unions as a necessary structure in order to win workers’ rights. Today we view unions as compromising workers’ demands to preserve capitalist institutions.
Another play in the movie reduces class struggle to a question of morality. It’s a play for children about a beaver that is kicked out of his dam, not because it represents the capitalists but because it’s "different"—it’s greedy. Also, the whimsical wife of the steel capitalist who objects to his ties with Mussolini is shown supporting the actors’ protest, suggesting that there are "good" and "bad" capitalists.
The original play The Cradle Will Rock was intended for masses of people but the movie appeals to a much narrower audience. A lot of the dialogue is historically related, referring back to a period of time that few people today know much about. Scenes are constantly shifting, making it difficult to follow. In addition, the movie is being shown in very few theaters.
In summary the movie is liberal. It says change the system by "degrees" or fight for reforms like unions or for better unions. We need to point out that everything under capitalism is measured by how profitable it is, even human labor. The movie also shows art as the sole form of protest. As communists we know that this will only "rock the cradle." Communist revolution will bring the cradle down and create a culture produced by and enjoyed by the masses.
NJ H.S. Student
Millions for (Sports) Stadiums, Nickels for Houses
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s all-news radio station KYW recently reported that newly-elected Mayor John Street to triple the after-school program budget from $1.4 million to $4.2 million. Mayor Street explained that finding the funds to do this "would not be easy" but he "wanted to assure everyone that the necessary hard decisions would be made to make it possible."
Then, a few minutes later, during sports, it reported that Philadelphia had agreed to reimburse the Eagles football team for the upgrading their practice facility if no agreement on a new stadium had been reached by November. A city spokesperson said, "finding the $23 million reimbursement would not be a problem."
Perhaps Mayor Street should talk to this person. He might find it much easier to find the extra $2.8 million that he needs.
On a more serious note, this is just one more indication that capitalism will never serve the interests of the working class. Finding money to build sports stadiums is never difficult but finding money to deal with homelessness, unemployment, lack of health care, etc., is always "impossible." This is not an accident. Nor is it due to who is mayor or who runs the City Council.
Capitalism only does what produces profits. Sports stadiums, riverboat gambling, luxury housing, etc. generate big bucks for a small number of financiers but housing for the homeless generates no profits. It is an honor to be part of the process of smashing this rotten system and replacing it with egalitarian communism.
Pennsylvania Reader
How to Win MLA Members to Subvert Bourgeois Culture
The Challenge (12/22/99) article on the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in Chicago and the Radical Caucus indicated that the Caucus will initiate some reform struggles. This indeed proved true. A set of Radical Caucus proposals to the MLA delegates assembly dealt with trade unionism, working conditions, salary improvements and continuing MLA vigilance against racism.
The CHALLENGE article says such reform issues are not revolutionary, not geared to replacing capitalism with communism. It then says the PLP members’ greatest achievement at the MLA convention will be to win more people to PLP and to fight for communism. It doesn’t give a clue how this is to be done at the MLA convention. The convention, as far as I can tell, is left with a grand effort, publicly at any rate, to adopt a series of reform issues. Reform issues are important when working with large numbers of people. It is not, however, the only part of that task.
Over 10,000 teachers and professors of literature and language attend the MLA convention annually. The sessions organized by the Radical Caucus and by the Marxist Literary group drew a little over 100 people. While this group may have a wider influence than its numbers suggest, its numbers aren’t substantial. More important, it cannot be substantial based on most MLA members’ primary interest in coming to the MLA Convention each year and or their primary interest all year long.
The way to win teachers and professors of literature is through what the thousands at the convention are interested in, subverting the whole process of producing ideology from within. This can’t be done by struggling for trade union, living condition and salary issues.
These are necessary struggles for other reasons. They do not address the heart of the ideological matter. The latter is ultimately the conflict between the bourgeois and Marxist approaches to literary analysis and evaluation.
The Radical Caucus and the Marxist Literary Group need to develop a profound way of tackling literature and language and how they function. That way is not simply condemning art because it does not call for joining PLP and fighting for communism. Nor is it simply condemning art for not explicitly and favorably presenting the working class and/or does not explicitly present the brutalities of racism.
Most art produced under capitalism is permeated with bourgeois ideology, whether deliberately or unconsciously. But art produced under capitalist rule also symbolizes, reflects and represents the many contradictions (cultural, social, class, "race") that characterize capitalist politics and culture. That is true even where the art is most abstract or appears to be most distant from history and politics.
A Marxist analysis should be able to dig out these contradictions in a sophisticated and convincing way, that will open the eyes of a host of those who attend the conventions.
MLA members are trapped in their own contradictions They have fallen for the weird and inflated bourgeois methods of analysis that obscure the bourgeois origins of the literature they are interested in. Still they are dissatisfied with the rarefied nature of their conclusions. They recognize how much of what they do is silly and subject to easy satirizing, as newspaper accounts of their annual meetings do quite regularly.
Still, they are not dumb. They will respond, in many cases quite readily, to analyses and evaluations from a truly dialectical and historical approach, a Marxist approach. On the other hand they will laugh off the oversimplifications that pretend to be Marxist.
A sound Marxist approach is only the beginning. It must be taken into as many sessions of the MLA convention as possible. It’s foolish to restrict it to Radical Caucus or Marxist Literary Group sessions.
We must tackle from the inside the notably strained and silly attempts most professors use to deal with literature and from inside the literary interests that make up the practice of their careers on a daily basis. This will subvert directly the schemes of bourgeois culture and open up professors and English teachers to the revolutionary alternative.
The Marxist approach to literature along with the respect we acquire as fighters concerned with day-to-day exploitation and oppression makes a powerful force for revolution and communism.
S. Agonistes
GREATEST EVENT OF THE MILLENNIUM
BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
- UNION HACKS AND LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS PLOT TO WIN WORKERS FOR U.S. IMPERIALISM
- UNAM STRIKE: BOURGEOIS UNIVERSITIES CAN NEVER SERVE NEEDS OF WORKING CLASS
- Ecuador: Dollar Economy Won't Get Workers Out of Hellish Conditions in Ecuador
- TEACH-IN WILL BUILD FIGHT AGAINST RACIST STERILIZATIONS
- STRUGGLE OVER CUBAN BOY MASKS IMPERIALISTS RULERS DOGFIGHT
- Dialectics of Evolution: The Potential of the Flexible Human Brain
- WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM? EVERYTHING
- CHILE ELECTIONS: BOSSSES WIN, WORKERS LOSE
- MOVIE REVIEW:
The Cradle Will Rock - LETTERS
UNION HACKS AND LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS PLOT TO WIN WORKERS FOR U.S. IMPERIALISM
The four remaining presidential candidates all back the dominant wing of U.S. rulers, the Rockefeller oil and banking empire. Some surface differences may appear to exist. But whoever gets elected will follow the basic Rockefeller agenda. As CHALLENGE has been saying for some time, it is a short-range plan for mass racist terror and "small" imperialist wars and a long-range program for fascism and world war.
The big bosses' essential unity on these questions is clear from the current issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, published by the Rockefeller-contolled Council on Foreign Relations. Its purpose is to spread the Eastern Establishment line among business executives, politicians and academic leaders. The January issue gives horses' mouth confirmation to our Party's analysis of U.S. imperialism's moves toward fascism and war.
Top billing goes to Jay Mazur, head of the UNITE garment union. Mazur and other AFL-CIO big shots have long since proved their loyalty to Rockefeller. They supported Rockefeller-backed Clinton in his fight against Gingrich & Co.'s failed coup attempt to impeach him. They supported the imperialists' genocidal wars for oil against Iraq and Yugoslavia where workers suffered most. By their refusal to mobilize worker militancy, the AFL-CIO honchos y have given a green light to every recent racist attack against workers, from increased police brutality to "Workfare" and prison slave labor schemes. During the Reagan-Bush 1980's, these labor lieutenants of the bosses sacrificed billions of dollars in workers' wages and benefits, scrapped work rules and helped the imperialists increase productivity.
In his Foreign Affairs piece, Mazur explains why he and his pals support higher labor standards outside the U.S. It comes down to profits for U.S. corporations. Mazur supports increased labor costs for foreign bosses which will give U.S. rulers a competitive edge. Mazur sees higher wages for workers around the world as boosting U.S. corporations' bottom line. In other words, Mazur's "humanitarian" language is just a cover for a scheme to defend U.S. imperialism against its rivals.
Sure, Mazur and his cronies are businessmen looking to feather their own nests. That's why they wanted a "a seat at the table" during the bosses' recent World Trade fiasco in Seattle. But they also have a key class role to play. Rockefeller & Co., much like the bankers and industrialists who bankrolled Hitler, Rockefeller & Co. are turning to the labor unions to build a pro-capitalist, patriotic work force. That's also the not-so hidden message behind Mazur's call for a "new internationalism."
The remaining important articles in Foreign Affairs deal with the need to counter growing threats from Russian and Chinese bosses and to secure control of Middle Eastern oil by armed force. One piece on oil comes from Amy Jaffe and Robert Manning. Jaffe has a big job in the James A. Baker Institute, named after an heir to Chase and Exxon billions. Manning sits on the Council on Foreign Relations. They warn that the present high price of oil is basically an illusion. The reality is the oil glut on the world market. They worry that Persian Gulf oil-producing countries may soon become powder kegs when oil prices once again collapse, because the rulers of these countries won't have financial maneuverability to pacify the population. To prevent chaos and ensure continued oil supplies, Jaffe and Manning call for a military coalition to "defend" Middle Eastern crude oil.
Next are two authors who reassure Rockefeller loyalists that the Republican Party will toe the Exxon line if either Bush or McCain is elected. There's little doubt here about who benefits from Gingrich's defeat in the impeachment brawl and Buchanan's exit from the Republicans. Robert Zoellick, a top Reagan-Bush aide, recommend using U.S. military power to "counter those dangerous states that threaten...vital interests such as maintaining access to oil in the Persian Gulf." The Republicans make clear their willingness to get ready for another war against Iraq.
Condoleezza Rice, a Bush's campaign advisor, goes even further. She criticizes Clinton's half-way war policies and says that the only worthwhile military adventures are a major oil war or, better yet, a world war: "The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be....Military force is best used to support clear political goals, whether limited, such as expelling Saddam from Kuwait, or comprehensive, such as demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany during World War II."
Other Foreign Affairs stories put a damper on this enthusiasm for blood-letting. But these authors' hesitations have nothing to do with a reluctance to see U.S. imperialism go to war. Rather it stems from the bosses not having yet won the working class to die for Exxon's oil. Their articles propose taking tactical steps building toward the next ground war for oil, like maintaining the current bombing policy against Iraq or dealing with the Iranian bosses.
UNAM STRIKE: BOURGEOIS UNIVERSITIES CAN NEVER SERVE NEEDS OF WORKING CLASS
MEXICO CITY -- After eight months on strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Administration, the government and the mayor of Mexico City from the opposition Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) continue trying to violently destroy it. The PRD achieved what the ruling PRI couldn't do since 1968: jail and try students for political reasons. There are barely seven months before the presidential election and the ruling class urgently wants to end the strike to avoid more instability, which would make an already cynical electorate even less likely to go to the polls. The resignation of former university president Barnes and his replacement by Ramon de la Fuente opened the possibility of a negotiated settlement but the rulers are trying to isolate and repress the more militant strikers.
The strike has exposed the fascist bureaucracy which controls UNAM, and its intentions to convert it into another private university. This would make it even more elitist. The bosses war' for markets causes them to squeeze the students, teachers, workers and academic programs even more. Imposing their program on UNAM is vital for the industrial and financial oligarchy, given their commercial treaties with the US and European imperialists. The student strike has also exposed the PRD as part of this rulers' plan. Even if any of the strikers' six demands are won, it will only temporarily slow the bosses' drive to make UNAM a private university.
Education for the masses as demanded by the student movement is impossible under this system. Capitalism is based on profits and competition, leading to the concentration of wealth in fewer hands. The extreme inequality created by capitalism means millions of youth never get to UNAM. Even if the strike wins, the thousands of youth who do enter UNAM and the other universities still confront growing unemployment, created by the deepening capitalist crisis of overproduction.
The social sciences cannot be taught in a scientific way because then they would question the very existence of capitalism. When they teach history, it becomes an intellectual exercise divorced from social practice, from class struggle and from the building of a revolutionary party that will lead the workers to their liberation. Science at UNAM is mainly involved with capitalist production, to generate profit and inequality, not to solve the problems affecting the working class. Science in UNAM and in all the universities essentially benefits the capitalists.
Capitalist education intensifies the division between mental and manual labor which splits professionals from workers. One reason socialism failed was its maintenance of the wage system and the division of labor, which is the essence of what capitalist education teaches. Understanding this will help overcome the anti-communism the capitalists have spread to separate workers and students from the fight for communism.
Communism continues to be the only hope. Communism will eliminate the wage system, the division of labor, the market, individualism, profits and the fascist beaurocrats like those who boss UNAM.
The student movement says democracy will smash the rulers' fascism. But you can't confront and defeat fascism with democracy. This concept hides the class struggle between the capitalists and the working class. The only way to destroy fascism is by organizing a communist party whose goal is to smash capitalism, the source of fascism with communist revolution. This party, the PLP, is being built. Join us.
This contradiction, between the rulers' need for a working class won to fight in imperialist wars and the workers' lack of enthusiasm for this scenario, presents our Party with a tremendous long-range opportunity. As Foreign Affairs shows, the bosses dream of a loyal working class gladly marching off to kill and die for Exxon Mobil's billions. But our Party can turn that dream into a nightmare for them by patiently and vigorously building for communist revolution. Planning and organizing now for mass May Day mobilizations in the spring, to raise the red flag around the world, is the best way to move forward and to guarantee that the working class and its Party will gain the strength we need to seize power when the time is ripe.
Ecuador: Dollar Economy Won't Get Workers Out of Hellish Conditions in Ecuador
QUITO, Ecuador -- The new year began almost like every other here in Ecuador, with hunger, poverty, corruption, deaths and few possibilities for workers to achieve a better life. The discredited administration of President Mahuad responded to the crisis and demands for his resignation (amid rumors of a coup d'etat) by adopting the US dollar as Ecuadorian currency. This is his plan to stop the-out of-control devaluation that has made the Sucre (the local currency) a worthless piece of paper, and has increased unemployment, poverty and the cost of living for most people.
The situation is so bad that many workers are subsisting by eating garbage. Housing, education, health care and other basic services have become a luxury for the eight million workers and their families. In a country rich in oil and natural resources, which produce huge profits for the local bosses and imperialists (like Texaco), begging in the street and slow death because of lack of health services and adequate food are now common among the poorest sections of the working class.
Of course, a dollar economy or a coup won't solve this situation. Ecuador is not in the pits just because of the corruption of local politicians who have stolen everything, but because of the crisis affecting the entire capitalist world. This is the same crisis and imperialist rivalry that have turned neighboring Colombia into a killing field.
But something will be different this year. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It is the political alternative for workers and their allies, the communist PLP.We in PLP fight to win the masses of workers, youth and members of the Indigenous organizations to turn their militant struggles away from the demand of " a patriotic government" to topple Mahuad. This only plays into the hands of the capitalist forces whose interests are contrary to those of the current rulers.Fellow workers, join with us to build a communist alternative, to make the Ecuador PLP into the mass revolutionary Party that can put an end to the living hell of capitalism.
TEACH-IN WILL BUILD FIGHT AGAINST RACIST STERILIZATIONS
CHICAGO, Jan. 10 -- A Chicago State University (CSU) student asked her teacher, "Do you know about the `Crack Sterilization' plan? This group C.R.A.C.K. is offering addicts $200 to have themselves sterilized. Someone could be sterilized, then kick their habit and want to start a family, but it would be too late. I am totally against it." As a matter of fact, the teacher did know about it. He's a member of PLP, and we are launching a fight against this fascist program.
This student is a young working mother, who pulled information about this program from the CRACK web-site. She e-mailed them, describing her disgust with their movement. Their reply did not satisfy her. She was looking for someone to join in the fight to stop this movement. She came to PLP and helped us plan a teach-in on "Racism in Social Policy," for March 1 at CSU. She will organize a one-hour panel, with a criminal justice professor, exposing this racist program.
"I think we need to discuss homelessness," said another student, who has been to two May Day marches and joined PLP. "It is so wrong that so many people do not even have a place to live." This young comrade helped to write, criticize, and improve the call for the teach-in. He is getting in touch with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and will organize a panel at the teach-in.
These discussions illustrate the strengths and the weaknesses of our work. On the one hand, there is energy, understanding, and commitment on the part of these young students. Many are angry and ready to organize. This is terrific.
But there are weaknesses. We need to involve other organizations to be part of the teach-in. The College of Arts and Sciences has agreed to sponsor it. Two teachers brought it to a union meeting but did not get it on the floor for discussion. We can involve students in the Social Work Club (who have attended organizing meetings), Student Government, Black Student Union, and Muslim Student Association, among others. We are not yet immersed in these organizations, but we have made a start. We need to do much more if we are to build a mass anti-racist movement.
The most important problems are political. We must defeat the fascist mentality that advocates "crack sterilization," and sees abortion as a helpful "crime fighting" tool. Many on campus believe the racist hysteria about "crack babies," and support sterilizing drug addicts. We must expose the racist and sexist stereotypes that blame the victims of drugs in a society that promotes drug use, eliminates drug treatment programs, and denies pregnant women access to the few treatment programs that exist. This is racist because the most deeply victimized are black people, without other resources to escape addiction. While this program could lead to mass sterilizations, the main danger is that it weakens us politically by directing our anger at victimized workers, not the racist profit system.
PLP is organizing a fight against racist sterilizations and abortions, to win many who oppose racism and fascism, to fight not only the gutter racists like those of C.R.A.C.K., but also the more liberal politicians who are even more dangerous, because they carry out massive racist cutbacks as they speak softly. This fight can open the door for workers and youth to see that the only solution to racism is to smash the system that created it and profits from it, capitalism. The teach-in will provide an opportunity to struggle with many students, professors, and campus workers over these issues. We can move thousands into communist-led anti-racist action, and many of those will march on May Day and join PLP. Workers are the force that will change the world.
STRUGGLE OVER CUBAN BOY MASKS IMPERIALISTS RULERS DOGFIGHT
On Sunday I attended a worship service at which Joan Brown Campbell, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, spoke about the 6-year-old boy from Cuba, Elian Gonzalez. In introducing her, the pastor listed her accomplishments, including the trip to Kosovo with Jesse Jackson and others last year [This was supposedly to free U.S. servicemen, but in essence it was to help extricate U.S. rulers from a military ground offensive there.]
We heard about all the liberal, reformist organization Boards and think-tanks to which Campbell belongs. We were informed that while in Cuba she became ill and was treated by Fidel Castro's personal doctor. One of my friends was skeptical and later said, "My grandmother taught me not to worry about people sloppily dressed, but to worry about people in fancy suits with briefcases. So I was on the alert." Not so many parishioners were as politically savvy.
Elian's father had asked Campbell to help return his son to him. She had spent a few days visiting him and his maternal and paternal grandparents. "Elian must go home quickly to his loving family," she said. "If the boy were other than Cuban it wouldn't be a question. The INS made a correct and courageous decision." Campbell said Elian's grandmother had been worried about her daughter because her daughter's boyfriend was a smuggler who regularly put 14 people in a small boat (built to hold six) in order to get the $1,000 paid to him by each person he smuggled into the U.S. Campbell said she was appalled by statements by Elian's relatives in Miami who said, "Elian's father in Cuba has nothing to give him but love." Campbell then said, "The lesson for us is simple and profound: love matters." Sounds good, is moving. But what's behind it?
"The U.S. should normalize relations between Cuba and the U.S., end the embargo, view Cubans as neighbors, not enemies, and not render Cubans more vulnerable than they need to be," Dr Campbell exhorted. The Cuban Council of Churches called the National Council of Churches to mediate. "The churches are playing an important role in the growing civil society in Cuba....[It] shows the strength of the church as it comes out of a time of revolution," she said. "Why do we get involved? Because it is just." Many stood to applaud. I didn't.
In several conversations following the service I suggested to my friends that Campbell saying "love matters," and the pronouncements that in the U.S. "we" abide by "law" and "justice," are covers for the Eastern Establishment rulers in the U.S. to use Elian's case to help end their isolation from Cuba. European and Japanese imperialists have invested heavily in Cuba. But Cuba U.S. bosses are building their own trade, financial and military bloc in the Americas to oppose their imperialist competitors. This makes Cuba even more important to liberal U.S. rulers. It appears the Castro government welcomes this development.
One of my friends, somewhat disgusted that once again I had raised questions, said her main fear was that the exile Cubans in Miami would win. I said I doubt it. The Miami Cubans will spout their anti-communist, "pro-democracy" and "law" position which is always acceptable in the U.S. It is especially useful to U.S. rulers' current drive to build patriotism here.
Today's global trade wars lead to shooting wars and U.S. rulers are desperate to build a reliable army. The Miami Cubans, as well as Indiana Senator Burton, will abide by the law. They may want their day in court. But what the rulers really want, conservatives and liberals alike, is to distort and bury the lessons of communism, while hypocritically proclaiming themselves the champions of "human rights" and "labor standards." The need to study the history of communism and use the lessons learned to continue the struggle is the main concern for the workers of the world.
New York City Comrade
MIAMI, Florida -- Cuban exiles, led by the right-wing anti-communist politicians like Representatives Iliana Ross, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Senator Dan Burton, rioted here and delayed the INS ruling that Elian should return to his father in Cuba. At the same time 389 Haitian refugees, 16 Dominicans and two Chinese refugees were deported without benefit court hearings.
In the first week of January, the small boat carrying these refugees to the U.S. ran aground near the coast of southern Florida. The Coast Guard quickly detained them and the INS quickly sent them back. There were some demonstrations, mainly by Haitian immigrants here (see photo). There were no riots by Cubans nor claims by politicians that these refugees should stay here in the U.S. The reason is obvious: they are mostly black, poor and have no high friends in Congress.
And those who believe that Janet Reno and the INS have all of a sudden become "good guys" because of their position on Elian. The same week they said Elian should return home, it was reported that 119 immigrants died crossing the Mexico-Southern California border. Most of them died because of the racist persecution by the INS-Border Patrol, forcing them to cross in the most dangerous zones.
Dialectics of Evolution: The Potential of the Flexible Human Brain
A recent CHALLENGE article (12/1/99) summarized scientific evidence showing the human brain as constantly changing. These new discoveries about the flexible brain also shed light on the dialectical materialist science of evolution and the controversy over evolution vs. creationism.
Flexibility of the Bigger Brain
One of the results of evolution was the greatly increased brain size in human beings. If birds and mice all have brains that control much of their behavior, what's the big deal about the bigger brain size in humans?
The behavior in birds and mice tends to be rigid, programmed. The extra neural connections in the larger human brain are enough to convert an inflexible, rigidly programmed device into a highly flexible organ. This allows for sufficient logic and memory to substitute non-programmed learning for "hard-wired" behavior as the basis for social interaction. In other words, humans have the potential for learning and adapting to a changing physical and social environment that birds and mice have little of.
Evolutionary Origins of Flexibility
Why did the larger human brain evolve? Evolutionary scientists have argued that natural selection favored large brains that made possible certain necessary skills in gathering food or socializing. But here's a key point: these skills by no means exhaust the limits of what such a complex device (the human brain) can do. The same brain that developed many years ago in relation to food-gathering needs has the potential for composing poetry and typing newspaper articles on a laptop computer.
In a similar vein, the human larynx (voice box) became capable of evolving when movement (walking) went from four legs to two. This allowed for a limited range of sounds needed to coordinate labor and social life in early humans. That same larynx has the potential for singing opera and chanting, "Fight for Communism" at a political demonstration.
Actual vs. Potential in Evolution
Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary science in the 19th century, recognized that living beings display many features that are not adaptations and do not promote survival directly. This is because: (a) organs may have capacities beyond what they were selected for; and (b) because organisms are integrated systems in which an adaptive change in one part can lead to a non-adaptive change of some other feature.
Evolution thus embodies the dialectical category, actual vs. potential. A factory may install a computer to keep track of accounts, but that computer can also be used to play games or surf the Internet. In evolution, natural selection may build an organ for a certain purpose, but that (actual) organ, as a result of its inherent structural complexity, may serve other purposes as well (the potential).
Evolutionary Science vs. Religion
Some 19th century scientists ("hyperselectionists") did not see the potential in the actual. They believed that every trait in living beings, including humans, had to be a product of natural selection. ("Sociobiologists" have this view today.) So the capacities to write articles and sing operas would have had to be products of natural selection. But, they argued, the brain and larynx evolved long before they were used for writing and singing. Therefore, some "higher intelligence" ("god") must have shaped the development of the brain and larynx so that ultimately the human activities, writing and singing, could develop. This was really a version of the old idea of "natural harmony," orchestrated by some higher being ("god").
There's no need to invoke "god" here. Organs in living beings have all kinds of potential, beyond what they were selected for. In this flexibility, particularly the flexibility of the human brain, lies our hope for the future. The human brain that evolved so that early humans could better dig up roots has the extraordinary capacity to think about dialectical materialism and make communist revolution.
References:
Stephen Jay Gould: "Ever Since Darwin" and "The Panda's Thumb"
Frederick Engels: "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man"
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM? EVERYTHING
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador--"What's wrong with the system?" asks Mauricio Funes. "Why not keep trying it?"
Funes is considered the country's most liberal journalist. He's seen on TV's "Uncensored" and "Interview of the Day."
"Why not keep trying capitalism?" Señor Funes, the working class has been suffering the effects of this system for more than 300 years. It simply doesn't work for workers.
Although many here think Funes is an "impartial critic," the truth is, "All that glitters is not gold"; there are many "wolves dressed in sheep's' clothing."
Funes has never defended the working class and never will. He's serving the ruling class ass one more piece in the scaffolding of capitalist propaganda flooding the working class. Scratch a liberal, find a servant of capitalism.
During the recent labor unrest and crisis in Social Security and other government agencies, Funes has been the system's up-front defender. He assures us there's no room for communism. But then why did the whole capitalist world send its armies into the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1925 to try to destroy the Bolshevik Revolution, fearing its spread to the world's workers? In this, history's first experience with a workers' state, certain mistakes undermined it. errors of less communism, not more, especially continuation of the capitalist wage system. From this gigantic experience, PLP learned that communism--and abolition of the wage system--is the only way out of capitalism.
Funes, claims workers experience democracy and peace daily. He paints lies with the brush-strokes of liberalism, trying to convince workers to cool our anger against the system and resign ourselves to capitalism as "the best that we can get."
We should not be fooled by these servants of the system and fight for a society worthy of human beings. That's communism.
Mauricio Funes is like Salvador Samayoa, Facundo Guardado and Joaquín Villalobos, the last three commanders of the FMLN guerrillas, who are now right wing "political analysts." These traitors to the revolutionary cause, who mis-led hundreds of fighters to their death, are now used by the capitalist press as useful front-men for the system. Their "brilliant" analysis cynically claims fighting back is now "out of style." But for the working class the fight against the hunger and poverty which the system generates will never go "out of style."
Workers need real revolutionary literature, sparking class consciousness, like our newspaper CHALLENGE, the only tool workers can trust. The articles are written by the people who live the oppression of the system, not by those who have never felt our problems. The latter only want to profit from the pain of our class and use it to sell their system.
PLP members must win more workers to read our revolutionary communist press, with the most comprehensive expression of the Party's communist ideas. The bosses' press may provide some useful information and possibly stimulate workers to read between the lies, to distinguish the appearance of things from their essence.
Class struggle continues as long as one oppressed worker exists. There is no peace when a small group of bankers and bosses live fat and happy while millions of workers live in misery and die of poverty. Join PLP.
CHILE ELECTIONS: BOSSSES WIN, WORKERS LOSE
CHILE -- The people have just finished voting for the representative of their exploiters and oppressors.
One group of bosses was represented by "Concertation of Parties for Democracy." A decade ago they ousted General Pinochet from power but continued his free market capitalism under the cover of democracy. In the recent elections their slogan was "growth with equality."
The second group is "Reformed Pinochetists" (conservatives) proud of being the followers of the regime that murdered thousands after the 1973 fascist coup. This group represents are outright free marketeers.
The other three groups represent ecologists, humanists and liberals of very little significance. The sixth group, the so-called "real left," formed by the "Communist" Party (CP) whose program is based on "sustainable growth" led by the state which will be in charge of "centralized economic planning."
There was no decisive winner in the December election, so there will a run-off election between the incumbents and the Pinochetists. Of course, no matter who wins workers will lose because elections are really a contest between different bosses to see which group is going to control state power in order to best serve the interest of their particular section of the ruling class.
The illusions created by opportunists, like the CP, are deadly. Workers in Chile already paid dearly for supporting this illusion in 1970, when socialist Allende was elected with full support of the CP. Three years later, Pinochet with the guidance of Kissinger-Nixon carried out one of the bloodiest coups in Latin America in recent history.
Our local PLP group is using the pamphlet, Voting, the Big Con, put out by our Party during the 1994 elections in the U.S. We updated it to include conditions here in Chile. We are bringing the message to the workers and youth that under capitalism workers can never be free, we will always be wage slaves. Building a mass communist PLP is the only choice we have.
MOVIE REVIEW:
The Cradle Will Rock
What a movie! Workers march through the streets demanding a theater be made available to perform a pro-working class play. The Federal government's Dies Committee--predecessor of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC)--is hunting for communists in the arts. But the play goes on. The workers win!
We should see this movie. One leaves it upbeat and excited. Bring friends and co-workers. Discuss this struggle, for working class art and against the ruling class' attacks.
The movie is based on a true story. During the 1930's Depression, government programs hired unemployed workers to get them off the streets (fearing they might start organizing). One such program was the Federal Theater Project (FTP), which employed actors and crews and brought live theater and new, bold, breakthrough plays to millions of workers who'd never seen a live play before.
One play, The Cradle Will Rock, written by Marc Blitzstein, shows the strength of the working class and the degeneracy of the bosses. The title refers to workers shaking the capitalist tree to make the cradle (capitalism) rock and fall. In this movie about the FTP production, Blitzstein's spiritual mentor is Bertolt Brecht, the German communist poet and playwright.
The movie depicts the struggle against fascism by many workers, even at personal cost. It shows many big U.S. capitalists supporting and building fascism in Europe, actually giving cash to Mussolini's mistress to take back to Italy, primarily to stop communism. We see the struggle over the politics of art. We see workers rallying behind steel workers striking for unionization, while William Randolph Hearst, the fascist newspaper publisher, is telling the steel boss that that he must learn how to give the workers a dollar and take back two.
These different threads tie together: capitalism in crisis, workers unable to find jobs, the ruling class attacks on workers' fightbacks and organization. On opening night Federal troops stood in front of the theatre to prevent the play's production. The right-wing AFL (American Federation of Labor) actors and musicians union orders its members not to perform. However, the play itself is a pro-worker, pro-union play showing a growing, mass CIO (Congress of Industrial Organization).
Yet, in the end, the workers triumph. They march to, and fill, an empty theatre where Blitzstein plans to read all the parts himself on a bare stage. Suddenly the play's actors and actresses rise inexorably, spontaneously out of the audience to play their parts. The crowd goes wild.
The film's strongest character is an actor of Italian background (played by John Turturro). When he discovers that his brother has taught his children the Italian Fascist anthem. Turturro condemns his brother and takes his family from the house. He refuses his mother's offer of support, saying he does not want to teach his children to abandon your principles when you get hungry.
There are many interesting stories within the movie. When FTP head Hallie Flannigan testifies before the Dies Committee, she is asked why she visited "communist Russia." She answers that the Soviet Union has more live theater groups bringing more theater to workers than any other country. Flannigan is a typical left-liberal who, while she supports the arts and the freedom to create, is not anti-capitalist. She lacks a class analysis of the art she is supporting. She's against censorship but does not necessarily believe art should serve working class interests.
There is the ventriloquist, played by Bill Murray, who has turned his back on communist ideas and is figuratively destroyed by the system. That he is conscience-stricken is reflected in the challenge from his "dummy" who winds up singing the working class anthem, "The Internationale" and then collapses.
The struggle over politics and art comes out in the actual story of Diego Rivera's mural in Rockefeller Center. Base on his reputation, Rivera, a famous Mexican communist muralist, is hired by Nelson Rockefeller to paint a mural in the then new Rockefeller Center. When Rockefeller sees the mural, which includes V.I. Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution, he demands Rivera "paint Lenin out." Rivera refuses., so Rockefeller pays Rivera and destroys the mural, (After all he paid for it "so I can do with it what I want." However, as the mural is destroyed one little germ is left on the wall, depicting the germ of change in the future, that they cannot destroy all working class art.
Intertwined with this scene the bosses are shown at a Marie Antoinette costume ball (pre-French revolution) and Hearst, dressed as a cardinal, tells Rockefeller he must spend his money on abstract art, alluding to Rockefeller's erecting and expanding the Museum of Modern Art. This promotion of abstract art crowds out artists depicting socio-political content.
We would criticize some of the characterizations as cartoonish. Some characters are developed, others aren't. Most of the media criticisms stem from political disagreements. The movie says clearly that art has a political point of view, that workers deserve better than they get. It also says no art should be censored, however, as the Turturro character says, all fascist art should indeed be censored. But the role of the Communist Party in organizing the march and raising the money to rent a theater where the play can be performed is never mentioned. In fact, the "Party" is mentioned only when Rivera says he was kicked out for criticizing Stalin and Blitzstein says he can't join because he is homosexual (but still praises the CP's ideas).
Even so, "Cradle Will Rock" tells the workers' side of life with humor, courage and class consciousness. However, if you don't know the history of the FTP play, the movie may seem less forceful. Hopefully moviegoers will seek the truth of this period, view proletarian art and literature and read the play.
LETTERS
THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE IN THE MILITARY: TO BUILD THE PARTY!
I recently completed BCT (Basic Combat Training) in the U.S. Army. The U.S. is trying to build the military in preparation for inevitable wars. Building the Party among soldiers is essential. On the one hand, the military wants solidarity among soldiers. On the other, they want to strengthen dedication to the U.S. But dedication to the U.S. is low in the military, so they use fear to keep soldiers in line. Communist organizers in the military must build solidarity between soldiers and workers to overcome any feelings of fear or nationalism pushed on us.
Three weeks into training, my platoon had just been "smoked" (did pushups, sit-ups, etc. as punishment) in the pit (a pit of dirt and sawdust). When standing in formation, the Drill Sgt. ordered a few soldiers who he continually picked on because of their weight to get in the pit and do sit-ups.
After a minute watching the Drill Sgt. smoke them, I stepped out of formation and started doing sit-ups in the pit with them. A few people immediately followed me. After ten seconds half of the platoon went in, and within a minute everybody was doing sit-ups. We all felt unified. All the Sgt. could do was show his disgust and tell us to leave the pit.
I've tried to build friendships as much as possible. Self-critically, I haven't brought up politics and the Party as much as I could. In a time of increasing fascism we have to be fearless and bold in our organizing wherever we are. The opportunity is there. We must step forward and take leadership. Fight for communism. Power to the workers!
G.I.
MAQUILA WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
On November 22, Rosa, like many other workers was laid off from the Do All Enterprises factory in the San Marcos industrial zone south of San Salvador. Rosa knows the only "wrong" thing she did was to fight for a small improvement in the inhuman conditions at the plant.
The workers here have started an organization to protest the boss's lousy treatment.
"He didn't want us to ever say we were sick, or go to the doctor or clinic [Social Security], much less go to the bathroom," said Rosa, who added they only had 20 minutes to eat. This is not uncommon in the El Salvador maquilla zones.
Friends of PLP and CHALLENGE readers have been encouraging these workers to continue organizing. They must fight intimidation by the bosses, who are desperate to survive their capitalist-created crisis of overproduction.
We have explained to our fellow workers that in a communist system there would be no bosses to oppress the workers. The capitalist profit system would no longer exist. The wage system would be abolished.
The bosses don't care how many workers die in their drive to extract profits from our blood and sweat. The big and small bosses, along with their ideology, must be wiped out. This can be accomplished only by joining an international Party, the PLP. Every worker who joins PLP is one more nail into the heart of our class enemy.
Maquilla workers from El Salvador, Mexico, Los Angeles, India and worldwide ask for CHALLENGE. Read it! Write to us! Organize in the PLP and fight for communism, the only system that will guarantee a better life for all workers.
Comrade from El Salvador
FIGHT AGAINST RACIST TESTING: COMMUNISM 101
The U.S. capitalists are attacking students all across the country. Many states are forcing students to pass special tests in order to graduate high schools. In Massachusetts, the MCAS test has been given for two years, and by the year 2003 it will be mandatory for graduation.
The Gaston Institution for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at University of Massachusetts Boston released the first study that showed MCAS test results by ethnicity and race. "In the 1998 test, Latinos and blacks failed at a rate twice that of whites...83 percent of Latinos and 80 percent of blacks failed the 10th grade math exam. Many fear it will result in a majority of frustrated Latino and black students dropping out of school."(The Boston Globe)
The future for these students is bleak because the bosses will push them into prisons, into minimum-wage jobs or into the army. But their future will be bright, if they organize against the system that is doing this to them.
Bilingual teachers here are organizing against the racist MCAS tests. My friend teaches bilingual students in a Boston elementary school. He says these teachers are angry because they are held accountable , but not given enough books or materials to do their job. The administration is always changing programs and assessment methods, without even giving teachers a chance to learn the new methods with some success with their students.
Last week, some teachers met to discuss this. The collective anger inspired all of them to begin organizing against these attacks on bilingual and working class students. More parents, teachers and students should join them!
PLP says we must demand:
1. No MCAS requirement for graduation. Smash racism.
2. Give teachers the materials they need.
Only communist revolution to overthrow the racist U.S. education system can produce decent education for the working class.
A Reader
REMEMBERING A COMMUNIST FIGHTER
Bernie Seltzer, a member of PLP for the decade before he was stricken with Alzheimer's disease, died on January 8 at the age of 73. Bernie's life symbolized both a commitment to communist principles as well as the frustrations of living under capitalism.
Bernie fought fascism in World War II, and was wounded in France in 1944. It was there that he began to acquire some of the principles he would live by for the rest of his life.
Bernie was always ready for a discussion about anything and everything. He found it difficult to accept the limitations put on us by capitalism, always wanting to raise "one more question" to see if we could go beyond the limits. However, he was not immobilized by these frustrations.
As a biochemist at Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, he won the respect of hundreds of fellow workers. Over 400 of them elected him shop steward because they had confidence he would handle their grievances in the best way possible.
Both of us were in the U.S. Communist Party (CP) when we met in 1955, I had had many discussions with him and his wife, especially after I quit the CP and joined in building the Progressive Labor Movement and later PLP. They read CHALLENGE intensively every week, made regular financial contributions, came to many Party affairs and marched on May Day.
Finally, in 1983, 28 years after I met him, he joined the PLP. Often I had wondered why it took so long for me to recruit him, but as one comrade told me, "Some people take longer than others."
Often he would join us outside Downstate, especially after he retired, selling CHALLENGES and distributing leaflets from the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR). He would always engage in very animated discussions with his co-workers during these distributions.
Bernie was a very generous comrade. His house (and well-stocked refrigerator) was always open to all. He was very close to his two children and two grandchildren, but sadly his relationship with the latter suffered with the onset of his debilitating disease in the early nineties.
Until then he had been a second doctor to his wife who suffered from a myriad of illnesses. Actually, he was more like her primary doctor, always challenging her doctors when he felt they weren't doing right by her. His scientific and medical knowledge and common sense kept them on their toes. They learned early on not to mess with Bernie.
Bernie wound up in a VA facility and then in the VA hospital in the Bronx where he passed away. His daughter told me she was convinced their shoddy care contributed to his death.
Although he is no longer in our midst, what his life represented shall always remain in our minds and hearts. His friends and comrades will miss him but will keep fighting for the communist future he believed in. This is the best testimonial we can honor him with.
A Brooklyn Comrade and Friend of Bernie
BLACK PRIDE FOR AFRICA SELLS WORKERS DOWN RIVER
A current series on public TV in New York City on African roots hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates, a black historian who travels extensively in Africa and fawns over any descendants of African royalty he can find while dwelling on three main points:
* Blacks have roots that prove they were cultured, rich and powerful long before white Europeans came to power.
* Slavery was horrible but would have been impossible to the extent it was if not for black complicity in the slave business. Also black on black racism and class society in Africa has deep roots and continues widely today.
* Many groups of U.S. blacks who returned to Africa because they were fed up with their racist society couldn't wait to get back to the U.S.
The greatest "wonder" to me is how a history professor could do a series on the horrors of African slavery, racism and colonialism without ever mentioning their main cause, the capitalists who finaced and profited from it all while accumulating the vast wealth that would enable them to enslave the whole world.
In order to be well-funded and get on prime time TV the program's content had to serve the interest of the U.S. ruling class so I thought the following might reflect their interest in the professor' s points:
* "Black pride" is necessary to obscure centuries of U.S. racist oppression beause blacks make up an increasingly larger percentage of U.S. imperialism's military;
* Capitalists need to get the issue of slavery off their backs ("blacks were in it up to their elbows") and to rationalize racism today (Africans have a long history of racism);
* The capitalist bosses want to believe that U.S. imperialist society with its racism,wage slavery and endless wars is still the best of all systems.
Professor Gates anguishes endlessly over how much he hates his slave roots and that he doesn't think he can ever forgive the slaveholders. But he has much more in common with slave owners than with the slaves because it as a servant for the capitalist class that he owes his high standard of living, his funding and his ability to do TV series. He realizes that he must sell out the workers and serve the interests of the capitalist system which causes all the misery he discovers. Only communist revolution can end racism and wage slavery because it destoys the reason for their existence, capitalism.
A Comrade
Y2K=BIG BUCKS FOR BOSSES
Well, we are now in the middle of January 2000 and the Y2K hysteria has turned into much ado about nothing. Well, not exactly, for some it meant a lot (billions to be exact).
First, for those not into computerese, Y2K means that when the big computer companies (shortsighted as many capitalists are) first programmed them, they used only the last two digits to identify a year. To save time, space and money, instead of recording "1981" they just programmed "81." When the year 2000 arrived, many computers might confuse 2000 with 1900. It was supposed to be a big problem, particularly for bill collecting, since all the bills could just be wiped out.
It probably wasn't much of a problem for most computer users but the very computer capitalists who created the problem decided they could make big bucks exaggerating it.
The emergency measures and almost $300 billion spent on the "Y2K bug" exceeded money spent on many of the natural disasters which have ravaged the world in the last few years. Instead of being punished for their big mistake, the computer bosses were rewarded with big contracts to "fix it." That's the nature of the capitalist beast.
Anti-Y2K Reader
BOLSHIVIK REVOLUTION
The front page in CHALLENGE (1/12) depicting events in the last century was useful. However, it had the wrong emphasis. The primary events of the 20th century were the Russian and Chinese revolutions and the battle for Stalingrad, not how bad capitalism is. The signal event of the 20th century was the Russian Revolution. It proved that the working class, with its communist vanguard party, could seize power.
It was a body blow to imperialism to lose one-sixth of the earth's surface to the working class. The Russian revolution paved the way for the Chinese revolution. These revolutions left capitalism reeling. For most of the 20th century imperialism was forced to spend its efforts reversing these revolutions. Eventually the capitalists built fascism in Germany and Japan to roll back the tide of revolution, but the German and Japanese fascists double-crossed their pals and tried to gobble up the entire world.
This is where the battle of Stalingrad and World War II connects with counter-revolution and anti-fascism.
After many easy triumphs against their capitalist rivals, the German Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Early Nazi successes made the German bosses seem correct in their claim of invincibility. After a period of bloody triumphs the German war machine drove to Stalingrad. It's capture would have cut the Soviet Union in half. However, the communist iron will of the Soviet workers triumphed over the Nazis. The Red Army surrounded the Germans in Stalingrad and 350,000 Nazis were captured. From then on it was one continuous drive to Berlin by the Soviets. So the 20th century produced another dramatic lesson: only communists can defeat fascism.
Ultimately the Soviet and Chinese communist parties defeated themselves. Winning power was one feat; learning how to hold onto it may be the biggest lesson of the 21st century. The tide of revolutionary history has been slowed by grievous mistakes made by previous communists. But the red tide can never be stopped. As the CHALLENGE article made clear, capitalism can never serve the workers. Only communism can do that.
WW II Vet
a href="#‘AMERICAN CENTURY’">‘A"ERICAN CENTURY’ = HISTORY’S WORST HOLOCAUST: MAKE THIS THE COMMUNIST CENTURY
a href="#SWEENEY’S ‘VICTORY’ SONG">SWEE"EY’S ‘VICTORY’ SONG IN SEATTLE A COVER FOR AFL-CIO’S DANCING TO BOSSES’ TUNE
SF LABOR CONFERENCE = CHANCE TO EXPOSE UNIONS’ PRO-WAR STAND
a href="#PLP ‘PROJECT’ BACKS UNAM">PL" ‘PROJECT’BACKS UNAM STRIKE POINTS WAY TO CLASS VICTORY
a href="#POULTRY WORKER’S MURDER">"OULTRY WORKER’S MURDER: ‘WE’RE NOT ASKING FOR A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BUT A LIFETIME OF STRUGGLE…
NATIONALIZATION—THE SOCIAL CON-TRICK
a href="#SALVADOR PL’ERS">"ALVADOR PL’ERS IN HIGH GEAR ON ROAD TO REVOLUTION
COMRADE HELEN SCHWARTZ: ‘SHE LIVES ON IN THE PARTY THAT SHE HELPED TO BUILD…’
NO CLASS ANALYSIS = PULITZER PRIZE
a href="#U.S., WITH WORLD’S LARGEST">".S., WITH WORLD’S LARGEST PRISON POPULATION, EXPANDING PRISON SLAVE LABOR
LETTER: STANDARDIZED TESTS TRACK YOUTH INTO UNEMPLOYMENT LINES
LIBERAL ON THE OUTSIDE, FASCIST ON THE INSIDE
HOSPITAL WORKERS LOSE AS BOSSES’PRIVATIZE FOR PROFIT
A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF LIFE IN INDIA AND CHINA
BASIC CONTRADICTIONS IN MASS ORGANIZATIONS
TEMP AGENCIES AND SHELTERS ENSLAVE CHICAGO HOMELESS
THE 20TH CENTURY: HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THAT LAST 1OO YEARS?
a name="‘AMERICAN CENTURY’"></"><s" st">'<">AM"RICAN CENTURY’ = HISTORY’S WORST HOLOCAUST: MAKE THIS THE COMMUNIST CENTURY
The New York Times used the millennium hoopla to distort history in "defining the American Century." The chief mouthpiece for the U.S. ruling class hailed a "society based on…political freedom, economic opportunity, individual worth and equal justice," that "guided the world away from totalitarian rule and economic ruin." Compare that crap with real history.
This century began with the U.S. intervention into the Colombian province of Panama, to set up a puppet regime to build the Panama Canal. The canal was built on the dead bodies of thousands of immigrant and native workers. They were worked to death and subjected to widespread disease, untreated by their murderous U.S. oppressors.
At home, racism against black people continued with thousands of lynchings. Jim Crow laws put black workers into chain gangs and a plantation/sharecropper economy that left generations in abject poverty. Millions of immigrants worked 12-hour days in the mines and mills, with barely enough to keep body and soul together. Thousands died in firetrap sweatshops like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. U.S. troops and hired gunmen murdered miners and their families in the Rockefeller-engineered Ludlow Massacre.
In World War I, U.S. bosses, fearing that the spread of communism would endanger their profit system, tried to crush the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution by sending troops into the fledgling Soviet workers’ state until 1925, at the cost of 4.5 million workers’ lives. Communist-led Soviet workers and peasants, and the organization of the international working class, defeated that counter-revolution.
After the War, U.S. rulers launched the Palmer Raids. Thousands of immigrant workers were jailed as "suspected" communists and anarchists. This was capped by the frame-up and execution of two left-wing anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, who symbolized resistance to the rulers’ vicious anti-communist, anti-union drive.
Marines Plundered Central America
The "American Century" invaded virtually every country in Central America and the Caribbean.. Nicaragua faced U.S. Marines on 15 separate occasions. Marine commander General Smedley Butler proclaimed himself "a racketeer for capitalism," making Nicaragua "safe for the National City Bank."
The "Roaring ’20s" saw "prosperity" fueled by the Henry Ford-style sweatshop. Autoworkers could barely crawl up the stairs to their homes after 10 or 12 hours because of the speed of the Ford assembly lines.
Then the capitalist bubble burst into the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Seventeen million workers walked the streets, millions starving, homeless and forced into tarpaper shacks called Hoovervilles, named after Wall Street’s servant in the White House, Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt called out the army and National Guard against communist-led union drives in basic industries. Thousands of workers died from soldiers’ bullets and the effects of mass unemployment.
Meanwhile, the genocidal racist attacks on black workers continued unabated. Scores of imprisoned black workers were murdered when denied treatment for syphilis in the infamous "Tuskeegee experiment."
Soon World War II erupted. The U.S. and the Western alliance helped Hitler build his army, aided by U.S. bankers and industrialists like Ford and GM. They wanted him to move East and destroy the Soviet Union. But the heroism of the Soviet working class and its Red Army—led by its Communist Party—foiled this strategy, holding 80% of the Nazi troops at bay on the Eastern Front. The U.S. and Britain deliberately postponed the invasion of France for two years, hoping Hitler would bleed the Soviets. Leading Western generals admitted, "If Hitler had conquered Russia, untold number of us in England and the U.S. would not be alive today."
U.S. A-Bombs Slaughter 250,000
While President Roosevelt turned his back on saving million of Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust (the "Times" defined it as a "lapse"), he put tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans in U.S. concentration camps for the duration of the war. A culmination of these atrocities came in August 1945. With the Japanese about to surrender, Democratic President Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two blasts slaughtered a quarter million Japanese civilians instantly. Millions more suffered genetic defects and cancers, right to this day. The real reason for dropping the bombs was to threaten the Soviets that they could be next if they didn’t knuckle under to U.S. imperialism in the post-war world.
U.S. rulers re-Nazified Germany while, along with the Vatican, helped thousands of other Nazis to escape to South America. They brought over 400 Nazi rocket scientists to lead the U.S. rocket/missile program. These Nazi "scientists" had literally worked and starved to death tens of thousands of slave laborers in concentration camp experiments developing the V-2 rocket. Not to be out done, the U.S. government conducted experiments on hundreds of thousands of military personnel, human guinea pigs, often without their knowledge or consent. (See History Channel, Jan. 8, 8:00, EST.)
Soon U.S. imperialism was running rampant throughout the world, supporting every anti-communist, fascist regime it could lay its hands on. In 1950 the US provoked the Korean War, invading Korea and killing a million Koreans. In 1953 it overthrew a nationalist government and installed the fascist Shah of Iran, to protect its Middle East oil interests. The U.S. government’s CIA trained the Shah’s Savak secret police, torturing and murdering tens of thousands. In 1954 the US overthrew the left-wing government in Guatemala, installing a puppet regime that murdered 200,000 workers—mostly indigenous peoples—the next four decades.
Atrocity in Vietnam: 3,000,000 Killed
Then came the invasion of Vietnam by a million U.S. troops to prevent the defeat of the fascist South Vietnamese regime. Throughout the Republican and Democratic presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, U.S. rulers rained more bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia than had been used in all of World War II! They killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese before being driven out by a communist-led movement that would not quit.
Meanwhile, anti-racist rebellions exploded in U.S. cities. National Guard and army troops were needed to put down black and Latin workers and youth, many of them Vietnam vets, who rebelled against racist police brutality and mass unemployment.
In 1961 the CIA assassinated Lumumba in the Congo and installed a puppet dictator there, which set up the slaughter of the past 40 years. In 1965, Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic with 32,000 troops to save a pro-U.S. military dictatorship. Then in 1973 the U.S. brought the fascist Pinochet to power in Chile, killing tens of thousands. Bush invaded Panama, sending thousands of civilians into mass graves, to freeze out competing imperialists. At Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas has trained fascist death squads from all over Central and South America. (In the early 1960’s the Second Declaration of Havana accused US imperialism of killing two million people a year in Latin America.)
The CIA brought planeloads of drugs into the U.S. from Central America, in aircraft used to deliver weapons to fascist troops in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Then Reagan’s "War on Drugs" made possession of one gram (1/33 of an ounce) of crack cocaine subject to a 5-year prison term; one-third of an ounce brought ten years, without parole. This swelled the U.S. prison population to two million, the highest in the world. Two-thirds are black and Latin. Including those on probation and parole, 5.5 million are in the criminal "justice" system, with hundreds of thousands forced into prison slave labor.
U.S. bosses under Bush and Clinton killed 500,000 Iraqis during and after the Gulf War. Many more are still dying from the effects of that war. Somalia and Yugoslavia were bombed and invaded to guarantee oil supplies and oil pipelines.
Nike, GAP Spread Sweatshops Worldwide
U.S. corporations exploit tens of millions around the world. The garment sweatshops of New York and Los Angeles have been spread to the Nike and GAP sweatshops in Indonesia, China and Southeast Asia. Millions die each year due to exploitation which causes poverty, disease, mass unemployment, inadequate medical care, death squads, cancer-causing pollution—all for U.S. corporate profits. This is the REAL "American Century," the one the "Times" deliberately "forgets."
But also in this century communist revolution emerged as the qualitatively new force in world history. The Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the Red Armies’ defeats of Hitler, the Japanese fascists and Chiang Kai-shek and the communist-led anti-fascist Resistance movements of Europe and Asia built an international communist movement that Challenged the 400-year-old capitalist world order. Although temporarily set back mainly by its own internal weaknesses, and also by attacks from world imperialism, communism is still, in Marx’s words, "the specter haunting world capitalism."
The one constant throughout this century-long profit-making orgy of capitalism has been the unceasing fight-back by the world’s exploited working classes. In the U.S. there has been continuous working-class struggle, including rebellions led by black workers, as well as mass anti-imperialist war movements. On a world scale there has been the heroism of the Soviet and Chinese Red Armies, rebellions throughout Latin-America and Asia and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa
The second half of the century saw the emergence of the Progressive Labor Party, initially in the U.S. and now in many countries in Latin-America and many friends organizing in Europe and Asia. We stand on the shoulders of the past giants of Marxism-Leninism, and are building a new international communist movement.
U.S. bosses rant about "the next American century." It is up to our class, led by the PLP, to smash their plans for a "1,000-year reign," just as the Red Army did to their Nazi predecessors in World War II. It is up to us to make the 21st century the century of the working class, the Red Century of communist revolution, especially here in the U.S., the belly of the monster. "Workers of the world, Unite!" is our clarion call. "We have nothing to lose but our capitalist chains! We have a world to win!"
a name="SWEENEY’S ‘VICTORY’ SONG"></a>"WEENEY’S ‘VICTORY’ SONG IN SEATTLE A COVER FOR AFL-CIO’S DANCING TO BOSSES’ TUNE
The latest Aero Mechanic, newspaper of Boeing’s largest union, distributed to 30,000-40,000 employed and retired Boeing workers, devoted most of its pages to celebrating the anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) demonstrations in Seattle. The Aero Mechanic declared the protest events "a marked victory, indeed!"
"The week produced a stunning breakthrough in the public debate over globalization and heightened public awareness of our issues," bragged this mouthpiece of the union hacks. "In taking to the streets, we gained a very important political ally…President Clinton."
It will do us no good to sugarcoat this point; there was no victory for the working class at the Battle in Seattle. The demonstrators did not cause the collapse of the talks in Seattle; the increasing tension between imperialist blocs did.
In fact, the world is a more dangerous place after these talks. This period carries undeniable similarities to the build-ups to World Wars I and II. "It is a phenomenon that the world has seen several times before. It is, over the course of a generation, a very scary phenomenon. Tensions among, and within blocs grow, beginning as economic tensions, and then turning into political tensions." (Stratfor, Inc., 11/29/99) Bromides about the "Victory in Seattle" will not help us destroy this murderous system, which was pushed further along the path to war and fascism by the events at the WTO meeting.
What then does AFL-CIO John Sweeney have in mind when he hailed the "victory" in Seattle? He is talking about democracy and defending human and labor rights abroad as a cover for building a movement to support U.S. imperialism worldwide. While he barely discusses labor abuses here in the U.S., he focuses his fire on other countries to paint U.S. capitalism as the savior of the world. The AFL-CIO has marched to the beat of U.S. imperialism for almost 50 years. This latest incarnation is nothing more than the same old wreck of a car with a new coat of paint.
Building this reactionary movement under a "progressive" cover is a tricky business. This is not the 1930’s when Hitler had millions of German workers goose-stepping to the Nazi beat. At this point the AFL-CIO misleaders do not have the thousands of committed cadre needed to organize the type of political movement that compares to Hitler’s. As our experiences showed during the Battle in Seattle, many workers were open to our communist analysis of events—if we don’t hold back!
The AFL-CIO, along with allies like Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, hopes to turn the Battle in Seattle into a campaign to attack the Chinese. They falsely label the Chinese capitalists "communists" to be able to spread anti-communism. Our warnings that this campaign is an attempt to win workers to support the imperialist aims of U.S. bosses against their imperialist competitors has met sympathetic ears among the rank and file in the unions and other groups. We can make qualitative gains if we fight like hell within these groups. Then, we can talk about some real victories!
SF LABOR CONFERENCE = CHANCE TO EXPOSE UNIONS’ PRO-WAR STAND
SAN FRANCISCO, CA., Jan. 3—This city’s AFL-CIO Central Labor Council is organizing an "Open World Conference on Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights." It will be held here from February 11-14, and is endorsed by the Labor Party and supported by Global Exchange. Already some 200 delegates from other countries, including mainland China, are committed to join 100-200 from the U.S.
This Conference is billed as a follow-up to the "victory" in Seattle. The ILWU, (West Coast Longshoremen) and the Teamsters have endorsed it. (The ILWU organized strikes against the WTO on the day of the AFL-CIO demonstration in Seattle.) The conference supports the protectionist demands of the Steelworkers’ union against "dumping" foreign steel.
PLP encourages workers to attend this Conference to put forward a fighting program against fascist conditions and imperialist war. We’ll fight against plans to turn the conference into a celebration of the AFL-CIO’s hypocritical campaign for "human rights" and the building of "independent" (pro-US imperialist) unions. The AFL-CIO leadership has a long, dirty history of supporting U.S. imperialist wars (helping the CIA to foment them), including the bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia. The conference leaders are planning sessions to attack China’s admission into the WTO, to use China-bashing to get workers to support U.S. imperialism.
Revolutionaries in PLP must raise our communist politics at this Conference to win delegates fighting prison labor in China to link that to the even larger issue of fighting prison labor and Workfare right here in the U.S. Our experiences in the recent past, both in Seattle and in many mass organizations, demonstrate that hundreds, even thousands, of workers and others are very receptive to the Party’s ideas. Many are wide open to them.
"We are in a death struggle against NAFTA and against the ‘corporate free trade’ agenda," says Jack Henning, Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus of the California branch of the AFL-CIO, and a convener of the Conference.
Sure, workers are in a life-and-death struggle all right. But NAFTA is just one of the symptoms, not the cause. The source of the attacks on unions and workers’ conditions worldwide is capitalism. The crisis of capitalism is leading to sharpening rivalry among the imperialists, and towards war. The AFL-CIO leaders have tried to cover up the fascist increase in prison labor in the U.S. and the spread of slave labor Workfare in their attempt to win U.S. workers to support a fascist pro-U.S. imperialist war movement.
Boeing is about to lay off thousands of workers while it turns to sub-contractors and prison labor to produce airplanes. More than 150,000 garment workers in Los Angeles face sweatshop conditions without a peep from the AFL-CIO. In transit systems across the U.S., Workfare and/or prison labor are being used to clean subways and buses. PLP urges angry workers to attend this Conference to raise the need to fight these fascist conditions and to expose the phony "internationalism" of the AFL-CIO as a cover for the U.S. bosses’ plans for fascism and war. Workers should follow up the fight at this Conference by joining PLP and marching on May Day, to fight for true internationalism and communist revolution.
End production for profit and produce for the needs of the international working class!
a name="PLP ‘PROJECT’ BACKS UNAM"></">PL" ‘PROJECT’ BACKS UNAM STRIKE POINTS WAY TO CLASS VICTORY
MEXICO CITY ¾ During the Thanksgiving weekend Progressive Labor Party members participated in a mini-project here to support the strike at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). During the extended weekend we distributed a communist flyer in a university that has shown some solidarity with the UNAM strikers. The flyer’s main point was that only communist revolution could alter the educational system in favor of the working class; that the class nature of the current UNAM bureaucracy was a reflection of the needs of the worldwide capitalist system. The flyer was warmly received by thousands of students on their lunch break.
Several high school strikers participated in building support for their strike. We had a Political Economy study group with them there. We began the next day with another study group. It was pointed out that the ideas in the Party’s pamphlet should be used as a guide to lead our struggle and to be better able to analyze the forces involved in the UNAM strike. The students said the university’s main role was to indoctrinate the working class and prepare it ideologically to serve the bosses. They were also aware that the bosses’ economic crisis is fomenting the attacks they’re suffering. They said their strongest support has come from the most oppressed masses of workers. The latter’s sons and daughters can hardly attend the university now and will be even more restricted if the tuition increase takes effect.
The UNAM struggle is teaching our Party many profound lessons: (1) We must be involved in the mass movement and struggle with our friends there to join the Party; (2) it is possible to participate in these sharp struggles and at the same time build the Party and spread revolutionary communist ideas; (3) to respect the profound nature of the masses’ knowledge once they are in struggle; and, (4) rely on the masses to help us lead this struggle and figure out the best way to participate in it.
The crisis changes the nature of political struggle. Examples include UNAM, the World Trade Organization and the Decatur, IL. 7 (suspended black students). It directly Challenges us to lead in a more mass way, to immerse ourselves in these struggles and learn to lead. One very dangerous pitfall is the reformist misleadership. We must present communism as the only alternative. We need a deep understanding of our friends’ reformist ideas so we can win them to revolutionary communism and the Progressive Labor Party.
As one worker said at a meeting with students, this strike is a golden opportunity to extend our Party and expand its influence. He is absolutely right! At a march of thousands of students demanding the start of talks with the new rector of the university we were able to distribute hundreds of leaflets pointing out the need for revolution. This is a small step toward the eventual victory of our class. We have become leaders in this movement and earned the respect of many militant fighters. This bodes well for our Party and our continuing efforts amongst students.
a name="POULTRY WORKER’S MURDER">">"OULTRY WORKER’S MURDER: ‘WE’RE NOT ASKING FOR A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BUT A LIFETIME OF STRUGGLE…
LOS ANGELES, CA, Dec. 13 — "Don’t stop the line. Keep working!" shouted one of the supervisors when several workers ran to see what happened with a fellow worker who had fallen off a flight of stairs, dying instantly. The workers were very angry and sad about the death of Armando. The Woodland Farms bosses tried to blame the worker, saying, "he didn’t even try to get up." The next day workers wore buttons with a big red fist that proclaimed, "We come to work—not to die!" They all wore black in memory of their fellow worker who died and collected money for funeral costs to take with their condolences to the family.
The anger and unity of the workers frightened the company and its supervisors. The bosses began a campaign to intimidate the witnesses who saw the "accident." They have hidden the stairs from which the worker fell and have tried to erase all memory of the dead worker. But what they can’t hide are the inhuman conditions under which these workers are forced to work. The pressure and speed of the line, racist insults, starvation wages and unhealthy and dangerous conditions make the processing plant an intolerably hard place to work.
This death is one more added to the long list caused by the bosses’ system which, in their drive for profits, kills workers in their factories, in their wars, at their borders and in the neighborhoods where racist cops terrorize the youth. The murder of this worker shows us once again the hypocrisy of Clinton’s government, along with his lackeys in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, who say the U.S. respects "human rights." What rights? The right to exploit and kill? The workers in this factory are constantly getting sick due to the terrible working conditions and lack of proper safety equipment. But OSHA (US Govt. Occupation Safety and Health Agency), in charge of supervising safety conditions, has given its approval to Woodland Farms!
Armando was a CHALLENGE reader. Every week he read his paper and came in the next day with questions and examples showing he identified with the whole working class. The bosses and their rotten, racist profit system killed one more working-class fighter. But his death will not be in vain. Many more workers have been politicized with CHALLENGE’S communist ideas. Many more see the need to organize and fight against all the bosses.
We will keep fighting for a communist society where the most important thing will be workers’ lives, where there will be no wealth made from workers’ blood; where workers won’t be forced to risk death to cross borders to survive, because we will abolish all capitalist borders. We will build a communist society where workers share whatever we produce, in scarcity and abundance.
Let the death of our friend Armando inspire us to fight for a society without bosses. We’re not asking for a moment of silence, but for a lifetime of struggle.
NATIONALIZATION—THE SOCIAL CON-TRICK
Dear CHALLENGE:
I see from some recent articles there are a lot of people who still think social democrats are kindlier, gentler capitalists and that, in particular, workers are better off working for nationalized companies. From my own experience, I can tell you all this is very wrong.
I lived for a while in the UK (England). I arrived in 1974, soon after the first big miners’ strike which smashed the Conservative government’s wage-freeze. For a short while there were big pay raises for almost all unionized workers. The bosses were set back somewhat and there was very little unemployment. But the situation didn't last. The social democratic Labour party took over the government later that year. Many workers thought this was yet another victory. However, the social democrats immediately began to undo everything won in the miner's strike—and a lot more.
It took a while but Labour had the advantage of being able to talk about "our" government, "our" problems with the economy, and the need for "us" to make sacrifices. Otherwise, they said, the meaner, leaner Conservatives would return, and destroy (through privatization) everything Labour had worked for. (The post-war Labour government had nationalized all the main industries in the late 1940’s.) The Labour politicians and the big union leaders (basically the same people) proposed the "Social Contract," which meant pay freezes and an end to strikes. On the whole, union members went along with it. The firefighters, for example, didn't, and Labour crushed their long strike by bringing in the army. Once the Social Contract was established, Labour moved on to the second phase, downsizing (of course they didn't use that word) the main industries (all government-owned). Workers were told this was in the national interest and that it was the only way to save these industries from going bust or (gasp) being privatized. Those who voluntarily abandoned their jobs were given a few thousand pounds of "redundancy payments" and sent to useless retraining schemes. As a result hundreds of thousands of industrial workers (in British Coal, British Steel, British Leyland, etc.) became unemployed, many never to work again. Whole areas, especially in the North, were economically devastated (and still are today).
And all this didn't even prevent privatization. Eventually, Labour was ousted. The clique of capitalists who had made it big through nationalization was replaced by the more traditional clique (centered around Barclays bank). This clique appropriated what was left of their rival’s property (through nationalization) and were able to defeat (in the second miners’ strike) the resistance of a much-weakened union movement.
Reader in Canada
a name="SALVADOR PL’ERS">">"ALVADOR PL’ERS IN HIGH GEAR ON ROAD TO REVOLUTION
MORAZAN, EL SALVADOR—"You have to be more careful when you talk about the Party’s ideas with the youth. We could turn them off. That happened to us when we started to organize people for the Front [FMLN guerrillas] in the 1970’s," said Robert. A young friend answered, "Don’t worry about us. We’re clear about the Party’s ideas. There’s no way that talking about them will scare us. On the contrary, you motivate us to keep learning." Another youth added, "We’ve already been reading CHALLENGE and we like the way the Party focuses its points, for example, predicting another inter-imperialist war."
This day in mid-December we gathered in the immense mountains of Morazan. It was very gratifying. The weather was very cold, but the warmth of our camaraderie gave a festive atmosphere to this communist get together. We ate a delicious bar-b-que meal, while comrades told stories about what had happened in these same mountains during the war.
There was time to be critical and self-critical about the scarce ideological training occurring during that conflict. We vowed that this will not happen in the future as we fight for communism. PLP members cannot fall into the FMLN trap of fighting to reform capitalism. Instead we will fight for every member of the Party and the working class to know the basic communist ideas of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
Our agenda began with the world situation, then the political situation in El Salvador, and the development of CHALLENGE. We read and analyzed the CHALLENGE editorial. We had a profound discussion about the inter-imperialist rivalries, and the ways that the capitalists fight for profits. We understood this means there will be a third world war, and we communists have to prepare the working class, starting now, to fight to take power, for the dictatorship of the working class.
We reviewed the coming elections in El Salvador. We discussed the recent television interview with Mayor Hector Silva of San Salvador in which he emphasized belief in a free market economy to solve workers’ problems. If the FMLN leadership believes blindly in this capitalist idea, it can never offer the working class a real alternative, communism, to change the economic system.
Four comrades joined the party at this gathering, filling us with pride. Other comrades whose responsibilities with electoral parties conflicted with our meeting put those tasks in second place. "The elections won’t resolve the workers’ problems," these comrades said. "The primary thing is to study the communist ideas of the Party. That’s why we’re here. In the FMLN, they only think about elections, not about ideology, which is fundamental."
PLP is advancing. Our communist literature, including CHALLENGE, is reaching places that previously appeared unreachable. But today we are taking steps to be able to win many more workers to the fight for communism during the new millennium.
COMRADE HELEN SCHWARTZ: ‘SHE LIVES ON IN THE PARTY THAT SHE HELPED TO BUILD…’
Helen and I met each other at a Marxist training school some 51 years ago. Our immediate affection for each other was reinforced by several dates through which we began to get to know each other better. Shortly thereafter we decided to marry.
We were both communists when we met and have remained so ever since, committed to creating a world in which profits play no role, in which the motive force for society is producing what people need, and in which the factories and fields belong to those who labor in and on them. A world free of racism and of all oppression of one human being by any other.
Helen was stricken with breast cancer in 1976 and carried on an almost unbelievably valiant struggle against it for 23 years. Even though she lost her final struggle against this disease, she won for herself and her family 23 good years during which four of her grandchildren were born so that she was able to enjoy them and they her. Unfortunately, she did not live to see the birth of her newest grandchild, due in July. During these years she also continued to lead our Party’s work in Connecticut in spite of her infirmities. She set an example of commitment from which we should all learn. She touched and changed many people’s lives. Her dedication to the struggle for communism and against racism is an inspiration to me and many others. She will be sorely missed by both her family and many friends.
We were married for over 50 years. During those years she was always my best friend and sharpest critic at the same time. I have loved her throughout and learnt much from her kind, caring and courageous example of how to live. I miss her terribly. Her loss leaves a great hole in my life. But in spite of this I intend to carry on the struggle as she would have wished me to.
NO CLASS ANALYSIS = PULITZER PRIZE
Book review: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond.
Diamond’s book covers tens of thousands of years of human history. It is an anti-racist answer to questions like why Europeans sailed across the oceans and conquered Native American and African societies, rather than the other way around. Using evidence from many branches of science—including archeology, geology, linguistics, and genetics—he proves that it was not due to supposed differences in innate abilities or biology, which he shows did not (and still do not) exist.
Diamond’s history begins with the origins of humanity in Africa and traces the migration to the rest of the world over tens of thousands of years. Around 40,000 B.C. people built boats and populated the South Pacific islands. Meanwhile, other people spread out over the Eurasian continent. Around 11,000 B.C., people migrated to North America and reached South America thousands of years later.
Diamond describes the various social organizations—bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states, increasingly larger and more tightly-governed forms. Bands were small mobile groups of related individuals, who hunted and gathered plants for food. Tribes were large enough so that not everyone knew everyone else. These larger groups became possible only through plant and animal domestication—agriculture and herding. As population size and density grew, tribes became chiefdoms and chiefdoms became states.
Agriculture requires the availability of plants that provide sufficient nourishment. Such plants only existed in a few places. The only peoples who did not develop agriculture were those without available domesticable plants. The same was true of animal domestication and breeding. These allowed societies to become sedentary (non-nomadic) and, in turn, larger and denser. Infectious diseases then spread from animals to people. Those who didn’t die from these diseases developed immunities. These germs later accounted for at least as many deaths of conquered peoples as guns and other metal weapons.
Technological inventions took place in many societies at many times, but only took hold in societies that could use them. While Europe was slower than Asia to develop states and technology, its eventual advance in this millenium was in part due to the predominantly east-west orientation of the Eurasian land mass. This allowed agriculture and technology to spread from the Fertile Crescent (today’s Middle East) to other peoples in Europe, Asia and North Africa, without its having to cross different temperature zones.
In contrast, Africa and the Americas are predominantly north-south oriented and cross equatorial deserts, which acted as barriers to the spread of agriculture and animal breeding until domesticable plants and animals were brought in by ship. Thus the differences were not due to innate qualities of the people, but to external circumstances of geography and domesticable plant and animal availability.
Diamond places the origins of organized religion in chiefdoms and states, in which the rulers required priests to justify their right to rule and enslave the masses. The priests pacified the masses. While Diamond doesn’t say so, this continues to the present time.
Filled with scientific falsehoods
The major areas of falsehood in Diamond’s otherwise useful summary of human history include, first, his failure to even mention social classes and how they arose once populations were large enough, and food production efficient enough, to free an increasing portion of the population from agricultural labor. Second, he fails to even ask what it was about the social order that determined when technological advances were needed.
Third, while Diamond asks why Europeans, but not Chinese, sailed abroad to conquer peoples all over the world, he explains the difference in terms of the unity of the vast Chinese land mass under one ruler, in contrast to Europe which had many competing societies, each with its own ruler. But he never asks what gave rise to the competition. Furthermore he never mentions that the conquerors were not Europeans as such, but rather European rulers, who enslaved the laboring classes of Europe no less than those of other geographical areas, though sometimes with alternative forms of slavery—wage slavery and serfdom, rather than chattel slavery. Nor does he mention that the conquered societies in the Western Hemisphere and in Africa were themselves class-divided. The rulers in these areas were either more easily conquered because of these divisions (e.g., Aztecs and Incas) or were willing to cooperate by selling their own working classes as slaves (as in Africa).
Competition is inherent in a profit-based, class-divided form of society, capitalism, which requires that profits be maximized to stay in business ahead of other profit-makers. This in turn gives rise to the outward expansion of capitalist ruling classes, and continues today in the form of inter-imperialist rivalry among all the capitalist rulers in the world. However, Diamond completely avoids discussing modern-day imperialism.
Worst of all is Diamond’s assumption that people naturally try to kill strangers unless prevented by external forces. He says that in large societies where most people don’t know each other, the state and religion were the only things that stood in the way of mayhem. This assumption about human beings smacks of the fascist explanations for modern war provided by sociobiologists and other biological determinists. And he ignores the fact that in the modern world, it is the state itself, as the main prop of profit-based capitalism and imperialism, which commits mayhem against working class people all over the world.
Diamond’s complete failure to criticize capitalism and imperialism is one reason why the book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize by the capitalists. But the book is also very useful to the working class in filling some of the gaps in pre-capitalist history.
"BUY AND SELL"
(to the tune of "Silver Bells")
Buy and sell, buy and sell,
Avarice thrives in the city.
Jobless? Well, what the hell!
Isn't free enterprise grand!
Inside trading, corporate raiding:
That's the way they get rich.
In the air, there's the stink of big business.
There's strip mining, bank red-lining,
And the old bait-and-switch,
And in every posh board-room you hear...
Arbitrage, slick tax dodge,
Avarice thrives in the city.
Poverty? C'est la vie!
Isn't free enterprise grand!
Toxic land fill, massive oil spill
Make the profits increase.
In the air, there's the reek of pollution.
When there's sludges, buy the judges,
Legislators, and police.
And in every plush penthouse you hear...
Real estate, speculate,
Avarice thrives in the city.
Rising rents? Move to tents!
Isn't free enterprise grand!
Leveraged buy out, workers cry out
As their unions get smashed.
In the air, there's the stench of reaction.
Oh the slum folk are just plumb broke,
And their hopes are all dashed,
But there's now growing voices we hear...
Organize, rainbow ties!
We all still need social justice!
They globalize, we mobilize!
There is a world to be won!
a name="U.S., WITH WORLD’S LARGEST">">".S., WITH WORLD’S LARGEST PRISON POPULATION, EXPANDING PRISON SLAVE LABOR
In previous CHALLENGES, we have erroneously estimated that there are about 500,000 inmates working in prison labor in the U.S.
Latest figures show that there are nearly two million prisoners in the U.S., 800,000 more than ten years ago. The U.S., with less than 5% of the world population, has 25% of the world’s prisoners. This, according to the London Financial Times, is a huge and relatively "untapped vein of young, able-bodied workers who can do more than hammer out license plates or trawl highways for rubbish."
There are now about 3,300 inmates in state prison systems who work for private firms, like Dell Computers, Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, Victoria’s Secret, Josten’s Caps and Gowns, and many others. Most work for smaller companies who do sporadic subcontract work for the larger companies mentioned. This is a rapidly expanding sector of the economy. The Prison Industry Enhancement program, as it is called, aims to have 10,000 prisoners working for private firms by 2005.
There are also 25,000 prisoners in federal prisons working for UNICOR, the federal prison labor agency, producing over 150 products, including 100% of all Army helmets, ammunition cases, body armor, ID tags, tarps, shirts and pants; 18% of the country’s electrical hardware; 61% of household utility contairners; 36% of household furnishings; 30% of headset/microphone speakers, all of which used to be made by workers in private industry. In 1994, 76,000 prisoners in state prisons produced $900 million worth of goods.
Private prisons are also increasing, run by such companies as Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America. Because they are strictly in business to make money, they are in the forefront in using convict labor. The circuit boards for Dell computers are made in one such private prison in Lockhardt, Texas. Another $22 million prison is about to be built in Texas, devoted entirely to employing inmates in private enterprise.
While the union bosses squeal about prison labor in China, prison labor in the U.S. is growing by leaps and bounds. As the U.S. moves to consolidate fascism in preparation for war, the U.S. bosses will increasingly ape their Nazi mentors in the use of prison labor. "Made in the U.S.A." will mean made by our brother and sisters caught in a racist "injustice" system.
LA Comrade
LETTER: STANDARDIZED TESTS TRACK YOUTH INTO UNEMPLOYMENT LINES
I am sending a letter written by a 13-year-old student of mine at a residential school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She and several other students were inspired by our political discussions in class, especially around the recent fight against the Klan in New York (I showed the news footage of that in class). Her letter concerns the MCAS tests, statewide standardized assessments being given to 4th, 8th and 10th graders. These tests have received widespread criticism. Some Party members are getting involved with one of the groups trying to organize a boycott of the tests. Soon the MCAS will be a requirement for graduation from high school, even though a large percentage of students have been failing. I believe there are currently 40 states using similar tests. Her letter follows:
We, as students of the Northeastern Family Institute school in Dorchester, strongly oppose the MCAS tests. Why do students who work hard all year have to stay back just because of a test? All kids have strengths and weaknesses, and these tests don’t show a child’s full potential. The same courses in different schools are taught at different levels, so how can you give all students the same test? This is a test that does not help, it just wants you to fail, and makes kids stay back in school.
The MCAS are not fair to people who can’t speak English or who just got to America [all bilingual, as well as special education students, must take this test]. These tests are also racist, because black and Latin working class students go to schools where they do not get the best education, and the schools don’t have enough money to buy supplies. The MCAS tests will only add to a hostile atmosphere and will punish these groups for their shortcomings.
Why would the government want students to fail? The government wants this test because there are not enough jobs in the working world today. It is a way of keeping kids from getting jobs. My point is that these politicians are just pathetic, ignorant assholes. We students will refuse to take and will protest against these tests.
Boston PLP’er
LIBERAL ON THE OUTSIDE, FASCIST ON THE INSIDE
CHALLENGE
has long and often held that the deadliest forms of fascism come from liberal leaders who pose as friends of the working class but actually serve the biggest capitalists. The sordid career of Elliot Richardson, who died on New Year’s Eve, bears this out. The establishment media have made Richardson a hero because, as Attorney General, he helped bring down Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
Nixon’s real crimes lay in his inflationary economic policies that were enriching upstart capitalists at the expense of the big bankers. Earlier, however, Richardson as Nixon’s Defense Secretary played a major role in the slaughter of three million Vietnamese workers and 55,000 mainly working-class GI’s. Richardson felt no need then to oppose Nixon, because the Vietnam War was a creation of the ruling elite’s main wing. When Richardson left the government, the Rockefeller family rewarded him with a cushy job at its main law firm, Milbank Tweed.
In the late 1950’s, Richardson killed two birds with one stone on behalf of the Eastern Establishment in which he was a full-fledged member. He prosecuted Bernard Goldfine, a textile boss charged with buying influence in the Eisenhower White House. Richardson was limiting the clout of smaller bosses and insuring the reign of anti-Semitism. Richardson showed his true colors early. In 1939, he led scores of his Harvard classmates in a brown shirt parade, complete with fascist songs and salutes, goose-stepping through Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was supposed to be a college prank, but Hitler and Mussolini’s savagery was anything but a laughing matter.
We must continue to expose and attack Nazis who masquerade as liberals.
A Regular Reader
HOSPITAL WORKERS LOSE AS BOSSES’PRIVATIZE FOR PROFIT
The Administration of Daniel Freeman Catholic Hospital in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, announced to the housekeeping staff that as of January 1, 2000 a private company will take over their department. The workers’ jobs will end in February. They can apply to work for the new company. Those selected will continue working at the hospital.
Hospital management says the workers will keep their present salaries and seniority. They say the new company has benefits but they are not sure how this will work.
The workers suspect they will lose benefits, and think the hospital may be lying about salaries and seniority. After all, the hospital is making this change to save money, and the new company is coming in to make a profit, so where will the profit come from? There is only one place…from the workers.
Maybe the company will lay off some workers and speed up others. Or lay off workers with seniority and bring in other workers at a lower rate of pay. One way or another, they have to push the workers down if the hospital is to save money and the company is to make a profit.
The housekeeping and all workers should get together now and organize a counterattack, before it’s too late. Even more important, they should join PLP to get rid of the system which says that their must work for lousy wages in lousy conditions either for the hospital or for the private company.
LA Hospital Worker
A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF LIFE IN INDIA AND CHINA
"Welcome to the Taj Mahal, the Crown Palace of Agra. In 1631 the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan had the Taj constructed by a force of 20,000 workers, working around the clock for 22 years!" This was the greeting my wife and I recieved upon arriving at the Taj Mahal in India recently.
"Welcome to Varanassi,(Benares); 140,000 Hindu pilgrims come to bathe in the Ganges, the holiest of rivers, every day!" Thousands in dire poverty and the most filthy conditions in the name of religion! This is a small example of life under capitalism in India today!
In 1990, I observed a glimpse of what life under communist equality could be. Some of the accomplishments after the communist revolution in China were truly inspiring!
We visited a commune (a collective farm) near Shanghai, where 60,000 people worked together to provide for all their needs. You got the feeling people really cared and were in this together!
We in PLP are aware that serious mistakes in China, compromises on leadership, wages, nationalism and socialism were made which led back to capitalism.
But we cannot take away from the tremendous accomplishments of people like "the Barefoot Doctors," who transformed the health of China in a few short years!
Ours is but to learn from the lessons of the past which wll lead to a better future for all of humanity, based on communist equality!
Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.
Bay Area Comrade
BASIC CONTRADICTIONS IN MASS ORGANIZATIONS
I was very excited about the anti-WTO protests in Seattle last November because they show that many workers and students are protesting exploitation and oppression, and therefore are very open to PLP’s view of ending ALL exploitation and oppression by smashing capitalism with communist revolution.
The masses are on the move! They could move either towards fascism or towards communism. Which direction depends a lot on what we in PLP do next.
PLP did a great job during the WTO meeting but it was still not nearly good enough. Most of us in PLP did not take the growing anti-WTO movement seriously. Not enough people were won to going to Seattle. Not enough are in mass organizations raising revolutionary communist ideas and leading the class struggle. If we were, many more of us would have naturally gone to Seattle to raise our revolutionary communist perspective inside the unions, environmental groups, student groups and other non-governmental organizations.
This growing anti-globalization movement is complicated and full of contradictions. Students want to stop prison labor or sweatshop labor throughout the world but groups such as Global Exchange who are backed and funded by major capitalists like Levi Strauss direct this anger against exploitation into attacking U.S. imperialist rivals like China. Clinton, Sweeney and the liberal fascist bosses wanted controlled, peaceful, non-disruptive demonstrations to put pressure on U.S. rivals.
But, many workers and students are really pissed off about what is happening to them and their fellow workers. They are angered by the extreme exploitation and oppression they see in the world, even as they are influenced by the pro-U.S. nationalism being pushed by the bosses. However, while Becker (steel union leader) pushed anti-foreign, pro-U.S. rhetoric (calling for the dumping of Russian and Japanese steel while chanting, "USA, USA", I did not hear of any steel workers or others in Seattle attacking Asians or Russians as the enemy. More mass fascism could come but it’s not here yet. Only if more PLP members vigorously raise our anti-nationalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-communist line in mass organizations will that day never come. Developing fascism is an inevitable feature of capitalism in crisis but the mass support of workers and students for fascism is not.
I think some in PLP become frustrated by the complicated, faced in capitalist mass organization. Some view this activity with little enthusiasm because it is full of contradictions including confronting nationalist and fascist ideas. We easily say yes we should be involved in these mass groups but basically we should expect little from them because we already have a mass fascist movement with few open to communist ideas (i.e., it is too late, workers are all basically goose-stepping behind the bosses). Thus, we take a limited view of mass work. We see it as some kind of forced effort with little political reward. But, we should not just work in this growing movement, we should be fighting to win the hearts and minds of the workers and students in this movement (the bosses sure are). We believe workers and youth will see that communism is the only solution to capitalism and all its horrors. Imagine if workers and youth shut down the WTO with PLP in the lead or at least with large sections of that movement being led by or influenced by PLP members. We are not going to suddenly have revolution with everyone joining PLP all at once. We are going to have many, many messy, contradictory situations were workers are going to be won to both nationalist, fascist ideas and communist ideas. Some workers will attack us and many others will join us along the way.
The Seattle mayor and cops did not attack the anti-WTO protesters from a position of strength but from a position of weakness. The bosses are terrified by masses of workers who are not in their control. Many workers and youth got a lesson of what state power and growing fascism mean (something many black and Latin workers experience all the time). What happened last week embarrassed US imperialism and further revealed its weakness. We all need to make the fight for international working class unity and the need for communism central to the anti-WTO/anti-globalization movement.
Boston Comrade
TEMP AGENCIES AND SHELTERS ENSLAVE CHICAGO HOMELESS
At a recent meeting of the American Public Health Association, a group of homeless people in Chicago Public housing is being destroyed an entire block at a time so the number of homeless is soaring. The weather is so cold they are forced into shelters. Each morning the shelter flushes occupants out into the street, where they file into temp agencies like Manpower, located next door to the shelter. From there, they are loaded onto trucks and sent all over Chicago to become day laborers. They are then trucked back to the temp agencies, which take a big cut of their pay. The shelters then take another cut. The homeless are left with a little bit of money, but never enough to escape their situation. Once you fall into this trap, it’s almost impossible to get out.
What struck me is that this is a form of slave labor that doesn’t depend on ownership of people, like chattel slavery of the old South; nor does it depend on the welfare system, like Workfare slavery; nor does it depend on the penal system, like prison industry slavery. This slavery is based solely on the wage system that we all work under, homeless or not. Slavery was supposed to be ended by the Civil War, but it will only truly be ended with the war to uproot capitalism.
West Coast Comrade
THE 20TH CENTURY
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THAT LAST 1OO YEARS?
The 20th century is now history. How well do you know it? (Answers follow.)
Globalization is now in vogue, particularly after the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) end-of-millennium bash in Seattle. Who defined it as imperialism and analyzed it some 90 years ago? (This revolutionary argued against political theoreticians of his time who predicted the imperialists would settle their differences because they had "too much to lose" if they fought each other.
Which was the most important event of the century for the international working class? (The person in the answer to question #1 led it.)
Who wrote one of the most important books about the event mentioned in question #2? What is the name of the book? (Warren Beatty didn’t do him justice in the movie "Reds.") He also wrote about the nationalist revolution in Mexico in 1912 and later became a leader of the U.S. Communist movement.
What was the key battle of World War II which led to the eventual defeat of the most powerful and murderous war machine of its time: the Nazi Wehrmacht? (The battle took place in the winter of 1942-43. The city where it occurred was named after the Communist leader of the USSR.)
Which flag flew over the Nazi Reichstag (parliament) in May 1945, marking the end of the Nazi "Thousand Year Reich"? This was followed by the "Battle of Manchuria" (August 1945) when the Soviet and Chinese Red Armies wiped out the bulk of the fascist Imperial Army of Japan.
Michael Jordan, Pelé, Babe Ruth, Muhammed Ali, Roberto Clemente—these are the choices of some sportswriters as "athletes of the century." Our choice is the person who became the first black football All-American at Rutgers early in 1918 when racism was even more rampant in sports. Who was this modern Renaissance man—a great singer and actor whose pro-communist, internationalist position for the working class in the face of the U.S. government’s attack inspired millions worldwide who hated racism and fascism?
Which war in the 1960’s and early ’70s revealed U.S. imperialism as a paper tiger? Millions protested this war. The U.S. armed forces have not yet recovered from it and have suffered from a syndrome named after the country in which it took place.
What organization terrorized thousands in the U.S. with its anti-communist witch-hunt? Which communist group defied, exposed and attacked it in 1964, leading to its demise? (Later that year, several members of this group were jailed because the ruling class blamed them for the first massive anti-racist, anti-cop rebellion of the ’60s, the 1964 Harlem Rebellion.)
In 1973 which organization led the sit-down strike at Chrysler’s Mack Ave. plant in Detroit, the first such strike in a U.S. auto plant since the 1937 Flint sit-down? (It was smashed by a thousand goons led by the union hacks of the United Auto Workers.
Since the early 1970’s, which anti-racist organization has consistently opposed, attacked and smashed the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis? (The latest occurred on October 23 in New York City where some members and friends of this organization were able to evade the Klan’s police protection and punch the KKK grand lizard and rip their fascist banner.)
Answers:
1. V.I. Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that freed one-sixth of the world from capitalism. The book, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," is a must-read for those who want to understand the current world situation after the debacle in Seattle.
2. The Bolshevik Revolution that established the USSR.
3. John Reed, a Seattle journalist who became a communist. He wrote "Ten Days That Shook The World." Eisenstein, the Soviet film maker, and regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th century, turned it into a classic movie, much better than Hollywood’s Reds in which Beatty played John Reed.
4. The Battle of Stalingrad where the Red Army smashed the Nazi army. It is sometimes referred to as the greatest military battle in world history. It was the turning point of the war, presaging the end of the Third Reich.
5. The Soviet hammer and sickle was raised atop the Reichstag by Red Army soldiers.
6. Paul Robeson used his many talents to fight racism and capitalism and sang across all borders for the working class worldwide.
7. The Vietnam War and Vietnam Syndrome. Even though U.S. imperialism murdered over three million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, it was soundly defeated.
8. House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Members of the Progressive Labor Movement (forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party), called to testify before it in 1964, organized mass demonstrations against it in Buffalo, N.Y. and Washington, D.C. PLM members refused to hide behind the bosses’ Fifth Amendment and proudly proclaimed themselves as communists while calling the committee by its rightful name: fascist.
9. The Progressive Labor Party. This revolutionary communist organization has led hundreds of thousands in the last three decades to attack the racist terrorists of the KKK and the Nazis.
10. Workers’ Action Movement, an organization formed by PLP, led hundreds of auto workers to take over the Chrysler plant.
This issue of CHALLENGE is tri-weekly. We will return to our weekly format in the new millenium, on the issue going to press Jan. 5, 2000
- AFL-CIO/TWU `Solidarity': Siding with Fascist Mayor Giuliani to Derail NYC Transit Workers' Strike
- "I voted for you because communists are good for workers..."
S.F. TRANSIT WORKERS CHOOSE RED LEADERSHIP;
PREPARE FOR COMING CONTRACT FIGHT - Editorial:
The Face of Fascism in Seattle or, `We're so nice, we'll kick you twice' - Editorial:
Israel-Syria U.S. Backed Deal Won't Stop Another War for Oil Profits - Aftermath of "Battle of Seattle"
Patriotism and Belief in a More `Humanitarian' Capitalism: Deadly for Workers and Youth - AFL-CIO Builds Bosses' Patriotism `Fighting' Foreign Sweatshops While Prison/Slave Labor Thrives in U.S.
- El Salvador: Workers Backed 25,000 Health Care Strikers
- MLA Convention: To Fight for Reforms Or To Fight For Revolution, That is the Question
- A System That Can't Provide Housing Should Be Destroyed
NYC: Protest Giuliani's Fascist Edicts vs. Homeless - Protesting Against the WTO Is Not Enough, Youth Must Fight All Imperialists!
- The Fight Is Not Because of Drugs, It Is for the Oil of Colombia and South America
- LETTERS
- Going Postal Under Fascist Conditions
- PLP Only Viable Alternative For `Red Youth' in El Salvador
- Ruling Class Funds Liberal Mass Orgs.
- Friendly Criticism of PLP in Seattle
- CHALLENGE Comments:
- Lessons From Chile Municipal Theater Strike
- Did Racist Cops Fake Inmate `Suicide'
- U.S. Navy's Racism In Vieques
- STEEL WORKERS EXPECT MORE FROM PLP
AFL-CIO/TWU `Solidarity': Siding with Fascist Mayor Giuliani to Derail NYC Transit Workers' Strike
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 15--The face of fascism raised its ugly head here when NYC Mayor "Jail-the-Homeless" Giuliani, representing his Wall Street banker/bosses, used the massive power of the ruling class state to smash any possible strike by 32,000 transit workers. After having gotten a strike-breaking court injunction under the bosses' Taylor Law, Ghouliani vowed to fine each and every transit striker $25,000 on the first day of any walk-out, $50,000 the second day and $100,000 the third day! Besides that, he was moving to break the union treasury, starting with a million-dollar fine the first day of any strike. As word of a sellout leaked out near the midnight deadline, he ordered his racist cops to clean out the union headquarters area of angry workers. This fascist was even demanding the workers pay for the cops' overtime and for all state aid for the schools lost "because" of a strike!
This gave pro-boss union head Willie James the excuse to tell workers they can't strike even if there was no agreement by the deadline. This is the same James who agreed to Workfare slave laborers to displace union workers as subway cleaners in the last contract (see box). The final settlement (12% over three years) was slightly more than the Transit Authority's original proposal, and less than half of the union's initial demand.
When Giuliani appeared on TV throughout Tuesday, Dec. 14, spewing his fascist threats to break the transit workers, where was AFL-CIO president John Sweeney's "re-invigorated" labor movement? Not a peep! No offer of mass solidarity, no organization of a general strike to answer this fascist strike-breaking. Nothing about joining strike picket lines, stopping all scabs, preventing all private bus lines, vans and taxis from operating. Nothing about workers on the Long Island RR, Amtrak and the Path lines walking out in solidarity, along with all city workers, whose next contract may be patterned after the transit agreement. These labor leaders are truly "lieutenants of the capitalist class" in their abject kowtowing to the bosses.
While Giuliani tried to "blame" the loyal opposition faction, New Directions (ND) (which nearly ousted James in the last union election) for any potential wildcat work stoppage, this is the same group that has gone repeatedly to the bosses' courts to sue the union. While spouting militancy and opposition to the settlement, virtually right up to the last minute the ND leaders were saying they were backing James. They were calling for a "good contract, without a strike if possible." They even called a riot a few years ago by Rikers Island prison guards a "strike." They are working within the system as much as James' machine, trying to become the "outs" who "get in" to union office.
Without transit workers, billions of dollars of profits for all NYC bosses would go down the drain. Without mass transit in a city of 7.5 million, all the major department stores would go broke. Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, couldn't function if tens of thousands of workers could not get to their jobs. That's why the bosses passed the Taylor Law (see box).
In New York, the city and the MTA's first obligation is to pay the interest on the city and transit debt to the big bankers. Service, maintenance, workers' wages and benefits all come AFTER bankers' profits. That's the definition of capitalism.
But in a period when U.S. bosses face intense competition globally, and are preparing for wars to control oil supplies and markets, they need ever more surpluses wrenched from workers' labor to pay for their war economy. This inspires even greater attacks on workers, a la Giuliani, slave labor Workfare (see box), etc.
The new "free" transfer system (paid for out of the last 25cents-fare increase) has increased the ridership, especially on buses. This forces workers to work harder and longer hours, causing more accidents, increasing stress among drivers and riders, creating longer bus runs and cutting out others entirely--in a word, SPEED-UP.
A strike of 32,000 workers could provide great potential for mass working class unity, black, white and Latin. It could have been a blow against racism since the bosses figure they can get away with squeezing these workers (a majority of whom are black and Hispanic) based on fanning racism among the rest of the working class. It could have been a blow against the fascist slave labor Workfare attack, where again the majority of welfare recipients are black and Hispanic. It could show the power of the working class, in breaking the bosses' laws and exposing the government as a tool of the capitalist class.
But strikes have limits. What workers win in one arena, the bosses take away in other ways: higher taxes, inflation, Workfare and fewer union jobs, speed-up, eventual wage-cuts in "hard times," fines imposed by the bosses' courts, etc. The bosses still control the state, its laws, and the very leaders of the union who themselves work within, and support, capitalism. By working within that system, the pro-capitalist union leaders become defenders of the bosses' interests.
The biggest victory transit workers could win out of this struggle is understanding the nature of the system that oppresses them and causes all our problems; understanding the fact that the bosses control the government, lock, stock and barrel; and understanding that the only solution to our class's problems is to destroy capitalism with a communist revolution. This goal can only be achieved if organized and led by a revolutionary communist party--the Progressive Labor Party. So real victory in this class struggle is to join and build PLP.
Organizing for that goal must come in the context of: (1) championing the workers' cause; (2) fighting to smash the bosses' anti-worker laws; (3) uniting all workers to beat back the fascist slave labor Workfare; and (4) relating all this to the necessity to get rid of the profit system.
Workfare: The Fascist Drive to Slash Wages
In the last contract, the transit union leaders agreed to the bosses' demand to use 600 slave laborers to clean the subways under Clinton/Giuliani's fascist Workfare regime. TWU president Willie James said this would "teach" people on welfare how to hold a regular job! Welfare recipients must work off their welfare checks doing this job, at an hourly rate ONE-FIFTH of the regular union rate! Instead of insisting these workers get the full union scale, TWU leaders helped the bosses rake in tens of millions based on slave labor. The spread of Workfare sets up low-wage competitors for union-scale jobs and eventually cuts wages for ALL workers. Who's next? Conductors, maintenance workers, bus drivers?
How the Bosses Use Their State to Oppress Workers
To stop workers like transit workers from exercising any power to advance their class interests, the bosses passed the Taylor Law. This law jails strike leaders and fines strikers two days pay for every day they walk out.
Under capitalism, the government (the "state") is a tool of the tiny ruling class (the bosses), to be used to oppress the majority class (the workers) whose labor produces everything. These laws are enacted to prevent workers from fighting for their class interests. Under communism, without bosses or profits, workers will reap all the fruits of their labors. Mass transit would be free.
"I voted for you because communists are good for workers..."
S.F. TRANSIT WORKERS CHOOSE RED LEADERSHIP;
PREPARE FOR COMING CONTRACT FIGHT
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 12 -- This is "a fitting cap to 26 years of struggle on this job....a vindication of your principles and politics." That's one worker's reaction to the election of PLP member John Murray as recording secretary of Transport Workers Union Local 250a, placing him on the Executive Board.
Said a Vietnam vet, "I voted for you because communists are good for workers."
These local elections are just one battle MUNI workers face in a long war. Drivers are fed up with racist attacks, management running roughshod over the contract and no response from the union leadership. Anger at the leadership is boiling. Secrecy about union finances and back-room deals are causing an explosion.
It was within this context that PLP members ran on a loose slate along with other opposition forces. About two-thirds of the local's 2,000 members voted, an unusually large turnout. John received 782 votes to the machine incumbent's 587. John's total actually surpassed the vote received by the incumbent president, who was narrowly re-elected.
The election caused widespread debate about capitalism, communism, how to fight the corporations and how to educate the membership in political economy.
"Just by challenging the machine, we are already winning," said another opposition candidate. "There is much more to this battle than just holding office." While the rest of the slate did not win, some newer activists won shop-level positions. Younger, minority workers are becoming active, and they don't plan on begging for crumbs from politicians. "Job Action," "Sick Out," "Strike," and "Wildcat" are echoing around the city.
PLP targeted capitalism as the cause of our problems at MUNI. The antagonism between capital and labor is built into the very framework of the system. One new activist told us that she re-reads our literature many times. "This is just common sense. I don't care what they call it. You have to look beyond the label of communism to understand it."
The next battle is the contract negotiations with the City and the downtown business interests. On hearing of John's victory one driver said, "That's great. Now what do we have to do? You can't do it by yourself."
Among a smaller group of activists we were able to bring up the history of communists' role in organizing the CIO unions, and the TWU in particular. Many said they now understood why the union leadership and Big Business fear the spread of communist ideas among the workers.
We may be at a new stage in the union, with a new set of problems. We may have a greater opportunity to unite with our co-workers and lead sharper class struggle. While voting in a union election may be a partial barometer of workers' sentiments, we must be careful not to allow ourselves and our co-workers to be sucked into thinking winning elections will do the trick. The bosses still hold state power and union elections cannot challenge that. Only an armed working class led by a revolutionary communist party can overthrow the bosses and their profit system.
We can sharpen the contradiction between reform and revolution, and convince many workers of the need for a mass PLP to lead our class to power. The contradiction between workers and bosses can never be reconciled. Capitalism must go. We are fighting in our union to build a mass PLP and to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution.
Editorial:
The Face of Fascism in Seattle or, `We're so nice, we'll kick you twice'
SEATTLE -- The heads are rolling here following the battles that raged in the streets between protesters and the cops, during the WTO week. Already the police chief, Norm Stamper (a liberal), has resigned, and many are calling for the resignation of the mayor, Paul Schell (also a liberal).
Almost 600 were arrested and jailed as the combined forces of the Seattle P.D., other King Co. cops, and the National Guard went wild firing tear gas, mace and rubber bullets at protesters and anyone else who got in their way. Some of the horror stories were told and retold this week when several public meetings were held for people to vent their anger. The cops screamed that they were outnumbered and unprepared, as speaker after speaker condemned them for their extremely violent tactics. (see photos) They certainly looked prepared, in full riot gear and with plenty of ammo!!
Many people in Seattle, a city with a reputation of being friendly and nice, were shocked by the behavior of the police. However, given the political situation that was unfolding at the WTO talks, it isn't surprising that the cops acted like fascist storm troopers. The WTO meeting was a fiasco. No agreements could be made because the major players, the U.S., E.U., Japan, Russia and China, were busy forming blocs in preparation for war .In order for the U.S. rulers to successfully wage war, they need to bring the working class under their control. They do this in many ways. One tactic is supporting and promoting NGOs, whose line is, "Capitalism just needs reforming." The unions do the same. Another way to control us is through police terror. (Certainly the black community has known this for a long time!) It was this face of fascism that shocked so many in Seattle, and that included some of us in the party! We secretly thought that this only happens in LA or New York or Chicago! This realization has made us get bolder about bringing the Party's line to others.
Just last weekend, some comrades went to a vigil outside the jail where the protesters were being held. There was a few moments between speakers when the microphone was free. A comrade saw an opportunity and grabbed the microphone. She spoke to the crowd of several hundred about the need to get rid of capitalism, not reform it. She talked about the role of the cops and the courts, and the need for real communism. She ended by urging people to read CHALLENGE. Everyone applauded, and several came forward with comments and questions. The other comrades circulated and distributed 60 Challenges.
As the weeks go on, a lot of (business) people here seem to be hoping that all the noise over the WTO will die down and Seattle will return to being a nice, quiet seaport town where you can go shopping and get a good cup of coffee. But to most people, the "Battle in Seattle" has changed things forever. This gives us a great chance to build the party here in the year 2000! Happy New Year! Fight for Communism!
Editorial:
Israel-Syria U.S. Backed Deal Won't Stop Another War for Oil Profits
U.S. imperialists' latest "peace" move in the Middle East is bound to bring more war. The establishment media are touting the likelihood of a deal between Israel and Syria. Some form of bargain may develop, backed by U.S. dollars and guns, but it won't stabilize the region.
Even if the Israelis and Syrians are bribed or threatened into temporarily settling some of their differences, the main contradiction in the Middle East isn't going anywhere. The region is still the world's most important source of oil. U.S. imperialism needs to control the flow and pricing of this oil. U.S. foreign and military policy is geared to this strategy.
The U.S. maintains a large naval presence (at a yearly cost of $50 billion) in and around the Persian Gulf and an important ground force in several Gulf countries as well. The Israel-Syria "peace" talks must be viewed in light of recent U.S. oil wars against Iraq. Basically, U.S. bosses want to secure their western flank in order to free themselves for future war in the east.
The New York Times chief foreign correspondent, Thomas Friedman (who usually front for Exxon-Mobil) said as much in his December 12 column: "Many Israeli generals feel such a deal is both possible and preferable to the status quo, particularly if you add the regional implications: bringing Syria into the circle of peace would close down the Lebanon front and totally isolate Iraq and Iran. That would constitute a major strategic realignment of the Middle East."
But other imperialists don't see why they should dance to Washington's tune, as the recent flop of WTO talks in Seattle proved. All doesn't always go according to plan, even for the world's "last remaining super-power." Iraqi boss Saddam Hussein just pulled his oil off the world market, as a temporary tactical probe against the U.S. He proved that the world capitalist economy still needs cheap Iraqi oil. During the halt in Iraqi shipments, U.S. Energy Secretary Richardson (another mouthpiece for Rockefeller's Exxon) said that the oil prices had risen too high and something had to be done.
The world's main imperialists can't live without Iraqi oil. Rockefeller's Exxon & Co. can't live with pending deals between Iraqi oil. bosses and U.S. imperialism's rivals: Russia, France and China. This is hardly a script that promises peace on the near horizon. U.S. rulers have few choices in the Middle East short of another oil war. Workers shouldn't be fooled by U.S. support for the Israel-Syria love-fest. Imperialism and oil add up to war. The next one can't be too far off.
Aftermath of "Battle of Seattle"
Patriotism and Belief in a More `Humanitarian' Capitalism: Deadly for Workers and Youth
LOS ANGELES -- About 120 people filled a meeting hall to talk about the victory in Seattle. Many youth told of their experiences being tear gassed, and arrested by the brutal Seattle cops. These youth were angry at the cops and proud of their victory over the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. But how could a few thousand people demonstrating peacefully stop a group of representatives of international capital from functioning? It was their own sharp internal contradictions that put an end to the Seattle round of the WTO.
A Philippine activist from a nationalist group presented a paper that said neither fair trade nor free trade is possible under imperialism.
When a PLP member spoke briefly to attack the nationalism of the leaders of the demonstrations, and to tell how well our communist literature and banner were received, some applauded. She attacked the nationalism of George Becker (head of the steel workers union) who said we must be prepared to defend American jobs and to defend America. But the leader of the meeting countered, Yes, protectionism was a small part of this event, but we brought workers from around the world to speak, to build internationalism. Another member of the audience said all the demands of the march pushed nationalism and protectionism. It was reactionary. So was the march to dump steel with marchers chanting `USA! USA!' The PLP member added that on November 30, Gore proposed a 178% tax on Russian cold-rolled steel and now more Russian steel workers will be out of work. She tried to ask how that solved anything for the world's workers. The leaderof the meeting cut her off and showed a video of the Seattle police beating the demonstrators.
The police riot against the demonstrators and residents of Seattle in itself shows the lie of the human rights position of the AFL-CIO and the NGO's (non-governmental organizations) which say the great standards in the U.S. should be pushed around the world! Many got CHALLENGE during and after the meeting.
The next day two friends in this group called the PLP member. One congratulated her on what she said and added that she was pleasantly surprised at the applause when she said she was a communist. The other agreed that the anti-WTO movement is justifying U.S. imperialism based on the lie of human rights. She fears they could convince good people into thinking that the U.S. is fighting for high standards of human rights around the world. But, we shouldn't be afraid. Just like us, more people can see through the hypocrisy of high standards from a U.S. ruling class responsible for more deaths and anti-communist, racist, anti-worker crusades than any other ruling class in history. The key to that fight must be that more of the people involved read CHALLENGE.
A Threatened Empire
The fiasco in Seattle has sharpened many of the contradictions among the world's bosses. The New York Times, mouthpiece of Rockefeller, Inc., explained how the WTO talks collapsed. "We would make progress, then the Europeans or the Japanese would come back and start right where we began hours before," said one U.S. participant. "You have to conclude that the outcome they wanted was the outcome we got: a collapse."
The Washington Post said that this fiasco sent a "grim message" and could "usher in a period of trade friction and cause the already burgeoning U.S. trade deficit to climb even higher." The WP quote Lawrence Chimerine, of the Economic Strategy Institute, which expressed concerns that without a mechanism to open up markets for U.S. goods and services, particularly in Asia, there is no prospect of controlling the US trade deficit, now approaching $300 billion. This widening trade gap is an "economic and political time bomb just waiting to explode at the first sign of economic downturn in the U.S."
This sharpening dogfight among world's bosses is taking many other forms. At almost the same time, the Seattle fiasco took place, the U.S. rivals in Asia and Europe were busy shoring up their own defensive positions. "The Asian countries [including China] held an ASEAN meeting over the weekend [preceding the WTO conference] that was much more important to them than anything going on in Seattle." (Stratfor, Inc. 11/29/99) On November 24, Mexico and the European Union (EU) put the finishing touches on "the most comprehensive free-trade agreement ever negotiated," according to EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy. Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo praised this direct attack on NAFTA saying the accord will put the nation "in a strong international trade position."
To add muscle to their position, the Europeans began building their own independent military machine. A few weeks before Seattle, the EU announced the merger of the military arms of Germany's DASA, France's Aerospatiale and Spain's CASA. The week after, the EU announced the formation of an "autonomous" rapid reaction force, separate from NATO. "U.S. fears rose," reported the Times of London. (12/8/99)
Trade wars among the world's bosses will eventually lead to shooting wars. Workers must understand this, and be prepared not to become cannon fodder in their respective bosses' war plans. There is an alternative, build a mass communist PLP to turn the imperialist dogfight into a revolutionary struggle to wipe them out from the face of the earth.
A TALE OF TWO MEETINGS
"Industry and economy in the hands of international finance capital means the end of all possibility of social liberation...we ardent socialists are waging the fight against capitalism and imperialism incarnated in the Versailles Treaty." So wrote the National Socialist propagandist of the Nazi Party, Gregor Strasser, in the 1930s. Substitute the word `WTO' for `Versailles Treaty' and it could well have been a speech we heard at the teach-ins in Seattle. And Strasser, it's important to note was not being cynical. He meant it and when he and his Brown Shirts began to organize for the `second revolution' the Big German bosses ordered Hitler to carry on the massacre known as the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler quickly obeyed his capitalist masters and betrayed his fellow national-socialists.
SAN FRANCISCO -- It is worth recalling this history. Within a week of the Battle in Seattle, 120 people (up from the usual 10 or so) attended a meeting of Global Exchange, to evaluate the "victory," and gather forces for the up-coming battles. And plenty is planned.
In February there will be an Open World Trade Union Conference in San Francisco. In April, mass protests are planned when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meet in Washington, DC, followed by mass May Day marches. A campaign will be launched against the use of prison labor in China, the China's entry to the WTO. Medea Benjamin, the new darling of Business Week, introduced these and other plans.
But it was the next speaker, Vincent Menotti from the rich man's club, the International Forum on Globalization, who really caught our attention. For him the battle in Seattle spelt "patriotism." Unfortunately only one person hissed in opposition, although one or two attacked that position in speeches later on. Hardly were the fruits of this so-called victory picked when they were being packaged in patriotism!
A PL speaker pointed out that the Nazi Party in Germany and fascist forces in Mussolini's Italy developed with a mix of nationalism, populism, and racism. He called for building a mass communist Party. Afterwards several participants came up to buy Challenge and express their agreement.
A PLP meeting held early the following week generated a heightened urgency about building communism, advancing the sale of Challenge, and combating the spread of nationalism. Speaker after speaker joined in a lively discussion on the role of Challenge, and the necessity and opportunities for fighting for communism within mass organizations led by reactionary forces. Six of the newer forces agreed to start distributing Challenge, and one young worker joined the Party. There were 36 people at the meeting. It's from the determination of groupings like this that the rulers attempts to build fascism will meet their doom.
AFL-CIO Builds Bosses' Patriotism `Fighting' Foreign Sweatshops While Prison/Slave Labor Thrives in U.S.
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 9-- Glitzy Fifth Avenue was crowded today, not with the usual Xmas shoppers, but with hundreds of demonstrators against sweatshops. Workers and many youth from local high schools and colleges protested Niketown, Disney, Gap, etc. for using sweatshops to produce their merchandise. But while most of the demonstrators were honest and wanted to fight sweatshops and child labor, what was the role of the National Labor Committee, the group formed by the AFL-CIO to organize against sweatshops?
These union leaders put a lot into this campaign. John Sweeney, top honcho of the AFL-CIO, came to the demo (the first time he attended one of the anti-sweatshop protests). Their idea of fighting sweatshops, child labor and prison labor is mainly to attack bosses in other countries, particularly China. They are trying to build patriotism (Buy American products and support Our Democracy said one group's leaflet) and anti-communism, mainly blaming China (without saying it is now a capitalist country). But the fact is that U.S. bosses now have 500,000 prisoners working for dirt-poor wages (many producing for private companies like Dell and Boeing). If the AFL-CIO wanted to fight prison labor and sweatshops, what about the sweatshops in Chinatown, many of whose workers pay dues to UNITE (the garment union behind the National Labor Committee).
PLP participated in this protest with our banner calling for workers' power. We distributed 200 CHALLENGES and hundreds of leaflets analyzing how the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry was mainly behind the WTO fiasco in Seattle. But we must do more to organize inside the anti-sweatshop movement to win the honest workers and youth interested in fighting sweatshops and prison labor to fighting them right here in the U.S., as well as all over the world. After all, capitalism is based on wage slavery, while communism fights for its abolition.
El Salvador: Workers Backed 25,000 Health Care Strikers
San Salvador, Dec. 8, 1999--More than 25,000 workers marched through the main streets of the Salvadoran capital to demand better jobs, services and living conditions. Patients and pensioners who use the health care system (called Social Security system) came into the streets to show their support of the workers. They participated in the march with signs saying "the struggle of the workers of Social Security is just and correct", "health care is a right for the workers, not a privilege."
The strike of the workers of the Salvadoran Social Security System has now lasted more than a month and the workers continue struggling. The march was a demonstration of the unity of the working class, including teachers, workers, and students who joined the demonstration.
A wave of strikes has been organized in El Salvador. The government thought that with wage cuts and firings, they would hold back the workers' movement. How wrong the capitalists were. More than 11,000 workers of the Social Security have been on strike since Nov. 7 and we aren't planning to give in to the government's repression. The bosses have just fired 226 workers. A group of unions called MOLI is announcing a strike in the different government ministries. The labor climate is like that of the decade of the 1970's, which led to a civil war in this country.
Sharp struggle has been carried out among the workers in the Social Security system, showing them that with or without privatization, its wage slavery that keeps us in a situation of hunger and poverty. It's a lie to think that by rejecting being class conscious fighters, we can keep our jobs. In a meeting that the union called, a worker said, "if in January, they privatize the Social Security system, more than 30% of the workers will be fired, whether or not they have participated in the struggle. So, why not join the struggle?" At least that way the workers are taking the offensive.
"Several workers have commented to me that the only way this struggle will be resolved is through armed struggle, and I've been thinking that the only way out of this crisis in which we are submerged by capitalism is the road of communist revolution proposed by PLP. I've passed Challenge to several workers, and they think the same way," said a friend of the party and a Challenge reader. This is a clear sign that PLP is on the correct road. We must continue to involve ourselves in the mass movements and build consciousness among the working class that the fight against capitalism is a life and death struggle. It's us, the workers, or them, the capitalists. There's no middle ground in this war.
In the daily struggles of the workers in El Salvador and throughout the whole world, we shouldn't lose sight of the source of these problems: capitalism, and its crisis of overproduction and the imperialist wars it causes. The only solution to these problems is to destroy the bosses and their profit system. No reform struggle, even if we win, will improve our lives. As long as capitalism exists, the bosses' thirst for profits will dominate. That means hunger, poverty and death for the workers. Only a communist society will improve our lives. Join the Progressive Labor Party to strengthen us and to make it our tool to fight for power and, in that way, to bequeath our children a better life.
MLA Convention: To Fight for Reforms Or To Fight For Revolution, That is the Question
CHICAGO -- December 26 through 30 there'll be a lot of struggle at the Modern Language Association's (MLA) annual convention in Chicago.
The MLA is the professional organization of college and university-level teachers of language and literature; it has a substantial and well-respected radical caucus--in which many of our friends are active--that over the years has led significant fights against racism, sexism, and other manifestations of the movement toward fascism reflected in higher education.As we engage in these struggles, it is crucial to put forward a class analysis of the world situation in which they occur. This context is contradictory. Because of increasing international competition, the U.S. capitalist class has the need for a certain number of college graduates trained to be critical, literate, and skilled workers, politically faithful to the ruling class and capable of performing the sophisticated labor capital needs to amass its profits. Hence the current drive toward higher "standards," k-12 and beyond. At the same time, the capitalists have access to an international pool of such workers; only a limited number need come from the United States. Thus the talk about "standards" is mainly a matter of weeding out. Most of the working-class students who aspire to go to college and rise upward in the system are targeted for relatively low-skilled and poorly compensated work; their situation has more in common with that of prison and Workfare laborers than it has with the corporate lawyers and magnates they are urged to take as their role models.
Thus the recent drive toward eliminating so-called "remedial" courses at CUNY (City University of New York) represents the wave of the future, at least for public higher education. Those working-class students not already weeded out by high school proficiency tests requiring skills far beyond those they have been taught encounter the next hurdle in college. A significant number are either flunked out or confined to junior college programs funneling them into low-wage employment. Even those receiving their B.A or B.S. Degrees rarely achieve their "dreams". And the racism shaping this whole process is of course notorious. The recent, racist statement of the president of Queens College, CUNY, regarding the presumably low quality of its student body--`sh__t in, sh__t out'--exemplifies this trend.In the context of these cutbacks, the humanities departments are the first to go. Most English departments now serve the function of providing the most basic literary skills for workers entering the lower echelons of the labor force. A crisis in academic labor--especially in the humanities--has resulted from this situation. More and more courses are taught by non-tenure track workers, either graduate student, teaching assistants or part-time adjuncts.
The Radical Caucus where we are intensely involved has addressed these issues. This Caucus has initiated these reform struggles: unionization of all campus labor, defend the committee on campus bigotry, expose the use of sweatshops or prison labor, etc. We realize that all of these reform struggles won't destroy the true culprit of racism, sexism, and wage slavery: capitalism!The greatest achievement of PLP members and friends at the MLA convention and through continuing mass work and basebuilding will be to win more members to join PLP and fight for communism.
A System That Can't Provide Housing Should Be Destroyed
NYC: Protest Giuliani's Fascist Edicts vs. Homeless
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 14 -- New York City-PLP members helped to mobilize people from several churches and from AFSCME Local 371 to participate in a rally on December 5 sponsored by the Coalition For the Homeless. Rally speakers, mostly ministers, union leaders and Coalition for the Homeless leaders, raised their voices to a fever pitch to unite against "greater evil" Giuliani and to carefully demand the "right to shelter" under the law and to sing "We shall overcome some day." PLP'ers interjected with calls for revolution, NOW. One carried a sign saying, "A system that can't provide housing should be destroyed." He urged fellow union members to refuse to carry out the Nazi orders to sign up workers in shelters to Workfare and to refuse to sanction mothers who don't with removal of their children.
Other comrades and friends helped to distribute 1,200 leaflets calling for another protest on December 9. The leaflet's headline was "Giuliani to Homeless: Work Will Set You Free (Nazi slogan over concentration camp gate)." People at the rally asked for bunches to distribute, to take back to their shelters or give to their friends in organizations they belong to.
Some PLP'ers openly agitated by distributing PLP leaflets and CHALLENGES.
Slowly PLP members are building visible anti-fascist trends within organizations to which we belong countering the dangerous illusion that liberal politicians can and will rescue workers.
Thirty people from one church and soup kitchen took a bus to the rally. Several gave out a special edition of the church newsletter in which anti-fascism was the theme:
"New York has become lot like Dachau! Unions have allowed slave-labor, WEP workers to be super-exploited in place of unionized employees. A militarized police force has been given marching orders to clear the streets of all `undesirables' and `mental defectives.' And if the latter object to being `cleared' and forced into slave-labor run shelters they are imprisoned as an example to the rest of us. Mayor Giuliani is serving as Camp Commandant, `AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT! he subtly reminds us every other day...'
"The Mayor, riding on a nearly unprecedented wave of racist media stereotyping, has driven the next stake in the work-camp fence he and his Wall Street mentors have designed for most of us: to imprison us when the next economic `downturn' inevitably hits, and any of us dares to rebel. But Giuliani's emerging fascist politics are a totally predictable outgrowth of the `Welfare Reform Act' passed in Washington by a Republican Congress, but proposed and signed by a Democratic President. There is blood to go around for all politicians' hands."
On December 9 almost 40 workers and students protested at the Department for Homeless Services. Prior to the protest two people from the planning group delivered a "Nazi-of-the-Year Award" to Mayor Giuliani and Homeless Services Commissioner Martin Oesterreich. High school students and their teachers led the picket line, loudly chanting, "Housing, yes; Crack down, no! Fascist policies got to go!" and, "Hitler rose, Hitler fell, Giuliani go to hell." Then the protesters marched to City Hall Park where we broke the ban on demonstrations there. A homeless friend from the soup kitchen which helped plan the protest had promised to speak about his arrest two days before. But he was arrested again for sleeping under the same bridge and so was unable to get to the demonstration.
With Giuliani's "take-no-prisoners" approach to breaking a potential transit strike, it's more important than ever for PLP'ers to reach out to the working class to take bold action against developing fascism. As the church newsletter said, "Those of us who keep the city running, everyone who works here in other words, can slow the city down. Or stop it. And now is the time to do just that! In every workplace we need to be discussing concrete actions to be taken on behalf of our sisters and brothers who are being forced into the streets, then into slave labor shelters, or into jails."
Through all of this activity PLP'ers are carrying out the sharp struggle to convince our friends to join and become active members of PLP. Some have become hand to hand distributors of CHALLENGE. So we will build the mass revolutionary communist party that the working class needs to destroy fascism.
Protesting Against the WTO Is Not Enough, Youth Must Fight All Imperialists!
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 13 -- Striking students from UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico) demonstrated in front of the US embassy in support of the demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. Police provocateurs infiltrated the march, breaking glass at the diplomatic center. With this pretext the fascist Mexico City police viscously attacked the demonstrators. They beat dozens and jailed 98. The PRD government showed the imperialists that they don't vacillate in keeping capitalist law and order. The UNAM strikers, like many other people, were fooled by the bosses' propaganda, thinking that the recent failed meeting of the WTO was a victory for progressive forces who oppose free trade. What was mainly seen in Seattle was capitalist nationalism of the different economic blocks who compete inside the WTO, sharpening the inter-imperialist battle for markets in the face of the deepening crisis of overproduction.
Clinton and the thugs of the AFL-CIO used the discontent of the masses to defend their industries and try to slow the decline of their exports. The Europeans protected their agricultural industry, and the emerging capitalists of Mexico, Brazil, India. Indonesia, and Malaysia defended slave labor as the only source of wealth to keep them competitive.
Slave labor has allowed the Mexican capitalists to sign NAFTA and the new Trade Agreement with the European Union. Mercosur, the third largest market in the world, is accelerating the process of regional integration in all of Latin America, and with the Europeans. All the capitalist trade agreements have brought misery and death to hundreds of millions of workers. No worker in the world should support his own executioner! All the capitalists and imperialists are the sworn enemies of the workers. The working class needs an international Communist party to confront all of them.
The fight among the imperialists for markets is sharpening in the whole world, showing that worse calamities for the workers are ahead. Only the rebuilding of the international Communist movement can put the working class on the offensive to turn these fights and wars between the imperialists into class struggle for communism. This is the alternative of PLP. Join us!
The Fight Is Not Because of Drugs, It Is for the Oil of Colombia and South America
Guerillas from FARC, the largest guerrilla group here, overran a Colombian naval base near the Panamanian border on Dec. 12. The raid highlights a new lack of Colombian military intelligence since the US plane was shot down. "This incident will likely result in more US intelligence aid to Colombia and force a reevaluation of US involvement in both countries." (Stratfor, 12/14/99). This incident shows that the battle for Colombia is heating up and leading to increased U.S. military involvement. FARC is supported by European imperialists.
What's really behind the U.S. military build up in Colombia? Is it to stop drugs or to stop "terrorists"? No, it's mainly a fight between the US and European imperialists for control of resources, markets and labor of Latin America. The fight for the oil and gas of South America is key in that inter-imperialist dogfight. The Europeans are making great advances in what was previously the private domain of US imperialism.
France's Total oil company (now Totalfina after merging this summer with Belgium's Petrofina) is growing by leaps and bounds in Latin America since it first ventured into Colombia in 1973. It is presently the top foreign oil producer in Colombia and is Argentina's second-largest gas producer. It is also actively preparing two major undertakings that, by 2001, aim to make it one of the biggest foreign oil producers in Venezuela and perhaps the number one gas producer in Bolivia.
Totalfina is also planning to broaden its Latin American presence with potential projects in Brazil and Peru, while keeping an eye on the possible privatization of Mexico's oil industry.
Totalfina is positioning itself to become the main gas supplier of Brazil and neighboring countries. Totalfina is also building pipelines to transport its Argentine production to Santiago de Chile and Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. It has several projects for gas sales for electrical power plants and transformation of gas into methanol or fertilizers. ("Totalfina Invests in Colombia," in the Petroleum Economist, Sept. 30, 1999, p. 18.)
The French bosses' goal is to become the biggest supplier of gas and energy in South America. Their plans for producing oil can't be less ambitious. They are making serious inroads in this respect. Other European bosses are doing likewise. Spain's Repsol recently bought most of the oil industry of Argentina.
In addition, a Brazilian aerospace company has made an alliance with the French company that produces the Mirage fighter. This will open up the South American market to European aerospace interests. And Spain, in addition to huge investments in Latin America's banking industry, has invested over $10 billion and now owns one out of every three telephone lines in the region. Renault of France, taking advantage of the newly signed free trade treaty between Mexico and the EU, will start building a subcompact in Mexico. VW is considering expanding its plant in Peubla. "The greater European presence in Mexico will intensify competition in the US market for Detroit and Japanese makers." (LA Times 11/30/99)
South America is an important market, rich in natural resources. Brazil alone has the eighth largest economy in the world. Being able to turn off most of the energy supply to the industries of the major countries in the region is a very powerful position. This obviously would relegate US imperialism to second fiddle in Latin America. US bosses won't roll over and play dead. That's why eventually they must invade Colombia and any country that seriously threatens to switch imperialist camps. Capitalism means competition, and competition means war. The best way to prepare for this is by building the PLP today to fight to bury the imperialists with communist revolution.
LETTERS
Going Postal Under Fascist Conditions
I'm a middle-aged black worker who took a temporary job to earn extra money. A friend gave me an application for the Post Office in Palatine, Illinois. I've been there a little over a week. This is the last time I'll work for the P.O.
My first night on the job a supervisor yelled at me to do something. Now, I take pride in being a hard-working, and conscientious worker who gives respect where respect is due. I would not have spoken to a dog the way she yelled and screamed at me.
"Hey don't come that way because I'm not in that kind of a bag. If you want me to do something just tell me to do it politely, and I will know how to respond to it." However, I'm not the only worker some of these supervisors talk to like that. The P.O. has several classifications of workers; myself and others are one of the lowest ones, 21-day casuals. They hired 44 casuals since I was hired; 24 have quit.
I go home and I'm completely sick, not physically but sick because of all the stuff that goes on. The supervisors don't know how to talk to you. They scream and holler to get out their frustrations, like we don't have frustrations.The other night a regular (full-time) employee brought some pallets over to the room we were working in. I told him not to bring any more pallets because the room was too full. He said O.K., he didn't have a problem with that. Five minutes later the supervisor came hollering at me, saying that, as a casual, I had no right telling a "regular" what to do. We're all in this workforce together, working for these nickels, dimes and crumbs. These supervisors just do not understand this.
My facility is 80% black, with Asians and whites. All the supervisors are black. I understand why postal workers are stressed and go off and do the things they do. These untrained supervisors get a taste of power. But they don't know that management uses them too. This supervisor on the second shift has been busted down twice. Every time management wants her to do their dirty work, they will move her off the line. But after she's done, they'll move her back on the line.
Casuals need some voice in the P.O. because there is no one voice for us.
Frustrated Casual in Palatine
PLP Only Viable Alternative For `Red Youth' in El Salvador
First, we want to congratulate you for the great work that you are developing building a communist organization. We are a group of young people who have been reading CHALLENGE and we feel very happy with the things you do. We think they are very real and we like them. The Salvadoran newspapers are completely capitalist, biased and in general they tell lies. That's because they're made to spread the ideas of the bourgeoisie and keep the people misinformed, so they can continue to exploit the working class, from whose labor they live.
On the other hand we want to refer to the misnamed "left" in El Salvador, the FMLN. We only see them as another part of the bourgeoisie who want to get power to continue exploiting the people. They don't have a clear vision. What are the structural changes they would make to the current neo-liberal system, or that they are currently carrying out in our country? That's why we see the communist organization of PLP as the viable alternative to change the destitute situation in which the great majority of our population lives. Let's fight for a just society!
A Group of Red Youth, El Salvador
Ruling Class Funds Liberal Mass Orgs.
The following information from a preliminary search on the college research device Nexis-Lexis shows that the leading Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) are tied to top ruling class institutions. These NGO's may appear "radical" but their mission is to build a mass movement backing U.S. imperialism.
The International Forum on Globalization (IFG), founded by Ralph Nader, Jerry Brown and Jeremy Rifkin in 1994, sponsored the main teach-in at the anti-WTO events. They advance the idea that "small is beautiful," that people should use local resources and push environmentalism. They opposed GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
The IFG is backed by the Institute for Policy Studies, a ruling class think tank founded by Jerry Mander of San Francisco's Public Media Center which supported U.S. military attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia. They have lots of money. Their web site lists associates as: Friends of the Earth, Ralph Nader, the Sierra Club (with ties to Chevron) and Canadian Trade Unions. Their teach-in at Berkeley was supported by Kirkpatrick Sale and the Max and Anna Levinson Foundation.The other NGO active in the anti-WTO and anti-sweatshop groups is Global Exchange (GEX) which is now planning a campaign against Wal-Mart's use of Chinese labor. They hypocritically claim they're fighting for "high labor standards," but the U.S. government and corporations are among the main powers responsible for low wages worldwide!
GEX was founded in 1988 by Medea Benjamin, a self-described "ex-hippie" from San Francisco. She makes money organizing tours to Tijuana and Chiapas in Mexico, and the Strawberry Fields of northern California, as well as to Cuba and Brazil. She sponsors anti-sweatshop tours and sent observers to the elections in Mexico and Indonesia. There are GEX lawyers in the campaign to free Leonard Peltier (jailed native American).GEX and UNITE (garment union) filed a class action law suit against 18 garment companies in the US-Marinas islands, called Saipan, alleging illegal labor practices by Nike, the GAP, Wal-Mart, Target, Jamboree, etc. In mid-year some settled, supported by UNITE, Levi-Strauss and Democratic Congressman George Miller from Martinez, California. In 1992 Levi's canceled its contract there. GEX then labeled Levi's products "fair trade" products. In a deal worked out about the Saipan case, some contractors now get to stamp "made in USA" on clothing produced in Saipan.
GEX is funded by the Compton and San Francisco Foundations (a SF ruling class group) as well as by James Gaither, an officer of the James Irvine foundation. Gaither, a lawyer, is a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of Levi Strauss, of the Hewlett Foundation, the Rand think-tank and is a trustee of Stanford University. Others on the GEX board are also connected with Stanford. Many directors of Levi-Strauss are also on the Boards of these foundations. Levi's is more a part of the ruling class than other garment companies. Its Chairman, Peter Haas, is also a member of the San Francisco Foundation. This is hardly a grass roots organization!GEX has an agreement with Reebok, Levi's and Mattel to adhere to proper labor standards and become "fair trade" companies. GEX filed its suit against the 18 garment companies in courts in LA, San Francisco and Saipan. The suit was joined by Sweatshop Watch, UNITE, and the Asian Law Caucus. GEX's Mike Dolan, who claimed a big victory in Seattle, helped the Los Angeles mayoral campaign of Richard Riorden. Before becoming LA's mayor, Riorden was a Mattel Vice President.
In June, 1997, Benjamin explained to an LA Times interviewer that she is pro-capitalist. Her group encourages indigenous people to make products and sell them via Global Exchange. She says she sells "ethnic crafts" at "fair prices," avoiding the middle man, and pays "decent wages," She herself leads about four trips a year. She says she advises young people who want to do "human rights work" to "get an MBA," teach accounting, tell the oppressed to open their own businesses and become part of the "global exchange/fair trade craft center." GEX receives grants from foundations that are interlocked with Levi's. Obviously, GAP and others are Levi's' competition.
We hope this information helps those active in this movement to see the ties and ideology of those behind it, so they can better fight to build PLP.
Los Angeles Reader
Friendly Criticism of PLP in Seattle
I spent four days in Seattle together with a goodly number of PLP members from around the country, who had come for the events and protests around the WTO summit. I sat in on many discussions and observed your communist practice as you interacted with this mass of protesting people. I wish to share some observations.On page 3 of the December 15 CHALLENGE, you wrote, "The debate must not be WTO or anti-WTO but capitalism or no capitalism." Your mass work reflects this, and at all times when your comrades speak publicly, you emphasize what you wish to tear down. And certainly the Marxist critique of capitalism can be deep and powerful.
But you are missing an opportunity! When the focus of consciousness of democratic forces is on building alternatives to the status quo, you must be there with a content-filled presentation of your alternative. When everyone is dialoguing on an alternative future, you too must emphasize what you wish to build. Can you inspire and motivate people to your vision of a communist society? You made no such attempt in Seattle.
But what is communism anyway? Certainly it is worth revisiting Marx's and Lenin's writings on this. But they didn't say much. Can you really develop and expand a somewhat detailed vision of what a communistically organized society would look like? I mean a vision in accord with our realities in the year 1999 and beyond. Can you engage in a four-hour presentation on what communism might be, much as non-communist, anti-WTO forces could deliver four hours of lectures on their alternatives? Ideas move history. Marx recognized this when he wrote that while the economic base determines the superstructure, the superstructure turns back and influences the base in countless ways.
A final thought on the anti-WTO movement. I understand that PLP considers many protesters in Seattle as part of a reactionary movement. Nevertheless you would recognize that there are also sincere democratic forces involved. Democratic forces--who seek justice and a curbing of the violent excesses of the capitalist system, yet do not have the vantage point of system thinking--are part of the evolutionary unfolding of this system. Both Marx and Lenin recognized this.Can you deal with democratic forces as such in a comradely way? Can you move beyond speeches directed at them fueled by an ideologically-driven anger, delivered from the wings of the auditorium, to dialoguing with them from a place of balanced poise, where you really listen? If so, they will listen too.
A friend
CHALLENGE Comments:
We thank our friend for his letter. We agree with the thrust of it although perhaps he overstates his case by way of emphasizing his point. We agree there were lots of sincere forces involved and many of them approached us after we spoke, whether from the wings or the center of the auditorium, and commented how quickly the chair would interrupt OUR speeches, calling time, while letting others make their non-communist points at leisure. (Incidentally, the audience applauded those who did speak from the wings.) We also spent many hours outside the auditoriums selling CHALLENGES leafleting and engaging in one-on-one discussions with hundreds of honest people.
Nevertheless, our friend is right in challenging us to present our communist goals with greater clarity and confidence. With friends like this the Party will grow.
Lessons From Chile Municipal Theater Strike
After being on strike for 54 days, workers at the Municipal Theater in Santiago, reached a partial agreement with the bosses of the Cultural Corporation which runs the theater. The workers demanded, among other things, a 10% wage hike but only received 5%. They also demanded an end to the disparities between the salaries of the Cultural Corporation Board and those of the workers. In exchange, the five unions, (representing musicians, the municipal chorus, the Santiago Ballet, technicians and office workers) agreed to return to work. These workers developed strong unity during the almost two months of the strike, an important aspect of working class struggles.
The partial agreement doesn't solve any of these workers immediate or long-range problems. But the lessons of the experiences learned by these workers during their strike should be now used to fight for long-range solutions. Welcome to the real world; it's very different from the arts and entertainment world. It's the real world that forces workers to fight the system that has turned their lives into a living hell. We in PLP here in Chile have supported your struggle consistently and now invite you to join us in the fight for a world without bosses.
PLP Club, Santiago, Chile
Did Racist Cops Fake Inmate `Suicide'
Shirley Mickens of Johnstown, Pennsylvania is suing the city, claiming it allowed her husband to die.
Charles Mickens, a black man, was arrested last summer by Johnstown cops for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Mr. Mickens had been institutionalized for mental illness and had attempted suicide in the past. The police department was well aware of Mr. Mickens' problems. On the night in question, the police placed Mr. Mickens in a town jail holding cell. The cell has a video camera which monitors prisoners. The cops made no attempt to monitor Mr. Mickens. They claim he was found dead at 5:00 A.M. after hanging himself "with his socks."
The police have never released the report. Even the right-wing editor of the local paper wrote an editorial about the corruption in the police department, demanding the police release the Mickens report.
Also, the police should have sought medical attention for Mr. Mickens or taken him to the hospital psychiatric ward instead of placing him in a holding cell without monitoring him. Social workers know it is mandatory to constantly monitor anyone with suicidal thought patterns during a crisis. Another question: just how did Mr. Mickens hang himself with his socks if he was drunk? Could it be that the police are withholding the report because Mr. Mickens did not hang himself. Racism is common in police departments. Throughout the history of capitalist Amerikkka many black people have been killed under suspicious circumstances while in police custody.
We need a mass movement to demand the report be released and that this incident be investigated thoroughly by a citizens' panel. Communists must point out that this type of incident is rooted in the growing fascist nature of capitalism, and that can only be stopped by workers power.
Johnstown Red
U.S. Navy's Racism In Vieques
The last issue of CHALLENGE mentions the growing racism inside the armed forces, and how this hampers the rulers' plans to win soldiers to fight in their imperialist war for oil. The November, 1999 issue of U.S. Naval Proceedings, published by the Naval Academy in Annapolis, ran an article which would make the KKK proud.
Written by a ship captain, it basically called Puerto Ricans "savages." The author compares Rosy Roads and other U.S. military facilities in Puerto Rico to the rest of the island, stating that "everything is perfect" in the military bases, but outside the bases all one finds is "dirt and antisocial attitudes from the natives that throw everything into the streets in total carelessness." It also says that the local population should thank the Navy for what it has done for Vieques; how the Navy helped the people of Vieques after hurricane George caused devastation all over Puerto Rico in 1998, etc.It's not just the Navy and its racist articles, racism and the armed forces go hand in hand. It's impossible to end racism in the bosses' armed forces, because they represent the system that breeds it.
Reader
STEEL WORKERS EXPECT MORE FROM PLP
"How come you're not in Seattle? I figured you [PLP] would be right in the middle of the fight." "He's not thinking about Seattle. He's thinking about vacation." These were some of the comments from my fellow workers during the anti-WTO demonstrations. And these are my friends.I explained that the Party was in Seattle, and was exposing the tricks of USWA (steel workers union) President Becker & company, and winning workers to a communist outlook. I said their criticisms were probably right (having been asked to go by my Party club), and that they should come to our next meeting and voice their ideas.
I underestimated my fellow workers. Workers fighting back against "globalism" (which we call imperialism) inspired them. They want to know what we think, and respect our ideas, even if there isn't total agreement. Most important, as communists we are expected to be in the struggle, fighting for our ideas. We are held to a higher standard.
The bosses are working overtime to line up workers for the next war, whether with guns or tariffs. George Becker and his crowd are waving the red, white, and blue to get steelworkers and others to side with "their bosses" against whomever. The struggle is on. If we in PLP don't win workers to internationalism, to the unity of all workers, no one else will. It's our duty!
Midwest Steel Worker
