EDITORIAL: Profit System Dictates Endless Imperialist Wars
- Contradictions Galore Between Washington and the Rest of the World
- Tactical Differences Between Bush Gang and Liberals
- Liberals' Worry: Present Ground Force Not Deadly Enough
'If You Make Me Kill You, It's Your Fault'
Transit Workers Link Cuts to War
Millions Stop Work Worldwide To Protest War
100,000 Workers in Turkey Protest War
a href="#Clinton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless">Clin"on’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless
Union Deals With Gov. and Bosses Cut Heart Out of Health Care System
a href="#Campus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus">"ampus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus
a href="#Rally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts">"ally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts
Students Angry Over Oil War, School Cutbacks
Political Anti-War Message Rings A Bell Among Many GIs
Transit Workers Hail Student Solidarity Against War
Oppose Liberal Pol Preaching War Draft
a href="#Youth Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth">"outh Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth
Berkeley Anti-War Marchers Reach Out To Workers
D.C. Marchers Hear Class Analysis Exposing ALL Bosses
UAW Opposes Bush, Not Imperialism
CIA Trained Saddam To Be Fascist Killer
a href="#"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"">"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"
a href="#"Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered">"Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered
LETTERS
a href="#CHALLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .">CH"LLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .
. . .Crucial to Class Struggle
U.S. Sponsors Mass Terror In Colombia
a href="#‘Billions For War, $0 For Jobless’">‘B"llions For War, $0 For Jobless’
a href="#Protest ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth">Pr"test ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth
NY Student Walkout Denounces Oil War
Boeing Speed-up Behind Shuttle Blow Up
Students Need To Take Leadership
EDITORIAL: Profit System Dictates Endless Imperialist Wars
A little over 48 hours after President George W. Bush ordered Saddam Hussein, French President Chirac and the whole world to surrender, bombs and missiles began to fall over Baghdad. It is the beginning of a war for control of Iraqi oil. Bush’s thuggish "diplomatic" maneuvering has isolated U.S. imperialism politically in a way unprecedented since the end of World War II. He holed himself up in the Azores, at a U.S. Air Force base in the Atlantic Ocean, with the prime ministers of England and Spain, the only two European powers he can either bribe or intimidate into playing along with his current war scenario. Recently, he suffered humiliating snubs from Turkey, Mexico and Canada, all countries that U.S. rulers used to command at a whim.
Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany and Russia are busy solidifying their own growing anti-U.S. coalition. Workers must draw an important lesson from these antics. Bush may go to war now. But a central law of imperialism is already operating. The nature of the profit system creates rivalries that no deal-making or negotiation can smooth over. These rivalries inevitably lead to war. The U.S. may be top dog now, but the rest of the world’s rulers can’t and won’t tolerate this domination indefinitely. The U.N. Security Council posturing and all the behind-the-scenes diplomatic scrambling merely provide cover for the deadly logic of a system based on the universal drive for maximum profit.
Contradictions Galore Between Washington and the Rest of the World
The threat of a U.S. oil war in Iraq has already sharpened every contradiction between Washington and the rest of the world’s bosses. War will speed this process. The U.S. drive to continue dominating the world through control of Persian Gulf oil aims for full-scale occupation of the Middle East which would produce an ever-widening series of wars, eventually pitting the U.S. against a coalition of the other imperialists. This scenario may take years to unfold; brief periods of relative calm may occur amid the violence, but the general trend is toward war. Nothing can necessarily prevent it. But organizing to smash it once it starts is an entirely different matter.
Now and in the months and years ahead, workers have an excellent opportunity to build our forces. We face a long, difficult march. However, our future as a class remains bright. The march will eventually lead to communist revolution and working-class seizure of political power.
Millions around the world have demonstrated their hatred of U.S. imperialism, Bush and his war plans. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ruefully writes (3/16), "George Bush has managed to lose a global popularity contest to Saddam Hussein." On February 15, in every major city across the U.S., North America, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, "the United States government became the target of what was apparently the largest coordinated one-day popular protest in the history of the world." Polls regularly show that most people consider the U.S. a "greater menace to peace and safety than Iraq." (The New Yorker, 3/17).
Growing mass anger at Bush & Co. provides the raw material for political growth. But that won’t happen all by itself. We must fight to strengthen the mass hatred of imperialism, lead the fight against intensified racism — especially against Arab workers and fascist deportations — and show how the U.S. rulers’ war in Iraq is also a war against workers in the U.S. and worldwide. Every bomb dropped on Iraqi workers is an attack on U.S. workers, both as class brothers and sisters as well the deepening of mass poverty here, increasing unemployment and destroying social services.
We make no distinction among members of the class enemy. We must expose the so-called "lesser-evil" capitalists. Bush is the obvious bad guy. Naturally we should help those who want to fight him, but opposing only the obvious enemy won’t get the job done. Far more dangerous than Bush are the liberal rulers, who pretend that imperialism offers alternatives to war or who scold Bush simply because of his inability to build a coalition for the present war.
Tactical Differences Between Bush Gang and Liberals
The differences between Bush and the liberals are purely tactical. They don’t disagree at all about the need to maintain U.S. dominance as a super-power, and they’re completely united in their desire to monopolize Persian Gulf oil. The differences concern the timing of the war and the extent to which either gang is prepared to bribe the French and Russian rulers with junior-partner Iraqi oil contracts.
For various reasons, Bush wants the war to start now. The liberals worry that an isolated U.S. may achieve easy initial victory in Iraq but will then get bogged down and overextended in a costly occupation with unpredictable dangers. And Iraq is just the beginning. As the Times warns (3/16), U.S. troops are likely to turn next to Iran. Even Iran is just another step in the U.S.’s strategic drive to lock in the entire region’s energy treasure. So, reason the liberals, a few crumbs to Russian and French oil and gas moguls might not be such a bad idea. Bush just wants to bulldoze ahead without the niceties. Barhim Salih, whom Bush seems to have made a leading candidate to head a post-Saddam puppet government, threatens to punish the uncooperative French and Russians by not honoring "oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq." (UPI, 3/14)
On timing, the liberals’ chief mouthpiece, the New York Times editorializes (3/18) on the eve of war, "This page has never wavered in the belief that Mr. Hussein must be disarmed. Our problem is the wrongheaded way this administration has gone about it."
This is liberal capitalist "realism:" debating how and when to wreak havoc on millions of Iraqi workers and their children and to place thousands of young working-class U.S.. British and Iraqi soldiers in harm’s way — all for the sake of the most ruthless, murderous system in world history.
The huge mobilizations against war have shown that masses of people have expressed ideas far more advanced than their leadership. As this war is unleashed, and as sentiment mounts against it, we must build on this and direct it against the entire system.
Bush is just one capitalist among many. The monster has a hundred heads. They must all be cut off. We need communism, not old capitalist poison in new bottles. Only the working class, led by the Progressive Labor Party, can accomplish this task. We’re pursuing these aims in the new anti-war movement. We can do much more. May Day 2003 will give us a good yardstick by which to judge our efforts and their results.
Liberals' Worry: Present Ground Force Not Deadly Enough
At the core of the liberals' discontent with Bush's war plans is their concern about his inadequate preparation for ground war. The New York Times quotes "military experts who are worried" about Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's plan to attack before assembling a full complement of ground forces. At the moment, U.S. forces are more heavily weighted in favor of assault troops - the Nazi-style strike forces Rumsfeld openly envies and admires - than occupation troops. Much of the hardware needed for ground fighting has yet to be unloaded in Kuwait or even shipped from U.S. ports. The Times (3/16) quotes a retired Marine general, Richard I. Neal, as warning: "You need enough forces to fight the war itself and sustain it."
The foregoing should make clear that any of the liberals' hesitation is not due to genuine anti-war sentiment. Just the opposite. With the Times as their mouthpiece, the liberals want the deadliest force possible. Their only gripe with Bush and Rumsfeld is that they're acting too rashly and jeopardizing U.S. imperialism's strategic goals.
'If You Make Me Kill You, It's Your Fault'
The hypocrisy of liberal rulers' supposed "humanitarianism" appears boundless. Remember Clinton's bombing the former Yugoslavia back to the Stone Age in 1999 to "save lives" or the U.S. officer's remark about having to destroy a Vietnamese village "in order to save it?"
The Iraqi people are about to become the latest beneficiaries of this imperialist philanthropy. By now everyone knows that U.S.-imposed sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, since 1991. Now two leading lights at the Council on Foreign Relations, which until recently backed these sanctions to the hilt, have concocted a remarkably twisted rationale for abandoning them. According to Walter Russell Mead and Rachel Bronson, "sanctions exist only because…(of) Saddam Hussein." These "scholars" point out that the containment policy the sanctions supposedly support allows Saddam "to control the political climate of the Middle East….Worse, (it) forces the United States to keep large conventional forces in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region." Worse yet, "Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda because U.S. forces stayed in Saudi Arabia."
Mead and Bronson have a solution to reverse the "[destabilization] of the very countries [containment] aims to protect." The solution is war. Of course, as Mead recognizes, "…war brings with it its own strategic problems and moral challenges."
But what are a few "strategic problems" and moral scruples when there are trillions of dollars in oil profits to win and a world to dominate? "It is time for a change," thunders Mead.
We agree. Our idea of change is called communist revolution.
(Sources: Washington Post, March 12; Newsday, March 15)
Transit Workers Link Cuts to War
CALIFORNIA, March 7 — Last week the city transit board met in closed session to discuss forcing a war contract down the throats of union service attendants and mechanics. Outside, some transit workers held a noisy and spirited demonstration.
The workers leafleted and held signs attacking the U.S. government’s plan to spill the "blood and treasure" of the working class to guarantee their supremacy over Middle East oil. During the demonstration, nearly 100 bus drivers, carrying several thousand passengers, honked their approval of signs beautifully lettered by a worker: "HONK IF YOU THINK TRANSIT MONEY SHOULD FIX BUSES, NOT TANKS"; and, "$32 BILLION TO TURKEY FOR OIL PROFIT WAR, 50 CENTS TO BUS MECHANICS."
Drivers waved for leaflets to take back to their division break rooms. Transit workers boarded buses loaded with workers and made brief speeches linking the transit cuts on workers to increased transit fares in cities nationwide to the $200 billion being spent for imperialist war in the Mid-East. Workers’ power could dump the warmakers and their system.
Unfortunately we ran out of leaflets because we underestimated the receptivity of the drivers and passengers and their contempt for the company. There was nothing small about the disgust these workers have for transit management or, as recent months have shown, the hatred they have for the misery that U.S. imperialism is bringing to the working class worldwide.
Although the demonstration was hastily organized, several transit divisions got leaflets. All morning, workers were asking if the demonstration was happening. As some were preparing to go to it, others scolded them saying, "Hey, get moving; it’s already past time." Although those who were unable to participate because they were on the clock, still had an interest in an organized protest against the company’s war contract.
The next day a worker said that although he’d been off work on the day of the demonstration, he wanted to help organize a larger one in the coming weeks. This time it could involve the whole day-shift after punching out, with signs, leaflets and a bullhorn, to demonstrate our opposition to the rotten contract offer.
This worker questioned whether the transit cuts were really paying for the U.S. tanks in the Iraq war. A good discussion followed about the many ways U.S. imperialism sucks the blood and squanders the treasure of the working class.
Millions Stop Work Worldwide To Protest War
Millions of workers across Europe stopped work for 15 minutes on March 14 to protest a U.S. invasion of Iraq. In Germany, the strikes halted production at three Volkswagen plants and a DaimlerChrysler factory. Italian workers downed tools from Sicily in the south to Turin in the north.
In Australia protesters hounded Prime Minister John Howard, hurling eggs and tomatoes at his limousine as he drove through the southern city of Adelaide. Traffic was brought to a standstill.
In Turkey two dozen activists chained themselves to the wheels of a truck blocking an entrance to the eastern port of Iskenderun, where U.S. forces were unloading equipment.
In Moscow, protesters hung a huge "Veto War" banner on a bridge across the Moscow River.
Anti-war protests also erupted in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand and Japan. And on March 15, millions again protested against the war worldwide. One million marched in Spain alone.
100,000 Workers in Turkey Protest War
Perhaps the most significant working-class action occurred in Ankara, Turkey on March 1, demonstrating what workers' power can accomplish. With the parliament meeting to decide whether or not to allow U.S. troops to invade Iraq from Turkish soil, over 100,000 workers and others from every corner of the country, especially from Kurdish provinces bordering Iraq, jammed the streets near parliament. They represented the 95% opposed to a U.S. war.
Then the strains of the working class anthem, The Internationale, swept through the crowd. This display of working-class might helped force parliament to reject permission for the U.S. to use Turkey as a northern front into Iraq.
The active participation of the world’s workers is crucial to the struggle against imperialist war. We need more actions like these, including work stoppages and walkouts, building to an international general strike. But that requires red leadership to break with the reformist union leaders who consider the imperialists of Paris, Berlin and Moscow as "peacemakers."
a name="Clinton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless"></a>"linton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless
Clinton’s welfare "reform" was supposed to move workers on welfare to seek jobs. But a nasty thing got in the way — capitalism.
The "prosperity" of the 1990s never reached tens of millions, especially those living below the poverty line. But the welfare rolls kept declining. Most who found work ended up in minimum wage jobs. But the inevitable recession/depression of capitalism’s business cycle hit with a vengeance. As the Wall Street Journal said (3/11), the job market is tough for everyone now, but "hiring prospects are even more grim for welfare recipients." This is particularly true in a war economy where the drive to finance the military leads to cuts in vital social services and mass layoffs.
Clinton signed the "reform" law in 1996, mandating state cut-offs for welfare in five years. Meanwhile, in the last two years over two million jobs disappeared. An official of the Saginaw Valley Rehabilitation Center (Mich.) that tries to help welfare recipients said, "We couldn’t bribe an employer into hiring right now."
With unemployment approaching 20 million (see CHALLENGE, 3/5), former welfare recipients who are now excluded from benefits must compete with laid-off workers with more experience, who have fewer child-care problems and more access to transportation. The early corporate "backers" of welfare-to-work policies have disappeared as capitalism’s economic crisis catches up with them. United Airlines dropped out in 2000 and is now in bankruptcy proceedings.
Since Ohio’s welfare cutoff in 2000, nearly 16,000 families have been slashed from state welfare rolls, while nearly 200,000 jobs have been lost in the state. "Even if they had job skills right now," said a senior researcher at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, "what we’d then have is better-educated unemployed people."
Those like Jesse Jackson and the liberal reformers who PUSH education as the solution to poverty and unemployment are essentially apologists for capitalism. Karl Marx pointed out over 150 years ago that the profit system must have a "reserve army of the unemployed," even if one has a decent education. Capitalism breeds unemployment. And because of racism, black and Latin suffer a jobless rate twice that of white workers. Only the communist society that Marx advocated can solve unemployment and the other horrors of capitalism. Without profits and with workers in control, we well collectively reap all that we produce and distribute it according to need.
Union Deals With Gov. and Bosses Cut Heart Out of Health Care System
NEW YORK CITY, March 11 — On March 3, hundreds of workers from Local 1199, SEIU, met here to plan a fight-back against Gov. Pataki’s proposals to slash $2 billion from the health care industry, mostly in Medicaid funding.
The union leadership had endorsed Pataki in the last election in exchange for small raises workers received in their last union contract. Proposed layoffs will wipe away these increases. The love affair between the union leadership and Pataki was short lived. Now politicians, from NYC Mayor Bloomberg to county leaders across the state, are demanding Albany rein in Medicaid costs. Actually Pataki could solve the budget shortfall by raising taxes on the rich and closing corporate tax loopholes. But that runs counter to bosses’ profits.
As one worker declared, "The politicians and bosses must be held accountable for any workers’ deaths and layoffs as a result of these cuts."
A massive rally is planned for April 1 in Albany, the state capital. A coalition with hospital management to lobby the politicians against the cuts is being formed. At the meeting, several workers opposed uniting with hospital management and relying on politicians. This would mislead workers to depend on their class enemies, the hospital bosses, politicians and the rich who all represent capitalism’s profit system.
The bosses have already started cutting jobs, including 200 after the closing of Caledonia Hospital. The bosses always find new ways to increase profits, even without these cuts — heavier workloads on an already over-burdened and short-staffed workforce; cross-training more workers; and shortening patients’ hospital stays.
Pataki is resisting taxing the rich, saying it will "drive jobs out of the state." But his proposals will drive thousands of workers onto the unemployment lines. The proposed cuts will cause misery, pain and suffering for the working class. For every dollar Albany cuts from Medicaid, Washington would cut $2.
Right now Medicaid assists those who need it most: the disabled, elderly and poor families. Medicaid cuts will drastically reduce hospital reimbursements, jeopardizing thousands of hospital jobs, eliminating rehabilitation services and reducing home-care services.
These cuts are racist. NYC’s health care workers are mostly black and Latin. These workers already suffer a high unemployment rate. With still higher joblessness and less health services, more diseases will spread through these communities.
The State’s 50,000 home health care workers make between $8 and $10 per hour, barely enough to survive. Pataki’s plan will wreak havoc with their lives and devastate the sick, the elderly and the disabled for whom they care.
All this is due to U.S. capitalism and is intensified by the Bush administration’s budget proposals and war plans, causing huge cuts in social services and other vital programs. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of workers’ taxes are spent for a war to maintain control of Mid-Eastern oil, which will ravage the health of, and kill, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers and children.
Capitalism’s racist health system cannot meet the needs of workers and patients nor provide preventative measures against illness. Only under communism — with no bosses, politicians or rich rulers — can the working class live long, healthy, productive lives.
a name="Campus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus">">"ampus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus
Millions of workers worldwide have joined marches protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Petitions have been signed, phone networks developed, teach-ins held. It’s important that PLP members be among those workers, spreading the winning ideas of revolutionary communism, to combat the cynicism when marching and chanting do not stop Bush & Co. from murdering masses of Iraqis and others.
In the largest union on our West Coast campus, some rank-and-file leaders wrote an anti-war resolution in January, to convince the local to take a firm stand against the war. Although a lower leadership body passed it, it lost in the Executive Board. They said they had to maintain neutrality since not everyone in the union was against the war. Some workers argued there’s no neutrality on this issue. If you don’t actively oppose the war, then you’re complicit in supporting it.
Some members were angry because there hadn’t been more support from our union leadership. One nominated a Party member for an opening on the Executive Council. Although he was hesitant, the Party club decided that, whether he won or lost, this offered an opportunity to raise issues the union might otherwise ignore.
The nominations and voting occurred at a small leadership meeting later that week. The two candidates were asked to speak. The PL member raised broader issues — the fight against racism, police brutality, for immigrant rights, etc. He received 40% of the votes. A number of people congratulated him, saying," We’ll do better next time."
This confidence of his co-workers has enabled him to organize an anti-war caucus in the union, which scheduled its second meeting in mid-March. This is an opportunity to discuss many political issues and move workers further left. It’s important to make clear that more than marching is needed to stop the imperialists’ war drive. War is one of the main ways they maintain their wretched system.
We must ensure that caucus members read and discuss CHALLENGE. As capitalism exposes itself, workers will become increasingly disgusted, which will help them grasp communist ideas.
a name="Rally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts">">"ally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts
LOS ANGELES, March 17 — "Did you know they’re laying off all our night-time counselors and may cancel all summer classes?" a student exclaimed. "We need all the help we can get!"
Students and faculty in the community colleges here are rallying on March 28 to protest the devastating budget cuts proposed by Governor Gray Davis. The $274 million cut from the 2002-2003 budget has already cancelled hundreds of classes, dumped part-time instructors and closed out thousands of students from courses needed for graduation. Funding for 2003-2004 will be even lower, while student fees would more than double.
These attacks are racist, sexist, and anti-working class because community college students have a heavy proportion of:
• Recent immigrants in ESL programs;
• Black, Latino and white working class students trying to make it to a university in the face of a racist education they received in school
•those seeking a trade to become a skilled worker or paraprofessional;
• Youth who can’t afford to go directly to a four-year college; and,
• Women returning to school while raising a family.
Their aspirations are under attack from a capitalist system intent on solving the bosses’ budget crisis on the backs of the working class. The state budget crisis is real and likely to worsen. Federal funds for education are drying up as $1.9 TRILLION finances a war to destroy, occupy and control Iraq. California plans to borrow as much as $11 million in June, partly to make payments on another $12.5 billion borrowed last year. Energy price gouging and a $5.27 billion prison-building spree have worsened conditions still further. In fact the prison budget is the ONLY one that Davis is NOT planning to cut! Nor will he release thousands of black and Latin youth who shouldn’t be in prison in the first place, or declare a moratorium on debt payments to bankers in order to maintain workers’ education and health care. As fascist "homeland security" intensifies, and U.S. imperialism is increasingly challenged by rival imperialists, this crisis will deepen.
The current union leadership denounces the budget cuts in marches and press conferences. But teachers and students need to link the cuts to the war for oil and to prison growth, organizing a serious fight against them.
The Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges say the cuts should be "shared more equally" between the different levels of education. But that’s self-defeating, giving in to the cuts. We need to build unity among all teachers, students and parents against these attacks, at all educational levels. We must place the blame for the cuts squarely on Davis (a Democrat) as well as on Congress and Bush, on a capitalist system hell-bent on war and building a police state. Teachers should not fight each other over where to cut education. No level should be slashed to fuel the war machine.
For the first time many are stepping forward as active participants, organizers and leaders in this struggle. Some are starting to question the very nature of a system that cannot meet their needs but instead builds more prisons and sends their friends to a bosses’ war for oil.
Students Angry Over Oil War, School Cutbacks
HYATTSVILLE, MD., March 5 — Over 800 students at Northwestern High School crowded into the auditorium for a teach-in against war in Iraq. Entire classes and many individual students joined the call for a "Student Strike against the War." Energy was high as students streamed into a slide show about worldwide protests, with music from Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, and Tupac Shakur. ("Stand Up for Your Rights," "Talkin’ About a Revolution," "Changes")
Speakers explained that the U.S. invasion aims to control Iraq’s oil fields for U.S. corporate profit and control of oil distribution to China and Japan. Students were angry over cutbacks in the school’s health center, books and teachers’ salaries. One speaker said millions were being spent for war every 10 seconds. The local county council chairman said he was against this war and that students here, not Bush’s children, would be fighting in it. Two students read a poem and were cheered when saying "Stop feeding the rich, start feeding the poor!" Half the auditorium was ringed with 5-foot-tall pictures of Iraqi people. Hundreds joined the last speaker in chanting, "Move Bush! Get Out the Way, Get Out the Way Bush!"
Students had been passing out red armbands for a week and had originally planned a walkout and picketing. However, they agreed to the principal’s offer of the auditorium instead. This was partly due to threats of suspension and arrests if they walked out. Then, on the day of the event he refused to allow outside speakers, except for the Democratic councilman who tried to direct the students’ militancy toward the ballot box.
The students were upset but well prepared. The event reached many more students than expected. Students saw they could rely on themselves instead of "experts." They also learned that, as the struggle intensifies, administrators are not to be trusted. The next day they found that their absence was unexcused, a lesson for the future.
Elsewhere in the Washington area 300 Blair H.S. students walked out when Tom Ridge came to offer money for "Homeland Security." Other students staged smaller protests led by Peace and Justice groups which emphasized moralistic and pacifist views.
Northwestern students have a sharper and more militant analysis, in great part because of connections with PLP. The most advanced students and experienced adults must develop closer ties and start study groups among the many who’ve come forward in this anti-war movement. We need to strengthen student understanding of the necessity for communist revolution and class struggle and smash imperialist warmakers once and for all.
Political Anti-War Message Rings A Bell Among Many GIs
In the Vietnam War, over 500,000 GI’s deserted, refusing to fight Vietnamese workers and peasants. Using grenades, they "fragged" their officers who ordered them into combat. Sailors sabotaged six aircraft carriers, forcing them back to the U.S. This is what created the Vietnam Syndrome, leading a Marine colonel/historian to describe it as "The Collapse of the U.S. Army." Many GI’s in today’s "professional army" can be won to oppose imperialist war. Witness the following from the N.Y. Daily News, March 16.
Al Jaber Air Base, Kuwait — Many of the U.S. troops poised for battle here would give peace a chance if they had a choice. Doubts about going to war can be heard openly in conversations among the troops at night….
Several military chaplains…said airmen, sailors, Marines and soldiers…have shared the same misgivings in private sessions….The kick-butt attitude appears to be dominant. But even those most eager for combat tend to allow that their disagreeing buddies have valid points about what they sarcastically call a "do-over war," meaning that they would be finishing a job left undone by then-President George Bush in 1991.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Barber, a Catholic chaplain….told of a fighter pilot who sought counsel "not just about his personal fears, but about the prospect of killing innocent civilians. And then there’s that Iraqi conscript who bears us no ill will. His crime would be that he was born Iraqi…."
Barber said the political anti-war message…[has] resonated with many….Even some of the officers are wondering — if it was up to them, they wouldn’t have this war.
Transit Workers Hail Student Solidarity Against War
March 5 — "The budget cuts are screwing us all — and it’s all because of this damn war for oil," exclaimed a transit worker to several students from a state university in California. He said his son attends our college and is suffering from the recent tuition increase. He explained that he used to feel lucky to have his transit job because he was recently laid off from Boeing due to cutbacks. But now the bosses are trying to jam a horrible contract down transit workers’ throats because of the budget cuts.
Another transit worker welcomed us, saying, "We’re glad you came to pass out anti-war flyers because many of us are also against the war."
Earlier we rallied at a busy intersection near our campus, displaying banners and chanting anti-war slogans as thousands of cars passed on their way to work and school. Many, including truck drivers, honked their horns in support. The rally’s energy and positive reception inspired us to march through campus, shouting, "1,2,3,4, we don’t want your oil war! 5,6,7,8, don’t recruit us for your hate!" We marched through buildings and past classrooms encouraging students to walk out to protest the upcoming war. Several students and professors joined as we strode to the ROTC building.
Moving several students to take the anti-war sentiments to the transit workers was an advance, leading to ideas about how to really block imperialist war. We discussed the power workers have to stop military production, about how a transit strike could encourage dockworkers (angry about their contract) to strike against the war. Dockers could follow their brother workers in England and refuse to load military equipment onto ships bound for the Persian Gulf. We discussed the need to stand in solidarity with striking workers everywhere.
Rallies and marches are useful in showing our dissent, but they will not stop imperialist war. Doing the hard, day-to-day organizing of workers and working-class students against the capitalist system will, in the long run, lead to revolution and end imperialist war. Connecting the war on Iraq and the budget cuts in health care, education and jobs to the bosses’ relentless drive for profit, can help workers understand they have no interest in maintaining this system.
Oppose Liberal Pol Preaching War Draft
I belong to a church in a large city. Recently the pastors invited a liberal congressman to address the congregation about his "anti-war work in Congress" and his bill to "re-instate the draft as an anti-war tactic." CNN filmed his appearance.
The Congressman reviewed his opposition to the war on Iraq, outlining familiar Democratic Party themes regarding timing and planning. He even said Iraq’s oil is the main reason for war because people here are "over-consumers of oil" and because the U.S. wants to control oil prices. He said the U.S. should get on Korea’s case instead because they’re "the really bad guys." He then painted a picture of Bush as a "born again" Christian who isn’t thinking right, a bit loony.
His championed the draft because most soldiers volunteer for economic reasons, making the military disproportionately black, Latin and poor — indisputably true. He paraded his credentials as a Civil Rights leader and a Korean War veteran. Riding on the back of the anti-war movement, he congratulated the efforts of "the people’s movement" and said we shouldn’t give up on "our great country."
He was slick, clearly showing how the Democratic Party is positioning itself at the head of the anti-war movement, in order to control and direct it ideologically. He was applauded, but challenged as well. When a friend and I held up a "Stop War on Iraq" banner, the pastor admonished us that this was "a house of worship." We held it up anyway.
During the question and answer period several people opposed the draft proposal as an anti-war tactic. Another said that historically the elite never served. Still another said the brains behind Bush’s policy were often Democrats. I said that, "For any administration the conquest of oil and empire defines U.S. political strategy for world domination. The Jan. 5 New York Times magazine section published an article by Michael Ignatieff entitled, ‘The American Empire: Get Used to It.’ Today it’s Iraq. Tomorrow may be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and the Philippines. And eventually larger conflict with competing empires, European and Asian, raising the specter of World War III. I have two questions: 1) Do you really think the elite will serve? 2) Won’t the draft serve U.S. strategy as it seeks a larger pool of working-class soldiers it needs not only to pursue its far-flung empire but also to militarize U.S. society under Homeland Security?"
The Congressman ignored my questions, saying people should keep doing what they’re doing and as well as register to vote and participate in elections.
Afterwards a friend told me we need to "re-define patriotism." That led to a discussion about how it’s impossible to be patriotic to the capitalist system. Other friends there are in a study group that’s discussing imperialism, the role of the liberals in the anti-war movement and the necessity for revolution as the only way to end imperialist war. The strengths and weaknesses of socialism historically and what communism will mean, have been front and center. These friends heard and discussed my questions before the event.
Over half the members of the church are against the war; the majority of these are committed to liberal ideology. Some of us have participated together in forums, marches and conferences over the past two years. We have plans for what to do when the war starts. Little by little I’m introducing a communist analysis and making a few good friends. The opportunities are growing, but patience and persistence are still required.
a name="Youth Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth">">"outh Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth
SEATTLE, WA, March 9 — In the last several months there have been the most massive demonstrations — against war — taking place in the streets here since the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting. Our youth club has been out in the rain distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES at least once or twice a month since early January, leading to new contacts or friends joining our meetings. We are trying to make the most of our potential. But we also understand the limits of these demonstrations. They haven’t stopped the push towards war and never will as long as the bosses do not face an international working class under the leadership of an organized party fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat. As the growing anti-war movement gets dragged further under the thumb of the liberal Democrats, our work in the schools and on the job is the main tool to fight imperialist wars.
In line with this, we are organizing study groups with our friends and inside mass organizations. For example, one member has arranged to give two talks on her campus to a local chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MeCha), entitled War in Iraq and The History of Communism. Another comrade is active in an anti-war organization in his neighborhood. Other youth have attended our club meetings from both of these groups as well as from comrades’ circles of friends.
The only way we can win is to discuss our ideas with as many people as possible. But quality is primary. Our base of friends must develop a comprehensive understanding of capitalism. Without it the numbers we attract mean very little. Our club itself has grown. This gives us more hope that we will be able to influence the millions demonstrating in the streets.
Berkeley Anti-War Marchers Reach Out To Workers
BERKELEY, CA, March 5 — In solidarity with students around the country, PLP members participated in a lunchtime walkout held at UCal-Berkeley today. At least half of the 150 protesters were high school students who braved suspension to be there. They added real energy, making up for the lackluster leadership of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition who said that two walkouts — the second set for the day the bombing starts — were "too much." Fortunately these high school students felt differently.
PLP members and friends struggled to build a larger event and attempted to include workers, especially campus workers. After the rally, we marched to various campus buildings, including Cory Hall where the crowd chanted, "University of mass destruction! Shut it down! Shut it down!" A speaker explained that the Electronics Research Lab was given $60 million dollars in military grants for weapons designs.
During the march we sold CHALLENGE, created signs, distributed flyers and had productive talks with college and high school students. Our anti-war, anti-imperialist message was well received and brought a number of contacts.
We’re trying to join students and workers in the anti-war movement, bringing workers to the anti-war meetings and anti-war students to the workplaces. In classes we’ve called on students to reach out to campus workers and to those in industries like transit, indicating that a successful anti-war movement must base itself on the tremendous power workers represent. Workers are definitely open to these messages, as seen at a recent social workers’ conference organized for social justice.
We’re also linking the fight against imperialist war with an attack on openly fascist elements. Students recently disrupted a forum entitled, "Why the Left Hates America" held by the Young Conservatives Foundation. By broadening the politics of the anti-war movement beyond the narrow vision of "peace" under capitalism, we can bring our friends to realize that revolution is the logical solution to these inter-related struggles.
D.C. Marchers Hear Class Analysis Exposing ALL Bosses
WASHINGTON, DC, March 15—Today, about 50,000 people marched against the war in Iraq. A small number of Party members and friends organized a rally on the edge of the protest to provide an alternative to the reformist and opportunist misleadership of the main march. We pointed out that a life-long commitment to revolutionary struggle was needed because imperialism creates endless wars, not just this one. We pointed out that, had Gore taken office, we would most likely still be in the same situation. We also criticized the notion that France was moral. (Quite a few people held signs saying "Vive La France" because Chirac, France’s leader, has attacked Bush for his invasion plans). We stated that the French bosses just wanted as big a piece of the oil action as they could get, and if the US occupies Iraq, they will be cut out and once again a vassal of the U.S. So it’s all about battles among imperialists—we have no "friends in high places" in any imperialist country! With struggle, we will see more signs like the one that said, "Soldiers turn your guns around!"
Lots of marchers picked up our revolutionary chants, gave us strong support, and received over 100 Challenges and 2500 leaflets. Several contacts were made for future struggle. And it will intensify!
Youth Raise Red Banners
LOS ANGELES, March 15 — Constant rain did not dampen the spirits of marchers here, protesting the war in Iraq. Youth in the PLP contingent waved red banners of workers’ revolutionary communist internationalism throughout the march. When they chanted "Same Enemy, Same Fight! Workers of the World Unite!" and "Las Luchas Obreras no Tienen Fronteras," workers in the adjacent union contingents joined in.
UAW Opposes Bush, Not Imperialism
DETROIT, MI, March 16 — On Feb. 3, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 600’s General Council, representing 30,000 active and retired members at the Ford Rouge and other plants, voted unanimously to oppose war on Iraq.
Over 120 local unions have passed resolutions against the war, including UAW 1700, 600, 909 and 1981.On Feb. 22, Local 600 hosted an anti-war forum, attended by about 200 people. One speaker tied the war drive to "third world" conditions in Detroit. A UAW-DaimlerChrysler-Jeep member described how the bosses are using the war atmosphere to justify forced overtime.
UAW Vice Pres. for Organizing, Bob King asked why Detroit labor couldn’t turn out more members for anti-war events. The answer? They don’t want to. Located in the largest concentration of Arab workers and students anywhere outside the Middle East, the unions have mobilized very few, even though most oppose the war. Only 20 black workers attended the Feb. 22 forum.
The union leaders and liberal politicians have a tiger by the tail trying to control the mass movement against the war. They want to rush to the head of the march and lead it to the voting booths and the Democratic Party. By mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers, they risk unleashing strikes and job actions that might oppose the imperialist plans of the liberals and open up workers to communist leadership.
The union leaders are against Bush, not the ruling class. They’re cynically using mass anti-war sentiment to win working-class acceptance of fascist Homeland Security and even larger, more deadly wars down the road. The UAW backs "joint company-union" programs that help U.S. auto bosses fight the "foreign" competition. They organize auto parts-supplier plants while abandoning the right to strike. They have failed to organize a single "foreign" auto assembly "transplant." Straight-jacketed by U.S. nationalism and class collaboration, they won’t mobilize too much of anything.
The international anti-war movement presents an opportunity to seriously challenge the misleaders’ patriotic, pro-capitalist outlook. Supposing autoworkers from Toronto to Argentina staged a General Strike against the invasion of Iraq and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas? Daimler workers from Germany to Brazil could help organize Mercedes "transplants" in Mississippi. "Workers of the World, Unite!" could become a mass outlook. CHALLENGE and bold May Day activities can push things ahead.
Demonstration Against KKKop
Community residents protest the flagrantly unjustified, racist shooting of Desmond ("Man-Man") Ray by cop Charles Ramseur. Ray, a 22-year-old African-American youth, is paralyzed for life after Ramseur shot him in the back. People are signing petitions demanding the firing and indictment of Ramseur. The People’s Coalition for Police Accountability in Prince George’s County, MD, [adjoining the District of Columbia] is organizing the grassroots campaign. Ramseur has shot four people in recent years and has escaped any punishment.
CIA Trained Saddam To Be Fascist Killer
The Saddam Hussein that the Bush gang is painting as evil personified is a creature of four U.S. administrations, Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, and Republicans Reagan and Bush, Sr. The Saddam Hussein we now know didn’t "suddenly" appear in 1991. His roots go back to the Kennedy era.
In 1958, General Abdel Karim Kassem ousted a pro-Western monarchy in Iraq. During that decade, the Communist Party of Iraq (CPI) had become arguably the largest mass organization in the Middle East. With a multi-ethnic membership and leadership of Arabs, Kurds and Jews, and a mass base among oil workers, the CPI organized huge general strikes and might have taken power. But it backed off under its "united front" with the "progressive" wing of bosses opposed to British and U.S. imperialism, which led to its downfall. Thousands were killed by the same generals and bosses it had sought unity with.
By 1961 Kassem was "Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s, threatening Western oil interests…[and] talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East….Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed." ("A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making" by Roger Morris, New York Times, 3/14)
By 1963, Kennedy had the CIA set up shop in Kuwait from which it radioed orders to, and organized rebels in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq itself, including arming Kurdish insurgents, to overthrow Kassem. (All this was disclosed by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and by David Wise, an authority on the CIA.)
On Feb. 8, 1963, CIA-organized forces staged a coup, backed by Britain and Israel. The Kennedy administration "immediately befriended the successor regime. ‘Almost certainly a gain for our side,’" Kennedy National Security aide Robert Komer wrote JFK on the day of the coup. (Morris, NYT)
Then, says Morris, "As its instrument, the CIA had chosen the…anti-communist Baath Party….Among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein" [then 25]…. The 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists supplied by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers… — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself…participated."
The U.S. "also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon…Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business in Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq."
Then in 1968, in-fighting within this regime led to still another CIA-backed coup, during the Johnson administration, enabling a Baathist general to seize control and bring Saddam Hussein next to the seat of power.
In the 1980s, during the Iraq-Iran war, the U.S.backed Saddam— the U.S. had lost Iran when its puppet, the Shah, had been overthown in 1979. They sent Iraq’s dictator arms and chemical and biological materials (see CHALLENGE, 3/5, and the UN weapons inspectors’ report). These formed the basis of his celebrated Weapons of Mass Destruction that the Bush gang is so "upset" about. But we should be very clear: Saddam Hussein, a fascist dictator, is an enemy of the Iraqi and international working class. The CIA taught Saddam how to kill workers and Reds. He deserves to be smashed — along with U.S. imperialism — by Iraqi workers and workers everywhere.
The "icing" on the U.S.-backed "cake" came in 1990 when Bush, Sr.’s ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam that any dispute with Kuwait was "an internal matter," of no concern to the U.S., giving him the green light to invade. Of course, U.S. rulers soon decided that Saddam’s control of Kuwaiti oil fields might make him too much of a threat to U.S. "friend" Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil producer, so for the first time in three decades, the U.S. reversed gears on the "evil" it had created.
Concludes Morris, ‘In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals….If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace."
Why, on the eve of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, has the New York Times printed such an exposé of the U.S. creation of Saddam? Perhaps it’s their way of telling the Bush crowd they’d better be prepared because they may be opening up a Pandora’s box of uncontrolled opposition to U.S. imperialism worldwide.
a name=""Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"">">"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"
This was the headline in the March 19 Wall Street Journal.
"For two centuries, foreign powers have been conquering Mideast lands for their own purposes….but in nearly every incursion…have endured a raft of unintended consequences. From Napoleon’s drive into Egypt through Britain’s rule of Iraq in the 1920s to Israel’s march into Lebanon in 1982, Middle East nations have tempted conquerors only to send them reeling….
"[Entering Egypt] said Napoleon…I have come to restore your rights!....Napoleon’s real goals involved France’s colonial rivalry with Britain….The French left within three years….but lost both money and men from its Egyptian adventure….
"Britain’s troops landed in what’s now Iraq in 1914…’bursting with confidence in an easy and early victory’…wrote Lawrence of Arabia….Instead it took four years for Britain, with vastly superior arms, to conquer all of Iraq….British troops killed 6,000 to 10,000 Iraqis putting down a revolt…in 1920….To suppress later rebellions by Iraqi Kurds, the British invented the technique of strafing civilians from the air…"
British Prime Minister Anthony Eden lost his post when his attempt to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956 failed.
Then the Israelis "surged into Lebanon in 1982 to crush Palestinian guerrillas….But as Ariel Sharon…pushed to the outskirts of Beirut [and] killed thousands of civilians, the offensive stalled amid furious criticism" and eventually Israel was forced to withdraw.
When Reagan sent the Marines into Lebanon in 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck killed 300 of them in one shot. Reagan also withdrew.
Israeli military historian Col. Meir Pial predicts that, "The longer the Americans stay [in Iraq], the deeper they will find themselves in the mud."
a name=""Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered">">"Don’t Drink From A Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered
The Soviet Union was the only country that gave aid and manpower to the Spanish Republic’s 1936-1939 fight against the fascist armies of General Francisco Franco, who got massive aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. All the "Allies" — Great Britain, France and the rest of Europe, plus the USA — tacitly helped Franco and the fascists by refusing to aid the Republic. The Communist International organized thousands of workers worldwide to join the fight against fascism in Spain — the "International Brigades."
Capitalist and Trotskyite historians have spread many lies about this massive act of proletarian internationalism. From some discussion among friends, the following example of anti-communist lies was discovered.
In his book Modern Times (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), reactionary historian Paul Johnson writes:
"During the rest of 1937 and well into 1938, many thousands of POUM (Party Of United Marxists) members, and indeed other Leftists of all descriptions, were executed or tortured to death in Communist prisons. They included a large number of foreigners, such as Trotsky’s former secretary, Erwin Wolff, the Austrian socialist Kurt Landau, the British journalist ‘Bob’ Smilie and a former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, José Robles. Among those who just managed to escape were Orwell and Willy Brandt, the future German Chancellor." [note 87] pp. 334-335.
Note 87, p. 739 reads: "Thomas, op.cit., 705-6; Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (London 1980), 224-6." According to note 48 to the same chapter, "Thomas" is Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961 edition.
Here is what Thomas really says:
"Although Nin was the only member of the POUM’s leadership to be killed, a number of international sympathizers with it also died in mysterious circumstances: these included Erwin Wolf, half-Czech, half-German, another ex-secretary of Trotsky, who was kidnapped in Barcelona, and never seen again; the Austrian socialist, Kurt Landau; Marc Rhein, the journalist son of the old Menshevik leader, Rafael Abramovich (Abramovich himself made two fruitless journeys to Spain to discover what had happened); José Robles, sometime lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, perhaps killed because he had been interpreter to the disgraced General Berzin; and, perhaps, ‘Bob’ Smilie, the English journalist, son of the miners’ leader of that name, who had come to Spain on behalf of the British Independent Labour party and died apparently of appendicitis, in a prison to which he had been sent without justification."
In short, according to Thomas, (a) nothing about "thousands"; (b) no evidence that Wolf, Landau, Rhein, Robles, or Smillie had been killed by Communists. Wolf disappeared. Rhein’s father failed to clarify his son’s disappearance. Robles and Smillie were "perhaps" killed – though then we learn Smillie "died apparently of appendicitis, in a prison."
The only things said on Crick, pp. 224-226, of any relevance to Johnson’s quotation are the following:
"On returning to the front from leave, Orwell had learned that another member of the International Labor Party contingent, Bob Smillie (the grandson of the great Scottish miners’ leader), had been arrested after coming back to Spain from a propaganda tour in England. Smillie was in prison in Valencia (and he was to die there, though whether from acute appendicitis or murdered by the Communists has never been cleared up)." (p. 224)
"They [Orwell and two friends, McNair and Cottman] tried to persuade Brandt to come with them to England but he refused.
According to Crick, then, (a) Smillie’s death "has never been cleared up." No evidence is given for the allusion to possible Communist murder; (b) nothing is said about Brandt having "just managed to escape," or being under any special danger at all.
Every single statement and allegation in this paragraph of Johnson’s is a fabrication, unsupported by the very sources — both highly anti-communist sources — to which he refers in his footnote. Further research by others has confirmed that there is no evidence at all that those mentioned by Johnson — Wolf, Landau, Robles, or Smillie — were killed by Communists.
LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!
a name="CHALLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . ."></">CH"LLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .
Can we doubt Iraq will be bombed and invaded? By the time you read this it may have begun. In our interfaith coalition we’re trying to battle the illusion that imperial butchery can be prevented merely by demonstrations. We also want to plan a vigorous response as soon as the war moves to the next level (it’s being going on since January, 1991).
On Ash Wednesday (beginning the Christian season of reflection and growth called Lent) we’re picketing our liberal Democratic Party warmongering Senator’s offices. One poster reads, "Does the concept ‘Recall Vote’ get your attention?" This is one proposed organizing tool for the coming war.
Once a month my parish is holding a "Study-Action Evening." Last month was "Savage Inequalities," a discussion of how racism lies at the basis of all oppression and imperialist conquest. This month, "Is the U.S. the New Evil Empire" will try to understand how the Iraqi slaughter is not just for cheap domestic oil consumption, but also for economic, political and military world domination. We’re reading, "The Grand Chessboard," Democratic policy advisor Brzezinski’s road map for U.S. imperialist design. We will plan class struggle at every session and review the progress of one of our new members against racist gentrification in a neighboring building.
The main thing is the Party is growing, modestly. We have regular club meetings and discuss CHALLENGE editorials and articles. I select 10 or so difficult and political "key words" in the editorial for each meeting. We learn them and discuss how they are tied to the Party’s line. Then we take turns reading and discussing the editorial, paragraph by paragraph. Little by little, members and friends are developing a broader and deeper understanding of the Party’s ideas. They are seeing CHALLENGE as an organizing tool for political struggle and circulating it at mass anti-war actions. One member takes an additional paper for her brother who is a truck driver. We are scheduling our next meeting at her apartment to suit his schedule.
We also discuss how to raise the Party’s ideas in a mass-distributed church journal. Our last interfaith conference expanded the circulation by 300 and a national conference produced an additional 150 addresses of people who do anti-racist organizing in inner city parishes around the country.
I also met with my old college roommate who I thought would never organize anything. Sharpening world events have led him to become active in our denominational national peace fellowship. He’s writing a piece for the journal debating me about whether UN Security Council approval means anything amid U.S. imperialist war. Even this pacifist lawyer can be won closer to PL! The horrors of U.S. empire building are opening up new opportunities in churches and communities to recruit new comrades!
Gnawing away in struggle, Red Churchmouse
. . .Crucial to Class Struggle
I want to add one point to the excellent article "Challenge Crucial to Revolutionary Consciousness" (3/19). It says:
"The coming war is both a great danger and a greater opportunity. Millions of workers and young people opposing U.S. imperialism can be won to becoming revolutionary communists. In order to win them, we must have a mass readership for CHALLENGE. Every anti-war rally should be viewed as another chance to spread mass communist consciousness through CHALLENGE. This struggle will be won or lost based on the commitment and understanding of workers and our young comrades and friends. Their efforts will make the difference."
The importance of mobilizing the Party, and particularly the young comrades, to distribute CHALLENGE at mass anti-war rallies can’t be overstated. Many current PLP leaders were trained through our activity in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the rebellions against racist police brutality when PLP and our allies in Canada and other areas grew by 15 or 20 times in size. At one point during the 1970s we were selling 100,000 CHALLENGES per month, mostly in street sales.
One reason we grew significantly then was because of our activity in many struggles which linked imperialist war to local issues. Today we also use another important method of increasing the mass local readership of CHALLENGE — distribution among our friends within the many mass organizations that our members are part of. Increasing these efforts could enable our Party to have a profound effect on the millions now in motion against the war. What if multi-racial groups of scores of workers under our political leadership, chanting our slogans, began challenging the liberal and phony "left" leadership of the anti-war movement? This could influence hundreds of thousands of honest anti-war forces worldwide.
We estimate there is a greater openness to our ideas than at any time in the recent past. We must take advantage of this situation, pushing harder for regular CHALLENGE discussion groups or PLP study groups. This could lead to more commitment by our friends and new members to the mass distribution of CHALLENGE. In turn, this could lead to greater worldwide growth of PLP.
Longtime Reader
U.S. Sponsors Mass Terror In Colombia
A peasant in Santa Ana (Arauquita) had his home burned to the ground by an anti-guerrilla army group which accused him of being a guerrilla. "The soldiers told us to get out of the way, that the house was going to be set afire," said a neighbor who fled the area with her little baby. "They threw gasoline and everything blew up." The burnt-out peasant said he fears denouncing the soldiers because, "If we do they accuse us of being a guerrilla sympathizer and treat us very badly. If we don’t keep quiet one might end up dead. We barely earn enough to eat and buy medicine for malaria, which is widespread here."
Two months ago an entire family, including two young children, had their heads cut off. This is part of a mass uprooting of poor families by land-grabbing cattle owners and drug-dealing landlords, backed by fascist paramilitary gangs who murder those who don’t move.
Some months ago the army surrounded Saravena and jailed 5,000 people for "investigation." One hundred were kept in jail suspected of "subversion." "It resembled a World War II movie showing fascist atrocities committed by the Nazis," said a local resident.
In the Comuna 13 district in Medellin, the army launched two military operations with U.S.-supplied tanks and helicopter gunships, killing 50 and jailing thousands as "suspected guerrillas." Many families were forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind. When they returned they found their homes turned into barracks for the paramilitary death squads.
In poor working-class neighborhoods of Bogota, Cali and many other cities, a so-called "census" is accompanied by military raids, arrests and mass dissapearances. The army claims to have carried out over 50,000 "voluntary raids." But everyone knows what could happen if you don’t accept it "voluntarily."
This mass terror has occurred for decades, but lately it’s been even more intense due to the fascist "Fight Against Terrorism" of Bush’s buddy, President Alvaro Uribe. Generals are ordered to produce "results," putting the entire population under siege — fascism under the guise of "protecting democracy from terrorism." On top of that, workers are suffering from the worldwide capitalist crisis with mounting unemployment and hunger.
PLP considers this local war part of the international class war imperialists are waging against workers to redivide the world’s resources and wealth. We must unite the world’s workers and allies to turn this imperialist war into a revolutionary upsurge to destroy capitalism and build a communist society where workers rule.
Red Worker, Colombia
a name="‘Billions For War, $0 For Jobless’"></">‘B"llions For War, $0 For Jobless’
On January 18, a group of people from our high school and other schools participated in the Washington, D.C. protest against a war in Iraq and to fight for equality. We met tens of thousands willing to protest, more than we could imagine — African-Americans, Caucasians, Muslims, Latino, Jewish people and others. People carried different signs, such as: "War is not the solution"; "Profit prevents peace"; "You have billions for war but $0 for the jobless."
U.S. imperialism wants war for control of oil profits. Workers and their families suffer in Iraq as well as in the U,S., from the soldiers who fight the wars, to the many thousands of innocent working-class people who will die. Billions of these dollars should be used for poor people, workers, immigrants and the homeless. This imperialist war could lead to World War III and a possible nuclear war.
We will continue protesting and studying this issue to learn more about changing the world. We need a new system and new leaders.
The NYC Revolutionary Youth Knights
a name="Protest ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth"></">Pr"test ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth
In February, some teachers at our high school who were very concerned about war in Iraq organized an assembly for several classes to discuss it. Speakers represent the views of Bush, Saddam Hussein and the "no war" position. A student friend who’d been to some anti-war protests was invited to present her view. She said students had to evaluate what they saw at these protests — just blaming Bush or supporting war if the U.N. backed it, didn’t make sense. On the other hand, slogans like, "No workers’ blood for oil profits," and "A war budget leaves every child behind," made lots of sense. She concluded by calling for a student peace club that would involve more students in the movement.
One friend asked why nobody else had mentioned oil. Then everybody jumped to explain about oil, but they’d already been exposed. One teacher disagreed with the "no war" speaker calling soldiers and ROTC members "trained killers." Someone said soldiers are also thinking people who are trying to figure out what to do. She gave several examples from World War I and the Vietnam War of soldiers fraternizing with the so-called "enemy" and refusing their officers’ orders. She said many of us have friends and family members in the military and that we should start a pen pal club with them, because they must be really having a hard time now.
After this assembly we organized the peace club. On March 5, when many schools had strikes and walk-outs, we had a picket line before school with 35 students and 15 teachers. Some of us went together to the March 15 demonstration and are planning more activities. We know from watching Bush on TV that by the time CHALLENGE comes out the war will probably be on. We will also have had more protests against it.
Some people probably thought that if the protests were big enough, there wouldn’t be a war. They can see by now it didn’t happen that way. We have a job to do within the student club at our school and in the movement in general to help others see that wars for profits are inevitable under capitalism — that it’s not just Bush but the whole capitalist system — and that we can and must organize a revolutionary movement to put an end to capitalist wars for oil profits. The sooner the better.
A student comrade
NY Student Walkout Denounces Oil War
I attended the March 5 youth anti-war rally in New York City with two dozen students from my school. It was very exciting. Thousands of high school students from around the city converged on Union Square. They had either refused to go to school that day or walked out of dozens of high schools in order to be at the noon-time rally. Scores of students — black, Latino, Asian and white — eloquently denounced the planned invasion of Iraq, calling it "a war for oil, a war for profits."
Speaker after speaker explained how this imperialist war would not only kill our brothers and sisters in Iraq, but also would take money from our already under-funded schools. City University students are being threatened with a 40% tuition increase. Huge budget cuts loom for NYC public schools. Yet the ruling class is willing to commit hundreds of billions of tax dollars to seize Iraq and control Persian Gulf oil. Many speakers said that the cops who threaten to arrest students if they try to march have a long history of brutalizing and murdering black and Latino workers like Amadou Diallo.
In my school, students organized for the rally by distributing sign-up sheets asking students to commit themselves to attending. The halls were buzzing with talk about "striking against the war." An Anti-War Faculty Committee will have its first meeting on March 12, a day when U.S. Labor Against The War has called for workplace anti-war activities.
At the rally we passed out copies of the PLP pamphlet against the war. It got a great reception. Thousands of students now consider themselves anti-war activists and are serious about learning more about the roots of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. They’re open to PLP’s explanation of imperialist war as a natural outgrowth of capitalism, and to working toward the day when that system is part of our study of ancient history.
High School Red
Boeing Speed-up Behind Shuttle Blow Up
CHALLENGE was right — again. A Feb. 19 front-page article on the Columbia Shuttle disaster said the explosion was caused by the drive for maximum profits and that the whole shuttle program was a military operation. "That’s the nature of capitalism in this day and age," it concluded, "everything is militarized for the endless wars the U.S. imperialists are planning in order to rule the world."
Now the Washington Post (3/3) admits as much in an article entitled "NASA’s Culture of Certainty: Debate Was Muffled On Risks to Shuttle."
"The agency [NASA] unquestioningly accepted [a fatally flawed] technical analyses [on damage sustained during lift-off] done by a contractor with a huge financial stake in the shuttle’s success."
Boeing was that contractor. Those of us working in Boeing’s commercial plants are well aware of the company’s plans to implement "self-inspection" — a process riddled with conflicts of interest designed to get the parts produced faster. You could call it the "NASA inspection plan comes to commercial aircraft production."
Even more revealing, Boeing CEO Phil Condit told CNN’s Lou Dobbs that the company has no intention of exiting the space business—no matter what the cost in lives or money. "From the military side (my emphasis), we are absolutely convinced that space-based [activities] are a critical element of our strategy and we have to be there," said Condit.
He’s worried about the competition. For instance, Greece’s Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou called for "European companies [to] develop the sort of scale they need to take on the American defense industry." The European Union Commission has responded, "just before the possible outbreak of a Middle East war, by approving plans to set up a pan-European armaments [procurement] agency," similar to DARPA, the U.S. counterpart. (Dow Jones, 3/10) The bosses know more is at stake here than market share.
The International Association of Machinists is goose-stepping right behind the imperialists. Last month our union leadership railroaded resolutions in favor of "missile defense." This month they maneuvered to block a resolution against the Iraq war signed by more than a dozen rank-and-file workers — including many Vietnam veterans.
Millions are looking for an alternative to the bosses’ press and its war propaganda. Let’s offer them CHALLENGE! You can’t do better!
Boeing worker
Students Need To Take Leadership
About 1,500 people at my college attended a March 5 teach-in against the war. Afterwards, 300 joined a rally called by Books Not Bombs, a student anti-war group. There, high school students from throughout the city spoke about risking suspension or other punishments for walking out of class. Then we marched, chanting, "ExxonMobil, BP, Shell - Take Your War and Go to Hell!" These events exposed the bosses’ lie that there’s overwhelming support for this war. But the events on my campus exposed some critical weaknesses in the anti-war movement.
For example, , the main speakers at our teach-in were professors; students mostly just introduced them. One student even said he "wasn’t here to talk about politics. That’s what the professors are here for."
Capitalist ideology discourages all workers and students, especially youth, from analyzing politics critically. Students are directed to sit passively while "knowledge" is handed down to them from teachers. Communists believe all workers are equally capable of analyzing political situations and should be urged to do so. Youth should not only be encouraged to understand politics, but also to take positions of leadership within organizations to put those political ideas into action. At a meeting of the teach-in organizers, I suggested that students lead the next event. Many students agreed, but there will be more struggles to convince my classmates that we can discuss politics without a professor.
Another political weakness was the group’s lack of political ideology. We’re only against "this war." This led to having an anti-war leaflet on our literature table written by the racist Pat Buchanan. He opposes the war not because it’s an imperialist war for control of oil, but because it involves America getting involved with "alien societies." In the same leaflet Buchanan calls the Vietnam War a "heroic struggle, which bought ten years of freedom for Southeast Asia."
The struggle against this opportunism led to the creation of a committee to work on the group’s "line." This is an advance because it’s made political ideology more of a central idea. Our continued work in the group will attempt to bring up ideas of multi-racial unity and communist revolution.
A Comrade
Vietnam Vets Know the Score
I had coffee with two Vietnam vets recently at an anti-war forum at the medical center where I work. One of them got pissed off and walked out after somebody covered up the US flag. These guys had a pretty good analysis on the Iraq war, exposing one government lie after another. "Can you believe Bush and Cheney already let a contract to some company to rebuild Iraq? The damn war hasn’t even started yet!" "Who got it, Haliburton?" I asked. We all had a good laugh.
They’d been in Vietnam during the Tet offensive, about the time I was finishing my college pre-med courses. I told them how I started to understand the economic cause of that war and got swept up in the anti-war and anti-racist movements sprouting everywhere. I told them the part of the movement that had impressed me most was the Worker Student Alliance within SDS. "They didn’t tell people to dodge the draft. They said if you were really against the war you should join the army and help organize rebellions."
"Yeah, I know," said the one who had been pissed about the flag. He seemed to have the most understanding of all the political/economic connections. His friend introduced him as the person in charge of research for their veterans’ group. "I got into it with one of those SDS guys and beat him up," he said After pausing he added, "I’d like to see those guys again. I would tell them they were right."
"Funny thing. I still get their newspaper," I said. "Here’s my copy. I just finished reading it." We talked a little more about things we could do together in the weeks ahead, then shook hands and went our separate ways.
They were in Vietnam and I was in college 35 years ago. History moves at its own pace, but it never stands still. Every person and every situation is a mass of contradictions, but some aspect is primary. A long-range outlook is essential, but so is a sense of urgency. I plan to see those guys again real soon. It seems the pace of events is speeding up, so we had better move with it.
Red Doctor
- Capitalism Spawns Endless Wars
Liberals: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing - Are Liberals Rooting for Another 9/11 to Build Support for War and A Police State?
- U.S. Rulers Seen As World's Greatest Terrorists
- CHALLENGE Crucial To Mass
Revolutionary Consciousness - PL Parent, Teacher Oppose Bosses' Pledge
- Communist Politics Greeted at N.California Anti-War Rallies
- No Blood for Petrodollars or Euros
- Did U.S. SET GULF WAR OIL FIRES IN KUWAIT?
- Union Helps Bethlehem Steal Retirees' Benefits
- U.N Report Proves U.S. and `Allies' Gave Iraq Weapons Technology
- Workers Need to Dump Chavez and Pro-Coup Bosses
- Latin America Shows Failure of Capitalism
- Workers Block War Trains
Across Italy - Hospital Strike Proves Need For Red Ideas
- Capitalist Medicine Is One Big Malpractice
- East Coast PLP School Builds For A Communist World
- YALE": ENEMY OF WORKERS WORLDWIDE
- WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
LETTERS - RED EYE ON THE NEWS
- Redo `Survivor' with pols?
- In a democracy, if you're starving, it's not famine!
- No checks for neediest
- Bankrupt? Rob pensions!
- No jobs for U.S. youth
- Immigrant roundup: why?
- Diplomat quits over war
- U.S. giant needed `illegals'
- Things look different when you're colonized
- No good guys in oil war
- French love oil, not peace
Capitalism Spawns Endless Wars
Liberals: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
Every opportunity has its share of danger. The burgeoning anti-war movement is no exception. Mass hatred of Bush is good but it doesn't go far enough. The Bush "hawks" represent only one viewpoint among U.S. rulers. The liberals who oppose their timing for the next war represent the other. The liberals constitute the main political danger because they offer sugar-coated poison instead of Bush's clearly-labeled bottle.
The difference is purely tactical. It is crucial to expose this fact within the mass movement. It can win new recruits to communism and begin to change the relationship of forces in the class struggle.
CHALLENGE has shown that the mainstream liberals, led by the New York Times, and the key liberal think-tanks, led by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, fully endorse the idea that the U.S. must rule the world. They agree on the need to dominate Persian Gulf oil and to seize the Iraqi oil fields. They back "homeland security," which is just a disguise for a fascist police state to discipline the working class and prevent mass rebellion when the going gets tough. No strategic differences separate them and the Bush crowd.
Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's Director for Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council from 1999-2001, writes in a new book about war in Iraq: "We have to do it right," by which he means that, among other needs, the U.S. must secure the support of key Middle Eastern states and its European and Asian allies and commit enough resources to establish a stable post-war Iraq. Without that commitment, Pollack says an invasion could create as many problems as it solves.
The liberals fear that by launching his war now, Bush is taking a gamble that may explode in his face and severely compromise U.S. imperialism's strategic goals. Their main objections are:
*Bush seems to think that the war will end quickly and easily. The liberals warn that controlling the Iraqi oilfields will require an occupying army with no end in sight and will mean huge expense and unforeseeable casualties, for which Bush hasn't adequately prepared a political base. "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to haunt the liberals.
*Bush arrogantly thumbs his nose at the international capitalist pecking order established after World War II and acts as though U.S. imperialism's present military superiority gives it unlimited political maneuverability. The liberals counter that Iraq is just the first step in securing the entire Middle East and that this job requires making deals to give significant junior partnerships to oil rivals like the French and Russians. The liberals worry that in the short run, an isolated U.S. will overextend itself in the Persian Gulf, and that in the long run, Bush's policies will encourage the Europeans to develop their own military with a view toward a potential confrontation with the U.S. As Philip Gordon writes in Foreign Affairs (Jan.-Feb. 2003): "With a collective population of 377 million and a GDP of some $8.5 trillion, the member states of the European Union certainly have the potential to develop formidable military power..."
*Bush's economic policy calls for making war and at the same time granting tax cuts for his wealthy buddies. The liberals point to the potential costs of the Iraq war alone (somewhere between $60 and $200 billion) and attack Bush for flubbing the opportunity to install "homeland security" fascism. For example, they complain that Bush has barely found 10% of the $3 billion needed to militarize U.S. commercial ports.
*Bush points to polls that favor his Iraq war plans. The liberals counter that "95 percent of the country" doesn't want this war (Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 3/2) and worry openly about the potential for social unrest if Bush goes ahead without a firmly established "homeland security" system.
This is the strategic viewpoint of the liberals who are now attempting to mislead the burgeoning anti-war movement. They want an oil war to maintain U.S. supremacy, but they want it under more favorable conditions than Bush has prepared. If we follow these liberal bosses, they will lead us over a cliff. Communists have always maintained that under the profit system, no such thing as a "lesser evil" boss exists. We must fight to smash all of them.
Are Liberals Rooting for Another 9/11 to Build Support for War and A Police State?
U.S. Coast Guard Commander Stephen E. Flynn is also a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. Updating a year-old article in Foreign Affairs entitled "America the Vulnerable," he writes: "Much to my dismay, it likely will take a second catastrophic attack on U.S. soil to inspire a serious reexamination of the needs and means of homeland security."
U.S. Rulers Seen As World's Greatest Terrorists
Bush still seems hell-bent on launching war in Iraq very soon. Even when Saddam Hussein complies with aspects of the UN weapons inspection farce -- as he appeared to do at the end of February -- the Bush gang counters by adding a new, unmeetable demand. The latest "rule change" is Bush's requirement that Saddam either surrender power or go into exile to avoid war. Maybe Bush's next move will be to insist that Saddam commit suicide.
But as CHALLENGE has frequently pointed out, Bush isn't the only war maker among U.S. bosses. They all agree in essence that the U.S. must continue to rule the world and that control of Iraqi oil remains crucial to that goal. The real division between Bush and the liberals within the U.S. ruling class concerns the best timing and conditions for launching this war.
On February 15 and 16, a new development caught the bosses napping. Millions in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East (including Israel), Russia, Africa, Asia, Australasia and Latin America -- and Antarctica! -- took to the streets in massive demonstrations opposing Bush's war plan. These marches had an air of spontaneous militancy that went far beyond the pacifism and class collaboration pushed by their leadership. Everywhere hatred of Bush and of U.S. imperialism made itself heard loud and clear. Unlike the Vietnam War period, when the protest movement gathered steam only after the fighting and bloodshed had reached a certain point, mass opposition to Desert Storm II is already a fact of life. Many workers, students, intellectuals and others now view U.S. imperialism as the world's greatest terrorist threat.
This consciousness isn't enough to overthrow U.S. imperialism or to stop its war plans, but it presents the international working class and our Party with our best opportunity for growth in many years. Whenever the rulers launch their war for Iraqi oil, millions of people will oppose it. Many of them will look toward leadership that explains the true causes of such wars and that offers a lasting solution. Only the Progressive Labor Party can provide these. Only communists can show that the profit system inevitably leads to war and that nothing short of communist revolution can provide a viable alternative.
History has shown one must take the long view, especially in a period such as the present one when class struggle clearly favors the bosses. Fighting to advance a communist line and to sharpen class struggle remains the same, regardless of circumstances. The international working class has endured a devastating defeat in the collapse of the old communist movement. Dialectical materialism teaches one to remain objective and accept the idea that in difficult periods, even hard work may yield only meager results. But things change. Even the worst defeats can be overcome, and the new worldwide upsurge in anti-war, anti-imperialist sentiment proves this point.
A new situation appears to be developing. The soil in which to plant communist ideas is becoming more fertile. In the shops and communities, on the campuses and in the schools and in the military, we can see signs of a new openness to communist concepts and tactics. But positive change doesn't fall from the sky. Nothing good comes without great effort. We still have our work cut out for us. The road ahead remains long and uphill. But whenever this war starts, we will have an important opportunity to fight for our communist ideas, to increase the circulation of CHALLENGE, to influence the mass movement away from the liberal enemy within and, above all, to win recruits to the PLP. This is the spirit in which we must approach the home stretch of building for May Day 2003.
CHALLENGE Crucial To Mass
Revolutionary Consciousness
The mass outpouring of anti-war marchers on Feb. 15 offers growing opportunity for building a revolutionary communist movement. While millions marched around the world, one important aspect of some of the U.S. marches was the openness to PLP and CHALLENGE. Many veterans of the anti-Vietnam War movement greeted the Party as a long lost friend. Many young marchers showed an interest in revolutionary communist leadership. While our voice is small now, our message is powerful. That message can grow on the rising tide of more CHALLENGE readers and distributors.
CHALLENGE shows that a fighting Party exists in the factories and mills, on the campuses and schools, in the barracks and communities, that enjoys the support of our co-workers, classmates, and others. It shows that the working class is fighting back. It exposes the role of the misleaders of the mass organizations, explains the infighting of the bosses, and shows how the struggle among the major imperialists is leading to a third world war. CHALLENGE is a ray of light in a sea of political darkness.
The coming war is both a great danger and a greater opportunity. Millions of workers and young people opposing U.S. imperialism can be won to becoming revolutionary communists. In order to win them, we must have a mass readership for CHALLENGE. Every anti-war rally should be viewed as another chance to spread mass communist consciousness through CHALLENGE. This struggle will be won or lost based on the commitment and understanding of workers and our young comrades and friends. Their efforts will make the difference.
Gaining confidence in themselves, the Party and the masses that comes from advancing communist revolution in a bold open way, will help workers and youth emerge as revolutionary communist leaders for the long haul and have a profound impact on the direction of this new anti-war movement.
PL Parent, Teacher Oppose Bosses' Pledge
BRONX, NY, March 3 -- Every day at 8:40 A.M. in an elementary school here one student instructs everyone (over the intercom) to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance as well as some patriotic song. Recently an Assistant Principal (AP) discovered that a PLP teacher does not make his students do this. The AP was furious. Both she and the principal not only wanted to force him to stand but also to ask all his students to stand as well. This is a Pre-Kindergarten class of four-year olds!
Despite the administration's fascist tactics, the PL'er didn't back down. He charged them with breaking their own rules by forcing him to stand. They said they would notify the "proper authorities" and get back to him.
Two hours after their interrogation, the AP realized she was wrong and might have to apologize. But the apology was not accepted. The PL'er spread news of this attack to other teachers and to 17 parents of the students in his classroom. All of the 17 agreed with the teacher allowing the students to do as they wished during the pledge. Eight parents disagreed with the pledge altogether and didn't want their children to stand at all.
But the dispute wasn't over. The administration said the teacher could refuse to stand for the pledge in his classroom, but his students would be escorted to the Pre-Kindergarten class next door to recite the pledge with those students. They're concentrating on feeding patriotism to the students, but a large group of resisting teachers would pose a real problem!
Some parents were unhappy with this "solution" but feared taking action, but one overcame her fear. During the winter break she attended our communist school's camping trip and joined PLP. Communist ideas are indeed powerful.
Upon her return she wrote a sharp letter attacking the administration for its fascist tactics, demanding that the students be returned to the PL'er's classroom and that no child be pressured to pledge to any flag.
Her action emboldened the other parents. Some are signing the letter. One parent asked, "Where's a pen? I'll sign. I don't pledge to this flag!" This letter will be handed to the principal, representing unity of parents and teachers against the administration's tactics of drumming nationalist propaganda into the minds of young children.
Meanwhile the teacher is building support among the faculty. Many are steady CHALLENGE readers. One told the PL'er, "Don't worry, we got your back!"
We must be confident that the working class will fight fascism. Anger towards capitalism will prevail over fear if given bold leadership from PLP comrades and friends. We pledge allegiance to the red flag of the working class!
Communist Politics Greeted at N.California Anti-War Rallies
SACRAMENTO/SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 24 -- PLP members in Northern California brought a much-needed dose of communist politics to anti-war rallies in these two cities on Feb. 15-16. Peace marches alone can never end imperialist wars for resources. We must organize workers, students and soldiers to wield their power and end capitalism. Only then will we experience genuine peace.
Our message was well-received, evident by the unusually large number of contacts we made at the 5,000-person rally at the state capitol. Results were similar in San Francisco, where PLP's ideas were spread to this march of nearly 150,000. Altogether, the Party distributed nearly 8,000 flyers and several hundred CHALLENGES with the special anti-war supplement.
The liberal leadership of Peace Action and a coalition called United for Peace scorned our class-based, internationalist analysis. These anti-communist liberal misleaders actually called the cops to shut down our bullhorn-powered revolutionary message. Some of our friends were particularly shocked at this, They saw first-hand how the importance and power of our revolutionary ideas are like no other at these marches, as contrasted to the misleaders' control of the rallies' political content.
In organizing for these marches, our Bay Area collective made qualitative advances. Participation in a Party study-action group led friends to actively join the Party's contingent at that weekend's events, including one recent student recruit who actively led it. Our collective involved them in producing Party literature and brought a powerful message to the masses.
These advances strengthen our Party, develop our line, and demonstrate that our revolutionary communist politics have a place in the hearts and minds of workers, students and soldiers alike!
No Blood for Petrodollars or Euros
Oil is not just another commodity. Major industries, armies, transportation and society overall cannot run without it. Most of the world's oil (and the cheapest to produce) is in the Middle East. The power that controls that oil has a major advantage over rival bosses. Oil is also a major source of profits and economic power.
Currently anyone buying crude oil must pay OPEC or any oil producer in dollars. Therefore, such buyers must accumulate dollars to pay for their oil. To do that they must exchange their own currency for dollars or demand dollars for what they themselves produce. Thus, the dollar dominates world trade; it is the world's reserve currency.
Several decades ago, the U.S. became a debtor country. It is now the world's biggest debtor nation, owing $2.7 trillion. It then prints more dollars which are bought by currency traders to build dollar reserves. The U.S. uses these funds to pay off the $2 billion a day required to satisfy the debt. In a sense, U.S. bosses are getting a "free ride" through its exclusive control over printing dollars. Since this is the currency in which oil is traded -- petrodollars -- the U.S. has an edge over its rivals both in economic terms as well as having a stranglehold over the distribution of oil.
The world economic crisis exposed by the dot.com collapse made others bosses wary of playing second fiddle to the U.S. forever. The law of inter-imperialist rivalry (each group of bosses must fight for maximum profits at the expense of rival bosses) impelled the European Union to create the Euro to challenge the dollar. The value of the Euro has surpassed the value of the dollar by 17%. Three years ago Iraq began demanding Euros instead of dollars for its oil exports. Iran is contemplating a similar move. As countries are forced to accumulate Euros instead of dollars, the value of the Euro will rise and the dollar will fall even further. This could conceivably induce the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) -- Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc. -- to ask for Euros for their oil. Oil-buying countries would have to stock Euros in their central banks to buy their oil. The more Euros are used to purchase oil -- the world's most important and expensive commodity -- the less would oil be traded in dollars. The value of the dollar would drop even further. U.S. corporations and consumers would have to shell out more dollars to purchase goods. This could severely affect the U.S. economy.
All this is one reason why U.S. bosses want to seize Iraq and its oil fields, second largest reserves worldwide. Not only would its military muscle control Iraq and force its oil (controlled by ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, etc.) to be paid for with dollars instead of Euros, but it would solidify U.S. control in the Mid-East region, the world's largest source of oil. It would also help U.S rulers maintain the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
European Imperialists Are No Peace-makers
This is one important reason why EU members France and Germany -- two leading traders in Euros -- are fighting a U.S. invasion of Iraq and control of its oil. Some of the leaders of the anti-war movement are trying to turn it into an anti-U.S., pro-European imperialism force. This is a deadly mistake; the cause of war is not Bush or Blair, but capitalism/imperialism.
Russia, which is siding with the Europeans in this battle and is the world's second largest oil exporter, is considering the Euro as the currency to buy some of its oil. It's an economic fight between petrodollars and petroeuros.
Further pressure on the U.S. is coming from China, which wants its currency, the yuan, to become Asia's reserve currency. Even Venezuela has put pressure on petrodollars by negotiating bi-lateral deals with 13 countries to pay for its oil in goods -- barter -- not in dollars. All this reduces the amount of dollars used in world trade, further reducing its value, and nullifying part of the "free ride" the U.S. gets in printing dollars to pay its huge trade deficit.
Thus do capitalists and imperialists fight for maximum profits over the dead bodies of millions of workers. U.S. rivals will strive to equal U.S. military power. U.S. bosses will try mightily to prevent this. We have no crystal ball, but the 21st Century promises to mirror the 20th: constant wars.
Shouldn't such a system be destroyed? Join the communist PLP now.
Did U.S. SET GULF WAR OIL FIRES IN KUWAIT?
Remember those images in the U.S. media of huge fires covering the oil fields of Kuwait during the first Gulf War? How U.S. rulers declared that Iraq was responsible? Now Gulf War veterans are charging that these fires were set by U.S. forces.
A press release from the American Gulf War Veterans Association (AGWVA) says that, "For the past six years the AGWVA have received numerous reports from veterans stating that US forces were responsible for setting the oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War....
"One veteran has now stepped forward and given a detailed account of how he and others in special teams moved forward of the front (behind enemy lines ahead of US forces) and then set charges on the well heads. `We were mustered into the briefing tent at which point a gentleman whom I first had thought to be an American began to brief us on the operation. I was concerned because he was not wearing a US uniform and insignias.'
"The information provided over a series of meetings with this veteran corroborates reports from other veterans who are totally unconnected with this individual."
The AGWVA also reports that, "Of the nearly 700,000 participants in the Persian Gulf war, over 279,000 have now come forward stating they are sick as a result of their service in Desert Storm. They are not just sick, they are dying (Senate Report 103-900)." (For more information, see Gulfwarvets.com or e-mail to
For nearly a decade the U.S. military denied there was any such illness as "Gulf War Syndrome." Many of the cases were later traced to vaccines administered to U.S. troops.
Union Helps Bethlehem Steal Retirees' Benefits
The bankrupt Bethlehem Steel Corp. will terminate health care and life insurance benefits for 95,000 retired workers and their dependents on March 31. It's part of a swindle enabling the International Steel Group (ISG) to take over Bethlehem's assets while shedding liabilities such as workers' health care, insurance and pensions. ISG -- now the largest integrated steel producer in North America -- will acquire a major cost-cutting advantage against their European and Japanese rivals, on the backs of U.S. steelworkers. And the United Steel Workers union played a "central role" in paving this road to workers' ruin.
This development is a classic example of how capitalism's inherent drive for maximum profits, combined with fascism in the guise of "democracy," screws workers. After World War II, the Japanese and European steel barons rebuilt their bombed out industry with more modern technology while U.S. steel bosses held onto their aging mills. This put the latter at a big competitive disadvantage.
Since capitalists must drive for maximum profits to stay in business, U.S. steel bosses decided they would have to regain some competitive edge. While some small non-union producers built more modern mills, the larger unionized companies moved to break their unionized workforces in order to invest in the new technology. Rather than engage in openly fascist union-busting, in classic capitalist style they used their laws and their courts to "democratically" do the job for them.
First, many of the larger ones merged with, or absorbed, smaller companies, killing tens of thousands of jobs in the process. Then over the past five years 33 steel companies -- including major manufacturers like LTV, Wheeling-Pittsburgh, Bethlehem and National -- declared bankruptcy. To help them out of bankruptcy, the courts would then O.K. the steel barons' breaking of their union contracts and imposition of drastic cuts or outright elimination of jobs, benefits and pensions -- union-busting accomplished all "according to law," but a fascist attack on the workers nonetheless.
Central to this operation are Wall Street creations like ISG, an investment outfit that specializes in buying bankrupt companies by collecting their assets and dumping their liabilities -- mainly workers' benefits. This latest assault on retired steelworkers' health coverage and pensions at Bethlehem was described by its CEO as a "dramatic turnaround...made possible by the innovative [!] new labor agreement with the USWA...and by President Bush's courageous steel trade program."
What was the union's role in all this? In favoring Bethlehem's sale to ISG and the bankruptcy court's O.K. of killing the workers' benefits, USWA president Leo Girard declared, "We are greatly encouraged by this decision because it represents another major stride towards the humane [!] consolidation of the American steel industry that our union is playing a central role in bringing about. Our goal has been to assure that [our senior members can retire], confident that their pension will provide the security and dignity that a lifetime of hard work has earned them." [!]
The social fascist union leader Gerard's "central role" is to guarantee that the consolidation of the steel industry proceeds with no strikes or disruptions as union contracts are voided -- "democratically" -- and workers are screwed out of their jobs, health benefits and pensions after a "lifetime of hard work." All to enable the steel bosses to compete with their rivals for maximum profits in the global market. What else is new for the "labor lieutenants of capital"?
U.N Report Proves U.S. and `Allies' Gave Iraq Weapons Technology
Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign countries that supplied Saddam Hussein with technology for its nuclear, chemical, biological and missile weapons programs from 1975 onward. They include 24 U.S. corporations, 80 from Germany and others from Britain, France and China. The U.S. equipment-suppliers for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction included Honeywell, Dupont, Hewlett Packard, Eastman Kodak, Bechtel, Sperry Corp., Rockwell and Unisys as well as the foremost U.S. nuclear laboratories at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia. In addition, nearly 50 subsidiaries of foreign countries operated its arms cooperation with Iraq from the U.S.
This occurred at a time when Iraq was considered a bulwark against the spread of Iran's influence in the Arab world. It covered the period of Saddam's rise to power and during his worst crimes.
The information was revealed in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung and reprinted in the UK Independent (12/18). The Berlin paper got hold of a copy of the Iraqi document and reported that, "From about 1975 onwards, these companies...supplied entire complexes, building elements, basic materials and technical know-how...to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction" as well as "rockets and complete conventional weapons systems."
When the Iraqi report first appeared, the U.S. immediately pulled out all stops to get first access and to shut down its widespread dissemination. They censored part of the original dossier before it was handed to the five permanent Security Council members. It then edited the copies given two weeks later to the other 10 countries in the Council.
The U.S. rulers' phony justification for its invasion of Iraq -- in actuality to control its vast oil resources and through that the Middle East itself -- is based on that country's possession of weapons of mass destruction, the very weapons for which the U.S. and others readily supplied the technology. All's fair in imperialist war.
Workers Need to Dump Chavez and Pro-Coup Bosses
As CHALLENGE reported (3/5), the most recent attempt by the old ruling class to dump Venezuela's President Chavez failed, especially because most workers and youth hate the rightwing forces. Such sentiments emerged in a recent march in Caracas honoring the February, 1989, "El Caracazo," a mass rebellion by tens of thousands opposing austerity measures imposed by Social-Democrat President Carlos Andres Perez under orders of the International Monetary Fund. The Army crushed the uprising, slaughtering hundreds (some claim 3,000). Pérez was tried for stealing billions while President. Now in exile, he helps lead the anti-Chavez forces.
The current fight is over control of the PDVSA (one of the world's largest oil companies) and the huge oil and gas deposits in the Orinoco River. Some of the old rulers want to reap the bonanza from totally privatizing PDVSA and the oil wealth in general. Chavez represents those bosses who prefer to keep the oil wealth mostly under government control, or at least diversify it to get a better cut from different imperialists instead of solely dealing with the U.S.
But another reason for Chavez remaining in power is his promise to the U.S. government and to a section of the local bosses to control the angry workers. He also agreed to guarantee the flow of oil to the U.S. (Venezuelan crude represents 12% of all U.S. imports). So even if some in the Bush clique would prefer to dump Chavez right now, as the U.S. prepares to attack Iraq some stability is needed in this oil-producing country.
Chavez has also allowed U.S. planes to use Venezuelan air space to spy on the anti-government guerrillas in Colombia. The U.S. has already sent hundreds of troops and "advisers" to protect the Occidental Petroleum oil pipeline in Colombia near the northern border with Venezuela.
But while millions of workers and youth have demonstrated against the old bosses, they still believe Chavez will solve their problems. The fake "leftists" in Venezuela help build that illusion by supporting Chavez as the new Messiah. But history has shown that capitalism (of any kind) will never solve workers' most basic problems. Despite Chavez's pro-worker rhetoric, the basic problems suffered by workers -- mass unemployment, poverty, no health care -- remain.
Workers and their allies must shatter their illusions in Chavez. The most revolutionary workers and youth should take advantage of the current situation to win workers to the long, hard fight for the only lasting solution: workers' power. Venezuela's militant and massive working class has shown they're capable of running industries (without the supervisors and bosses whose recent 62-day lockout failed to topple Chavez). That's an aspect of communism: workers produce all wealth in society and can run everything. Let's make that a total reality by building a mass revolutionary communist Party.
Latin America Shows Failure of Capitalism
Latin America is burning -- from the long, militant medical workers and professionals in El Salvador against privatization, to the militant teachers' strike in Guatemala for better working conditions and more money for public education, to the recent rebellion in Bolivia.
Millions have witnessed the total failure of free-market capitalism. The New York Times is now reporting -- in an article (3/2) entitled "Once Secure, Argentines Now Lack Food and Hope" -- what regular Challenge readers have known for a long time: "19 children have died of malnutrition [in Tucuman province]....Hunger in this nation that has more cattle than people is now rampant, especially among the most vulnerable, the very young and the very old."
In Bolivia, when the government tried to raise taxes last month among workers who are now more impoverished than ever, a mass rebellion erupted. Dozens were killed. All over the region, the masses "are questioning not only the old oligarchies, but also free market policies... At the same time, governments are suffering from a world-wide economic slump,stiff foreign debts and tight budgets..The region is plagued by `a crisis of governability, legitimacy and authority' says Gabriel Marcel, a national security expert at the U.S. Army War College." (Wall Street Journal, 2/24)
But while the masses are looking for revolutionary answers, there is no revolutionary leadership. The task of the most militant workers and youth is to forge this leadership.
Workers Block War Trains
Across Italy
"No ships carrying weapons or war material destined for the Gulf will sail from Italian ports," declared the head of Italy's largest transport union. Prime Minister Berlusconi is backing U.S. bosses and allowing the U.S. Army to pass through Italy on its way to the Middle East. But the dockers' union has vowed to "boycott the transport of weapons, using strike action if necessary." This declaration reflects intense rank-and-file pressure since the dock union leadership is one of the most right-wing in the country. But after the two million-strong anti-war demonstration in Rome on Feb. 15, militancy is rising. The metal workers' union has already stated it will call a general strike the day a war starts.
On Feb. 21, war convoys were chase throughout northeast Italy as they kept switching routes to avoid anti-war blockades. Since then thousands of demonstrators have been stopping the "Trains of Death" as they attempt to transport war materials to the U.S. military base at Camp Derby, near Pisa. The camp is one of the largest ammunition depots in Europe,which supplied key support in the 1991 Gulf War and in Clinton's onslaught in the Balkans. While eight Death Trains had been slated to arrive at the base by Feb.27, only four had made it due to people blocking tracks. Demonstrations and train blockages have occurred in at least 13 cities all across Italy, including Florence, Verona, Bologna and Magdalena. A national demonstration converging on Camp Derby is scheduled for March 3-8. On March 1, blockages were aimed at 22 remaining trains.
Hospital Strike Proves Need For Red Ideas
"You're not just fighting the hospital, you're fighting the whole system!" declared several members of a Local 1199 union meeting at a large East Coast teaching hospital. Never was this more true than during a recent Teamsters Union strike, which was completely sabotaged by the 1199 leadership -- yet another example of why workers need communist leadership.
The Teamsters struck when the hospital bosses moved to double the co-pay for their health benefits, from $33 to $66 every two weeks. After the strike's first week, the hospital obtained an injunction limiting picketing. From then on cops were parked at the main location where strikers had tried to block incoming trucks. By the end of the second week, the Teamsters agreed to most of the increase the bosses wanted. Even worse, these concessions set a pattern for the 1,000 1199C members who have contract negotiations in July and incited greater attacks on the non-union workers and on patient care.
The strike's greatest weakness was its lack of a revolutionary communist working-class outlook. How could less than 100 Teamsters shut down a major hospital without uniting with the other 6000-7000 workers?
The strike's strategy typified a union functioning within the confines of capitalism: narrowly trying to protect "our own" conditions, obeying the bosses' laws while seeking the "protection" of "sympathetic" politicians and judges who've received contributions from union political action committees. This strategy was doomed to fail and demoralizes workers for future battles. Healthcare workers especially must focus on the bosses' attacks on patient care, not restricting themselves to narrow trade union demands.
Communist Outlook Would Be Different
First, understanding the need for communist revolution would free workers from a reformist merry-go-round of reformist struggles whose gains the bosses can always reverse with their control of state power, used to enforce their profit system. A primary goal of every strike must be advancing the fight for communist revolution, an outlook particularly needed in this era of war and fascism.
The main attack on the Teamsters stems from the capitalist class as a whole slashing healthcare budgets to finance their oil wars. And the need for maximum profits drives every boss to cut labor costs in order to compete locally and globally.
Secondly, a key communist strategy is to spread every fight throughout the working class. Here, the Teamsters must unite with the 1,000 1199 members. Such potential unity worries the hospital bosses, which is why they banned sick or vacation days during the strike, which might give strike supporters leeway in refusing to cross picket lines.
Working-class unity also worried the pro-capitalist union leaders of 1199C. They tried to squash it at an emergency delegates' meeting on the strike's third day, telling them there was nothing 1199 could do to help the strikers, that they shouldn't even stand by the Teamsters picket lines. The Local 1199 leadership warned the delegates that they "were on their own" if they got in trouble for supporting the strikers.
But some of the 1199 delegates and members defied these edicts. In the strike's first week. a group marched on the office of a hospital vice-president, forcing the bosses to pay workers sick and vacation time during the walkout. Some 1199 union delegates also found ways to prevent the crossing of picket lines for hours at a time, as well as giving tactical information and leadership and collecting donations to help the strikers.
PLP literature and assistance were welcomed by many workers. Our strike flyer was widely distributed and so sought after that one surprised friend commented that the workers were boldly reading this communist paper right in front of their bosses, "like it was a regular newspaper and they had nothing to be afraid of." For PLP members and friends this strike was a helpful school for revolution.
Capitalist Medicine Is One Big Malpractice
West Virginia doctors, like others in NY, Illinois and Florida, recently struck to reduce malpractice premiums and protect the quality of medical care. Dr. Robert Zaleski, an orthopedic surgeon, told CNN, "The number of qualified surgeons has decreased in this area. It...is a quality-of-care issue. We used to have three neurosurgeons. We now have none...If I...cannot afford [to[...keep my office open, patients would be without my care. My insurance has risen over a factor of a hundred...since...1980." He said he would have to borrow $150,000 for his malpractice insurance in order to stay open next year.
The striking doctors charged that politicians and hospital owners have ignored the problem. Meanwhile, President Bush, the insurance industry, the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are demanding a severe legal cap on claims and awards. The collapse of the dot.com bubble has driven giant insurance companies to squeeze patients and medical workers harder than ever to recoup their stock market losses.
In the U.S., nearly 98,000 people die annually from medical mistakes. A huge number are caused by understaffing, overworked doctors-in-training, too few hospital beds, use of under-trained workers for direct patient care and direct cost-saving measures to maximize profit. Care is fragmented between hospitals and specialty clinics. Health workers are given extra work while others are laid off to reduce costs. Patient information is spread over different locations, providers are too rushed for good charting and records departments are understaffed. Under these dangerous, profit-driven conditions, it's a miracle there aren't more mistakes. Actually health workers catch over 90% of mistakes themselves.
The medical malpractice system forces workers to seek redress as isolated individuals at the mercy of the legal system. Health bosses save billions by doing nothing fundamental about dangerous conditions. Instead they absorb, or force doctors to absorb claims and insurance premiums. Only one mistake in eight makes it to court; only one in 16 reaps an award. And their value has not risen, adjusted for inflation.
Malpractice awards account for only one-half of one percent of healthcare costs, but the bosses and their politicians want to lower them drastically. Capping malpractice awards is part of capitalism's preparation for war, increased poverty, an aging population and endless budget deficits. Huge health cuts will produce far more mistakes, injuries and deaths. The industry wants to ward off a flood of future suits. Lower malpractice awards are just one more assault in a class war -- rising unemployment, homelessness and lack of medical care, especially for millions without insurance. Ongoing Medicare cuts will leave millions more without insurance. The profit drive by HMOs and insurance giants puts a greater burden than ever on doctors, in one of the shabbiest care systems among industrially developed nations. Only a communist society run by and for the working class, without bosses and a profit-driven health care system, can provide the best possible care and preventive medicine.
To defend ourselves, we should avoid the trap of supporting liberals with band-aid reform plans that ultimately mean no reform at all. Capitalism cannot be reformed. PLP hospital workers and healthcare professionals are playing active, leading roles in the fight against the attacks on workers' health. We invite others to write CHALLENGE on this struggle and help clarify our position on major issues in the medical field.
East Coast PLP School Builds For A Communist World
Four of 17 parents, teachers and students from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Westchester and Connecticut joined PLP after attending a weekend communist school to discuss and analyze a 1982 party document, For Communist Economics, For Communist Power (see PLP.org for a copy). Two Party comrades from the City University of NY were the main organizers.
The weekend began with a talk about the birth of capitalism and moved into smaller workshops. Prepared questions supplemented our readings and sparked lively discussions, beginning with what people thought would be the most effective way to organize society. This eventually led to issues of collectivity versus individualism and communist centralism versus capitalist democracy.
Towards the end of our workshops, one parent said, "It's hard to fight for communism if you don't have an idea of what it's going to look like. This weekend really helped give me a better understanding of that." This parent later said she mostly agreed with PLP's ideas, and although not ready to join now, consented to meet with a club and make plans to build an anti-racist action group within her church.
Watching a video depicting our annual May Day march encouraged us to become May Day organizers in our schools and mass organizations.
One Bronx parent, two Westchester students and another from Brooklyn joined PLP at our closing discussion. The parent and a PLP teacher is leading a struggle in her daughter's elementary school against the administration pressure on students and teachers to recite the pledge of allegiance (see front page). These two comrades and another parent from the same elementary school also agreed to print stickers saying, "I pledge to stop the war!" and encourage parents and teachers to wear them in school. She said her experience on the camping trip strengthened her commitment to join PLP.
All the new student members were inspired to lead struggles at their schools against the war in Iraq, including walkouts and rallies in the event of an actual U.S. invasion. We agreed to expand our involvement in the anti-war movement but understood that only a communist world can truly end imperialist wars altogether. This weekend school gave us confidence to advance these ideas. We plan to double the attendance next year and further intensify the fight for communism.
YALE": ENEMY OF WORKERS WORLDWIDE
NEW HAVEN, CT., March 5 -- More than 6,000 workers at Yale University here are fighting this $11 billion corporation for job security, decent pensions, higher wages and the right to unionize. They include maintenance, clerical, technical, food service and Yale-New Haven hospital workers, as well as graduate school teaching assistants. The dietary workers have been without a contract for two years. Many workers need two or three jobs to survive.
This is the first time all these groups of workers have struck together. Workers walked out for the five days before the college's spring break. They plan to continue the fight when the school reconvenes.
Yale is one of the U.S. ruling class's sources of research and ideology for conducting its imperialist oil wars. Yale and Iraqi workers are victimized by the same bosses. International working-class unity is crucial in the fight against U.S. exploiter/killers, at home and abroad.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WRITE!
LETTERS
Party's Boldness Makes a Difference
What a delight it was to see PLP at the anti-war demonstration and to hear the old familiar chants as you marched behind us for a while. Your presence makes a difference. For example, one friend of ours had never seen our bold open rallies before. He said he was very impressed with the response to the Party standing in the street and openly calling for communist revolution.
Another friend with us had been relating his experiences investigating leftist parties. Well, he noticed you! He started asking questions about your multi-racial group. When we told him PLP was an integrated Party that includes workers, with a significant number of black and Latin workers and youth at the march and in leadership, he was very impressed. Now he wants to come to some meetings.
The vast majority of the groups at the march were either all or mostly white. This reflects the neo-racist weakness of the whole U.S. anti-war movement. We encourage the Party to mobilize its entire base, especially black and Latin workers and youth, to participate in these marches and show in action our opposition to racism and nationalism. So thanks again!
Some old friends
Students Don't Buy Shuttle Patriotism
I'm a science teacher in an urban high school. On the Monday following the explosion of the Columbia Space Shuttle, the principal made a special announcement, reiterating that the astronauts were "heroes" and that their loss was a "national tragedy. "She said there was a special circular in the Main Office we were required to pick up and we should spend part of our class time discussing this incident. There was still another circular the next day.
My immediate reaction to the publicity and mourning over this incident was that something else must be happening. When hundreds are killed in an airplane crash, it isn't called a "national tragedy" nor are the pilots and passengers labeled "heroes." Recently a baby and two elderly women died due to lack of heat. No one characterized this a "national tragedy." Clearly they froze to death, but the medical examiner listed the cause of death as "heart failure complicated by hypothermia" (low body temperature). That's like saying the people the Nazis killed with poison gas died of asphyxiation!
I decided to follow the principal's "suggestion" and discuss the situation in class, but not the way she probably wanted. When a student asked, "Why are they heroes?" I replied that the astronauts have a military connection and the government wants us to believe all military personnel are heroes, especially with the coming oil war in Iraq. Nobody objected to this analysis. Moreover, no one was very upset over the Shuttle crash. This indicated the students weren't buying into the patriotism crap.
I also mentioned the people who had frozen to death and said this and other working-class oppression were the real national tragedies. All in all, the discussion went quite well.
A Comrade
OVERCOMING FEAR
I work with a retirees' group that fights for labor causes. Articles we contribute to a newsletter are sometimes rejected or cut drastically because the group is tied to the AFL-CIO which suppresses criticism of unions, the electoral system and war.
The group's leadership hesitates to back anti-racist struggles. While most labor publications run articles about past struggles, I wrote one for Black History Month, documenting racist oppression of black people today.
At a newsletter meeting, the group's chairman -- who serves as the guardian of the AFL-CIO policies mentioned above -- attacked my article. He said I had "some nerve" to write about Black History since I am white and that he, a Jew, would be insulted if a non-Jew wrote about Jewish problems.
The next two speakers, both black, said the article was informative and didn't offend them. The following speaker said he was Jewish and had participated in the Civil Rights struggle hand-in-hand with people from many backgrounds and that he wished other groups would have stood with Jews when the Nazis attacked them. The group overrode the chairman's objections and approved my piece, featuring it as the lead article. This confirms that racism is very much an issue in the labor movement.
I'm learning that the key to overcoming fear of workers' rejection is not to be isolated but to consult them in any fight. It's not so important if a struggle is lost or if workers back down but that we bring our ideas to, and work in a mass way with, the rank and file, not through leaders.
Even if workers disagree, if we work collectively, positive things will happen.
A retiree
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)
Redo `Survivor' with pols?
I'd like to see a more realistic remake of "Survivor." In my version, a group of politicians is dropped onto...unfamiliar terrain....Each is given two young children to raise and a minimum wage job an hour's bus ride away. Contestants...pay rent, child care, utilities and groceries....
It might not be "Survivor," but I think a producer ought to give it a shot....
San Francisco Chronicle, 1/22
In a democracy, if you're starving, it's not famine!
The winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, Mr. Sen....is famous for his assertion that famines do not occur in democracies. "No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy," he wrote in "Democracy as Freedom." (Anchor, 1999) This, he explained is because democratic governments "have to win elections and face pubic criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measure to avert famines and other catastrophes." This proposition, advance in a host of books and articles, has shaped the thinking of a generation of policy makers, scholars and relief workers who deal with famine.
Now, however, in India, the main focus of Mr. Sen's research, there are growing reports of starvation in drought-ravaged states like Rajasthan in the west and Orissa in the east, many families have been reduced to eating bark and grass to stay alive. Already thousands may have died. This is occurring against a backdrop of endemic hunger and malnutrition. About 350 million of India's one billion people go to bed hungry every night, and half of all India's children are malnourished. Meanwhile, the country is awash in grain, with the government sitting on a surplus of more than 50 million tons....
Mr. Sen said...."We must distinguish between the role of democracy in preventing famine and the comparative ineffectiveness of democracy in preventing regular undernourishment." (NYT, 3/1)
No checks for neediest
The numbers are shameful. Only 43 percent of workers who are unemployed actually receive unemployment benefits. In some states the number is...25 percent....
For example, many low-wage workers simply don't make the eligibility cut established by the government even as they perform some of the hardest and most menial jobs....Temporary and part-time workers are less likely to receive benefits....The bottom line is that women, people of color, immigrants and single parents are disproportionately protected.... (Newsday)
Bankrupt? Rob pensions!
A federal judge ruled this weekend that US Airways could dissolve its pilots' union pension fund as it seeks to reorganize under bankruptcy protection....The judge's ruling makes a legal challenge more likely...at other distressed airlines, said Robert W. Mann, Jr., an airline industry consultant....
"The US Airways...situation," Mr. Mann said, "is becoming a blueprint or a map which is being read by management at other carriers." (NYT, 3/3)
No jobs for U.S. youth
You see them...hanging out...wherever they can, drifting in some cases into the devastating clutches of drug-selling, gang membership, prostitution or worse.
In Chicago there are nearly 100,000 young people, ages 16 to 24, who are out of work, out of school and all but out of hope. In New York City there are more than 200,000....
This army of uneducated, jobless young people, disconnected in most instances from society's mainstream, is restless and unhappy....
"I don't think I can take it much longer," said Angjell Brackins....
She has tried for months to find a job, she said, filling out application after application, to no avail. "I'll do any kind of work if they'll just hire me. It doesn't matter, as long as it's a job...."
When you have 5_ million young people wandering around without diplomas, without jobs and without prospects, you might as well hand them T-shirts to wear that say, "We're Trouble." (NYT Op-Ed, 2/6)
Immigrant roundup: why?
The roundup of hundreds of immigrants after Sept. 11, 2001, yielded not one indictment in the attack. (Newsday, 2/13)
Diplomat quits over war
United Nations, Feb. 26 -- A career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in protest against the country's policies on Iraq....
Mr. Kiesling, 45, who has been a diplomat for about 20 years....wrote Mr. Powell: "We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners."
His letter continued: The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests...."
Asked if his views were widely shared...Mr. Kiesling said: "No one of my colleagues is comfortable with our policy..." (NYT, 2/27)
U.S. giant needed `illegals'
One of the world's largest chicken producers, which is a key supplier to McDonalds....Tyson....brought illegal workers into the country who could be paid low wages, would not receive sickness or injury benefits, and could be sacked without compensation....
Because workers fear being deported, they are unlikely to complain about poor wages or conditions....The death rate among slaughterhouse sanitation crews is extraordinarily high....The nation's worst job can end in just about the worst way -- sometimes these workers are literally ground up and reduced to nothing. (Guardian Weekly -- Britain, 2/19)
Things look different when you're colonized
It is with great amusement that I absorb abuse from white, rightwing Americans, who hark back to the declaration of independence of 1776 as justification for their Euro-bashing, and to the second world war to justify military aggression....
As if the struggle for moral superiority between Europe and the US could have any relevance to someone whose ancestors were brought to the Americas as slaves and whose parents and grandparents lived through the second world war under colonization.
"If it wasn't for us you would be speaking German," they say. "No, if it wasn't for you," I tell them, "I would probably be speaking Yoruba." (GW, 2/19)
No good guys in oil war
If America's push for war is motivated by oil, then France and Russia's push for peace is no less so -- both have lucrative contracts in the region that they are keen to preserve. (GW, 2/19)
French love oil, not peace
The French believed that they were swindled out of their hard-earned spoils at the end of World War I....
The French ended up with only Syria and Lebanon, which had no oil....Britain had power over Iraq and the Gulf states and the United States became paramount in Saudi Arabia....
Ever since, French policy has been to get a share in the oil by one means or another. I have no doubt that France would be backing America in Iraq today if President Bush had felt able to give President Jaques Chirac a cast-iron guarantee that French interests would be rewarded when Saddam is overthrown. But this Bush has flatly refused. (NY Post, 2/13)
a href="#It’s Not Just Bush, It’s Capitalism As Millions March Against War">It"s Not Just Bush, It’s Capitalism As Millions March Against War
a href="#Bring PLP’s Politics To Marching Millions">"ring PLP’s Politics To Marching Millions
a href="#Iraq’s Oil Has Imperialist Rivalry Boiling Over">"raq’s Oil Has Imperialist Rivalry Boiling Over
a href="#PLP At LA March: Not Just Bush, It’s the Whole System">"LP At LA March: Not Just Bush, It’s the Whole System
Billions For War, Unemployment For 20 Million
Unemployment - The Phony Figures
Billions For War, Bankruptcy For Pensions
Capitalist Crisis Running Amok
Venezuela: Fascist Lockout Failing; Workers Power Is Way To Go
Workers And Youth Celebrate Challenge
a href="#U.S. ‘Victory’ in Afghanistan Still A Mirage">U.". ‘Victory’ in Afghanistan Still A Mirage
a href="#Terrorizing Civilians: A ‘Long U.S. Tradition’">Te"rorizing Civilians: A ‘Long U.S. Tradition’
LETTERS
a href="#Workers’ Solidarity Is An International Language">"orkers’ Solidarity Is An International Language
a href="#Unite With GI’s">"nite With GI’s
a href="#Youth Says ‘Let Our Voices Be Heard’">Yo"th Says ‘Let Our Voices Be Heard’
Imperialists Fear Spirit of Unity
Terror at Home: Unemployment, Low Wages
Peace Marches Mean We Got To Fight Back
a name="It’s Not Just Bush, It’s Capitalism As Millions March Against War"></">It"s Not Just Bush, It’s Capitalism As Millions March Against War
Millions of people across the world protested on the weekend of Feb. 15-16 against a U.S. war in Iraq — from Cape Town to Moscow to Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv to San Francisco to Berlin to Melbourne to Damascus. Two million marched in London and nearly that number in Barcelona, 400,000 in New York City, and so on. This occurred simultaneously with an oil workers’ strike in Nigeria against the super-exploitation by Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil; a mass rebellion erupting in Bolivia (even cops, usually the bosses’ fascist repressive arm, struck and 20 were killed by army troops); a strike by tens of thousands of teachers in Guatemala for higher wages and more money for public education entered its second month; massive protests in the Dominican Republic opposed price increases in gas and other goods.
Masses of workers, youth and their allies are fed up with a system that only breeds endless wars and mass poverty. Millions in the anti-war movement are not won to the pacifist line of supporting a UN-led war in Iraq. Nor do European protesters necessarily believe the leadership of the "lesser imperialists"— France and Germany — is any better than the U.S. rulers. This situation is actually quite different from a similar stage during the anti-war protests of the Vietnam era.
There is real anger at, and hatred of, U.S. imperialism, personified by Bush. While there is a serious danger in portraying Bush as representing the entire U.S. ruling class — that is, a misreading of the liberals — this worldwide reaction to Bush is nonetheless a new phenomenon. It caught the rulers by surprise. Until now, they seem to have worried mainly about the "Arab street" reaction. Now the "street" has expanded and they clearly have much more to worry about that they didn’t anticipate.
These events also demonstrate how quickly things can change and how opportunities can open up. Revolutionaries should mainly be encouraged by Feb. 15; it underscores the struggle that needs to be waged for the political leadership of this now significant movement. This doesn’t invalidate the point about the struggle against capitalism being a "long, hard" road, but something significant has happened here. It would be a bad mistake to take a hands-off approach.
Now, if Washington does launch this war — tomorrow, in March, in the Fall or whenever — they must face not only the problems they’re very likely to encounter in the Gulf and the Middle East, but also the potential for anti-U.S. rebellions globally, including the non-Arab, non-Muslim world. This significantly expands their liabilities. However, if they find themselves unable to launch their war because of these new circumstances, they will suffer another kind of setback, which will, over the not-so-long run, make them more desperate and render war even more important to them.
a name="Bring PLP’s Politics To Marching Millions">">"ring PLP’s Politics To Marching Millions
While the Bush gang was selling duct tape and plastic wrap, millions of people around the world took to the streets in huge anti-war demonstrations on Feb 15. This reflects the aspirations of millions of workers and youth to avoid war. It also points to a struggle within the U.S. ruling class over the timing and tactics for war as well as the growing isolation of the "world’s only super power" from the other major imperialists. The struggle within the U.S. ruling class is adding fuel to the fires of growing fascism. The contradictions among the imperialists are setting the course for yet another world war. By building a mass international PLP among workers, soldiers and youth, across all borders, we can set the course for communist revolution.
The day before the demonstrations Secretary of State Colin Powell was ambushed at the UN Security Council. What was supposed to be a major step towards war turned into another Valentine’s Day Massacre. Hans Blix reported that UN weapons inspectors were forcing concessions from Iraq, and that satellite pictures used by Powell in his Feb. 5 intelligence briefing of an Iraqi chemical decontamination truck were shot two weeks apart and could be "routine" movements.
The day after the demonstrations foreign ministers from 22 Arab nations meeting in Cairo called on all Arab countries to "refrain from offering any kind of assistance or facilities for any military action that leads to the threat of Iraq’s security, safety and territorial integrity." (New York Times, 2/17)
War Now Or Later?
Facing growing isolation at every turn, the Eastern Establishment, the main wing of the ruling class, may now prefer to wait until the Fall to launch their war, in order to carve out deals with the French and Russians. If these two principal rivals can be brought on board, the French and possibly the Russians might send troops to protect their share of the oil profit pie. But whether war starts next week, next month, or next Fall, any imperialist deals will end in blood.
According to Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies at the main wing’s Council on Foreign Relations, "The problem is the calendar….This rigid timetable is of Washington’s own making….War rarely occurs on neat timelines, but the administration could get lucky. If not, a third option has always existed but has never been seized upon — to postpone an assault until next Fall.
"…America can afford to wait until next Fall for conditions to ripen. Iraq will inevitably play a cat-and-mouse game, which Washington can use to strengthen the case for war. Such a delay will also allow American planners to better think through how to reconstruct Iraq after the fighting." (NYT 11/10/02) This wing of the ruling class would like to use the anti-war movement to win public support for a U.S.-led war sanctioned by the UN.
One reason Bush and Cheney are hot to trot into Iraq may be that Halliburton, the top U.S. oilfield service company (which Cheney headed before becoming Vice-President), stands to turn the quickest profit from building and rebuilding Iraqi oil facilities. It also has billion-dollar Pentagon contracts to build and maintain U.S. bases overseas. Halliburton’s big shareholders have more immediate profit concerns than ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco, who can afford to take a longer-range strategic view.
"The Wall Street Journal last week quoted oil industry officials saying that the Bush administration is eager to rehabilitate the Iraqi oil industry. According to the officials, Mr. Cheney’s staff held a meeting in October with ExxonMobil Corporation, ChevronTexaco Corporation, ConcocoPhilips, Halliburton, but both the U.S. administration and the companies deny it." (The Guardian, 1/23)
The current "debate" among the rulers isn’t war vs. peace. It’s about the timing, tactics and political conditions that most favor U.S. imperialism. The Bush gang wants a quick kill in order to make a quick killing. The liberals realize that occupying and rebuilding Iraq and then reconfiguring the entire Middle East-Persian Gulf will be a lengthy, expensive, and very bloody process — and that it must be done.
Put The Line On The Line
War is the inevitable result of imperialism. Without the development of a mass revolutionary communist movement, all the peace marches will be twisted to suit the interests of one or another of the bosses. Only communist revolution can defeat imperialism.
The drive to war is sharpening the contradictions within the ruling class, among the imperialists and between the capitalists and the international working class. This presents us with many opportunities to build the revolutionary communist movement in the factories, barracks, schools and communities.
Readers and distributors of CHALLENGE can help move workers and youth with the most advanced revolutionary understanding. What if transit workers in Washington, D.C., steelworkers in Gary, Indiana, and Boeing workers in Seattle walked off their jobs in opposition to the war? What if they went to neighboring mills and factories, and called on dockworkers and autoworkers to join them? While we may not be in position to do this now, it would have an electrifying effect on millions around the world and strike fear in the bosses. Many British workers are already talking about a general strike when war begins.
Fighting for these actions can help to recruit new members to PLP and have a profound revolutionary impact on the millions who oppose war. What’s more, it can help expose the pro-capitalist leadership of the mass movement, who will move heaven and earth to keep the masses from taking the road to revolution.
The "peace" movement has called for student strikes on March 5. We should organize walkouts, and where we can, march on major workplaces and encourage workers to join us. In our workplaces, we should prepare our co-workers to welcome and join the students.
We should begin organizing now for job actions and student strikes when war breaks out. We can show the potential of revolutionary communist leadership and win many to participate in bigger May Day activities this year.
a name="Iraq’s Oil Has Imperialist Rivalry Boiling Over">">"raq’s Oil Has Imperialist Rivalry Boiling Over
All the imperialists covet Iraq’s proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, of which 35 billion are immediately available for development. "Probable" reserves along the border with Saudi Arabia and Jordan may add another 60 to 200 billion barrels. Iraq needs $30-$40 billion to begin exploiting this potential, which explains its attempts to lure foreign investment, despite the current sanctions.
"The American military isn’t alone in preparing major maneuvers in Iraq.…ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco are…all set to cross a border that has been sealed off until now. But these multinationals will have to reckon with vigorous competition, which, like its diplomatic counterpart, takes shape along the Paris-Moscow axis.
"According to information…through…the Iraqi Oil Ministry, forty or so oil companies had by 1998 established contact with the Iraqi authorities, with the outlook of exploiting that country’s immense resources…The Russians are in the lead, with six companies, followed by a galaxy of dealers from all over the world: Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Turkey, China, Vietnam, Japan, Australia, but also Italy, Spain, the U.K. and, of course, France…" (Le Monde, 2/12)
For the TotalFina Elf oil company and France, the issue is strategic. The Middle East contains 66% of the world’s oil reserves, and yet TotalFinaElf has only 18% of its own business there. French bosses want in. They feel British and U.S. bosses have been screwing them since 1927. German bosses want to build a German/French-led European Union as a super-power rival to the U.S. U.S. rulers see unchallenged control of Middle Eastern oil as the economic linchpin to ruling the world in the 21st Century. The Russians and Chinese have strategic oil needs of their own.
TotalFinaElf and Russia’s Lukoil hold options covering a quarter of this potential production. TotalFinaElf (whose "ancestor," the French Petroleum Company, has been in Iraq since 1927) is focused on two oilfields in the Basra region that supposedly contain up to 13 billion barrels. The unsigned contract has been ready since 1995. Russia’s Lukoil signed a contract in 1999 but never invested the $200 million it promised, so Saddam recently revoked the contract.
French bosses would prefer that Hussein remain in power, honor existing contracts and give TotalFinaElf the vast West Qurna field it had once promised to Russia. Plan B is to join in the U.S.-led butchery and claim a smaller share of the prize. But Germany is pushing France away from Washington in order to build a Franco-German alliance that can dominate Europe. No matter how the Iraq war materializes, the inter-imperialist rivalry will sharpen.
a name="PLP At LA March: Not Just Bush, It’s the Whole System">">"LP At LA March: Not Just Bush, It’s the Whole System
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 15 — An estimated 40,000 people marched here today against the coming invasion of Iraq, moving through Hollywood and ending at an army recruiting center. Cheers and applause greeted PLP’ers’ denunciation of the war as an imperialist bloodbath for control of oil and our attack on the Democrats as being equally responsible for the slaughter. Speakers called for communist revolution to destroy capitalist wars, crisis and oppression worldwide.
Several people in various contingents said the best thing about the march was PLP’s presence and that so many people are against the war and winnable to the understanding that the capitalist system, not just Bush, is the cause of wars for profit.
One college student said he was really impressed with "PLP’s revolutionary message." At a peace coalition meeting at his university he heard a PL member emphasize the importance of reaching out to workers and soldiers and organizing militant actions on campus. Now, at this march, frustrated by what he described as "pacifism" and a "lack of diversity," he appreciated more PL’s "political stance" and wanted to stay in touch with the Party.
Another demonstrator said she was "tired of all the empty slogans" at these protests and was interested in learning more about PLP. There were many more such conversations throughout the march.
A group of enthusiastic youth who handed out PLP flyers containing many of the above ideas plan to take this message to workers and youth who did not march. Without this struggle, many people will be misled to think that the Democrats represent a real alternative and not just a different tactic (see editorial). This would leave people defenseless as fascism deepens.
The liberal rulers are openly building and using these marches to organize for "patriotic" dissent and war on their terms. As has increasingly become the norm, Hollywood celebrities like Martin Sheen led the march and politicians like Maxine Waters chanted, "Give peace a chance!" That and "Impeach Bush," were among the main march slogans. One veteran marcher, seeing a big "impeach Bush" banner remarked, "What a big banner for such a little idea."
The rivalry between the U.S. and other imperialist powers over control of Iraqi oil is clearly sharpening. Last week European Union leaders openly defied the U.S., threatening the existence of the Atlantic alliance. But it’s a dangerous illusion to think there are any "good" capitalists or imperialists. Neither the U.S. nor the French or Germans represent any hope for the world’s workers.
We can’t stop the bosses from starting their murderous wars. But we can organize the PLP. Communist participation at anti-war events combined with building PLP in the shops and schools must become the passion of more and more workers and students who, on the eve of imperialist war, will be seeking an alternative to this horrid system. Let’s make sure the alternative becomes an international revolutionary communist movement.
Billions For War, Unemployment For 20 Million
"The worst hiring slump in almost 20 years" (New York Times, 2/6) has sent unemployment through the roof, approaching 20 million. Over two million jobs have been lost since the beginning of the recession in March 2001. During the 11-month "recovery," mass layoffs are the rule. According to the Times, manufacturers of durable goods have cut one of every nine jobs; airlines, brokerage firms, and the clothing/textile industry laid off one of every ten. Many states are slashing jobs to close budget deficits. The number of help wanted ads in newspapers is the lowest in 40 years. Almost two million workers have been unemployed for at least six months, triple the figure just two years ago.
"Waiting for war…weighs down the economy." (NYT, 1/26) Big Business holds back on investing in new factories; small businesses hesitate to hire more workers. And "the likelihood of war with Iraq…[affects] everything from oil prices and air travel to consumer confidence and international financial markets" (NYT, 1/26), all of which increases joblessness.
The Phony Figures
The government’s "official" unemployment rate rose from 3.9% to 6% in the last two years. But that is less than HALF the story. Well hidden in the government reports is something called the U-6 unemployment rate. This includes categories of joblessness not counted in the "official" 6% figure: "discouraged" workers who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs; and those who want full-time jobs but must settle for part-time. (The government says if you work one hour a month you’re "employed!") U-6 says, "The unemployment rate jumped to 11% in January, from 9.6% the month before." (NY Post, 2/11)
Eleven percent of a 135-million workforce amounts to 15 million unemployed. Add two million in prison and the millions on welfare who would work if there were decent jobs and sufficient daycare. But that’s still not the whole story.
Comparing the 2000 Census figures to the 1990 totals, the Labor Dept. "discovered" that they’ve been undercounting the number of Latino workers in the workforce, who have an "empirically verifiable unemployment rate that is higher than…whites….The government expects this change…to worsen the unemployment data." (NY Post. 2/11) Underestimating Latino jobless figures for at least ten years means that total unemployment right now may well exceed 20 million.
What does it mean when the economists say "the economy as a whole is in decent shape" and growing while joblessness deepens? It means "businesses are finding more ways to get more production out of each current employee….The kind of growth that previously gave…rising employment…now gives us rising unemployment." (New York Times 1/26) Speed-up works!
The U.S. ruling class’s drive for maximum profits inevitably comes into conflict with rival capitalists, also governed by the drive for maximum profits, and leads to war. The only answer to these insoluble contradictions is destroying the profit system with communist revolution.
Billions For War, Bankruptcy For Pensions
The crisis of capitalism is turning the "American Dream" into a nightmare for 44 million holding private pensions. A combination of bankruptcies, declining stock prices and lower interest rates is threatening a "disastrous Savings-&-Loan-style collapse" (New York Times, 1/25) in the federal agency that insures pensions for tens of millions, the second largest source of income for retirees after Social Security. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) had its entire $8 billion surplus devoured in one year by bankruptcies at LTV Steel, USAirways, Bethlehem Steel, United Airlines, K-Mart and others.
Underfunding of these pension plans — the difference between what companies have promised to pay in pensions and the funds they’ve set aside to do so — has skyrocketed to $300 billion. The problem has a Catch-22 "solution": to prop up PBGC’s funding, companies could be asked to increase their payments to the agency; but this could impel some companies to stop offering pensions altogether.
For reserves to rise without increased payments, either a rising stock market or rising interests rates are required. Usually, when one goes up the other goes down. But for the first time since 1939-1941, a three-year bear market has coincided with falling interest rates.
The only thing that capitalism can guarantee is continuous and intensifying exploitation and insecurity for the working class. That’s reason enough to "retire" the whole damn profit system.
Capitalist Crisis Running Amok
The economic crisis of U.S. capitalism is reaching gargantuan levels, and will be intensified by the Bush administration’s budget proposals. When the budget went on sale in government bookstores, the London Financial Times (2/4) editorialized, "Too bad they do not have a fiction department to put it in."
U.S. imperialism hopes to solve their economic crisis the old fashioned capitalist way: war abroad and fascism at home. They hope to seize Iraq’s oil fields to control the Middle East (world’s largest energy source) and dominate the world. At the same time they are increasing repression of U.S. workers through the USA Patriot Act, dragnet arrests of thousands of immigrants, vast cuts in vital services, busting strikes and intensified racism against black and Latin workers.
The Bush budget uses Hitler’s Big Lie technique. It depicts a tax cut for the rich as a plan to "help the unemployed." It calls the sabotage of Medicare an "expansion and improvement of the healthcare system." The $307 billion deficit for 2004 was projected as a $262 billion surplus two years ago. That’s a $500 billion lie! And it doesn’t include a possible $200 billion debt from an invasion of Iraq.
The Financial Times says that even the 5-year cumulative $1.05 TRILLION deficit for 2004-2008 was achieved through "sleight of hand." Without the surpluses stolen from Social Security, the 5-year deficit more than doubles, to $2.1 TRILLION.
A deficit means the government is spending more than it is taking in. They "balance the books" by stealing the Social Security surplus, borrowing (which nets big interest payments to the banks and foreign investors) and slashing money to the states for social services. Then the states must cut these services and raise taxes to make up their own deficits. So the federal tax cuts for the rich are paid for by increased taxes on all workers.
But this is not strictly a "Bush operation." The Democrats voted for Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy, and for the last 20 years has approved the using of trillions of the Social Security surpluses for other purposes such as increasing the war budget. And every Democratic presidential candidate supports a war on Iraq, as they did the war on Afghanistan.
Financing the U.S. foreign debt of $2.8 trillion requires a flow of foreign capital into the U.S. of $2 billion a day. But with projected trillion-dollar deficits and the continuing recession/depression, at some point foreign financing of these debts could become too risky and investors might begin to pull their money out, leading to an even deeper crisis.
There are divisions among the rulers about how to handle this crisis. Full-page ads have appeared in leading newspapers sponsored by bankers and Democratic and Republican former government officials, criticizing the Bush policies. How these differences work themselves out remains to be seen. But all sections of the ruling class agree that the working class must pay for the bosses’ crisis.
There are nearly 20 million unemployed (see article this page). Two million U.S. jobs have disappeared in the last two years. Over 43 million live without health insurance. The racist double burden on black and Latin workers, the squeezing of Medicare, the raising of the retirement age for Social Security, the threat to the pensions of 44 million retirees — these are all effects of the crisis of a profit system controlled by ALL bosses and defended by BOTH their parties.
And the workers will pay in blood with the deaths of working-class soldiers and millions of innocent civilians in wars for oil. Such a system cannot be reformed. The only solution is communist revolution to eliminate profits and bosses and guarantee that those who produce all value will collectively reap the fruits of their labors.
Venezuela: Fascist Lockout Failing; Workers Power Is Way To Go
After 62 days of a bosses’ lockout (erroneously labeled a strike by their media), the old Venezuelan ruling class failed completely to oust President Chavez. The right-wing bosses and their allies in the Union Federation leadership, the church hierarchy, the high-paid technicians in the state-owned oil company and Cuban exiles in Miami, as well as some in the Bush administration, are now in disarray. This followed last April’s failure when a one-day coup briefly installed Pedro Carmona, head of the Chamber of Commerce, as President. Then in a few hours, the putschists tried to impose a Pinochet-style government, scaring away even many of its own supporters. Although U.S. bosses at first supported the coup, they changed their minds when they realized it wouldn’t help their plans to whack Iraq under the cover of "bringing democracy to the Middle East."
When tens of thousands of poor workers came out to oppose the coup, it unraveled and the military brought back Chavez. The putschists failed again in the fall, and then tried a third time with this 62-day lockout. But again, the support of most of the military and of poor and industrial workers who hate the old racist rulers, combined with the vacillations of U.S. imperialism, doomed this attempt.
Venezuela’s working class has played a key role in the struggle. Although Chavez, under pressure from the military high command, treated the lockout with kid gloves, belying the "dictator" label, support for the putschists remained mainly in the better-off neighborhoods of Caracas and a few other cities.
Industrial workers sabotaged the lockout, forcing big plants in the South to remain open. In the industrial city of Valencia, dissident unionists kept a vigilant 24-7 watch to stop the bosses from joining the lockout. In the oil refinery and petrochemical plants of Puerto La Cruz, 95% of the workers kept production going at a 60-70% level, despite most of the technicians and engineers joining the lockout. These workers are realizing that they’re key to running everything: "We shattered the myth that only a well-prepared elite can run the company.…We helped the Chavez government from falling." (Punto de Vista monthly magazine, Jan. 2003) Interestingly enough, Chavez had attacked many of these militant workers in the past because they opposed the partial privatization of Fenitro, a fertilizer company.
But the militancy of these workers and their hatred of the old rulers conflicts with an illusion that they can pressure Chavez to serve their interests, that nationalist and populist leaders like Chavez will liberate workers and their allies from the yoke of capitalism and imperialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chavez, despite his rhetoric, has accepted foreign investment in state-owned enterprises (Exxon and other big oil companies). He’s done very little to ease the poverty of most workers who support him.
Workers must learn they will achieve liberation only by ending a system based on production for the profits of a few and by fighting for one where production serves the needs of all workers: communism.
Workers And Youth Celebrate Challenge
The highlight of our CHALLENGE dinner, attended by 45 steelworkers, hospital workers, students and youth, was the following talk given by a new young comrade. The dinner shows we’re modestly taking advantage of the opportunities created by the bosses’ rush to fascism and war.
"On January 17, many comrades and myself endured a night-long bus ride in order to take our struggle against capitalist war for oil to the door of the racist bosses. Estimates of the rally range from 100,000 to 500,000. Regardless of the total number, PLP had an enormous presence among the liberal cries for peace.
"Red flags waved proudly. Chants for communist revolution and workers’ solidarity throughout the world were heard loud and clear. Many of us passed out literature calling for communist revolution, and spoke to people on the streets. We felt the immense power of our movement and the work we have before us.
"Being my first protest with the Party, I felt solidarity seldom experienced with any other group. I decided to join the Party as a full member. The actions at the march were important, yes, but our goal is to smash wars at their base, pull them out from the root. Only communist revolution will bring the capitalist murderers to their knees. Only communist revolution will free the working class.
"The bosses will try to smash our revolution and discourage us from fighting back, but we are stronger than that. We will not allow the murder of workers all over the world to continue. The bosses claim they want to liberate the people of Iraq, but we all know that the only liberation they’re concerned with is "liberating" Iraqi oil.
"People throughout the world realize this. However, they fail to understand that the system they hold so dear is the root of the problem. The bosses want oil for profits. The profit system is the enemy of the international working class. Iraq is the problem we face at the moment. But the more the bosses fight among themselves, there will be more wars and more workers will suffer.
"But there is hope. There is a massive communist revolution building right under the bosses’ feet. They have no idea how hard we are working and mobilizing to destroy their racist, fascist, oppressive system and educate the masses in the truth of Marxism. The plan has been laid before us. We all know our part. Organize in the community; speak to your friends and family about the realities of capitalism and the glorious liberating revolution that is ahead of us all.
"Together we can make a marvelous world for the proletariat and bring the bosses to their knees. Join the Party and fight for communist revolution. A better world is possible. We can liberate ourselves from the oppression of the bourgeoisie."
a name="U.S. ‘Victory’ in Afghanistan Still A Mirage"></">U.". ‘Victory’ in Afghanistan Still A Mirage
U.S. War Secy. Rumsfeld boasts that the U.S. military can make war on many fronts. Maybe, but meanwhile its "victory" in Afghanistan is increasingly becoming a mirage. Ahmed Rashid, author of a book on the Taliban, calls it "The Other Front"(Wall Street Journal, 2/11). "For the last few weeks, American B-1 heavy bombers and helicopter gunships have been fighting the largest force of Afghan rebels to have surfaced in nearly a year in southern Afghanistan."(WSJ)
U.S. Special Forces near the Pakistani border are being rocketed daily. Mines and rockets have exploded near U.S. army headquarters outside Kabul. In the city itself, U.S. and other foreign troops have been attacked constantly. Hundreds of anti-U.S. militants are mobilizing on the Pakistani border for a Spring offensive to coincide with a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Who’s behind these attacks? Bin Laden? Saddam Hussein? No, it’s being coordinated by a U.S. "ally" — the Pakistani ISI (Intelligence Services)! This same ISI financed and coordinated the forces led by bin Laden fighting the Soviet army occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s, serving the CIA and Saudi Arabia. The current anti-U.S. forces "are receiving logistical and financial support from former or current members of Pakistan’s InterService Intelligence agency." (London Financial Times, Feb. 8-9) Many in Pakistani ruling circles now believe their country is the "next target in the U.S. line of fire. "(FT) Pakistan sent North Korea uranium-enriched technology in exchange for ballistic missile assistance. Bush ambassador Nancy Powell caused an uproar in Pakistan when she implied it continues to be a "platform for the spread of global terrorism." (FT)
What’s turned Pakistan from a "close ally" of the U.S., "against terror" to close to something approaching Bush’s "axis of evil"?
The Pakistani ruling class, like all bosses worldwide, is defending its own interests. While still claiming it’s hunting elements of Al Qaeda hiding in Pakistan, it’s simultaneously allowing ethnic Pashtun fundamentalists to attack the U.S. on the border. "Pakistan is extremely apprehensive of the increasing influence in Afghanistan of India and Russia, who are arming several non-Pashtun warlord armies as well as giving support to Afghanistan’s ethnic Tajik defense minister, Mohammeed Fahim, who has the largest factional army in Afghanistan and is regarded as an ally by the U.S." (WSJ)
The U.S. is asking Russia to cut off $100 million worth of weapons being supplied to Fahim’s personal army, a policy negating U.S. efforts to build a multi-ethnic national Afghan army loyal to the central government.
Since Pakistan sees the U.S., Russia, Iran and India — its worst enemy — arming different Afghan groups, it’s decided to do the same, arming the most extreme fundamentalist Pashtun groups on both sides of the border. Meanwhile, pro Taliaban-Al Qaeda anti-U.S. fundamentalist parties in Pakistan are gaining strength.
U.S. "war on terror" has brought this kind of mess to Southeast Asia. It will multiply itself in Iraq once Desert Storm 2 begins. The rulers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, France and Germany, and whatever remains of the Saddam Hussein’s forces, will do the same to ensure U.S. occupation won’t be as smooth as Bush plans.
For workers, soldiers and others, imperialist and local capitalist rivalries, along with fundamentalism, is a recipe for endless wars. It’s time to rebuild the communist movement, with its long history of organizing workers and others — from Iraq to Afghanistan —.while learning from its past errors. The only way out of this imperialist hell is to fight for a society without any bosses: communism.
a name="Terrorizing Civilians: A ‘Long U.S. Tradition’"></">Te"rorizing Civilians: A ‘Long U.S. Tradition’
U.S. bosses want Iraqis and others worldwide to believe the U.S. military will be "the liberator and protector of an oppressed Iraq, not an enemy occupying force." (New York Times, 2/11) On Feb. 10, Bush denied U.S. forces will target civilians, saying they will follow a "long U.S. tradition" of respecting civilian lives.
But history and facts are stubborn. A long-held U.S. imperialist strategy is to target civilians directly, to terrorize whole populations into submission. The most recent example was the bombing of civilian targets — including hospitals, power and water plants, etc. — during the 1999 U.S.-led air massacre of the former Yugoslavia. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed during these air raids, while almost the entire Yugoslavian army in Kosovo escaped intact.
Bush, Sr. did the same in December, 1989, when he went after his "compadre," Manuel Noriega. (Bush Sr. was the godfather of one of Noriega’s children!). Over 5,000 civilians were slain when U.S. planes and ground forces attacked Panama City’s Chorrillo, a poor working-class neighborhood. They were buried in mass graves in an attempt to hide this war crime.
The U.S.-led UN sanctions against Iraq following Desert Storm I have caused hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, including a half million children who have died due to lack of food and health care. Untold thousands of civilians are also dying because of the after-affects of U.S. shells and bombs containing depleted uranium (a "tactical" nuclear weapon) during
Desert Storm 1 and will occur in Afghanistan as well.
According to Ret. Colonel David H. Hackworth, more than 161,000 U.S. Desert Storm I vets have been disabled, and almost 10,000 have died, from Gulf War illnesses which the U.S. government repeatedly claimed "were only in their heads." (Hackworth.com, 1/23).
Agent Orange: A Weapon Of Mass Destruction
Much has been said about the U.S. GI’s deformed and killed from exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. But little is reported about its Vietnamese civilian victims, from a war that ended three decades ago. "The Pediatrics Hall of Tu Du hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) seems like a chamber of horrors. Dozens of children, many under 12…show some physical deformation. Vo is one of them, formed with his feet curved inwards. Similar scenes can be seen in pediatric wings all over the country." (EL MUNDO, Madrid, 2/9).
During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon waged chemical warfare against the Vietnamese people, using Agent Orange, a herbicide mixed with kerosene and diesel to burn the vegetations where Vietcong guerrillas were hiding. This Agent Orange contained TCDD, even today the most powerful poison known. It was spread from Hercules C-123 planes, helicopters, land vehicles, navy boats and even hoses handled by infantry soldiers. Agent Orange not only killed vegetation but also spread to rivers, grassland used by cattle and other animals. Even worse, it poisoned the maternal milk of pregnant women. Doctor Hoang Dinh said the dioxin in Agent Orange harms human DNA, affecting chromosomes for three generations.
U.K./U.S./Nazi Imperialists Learned from Each Other
Singling out Saddam Hussein for using poison gas against Kurdish civilians during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s exposes the hypocrisy of the imperialists. (Both Iran and Iraq used poison gas against each other, with chemicals supplied by U.S., Germany and other Western countries). But in fact, the first use of poison (mustard) gas against civilians was ordered by Winston Churchill in 1915 against what he called "the uncivilized Arab tribes" of Mesopotamia (Iraq) opposed to British imperialism. The Nazis learned from the British, attacking civilians during World War II, as well as partisan movements organized by communists and others in Nazi-occupied Eastern and Western Europe, again to terrorize entire populations into submission. Many Nazi officers who fought Soviet guerrillas during WWII were exempted from the Nuremberg War Crimes trial by U.S. and U.K. bosses.
One Nazi general lectured his U.S. captors on how to best fight guerrillas, using methods acquired while fighting what he called a "war against bandits." He said that if the Nazis had had nuclear weapons, they would have used them to oust the victorious Soviet guerrillas in the Pripjet swamps.
U.S. President Truman learned that lesson well, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, massacring 250,000 civilians on the pretext of forcing Japan’s surrender. (Japan was already defeated.) Actually U.S. rulers used the A-Bomb to threaten the Soviet Union, whose Red Army had defeated the Nazis virtually by itself, as well as a good part of the Japanese army in Manchuria.
After WWII, the U.S. and British imperialists used the Nazis themselves and their techniques on many fronts: from developing the U.S. missile program to fighting the anti-imperialist movements worldwide, including in Vietnam.
When it comes to using weapons of mass destruction and murdering civilians, the U.S. bosses and their British allies are world champs.
Workers Of The World, Write!
LETTERS
a name="Workers’ Solidarity Is An International Language">">"orkers’ Solidarity Is An International Language
Recently I started working in a new garment factory and began making new friends. One was a worker just over from China who didn’t speak English — much less Spanish. The bosses were always shouting at him. One day, a boss called him "an idiot who didn’t understand anything." I stood up from my machine and shouted at the boss, "That’s no way to treat a worker! Because he can’t speak English, he can’t stick up for himself, and because he doesn’t understand you, you insult him more. Leave him alone."
Then I made signs to the worker showing him with my fist and the anger on my face, gritting my teeth, that he had to defend himself; that he had to shout back. All this surprised everybody, especially because he and I come from different ethnic backgrounds.
We’ve become friends, and although we can’t communicate much, we do laugh a lot and visit each other in our homes and at work.
This experience demonstrates that no matter where we come from or what language we speak, all the world’s workers have one common language: workers fighting the bosses’ abuses and the exploitation of our entire class.
We’ve shared the understanding not to wait for "divine justice," but instead to fight back; that we must break with our cultural and racial prejudices by recognizing that we are class brothers and sisters; and that only by uniting can we smash capitalism and its exploitative wage system. The road to communist revolution starts which this kind of unity. Let’s start building it today in our workplaces.
internationalist comrade
a name="Unite With GI’s">">"nite With GI’s
My collective noticed that in a few otherwise generally good articles in several recent CHALLENGES, there seemed to be a tendency by some who are against the coming war to cast members of the armed forces as the enemy of workers. One letter mentioned students who said they were too "smart" to join the armed forces. This portrayal is inaccurate and doesn’t help our efforts to reach out to those who find themselves in the armed forces. Many join up mainly looking for a way to pay for school or get a job, not to help Exxon Mobil or U.S. rulers.
In recent issues, it’s been clear we want to unite with the working class, on the job and in the barracks. That makes us confident we’re on the right road. As contradictions sharpen, many of the hundreds of thousands of working-class youth most affected by war will be open to the truth about it. We can learn from history and build a powerful movement that ultimately will defeat imperialism.
A comrade
a name="Youth Says ‘Let Our Voices Be Heard’"></">Yo"th Says ‘Let Our Voices Be Heard’
I look at problems in my high school and see how money rules the world. For example, my science teacher only gives out grades of 65-75, no matter what you actually earned. He doesn’t explain the work on the board and only a few students pass the regents. Yet, this teacher is still here. My school has only black and Latino students and it is situated in a black neighborhood. I know if my school’s population and location were different, that teacher would be gone.
Capitalism creates this problem. It will always be the rich over the poor, the "superior" over the "inferior" and the powerful over the powerless. Everybody should have a chance at equal opportunities no matter what ethnicity, nationality, economic status or color.
One of my peers started a petition, but hardly anybody signed it. They were afraid because they thought something would be done to the teacher. My peers were afraid of taking action and seeing the results.
For so long youths have been accustomed to sitting passively and doing nothing about things. Capitalist society considers change "wrong." So many youths don’t realize they can make a change. This is a call for all youth to stand up! Let your voice be heard! Next time you know you deserve a B+ rather than a B, confront your teacher. We youths need to empower ourselves with knowledge to survive in this capitalist world. We have a voice!
Brooklyn H.S. Student
Imperialists Fear Spirit of Unity
"What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"
The crowd shouted, growing stronger and stronger. With their fists high, posters straight in the air and the look of change on their faces. I knew I would never forget this day, January 18, 2003.
Peace seems like a fantasy with these capitalist bosses raging our country into war. On every station you see "Mr. President" trying to convince us everything will be all right, while thousands of innocent children are getting bombed every day and another youth is shot in the ghetto.
As I marched, I met people from all over the U.S. They wore their hearts on their faces. They all came to Washington for one fight, to stop the imperialist power from striking again. There was no "I" that day, only "We." That’s the way we can put an end to this oil war. We the people can’t sit around anymore, but must come together.
"It’s your turn," my teacher said. Nervousness quickly ran though me. The question was, "Why was I attending this rally?" I quickly answered, "to make a change. I was tired of watching television and wanted to do something." "What kind of change?" I asked myself, and couldn’t find an answer, not knowing that by the end of the day I would find one.
As a youth growing up in a capitalist society, you feel you have no power. It all lies in the hands of the "established," the rich. You feel your voice is silent to many ears. Capitalism creates this barrier, the idea that the "superior" one will always win. But we the people can’t let this notion go on, can’t let things just go by. If that continues, we’ll always feel "inferior."
The need to make money — such as the prison business — breaks up families. Prisoners work for as little as 30 cents an hour. Anger grows in my blood when school budgets are cut, but yet they have the money to build more prisons. Issues like these show me that capitalism is not the way.
My nickname during the march was "energizer bunny." I kept shouting, talking and singing. I could not stop because the spirit there just moved me, the spirit of seeing strangers talking to one another like they were old friends, of seeing people not caring if you were black or white, young or old, short or tall. Seeing people come together was very uplifting.
Imperialist powers fear this spirit. They’re afraid of people uniting and breaking the barriers they set up. It was the spirit of change that held everybody together that day. Imperialists spend millions to try to control this spirit — not knowing it is inside everybody and in due time will be released.
Brooklyn H.S. Student
Gardener Has Red Thumb
I’m a gardener and work mostly for rich people. Recently I arrived at one of these mansions and was surprised to see some posters against the war. When I asked my boss what it meant, she replied, "I’m against Bush’s war and I participated in the last march in downtown LA."
I also had been in that march, but my objective was to attack the whole capitalist system, not just Bush. While I didn’t tell this to my boss, it felt weird to think my boss and I had been together fighting against the war. Later I realized it appeared we were united on that march, but in reality we were each there for our own interests.
Red Gardener
Terror at Home: Unemployment, Low Wages
I work in a garment factory. At lunchtime we have very heated discussions about the war. Most of these workers hate the war, but the majority only blame Bush.
Recently one worker said the war won’t affect him — it’s far away and bombs wouldn’t fall here. Another worker asked him, "Why do you think there isn’t much work, and we’re only earning $150 a week?" Then she explained how the economy and war go hand in hand. Another worker remarked that the attacks on immigrant workers were part of this campaign for an oil war in Iraq.
Although it may be difficult to move workers into political activities, there’s a big opportunity to discuss politics and advance their understanding of how the capitalist system works. This could lead to a united fight against the bosses.
Garment Worker
Capitalism Strikes Out
My wife and I went to the Feb. 15 antiwar march in New York City. It was her first. I’m sure she wasn’t the only first-time participant against these murderous U.S. imperialist policies. She gained insight into the role of the police, with their horses, helmets and clubs. Previously she mostly thought of cops as helpers of anyone in trouble. Now she may very well come to May Day, where the reasons for the brutal U.S. war drive would be better clarified.
A Reader
Peace Marches Mean We Got To Fight Back
A spirited PLP contingent joined the Chicago coalition on the Feb. 15 day of international protest. The march was more like the Mardi Gras of anti-war protests, with marching bands dressed as skeletons in Uncle Sam top hats playing, "When The Saints Go Marching In." The PLP group, in large part students from various campuses, gave speeches, chanted and distributed literature.
One friend from Malcolm X Community College, protesting for the first time ever, said that while "ideas are swirling around in my head, communism seems like the best way to go." This comrade distributed CHALLENGE on the train ride home and discussed our ideas with his mother. His participation and enthusiasm has inspired me, and I hope others here at school.
At the march I heard an interesting comment from one of the four pro-war knuckleheads, which really reinforced the idea that these anti-war protests are run by the liberal Democrats. He said, "Why are you protesting this war against Iraq and didn't against the war in Kosovo? What's the difference between Milosevic and Saddam?" I think this guy has a point. These protests don't condemn the Clinton administration or connect these Democrats to U.S. imperialism. Interestingly enough, besides PLP's analysis and actions, his comments were more profound than any of the peace groups.
Despite the low politics and high antics of the march, we were very well received. People listened to our speeches and asked for CHALLENGE. We distributed hundreds of flyers. Most importantly we brought our friends. Later that evening, students from various areas, meeting for the first time hung out and further discussed our ideas. This was especially good for two students from my school. One had argued about the ineffectiveness of peace marches before ever going to one, which of course he has a point. He experienced not only their weaknesses, but was also able to differentiate our politics and strategy from the other so-called left organizations. While the antiwar protests are not the center of our work, they are definitely organizing tools, not only for the workers there, but for those that we bring. "Peace Marches Mean We Got To Fight Back!"
Malcolm Red
a href="#U.S. Imperialists’ Plan: Endless Wars to Murder Millions">".S. Imperialists’ Plan: Endless Wars to Murder Millions
a href="#Kennedy/NY Times Liberals Want War — With UN Support">"ennedy/NY Times Liberals Want War — With UN Support
Columbia Shuttle: a Military Operation
Anti-War Means Fighting Capitalism
A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind
AFL-CIO Resolutions No Substitute For Class Struggle
Campus Marchers Link ROTC to Oil War
DuBois Praised Stalin the Revolutionary
a href="#Stalingrad: The Real ‘Mother of All Battles’">St"lingrad: The Real ‘Mother of All Battles’
a href="#NY TIMES: All Workers Are ‘Fit’ To Be Laid Off">NY"TIMES: All Workers Are ‘Fit’ To Be Laid Off
Capitalist Crisis and Nuclear Doctrine
a href="#Seizing Iraqi Oil — U.S. Learns From Japanese Fascists">"eizing Iraqi Oil — U.S. Learns From Japanese Fascists
Terrorist Bosses Kill Four In North Carolina
LETTERS
a href="#DESAFIO: ‘our best political tool . . .’">DE"AFIO: ‘our best political tool . . .’
Retirees Organize Labor Solidarity
Transit Rank & File Challenges Sellout
a name="U.S. Imperialists’ Plan: Endless Wars to Murder Millions">">".S. Imperialists’ Plan: Endless Wars to Murder Millions
The coming U.S.-led invasion of Iraq isn’t just about oil. It’s mainly about U.S. rulers using oil to defend their world dominance against all competitors. Oil threats and oil bribes based on a presumed U.S. victory in Iraq now play a key role in its grand strategy, preventing the rise of a rival superpower. But these schemes may prove fatally arrogant. U.S. rulers must first build support for the war, win it, and then face the outrage that will follow the slaughter.
Washington fears the emergence, over time, of an alliance between Russia and Western Europe that would surpass the U.S. economically and could catch up militarily. The French and Russian contracts with Saddam Hussein to develop Iraq’s vast oil fields would help them challenge U.S. supremacy. So U.S. rulers are warning Moscow and Paris to change sides now or face an Iraqi oil shut-off. "Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Russia and France ‘must be ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in any US-led military intervention’ if they want a share of Iraqi oil." (Oil and Gas International, 1/27).
France’s President Chirac appeared to give in to the U.S. by readying an aircraft carrier and 15,000 French troops for the U.S-led assault. "Then [German Chancellor] Schröder made...Chirac an offer he could not refuse: to permanently assert French-German dominance over the 23 other nations of Continental Europe." (New York Times, 1/24) Germany and France moved to change the rotating presidency of the European Council from one which now gives smaller nations influence to a system with a long-term French or German president. Double-crossing the U.S., Chirac paid Schröder back by promising a French UN Security Council veto on U.S. action in Iraq.
Russia’s oil bosses seem divided on whether to stick with Hussein or take the U.S. bribe. Iraq recently terminated the huge West Qurna oil production contract with Russia’s Lukoil because of "Lukoil’s behind-the-scenes attempts to get assurances that it would keep its contract after any regime change in Iraq." (Energy Intelligence Group,—EIG—1/21) Such assurances could have come only from the White House. But other Russian oil firms are bucking the U.S. "Proving it still held Moscow near and dear to its heart, however, Baghdad last week offered Russia a clutch of other oil deals." (EIG) This split helps account for Putin’s waffling on Iraq.
It’s hardly a coincidence that France and Russia, the objects of U.S. oil-deal enticements and extortions, have veto power in the UN Security Council. To help ensure long-term U.S. domination of the Middle East, liberal U.S. rulers seek the UN’s stamp of approval for the coming war. Complaining that Bush’s efforts at the UN were haphazard, the liberal New York Times (2/2) demanded, "Before moving toward invasion, the United States needs to win the widest possible Security Council backing." No doubt Colin Powell must promise France and Russia bigger cuts of post-war Iraqi oil.
The U.S. is likewise brandishing the oil weapon to compel temporary support from China, which also has a permanent seat on the Security Council. "Baghdad’s unilateral termination of Lukoil’s contract for the West Qurna field in December left China National Petroleum Corp [CNPC]. as the only oil company with a firm production-sharing contract in Iraq. [CNPC and other] Chinese companies are supposed to invest $1.3 billion." (EIG, 1/16) U.S. guarantees greased the transactions. "These companies wouldn’t be signing deals if they thought they would become worthless after a regime change." (EIG).
These deals serve the long-range strategy of U.S. rulers beyond aiding an attack on Iraq. China’s burgeoning economy is demanding increasing quantities of Persian Gulf oil. The U.S. wants Chinese oil firms operating in the Mideast to be junior partners dependent on Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco. "The Asian companies could seek to bring in oil majors as partners in a post-Saddam Iraq in order to reduce their risk and alleviate their financial burden." (EIG) But China’s bosses have other ideas. They are building a "blue-water" navy that could someday challenge the U.S. fleet for mastery of the oil routes.
a name="Kennedy/NY Times Liberals Want War — With UN Support">">"ennedy/NY Times Liberals Want War — With UN Support
It takes time to make these deals. Liberals, like Senator Kennedy who calls for a delay in the fighting until "convincing evidence" against Hussein is furnished, are merely buying time to iron out the post-war oil arrangements. "The international clamor of demands to give UN weapons inspectors more time may eventually prove to be just another bout of horse trading." (International Oil Daily, 1/28) Kennedy & Co., in fact, want to hit Iraq with as large and as deadly a coalition as possible. This is the stand taken by all the leading Democratic Party presidential candidates and the leadership of the anti-war movement.
To secure Iraqi oil and their top-dog status, U.S. rulers plan to kill hundreds of thousands of workers and children. We can’t stop them from starting this bloodbath. But war lays bare the murderous essence of the profit system and opens the door to communist organizing. We can and must build the Progressive Labor Party in this new period.
Columbia Shuttle: a Military Operation
By now it’s quite clear that the space shuttles are flying coffins, buried by capitalist budget cuts and maximum profits. Six scientists were dismissed from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel in March 2001 after repeatedly complaining about deficiencies in the operation of the shuttle program. Just a few months ago, the White House brushed off the accusations by Don Nelson, a retired mission planner and NASA supervisor. Nelson warned Bush last August that the astronauts faced imminent danger, citing many problems in the shuttles — hydrogen leaks, dented fuel lines, wiring and computer failures.
John Marburger, Bush’s chief science adviser, discussed Nelson’s letter with NASA officials and then "answered" Nelson by praising NASA’s safety record, concluding that there was no reason to stop the shuttle flights.
Why weren’t the shuttles grounded when it was clear they’re old and unsafe? Firstly, war contractors like Boeing and Lockheed reap huge profits from the space program. The United Space Alliance, a joint venture of these two companies, is extremely profitable since they get fees to manage the construction of space craft and also get paid to subcontract it — double dipping — both to themselves and to 20 other firms. The crisis of overproduction has led to less investment in commercial planes and more on satellite production.
Secondly, the space program is also important for U.S. imperialist military plans to control the world. Ninety percent of Columbia’s experiments were military in nature, as were the last 50 shuttle flights. That’s why most of the astronauts are military personnel. The Israeli astronaut killed on the Columbia not only participated in the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s but also led the air attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Southern Lebanon during the Israeli occupation.
That’s the nature of capitalism in this day and age: everything is militarized for the endless wars the U.S. imperialists are planning in order to rule the world. The lives of millions — including the astronauts — mean nothing when it comes to protecting this obsolete, rotten system.
Anti-War Means Fighting Capitalism
(The following is taken from a PLP leaflet distributed at the Jan. 11 Los Angeles and Jan. 18 San Francisco anti-war marches.)
The imminent war with Iraq forces growing numbers of workers, youth and others involved in mass protests to ask a basic question:
Will the anti-war movement once again just deal with symptoms and leave a war’s root economic causes unopposed, or will it take on the actual causes of war itself — the profit system?
Despite a propaganda onslaught about weapons of mass destruction and counter -claims about election-year gimmickry and maintaining domestic oil supplies, this is an imperialist war. Only 14% of oil consumed in the U.S. comes from the Persian Gulf. U.S. capitalists are fighting for control over ALL the Persian Gulf oil, which goes mainly to their capitalist rivals. These petroleum reserves are vital to the profits of the giant U.S. oil companies, like ExxonMobil, as well as to U.S. strategic control of the Middle East. They use war to maintain their bottom line and in their drive for world domination.
• If the anti-war movement only opposes another U.S. attack on Iraq — while ignoring the war’s causes in the capitalist profit system — it sets the stage for a long cycle of oil wars and short-lived, pacifist, go-nowhere anti-war movements.
• If the anti-war movement makes common cause with those who only object to unilateral war, not to the shedding of workers’ blood for oil profits, the anti-war movement can become a pro-war movement overnight.
• If the anti-war movement only targets the Bush administration’s war preparations and absolves the Democrats, despite the latter’s fully-documented support of long-term military build-up and involvement in the Middle East, it allies itself with the U.S. government in future wars for profit and domination.
• If the anti-war movement fawns over liberal politicians and ignores soldiers and workers — and their amazing record of stopping the U.S. war machine in Vietnam — it will produce more wars and reactive, superficial anti-war movements.
If the anti-war movement downplays the combined fascist impacts of cutbacks, layoffs and Homeland Security on activists, immigrants, minorities and workers, it will ignore the main forces who are hurt by war and who can actually bring down the profit system. The anti-war movement will be vulnerable to racist divisions, fear, political repression and jail.
Only a communist-led international movement can address the war’s root causes in capitalism, imperialism and racism. We cannot afford to side with "lesser-evils"; treat the war as an isolated event; cave into anti-communism; or ignore the power of soldiers, workers and others to bring the war machine to its knees. In the long run, we need to take power through revolution to get rid of capitalism and its wars, building a true communist system where production will meet the needs of the working class, not the warmongers’ profits.
A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3 — Teachers are organizing a campaign within the union here to strike against a war budget, demanding a moratorium on debt payments to banker-bond holders, and that money now financing war and "homeland security" be spent on schools, colleges, Medi-Cal and hospitals. A union committee sponsored a bus to the recent San Francisco anti-war march with an official banner declaring, "A war budget leaves every child behind."
The bosses’ war drive attacks workers in Iraq and worldwide but it also must attack the working class here, using our taxes for war instead of using them to bail out county and state budgets in crisis. In California, this crisis means huge Medi-Cal cuts, college tuition hikes, a freeze on school expenditures, class-size increases and teacher layoffs. Meanwhile the bankers take their cut off the top — the interest payments on debt is mandated untouchable under the bosses’ laws.
Still, there’s a surprising amount of resistance to a strike from union activists who seem to have more confidence in passing resolutions and working for "lesser-evil" Democrats than in the power of the working class — teachers and students — to shut it down. Nevertheless, some teachers are determined to circulate petitions for action against the cuts, to organize a fight in the union’s representative bodies.
The anti-war movement offers opportunities to win people to understanding that capitalism requires war, and that ending imperialist wars means ending the profit system. High school and college students attacked by these cuts helped the PLP contingent distribute literature blaming the war and the cuts on capitalism. While much PLP literature was enthusiastically distributed in the huge January marches, and should continue to reach the many honest people who participate, agitation alone won’t build a movement that can challenge the ruling class and lead to a fight for power.
Many unions have recently passed resolutions "opposing the Bush administration’s war on Iraq." Some have also blamed Bush for the budget cuts. Such resolutions can strengthen ties with forces opposing imperialist war. Fighting for them can lead to political struggle for an understanding that the problem is not just Bush — to be replaced by a Democrat — but is capitalist rivalry over control of maximum profits.
Yet such resolutions can also breed passivity, or worse. It can divert workers away from class struggle against the system. Blaming the whole crisis on Bush without any plan of action leads to reliance on the Democrats, the bosses’ other party of war and fascism.
A mass fight could lead to something the bosses’ media can’t turn on and off like a faucet. It’s part of creating a force among teachers, students and parents against the racist cuts and imperialist war. PLP’s influence can help build a movement that can organize a working-class fight, with communist leadership, against the whole system. Eventually it can destroy capitalism and wars for profit once and for all.
AFL-CIO Resolutions No Substitute For Class Struggle
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 4 — The AFL-CIO here seems in a dither now that the bosses’ war train is leaving the station. The web sites of the different Democratic Party and liberal anti-war groups were buzzing about the "anti-war, anti-Patriot Act resolution [passed] unanimously at a very well-attended delegate’s meeting."
Predictably, the LA Federation of Labor attacks the Bush administration’s war drive as a "Wag the Dog" distraction from the sinking economy, corporate corruption, and layoffs. But they don’t mention the imperialists’ desperate need to grab cheap Mid-East oil ahead of their rivals. The Federation forgets that "Wag the Dog" was a movie made during Clinton’s eight-year bombing of Iraq’s "no-fly" zones. Rather than a distraction from the sinking economy, this war is the bosses’ solution to the current crisis of overproduction (Republicans and Democrats alike).
But the AFL-CIO leadership’s most glaring shortcoming is its forsaking class struggle and workers’ solidarity. In 2001 there were one million layoffs in the US; in 2002 Boeing laid off 35,000, the Telecom industries eliminated double that number — all this with no fight or calls for unity with workers worldwide facing similar layoffs. But there was plenty of patriotism and support for the "war on terrorism." By year’s end, United Airlines mechanics and the West Coast dockworkers were both left to dangle in the wind. New York City transit workers, watching their union President hugging the top transit boss on TV, only voted in a sellout contract by a 60-40 margin.
Workers waiting for the real fighting labor movement should not be fooled that another resolution, even one against the war and Homeland Security, means the AFL-CIO is coming out swinging.
It’s one thing to "Resolve that the LA Federation…join other[s]…to actively promote and participate in activities opposing the Bush administration’s drive to war." But meanwhile they stand by passively while LA Transit stiffs the mechanics with a one-year, 1% wage-increase "offer." Since when did 1% a year become a "union contract"?
The company blames the state budget crisis and an economy flirting with recession. But these are the same things the LA Fed blames on the Bush war-drive and says it’s "resolved" to stand up against them. But there’s no united labor support for the transit workers, schoolteachers, county hospital workers and unorganized immigrant workers who have no health insurance.
The rank and file is prolonging its frustration and suffering by not organizing to take power into our own hands. A number of workers have heard the bell and said its time to come out of our defensive crouch. At the LA transit strike-vote meeting there were loud calls for a new union president and jeers against a short-term contract. There was a demand for a seriously prepared strike, instead of just a strike vote, to threaten the company and oppose the war budget.
One worker, commenting on the Columbia’s disintegration, said, "In LA the tiles are falling off the walls of the public school bathrooms because they don’t hire janitors and maintenance workers. Why should we be shocked if the thermal tiles fall off the Space Shuttle?"
U.S. tanks and armor are rolling up to Iraq’s border daily. In a figurative sense they’re also rolling up to the schools, hospital clinics and transit divisions throughout the U.S. But the "collateral damage" and death to the working people in Iraq and here will be all too real.
Workers are skeptical. But disbelief and thinking that George Bush and Colin Powell are liars and thieves isn’t enough. Rather than empty words of resolution without action, workers should organize against these attacks by all the bosses and for the long struggle of taking power into the hands of our class.
Campus Marchers Link ROTC to Oil War
Five hundred students, professors and community residents marched against the creation of a new ROTC on a California State University campus, chanting "1, 2, 3, 4, we don’t want your oil war, 5, 6, 7, 8, don’t recruit us for your hate."
An anti-war coalition planned every aspect of the march, building closer friendships through the strength of multi-racial unity. Several guerilla theater skits drew students’ attention to the struggle. PLP members helped build it, especially linking the upcoming imperialist war, the ROTC, the budget cuts and the capitalist system.
The march was positive but we must build solidarity between students and rank-and-file soldiers. Their class interests are the opposite of the ROTC officers who order them to risk their lives and kill other workers for the bosses’ oil profits and their racist system. We must also build solidarity between students and campus workers. Custodians are ordered to tear down all our flyers and not to speak to coalition members.
Despite anti-ROTC votes of both the Faculty Senate and the Associated Students years ago as well as a large anti-war coalition currently opposing it, the ROTC wants to recruit on campus, teach pro-imperialist lies as history courses, and conduct "adventure training." If refused access, they threatened using the 1996 Solomon Amendment to deny several million dollars in federal grants to the school. After hiding these facts and then orchestrating a deceptive campaign to build support for the ROTC, the university president signed an indefinite "partnership" with it, providing campus classrooms and office space. They will focus on recruiting Hispanic students (the Hispanic Access Initiative) with special access to their student records. Evidently, the Universities can’t recruit black and Latino students (Affirmative Action) but the Army certainly can.
The ROTC, forcing itself onto campus with Administration help, is another example of the dictatorship of the capitalist class. No matter what workers, students or teachers vote for, the bosses — to guarantee their class rule — mobilize the entire capitalist state, pass fascist laws and slash billions from health care, education and welfare in order to finance their imperialist wars. Meanwhile, their universities spread pro-capitalist, anti-worker ideas among the students and recruit working-class students to defend the bosses’ profits.
PLP members must build study groups that stress the similar class interests of workers, soldiers and students and the need to unite to destroy the capitalist system. Those who must sell their labor power to survive are members of the working class. PLP aims to sharpen the class struggle and organize all workers to fight for a communist world based on meeting the needs of the international working class. Join us!
DuBois Praised Stalin the Revolutionary
Black History Month is celebrated in Feb. in the U.S. One thing that is always ignored is the influence of the communist movement in the civil rights movement in the U.S. The great William E. B. Dubois was one of the leading fighters against racism in the 20th century. He founded the NAACP a century ago. After 50 years of anti-racist struggle, he joined the Communist Party in 1945, declaring that becoming a communist was "the logic of my life." That fact will be well-hidden by the hypocritical U.S. rulers as they "celebrate" Black History Month while preparing another racist war for oil in the Middle East. Even more hidden will be the homage DuBois — a true hero, beloved by the working class, black and white — paid to the communist world leader, Joseph Stalin, on the occasion of Stalin’s death in March, 1953, 50 years ago next month.
(From the National Guardian, March 16, 1953)
Josef Stalin was a great man; few other men of the twentieth century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf, but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also — and this was the highest proof of his greatness — he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.
Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that; he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions or induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.
His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bread and insulting attitude of liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.
Three great decisions faced Stalin in power and he met them magnificently; first, the problem of the peasants, then the West European attack, and last the Second World War. The poor Russian peasant was the lowest victim of tsarism, capitalism and the Orthodox Church. He surrendered the Little White Father [the Tsar] easily; he turned less readily but perceptibly from his icons; but his kulaks [rich peasants] clung tenaciously to capitalism and were near wrecking the revolution when Stalin risked a second revolution and drove out the rural bloodsuckers.
Then came intervention, the continuing threat of attack by all nations, halted by the Depression, only to be re-opened by Hitlerism. It was Stalin who steered the Soviet Union between Scylla and Charybdis;* Western Europe and the U.S. were willing to betray her to fascism, and then had to beg her aid in the Second World War. A lesser man than Stalin would have demanded vengeance for Munich, but he had the wisdom to ask only justice for his fatherland….The British Empire proposed first to save itself in Africa and southern Europe, while Hitler smashed the Soviets.
The Second Front dawdled, but Stalin pressed unfalteringly ahead. He risked the utter ruin of socialism in order to smash the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. After Stalingrad the Western World did not know whether to weep or applaud. The cost of victory to the Soviet Union was frightful. To this day the outside world has no dream of the hurt, the loss and the sacrifices. For his calm, stern leadership here, if nowhere else, arises the deep worship of Stalin by the people of all the Russias.
Then came the problem of Peace. Hard as this was to Europe and America, it was far harder to Stalin and the Soviets. The conventional rulers of the world hated and feared them and would have been only too willing to see the utter failure of this attempt at socialism. At the same time the fear of Japan and Asia was also real. Diplomacy therefore took hold and Stalin was picked as the victim. He was called in conference with British Imperialism represented by its trained and well-fed aristocracy; and with the vast wealth and potential power of America represented by its most liberal leader in half a century.
Here Stalin showed his real greatness. He neither cringed nor strutted. He never presumed, he never surrendered....He asked neither adulation nor vengeance. He was reasonable and conciliatory. But on what he deemed essential, he was inflexible. He was willing to resurrect the League of Nations, which had insulted the Soviets. He was willing to fight Japan, even though Japan was then no menace to the Soviet Union, and might be death to the British Empire and to American trade. But on two points Stalin was adamant: Clemenceau’s "Cordon Sanitaire"** must be returned to the Soviets, whence it had been stolen as a threat. The Balkans were not to be left helpless before Western exploitation for the benefit of land monopoly….
Such was the man who lies dead, still the butt of noisy jackals and the ill-bred men of some parts of the distempered West. In life he suffered under continuous and studied insult; he was forced to make bitter decisions on his own lone responsibility. His reward comes as the common man stands in solemn acclaim.
W.E.B. Dubois, March 16, 1953
*From Greek mythology, caught between two monsters."
**Stalin insisted that the Balkans and Eastern Europe not be an imperialist launching pad for the West to invade the Soviet Union once again.
a name="Stalingrad: The Real ‘Mother of All Battles’"></">St"lingrad: The Real ‘Mother of All Battles’
February 2 marked the 60th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, the real "Mother of All Battles." It was the turning point of World War II, the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime.
On August 23, 1942, Luftwaffe planes, commanded by Baron Wolfram von Richtofen (who led the fascist onslaught on Guernica during the Spanish Civil War) launched the mass bombing that eventually destroyed Stalingrad. In the first week, 40,000 of the 600,000 inhabitants were killed. The "devastating attack moved Stalin to declare ‘Ni shag nasad’ (not one step backwards)." (El Mundo, Spain, 2/2/03).
In September, Field Marshall Paulus’ VI Wehrmacht army launched a series of successful attacks against the industrial center. But the Soviet 62nd Army, commanded by V. Chuikov, resisted. It was the beginning of what the Nazis called rattenkrieg (war of rats), or house-to-house combat. This prolonged the fighting until winter arrived. The commitment and courage of the Red Army and Stalingrad’s working class held off the Nazi juggernaut. Right in the middle of the fighting, the workers built tanks and other weapons for battles outside their plants.
After 170 days, the remaining 91,000 Nazi troops and 24 generals surrendered. Hundreds of thousands of Nazis died, along with over one million Soviet soldiers and civilians.
"Our Red Army was so powerful that…we would have not only reached Berlin but the Gulf of Vizcaya (Spain)," one veteran told El Mundo.
By mid-1944, Soviet tanks and infantry were rolling westward at 40 miles a day. Only when the U.S. and Britain realized the Red Army would defeat the bulk of the Nazi army by itself did they open the second front in France. Over 70% of the active Nazi war machine in Europe was tied up fighting the Soviets.
The capitalist implosion of the former Soviet Union achieved what the Nazis couldn’t. This was caused by the opportunism of the Soviet rulers and the weaknesses of socialism, retaining many capitalist practices like the wage system.
There are only 50,000 Red Army Stalingrad veterans still alive. They can hardly survive on a miserable pension of 3,000 rubles ($85). Even the name of their beloved city has been changed, to Volgograd. Putin has blocked a movement to change it back to Stalingrad.
Still, the lessons of the heroic Soviet workers and soldiers live on. As the world’s imperialists prepare for endless wars, the international working class will continue what the Red Army and Soviet workers achieved in Stalingrad. That’s the goal of the communist PLP.
For more information on the role played by the Red Army and the communist movement in defeating the Nazis see the CHALLENGE supplement: 50 Years Ago: Communist Red Army Defeated the Nazis, May 17, 1995
a name="NY TIMES: All Workers Are ‘Fit’ To Be Laid Off"></">NY"TIMES: All Workers Are ‘Fit’ To Be Laid Off
The hypocrisy of the New York Times’ "concern" for the unemployed that is sometimes expressed on its editorial page is completely exposed by its current drive to eliminate a "no layoff" clause in its coming contract with the Newspaper Guild. The Guild said Times’ bosses "made clear in its first bargaining session with the union that ‘no layoffs’ language must be eliminated." (N. Y. Daily News, 1/31)
The union has 1,500 members at the Times and the job security clause covers all workers on the payroll in 1997. This mouthpiece for the Eastern Establishment section of the ruling class characterized the "no layoff" clause as an "extreme provision."
While this billion-dollar media conglomerate often "criticizes" the Bush administration for being "heartless" towards the unemployed, when its own profits are concerned it acts like any boss under capitalism and has no qualms whatsoever about adding to the jobless rolls.
Capitalist Crisis and Nuclear Doctrine
(The following is excerpted from an article by Heinz Dieterich Steffan, an analyst on Latin American affairs, published in Rebelion.org. Translation from Spanish by the Challenge staff.)
Capitalism, incapable of solving the big problems facing humanity in a constructive way — through productive forces — has decided to do it through nuclear force, the most destructive possible path. Nuclear weapons have been adapted for use as conventional ones [depleted uranium bombs]. Similarly, the old nuclear doctrine has been adapted to the current situation. All this has been justified by Washington’s hypocrisy about international terrorism.
The U.S. is the only country to use nuclear weapons, against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. There was no military reason for these attacks. The Air Force generals had told President Harry Truman that conventional bombing would force Japan to surrender in a few weeks. But there was a strong political motive for this war crime — to warn Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that in the new post-World War II New World Order, the U.S. had overwhelming military superiority; therefore, the Soviet Union better not dare challenge U.S. imperialism.
In Washington’s view, to "contain" the Soviets was good, but to eliminate them was even better. Thus, the second phase of U.S. military doctrine: to execute a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s. But Soviet development of the A-bomb in 1949 and the hydrogen bomb in 1953 made such a first-strike project too risky for the U.S.
Therefore, Washington adopted a defensive nuclear doctrine: using nuclear bombs exclusively in case of an attack against the U.S. But in reality in at least 18 cases the U.S. threatened to nuke other countries, including China, Vietnam and Lebanon, among others.
After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon redesigned its military strategy for the new globalized world in 1995 under the Clinton administration. Hitler’s Blitzkrieg doctrine, adapted by NATO under the concept Air Land Battle, was replaced by the "Global Reach," devised by the U.S. Air Force and first practiced in the wars against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon also redefined its nuclear strategy with the "Nuclear Posture Review" (NPR). This went beyond merely counter-attacking with nuclear weapons if attacked, but also considered their use if any country tried to reach nuclear parity with the U.S. Based on NPR, Clinton threatened to "wipe North Korea from the face of the Earth" if that country was developing nuclear bombs.
Bush has merely extended this doctrine, preparing "preemptive annihilation" of anyone interfering with U.S. rulers’ aim of turning the world into a giant slave camp serving the new multi-national corporate masters.
This use of extraordinary brutality, always typical of capitalism, is hidden behind an ideological smokescreen clouding the consciousness of the exploited masses about the terminal crisis of capitalism: a) its failure as a modern production system to provide a decent life, and b) its obsolete parliamentary superstructure, becoming increasingly dysfunctional in controlling society.
The intellectual-metaphysical apologists of the system in this stage of fascist structural crisis range from Sam Huntington, a proponent of the U.S. massacre in Vietnam, who now espouses a chauvinist "clash of civilizations" to attack Islamic peoples in general; to Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri’s Empire, saying there are no more imperialist powers, to the post-mortem post-modernism of John Holloway, changing the world without taking state power.
This new world order brings us to the U.S.-British "liberation" of Afghanistan, which has restored banditry and heroin production, while the puppet regime of Karzai only has a presence in a couple of cities. Most of the country is controlled by warlords and Islamic fundamentalists.
CHALLENGE comments: One must add: rival imperialists won’t remain subservient to U.S. imperialism’s world order forever. France, Germany and others have already shown they are not too happy with Bush’s plan to take sole control of Iraq’s huge oil wealth. This rivalry will lead to many more wars, and eventually to another world war. The international working class has never played dead, no matter what the bosses do. The way to make sure the capitalist crisis becomes really terminal is to organize an international revolutionary communist movement.
a name="Seizing Iraqi Oil — U.S. Learns From Japanese Fascists">">"eizing Iraqi Oil — U.S. Learns From Japanese Fascists
Bush’s Jan.28 war speech omitted one key reason why U.S. imperialists need to attack Iraq: control of its oil, second largest reserve worldwide after Saudi Arabia. But while the White House tries to mask the real purpose for attacking Iraq, the Pentagon is planning to seize the oil fields as soon as Desert Storm II begins. There are some precedents limiting this:
"A tribunal after World War II found that Japan breached international law by aggressively exploiting occupied oil fields in the Dutch East Indies and using the oil to fuel its own war needs. Another widely cited precedent involves Israel’s operation of occupied oil fields in the Sinai after the 1967 Six-Day oil War. The State Department criticized Israel’s actions in that case…"(Wall Street Journal, 1/29).
Now that U.S. rulers want to do the same in Iraq, it’s doing the usual: ignoring, disobeying or skirting all international laws that limit them. "If you justify [actions] under the law of military occupation, you can justify just about anything," said one administration official familiar with the current debate among Pentagon and State Department lawyers. (WSJ).
Basically, the military commanders of the invading Army can do anything they want, even force civilians to work the oil fields. If workers struck, the generals could force them back with the bayonet, just as Saddam does. This is the kind of strike-breaking "democracy" Bush wants to install in Iraq, just like his administration’s threat to use troops against a dockworkers’ strike on the U.S. West Coast.
The U.S. imperialists resemble the Japanese fascist army that occupied the Indonesian oil fields during World War II, and maybe worse. (The CIA organized the fascist coup there in 1965, killing over one million communists, workers and peasants.) When fighting to be top-dog imperialist, and for its key ingredient — control of Middle-East oil — mass murder is the name of the game for the U.S. and all bosses.
Terrorist Bosses Kill Four In North Carolina
The Jan. 29 explosion at the West Pharmaceutical plant in Kinston, NC that killed four workers, injured 37 and wiped out the livelihood of 255 workers follows a carnage of terror that has produced 437 factory deaths in this state in the last two years.
The bosses’ media label these slaughters "accidents," but an inspector reported 22 serious safety violations in this very plant just this past October. He characterized them as "routine for the myriad plants that dot the Carolina countryside." (Christian Science Monitor, 2/1)
The South’s bosses and "pro-industry government continue to ‘wink and nod’ at hazardous manufacturing conditions." No wonder "It’s dangerous to go to work for most of the people in this state," says the director of the North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Project, a state that is 96% non-union. (CSM) And, of course, there is a complete "lack of criminal prosecutions" for the bosses responsible for this butchery.
While investigators supposedly try to determine if clouds of rubber dust or a newly-installed gas line caused the explosion, the county commission rushed to give $600,000 to West’s owners to re-build the plant and a landlord offered the company’s executives free office space. There were no reports of funds being offered to the victims’ families or to the 255 workers who lost their jobs. Three cheers for the terrorists of free-market capitalism.
Workers Of The World Write!
LETTERS
a name="DESAFIO: ‘our best political tool . . .’"></">DE"AFIO: ‘our best political tool . . .’
I’ve been a PLP member for about a year and live in one of the many poor neighborhoods abandoned and depressed by the Colombian government. We see representatives of the bosses’ state on two occasions: when politicians come to ask for our votes and make promises they never carry out; the other when the cops conduct their almost daily raids "searching for "guerrillas or their collaborators." These same cops do nothing to stop the right-wing death squads which nightly terrorize workers and youth, charging us their own taxes and killing whoever they dislike.
With the help of DESAFIO-CHALLENGE, our best political tool, I’m organizing a PLP group with some friends and relatives. We study the Party literature and debate the real causes of our problems as workers. I also bring our communist politics to several neighborhood social groups.
Workers and youth must understand history and dialectics, to learn that the only way out of this capitalist hell is to fight for a society without bosses and their death squads: communism.
Red Comrade
Retirees Organize Labor Solidarity
I recently retired from my job. As a communist, I’d been an active shop steward for many years. After a recent retiree meeting which discussed the impact of contract negotiations of a major union, I suggested that our 25,000-member retiree association form a solidarity committee to organize support for struggles of other unions and community groups. I’m now co-chair of that committee.
The very next day we were called to a union hall to help in strike preparations. I’m meeting workers who’ve been activists in many union locals. In less than two months, over 40 retirees have signed up for this committee. One member expanded our notion of solidarity by suggesting we also focus on the needs of homebound retirees.
It’s heartening to see the idea of class solidarity so eagerly adopted by retired workers. I’m sure this committee will bump into plenty of pro-boss "united-we-stand" ideas but it will also lead me into many exciting opportunities to serve the working class and build our communist movement.
Keeping Young
Transit Rank & File Challenges Sellout
On Jan. 9, the Transport Workers (TWU) held a rally at Hunter College in a huge hall but only 60 people attended. Half were TWU staff. Union president Roger Toussaint tried to get workers’ approval of the contract his leadership had just negotiated with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
The few rank-and-file workers present were mostly concerned about the new layoff clause. Toussaint’s spokesman rationalized that the old layoff clause didn’t protect jobs either, to which a worker replied, "Then why change it?"
Toussaint said we needn’t worry because the layoff clause was rarely used only when the City was in deep financial trouble. Another worker disputed that idea, saying that while Verizon reported recent profits in the billions they were laying off thousands. He said layoffs, speed-up and benefit cuts are the usual ways businesses exploit workers for more profit.
Since that rally, frustrated workers voted for the contract; 40 health workers servicing TWU members have been laid off; and hundreds more are facing layoffs as the MTA is closing 177 token booths and announcing cuts in bus service. More layoffs and threats are in the cards as the MTA seeks more concessions.
Toussaint and his staff tries to pass off the phony idea that his "leadership" is following in the footsteps of former TWU president "Red" Mike Quill. Although Quill was not a communist, he used them to help organize the union and learned enough from them to know that the only thing the bosses respect is workers’ power. He used this to win decent conditions and to smash the anti-strike law.
Quill was called "Red Mike" by the bosses’ media because he used communist ideas to inspire not only transit workers but many city and national unions with the idea that they could fight back and win against the bosses’ power. If transit workers don’t want to return to the sweatshop/company union days, they need to relearn communist ideas and organize their own leadership from the ranks.
Retired Transit Worker
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, WG=Weekly Guardian
U.S. broke N.Korea agreements
In 1994, Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze the nuclear situation at Yongbyon and permit international inspectors to monitor the agreement. In return, the United States was to pledge that nuclear weapons would not be used against North Korea and that two modern light-water reactors would be built to replace the Yongbyon facility . . . .In the meantime, a monthly supply of fuel oil would help provide electrical power. . . the promised light-water reactors were not built. The Bush administration brought a change in relationship with both Koreas. . . the monthly shipments of fuel oil were terminated.
Washington Post 1-14
Europeans say no to U.S. war
European public opposition to a war appears to be hitting a new peak....32 percent in Britain, 76 percent in Germany and 77 percent in France — are against the military action even with the blessing of the United Nations.
The opposition reflects a deep uneasiness with America’s increasingly assertive role as the worlds only superpower.
NYT Jan 22
More workers lose insurance
Two-thirds of the states say they are cutting Medicaid benefits, increasing co-payments, restricting eligibility or removing poor people from the rolls because of soaring costs and plunging revenues.
. . . One million to two million low-income people would lose insurance coverage because of the cutbacks.
The Bush admistration has opposed any increase in the federal share of Medicaid, saying that the federal government has fiscal problems of its own.
NYT January 14
Loans backfire on students
. . .A lot of students are questioning whether they should have borrowed so much money . . .Family background plays a big role. 62 percent of low-income borrowers said they regretted taking out so much in loans. Similarly, only 54 percent of low-income students said the debt ultimately paid off in terms of their career goals. . . At Harvard, "We kept hearing, ‘I’m going to go work in industry for a few years, then I will return to what I care about.’ Frankly I’m not sure how many of them were able to make the return trip."
NYT January 28
Poll: War stems from U.S.
The European edition of Time magazine has been conducting a poll on its Web site: "Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?" With 318,000 votes cast so far, the responses are North Korea, 7 percent; Iraq, 8 percent; the United States, 84 percent.
NYT January 31
Make job safe? Cheaper to kill
The regulatory system has often proven itself incapable of thwarting flagrant and continual safety and environmental violations by major corporations, according to a nine-month examination by The New York Times.
In plant after plant, year after year, workers have been maimed, burned, sickened and killed by the same safety and health failures. Flammable materials are mishandled; respirators are not provided; machines are missing safety guards; employees are not trained.
"The current law is inadequate to deal with serious violators, repetitive violators, situations where people are put at risk day after day, " said Charles N. Jeffress, who headed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the late 1990’s.
Indeed, under federal law, causing the dealth of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor with a six month maximum prison term. . . . managers viewed the burden of regulatory fines as far less onerous than the cost of fully complying with safety and environmental rules.
NYT January 10
‘Amazingly’ soft on biz crime
The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to recommend that the agency soften proposed rules that would impose new obligations on lawyers and accountants. . . Some of the toughest proposals appear to be dead, watered down or postponed, S.E.C. officials said today. Critics attributed the shift to heavy lobbying. . . "We’ve had Enron, Tyco, Worldcom. And despite all of that, the commission is softening, rather than toughening, the rules in favor of the attorneys and auditors to the great detriment of investors. . .It’s just amazing."
NYT January 22
Poor pay a rich tax rate
"It doesn’t take a lot of income to start paying a lot of taxes," Professor Kotlikoff said. Over their lifetimes, "the superpoor don’t pay taxes but the poor do."
. . . .The total burden from nearly all forms of taxation — income, sales, property and excise taxes, and the Social Security payroll tax — was strikingly similar across the entire spectrum of incomes in 2001.
For individuals and families in the lowest fifth, with an average income of $7,946 (including just $25 in dividends), the cumulative tax rate was 18 percent. For the top fifth, with an average income of $116,666 (including $1,188 in dividends), the rate was 19 percent.
NYT January 21
French have their own $lant
In private, many French diplomats acknowledge that the war is inevitable. In public, they say war can be avoided. . . .The French are more interested perhaps in being guaranteed access to Iraq’s oil resources.
NYT January 24
U.S. backed Guatemala’s terror
Now that the United States has declared war on terrorism, it is useful to ask just what it is we are fighting.
What about stopping the governments that support the governments that terrorize their own people? Governments like ours, for instance? Oh, but that was in a good cause — fighting communism. Before El Salvador, before Chile, even before Vietnam, there was Guatemala.
. . . Let us listen to the old men and women, close to death now, whose parents worked in near slavery for those landowners, and who believed that when they elected the reformer Jacobo Arbenz in 1952, their lives would change for the better. Wilkinson shows us the documents that labeled Arbenz a communist and justified his U.S.-sponsored overthrow. . . He tells of the death threats he received as he was doing his research . . . . The terrorism continued for more than 50 years, with U.S. support and official silence. The result? "Guatemala was a place where terrorism did, in fact, win."
Washington Post December 22, Section X
Bush, Democrats: Warmakers, Inc.
a href="#No ‘Lesser Evil’ Bosses in Dogfight Over Iraq">No"‘Lesser Evil’ Bosses in Dogfight Over Iraq
Liberals, Democrats Delivering Anti-War Movement Into Hands of Imperialist Bosses
Capitalism Is the Cause of War
Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros Fund Pacifist Media
Black and White Unite vs. Nazi Attack on Somalis
a href="#Ford Profited From Worker’s Murder But Fight-Back Continues">"ord Profited From Worker’s Murder But Fight-Back Continues
a href="#Warmaker-Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!">"armaker-Strike-Breaker — Smash GE!
Boeing Sale No Triumph For Workers
a href="#The Rich Get Richer …Workers Get Evicted">"he Rich Get Richer …Workers Get Evicted
a href="#Capitalism and Workers’ Healthcare Don’t Mix">Me"ico - Capitalism and Workers’ Healthcare Don’t Mix
Racist War on Terrorism Hits All California Workers
Rely On The Workers To Fight Police Terror
Anthrax, Apartheid, And The FBI
Toussaint + Clinton = Layoffs for Transit Workers
Big Bucks For Banks, Workers Pay Through Nose
British Railworkers Refuse to Run Arms Train
LETTERS
a href="#‘U.S. Labor Against the War’">‘U"S. Labor Against the War’
Rebel vs. Factory Concentration Camps
Bush, Democrats: Warmakers, Inc.
The large anti-war marches on January 18 prove that many people oppose the mass butchery U.S. rulers are planning in Iraq. But peace and the profit system are incompatible. War is the normal state of affairs under capitalism. CHALLENGE can’t predict the immediate future. Perhaps Bush will intensify the air war over Iraq within the next couple of weeks and then launch a ground war by early March. Perhaps a coalition of European, Russian and Arab bosses opposed to U.S. policy can throw a monkey wrench into this scheme and force a temporary delay.
But war is the absolute certainty. U.S. imperialists cannot tolerate a challenge to their world supremacy. This supremacy depends upon the control of cheap oil to run the military, industry and war production. Iraq has the planet’s second-largest reserves and represents a strategic key to the command of the oil treasures in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait. The coming oil war in Iraq is a war to establish U.S. bosses’ world domination for the foreseeable future.
U.S. rulers have set the standard for mass murder. They alone have used nuclear weapons. Their arsenal includes "depleted uranium" bombs with a half-life of several billion years that create cancer epidemics. The workers and children of Iraq have tasted this atrocity since 1991, as did those of the former Yugoslavia during Clinton’s aerial bombardments of 1999. More recently Afghanistan received the same treatment. Now the bosses are about to outdo themselves.
The coming war heralds a new period of imperialist mayhem. U.S. imperialism will have to occupy Iraq in order to control its oilfields. It can then try to take over the entire Arabian Peninsula.
For the European rulers, U.S. power is already greater than they would like. Seizure of the Arabian Peninsula would be intolerable. For the Arab rulers, an Iraq completely dominated by Washington and Exxon Mobil-Chevron Texaco et al. would be equally unbearable. These are the raw materials of much wider armed conflict. The Russians and Chinese, who have a tremendous stake in the oil of the Persian Gulf, will eventually increase their own military commitments there. No peace marches can alter the basic laws of capitalism. The drive for maximum profit requires a parallel drive for world domination and always leads to war.
But within the horror of imperialist war lies revolutionary opportunities for the working class. As the rulers’ atrocities mount, millions of workers and others will seek explanations and solutions that only communist revolution can provide. Large numbers of body bags can eventually turn peace marches into rebellions, strikes, and uprisings, in the bosses’ military and throughout the U.S. Anti-U.S. rebellions throughout the Arab world are only a matter of time.
The spread of violent inter-imperialist rivalry will inevitably lead to sharpening class struggle. This can lead to an upsurge in revolutionary consciousness and the growth of revolutionary forces everywhere.
Communists in PLP are both realists and optimists. We are realists because we reject illusions about the nature of imperialism and the possibility that it can produce a peaceful, decent society. We know that war is the profit system’s Frankenstein. But we are optimists because history has proven that communist leadership can turn imperialist war into mass revolution to wipe out the war-makers and their monstrous system. This is the historical experience of the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions. It is also our own, having played an important role in launching and leading militant mass struggle against U.S. genocide in Vietnam.
Many anti-war demonstrators are looking for answers. We must struggle to win them to communist ideas. The response of workers, students, soldiers and others to our modest efforts in the factories, the military, the schools and the communities, proves that revolutionary optimism remains the order of the day. U.S. imperialists will start the next war. That is up to them, and we can’t prevent it. But collectively, communist-led workers, soldiers and youth can determine the outcome. However long it takes, the international working class will raise its fist in triumph.
a name="No ‘Lesser Evil’ Bosses in Dogfight Over Iraq"></">No"‘Lesser Evil’ Bosses in Dogfight Over Iraq
(From Stratfor Weekly, 1/14/03)
"Opponents of a war with Iraq, both European and Islamic, have tried to use the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) issue and the United Nations apparatus to prevent a U.S. attack. It has become clear that this is not going to work….The motives of the anti-war nations are far from humanitarian. Many of the same countries that were agitating for war against Slobodan Milosevic suddenly find war with Iraq intolerable. Their real motivation is fear that the United States, once it occupies Iraq, will not only dominate the region, but use Iraq as a base from which to extend its control throughout the Arabian Peninsula….For…France, Germany, and Italy, an already unmanageable United States would swell in power.…For…Saudi Arabia and Iran…U.S. military power on their borders, based in an Iraq completely under U.S. control, is something they don’t want to think about. If Saddam Hussein’s regime was destroyed through war, this would be the outcome."
Liberals, Democrats Delivering Anti-War Movement Into Hands of Imperialist Bosses
WASHINGTON, D.C. January 18— Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth rallied and marched against the imminent war in Iraq today. PLP organized a rally at one corner where speakers condemned the profit system that motivates and causes imperialist wars. Some speakers exposed the anti-war movement’s call for peace through "lesser evil" Democrat politics. During the march, PLP lead a contingent in chants. Some marchers, led by liberal ‘misleaders’ started chanting "Impeach Bush, Impeach Bush!" PLP’ers were booed by SEIU hacks when leading chants against both Republicans AND Democrats as two sides of the same capitalist coin. During the day, PLP’ers handed out hundreds of CHALLENGES and thousands of the new pamphlet, "Control of Iraqi Oil: Key for U.S. Bosses’ Plan to Rule World: Organize to Smash Cause of War: Capitalism".
Capitalism Is the Cause of War
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 18 — Friends and comrades from around the West Coast brought the much-needed message of international communist revolution as the solution to imperialist war and fascism to the liberal-led march against war in Iraq. Our multi-racial contingent struggled to lead workers away from the dead-end politics of the liberals and Democratic Party politicians.
We underestimated the amount of literature we could distribute. Little more than half-way into the five-hour march we had already passed out all of it. Many were hungry for a communist perspective.
We said workers can never achieve peace by supporting the Democrats or any capitalist leader. Only a communist party organizing workers, soldiers and students to make a revolution will create a worker-run world based on the needs of the working class, not on bosses’ profits.
One comrade told a crowd at a rally we organized inside the march that GIs played a big role in helping defeat U.S. imperialism in Vietnam: "The secret the liberals will never tell you is that during the Vietnam War GIs refused to fight for U.S. imperialism. Soldiers are working-class people like you and me who are forced into the military because they don’t have jobs or money for school. Soldiers have minds and can fight for the working class, not the bosses’ profits. Workers can also stop production of military equipment like helicopters, planes and bombs."
Of course, a huge difference exists between the opposing forces in Vietnam as compared to the coming war in Iraq. It was the Vietnamese workers’ and peasants’ struggle that actually defeated U.S. imperialism and inspired millions here to support them. Currently Iraq is led by a murderous capitalist, Saddam Hussein, who’s fighting to continue oppressing Iraqi workers. The international working class must side with those workers and oppose both U.S. and Iraqi bosses.
Organizing against the bosses’ war will become more possible and necessary as the ruling class cuts all state and city budgets, eliminating vital social services to pay for their war and their internal police state.
The large task before us involves not only these big marches but especially our day-to-day work, entering a period in which PLP can grow if we fight the bosses’ attacks, shatter the illusions many have in liberal politicians and expose the opportunist "left" serving the Democratic Party.
We were much more organized today than in past marches.
Afterwards at a dinner, we talked about our experiences this day and the difference it made to have a more organized, larger PLP presence. It showed we have more opportunities to win workers and youth fed up with the liberals’ illusions. Everyone was invited to march for communism on May Day and join with workers worldwide.
Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros Fund Pacifist Media
LOS ANGELES, Jan 20 — On Jan. 11, 15,000 people marched and rallied here against the war in Iraq. PLP members participated holding a rally, selling CHALLENGE and distributing thousands of leaflets. Our exposure of the bosses’ politicians, from Bush to the Democrats, and of capitalism’s drive for maximum profits as the cause of war, and our call for communist revolution, were cheered by many workers and youth.
This is the opposite of what the leaders of the anti-war movement have in mind. At the end of the march, the master of ceremonies thanked Pacifica radio for building it so consistently. This symbolized the fact that this movement is being financed (and its leadership ideologically controlled) by liberal sections of the ruling class, including the Ford and Carnegie Foundations, part of the Rockefeller-led Eastern Establishment (see below). When Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters spoke against a unilateral war and against Bush, it implied that a UN-sponsored war is O.K. Meanwhile, the entire U.S. Congress is carrying out the capitalists’ drive to force workers to pay for imperialist war.
So far this anti-war movement is being built from the top, unlike the one against the Vietnam War, initially sparked by anti-imperialist and anti-racist actions on the campuses and in the factories and barracks. The Cultural Revolution in China and the 1968 general strike in France also inspired tens of millions to oppose imperialism.
The anti-war movement was given a tremendous boost by the anti-racist, anti-cop rebellions that shook most inner cities in the U.S. The 82nd Airborne Division, scheduled for duty in Vietnam, was pulled back by President Johnson in order to put down the 1967 Detroit rebellion.
Although many people respond out of anger about the coming war and growing fascism, the big marches have been publicized and supported by Pacifica Radio, the Nation/Nation Institute and liberal groups associated with them. The Jan. 18 marches were reported in the more mainstream media and drew praise from the New York Times. (Editorial, 1/20)
In 1951, Pacifica Foundation received a $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation’s Fund for Education (whose first head was a president of Shell Oil). This was part of a Cold War CIA-Ford program to develop an anti-communist liberal "left." For a while Pacifica Radio (parent of KPFA, KPFK, WBAI and other stations) took a more independent financial course, but in the 1990s, its leadership sought and received large infusions of ruling class cash, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation and multi-billionaire George Soros.
Amy Goodman used $100,000 from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations to organize "Democracy Now!" She’s also supported by Soros and by the J.M Kaplan Fund (Welch Grape Juice money), which backs the Nation Institute as well.
Ford and Carnegie are Eastern establishment strongholds, with close and long-standing ties to the Rockefeller-led ruling class through corporate interlocks and through their Council on Foreign Relations.
Soros is no "lone ranger" billionaire. His holdings have included large chunks of Boeing and Lockheed stock, tobacco investments, Wal-Mart, CBS and Warner Communications. Bill Moyers, a Rockefeller foundation trustee for 12 years and a director in his Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the board of Soros’ Open Society Institute and is President of the Schumann Foundation. The latter funds Alternet, Mother Jones, the Institute for Policy Analysis, and Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).
These media are doing everything possible to build an anti-communist, liberal, pacifist anti-war movement loyal to capitalism with the active support from forces within the U.S. ruling class.
Workers and students must not rely on the bosses’ liberal media or their capitalist politicians who aim to contain our anger within the limits of their bloody system that inevitably creates war and mass misery. They want to win our hearts and minds to support U.S. "democracy" even as capitalist crisis drags us ever deeper into fascism.
The PLP is the only force capable of building a truly revolutionary movement to smash this vicious system of perpetual war, racism and fascist repression. Workers, soldiers and students are looking for answers to imperialist wars, but are being mis-led by the liberal politics of the anti-war movement leadership. We must spread PLP’s ideas, and lead actions against the bosses’ attacks, within liberal-led mass organizations and protests to counter the liberal misleaders.
Black and White Unite vs. Nazi Attack on Somalis
LEWISTON, MAINE, Jan. 11 — Today members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined with the working people of Maine to counter the appearance of the Nazis in the so-called World Church of the Creator (WCOC). Lewiston’s racist mayor had sent letters to everyone in the Somali community saying they were not welcome here. This was a blatant invitation for the Nazi WCOC to whip up racism and rally in this city. All told, nearly 5,000 people turned out at two anti-Nazi demonstrations, an astounding total in a predominantly white city of 36,000, proving once again there is mass anti-racist sentiment among all sections of the working class.
PLP has a long history of fighting fascism, including a street battle in Wakefield, MA, in which WCOC members fled under police protection. We also mobilized to stop the Nazis here. Meetings of anti-racists, with PLP present, were organized in Lewiston by the Somali community. Our organizing meetings in Boston were especially good as many Somalis there decided to confront the Nazis.
PLP proposed two picket lines, one against the racist mayor and another against the Nazis’ rally in a National Guard Armory. Another group, tied to the elected power structure, planned a so-called Many and One Rally at Bates College. PLP indicated that this only disarmed the anti-racists, leading people to believe the cops would protect us from the Nazis and that the elected officials cared about working people. PLP pointed out that cops only protect the Nazis and that an elected official initiated the racist attacks on the Somalis.
When the bus from Boston arrived, a picket line formed in front of Lewiston City Hall. Despite the cold weather, immediately more anti-racists joined, enlarging the line to nearly 100. Although the cops harassed us, we maintained our spirit and discipline. We called for the resignation of the mayor, who was vacationing in Florida.
Almost all the Lewiston residents who joined our rally at City Hall agreed to go to the armory to confront the WCOC Nazis. We all squeezed into the bus and vans. The police had erected roadblocks near the armory but 150 demonstrators marched right through them.
At the armory a chaotic crowd of 400 anti-racist demonstrators were held back by a line of cops. PLP established a picket line, allowing us to be visible as a group. We chanted "Hey, Nazis, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!" On our bullhorn speakers explained how capitalism spawned racism and fascism and why it needed to be overthrown. Some said racism was used to divide working people into accepting war for oil while we have no health care.
We then held an open mike. Most people advanced our anti-racist position, but a few people said Somalis and PLP were "outsiders," showing the need to intensify our anti-racist activity.
Amid 20 degree weather, we picketed for over three hours until we were sure the Nazis were gone. We were unable to confront them as we had in Wakefield, MA.
A PLP contingent went to the Bates rally and distributed hundreds of PLP flyers. The 5,000 people there were genuine anti-racists but misled into listening to Maine’s governor and senators. There was no open mike there, reflecting the political bosses’ fear of what working people might say.
On the return to Boston, the Somali people thanked PLP for standing up to racism and giving leadership to working people against the Nazis.
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MÉXICO — Thirteen years ago on Jan. 8, Ford bosses and their Mexican Labor Federation (CTM) union hacks murdered foundry worker Cleto Urbina.
Ford workers were fighting to get rid of the corrupt and murderous Uriarte-led CTM leadership and were demanding payment of a year-end bonus.
At 5 A.M,, Ford brought in 200 goons armed with guns and chains and dressed in work uniforms to look like they worked at the Ford Cuautitlan plant. When the workers fought back with their tools, the cowardly goons ran like chickens. While fleeing, they shot at the workers, killing Cleto and injuring 10 others. Angry workers chased the goons, capturing several and seized the entire plant. The bosses fled with their goons and hacks.
The workers held the plant for one month, demanding the killers be punished. Workers donated food from all over the metropolitan area to feed them. After a month, hundreds of cops helped by helicopters, broke into the plant, ousted the workers, and returned the factory to Ford. But resistenace continued. The plant remained closed for over two months.
Ford and the CTM leaders were exonerated of any guilt. Only one goon went to jail. During this struggle, DESAFIO-CHALLENGE was circulated among the strikers, spreading the idea that only communist revolution will make the bosses and their goons pay for their crimes.
This battle and many others won Ford workers the respect of thousands of workers and instilled fear in the bosses. Many of us were blacklisted, making it extremely difficult to find new jobs.
In 2002, with support from the Labor Ministry, Ford used a proposed fascist bill still being debated in Congress to fire 1,500 workers before the bill even became law. This law would give bosses even more power to fire workers. Even more repressive conditions now exist at the plant, but workers’ resistance continues.
In many ways, Cuautitlan Ford workers have shown that industrial workers are the key force in the fight against capitalism. In this period of war, economic crisis and worldwide fascism, revolutionary leadership among workers is the bosses’ worst fear. Let’s make this a reality. Workers of the world, unite!
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On January 1, General Electric (GE) more than doubled health care expenses for nearly 145,000 workers and retirees by an average of $400 yearly. On January 14 and 15, about 20,000 GE workers in 23 states conducted their first national strike since 1969. This is just a warm-up for GE. It wants a 30% co-payment from workers once the current contract expires in June.
The strikers are members of the International Union of Electrical Workers/Communications Workers of America (IUE/CWA) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). Since 1991, the percentage of unionized workers at GE’s U.S. operations has fallen from 39% to under 25%, or 38,000 workers.
GE is one of the world’s largest corporations, with 300,000 workers worldwide, and is a major war contractor. Last year its revenues totaled $125 billion, raking in a $16-billion profit. GE moans about rising health costs, but relative to profits their costs have actually declined. In 1989 the insurance bill was 13.6% of GE’s gross profits. In 2001, it fell to only 7%, a 48% decrease.
These health care changes could transfer $30 million from workers’ pockets to GE’s profits. That’s about the value of the various retirement homes GE has provided to former CEO Jack Welch (who continues to receive a $10 million-a-year pension). The increases will hit hardest when workers or their dependents are hospitalized, on multiple prescriptions, forced to see medical specialists, and are laid off, on sick leave, or retired.
Cop Car Kills GE Striker
Michelle Rogers, a single mother with three teenage daughters, was struck and killed by a police car while picketing the GE Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, GE’s largest unionized facility in the U.S. Since the 1980’s, the Louisville workforce has been slashed from 18,000 to 3,000, as GE wiped out 150,000 jobs worldwide. Despite the company’s vow to continue production during the strike, the Louisville complex was shut tight. GE owns the NBC television network, which could explain the lack of coverage of Michelle’s death.
GE’s health cuts reflect the increased attacks on the working class in this period of growing war and fascism. The pro-capitalist union leaders are incapable of stopping them. In the name of "saving jobs" and "beating the foreign competition," they have collaborated with the bosses to cut costs and increase productivity. In the last national contract they reduced pay raises to preserve health benefits. Now IUE/CWA President Edward Fire says he wants to help GE lower health care costs, but the company won’t meet with him.
The 1969 strike occurred at the height of the Vietnam War. Nixon pleaded with the strikers to return to work because they were hurting the war effort. In Schenectady, NY, strikers on the picket lines chanted, "Screw the War Effort!" At a massive anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance leadership of SDS led a breakaway march of over 10,000 people to the Department of Labor chanting, "Warmaker, Strike-breaker, Smash GE!"
A generation later, GE workers are fighting to keep what it took a lifetime to win, on the eve of more cutbacks and yet another imperialist invasion. Communist revolution is the only way off this endless treadmill of war and fascism.
The new face of basic industry:
Boeing Sale No Triumph For Workers
SPOKANE, WA., Jan. 6 — Today former Boeing workers accepted the new International Association of Machinists (IAM) contract with the new owner of the plant, Triumph Group, Inc. Boeing threatened to close the plant if the workers rejected it. The IAM leadership at Boeing called it "a very good first contract."
Last week, Triumph laid off all 320 production workers, permanently fired 35, and accepted applications for rehire from a little less than 90%. Seniority was ignored. Those that remain took 15% wage cuts and lost their sick leave accrued under the old contract. In exchange, union leaders "won" important job security language that says Triumph does not "intend" to lay anybody off.
Those already laid off under the old contract lost their automatic recall rights that were "guaranteed" for six years. Instead, they will be put on a "preferential hiring list" for three years. The Triumph workers are now under the IAM National Pension Plan, an option long rejected by Boeing workers. Those near retirement will lose money. Benefits from the old pension will be frozen at current levels so senior workers will not gain from future increases in the Boeing plan, which are multiplied over years of employment.
Finally, union leaders boast that the Spokane plant will be a model for "team" concepts in the Triumph Group. One job category will cover all production workers, allowing the company to force workers to perform any job on the production floor. This "flexibility" is unsafe and a proven job-killer. A future "gainsharing" regime is to be negotiated, the modern day equivalent of piecework with the added twist of getting workers on the floor to push speed-up.
Workers Know When They’re Being Sold A Bill Of Goods
Boeing workers aren’t falling for this "good news," particularly when learning that the same bosses who control Boeing will be reaping the profits from cheaper labor at the new Triumph plant (see adjoining article).
"Ever since 9/11, the big boys have been waving the flag and then screwing us," said one machinist. "What’s the difference between this and what Enron did?" asked another. "The same guys that say we have to fight an oil war in Iraq are the same ones playing this shell game that cuts our wages!" "They say only scoundrels and criminals are the ones that resort to patriotism," bitterly added a thoroughly disgusted bench mechanic. We also discussed how the bosses divert our anger, exemplified by the immigration arrests in California.
Restructuring Basic Industry
The Boeing sale to Triumph mirrors a pattern being repeated throughout basic industry. Manufacturers, especially auto and aerospace companies, are subcontracting whole sections of production. Soon these subcontractors will actually add their parts to the final product, eliminating even more jobs in the basic manufacturing firms.
The bosses and their labor lieutenants spread the illusion that these subcontractors are "mom-and-pop" entrepreneurs. Actually, they’re huge conglomerates financed by the same ruling-class banks that control basic industry today.
The AFL-CIO unions have failed to organize these subcontractors, leaving a gaping hole through which the bosses are now driving their profit machine. Many of these low-wage plants employ larger numbers of black, Latin and women workers, feasting on racist super-exploitation.
Today, basic industrial unions are holding on to union contracts at factories surrounded by non-union plants like Triumph Group. Essentially, the union "leadership" tries to "organize" by guaranteeing lower wages and more collaboration.
There are still millions of basic industrial workers in the U.S. More than 50% of autoworkers, steelworkers and coal miners have been shifted to these super-exploiting, subcontractor conglomerates. We must fight the demoralization caused by the "old-line" industrial unions’ inability to respond to this restructuring.
The present crisis lays out the contradictions of capitalism more clearly. The potential exists to win these super-exploited workers to communist revolution. Anti-racism an class-consciousness are good starting points from which to reinvigorate class struggle among industrial workers.
Keeping It In The (Ruling Class) Family
At the last series of union meetings our union told us Triumph is a new company looking to "grow the business." They assure us, "this means jobs."
Formed through a leveraged buyout in 1993, Triumph now operates in 42 locations, employing nearly 4,000 workers in Washington State, Chicago, San Diego and the Los Angeles area. It’s "growing" all right, approaching its first billion dollars in revenues in less than a decade. How?
The key player on Triumph’s Board is Joseph M. Silvestri. He’s Vice-President of Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd., a subsidiary of Citigroup, one of the original Rockefeller banks. The Rockefellers and their Eastern money allies are the leading controlling group in the U.S. economy and already control Boeing. Now they’ve provided Triumph with the money, connections and political clout to buy up whole sections of the automotive and aviation fabrication industry.
A thread of interlocking directorates of big corporations and banks runs through and around Boeing, which has a long history of connections to Citigroup. Boeing Chairman Emeritus Frank Shrontz and director Rozanne Ridgeway were on the Board of Citicorp, the precursor of Citigroup. Ridgeway is also connected to Citigroup through membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, the premier U.S. foreign policy think-tank. She and Senior Boeing Vice-President for International Relations Thomas Pickering meet with Citigroup Board member and former CIA director John Deutch.
Boeing CEO and Chairman Phil Condit joins Verizon Vice-Chairman and President, Lawrence Babbio, Jr. on the Board of Hewlett-Packard. The other Verizon Vice-Chairman and President, Michael Masin, sits on the Citigroup Board.
Boeing director Kenneth Duberstein is on the ConocoPhillips Board along with William Rhodes, Senior Vice-Chairman Citgroup, Inc. and Citbank, Ltd.
Thus Boeing’s sale of its Spokane plant to Triumph represents a gigantic and very profitable shell game. The same ruling class controls both firms. The same parts still get manufactured, but with workers taking a 15% pay cut, if we’re lucky enough not to be one of the 35 who permanently lost their jobs. Triumph "grows the business" by slicing off chunks of basic industry and slashing wages and jobs of these workers.
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DETROIT, MI — On the morning of December 11, more than 100 residents were evicted from a city-owned apartment building at 71 West Willis. The residents were not behind in their rent. Democratic mayor Kwame Kilpartrick ordered the eviction in order to sell the building and convert it into luxury apartments.
The following day, Kilpatrick, Matt Cullen of General Motors and Kresge Foundation president John Marshall III announced plans for major investments by the corporations and the city, state and federal governments into the redevelopment of this area, which connects Wayne State University to Comerica Park and Ford Field, the new Compuware world headquarters now under construction and the new GM world headquarters.
A Vietnam veteran returned from the Veterans Administration hospital to find everything he owned, his discharge papers and personal possessions, piled into the gutter by Wayne County Sheriff’s Deputies. "The only thing I have left is what’s on my back," he said.
GM and Chrysler each received $500 million in tax abatements, financed by cuts in education, health care and city services. When GM moved its world headquarters to the Renaissance Center in 1998, the state pledged $140 million for freeway improvements and a park. The federal government will fund seawall improvements and a new Port Authority terminal. The city will pay $180 million for parking and other improvements.
Meanwhile, the Coalition on Temporary Shelter reports 5,800 homeless in Detroit, with only 3,700 emergency beds available. Poverty is increasing and thanks to Clinton’s budget cuts and Bush’s war budget, there is little or nothing left of public assistance for the people who wander the streets, huddle in abandoned buildings, or for those who will join them because of Mayor Kilpatrick’s eviction order.
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MEXICO CITY, Jan.18 — The Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) provides health care to more than half the population of this country. Ruling-class plans for privatization mean that by 2005, IMSS might not exist. That means there will be no new hospitals or clinics, no maintenance for existing ones and no new diagnostic or treatment equipment. Millions of workers may wind up without health care, and those who can afford some will get lousy service.
Director Santiago Levy, faithful ruling-class servant, blames the workers for the IMSS bankruptcy. "The union contract is too generous…the IMSS employees are inefficient…the cost of health care for senior citizens is too high." He says workers’ wages are the main problem and is firing 5,000 while looking to fire more, with no opposition from the pro-boss union leaders.
Levy hypocritically attacks the workers, but upon taking office he increased salaries for himself and other corrupt officials. The bosses freeze hiring while firing pregnant women workers. Many are denied their 3-month leave to give birth because they "lack seniority." Levy says retirement pensions are a burden. Yet thousands of workers have given their best years to the IMSS. Never did this wolf in sheep’s clothing blame the corrupt public officials who fraudulently enriched themselves nor the bosses who never paid their Social Security fees.
The capitalists and politicians like Levy are the biggest burdens. We should follow the example of workers in El Salvador who struck for months to stop privatization there.
Capitalism and decent health care for workers don’t mix. Like everything else under this system, health care is a business. The lab owners producing the medications and the medical equipment, the companies providing medical units, the construction bosses who build medical centers, the big private hospital corporations and the corrupt health officials all profit from workers’ bad health. High infant and maternity mortality rates are rising while these mercenaries stuff their pockets.
Corruption will not end by replacing corrupt officials while retaining the capitalist profit system. We invite all IMSS workers and doctors to join and build a mass PLP to destroy this anti-worker system. Only communist revolution can resolve our problems, with a society based on workers’ needs. Unite to support the doctor’s struggles in Vera Cruz, Chiapas and Oaxaca.
Racist War on Terrorism Hits All California Workers
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 20 — "It’s not a question of comfort or discomfort, it’s a question of living or dying." (Los Angeles Times, 1/11).
That’s one worker’s reaction to Gov. Gray Davis’s "solution" to California’s budget crisis. He’s threatening $21 billion in budget cuts and tax hikes of $8.3 billion, all on the backs of the working class. Here is the racist war-on-workers scorecard:
•Cut $3.6 billion from Medi-cal, eliminating 570,000 recipients, ending adults’ physical therapy;
•Chop $1.6 billion from mass transit;
•Slash education by $4.6 billion, meaning layoffs and larger classes;
•Reduce welfare payments 6.2%, including SSI and aid to the blind;
•Lay off state workers and cut wages for those remaining;
•Double fees at community colleges;
•Increase of $400/year at Cal State Universities and $800 at the Univ. of California, leading to wholesale dropouts.
That’s for working-class families. At least 70 % of those most affected by the cuts in Medi-Cal and welfare are black and Latin. Among children the figure is higher. Racism is the cutting edge of these attacks on all workers. The only sector NOT cut? Prisons, maintaining a $5.3 billion budget, while building more. The flip side is enriching the wealthy: $2.9 billion in "debt service" to the banker-bondholders, paid by law before anything else. County governments owe these bankers $19 billion in interest and principal. The city of LA alone owes them $14.5 billion and another $1.5 billion to related "authorities." Meanwhile, there’s no law mandating Enron and Dynergy repay the $15 billion stolen from California taxpayers from the false energy shortage they created to jack up electricity prices
Corporate taxes in California are very low with no plans to increase them. In fact, when the dot.com bubble burst, California tax revenues dropped 25%. In the 1990s, billions were invested in speculative gambles rather than production, leading to the inevitable decline in profits when the bubble — not based on real value — burst.
Capitalism is based on profits for the few and wage slavery for the many. Vital public services come from taxing the value workers have created. But there’s no profit in using these taxes to lift the poor out of poverty. Since the bosses make super-profits from racist super-exploitation of black and Latin workers, these cuts affect them the sharpest. The bosses need all our money to pay off the bankers, prop up the bond and-stock markets and go to war for control of oil and U.S. imperialist world domination.
The Federal government is cutting money it sends to the states (which also comes primarily from workers’ taxes) to pay for a $400 billion war budget. Maintaining U.S. troops in the oil-rich Middle East costs $60 billion a year. A war in Iraq, in addition to killing hundreds of thousands of workers, will cost $1.9 trillion for a decade of U.S. occupation of that country.
Some union leaders "protest" Bush’s war plans but refuse to organize any serious challenge to the bosses’ war budget. In fact, the AFL-CIO proudly claimed credit for electing Davis Governor, the very Davis who’s waging a war on the workers and youth of California to bail out the bankers and war-makers. They build confidence in the capitalist system and its laws. Relying on these traitors is dangerous.
Workers and students throughout California need to organize a massive fight, including local and general strikes, against these cuts, the tax increases and to stop the billion-dollar payments to the banks. If the bosses claim such a moratorium would "ruin" California’s credit rating and cut off any further loans, that will simply expose this capitalist system as unworkable for workers, where maximum profits and wars for oil come at the expense of workers’ lives. We urge all workers, students and soldiers to join the fight to end the rule of profits by fighting for a communist society where all the value produced by the working class will be used to meet the needs of our class.
Rely On The Workers To Fight Police Terror
CAPITOL HEIGHTS, MD., Jan. 11 — Twenty members of the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability (PCPA) held a community rally here today, near the District of Columbia where cop Charles Ramsuer shot Desmond Ray in the back last December, paralyzing him for life. The police were conducting a raid on an alleged drug house when Ramsuer shot the unarmed, 22-year-old Ray as he walked towards his sister’s house. They were looking for someone who had not lived there for seven years.
Ramseur has again shown that cops are in the forefront of the bosses’ war to terrorize workers, particularly black and Latin. This was Ramseur’s fourth shooting! He was already on our "Dirty Dozen" cop list due to his last unjustified shooting. As we marched along Marlboro Pike and Southern Avenue, car horns blared in solidarity with our signs condemning police brutality and calling for Ramseur’s indictment. Then we marched through the neighborhood with Ray’s family, distributing flyers and getting over 130 signatures on petitions. The PCPA vowed to take the community rally strategy to Forestville next, where Ray lives.
This action energized the PCPA more than previous ones directed at county officials. By turning directly to the working class to build a base, the PCPA is embarking on a powerful strategy that can create a mass movement against racist police brutality, and shake the halls of power in Prince George’s County.
Anthrax, Apartheid, And The FBI
The FBI is hunting for evidence linking bio-warfare researcher Steven Hatfill to the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11. According to Attorney General Ashcroft, Hatfill is a "person of interest," not an official suspect. Whether or not he killed the five people who were exposed to mailed anthrax spores, he is definitely not "innocent." The investigation has uncovered his ties to the fascist Rhodesian and South African white supremacist regimes.
Soon after the 2001 anthrax attacks, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists accused the FBI of "dragging its feet" in investigating obvious leads to defense research. She described how Hatfill had access to anthrax and the motive to use it. By early December 2001, genetic fingerprinting raised the possibility that the anthrax spores came from one of a handful of U.S. labs engaged in bio-weapons research but the FBI didn’t demand bacteria samples from the labs until March. All anthrax samples were the "Ames" strain, developed by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, MD., Hatfill’s former employer. The spores were "weaponized" — powdered to maximize their spread — by a secret process invented by Army scientists and requiring sophisticated equipment.
Hatfill joined the Army’s Institute for Military Assistance in the 1970’s. He moved to Ian Smith’s fascist Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe), where he obtained an M.D. From 1975-’78, while still in the U.S. military, Hatfill served as a mercenary with Rhodesia’s Special Air Squadron and the Selous Scouts, elite paramilitary forces engaged in "counter-insurgency" warfare against black guerrillas. Racist and anti-communist "dirty wars" backed by South Africa and the CIA killed 1.5 million people in the countries bordering South Africa, including Zimbabwe. The Selous Scouts carried out human experiments with chemical and biological agents. A now-declassified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report comments, "…a member of the Selous Scouts admitted in 1978 that they had tried both chemical and biological warfare techniques to kill terrorists."
At the peak of Zimbabwe’s civil war (1978-1980), the world’s biggest anthrax epidemic swept the "Tribal Trust Lands" (black "homelands"), affecting 10,738 black farmers and their cattle; 182 died. The region remains contaminated today. Meryl Nass of the Physicians for Social Responsibility charged the Rhodesian military with germ warfare. According to a former Rhodesian military officer, "the use of anthrax spoor to kill off the cattle of tribesmen…was carried out in conjunction with psychological suggestion…that their cattle were sick and dying because of disease introduced into Zimbabwe from Mozambique by the infiltrating guerillas."
According to Zimbabwe’s Daily Mirror, Hatfill owed his medical school admission to Dr. Robert Symington, father of Rhodesia’s bio-weapons program. In 1984, Hatfill moved to apartheid South Africa, where he joined the medical branch of the notorious South Africa Defense Force. Medical units of the SADF were linked to "Project Coast." Under Wouter Basson (aka "Dr. Death"), "Project Coast" was a massive bio-weapons operation, experimenting with plague, cholera and anthrax to assassinate African nationalists. The British New Statesman asks, "Were [Hatfill] to be publicly charged, might he have very damaging information to impart about U.S. assistance to the Rhodesian and South African regimes…about offensive biological warfare programs, even though the military insists it does defense research only? Might he not be a veritable landmine of dangerous, damaging and embarrassing information?"
Returning to the U.S. in the mid-90s, Hatfill worked at USAMRIID on Ebola and Marburg, two of the world’s deadliest viruses. In 1999 he joined SAIC, a defense contractor whose major client is the CIA. Hatfill never officially worked with anthrax but his USAMRIID mentor was Bill Patrick, the Army scientist who weaponized anthrax. Under a CIA commission to the SAIC, Patrick wrote a report on possible scenarios following an anthrax attack through the mail.
If Hatfill is the killer, his motives are murky. But it’s clear that the main beneficiary is the bio-defense industry, which is reaping a bonanza in the wake of the anthrax scare. According to David Franz, former Commander of USAMRIID, "I think a lot of good has come from it. From a biological or a medical standpoint, we’ve now five people who have died, but we’ve put about $6 billion in our budget into defending against bio-terrorism" (ABC News, 5/4/02)
This exposes U.S. hypocrisy in justifying war with Iraq over "weapons of mass destruction(WMD)." From Hiroshima to anthrax to depleted uranium, U.S. imperialism has been the major deployer of WMD since World War II. The current build-up in bio-defense research, along with plans for mass smallpox vaccination, goes beyond concern with an Iraqi military response. The rulers anticipate prolonged war in the Mid-East, against many potential enemies. Homeland Insecurity and bio-defense spending is preparing us for fascism and a perpetual state of war.
Sources: New York Times, 1/4/02; 7/2/02; 7/12/02; 7/19/02; 8/13/002; Science, 297: 1264-5; 23. M. Nass, PSR Quarterly, 1992, 2: 198-209. http://www.anthraxvaccine.org/zimbabwe.html; Hartford Courant, 3/4/02
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm; Guardian, 5/21/02; P. Keim et al. (2000) J Bacteriol 2000 May;182(10):2928-36, Mangold and Goldberg (1999) Plague Wars; The Mirror (Harare), 10/19/2002.
Toussaint + Clinton = Layoffs for Transit Workers
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 17 — Before the vote is even counted, the bitter fruits of the latest Transit Workers Union (TWU) sellout contract are becoming evident. The Toussaint leadership gave away the no-layoff clause. Now the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is closing 177 token booths, which will slash 350 clerk jobs; is reducing 6-worker crews to 5; and is laying off 40 members of Local 153 who serve the workers’ and retirees’ Health Benefit Trust, which is being taken over by the MTA.
In addition, the merger of the Manhattan-Bronx bus lines with NYC Transit will force workers to take on added routes, cut more jobs and pit worker against worker by mixing seniority rosters. The absence of a no-layoff clause hands the bosses a weapon to threaten mass cutbacks if workers don’t knuckle under to more concessions.
This is what happens when social-fascist union leaders rely on liberal Democrats like Senator Hillary Clinton and Basil Patterson to ward off a strike. Clinton supports the fascist USA Patriot Act and war in Iraq. She called the strike breaking Taylor Law a "wise law. Public employees should not legally be allowed to strike."
In 1966, TWU president Mike Quill tore up the anti-strike injunction based on the previous law banning strikes and went to jail rather than order workers back to work. The TWU won more in that walkout than any other contract, and forced the State Legislature to pass a special amnesty bill exempting the strikers from any penalties mandated by law.
Big Bucks For Banks, Workers Pay Through Nose
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 17 — An analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) revealed how capitalism uses its state apparatus to funnel workers’ money into the coffers of Wall Street banks. The IBO stated that the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) proposed fare increase to $2 was based on a budget deficit for the next two years that was overstated by 300%. But it cited a $25 billion "storm cloud on the horizon" in terms of a projected debt over the next few years that would "justify" the proposed fare hike and more to follow.
It seems Governor Pataki and the MTA bosses borrowed extensively for repairs and new equipment rather than use the budget surpluses of the late 1990s. The IBO says, "Debt service will…absorb a growing portion of fare and other revenues." (New York Times, 1/17) A lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign said that the MTA’s massive borrowing program is leading to a "debt that would explode and swallow up a huge chunk of the money that goes to operations."
The debt has currently climbed to $16 billion and "is projected to rise to $25 billion over the next few years, in large part…because direct state and city aid for capital projects has evaporated." (NYT) This could lead to a constant stream of fare hikes for the express purpose of assuring bond-rating agencies that the MTA’s "outstanding debt is backed by revenues."
In other words, while the bosses spend $400 billion a year to make oil wars in the Middle East and massacre hundreds of thousands, workers will pay higher fares to maintain increasing profits for the banks to the tune of hundreds of millions in interest.
British Railworkers Refuse to Run Arms Train
LONDON, Jan. 9 — Two rail workers opposed to a war on Iraq refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition for British troops deployed in the Persian Gulf. The train was headed from Glasgow to the Glen Douglas base on Scotland’s west coast, Europe’s largest NATO weapons depot. They are the only pair at the Motherwell freight depot trained on the route of the West Highland line.
Union officials, also against this war, have refused to ask the workers to change their position, risking legal action and fines for contempt of court.
The rail workers are following a long-held internationalist tradition here. In 1973, dockworkers went on strike rather than load British-made arms headed for Chile’s CIA-installed fascist dictator Pinochet after his assassination of Salvador Allende. In 1920 stevedores on London’s East India Docks refused to move guns onto a ship chartered to take weapons to British interventionist troops and counter-revolutionaries trying to smash the Russian Revolution.
These actions set an example for workers worldwide in standing up for our class. Without workers to manufacture and transport weapons, the bosses would find it far more difficult to conduct their imperialist wars. The next step is for the working class to use these very weapons to wipe out the bosses and their capitalist profit system altogether.
Workers Of The World Write!
LETTERS
USWA Local 1011 passed a resolution at their January meeting which stated, "We value the lives of our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters more than Bush’s oil profits. We have no quarrel with the people of Iraq who will suffer the most." The resolution passed without one dissenting vote. These are former LTV workers who now work for ISG. CHALLENGE readers will recall, LTV died a painful death, costing workers millions in wages, pensions and health care. Many are Vietnam vets. They have learned the hard way the "guarantees" of capitalism. Some workers are wearing anti-war buttons, and a small group attended the Jan. 11 anti-war rally in Chicago.
More and more workers are taking a stand against this blood for oil war that will kill Iraqi and US workers. Teachers, postal workers, AFSCME workers, steel workers and others have passed resolutions condemning Bush’s oil war.
These are all good first steps, but not nearly enough. It’s all been pretty easy. When the Bush murderers start the war, the stakes will rise. Thousands will die. Racist, right-wing patriotism will sky rocket. Those who oppose the war will be called traitors.
In the coming days, we must do everything we can to win workers to the anti-imperialist camp. A worker wearing a button that says "No blood for oil"; a worker who distributes CHALLENGE; a worker who backs up a comrade in a lunchroom discussion; these can all become bullets in the war against the bosses.
Some folks in the anti-war movement think demonstrations; vigils and liberals will stop the war. We have no such illusions. The US ruling class will kill millions to control the world’s oil supplies. They will have their war. But every worker who stands with us in this fight is a potential recruit to PLP.
Three Finger Slim
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On January 11, more than 100 trade union leaders and activists gathered at the Teamsters Local 705 hall in Chicago to launch U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW).
Local 705 is the country’s second largest Teamsters Local, composed mostly of UPS workers. They hosted the meeting after passing an anti-war resolution.
Dozens of unions have passed anti-war resolutions across the U.S. In the Chicago area, aside from Local 705, the Chicago Teachers Union voted to send a bus to the Jan. 18 march, and local unions of postal and steel workers passed anti-war resolutions with relative ease. PLP members have been involved in much of this activity.
A continuations committee, backed by $30 million from AFSCME and SEIU, was established to set up local chapters. There is already one in New York (NYCLAW). Has the AFL-CIA leopard changed its spots? Are anti-imperialist union leaders bombarding the AFL-CIO headquarters? Do you want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
A few aspects appear to comprise this development. First and foremost is that the working class, including those in the military, is not won to supporting U.S. imperialism and the invasion of Iraq. There is a mass, undeveloped anti-imperialist sentiment. Also, many union leaders on many levels, whether they are organized into "leftist" parties or not, were influenced by the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements and/or Vietnam veterans. They reflect the mass anti-imperialist consciousness that affected tens of millions, a great deal of it due to the efforts of PLP.
The AFL-CIO leadership recognizes this sentiment and wants to get behind it to co-opt it in service of the liberal bosses. The Democratic Party sees the mass anti-war sentiment as a potential battering ram against Bush and the Republicans. Even the political hacks and errand boys on the Chicago City Council voted 45-1 against "Bush’s rush to war," the very same misleaders who sell out workers daily. The smorgasbord of opportunist "leftist" parties are all too eager to be the foot soldiers of the Democrats, who want war and control of oil but on their terms.
But what about PLP? What are our opportunities in the current period? We are also subject to opportunism and must wage a relentless struggle against it. There is a basis of unity with thousands of workers on our jobs and in our unions, against racism and war. We must use that unity to sharpen the ideological struggle, expose the opportunists, help the workers shed their illusions and win them to communist revolution and PLP. The main aspect of this struggle is to win more workers to read and distribute CHALLENGE.
We should investigate how to relate to Labor Against War, but the main opportunity is to build a mass base for PLP, concentrating in shops, the military and on campuses. Resolutions are only helpful if we use them to organize our co-workers into action. Regular readers and distributors of CHALLENGE will be the ones most open to supporting and organizing job actions and union battles. Short of that, all roads lead to the Democratic Party, and ultimately to war.
A Reader
Rebel vs. Factory Concentration Camps
The workers of Avellana/Outkeen here in Mexico are rebelling against layoffs. The bosses want to "do more with less," meaning cut costs by firing workers while increasing productivity. "Modernization" is turning the factories into concentration camps, where workers have no rights nor can they claim any by law.
If we believe the company line — "more productivity will win markets and secure our jobs" — we will lose. Under capitalism only the bosses win. If we unite with other workers to fight, we can build a movement of millions, not only to stop layoffs but to smash capitalism.
Workers produce everything. Why do we need the parasite bosses? They belong in the garbage can of history. We need communism. This is the only way we will be free and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Factory Red
