To our readers: this is a 3-week issue of Challenge. We will return to our biweekly schedule on Sept. Meanwhile, we urge our internet readers to help us with our funds and sub campaign. You can buy a yearly sub to the printed paper (only 15 dollars a year), or send us a contribution. All checks and money orders should be made out to Challenge Periodicals and mailed to PLP GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202.

1. No Matter Who Wins the Elections, USA.
   RACIST BOSSES STILL CONTROL STATE POWER
2. Kerry, the other Pro-War Candidate
3. Why Is Big Oil Happy Over Chavez's Victory?
4. GIs Headed for Iraq Ripe for Red Leadership
5. Navy PL'er Striving to Unite Black, Latin, White Soldiers
6. Stand Up Against Steel Bosses, Union Servants
7. Workers' Power Is Only Answer to Capitalism's New Business Model
   1. The New Factory Arrives in the U.S.
   2. Racist Pay Differentials or Revolutionary Class Consciousness
   3. Need Workers' Internationalism to Fight `New' Subcontracting
8. Chicago Bosses Use Racist Attacks on Workers in Projects To Enrich Developers
9. Home Attendants Eager For Struggle, PLP's Ideas
10. Attica Means Fight Back!
11. Doctors Must Fight U.S. Nazi Torture
12. Organize vs. Bosses' Nationalism, Racism,
    Basis of Subcontracting Profits
13. Protest Ten Years of Racist Cop Killings
14. Hotel Women Workers Wildcat vs. Bosses' Attacks, Union Sellouts
15. BOOK REVIEW:
    U.S. GOV'T ANTI-COMMUNISM CREATES TERRORISM, DRUG EPIDEMIC
    1. SOUTHEAST ASIA
    2. U.S. BACKS DRUG LORDS AFTER WWII
    3. AFRICA
    4. ROLLBACK: LATIN AMERICA
    5. Afghanistan
    6. REAL WARS ON TERROR AND DRUGS = COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
16. `Fahrenheit 451': A Bosses' Tool That Can Bury Them
17. NEW T-SHIRT!
    1. Revolt! Don't Vote
18. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. At last, truth from Bush!
    2. A wide, poisonous dragnet
    3. After election, a draft?
    4. Big-biz media bury issues
    5. US writers ignore workers
    6. Scaring ill immigrants
19. LETTERS
    1. Renew my Sub for 2 Years
    2. Fired for Refusing To Betray Ideals; Sends $100
    3. Profits Fuel Fire,
       Kill 400 in Paraguay
    4. Which Side is Moore On?
    5. Is this Fascism?
    6. `Project changed my life forever!'
    7. Project Developed
       Youth Leadership
    8. Bosses Are Always Snakes
    9. Nixes Racist Dixie Flag
    10. Liberal Think-Tanks Tied to G.O.P. & Dems
    11. PLP's Ideas
        Re-Printed in Pakistan

---

No Matter Who Wins the Elections, USA.
RACIST BOSSES STILL CONTROL STATE POWER

No matter who wins the 2004 electoral circus, the United States is and will remain a class dictatorship. Under the profit system, political parties exist for two primary reasons: first, to serve individual groups of bosses pursuing their particular profit goals; and second, to mislead workers into backing these profit goals with the illusion that the right to cast a ballot makes the U.S. a democracy.

Many people correctly saw through the crude, racist swindle that enabled Bush, Jr. to steal the White House in 2000 by denying black workers the right to vote in Florida. But this isn't the main reason the present government is a dictatorship. Swindles and voting fraud are as American as apple pie. In 1960, the Democrat John Kennedy beat Nixon because Chicago's Democratic political machine handed him the Illinois electoral vote by counting the votes of dead people.

The main lesson for workers in this election is the nature of state power in a class society. By "state," communists mean the entire government apparatus that enables the bosses to rule at the federal, state and local level. It includes all three so-called "branches" of government on each level. Every elected official, from Bush to the mayor of the tiniest town, every legislative body, from the U.S. Senate down to the smallest state legislature all belong to it. So do all four branches of the military and every cop, judge and immigration officer.

The capitalist state apparatus exists to prolong and protect the profit system, regardless of the party in power at any given moment. The state in this sense was born long ago, as a product of society's first historical division into antagonistic social classes. Under slavery, the state existed to protect the privileges of the slave-owning class. Under feudalism, it served kings and lords, helping them rule over serfs and bondsmen. Now, under capitalism, it protects the profits and private property of the wealthiest bosses, primarily against the working class, but also against real and potential rivals to U.S. imperialism.

The capitalist state therefore reflects the essential class violence of the system itself. This is perhaps less obvious today in a temporary period of relatively low class struggle, but even under present conditions, we see the class role of the police, for example in their systematic racist war of terror against workers living in the most oppressed sections of U.S. cities. The moment class struggle sharpens, the role of the police becomes crystal clear, as they protect bosses' interests at gunpoint, shooting workers, protecting scabs and enforcing back-to-work court injunctions.

A classic recent example of the state's role in class struggle was the decision by the Republican president Reagan to fire striking air traffic controllers in 1981. This fascistic action set the tone for the increasingly virulent anti-worker policies the bosses have been implementing ever since. The Democrat Clinton followed suit with his racist "welfare reform," which was a thinly disguised union-busting, slave labor scheme.

The entire ruling class now agrees with the need to cloak its post-9/11 moves toward a police state in the form of "anti-terror" measures. Anti-Bush squawking from the Democrats reflects their discontent over Ashcroft's clumsy, inept tactics rather than over goals. The real purpose of these measures is to discipline our class, preparing it for the sacrifice in blood and living conditions that the rulers' long-range war plans will require. All the rulers agree on this question.

In foreign policy, none of the big bosses in any significant section of the Republican or Democratic parties disputes the U.S. imperialism's need to rule the world by force, to control the flow and pricing of all major sources of petroleum, particularly in the Persian Gulf, or to prevent the rise of serious imperialist rivals in Asia or Europe. The rulers differ only on methods and approach (see article on page 1 on the tactical differences between Kerry and Bush).

The post-World War II history of U.S. Middle Eastern policy reflects the consistency of the class role the bosses' state apparatus has played on this issue.

Immediately after World War II, key U.S. advisor George Kennan warned the Democratic Truman administration that control of Middle Eastern oil must become and remain an absolute priority for Washington and Wall Street.

The Republican Eisenhower organized a coup to overthrow a nationalist government in oil-rich Iran and replace it with the nazi-loving, pro-U.S. Shah. Eisenhower also forced British, French and Israeli bosses to back down when their 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal threatened potential U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.

After the Israeli fascists proved the strength of their military in the 1967 Six Day War, every U.S. president from Johnson through Bush Jr. has armed Israel to the teeth and given it the assignment of serving as U.S. imperialism's local gunslinger.

In 1979, when a nationalist-Islamic fundamentalist uprising overthrew the Shah, Democrat Jimmy Carter announced the "Carter Doctrine," which stated that the U.S. would consider any attempt to wrest control of Persian Gulf oil from U.S. companies as a cause for war. Every U.S. president since then has followed this strategic line. The cost in human life has been staggering. The U.S. cynically backed both sides in the murderous 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Bush, Sr.'s 1991 Desert Storm in Iraq slaughtered hundreds of thousands. A million people, mostly young Iraqi children, died in the wake of Clinton's brutal sanctions and bombings. And now the Bush-Cheney war is adding to the toll.

As CHALLENGE has often said, the biggest mistake workers can make is to choose among supposed "lesser evils" under capitalism. Understanding the class nature of the state helps avoid this error. As long as classes exist, a state apparatus will exist, and its role will be to keep one class in power to rule over the class that directly antagonizes and threatens it.

Communists have an alternative to the bosses' dictatorship: the Dictatorship of the Working Class (or Dictatorship of the Proletariat). But the working class cannot seize political power by voting for it. Only a prolonged, violent revolution supported by communist workers and led by a communist party can achieve this goal. History shows that even when the first stage of the goal is achieved, keeping power and building communism are even harder than the seizure of power. Nonetheless, the future of humanity and the survival of the working class demand nothing less.

These are the goals our Party expects to win, regardless of all obstacles and of the time needed to win them. As the rulers' presidential circus unfolds, workers can take an important step in the right direction by shedding their illusions about capitalist elections and the capitalist state and by joining with the PLP to sharpen the class struggle and carry our class forward on the long, violent and inevitably victorious road to revolution.

(Another article will explore the ideological arms of the capitalist state apparatus and how the working class and PLP can fight them.)

Kerry, the other Pro-War Candidate

Just days before George Bush took office in 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission handed him its final, 148-page report. This document outlined the measures the U.S. ruling class deemed necessary for maintaining U.S. capitalism's worldwide dominance for the next quarter century. It proposed expanding the military, launching oil wars in the Middle East, creating a police state at home, centralizing the state apparatus and linking business more closely with government. Carrying out Hart-Rudman's provisions became job Number One for the U.S. president. Bush's failures and shortcomings in this regard, and Kerry's shaky promise, are--for the rulers -- central issues in the coming election.

Hart-Rudman said a terrorist attack on the U.S. would provide an invaluable recruiting tool for the military. Bush squandered that opportunity, was forced to send inadequate forces to Iraq, and now faces the rulers' wrath for the quagmire there. Hart-Rudman said the National Guard should serve as a homeland police force. Bush sent the Guard to Iraq to bolster the overstretched regular army. Hart-Rudman called for a sweeping restructuring of federal agencies. Bush set up the Homeland Defense Department only grudgingly and is balking at revamping intelligence services. Sen. Jay Rockefeller called Bush's recent appointment of Porter Goss as CIA boss a "big mistake." Instead of merely filling a vacancy, Bush should be uniting the CIA, FBI, NSA, and defense intelligence under an overall czar, according to Hart-Rudman and the follow-on 9/11 Commission.

Hart-Rudman urges that leaders prepare citizens to give up "blood and treasure" in the cause of U.S. imperialism. Bush has spilled the blood of a thousand working-class GIs and many thousands of Iraqis but hasn't managed, or even tried, to shift capitalists' profits from their pockets to the war effort. His tax cuts, while fattening the bottom lines of companies and investors, send the wrong ideological message, in the rulers' eyes. For them, it's "there's a war on," not Bush's "business as usual."

John Kerry, on the other hand, allies himself with Hart-Rudman's war-and-fascism evangelists. He works closely with a group called Business Executives for National Security (BENS), having spoken at its meetings and won praise from its chief Denis Bovin, vice-chairman of Bear Stearns, a New York financial firm. The directors of BENS wrote in the Wall Street Journal (6/15/04), "We hadn't fully anticipated the extent to which 9/11 and the security regime that followed has affected the job of a business leader. But blind faith in markets, ignorance of the ways of Washington, and a desire to avoid any unnecessary involvement with federal authorities are insufficient approaches to today's challenges -- and tomorrow's." Kerry's campaign advisors include Gary Hart, co-chairman of the Hart-Rudman commission, and Leslie Gelb, one of its 12 members. Kerry wants 40,000 more soldiers immediately and a national service program to provide cannon fodder for the long term.

The New York Times, the rulers' leading media outlet, expressed delight that "Mr. Kerry instantly embraced every recommendation of the 9/11 Commission" (8/15/04). But the same edition worried about Kerry's "opportunistic" flip-flopping, "Mr. Kerry, who voted against the first Persian Gulf War, tailored his positions on this one to his presidential ambitions. He was more hawkish when the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination seemed to be Richard Gephardt, and more dovish when Howard Dean picked up momentum. At the height of the Dean insurgency, both Mr. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, decided to oppose spending $87 billion to underwrite the occupation of Iraq that they both voted to authorize."

The rulers are having trouble producing a leader as galvanizing as an FDR or a Hitler. But that doesn't lessen their need to destroy foreign rivals or crack down on workers at home. Iraq, Afghanistan and the Patriot Act show that the capitalists' war-making and fascism are deadly under inept leadership. If a President Kerry should prove more capable than Bush, the working class would suffer even more.

The alternative? Destroying the capitalist system that drives these endless wars. Joining PLP and fighting for communism can ultimately emancipate our class.

Why Is Big Oil Happy Over Chavez's Victory?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's victory in the Aug. 15 referendum that kept him in office brought relief to the world's oil markets. Jimmy Carter and the OAS (Organization of American States) led by former Colombian President Gaviria (a Washington lackey) declared Chavez the victor in the teeth of the rantings of the local right-wing capitalist opposition, showing that despite everything, Chavez was the "lesser of two evils" for U.S. rulers, at least for now. A NY Times (8/18) editorial said it all when it told the opposition claiming fraud to "shut up" and accept that they lost badly.

Chavez was also the candidate of U.S., European and Chinese oil companies operating in Venezuela.

Why? According to the Internet intelligence service Stratfor (8/17): "The threat of destabilization should he have lost was too great a risk. Venezuela is a main source of oil, and Chavez's victory assured that supply."

Stratfor added that, "Hidden behind is another reality. The United States needed Chavez to win because his victory was the greatest guarantor of stability, and the United States does not have enough forces available to intervene in Venezuela should chaos break out. The lack of sufficient troops is now shaping U.S. policy. Washington is rooting for political opponents because it has no real capacity for intervention should instability result."

Stratfor wrote this amid the latest White House announcement to shift 70,000 troops out of Germany, Japan and other countries. This follows the Rumsfeld strategy to re-shape the U.S. Armed Forces. But this strategy contradicts the fact that U.S. bosses' primary need now is not a "hi-tech" army. Stratfor says Bush's speech announcing the troop reduction overseas indicates the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq still have not penetrated Pentagon planners.

This is exactly why so many elements in the U.S. ruling class prefer Kerry to Bush (see page 1). Workers in Venezuela who hate the old rulers unfortunately think Chavez is their savior (a line pushed by many in the pseudo-left worldwide). But Chavez just represents a different section of the capitalist class, willing to make deals with the devil as long as their interests are served. (Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA oil company owns CITGO, one of the largest gas-station chains in the U.S.). Chavez has used the oil profits to dole out a few crumbs (some bikes, sewing machines, cheap medical care courtesy of the thousands of doctors sent by Cuba in exchange for oil). But still, Venezuela's income gap is one of the highest in Latin America, and the poverty rate has not diminished much under Chavez.

Revolutionary-minded workers in Venezuela's "Bolivarian mass movement" should heed the lesson that only a communist-led workers' revolution can serve their interests. Their task should be to win workers and other exploited masses in the country's mass organizations to build the long fight for communism.

GIs Headed for Iraq Ripe for Red Leadership

I'm in the National Guard. Recently our unit was put on "alert," headed for Iraq. CHALLENGE has often shown that certain areas of work and historical times are particularly ripe for communist leadership and Party growth. I've never experienced this more clearly or personally now that my friends and I face going to war.

The Army will give our unit months of training before sending us to Iraq. They've extended the activation period to 18 months, to turn the military's cheap "civilian" soldiers into better fighting machines. This has created problems for those having lives outside the military. Unlike regular Army soldiers, National Guardsmen are totally unprepared for duty abroad.

Besides "skills training," we've had "indoctrination" sessions by higher officers. Before this I had struggled with one soldier-buddy who agreed with the Party's analysis, but said he'd resolved his internal conflict by hoping he could do some good for the Iraqi people -- providing medical care, building schools, etc. He said it was better that he represent America than somebody else, who might shoot the first Iraqi he sees.

However, we were briefed repeatedly not to trust any Iraqi, not even to give candy or food to begging children because they might be providing a distraction for the enemy. Furthermore, we're not to trust reporters, neighbors or even family members. Why? Because "the information we give them might wind up in enemy hands." They gave an example of a CIA agent working for the Russians without his co-workers knowing. They said "terrorist organizations" include even environmental and abortion rights groups!

The commanders try to imbed paranoia and fear into us, while also winning us to "humanitarianism." They feed us the lie that the average soldier is privy to top-secret information. Meanwhile, we don't even know exactly when we're going to Iraq, or to what part.

The underlying assumption is: trust your superiors -- they're the only ones you CAN trust! This creates the illusion that in the military we're all "part of the same team," that we must separate our purpose from the rest of society.

I immediately asked one of my close friends what she thought of all this, and how she now viewed me. Since then she said it would be good for her to try to raise awareness among the soldiers.

One officer asked his audience of hundreds of soldiers: "Who's afraid of going?" More than half raised our hands. Then we were shown a clip from the movie "Band of Brothers": a soldier who admits he's afraid is told that it's because he still hopes he'll make it out alive. The movie says, essentially, "toughen up," realize you're a soldier, and you might die. The officer stopped the film here and used this to tell those of us who are afraid that we're still clinging to the hope we might not go. His response was: get over it, you're going!

Many soldiers talked afterwards about how they feel worse, not motivated, after these sessions. There is nothing like hearing it for yourself, what Party members have been saying all along. Now if you ask most soldiers, "Why go to Iraq?" they'll say that, since they have no other choice, they go "for each other," to relieve the soldiers already there.

The rulers may be able to exploit people's good intentions for now, but their callousness creates a very thin commitment to their overall mission of profiteering. In wartime, what it takes to preserve capitalism is really exposed.

Instead of causing me despair, this situation gives me hope. I use these opportunities to show my friends something really worth fighting for. The bosses have created a situation in which the working class is willing to sacrifice the little they have now for what they believe will protect their families and each other. Imagine the lengths to which they will go for communism!

A PLP soldier in the National Guard

Navy PL'er Striving to Unite Black, Latin, White Soldiers

Much has been made of presidential candidate John Kerry's role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) during the early 1970s. The liberal media portrays him as a hero because he inquired of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" I, too, was in VVAW around this time. My view of Kerry, and I think I speak for most in that organization, was decidedly more negative.

Kerry always wanted to save U.S. imperialism. He thought continuing the war in Vietnam would undermine the army and the whole U.S. Empire. "I don't see any other system other than democracy [i.e. capitalism]," Kerry told the Senate hearing, "but [it] has to remain responsive. When it does not, you create the possibilities of all kinds of other systems to supplant it, and that very possibility, I think, is beginning to exist in this country." He concluded continued fighting was a mistake. Eventually, a majority in the ruling class shared his opinion.

By the early '70s, large numbers of soldiers and veterans realized that the Vietnam War was no "mistake," but rather the logical extension of U.S. imperialism. Many in and out of the armed forces took anti-racist, anti-imperialist positions in the struggle against the brass and the ruling class. General Westmoreland, overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, pleaded in White House meetings to speed-up the withdrawal before the bosses "lost the army."

Kerry's pro-imperialist politics led to his desire to keep VVAW a relatively small organization of combat veterans, who would testify before Congress and make symbolic gestures like throwing away medals. Those with anti-imperialist, anti-racist politics wanted VVAW to become a mass, fighting organization of all soldiers and veterans, led by enlisted GIs, not officers.

Some active duty chapters, led by our Party, actually organized GI rebellions against the brass and the bosses' genocidal war. The New York Times (11/18/72) reported: "...organized servicemen, blacks and whites, have moved from a `position of conciliation to revolutionary, defensive and violent stands.'" Our Party's multi-racial, anti-imperialist, revolutionary line was more in tune with the consciousness of the majority in VVAW.

Kerry saw the handwriting on the wall. He could never launch his career as a ruling-class politician linked to an organization with such rank-and-file fervor. He quit.

New "resistance" organizations are springing up around the military and their families. One even updates the VVAW name, calling itself the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Today's soldiers and their family members would do well to heed the lessons of the Vietnam War. Symbolic gestures that don't threaten U.S. imperialism will not get the job done. We must build on the work of those soldiers who attempted to mold a revolutionary force in the army during the Vietnam War.

Red Veteran

Stand Up Against Steel Bosses, Union Servants

EAST CHICAGO, IN, August 9 --

"Last time we were out here, we were WITH the company, in our partnership to get tariffs passed for the steel industry," said Jim Robinson, Director of United Steel Workers Union (USWA) District 7 to a crowd of 500 workers surrounding the headquarters of Ispat-Inland Steel. They were protesting the company's decision to cancel the meager $62.50/month supplemental benefit paid to widows of Inland workers who retired before 1989. Many of their pensions only amount to $200/month. The contract with Local 1010 expired on August 1, and the bosses are holding these elderly steel widows as hostages in the negotiations.

Several workers made their own signs attacking the union's partnership with the steel bosses. "NO PARTNERSHIP," and "OUR PARTNER = OUR TERRORIST" conveyed the truth about the union leadership's traitorous alliance with the steel bosses. Workers were furious that Ispat owner Milat was cutting off these measly benefits while having just bought a $125 million mansion, and thrown his daughter an $85 million wedding at the Palace of Versailles!

The union's infamous "STAND UP FOR STEEL [BOSSES]" campaign has led to mill closings, mass layoffs, attacks on pensions and healthcare and government-imposed tariffs; the latter were later overturned by the World Trade Organization. The destruction of excess domestic production capacity and the scrapping of work rules, job classifications and pension and healthcare "legacy" costs have led to record profits for the industry and even more attacks on the workers. This unity with the bosses is bringing fascism to the workplace and ultimately leading the working class to another world war to defend the bosses' profits.

There are bosses and workers; you can't serve both. The pro-capitalist union leaders have no plan to fight these attacks. Not one dared mention "strike." Instead, they paraded a line of Democratic Party politicians, and ultimately washed their hands of any responsibility by sending the contract to binding arbitration.

First they tell us you can't strike when the bosses are losing money and under attack from "foreign" competition. Now they tell us you can't strike when the bosses are pocketing billions! The fact is the flag-waving union hacks are committed to defending the bosses' profits; even militant trade unionism won't change the fundamental laws of capitalism. PLP is stepping up our efforts to build a base among steel workers for communist revolution, to destroy the profit system and their "partners" in union jackets.

Workers' Power Is Only Answer to Capitalism's New Business Model

SEATTLE, WA -- "Are they talking about workers' power?" asked a hopeful Boeing machinist. He was referring to the Machinists' union Journal's cover story entitled "IAM North American Might." After detailing all the key places Machinists worked in the civilian and war economy the article posed, "Imagine for a second all those Machinists stopped what they were doing -- for a minute, an hour, a day or a week -- and you will get a sense what absolutely indispensable really means."

The next paragraph brought us back to reality, assuring the bosses: "Such a massive work stoppage cannot and will not occur, at least not by the unilateral decision of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers."

After bemoaning "unpatriotic" foreign off-shoring, the article concluded, "There will come a day when doing what's right means doing nothing at all." What's a worker to make of this flip flop?

The New Factory Arrives in the U.S.

Perhaps part of the answer can be found in Toledo, Ohio at the new DaimlerChrysler plant. Several years ago, our Party brought revolutionary communist politics to General Motors workers during their strike against the "Brazilian Model," (superexploiting workers there) where subcontractors actually bring in their own employees to assemble the final car. Since then the "Brazilian Model" has migrated to Europe and is now reaching the U.S. with this new Chrysler factory.

DaimlerChrysler is welcoming suppliers from the "Kuka Group and Durr of Germany and Hyundai Mobis from South Korea, each [of whom] will own and run a major operation -- the body shop, the paint shop and the manufacturing line for chassis, respectively." (LA Times, 8/8) "The setup has the potential to forever change the way American car companies finance their factories and develop their products," says J. Ferrer, senior analyst at PriceWaterhouseCoopers' automotive consulting practice.

The UAW has endorsed this "modification of the business model," signing contracts with independent parts suppliers at substantially lower wages and benefits, creating greater racist and nationalist wage differentials! News of this new kind of factory has sparked much discussion and debate on the shop floor and in union meetings.

IAM District President Mark Blondin brags about the $3.2 billion the union helped win for the company to locate the new 7E7 assembly line in Everett. But he omits the racist cuts in unemployment compensation -- targeted at farm workers, but affecting even laid-off Boeing workers -- that helped pay for that bribe. Meanwhile, the company is selling off whole sections of the fabrication division (parts-making), and once again the union is institutionalizing racist and nationalist pay differentials by agreeing to lower wages and benefits at the sold plants. Workers are confronting the union leaders about this "new business model." The District may have sold out to get a new plant in Everett, WA. that in the long run won't even employ Boeing workers.

Racist Pay Differentials or Revolutionary Class Consciousness

Blondin's take on lower wage contracts for subcontracting workers is, "What can you do? It's either that or you're out." That's a far cry from the "absolutely indispensable" power of workers.

The rise of international competitors and the need to finance increasingly expensive wars for oil and imperialist dominance has forced the bosses to adopt a "new industrial business model." The traditional trade union model is no longer viable. Preparing for the necessary all-out class fight "...is not a weapon that the IAM has ever wielded," admits the IAM Journal. What little militancy the union proposes is for the sole purpose of becoming junior partners in this new business model of racist pay differentials to pay for imperialist wars.

The IAM is not talking about workers' power. Yes, industrial workers are "absolutely indispensable" to society. It's the bosses who can be dispensed with. Only PLP's revolutionary communist politics can offer the "proletarian model,"uniting workers from Sao Paulo to Seattle to fight for workers' power.. The times demand nothing less.

Need Workers' Internationalism to Fight `New' Subcontracting

By 1995, the world's industries employed 500 million workers. While the world's population had doubled since 1950, its industrial working class had grown 3_ times as much.

Today, capitalism is bigger than ever. So, too, is its potential gravedigger, the international working class. Yet, at the moment it is capitalists, not communists, who are organizing the world's workers.

On the one hand, the employment, experience and working conditions of workers internationally are increasingly similar. But the capitalists are presenting workers with many flags to wave, political parties to join or lifestyles to uphold. Racism, nationalism, sexism, and even religious divisions may be bigger than ever. Thus, the ruling classes are "internationalizing" the working class at the same time that they push nationalism to try to set one nation's workers against all the others. So the world is moving in opposite directions at the same time.

It's doubtful there's a corner of the world that monopoly capitalism hasn't reached in some form. For example, in 1996 Volkswagen built its latest "dream" factory in Brazil -- not in the Sao Paulo area, the industrial heart of Brazil, but in the poorer inland city of Resende. Of its 1,000 workers, only 200 work for Volkswagen. The other 800 production workers are subcontracted out to work on the line in the same plant, earning about 1/3 less than workers in the Sao Paulo area. This method -- known as fractal production -- had been pioneered some years earlier when Volkswagen had bought the Skoda factories in what was then Czechoslovakia.

The Resende plant's success has turned subcontracting out into subcontracting in! But the story doesn't end there. Within the year Fiat had copied Volkswagen's "success" in its new plant in Mirafiori, Italy. The capitalists in the Czech Republic, Brazil or Italy may wave flags whose colors differ, but for subcontracted autoworkers the bitter taste of super-exploitation is exactly the same!

What's true in auto is also true in electronics, optical manufacturing, the iron and steel industry and so on. Increasingly this one world (market) has created one working class with almost identical experiences. It's already a gigantic working class and it's still growing. Every worker in each and every one of these plants has the same class interests. Our job is to win our class to realize that it needs just one flag -- the red flag -- around which to organize one revolutionary communist party, the PLP.

(It's easy to imagine this movement of production at Boeing. First, subcontract OUT to prisons, China, but mainly to Southern California, Texas and the south. Then hire another subcontractor INSIDE the Boeing plant.)

Chicago Bosses Use Racist Attacks on Workers in Projects To Enrich Developers

The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is the latest example of the neo-racist, "liberal" fascism going down here. Since the 1980's, racist articles in the media about gang violence, crime and drugs have depicted the horrors of public housing, with a focus on major housing projects like Cabrini-Green and the big Federal St. Projects. More racist articles about the "culture of poverty" in the projects have accompanied them, lamenting how living in public housing was destroying one generation after another. Of course, the drug-dealing cops and gang-bangers, more often in cooperation than conflict, added more than an ounce of truth to these racist depictions.

But despite the racist propaganda, a large number of those using public housing were workers whose apartments were clean, well-kept, working class homes. Nothing was written about the CHA being a cash cow for Democratic Party politicians who doled out million-dollar contracts to favored financial backers in return for substandard services, elevator problems, poor trash pick-up and general deteriorating conditions. Nothing about how some of Chicago's biggest banks, like First National, made millions from storing CHA federal funds for municipal use.

Eventually, the bankers, real estate developers and politicians used this ideological offensive to seek to eliminate all major CHA housing in the city to make way for million-dollar townhouses and condominiums. CHA tenants would be "resettled" in "mixed-income areas" with Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers to subsidize their new homes. Daley-controlled tenant councils, City Aldermen, and Civil Rights leaders like Jesse Jackson covered up the poison with the taste of Kool-Aid.

And so, led by the neo-racist Daleycrats, the plan was launched. Three major units were blown up near Lake Shore Drive to the cheers of the real estate developers and kick-back artists in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area. The Cabrini-Green and Ida B. Wells Housing Projects are targeted for full-scale reconstruction. The row of housing projects along the Dan Ryan Expressway is also slated for destruction.

And what about the promised housing vouchers to the displaced, mostly unemployed or low-paid black women who are the heads of the households? The CHA has introduced new rules that perpetuate the racist myth that working-class tenants destroyed public housing, and are designed to prevent large numbers of former public housing tenants from getting new subsidized housing.

The applicant and their entire family must take a urine drug test. The applicants must have a clean record of lease compliancy -- which means that if at any time, for any reason you had a problem paying rent or utilities, you'll be denied the voucher. There can be no record of a felony arrest or a conviction. Even if you had charges dismissed, you're still ineligible for the voucher. Most of all, one must be employed.

Under communism, housing the international working class will be among our highest priorities. But today we live in the new Dark Ages, where tens of millions of men, women and children are either homeless, or live with no roof and/or plumbing. But there will be a reckoning and woe to all these bosses and their lackeys when communist revolution, led by PLP, comes roaring down the tracks of history. When that day comes, the whole earth will be our home.

Red Rev

Home Attendants Eager For Struggle, PLP's Ideas

NEW YORK CITY, Aug. 9 --

Last week a group of comrades and home attendants working in a Social Justice Summer Project went to a homecare agency to get signatures on a petition addressed to NY State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer and 1199-SEIU President Dennis Rivera. The petition demands overtime (time and one-half pay) after 40 hours for all homecare workers, part of the 123,000-member Homecare Division of 1199-SEIU here.

The majority of agencies in NYC pay no overtime or barely a dollar above base pay. Workers on 24-hour shifts are paid for 12 hours with a $17 night differential. The agencies' rationale? The workers don't work at night!

Many agencies refuse placement to workers who don't accept 24 hours. Those on a 5-day week, 24-hour day (some work 6 days) work 120 hours; 80 hours should be paid at time and a half!

We went to the agency on payday when workers get their checks. We were immediately surrounded by the women workers who eagerly signed the petition. Two workers grabbed the clipboards and began collecting signatures themselves.

The union organizer, who always sits inside the agency -- supposedly to address workers' problems -- then emerged and demanded to know what we were doing. Seeing the petition he asked, "Don't you people know that the workers `like' working 24 hours?" "Yeah, that's why they're all signing the petition," we answered. "Well, this isn't the union's priority!" he said. "We know the union's priority is to get Kerry elected, not to fight for the workers," we shot back "It's to get a $10 wage for home health aides by 2007 when the money will be worth about 80 cents after cost of living and taxes." Soon an administrator arrived. "Do they know you're here?" she asked, clearly meaning the union.

We now have 200 signatures, a mailing list of 60 workers and an active group of eight women. A network of workers is taking almost 50 Challenges every issue for friends and family members. Furthermore, a comrade has organized a PLP study group for these active workers. One has joined the Party. She and two other comrades will start a new Party club.

Our friends respond to PLP in various ways, from interest and openness to wariness, to "I don't know anything about politics" to open anti-communism. We must be patient and maintain both unity and ideological struggle with them in this time of both difficulty and opportunity.

We're confident that as our struggle heats up and we talk more about capitalism, imperialism and war, the fascist Homeland Security measures and communist revolution in our study group, we'll recruit more workers to the Party. They can lead our class from every fight-back on to communist revolution, however long it takes!

A comrade

Attica Means Fight Back!

NEW YORK CITY, July 31 --

Frank Smith, known as Big Black, participated in the Attica prison uprising in September 1971. He died of kidney cancer today at 71. He lived in Brooklyn and Queens for many years before moving to Kinston, N.C. last year. He was tortured by police and prison guards after the rebellion, and spent the next quarter century fighting for legal damages.

Thirty-three years before Abu Grahib, the Attica Correctional Facility, 30 miles east of Buffalo, was a racist concentration camp. The prison was severely overcrowded, racist police brutality was commonplace, the food was inedible and inmates were given one roll of toilet paper a month. Many inmates were Vietnam veterans, and most had been deeply influenced by the war and the ghetto rebellions of the 1960's.

Frank was working at his 30-cent-a-day job in the laundry when the prison erupted. As coach of the prison football team, he was chosen by other inmates to be chief of security.

New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state troopers to storm the prison. Rockefeller's troopers killed 32 inmates and 11 guards held as hostages. Frank was subjected to brutal reprisals. Police repeatedly struck him in the testicles with their nightsticks and dropped lighted cigarettes and hot shell casings on his chest. The guards repeatedly told him they would castrate him.

He spent the rest of his life keeping the memory of Attica alive, largely through legal proceedings that began in 1974, which charged that 1,200 prisoners had been beaten, tortured or denied medical care. In 2000, inmates won a $12 million settlement.

During the case, Frank arranged bus transportation and box lunches, from New York to Rochester so the former inmates could testify. He also volunteered as a substance abuse counselor and in suicide prevention, and often took mentally ill people into his own home.

Frank was born as his mother, the daughter of a former slave, picked cotton near Bennettsville, S.C., on Sept. 11, 1933. She balanced her newborn baby in her sack and finished the day's work. She moved to Brooklyn when Frank was five years old.

Though the Attica prison uprising was brutally crushed, it electrified U.S. workers and youth and inspired millions worldwide. Attica shows that the racist rulers are old hands at prison torture and humiliation and compared to Rockefeller's crew, the Abu Grahib prison guards were amateurs. The chant of the day, coined by PLP was, "ATTICA MEANS FIGHT BACK!" That's still true today.

Long live Frank Smith and the Attica Uprising!

Doctors Must Fight U.S. Nazi Torture

Doctors under capitalism can be viewed as agents of the bosses in maintaining social order by everyday rules such as providing excuses for work missed due to illness, evaluating on the job injuries, providing vaccinations for certain jobs and triaging injury on the battlefield as well as deciding who returns to battle and who goes home. Company and military docs are always suspect since their allegiances to the bosses and brass may override their responsibility to the patient.

The rise of HMOs intensified the contradictions for doctors, who face loss of revenue if they order too many tests in a "capitation system" or if they treat too many sick patients and risk being dropped from an insurer.

Reimbursement issues also keep most physicians from treating the uninsured and Medicaid populations. Thus patients and physicians are frequently in conflict in a society where profit drives the rules. This is nowhere more dramatic than under fascist conditions where state-sponsored murder and torture become routine.

In the New England Journal of Medicine (7/29), Robert Jay Lifton writes about physicians in the military and in settings of torture. The author of "Nazi Doctors," Lifton addresses the physicians' role at Abu Ghraib prison. Doctors, nurses and medics all witnessed some of the now infamous torture scenes without effecting change or reporting this as criminal. Lifton says the use of medical records to direct effective torture and the alteration of these records to conceal causes of death are current issues which have not been fully revealed. The same issue includes an article "In the Name of Public Health - Nazi Racial Hygiene" by Susan Bachrach, related to the current special exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

The role of faculty and programs that train physicians to include study of these topics was recently discussed by program directors in internal medicine. While some supported the idea and the need for doctors to refuse to participate in torture, many others did not. Individual physicians may often take heroic stands against fascism, but as Lipton's book and article and this recent discussion illustrate, most continue to support the capitalist government. Physicians for Human Rights recently stated that "torture can also compromise the integrity of health professionals".

(www.aclu.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID=13965&c=36)

Physicians and nurses fought back recently against the smallpox vaccination campaign, building solidarity through e-mail contacts, unions and professional organizational contacts such as local public health associations. The leadership of PLP members was helpful in this struggle. Exposing this as a war propaganda tactic was uniquely raised by our Party. (Others opposed vaccinations primarily because of safety concerns as well as a mistrust of the government's rationale.) In wartime we must raise these issues among the students and residents we teach as well as among our friends and colleagues. In Iraq, many surgeons refused to collaborate with the state by binding up wounds of amputees punished for political deviations. Other international examples beyond the Nazi experience can probably be learned from our many international medical graduates.

Red Doc

Organize vs. Bosses' Nationalism, Racism,
Basis of Subcontracting Profits

I worked for a subcontractor for a big aerospace company as described in CHALLENGE 8/4), "Playing the Cards Your Dealt," about industrial manufacturing work being moved from highly-paid union factories into low-paid non-union subcontractors.

Right out of high school, I began working for a West Coast aerospace subcontractor employing 70-80% young Mexican and Filipino workers. Many came directly from super-exploitative jobs in the fields or other low-paying service jobs. Unlike union jobs with good wages and benefits, this sub-contractor pays only $3.00/hr above minimum wage for assembly-line jobs with limited benefits.

Many white workers in the machinist and engineering jobs came from large unionized aerospace factories that closed during the recession in the early 1990's. They said their union did nothing to fight for their jobs. Now they saw their wages cut by more than half and their pension shot to hell. White and non-white workers had many structural reasons to unite and fight for better wages, benefits and conditions, but racism, nationalism and fear is used to divide them.

Mexican and Filipino workers were separated on different production lines and prodded to compete with each other based on nationalism. The Mexican foreman would say, "Do you want those dirty Filipinos to out-work you today." The Filipino foreman would counter with, "Let's send those Mexicans back to the fields today." For a time, at day's end, whichever production line produced the most saw their country's flag raised on the wall.

White workers rarely toiled on the assembly line, working mostly office and technical repair jobs. They were constantly told, "At least you don't work on the assembly floor, your bathrooms are clean and you have air conditioning." While I was there, these workers were never involved in a major accident. Only the most advanced felt any connection beyond liberal pity to those injured on the line.

White workers were constantly told not to complain. Many non-white workers lived in over-crowded houses while many white workers were in the process of losing homes bought before losing their last union job -- they could no longer pay their mortgages. Yet, because of the bosses' nationalist and racist campaigns, very few white and non-white workers teamed up to improve their living situations.

There are no work-rules and no grievance system. Conditions are dangerous, with only loose adherence to occupational safety codes. Accidents causing serious injury occurred every year. There were also continuous minor accidents due to the lack of proper safety equipment, like thick gloves or heat-resistant safety glasses. Workers were constantly pushed to "avoid" accidents because of the rising cost of workmen's comp insurance, leaving many accidents unreported. Every single injury, every lack of a work-rule offers a chance to organize.

There are also other difficulties organizing non-union sub-contractors. Many workers start out as temporary agency employees. If you cause "trouble" they fire you simply by telling the agency to stop sending you out. Even after you're permanent, talk about organizing is grounds for firing.

Winning workers requires building deep ties with them. There are countless opportunities to become close to the workers in these non-union jobs. Organizing dinners, baby-sitting, English tutoring, homework tutoring for children, collectively buying work-gloves and shoes to obtain lower prices all were ways we bonded at the factory.

Lastly, many sub-contractors still effectively maintain a kind of "family" paternalism. They laid a thick line on us about how we're all "one big family," and because the owner still walks around talking to many of the workers, some may fall for this lie. The truth is that he owns time-share vacation condos in 12 different countries, wears European suits, buys a new Cadillac every year, and lives far away from the slums "housing" his workers.

The workers at this plant make key parts for airplanes and can be won to see that our fight is for workers' power, not for any bosses' flag. PLP's internationalist, anti-racist communist politics can and will break the divisions the bosses have created in the working class. Workers' unity will prevail against the ruling class if we in PLP and class conscious workers are bold, patient and creative in organizing these subcontracted factories.

Protest Ten Years of Racist Cop Killings

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD., July 31 --

Recently, in memory of the 11th anniversary of the brutal police slaying of Archie Elliott III, a young black man, by this county's Police Department, a grassroots organization held a rally and vigil. The rally was at police headquarters and the vigil at the site of the merciless police shooting.

The rally involved a picket line and speakers, each one calling for a specific action -- the indictment and prosecution of the two cops who killed Archie, and the prosecution of all PG County cops responsible for at least 47 deaths in ten years. One speaker linked police brutality, racism, and the system that makes it all possible -- capitalism. They cheered this connection. Neighborhood residents came out to listen to the speeches and cars stopped to take leaflets explaining the protest. Two mothers of other police victims participated, expressing their outrage with a "justice" system that continues to mete out injustice to county minorities. The murdered young man's mother spoke passionately about her son, the tragic circumstances surrounding his death, and the "justice" system that let her and her family down. She urged the crowd to action, calling on us to speak out immediately after an incident of police brutality and to become active in organizations opposing police violence. After her eleven-year battle and fighting tears, she ended with the battle cry, "No justice, No peace."

At the vigil, victim's names and the cops responsible for their deaths were read, showing that this was not an isolated incident but a systemic technique used against working-class county residents. Speakers again decried the enormous injustices meted out by the "justice system" and this system's impotence when it's time to prosecute cops. Here, once again, cars stopped and took leaflets, and neighborhood residents watched and/or joined the vigil. Many remembered the shooting quite vividly, even after eleven years.

To guarantee the event's success, there was a prior leafleting in the neighborhood where the young man was killed, at a nearby Metro stop used by many working-class county residents, and at a local university. Calls were made to the media, letters and e-mails sent out, and an information campaign organized. Over 1,500 leaflets were distributed and 30 contacts made.

This rally and vigil differed from most because it didn't call for system reform, a new police chief or a new county executive, but for accountability under the current laws. As communists we know there's no reform for a system dependent upon increasing violence and fascism to operate. Participating in organizations, these rallies and vigils gives us a chance to expose the futility of attempting to fix, reform, or revise a system which has no fix. For every case of police brutality that receives attention, another three atrocities are committed with impunity. This action allows us to identify the root cause of these attacks -- capitalism -- and gives our working-class comrades the opportunity to present the solution: communism.

Hotel Women Workers Wildcat vs. Bosses' Attacks, Union Sellouts

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13 --

Over 100 hotel workers, mostly women, defied their racist bosses and held a one-day wildcat strike here yesterday. "I was never political before," said a rank-and-file leader, "but the managers show us no respect. I had to get involved."

Workers in nine unionized LA luxury hotels have been working without a contract since April. The LA bosses are trying to enforce their "last, best" offer: escalating worker contributions to healthcare, denying pay increases, and intensifying workload.

Century Plaza Hotel workers confronted the manager when supporting a sick co-worker whose HMO turned her away. They protested having to pay nine weeks retroactive contributions.

When the manager threw them out, they blanketed the hotel recruiting other workers to leave with them. They phoned activists at Century City's other major hotel, who also walked out and joined their picket lines.

"I never thought we could get the workers from two different hotels to come together like this," a housekeeping worker said, "but we did!" Leaders of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE-UNITE) hurriedly told workers "not to provoke a lockout" while also "praising" them for "taking initiative." This mixed message typifies a union trying to win workers' loyalty to a capitalist system that's beating them down.

HERE Local 11 has organized committees in each hotel, held meetings and rallies, and had solicited churches to begin stockpiling basic food and household necessities.

The union is calling for hiring black workers, who were mostly fired years ago and replaced with mainly Latino/a immigrants. Multi-racial unity could be a big step towards sharper class consciousness and anti-racist struggle -- with communist leadership -- but without it the result could build multi-racial support for Democratic Party warmongers.

HERE officials like liberal darling Maria Elena Durazo oppose relying on the working class's mass strength to fight for power for our entire class. Instead, by begging the multi-nationals that control 75% of the hotel business to be "good corporate citizens," she builds the illusion that workers can get a "fair share" under capitalism by working within the bosses' deepening fascist system, praying that they'll have "a change of heart."

Hotel workers are in a tough spot. They suffered massive layoffs when tourism plummeted after 9/11. Now hotel occupancy is higher than three years ago, but few workers have been recalled. Workloads have tripled. The defeat of the grocery strike last winter was another blow. The same Federal mediator who engineered that attack is "mediating" the hotel workers' struggle. He's as "neutral" as the rest of the Federal government in this capitalist class dictatorship.

HERE works with liberal groups like LAANE (LA Alliance for A New Economy) and CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), pushing workers to depend on mediators, ministers, lawyers and the media to gain immediate reforms, while relying on the same government who's sending these workers' children to die in Iraq for the bosses' oil profits.

The day after the wildcat, HERE staged a media event in which a housekeeper was arrested making beds in the middle of a busy downtown intersection. They appeal to the media, and fear workers' power at the point of production. Such power can teach workers their potential to fight for class power.

Nearly one-third of all LA families are "working poor," including tens of thousands in manufacturing jobs, many in war-related industries. Youth from these families fill the ranks of the bosses' military. HERE leadership reflects the liberal imperialists' need to win the loyalty of these same workers being attacked by the corporations' drive for maximum profits.

The face of a new organizer lit up as she said, "We were so united and together. I was surprised that we could do it." We can seize such an opportunity to cement ties with these workers through which PLP can be built.

PLP members and friends will intensify our support of the hotel workers, using our red politics and long-term commitment to building a revolutionary communist movement of the working class.

BOOK REVIEW:
U.S. GOV'T ANTI-COMMUNISM CREATES TERRORISM, DRUG EPIDEMIC

A new book, "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror," by Mahmood Mamdani, provides valuable information about the rise of political Islam and U.S. imperialism's "Cold War" strategy after World War II, to contain the Soviet Union and defeat revolutionary movements around the world. Terrorism, financed in part by the drug trade, lay at the heart of this anti-communist strategy.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Starting in 1964, U.S. imperialism sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam. Massive bombing killed millions of Vietnamese. The U.S. used mass terror, like the "strategic hamlet" program, search-and-destroy missions to maximize the "body count" of Vietnamese and the CIA-inspired Operation Phoenix, designed to destroy the Viet Cong political apparatus in the villages. Nevertheless, by 1975 the Vietnamese had militarily defeated the U.S.

The U.S. also attacked Laos to stop the flow of troops and supplies from North Vietnam to the south. The bomb tonnage dropped on small, impoverished Laos equaled that dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. Local Hmong mercenaries were recruited to wage a secret war against communist guerillas in the mountains of northern Laos, removed from any scrutiny. The use of local death-squads and militias, combined with ferocious aerial bombing, became the basis for U.S. imperialism's worldwide anti-communist strategy.

U.S. BACKS DRUG LORDS AFTER WWII

Drugs played a big part in financing post-World War II anti-communism. From 1948-50, the CIA worked with the Mafia in Italy and France, particularly with the Corsican underworld, in the struggle against the French Communist Party for control of the strategic Mediterranean port of Marseille. The Mafia used this port to export heroin to the U.S. for the next quarter century.

In 1950, the CIA ran covert operations along the Burma-China border with anti-communist Chinese forces that helped form the Golden Triangle heroin complex. These operations were designed to create an anti-communist force capable of mounting an invasion of mainland communist China. The invasion never happened, but Burma's Shan states became the world's largest opium producer.

Later the CIA helped develop a massive opium trade, supplying airplanes and landing strips. This is where the infamous Air America and Air Opium "airlines" originated. The money from this trade helped finance the Hmong mercenaries.

AFRICA

In the 1960's, the CIA engineered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, an anti-U.S. nationalist leader who received aid from the Soviet Union, and provided money and logistical support for a pro-U.S. mercenary group to crush a rebellion in the Congo.

U.S. rulers also financed anti-Soviet movements like UNITA in Angola, which engaged in direct attacks, kidnapping, and planting land mines on paths used by farmers. In the early 1970's, some sections of the ruling class backed the terrorist group Renamo in Mozambique, created by the fascist Rhodesian army (now Zimbabwe), and backed by apartheid South Africa.

ROLLBACK: LATIN AMERICA

During the Reagan administration, U.S. policy shifted from "containment," to an aggressive effort to "rollback" defeats in Asia, Latin America and Africa. The policy now targeted nationalist, anti-U.S., pro-Soviet governments, like those in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.

Again, U.S. rulers used terrorism and the drug trade to accomplish their anti-communist, imperialist objectives. In Nicaragua the CIA organized the anti-Sandinista "Contras," who soon established a reputation for cruelty and brutality, engaging in sabotage (blowing up bridges, oil tanks, port facilities), kidnappings, torture, and mass murder. The CIA delivered planeloads of weapons and materials to the Contras, and returned to the U.S. loaded with cocaine. Mamdani says that the point of the terror in Latin America and Africa was to bleed and discredit the existing governments.

Afghanistan

Mamdani shows how the U.S. government helped create the Mujahideen movement that toppled the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. Around 1980, the U.S. ruling class began to view political Islam as an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union and militant anti-U.S. nationalism, and poured millions into training and financing right-wing Islamists, including "jihadists," who saw the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan as part of a holy war that would later be turned on the U.S. This effort involved alliances with opium-producing warlords in Afghanistan that reinvigorated the opium and heroin trade in the region. U.S. rulers armed and trained the most extreme adherents of political Islam, including Osama bin Laden, who represents a section of the Saudi ruling class which doesn't want to share the oil bonanza with Exxon-Mobil & Co.

REAL WARS ON TERROR AND DRUGS = COMMUNIST REVOLUTION

Mamdani's book does not have a communist outlook. He concludes that nationalist movements can be progressive and that the wealthy powers in the world need to be more tolerant of such nationalism. PLP rejects this outlook and views all forms of nationalism as a dead end that promotes capitalism. Only communist revolution and the elimination of capitalism and imperialism worldwide will end terror and drugs. Nevertheless, this book provides useful information on the history of religious fundamentalism (Christian as well as Islamic) and various ideological tendencies within Islam. Linking terror and drugs to U.S. anti-communist policy over the past half-century is especially sobering.

`Fahrenheit 451': A Bosses' Tool That Can Bury Them

Amid all the hoopla about "Fahrenheit 9/11," I decided to teach Ray Bradbury's classic "Fahrenheit 451" to my summer high school seniors. Though the political weaknesses abound in this opus against censorship, I feel I've made some great political advances with my seniors and deepened my own commitment to PLP.

The fascist government and ruling class in Bradbury's dreadful hypothetical future world uses television and the destruction of all books to totally control the minds of the working class and keep them in complete subjugation.

When the protagonist, a "fireman" who specializes in burning books, escapes from the city, he encounters the intellectual elite out in the wilderness. They are all educated liberals, entirely removed from the working masses in the city. They turn up their noses at the brainwashed workers and blame them for the state they're in.

When the protagonist asks Granger, one of the snotty "scholars," how many of them there are, Granger says "thousands." Think about what our Party could do with thousands and thousands of cadre dedicated to organizing revolution!

The novel concludes with the murderous military regime atomizing every city in a nuclear war. The genocidal murder of billions of the world's workers is part of Bradbury's "solution" to capitalism -- brainwashing. Bradbury realized that the sick society had to be destroyed, but fails to provide real solutions.

Ironically, the intellectuals insist they have no answers, but then organize themselves into a cashless, classless, collective society dedicated to smashing individualism in favor of society's needs! The intellectuals were looking to the past, to the sky, to old dusty books for answers existing all around them in their own reality.

My students were able to apply this book to present society, due to the ruling class's increasing fascism and wars. I advanced our political line and criticized capitalism via criticizing Bradbury's "future society." The students learned class struggle, political economy, the needs of the ruling class and dialectical materialism as I discussed the appearance and the essence of the world depicted in the bosses' media.

I concluded my lesson by assigning them to write their concept of the perfect society. They constructed a cashless, classless, egalitarian society based on "from each according to ability and to each according to need." Questions such as "Why do we even need money?" abounded and their class consciousness increased dramatically.

Using "Fahrenheit 451" in this way gave my whole class a better understanding of why capitalism can't meet the working class's needs, why conditions are the way they are, and what needs to be done. I used Bob Marley's phrase, "Free yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our mind," indicating that the working class, not a superhero leader, must free us from the bosses' deadly ideology in order to build a communist revolution.

The novel deepened my commitment to that goal, showing me what could happen to the working class if we were to separate ourselves and wander in the wilderness. We are the defenders of our class brethren, the future of our class, and each of our students is a potential communist leader. Four of the class had already been reading CHALLENGE. Now I'll ensure they all have the opportunity to read our revolutionary ideas.

A Red Teacher

SEIU Backs Kerry, Masking Support for Bosses' Wars

I attended some of the recent SEIU convention in San Francisco and found it very interesting from a communist perspective. Before I arrived, SEIU president Andrew Stern had given a speech attacking the AFL-CIO, challenging it to become a strong, united, international organization or the SEIU -- the country's largest union -- would secede. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney spoke the next day, calling for more "diversity" in the union leadership, so that minority and immigrant workers would be represented.

What kind of analysis can communists make of this? On the surface, a strong, global, multi-racial union sounds like a good thing. But through many struggles we've had within this union, we know it's not fighting for the workers. It is blatantly anti-communist and reformist. So what's with the rhetoric?

As worldwide inter-imperialist rivalry grows, it is crucial for the bosses that they keep the workers in line. The unions are one way in which this can be done. With a big, strong, centralized, global union controlled by the ruling class, whether through the Democratic Party or some NGO, the ruling class can more easily repress workers' wages and benefits, and even monitor their activities. Currently the SEIU is making a major push for amnesty and citizenship for undocumented workers, in the hopes of organizing them. What a grand way for the ruling class to be able to mislead the workers! If they expect these workers to send their sons and daughters to die in Iraq and elsewhere, they must at least get workers to believe they're in line for the "rights of citizenship."

Even though the delegates passed a resolution calling for an end to the Iraq war and bringing the troops home, they were very supportive of John Kerry, who spoke there. Kerry believes the U.S. needs at least 40,000 more troops in the military. Many will be the children and spouses of the newly-organized immigrant workers, who will be fed a liberal line about their "rights" in this "democracy."

Although we cannot predict exactly when or where the bosses will launch their next war, we do know that as inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies, they will attempt to "solve" their problems on the backs of the working class. We've already seen large numbers of job losses, pensions disappearing, and young men and women being killed in U.S. capitalism's drive for oil and profit.

To allow the unions and their leadership to be uncontested players in this deadly farce betrays the workers. Because we have a communist awareness, we have the tools to analyze the ruling class's attacks and how workers must respond. We need to get these tools -- CHALLENGE being a major one among them -- to the workers, so we can fight back with all our strength for the success of our class.

Comrade in SEIU

NEW T-SHIRT!

Put forward a revolutionary line this summer at the Democratic and Republican Conventions with Progressive Labor Party's white T-Shirt that reads:

Revolt! Don't Vote

sizes: M, L, XL. Send $10 plus $1 for shipping and handling.
Check or Money Order to:CHALLENGE PERIODICALS
PO Box 808 Brooklyn, NY 11202

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

At last, truth from Bush!

President Bush...unveiled a bold new strategy on pre-emption. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," he said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." (NYT)

A wide, poisonous dragnet

Attorney General John Ashcroft recently went to Congress to herald another record year of fighting terrorism, showcasing numbers showing 310 defendants charged as evidence that "the Patriot Act is al-Qaeda's worst nightmare."

Few would argue about the nightmare part, but.... To a large degree, Ashcroft has used antiterrorism laws against citizens with no ties to al-Qaeda or even terrorism....

Prosecutors are pursuing artists, protesters and academics....

The most bizarre example was Ashcroft's prosecution of the organization Greenpeace.... Ashcroft wanted Greenpeace criminally convicted for boarding a ship allegedly carrying illegal mahogany....

In one case Ashcroft secured the curious victory of convicting three nuns who staged a protest by writing on the cap of a nuclear silo and praying until they were arrested. They were sent to prison for years and added to the pile of "national security threats" brought to justice under Ashcroft....

At the moment, the Justice Department seems to naturally gravitate to political critics, protesters and Muslims as the usual suspects for its body counts. (Baltimore Sun, 7/26)

Not just terrorists hate US

Since April 2002...favorable attitudes toward the United States have plummeted in Jordan from 34% to 15%, in Morocco from 38% to 11%, in Egypt from 15% to 2%, and in Saudi Arabia from 12% to 4%....

Do not even ask about policy. In Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE, support for the U.S. policy in Iraq is a 1 to 4%. Support for U.S. policy toward Arabs is between 4 and 8%. Support for U.S. policy toward Palestinians is between 3 to 9%. The strongest support for any U.S. policy in the region is for the war on terrorism, but even that ranges from 3% in Saudi Arabia to 21% in Jordan.

What you have is a collapse of trust...." (Boston Globe, 7/26)

After election, a draft?

Army re-enlistments are dropping; new enlistments in fiscal 2005 (beginning in October) are expected to fall 10% short of the total needed. If the United States means to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq for the next five years, there will be no alternative to reinstating conscription after the presidential inauguration in January. (Int'l Herald Tribune, 7/23)

Big-biz media bury issues

Concentration of media sources leaves most Americans with a very narrow range of news awareness and an almost complete lack of competing opinions.

Important questions that impact most Americans are generally ignored. Why are 45 million Americans without health care? Why is poverty increasing in the U.S.? What happened to the safety net of social programs for the disadvantaged? What are the underlying reasons -- other than oil -- for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?....

Where have all the living wage jobs gone? Why is the minimum wage now 60% of its value in 1968?....The corporate media choose not to address these important issues in any significant way.

Instead, they are keeping on top of...the Michael Jackson trial and the threat of new terror attacks....

The corporate agenda of maximizing profits undermines the public purpose of a free press. (MinutemanMedia.org, 7/28)

US writers ignore workers

You can't really write about characters' lives without writing about their work....The office (or factory or restaurant) is where people find adventures, camaraderie, meaning....

Incorporating work into fiction "opens possibilities, introduces complications, [and] gets characters into revelatory conflict...."

Where are all the novels about working? Freud supposedly said all that matters in life is love and work, but as David Gates observes in the introduction to a new anthology, "Labor Days," it's remarkable how often fiction writers "prefer not to look at the significant portions of their imaginary people's lives that must...be spent at work." (NYT, 8/8/)

Scaring ill immigrants

The Department of Health and Human Services wants hospitals seeking reimbursement to ask patients these questions, among others:

* "Are you a United States citizen?

* "Are you a lawful permanent resident?....

In many immigrant households, at least one parent is undocumented, but the children, having been born in the United States, are citizens.

When such families hear about the questions asked by hospital employees...it's likely that the undocumented immigrant parents will be terrified to seek care for their children, let alone themselves."

LETTERS

Renew my Sub for 2 Years

"Your newspaper helps me cope with the deluge of doublespeak and Bush-Fascism. Keep up the good work and please renew me for two years."

--NK

Fired for Refusing To Betray Ideals; Sends $100

I received the PLP fund-request letter to help expand the many Party activities. My financial situation is not that strong. I'm a teacher in a South American country and only work part-time. The little I make is used to cover my basic expenses during the summer (January, February and part of April in the Southern hemisphere). I had free access to the internet in the local college I worked in, but now I'm no longer there and must pay for it.

My students and other teachers considered me an excellent teacher, but the administration gave me a bad rating, trying to pressure me to leave or else change my teaching methods and how I see education in general. I couldn't betray my ideals. It would be denying my whole life, based on being a human being, not a liar, racist, crook, ass-licker and careerist. These terms describe those who supposedly are my colleagues, who then stabbed me in the back, giving me the bad rating.

I found another job, although with less pay. But my conscience and attitude towards life are now stronger than ever.

Part of being a comrade is in essence to be "friends" and "compa�eros," which is why I am telling you all of this now. Anyway, I will send $100 to help our organization and will try to send some money every month,

For one world, one working class, one Party.

A Comrade in South America

Profits Fuel Fire,
Kill 400 in Paraguay

A fire caused by a possible gas leak killed over 400 shoppers in the crowded Ycua Bolanos Supermarket in Asuncion, Paraguay. The death toll is still rising. Over 150 bodies have yet to be identified. Several hundred escaped.

The son of the owner allegedly ordered the security guards to lock all doors, in order to "prevent robbery" by the customers who were fleeing for their lives from the deadly blaze.

The fire began on the first floor of the three-story supermarket complex, on a Sunday packed with families and small children. Many bodies were found huddled together embracing in their final moments of life, burned to death.

If the owner had not locked the doors and allowed the people to flee, the loss of life would have been greatly minimized. But the owner was more concerned about profits and less about the working-class families who frequented his store. The owner and his son have been charged with manslaughter. Their maximum sentence is 20 years in prison.

This tragedy shows us more and more that in order to combat capitalist greed and individualist thinking, we need a revolution by the international working class led by the communist PLP.

A South American Reader

Which Side is Moore On?

Recently a letter appeared (7/21) from a friend of PL's, questioning hostility shown to Michael Moore, creator of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Moore has a lot of interesting contradictions, and that's not a bad argument in his favor.The movie is certainly worth seeing. But it's also proper to ask which side Moore is really on, especially now, when "Fahrenheit" has grossed over $100 million with no end in sight. And a major part of that is headed right into Moore's pocket since he owns just about the whole, non-studio rights to the movie. Well, the night that $100 million figure was first mentioned, Moore appeared on the Jay Leno Show, leading Leno in singing "God Bless America," gesturing for the audience to join in. This asskissing is not ambiguous -- he's come down on the side of John Kerry, though the love affair is stated in coy terms.

I wish, along with the reader, that there were stars in Hollywood and in other arts that had the guts to stand up for the fight for a decent society -- a fight which is necessarily anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. In the past there were thousands like Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso, Pablo Neruda, Diego Rivera -- that's right, these people all were communists or friends of communism.

Don't expect non-communists or anti-communists to fight very hard to destroy the oppressing class system which rewards them with riches the rest of us have no shot at.

Red from Brooklyn

Is this Fascism?

These are some thoughts from discussions I've had with a few CHALLENGE readers.

For some time now, PLP has said we've been moving into a period of fascism. Recent articles have talked about the accelerating creation of a "fascist police state." The Patriot Act has set up a new legal infrastructure for snooping on and locking up "terrorists," and it wouldn't take much to label anti-war protestors, strikers, and communists (who, after all, advocate violent revolution) as terrorists.

Politicians and the media are doing their best to create a climate of fear. The surveillance satellites, linked computerized databases and facial recognition programs available for spying and tracking are increasing at a rapid rate. Big Brother has become acceptable. We have "cookies" on our computers, RFID (radio frequency identification) devices on the sweaters we buy and surveillance cameras lining our streets.

All this high-tech instrumentation could be used for good. Keeping track of hikers in the wilderness, adults with Alzheimer's disease or grazing animals can be beneficial. Satellites can track the movements of political activists, but can also reveal areas at risk for forest fires and tornadoes. It's not the technology itself that's good or bad; it's how those in power use it.

The 9/11 Commission is calling for a National Counter-Terrorism Center that would set new precedents in allowing the intelligence agencies and the military to work together. If one aspect of fascism is preparation for war, it seems that the ruling class is getting ready, including disciplining their own, and trying to prepare us for years and years of global wars.

PLP has been very clear that this fascism comes from the ruling class as a whole, led by the main "liberal" wing of the capitalist class. We reject the idea that fascism represents only the policies of the most reactionary, nationalistic elements of the capitalist class.

But the international communist movement suffered a grave defeat with the rise of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China. The U.S. union movement is in dreadful shape, with something like 10% of workers currently unionized. Both internationally and domestically, working-class resistance to increased war, terror, and economic attacks is at a low level.

In the current period, the bosses don't seem to be facing a serious threat from the working class or some rival imperialist that would warrant fascism as a kind of emergency rule by the bosses. Yet they're changing the rules and putting in place more and more repressive policies. Why? Because they can!

In the absence of serious resistance, the bosses will move to crack down as much as possible to strengthen their political control and increase profits. In the past we've said that the capitalists prefer liberal democracy and move to fascism reluctantly when there's a crisis. Maybe in the 21st Century, at least for a while, the norm will be a hyper-repressive society, greased by high-tech gadgets. This makes for untold pain and danger for the working class. And it increases the challenges to, and responsibilities of our Party. But if it's not a life-or-death crisis, is it fascism? What do you think?

A Reader

`Project changed my life forever!'

I love Boston. No, no! I love the Summer Project! This was one of the greatest youth-oriented projects I've ever been involved in. This week has been definitely worth our 20-hour drive from Chicago.

One protest that really opened my eyes occurred where Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich were speaking. It showed me how phony the liberals are. The Kucinich people organized the forum. Speeches addressed gay rights, women's rights and a call to all workers to put heat on the Democratic Party that has continued to ignore universal health care, a living wage, education, civil liberties and civil rights. The speakers called on all to mobilize for the October Million Worker March in D.C. However, no speaker indicted capitalism as the cause of all these problems. That was PLP's job and that's what we did.

Two PL teams of volunteers leafleted and sold CHALLENGE. There was a circus of different groups: libertarians, Larouchies, Christians for Peace; you name it, they were there. But when PL presented our line with confidence, enthusiasm and a boldness that could not be ignored, it was all over for those phonies.

Then out of nowhere a black limo drove up and out popped Jesse Jackson, looking large and in charge (so he thought). Well, we soon set him straight. An alert PL team immediately started to boo him and call him the sellout he is. This "reception" really caught him off guard. So much so, he ran into the church with news cameras chasing him. That's all we needed to see because what goes in must come out.

We made a plan for his departure, starting a picket line chanting, "Kucinich-Jackson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!"

When Jackson came out, PLP was the one that was large and in charge.

We gave him everything we had, short of armed revolution. Workers on the streets of Boston watched and asked for CHALLENGE, to see what we were about. A high school student gave us her name and phone number and said she would tell her Dad about our group because we were so impressive. It was a great day!

I joined PLP! The whole project has changed my life forever.

 Chicago comrade

Project Developed
Youth Leadership

Participating in a PLP Summer Project can be one of the best experiences in one's life. The recent Project in Boston was no exception. The comrades there were well-prepared for our arrival and had organized a very educational, entertaining and fun summer project that also helped the young people develop their leadership potential. We're thankful to everyone who helped in this organizing project.

The workshops at UMASS as well as the ones PLP organized led to burning discussions with valuable information. We were glad to see and be part of an organization that got out there on Boston's streets to fight for the international working class, the human race, against racism, fascism and the imperialists worldwide with demonstrations and agitations.

LA Volunteer

Bosses Are Always Snakes

Sometimes government workers get confused about what snakes their bosses are. I work at a large public-sector agency whose mission supposedly is protecting workers. Some incidents expose the bosses and remind us that only a fight for communism is going to change things for real.

My best friend -- just been elected head steward -- and I were having lunch in the cafeteria when the agency head and her aides sat down at a table next to us. My friend wanted to introduce herself, but I was leery because this boss had just barred a Latino man from the building after a "vigorous" lunchtime conversation. (Only the intervention of the union's Civil Rights Committee got him back at work.)

But we went over anyway. The conversation started out politely, but escalated when the boss said she'd heard it was hard to get jobs at this Agency. I blurted out, "That's because there are so many contractors working here." (The government is saving money by contracting out much of its work to slave-labor agencies). The agency head replied, "There are no contractors here." My friend and I contradicted her. Then she backpedaled, saying only information technology jobs were held by contractors -- another lie! I finally said that, although the union does not want contractors here, at least the ones hired should receive benefits! "Isn't it the mission of this agency to protect workers?"

Well, I had stepped over the line. A boss's aide quickly ended the conversation.

The story of this confrontation spread. It showed the boss's duplicity -- she baldly lies to workers even when the workers know the real deal! The incident showed how workers' boldness is necessary here, how callous the bosses are, and it engendered good discussion throughout the agency about the nature of the system.

But maybe the bosses' would help out in an emergency? Think again -- looking out for #1 is their mantra. During a recent evacuation, I realized that a 250-lb. co-worker with breathing problems, who uses a wheelchair, needed help exiting the building. I asked a co-worker to help and requested that the boss -- the official "zone monitor" responsible for workers with disabilities to get out safely -- assist us. The boss left his office, looked down the hall at us, and walked the other way! We had to navigate our co-worker down a steep ramp to the street. I injured my back doing this, and went out on worker's comp.

Make no mistake. Simply because you work with them every day and they appear friendly, their essential nature is evil and inhumane. Workers will dispose of such enemies sooner rather than later!

A Reader

Nixes Racist Dixie Flag

This anecdote illustrates why boldness is essential in any struggle. My husband and I were eating at a "Potbelly Sandwich" place in College Park, Maryland. He had eaten at one down in Leesburg, Virginia. The d�cor is that of an old-time, rural general store with pictures and artifacts from the late 1800's.

After we sat down, my husband noticed a confederate flag emblazoned on a picture or book on top of a bookshelf. I groaned to myself and vowed not to eat there again. My husband, however, investigated and discovered it was on the cover of a book. He took it down and went to the manager demanding it be removed. He said this restaurant catered to a multi-racial clientele and this was inappropriate.

The manager, very young, was surprised to see the book, agreed with my husband and quickly took it. Others have eaten there since and reported the flag book has not reappeared.

As a veteran of the anti-racist struggle for 30 years, I felt defeated by seeing this flag. But my husband, who usually doesn't involve himself, decided enough was enough! We need to realize that any anti-racist action, no matter how small, does sow seeds.

An Anti-Racist Reader

Liberal Think-Tanks Tied to G.O.P. & Dems

The Brookings Institution is a ruling-class organization that develops policies to help the big capitalists stay in power. This liberal think-tank has important ties to key politicians in both parties, to finance capital and to two other think-tanks: the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. For example, Brookings member Kenneth Duberstein is on the board of directors of Boeing, Conoco Oil and Fannie Mae. Brookings specializes in the relationship between foreign and domestic policies. Kerry and his wife are both members, He has adopted its programs

Right now, they're working on reinstituting the draft, to supply the U.S. military for the continuous wars many are predicting. Last year, they published a collection of essays entitled, "United We Serve," on community service and the draft.

One of this collection's editors is E. J. Dionne, a senior fellow at Brookings. He authored an essay in the SF Chronicle (7/6/04), calling for a "Sacrifice From All." He quotes Rep. Charles Rangel (Dem,-NY, another contributor to "United We Serve") who pointed out that the stop-loss order (which prevents soldiers from leaving military service even after their time is up) and the recall of the Ready Reserve are actually a type of draft because service is no longer voluntary.

Dionne is a critic of: (1) the tax break for the rich because it siphons money needed for the military; (2) the politicians who ignored military leaders' estimates on the need for more soldiers; (3) the apparent lack of willingness of the leaders "to ask themselves and other privileged Americans to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." (One essay in "United We Serve" maintains citizens will not accept combat deaths until they see the privileged on the front lines as well, a point reinforced in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when it asks Congressmen to send their children to fight.)

Both Kerry and Bush represent the ruling class. They differ only on how to conduct the "war on terrorism," really a war to maintain U.S. dominance worldwide. Voting for either is a mistake. The only real alternative is to organize for revolution to overthrow the system promoted by these politicians and their think-tanks.

A Comrade

PLP's Ideas
Re-Printed in Pakistan

Dear Comrades,

Through CHALLENGE we have learned many revolutionary ideas from PLP on nationalism, sexism, fascism, religion and especially the wage slavery system and state borders which are enemies of the international working class. We have also learned to reject categorically the two-stage theory (first socialism, then communism). Collective leadership is the best leadership. All powers belong to the Party (PLP) only, not to a single individual.

PLP criticizes the old communist movement (fake left) publicly. Their weaknesses ravaged many countries, e.g., Indonesia, Spain, Iran, India and Vietnam among many around the world. That's why today the working class is chained and oppressed by capitalism globally.

In Pakistan, the "Communist" Party split into many parts due to its individualistic leadership since birth. CHALLENGE is the one revolutionary paper in the world which opposes the whole capitalist system, without concessions.

For 12 years, we saw very few names of comrades in CHALLENGE. Organization should be confidential, but the Party is open to the entire working class.

No other party talks about a third world war except PLP. It is a dialectical analysis of a world perspective. What is the membership policy for non-U.S. areas?

Comrades in Pakistan

(CHALLENGE postscript: Arriving with the above letter were two pamphlets, one a translation of Road to Revolution IV into the Sindh language.our Partyis international. We are opento all those in agreement with our internationa communist politics and willing to build our movement.)

U.S. Vs. Asian Bosses:The Next Really Big War

a href="#PLP Summer Project Cracks Kerry’s Pro-War Festival">"LP Summer Project Cracks Kerry’s Pro-War Festival

a href="#Obama: Liberals’ New Hero ‘Forgot’ About Racism">Obam": Liberals’ New Hero ‘Forgot’ About Racism

Boston Summer Project!

a href="#Kerry Hand-shaking Can’t Hide Pro-War Stance">"erry Hand-shaking Can’t Hide Pro-War Stance

Project Created New Young Leaders

DC Transit Workers Applaud Red Prez For No Sell-Out Pledge

International Solidarity Needed in Fight vs. DaimlerChrysler

Ford Profits Mask Sharpening Contradictions

a href="#Union Hacks’ Nationalism A Loser As Mitsubishi Plans Firing of 1200">"nion Hacks’ Nationalism A Loser As Mitsubishi Plans Firing of 1200

Bosses Terrorize NYC Workers: Fares Up, Wages Down

a href="#Hacks’ Betrayal of Grocery Strike Becoming Model For School Sellout">"acks’ Betrayal of Grocery Strike Becoming Model For School Sellout

a href="#PLP’s Ideas Spark Discussion of Revolution">"LP’s Ideas Spark Discussion of Revolution

a href="#Workers Fight Bosses’ Flow of Profits from Privatizing Water">"orkers Fight Bosses’ Flow of Profits from Privatizing Water

Studying Imperialism Crucial to Fighting vs. Bosses Wars

Is Sudan Crisis About Oil?

LETTERS

a href="#Inspired by PL’ers ‘on the front lines’">Insp"red by PL’ers ‘on the front lines’

Turning Attack into Fight vs. Fascism in NYC Schools

a href="#AIDS Conference Hides Bosses’ Rule">"IDS Conference Hides Bosses’ Rule

Workers in Germany Need PLP

a href="#PLP Study Group Moves GI’s To Want To Be Involved">"LP Study Group Moves GI’s To Want To Be Involved

Red Eye On The News

• From commune to cutthroat
• Voting doesn’t work for us
• Why U.S. wants army to stay
• War profits = family losses
• US: 7 million criminalized
• Children slave for "Coke"

---

U.S. Vs. Asian Bosses:The Next Really Big War

With its endless parade of generals, admirals, and veterans, countless pro-war speeches, and mindless flag-waving, the Democratic convention looked like a Nuremberg Rally. In the 1930’s, the Nazis staged wildly patriotic rallies every year at Nuremberg as part of a broad campaign to win the German people to fascism and war. Today’s U.S. rulers have long-range war aims that reach far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like their Nazi predecessors, know that dominating the world inevitably entails fighting major military rivals. They, like the Nazis, know that eventually they must fully militarize the nation. Kerry’s war-fest in Boston was a significant, early step in mobilizing for a global confrontation.

Even as they rake in billions by exploiting cheap labor in Asia, U.S. rulers’ fears focus on the growing might of that region. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the leading U.S. policy-setting group, represents the Exxon Mobil-JP Morgan Chase-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital. In its July/August issue, James F. Hoge, editor of the CFR’s "Foreign Affairs," drew ominous parallels to the run-up to World War II, "This time, the populous states of Asia are the aspirants seeking to play a greater role. Like Japan and Germany back then, these rising powers are nationalistic, seek redress of past grievances, and want to claim their place in the sun. Asia’s growing economic power is translating into greater political and military power, thus increasing the potential damage of conflicts."

And it’s not just China, Hoge warns. "India and other Asian states now boast growth rates that could outstrip those of major Western countries for decades to come. China’s economy is growing at more than nine percent annually, India’s at eight percent, and the Southeast Asian ‘tigers’ have recovered from the 1997 financial crisis and resumed their march forward. China’s economy is expected to be double the size of Germany’s by 2010 and to overtake Japan’s, currently the world’s second largest, by 2020. If India sustains a six percent growth rate for 50 years, as some financial analysts think possible, it will equal or overtake China in that time."

Hoge measures the approach of the crisis in decades, but cautions that war might not follow such a neat timeline, "the flash points for hostilities — Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and divided Kashmir — have defied peaceful resolution. Any of them could explode into large-scale warfare that would make the current Middle East confrontations seem like police operations. In short, the stakes in Asia are huge."

To counter emerging rivals, the Pentagon is undertaking "the most extensive realignment of U.S. power in half a century. Part of this realignment is the opening of a second front in Asia. No longer is the United States poised with several large, toehold bases on the Pacific rim of the Asian continent; today, it has made significant moves into the heart of Asia itself, building a network of smaller, jumping-off bases in Central Asia" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7/26, citing Andy Hoehn, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense). Pentagon insiders conclude that the main rationale for these bases is not the war on terrorism but "containment of China." U.S. strategists plan to "position forces along an ‘arc of instability’ that runs through the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and southern Asia. It is in these parts of the world — generally poor, insular and unstable — that military planners see the major future threats to U.S. interests" (Post-Gazette). Since the days of Jimmy Carter, "interests" has been a code word for oil. The proposed arc of troop deployment coincides with the chief export routes for Mideast, Caspian, Russian and West African crude.

China’s capitalist rulers, hardly sitting on their hands, are "modernizing [their] military forces, both to improve [their] ability to win a conflict over Taiwan and to deter U.S. aggression. Chinese military doctrine now focuses on countering U.S. high-tech capabilities — information networks, stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and precision-guided bombs." (Post-Gazette) China is creating a blue-water navy that can someday challenge the U.S. for control of oil shipping routes. Naval experts predict that China will become the world’s biggest shipbuilder by 2015.

While China looms in the future, U.S. rulers have no shortage of present enemies. Another CFR guru, Walter Russell Mead, wrote in the Los Angeles Times (7/25), "The U.S. may wind up facing in Iran the choice our intelligence agencies told us we faced in Iraq: between military action against a rogue regime or allowing that regime to assemble an arsenal of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction....The U.S. is closer than many think to what could well be the biggest and most difficult crisis in the war on terror yet."

The rulers have their own long- and short-term battle plans. We have ours. One day, we or our successors will make a communist revolution that will put an end to capitalism and its wars for profit. In the meantime, to reach that seemingly distant but inevitable goal, we must build the PLP. The pages of CHALLENGE offer the lessons of ideological and class struggles needed for that process, including showing that capitalism (either led by Kerry or Bush in the case of the U.S) makes war inevitable.

(A future article will deal with how the demise of the old communist movement created both new areas of exploitation for U.S. , Western European and Japanese imperialism as well as new competing capitalist powers.)

a name="PLP Summer Project Cracks Kerry’s Pro-War Festival">">"LP Summer Project Cracks Kerry’s Pro-War Festival

BOSTON, July 30 — Seventy members and friends of PLP just completed a very successful Summer Project at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). The week was packed with agitation, workshops, forums, demonstrations, socializing and comradeship. It was a very positive, intense experience for everyone. At least a dozen people joined PLP. Many workers and youth responded positively to our anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, anti-Democratic Party message. We distributed over 3,500 CHALLENGES and 10,000 leaflets.

We continually attacked Kerry and Democratic (as well as Republican) politicians as war-making enemies of the working class. We told anti-war people who plan to vote for Kerry that he calls for staying the course in Iraq and says as President he would enlarge the military by 40,000. The rulers need Kerry to build popular support for their profit wars abroad and police state at home. (See editorials in recent CHALLENGES)

We attended the Boston Social Forum (BSF) where we had a PLP table and three PLP-sponsored workshops on oil and imperialism, the truth about democracy, and nationalism, racism and war. About 50 BSF participants attended our workshops. Many stopped at our table and we made a number of contacts.

On July 25, about 50 of us held a bold, unannounced multi-racial march and demonstration at a hotel reception for Bill and Hilary Clinton. Encircled by cops, we chanted: "Bill Clinton you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide." We pointed out that the Clinton-Gore administration — with Kerry’s support —murdered over a million Iraqis, mostly children, with U.S.-led sanctions and bombing as part of a desperate attempt to bring Iraqi oil back under Exxon-Mobil’s control.

Our bold, disciplined anti-Clinton/anti-Democrat march inspired everyone and set a militant, anti- fascist, anti-war tone for the week. We divided into six teams of young and old, black, Latin and white, from all regions of the country and carried out anti-DNC agitation in working-class neighborhoods and at DNC-sponsored and psuedo left-led forums and protests. We distributed about 4,500 PLP leaflets attacking Kerry and the Democrats as the party of war and fascism and no better than Bush. During the week, PLP led two more spirited demonstrations and marches attacking the Democrats, Harvard University as a bastion of racism and imperialism and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

MBTA cops conducted "random" baggage searches and ID checks of commuters. We distributed about 5,500 PLP leaflets city-wide at subway stations and led a militant picket line against this MBTA fascist plan right inside one of the city’s busiest, working class subway stations. Many workers, professionals and youth were opposed to the MBTA plan. Another team distributed 500 anti-MBTA leaflets and 100 DESAFIOS to workers in a Latino working-class area.

Another team led a march in one of Boston’s working-class housing projects to protest racist police brutality and murder. Residents eagerly took about 150 copies of CHALLENGE. Later the same team leafleted and distributed 270 copies of CHALLENEGE to workers and patients at a large local hospital.

We also went on the ideological offensive against so-called left Democrats like Dennis Kucinich and Jesse Jackson, exposing their role keeping workers and students inside the Democratic Party. Two teams picketed at a church where Jackson spoke and confronted him when he left (see letter page 3).

We met many people angered by the Democrats and opposed to war and fascism. We made over 50 new contacts. The project culminated with a banquet of 100 which included communist raps and songs and speeches about the fight against racism in Boston 1975, building a worker-student alliance and the difficult but important task of building for communist revolution.

We also organized PLP workshops on industrial organizing; unions and communist base-building; imperialist war, military work and communist revolution; elections, war and fascism; and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary process.

One of the Project’s strengths was the willingness of the leaders and participants to try to correct the mistakes made during the project and then move forward. The project developed a whole new set of leaders and encouraged the political development of many others. (For more details see page 3).

The Project gave us more confidence in the Party’s ability to organize workers and students around communist politics.

a name="Obama: Liberals’ New Hero ‘Forgot’ About Racism"></a>"bama: Liberals’ New Hero ‘Forgot’ About Racism

Barak Obama, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention and next Senator from Illinois, is the rising star of the Democratic Party and the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class. Groomed and educated at Harvard Law School, the first black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and on the faculty of the University of Chicago (UC), Obama has "the face, voice and manner of a practiced anchorman. His style was not…old school…but rather it was made for the television screen…" (Chicago Tribune, 7/28)

His Boston speech attacked crime and welfare, but never mentioned the word "racism." He joined the Bill Cosby chorus and put the burden of education on black workers instead of the government and society. Right after the convention, he addressed the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations where he toed the party line, attacking Bush for mishandling the Iraq occupation, and calling for more troops and a long stay.

During the Senate primary race I volunteered at his South Side office. He took black voters there for granted, attending churches and other middle class black venues. The only mass rally was on the night before the primary election at Liberty Baptist church. But even then, he showed up rather late and basically made a sermon, rather than a political speech about what he intended to do. Outside the rally a group of unemployed black youth protested against him. One told me Obama was just another politician.

He reached a major stage in his political rise when elected one of the youngest state senators. He ran against Jesse Jackson Jr. in 1998, gaining some important political experience and exposure, and leading to an ongoing feud between the two liberals, only healed at the Democratic Convention. Both Jesse Jr. and Senior refused to endorse Obama during his primary run.

He returned to the State legislature and kept his UC job. During the first phase of the primary campaign in 2003, much work was needed to get him known among the black working-class community. Many had never heard of him.

He organized a multi-racial base for the South Side, bringing on board Hyde Park liberals and UC students. He also developed a specific cadre to deal with major events on college campuses, especially Chicago area’s black colleges. He aggressively sought southern Illinois Democratic voters, and won key endorsements from the AFL-CIO, especially SEIU.

Obama is emerging as a major player in the consolidation of liberal fascism in this country. In future articles we’ll try to uncover his specific ties to the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class. We’ll also look at how communists working in his campaign must deal with the contradiction of "being in it to win it,"(one has to be among the masses to win them to PL’s politics) while exposing the ruthless core of liberal fascism as the great danger to the working class. There must be a real powerhouse behind him to account for the sudden rise for which his training has prepared him.

Chicago Reader

Boston Summer Project!

The 2004 PLP Boston Summer Project, my first, was more than I could’ve expected – a truly life-altering experience. As one comrade said, "I’m a different person today than when I arrived." Everyone experienced a qualitative change, both individually and as a member of PLP, and of a larger revolutionary communist movement.

For many, it was the first time they worked with other PL members from around the country and the world. Each comrade grew substantially as a communist and as a future leader of PL, forced daily to struggle with their own personal limitations and contradictions as well as with those of the collective.

The Summer Project Banquet revealed the fruits of the week’s political struggles: a number of friends of PL and project first-timers enthusiastically joined the Party, vowing to fight to smash capitalism.

The week in Democrat-occupied Boston was largely spent exposing that party’s imperialist and fascist foundations, and struggling to win workers and students to communist ideas, to the fight against capitalism, and to join PLP. Comrades attended workshops and discussion groups at the Boston Social Forum (the local counterpart of the World Social Forum held last year in Porto Alegre, Brazil) and struggled against the "Anybody-but-Bush" lesser-evil arguments and reformist strategies put forth by many anti-war activists and left liberals. At mass demonstrations we distributed thousands of PL leaflets and CHALLENGES as comrades marched through downtown Boston chanting, "Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World Unite!"; "Hitler Rose, Hitler Fell, Bush And Kerry Go To Hell!"; and, "The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated, Obreros, Unidos, Jamás Serán Vencido!"

A highlight was a chant exposing the blatantly fascist scene when a group of Pro-Lifers carrying posters of aborted fetuses were being escorted by the State Police in full riot gear — in other words, fascists protecting fascists! We yelled: "Tell Me What Fascism Looks Like — This Is What Fascism Looks Like!" Some comrades picketed and sold CHALLENGE at the hotel housing the Clintons and Madeline Albright. Others confronted Jesse Jackson, surrounding his limousine and chanting, "Jesse Jackson You Can’t Hide; We Charge You With Genocide!"

The most important political work, however, occurred in Boston’s racially segregated, working-class neighborhoods. A PLP-led demonstration against police terror was organized in a predominantly African-American and Latina/o working-class community. Leaflets denouncing the recent police murder of a 56-year-old mentally-ill Latino man were distributed. Over 150 CHALLENGES were sold, leading to a number of contacts. Workers gathered at corners, stood on porches or leaned out of windows listening to comrades’ speeches linking fascist police terror at home to imperialist wars abroad, capitalist exploitation to racism and sexism, and the fight against all of capitalism’s evils to the struggle for communist revolution.

The majority of workers agreed that both Democrats and Republicans serve the bosses and that elections don’t fix, let alone address, the most crucial problems facing our class. Overall, workers proved highly receptive to communist ideas, realizing that the bosses’ scam elections will never bring about the much-needed changes all workers so desperately desire.

Amid all the crass revisionism (phony leftism), reformism and liberal misleadership surrounding the Democratic Convention, the Summer Project demonstrated how workers can be won to PLP. It also revealed to many young comrades how vital PL’s role truly is in the fight for communist revolution.

West Coast Comrade

a name="Kerry Hand-shaking Can’t Hide Pro-War Stance">">"erry Hand-shaking Can’t Hide Pro-War Stance

I met a woman in Boston at the Democratic Convention who had two tickets to meet John Kerry. We became friends and decided to enliven the meeting with two anti-war posters. (Both of us worked with the Dennis Kucinich campaign, which had a strong, vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.)

We were unsure about being able to carry the placards — the security where we were to meet Kerry was overwhelming. But we swallowed our apprehension and, emboldened by the week’s lively political activities, stuck to our plan. (I had witnessed unbelievable crowd energy at the Boston Social Forum.)

It almost didn’t happen though. The security at the Boston Harbor was insane! The police presence was massive and depressing. Signs were barred — either the approved Kerry signs or homemade ones. But we decided to try anyway. At worst they would throw them away.

The security guard looked at our signs reading, "End the War in Iraq Now!" and smiled. He said he had no problem with them and let us through. We were ecstatic. People around us carrying Kerry/Edwards signs had to leave them outside, but not us.

As we waited for Kerry, I talked with my new friend about the war in Iraq, about empire and imperialism, about how both Kerry and Bush were for sending and maintaining troops in the Mid-East. Kerry is no friend of students or working people in the U.S. or anywhere else. When he arrived, the crowd cheered and shouted support for Kerry and Edwards — all except us who boldly held up our anti-war signs and shouted for Kerry to end the war in Iraq.

The people around us were unhappy. A few told us to take our signs down, that this wasn’t the time or place — "too divisive." One said we were helping to elect Bush. This reaction was NOT what my friend was expecting. We had been repeatedly told all week that most Democrats don’t support the war.

My friend was angry with the crowd; we held our signs higher and screamed louder against the war. When Kerry went around shaking hands, my friend grasped his hand and told him to end the war and withdraw the troops. His response was, "I’m working on it." Afterwards, to my pleasant surprise, my friend said she was not impressed with Kerry and was upset with him and the crowd for their position about our signs. After his Thursday speech, she was even more upset at his pro-war stance. Since she lives near me, we intend to keep in touch.

I think that she and many others are winnable to PLP’s ideas. All this has shown me we can have experiences like this, meet people, make friends, and make our politics count! This will help me be bolder at my job and in my own city.

All throughout the week, I met people who were both committed to changing the current administration and disgusted with the Kerry campaign, people who are receptive to PLP’s ideas. One young man told me, "Those PLP people are hard core. I respect that they’re militant, principled, young and multi-racial." This is a very good sign.

A comrade

Project Created New Young Leaders

Many different organizations participated in the Boston Social Forum and the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention. Although PLP participated in the Forum and met many potential comrades within its ranks, we stand apart. We’re the only Party calling for communist revolution while working within mass organizations. We’re not trying to reform capitalism, because we know, at best, that only happens on a small, temporary scale, which the bosses ultimately reverse. We don’t waffle on Democrats vs. Republicans, not choosing between evils. We advocate fighting for a communist world free of capitalist exploitation, led by the working class which produces all value. We’re not led astray by Ralph Nader’s promises of a "kinder, gentler" capitalism.

Our organization mirrors the kind of world we envision. We’re black, Latin, white and Asian; young and older, workers and students. We don’t have "stars" who give every speech and lead every meeting. Virtually every PLP Summer Project participant spoke or led chants at one of the demonstrations or meetings. There were many firsts for individual participants, including selling CHALLENGE, speaking on the bullhorn, asking a potential recruit for contact information and for donations, and speaking out at meetings. Comrades under 30 led the teams, planned the activities, figured out the logistics and guaranteed security.

The Summer Project proved that our future is in good hands. While we have a long way to go to make communism a reality on a large scale, the Boston Summer Project showed it is possible and played a big role in developing the leadership which will create communism.

Mid-West Comrade

DC Transit Workers Applaud Red Prez For No Sell-Out Pledge

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 31 — Over 300 transit workers from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 greeted PLP’er Mike Golash at the first union meeting following his election as president. Mike thanked the predominantly black workers for the confidence they showed in him, a white anti-racist communist, saying his membership in PLP would ensure his wholehearted commitment to black, Latin and white workers’ struggles, both immediate and long-term. Mike declared the union must never surrender the strike weapon. He received a rousing ovation for this "maiden speech."

Mike then warned of a tough upcoming contract fight because of the unprecedented $40 million payment the bosses were required to make to the pension fund. Management had conned the previous president into approving accounting tricks to avoid this payment and thus jeopardize the pension fund. Mike vowed to lead the workers in fighting such a deal. He asserted that any gains won in the upcoming contract would be used to foster greater equality among union members, to strengthen the basic solidarity of the union.

Thus, a new chapter of class struggle began with communist leadership of a major industrial union local, out of which many new members can be won to PLP.

International Solidarity Needed in Fight vs. DaimlerChrysler

Frankfurt, Germany, July 23 — "We found a good solution for DaimlerChrysler as well as for Germany," said DaimlerChrysler CEO Jürgen Schrempp. "These… agreements are helping to improve cost competitiveness, making companies more productive…We’re going to see more of this," said Elga Bartsch, an economist at Morgan Stanley in Frankfurt. "There are difficult conditions for the company, and we’ve come up with a fair agreement," said Erich Klemm, chief workers’ representative and deputy chairman of the company’s supervisory board.

The auto boss, the Wall St. banker and the union hack were referring to the new contract between DaimlerChrysler and the metalworkers’ union IG Metall that will gradually increase the work-week to 40 hours, and cut wages by 2.79% in 2006. Other pay increases will be capped at 1.5%. This contract will reduce costs by $613 million a year, and follows an agreement by 4,000 Siemens workers who produce mobile telephones, to extend their work-week after the company threatened to wipe out 2,000 jobs and shift production to Hungary. Germany’s largest car and truck builders, Volkswagen and MAN, and a whole series of factories and service companies will follow the example of Siemens and DaimlerChrysler.

If you listen closely, you can hear the Nazi jackboots goose-stepping across Germany again. The economy is weak, the official unemployment rate is 9.8%, up from 7.6% at the end of 2000, and union membership has dropped by more than one-third since Germany’s reunification in 1991. These are the fruits of the inter-imperialist rivalry, and the collapse of the old communist movement.

The company had threatened to cut 6,000 jobs at the company’s largest Mercedes plant, in Sindelfingen, and shift some of the new C-class Mercedes production to plants in Bremen and East London, South Africa.

On July 15, workers participated in a range of strikes and other actions, stopping production of at least 2,800 cars. (See CHALLENGE, 8/4) However, we need more than strikes and protests to end these attacks.

These concessions are just the beginning. The downward spiral will accelerate. Just ask U.S. Chrysler workers. DaimlerChrysler, with 360,000 workers and factories worldwide, is locked in an intense struggle with U.S. and Asian auto bosses for cheap labor, markets and resources. Not only must they compete against GM and Toyota, but Daimler plants in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Africa are played off against each other as well. After wages and working conditions have been driven down in Germany, the downward spiral will continue at plants in the U.S., South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, India and China.

‘Conflict Of Principles’

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said that he was very worried about the DaimlerChrysler struggle, and warned of a "conflict of principles." In the "Financial Times Deutschland," he said, "Those who create ideological battle lines in this question can only unsettle people and harm the economy." But a conflict of political principles is exactly what’s needed.

The struggle against the bosses’ attacks is a political one. The sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and the capitalist crisis of overproduction are behind the worldwide attacks on autoworkers. This is compounded by the transnational character of the auto giants of the U.S., Europe and Asia. Nationalist union leaders, loyal to their bosses, attack the workers to accept wage cuts, longer hours and the dismantling of social reforms to prevent production from being shifted elsewhere.

This rivalry among billionaires is creating more poverty than cars, and will ultimately be resolved through war. Only a mass, international PLP, based among industrial workers, soldiers and youth that recognize no borders, can lead the international working class out of this horror, with communist revolution. With communist leadership, autoworkers can take advantage of working in transnational companies to expose the nationalist/patriotic union leaders, unite with workers around the world, and build a mass international base for communist revolution.

The capitalists organize their operations on a global scale, and the working class must respond in kind. There is no quick or easy short cut. Autoworkers must prepare for a long, hard political struggle, fighting the billionaire war-makers every step of the way, and out of each battle building the revolutionary communist PLP.

Ford Profits Mask Sharpening Contradictions

DETROIT, July 20 — Ford Motor Company reported a $1.2 billion second-quarter profit today, nearly tripling its earnings from a year ago. But Ford Credit, the company’s finance division, contributed $897 million, more than doubling last year, while the company lost $57 million building cars and trucks. Ford and General Motors have high inventories and are losing market share in the U.S.

Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa wrote, "The overwhelming concentration of earnings in financial services will likely give investors reasons for pause," especially since the Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates.

Ford’s Jaguar division, part of the Premier Automotive Group, a collection of European luxury brands owned by Ford, is also struggling. Ford hoped Premier, which includes Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo, would be a major source of profits after the company lost $5.5 billion in 2001. Instead Premier lost $362 million for the quarter, in part due to the strength of the euro, which makes it more expensive for European automakers to export to the United States. Jaguar sales have been weak, and along with Land Rover, are not meeting "cost-cutting targets."

Ford is cutting production in the U.S. for the third straight quarter, while Toyota, the profitable Japanese automaker, is increasing production by 10%.

Ford To Build New Auto Plant in China

Meanwhile, Ford plans to build a third factory in China with an annual capacity of 200,000 units, part of a $1.5 billion expansion of its 50-50 joint venture with Changan Automobile Group. The project also involves Japan’s Mazda Motor Corp. Ford owns one-third of Mazda. About 100,000 units will be a Mazda subcompact, the rest an unidentified Ford model. Production will begin in 2007.

Ford was a latecomer to China, beginning auto production in 1997. It’s trying to catch up with U.S., German and Japanese rivals, who are also expanding their China operations.

Volkswagen plans to invest up to 5.3 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in China by 2008 and GM is investing another $3 billion over the next three years.

Ford builds Mondeo and Fiesta sedans at a plant in Chongqing, in western China, and Ford Transit light trucks in Jiangxi province with Jiangling Motors Co., a Chinese light truck and van maker in which Ford has a 30% stake. The Mazda 6, Mazda 323 and Premacy are made in China in a venture with China FAW Group Corp., one of China’s largest carmakers.

The international battle for cheap labor, markets and resources is at the heart of the inter-imperialist rivalry that is shaping world events. Production cuts, investment in China and "cost-cutting targets" in Europe all signal increased attacks on autoworkers worldwide. And saddled with nationalist, pro-capitalist union leaders, each out to make "their" bosses #1, workers are caught in a whirlpool, squeezing their living standards lower and lower. Ultimately, this increased imperialist rivalry, and more patriotic/nationalist "leadership," will head the working class into bigger and more deadly wars for profit.

Even so, these attacks are not all going down smoothly. From the recent Daimler strikes in Germany, to much smaller actions, workers are showing a willingness to fight back. At one here, workers returned from the summer shutdown to find all the escalators in their sprawling plant inoperable. This meant much longer walks to and from their work assignments. Mysteriously, the air conditioning in the bosses’ offices was also shut down until the escalators were running again.

Current conditions cry out for revolutionary communist leadership. Every attack, including the UAW leadership’s China-bashing and support for Kerry the war-maker, offers us a chance to fight for communist politics and build a base for PLP. This is not only possible, but is happening.

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NORMAL, IL, July 22 — Mitsubishi Motors North America will fire up to 1,200 workers at its assembly plant here, dropping to one shift in October, cutting its capacity in half. The plant employs 3,150 workers and can produce 240,000 vehicles annually.

Mitsubishi, the second-largest employer in this area, sold a record 345,000 vehicles in the U.S. in 2002, but sales sank 26% last year and are down 27% this year. Mitsubishi Motors of Japan piled up $9 billion in debt before announcing a reorganization that includes plant closings in Japan and cutting 20% of its global workforce. In Japan, Mitsubishi has been losing money and was forced to recall vehicles after covering up defects for years.

The Normal plant will continue to produce four Mitsubishi models. The plant’s production of the Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Sebring coupes, under a contract with the Chrysler Group, will end in April. DaimlerChrysler, the Chrysler Group’s parent, owned a 37% stake in Mitsubishi but declined to bail out its Japanese partner, forcing Mitsubishi to reorganize.

The 1,200 workers here are the latest victims of the worldwide capitalist crisis of too much production capacity and too many companies fighting for market share. Stephen Girsky, a Morgan-Stanley auto analyst, said, "Mitsubishi’s problem is compounded by the fact they also have a lot of debt. Ford and General Motors have overcapacity problems, too, but they have the finances to weather the storm," casting doubt on Mitsubishi’s ability to survive in the U.S.

United Auto Workers Local 2488, representing 2,700 workers, is reduced to ensuring the cuts are "based heavily on seniority." They and the Detroit UAW leadership have no plan or vision to build an international fight-back because they’re wedded to the profit system and blinded by nationalism. All their China-bashing is a big distraction. Even if Kerry is elected in November, it will not alter the laws of capitalism one bit. Increased poverty, unemployment and union-busting are just the prelude to more wars and a fascist Homeland Security police state. Building a base for CHALLENGE and PLP among basic industrial workers is the key to building a mass revolutionary communist movement, the only answer to endless capitalist crises.

Bosses Terrorize NYC Workers: Fares Up, Wages Down

NEW YORK CITY, July 31 — This city and state’s bosses and bankers have hit the working class with a one-two punch and we don’t mean another fake Code Orange "terror alert": they’re raising subway and bus fares, which amounts to a wage-cut, and applauding Governor Pataki’s veto of an increase in the minimum wage for 700,000 workers. All this is happening with the electoral circus in full swing. But sure as hell the workers don’t get to vote on transit fares or minimum wages. Under capitalism, those "choices" are reserved only for the bosses.

Both moves stem directly out of U.S. capitalism’s drive to place the cost of their imperialist moves for world domination squarely on the backs of the working class. Washington’s allotment of hundreds of billions to prosecute their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and thereby cutting Federal aid to states and cities — produces "deficits" in local budgets. The politicians then cover these "deficits" out of workers’ paychecks, to pay off the bankers while giving low-wage bosses a free ride.

The Fare Hike Fraud

Raising fares for all workers — while cutting bus service for night workers — shows how capitalism operates to reap maximum profits for the banker-bosses. Mass transit is a vital service without which the city couldn’t function — very few people could get to work, and very few bosses could make any profit.

Until the late 1940’s, all transit costs — as all vital services — were paid from the general city treasury Then, in 1948, the Transit Authority was established (now the Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA). It mandated payment of all operating costs, including workers’ wages and benefits, from fare revenue. This created a built-in division in the working class: whenever transit workers needed a raise to cover the rising cost of living, the fare would automatically increase. Then the bosses’ media would loudly proclaim that transit workers were taking money from the rider-worker’s pockets.

Meanwhile, the MTA paid for capital improvements by borrowing from the big banks, producing a huge debt and hundreds of millions in interest being funneled to these bondholders. So huge "deficits" were created, which would impel even more borrowing and more interest, and on and on.

In 1999, the MTA, taking it one step further, "borrowed unprecedented amounts" for a five-year capital budget program. The "payments on that debt is the primary driver of the authority’s current problems."(N.Y. Times, 7/29) How to pay off these bankers? According to State Controller Carl McCall, the "debt really had to be paid from the fare box." (NYT) So it’s the banks that really own the transit system, and the working class that pays for it, to keep capitalism functioning.

Minimum Wage = Poverty Wages

The second blow delivered to the poorest workers was Pataki’s veto of a proposed increase in the minimum wage, from the current $5.15/hr to $7.15 — by 2007! — a move which Pataki says "would damage New York’s business climate." (NY Daily News, 7/30) Capitalism’s priority is always bosses’ profits. The damage to workers of poverty-level wages is never a factor.

But even if the State Legislature should override Pataki’s veto, $7.15 an hour is still way below the government’s own poverty-line figures. So the politicians and the labor misleaders who cry crocodile tears over Pataki’s veto are not exactly worried about how families will make ends meet on $7.15 an hour — BEFORE taxes — an amount they wouldn’t reach until 2007.

Both the fare hike and the poverty wages hit the poorest workers the hardest, overwhelmingly black and Latin in this city, still another way that capitalism’s racism super-exploits these workers and hits white workers in the pocketbook as well. Racism hurts ALL workers.

The answer? While fighting back against these attacks, we must recognize none of these problems will be solved under a profits-first, workers-last system. Communist revolution would destroy capitalism and its wage system. Abolition of that system is the only road to eliminating exploitation, racism and poverty. Joining PLP is the surest way to guarantee that future.

a name="Hacks’ Betrayal of Grocery Strike Becoming Model For School Sellout">">"acks’ Betrayal of Grocery Strike Becoming Model For School Sellout

My friend is one of the grocery store workers, members of the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) who struck Von’s in California last October. She organized other workers to support the picket lines, returning to work in March, after the vote to accept a new contract.

Although an active striker, she was very critical of the union leadership and is disgusted with the terms of the new, three-year agreement. From my own experience in talking to workers on the picket line and from reading the CHALLENGE articles (3/17/4), I believe there are many grocery workers besides my friend who agree that workers can run the world much better than capitalist bosses and their class lieutenants, the union hacks, and to benefit the working class, not to enrich the bosses. My friend and I need to talk more about the answers that communism has for the world’s workers. Here are some of her observations on the strike.

Q. What were the main issues leading to the strike?

A. The owners wanted to charge us more for medical co-payments; to pay new workers less; and make it more difficult for all of us to reach the highest salary range. They said they needed lower wages and concessions in order to compete with mega-stores like Wal-Mart.

Q. Did the new contract provide any relief from these demands?

A. NO! We actually have worse working conditions now than before the strike. Besides winning the cutbacks they wanted, the grocery bosses, at least here at Von’s, have demoted workers from checkers to baggers, reducing their pay from $17.90 to $6.75 per hour.

Q. What could the union leaders have done to make the strike successful?

A. For one thing, they could have kept the picket lines going at Ralph’s [The union agreed to let Ralph’s — which locked out workers when the UFCW struck — re-open after a few weeks, claiming workers had nowhere else to buy food.] They also could have organized more unions to help us picket, and insisted that the local Labor Council and the AFL-CIO provide more support. Many grocery workers were very militant on the picket lines at their home stores, but the local union leadership transferred those workers to other stores to "calm them down." The union wasn’t willing to go all the way for us.

Grocery workers are not alone in facing such attacks. Gov. Schwarzenegger has made it a priority to broaden the use of contract labor in non-teaching jobs in California schools. The unions are supposedly "fighting back" with a letter-writing campaign and rallies in Sacramento, but have no plans for local or state-wide mobilizations. Their weakness should not surprise us. Their stand has always been to use the Democratic Party to win concessions from the State, not to organize school workers to strike for better conditions and end contract labor, much less to use such actions to realize our potential power to unite as a class against the bosses’ fascist attacks and their war.

Communists in PLP can make the key difference in organizing the working class, no matter where they work. We need my friend and others to join the Party and move the working class forward, beyond strikes and toward the fight for workers’ power through communist revolution.

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"What I see is that soon we’re going to be in the streets protesting. Things can’t continue like this. The only road that’s left to us is revolution."

So spoke an older worker during a political discussion on my job. These days the word "revolution" doesn’t draw the same surprise it did a few years ago when the workers would view you as a little "far out," or as a good person who was dreaming.

This discussion was provoked by a PLP leaflet about health-benefit cuts, and about how we’re under attack, losing a little more every contract period. For example, we got an "increase" of 50¢ an hour per year but lost more than $5 an hour in health and other benefits.

This is besides the fact that the purchasing power of our wages is decreasing while the cost of gasoline, housing, food and clothing is all rising — we’re going backwards like a crab. The current union leaders play a game with the bosses, trying to prevent real class struggle.

Either we fight back and defy the bosses’ laws or we prepare to live on the streets — that’s how things are going. But when we do fight, the biggest victory is realizing the potential power of a united working class able to eliminate this rotten, racist capitalist system.

A few days later there was an opinion piece in the daily newspaper about an upcoming U.S. "military exercise" with seven carrier groups off the coast of China to warn that country "not to touch Taiwan." The writer said the purpose of such a huge U.S. force was to make China fearful of ever challenging the U.S. This writer said the exercise would have the opposite effect — causing China to accelerate its plans for a deep-water Navy that could eventually challenge the U.S.

I showed this article to my friends at work. Sometimes they think I’m exaggerating when I say capitalism makes wars and world war inevitable. But after reading this article, they said I was right about world war being inevitable.

We must take advantage of every opportunity to show workers that capitalism means wars for profit and that the only way out is to fight for a revolution and a communist system that meets our needs.

‘Better to be a red than a rat…’

An example of how workers respond to PLP leaflets happened recently with the one mentioned in the adjoining article. The workers posted it everywhere so their co-workers could read it. In one of the areas someone wrote "communist propaganda" on it. But it still stayed up for a while. Then someone threw it on the floor. Soon another worker picked it up and posted it in an even more visible spot and wrote on it that it was "better to be a red than a rat"!

a name="Workers Fight Bosses’ Flow of Profits from Privatizing Water">">"orkers Fight Bosses’ Flow of Profits from Privatizing Water

What in the capitalist system drives corporations to get into the private water business?

Fortune Magazine partly answers that question in an article entitled, "Water, And Water Everywhere" (5/15/2000): "Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations…. From Buenos Aires to Atlanta to Jakarta, the liquid everybody needs — and will need a lot more of in the future — is going private, creating one of the world’s great business opportunities. The dollars at stake are huge. Supplying water to people and companies is a $400-billion-a-year industry. That’s 40% of the size of the oil sector and one-third larger than global pharmaceuticals."

The French corporations Vivendi and Suez and the German corporation RWE control over 70% of existing privatized water services (www. blueplanetproject.net click on resources). Profit from the sale of water has helped catapult these companies into the top-100 list of largest global corporations, with combined revenues of over $100 billion (Global Fortune 500 list).

Not to be outdone in this imperialist dogfight, U.S. Bechtel has jumped into the water privatization game and joined forces with UK’s United Utilities to privatize Latin America’s water.

Corporations are driven by the cold logic of capitalism: the never-ending accumulation of capital. Each capitalist must constantly gain more profit, maximum profit, or die. This inexorably puts corporations, and ultimately their governments, in competition with one another.

The unprecedented profits being made from the sale of water create furious competition for water contracts, and results in the increased suffering of the world’s poor. Once the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund put a struggling country’s water services onto the open market to pay for a loan, corporations fight each other over how profitable they can make their investment, not who can best serve the people in need of water. Fortune magazine (5-15-2000) says foreign water service contracts are risky, but "Suez [the largest water company] is an expert at pricing deals to reflect that risk and at protecting its future profits." This means raising water bills dramatically and not providing promised repairs or adequate sanitation service (N.Y. Times, 8/26/2002, 5/29/2003).

From South Africa to Bolivia to Central America the working class is fighting back. Municipal workers in South Africa are joining with community activists to illegally re-connect water and electricity to poor people who have been shut off. In Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets and militantly drove Bechtel out of their country. Throughout Central America community organizations are joining with workers and indigenous groups to fight privatization. (The Nation, 9/2/2002).

In southern Mexico, the indigenous population of Chiapas is preparing to fight Coca Cola over control of Chiapas water reserves which supplies 30% of the country’s sweet water. Coca Cola is pressuring local governments to use zoning laws to increase private control of water supplies. (http://www.argenpress.info/nota.asp?num=012724)

On July 27, 3,000 Indigenous workers and peasants seized the center of the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, to stop passage of a water privatization bill. "There will be deaths and blood in the streets if the bill is passed," said one protest leader. Unions are threatening to join the movement, which could become nationwide. (Xinhua news)

It’s our job as communists to turn the economic fight for the control of water into a political fight for workers’ power. Water is the fundamental resource for human life. Under capitalism it’s a commodity that becomes private property, diverted from those who need it, polluted and sold for profit. If we don’t own resources collectively, if we allow some corporation or its capitalist government — only interested in profits — to own our water, then we’ll always be at the mercy of heartless profiteers and will see endless wars between the capitalists for control of those resources.

Already some activists such as Rigoberta Menchú argue that a future world war will be fought over water. It’s up to PLP to fight for the solution to these wars for profit. Whether it’s oil or water, the world’s working class must fight to control our resources for the benefit of our class, not for the profit of the greedy bosses. Join PLP and help fight for a communist revolution to end this resource-raping capitalist system.

Unquoted Resources:

"Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water," by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.

"Thirst for Control," by Shrybman, Steven. http://www.blueplanetproject.net/cms_publications/TFC_E.pdf

Studying Imperialism Crucial to Fighting vs. Bosses Wars

People active in the anti-war movement, or considering it, must understand imperialism in order to fight it better. Following are important sources for study groups or for individual reading.

Although almost 90 years old, Lenin’s book "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism," is essential and an easy read and available free on the Internet. Chapter 10 is a summary; chapter 3, on the domination of finance capital (the big banks) over the capitalist economy, and Chapter 7, on the inevitability of imperialist war under capitalism, are especially good. Lenin’s analysis is made current in Chapter VI of the PLP pamphlet "Political Economy: A Communist Critique of the Wage System," and in the "Oil War" pamphlet (applied to Iraq), as well as recent issues of CHALLENGE.

"Behind The Invasion Of Iraq," (Monthly Review Press, 2003) gives a clear account of the history of imperialism in Iraq and the reasons for the U.S invasion. The authors, the Research Unit for Political Economy (from India), summarize the long struggle of U.S. and British imperialism to dominate the Persian Gulf. They spell out U.S. plans to control oil and dominate Europe and China, as well as the dollar’s role as a reserve currency in maintaining the U.S. empire.

A useful source from a liberal, anti-imperialist viewpoint is Chalmers Johnson’s "Sorrows of Empire, Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic" (Holt, Reinhart, 2004). Johnson defines imperialism, and recognizes that both Democrats and Republicans are imperialist, but thinks Clinton was a "smarter imperialist" than Bush. He describes the far-flung system of 725 U. S. military installations worldwide and reviews the extent and destructiveness of U.S. imperialism, which impoverishes billions, creating enemies of the U.S., while destroying institutions within the U.S.

Rather naively, Johnson claims the "military-industrial complex" runs the government. He doesn’t identify the capitalist system itself as the problem. He even argues that imperialism is not an inevitable result of capitalism, suggesting that if citizens would "take the country back," imperialist policies could be reversed. While Johnson’s conclusions are mistaken, the book is a valuable description of the scope of U.S. imperialism, and may especially help those new to the concept of imperialism.

An older, but still very worthwhile book is "The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money & Power" (Free Press; 1993), by Daniel Yergin. Although not really an anti-imperialist book, it makes a convincing case that a fundamental contradiction among the imperialists is the drive to control oil. It’s a well-documented history of the oil business, from its beginnings, as a source of kerosene for lighting homes, to having become the most important commodity in the capitalist world. Yergin depicts the struggle for oil in World Wars I and II, creating a perfect context for the current war in Iraq. It clarifies why the U.S. ruling class has no choice but to commit hundreds of thousands of troops and billions in borrowed dollars to control the Middle East militarily. Whoever controls this region’s oil has power over the economies and military capability of the entire world — the "prize" is control of oil.

It’s also important to study the capitalists’ pro-imperialist theories. The Hart-Rudman Commission’s "Report on a U.S. National Security: Strategy for the 21st Century" (2000) argues that it’s a "critical national interest" of the U. S. that no hostile power or coalition dominate "in any of the globe’s major regions."

Multi-lateral cooperation between the U. S. and other imperialist powers is the theme of Charles Kupchan’s "The End of the American Era: U. S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century" (Knopf, 2002). It was commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations, the U. S. capitalists’ main organization for developing their foreign policy. Since the U.S. can’t be top dog forever, Kupchan argues, it must seek a "soft landing," a more nearly equal relationship with other imperialist powers, a "new equilibrium" with them. Kupchan is critical of unilateral imperialists who want to squash all rivals everywhere, arguing that this will inevitably lead to over-reaching and defeat.

The study of imperialism and its theories are important but must be combined with joining the cutting edge of the struggle against imperialism — participating in PLP activities like its summer projects for students, and learning how to destroy imperialism by ending the capitalist system through organizing for communist revolution.

Is Sudan Crisis About Oil?

From The Guardian, 8/2

Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr. [Tony] Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent — as General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed….

The absence of anti-war skepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil…. There are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan’s biggest foreign investor.

We ought, therefore, to treat with skepticism the U.S. Congress declaration of genocide in the region.

LETTERS

a name="Inspired by PL’ers ‘on the front lines’"></a>"nspired by PL’ers ‘on the front lines’

The experience in the Boston Summer Project with the most impact on me occurred in the daily workshops. There comrades discussed serious issues of fascism, imperialism, and the need for comrades to work in the military and industry. Although broad topics, each discussion was focused, in depth and detailed. In both the industrial working class and military workshops, we heard from comrades on the front lines. It was inspiring to see these comrades very literally dedicating their lives to the death of capitalism via base-building in these crucial areas. All of us were inspired to redouble our efforts and rededicate ourselves to finding work in these key areas or supporting those who are there.

The workshops also presented good historical background, with speakers giving critical analysis of important past events that can shape our current fight. Hearing about current workers’ struggles from LA to NY was also inspiring and a learning experience.

As a first-time Summer Project participant, I was impressed at how all workers’ opinions, younger and older, were respected, always emphasizing the dialectal process. The workshops, in combination with all the activities, served to better equip all comrades to smash capitalism and fight for communism.

D.C Comrade

We ARE Making A Difference

The Boston Summer Project taught me that we are not alone in the fight for communism, that working as a collective we can deal with all problems.

Before getting there, I was very excited about how it would change me and my team. Although we experienced some miscommunications and lack of planning, our internal struggles helped us understand our limits and contradictions and clarify our line as a Party, enabling us to address these issues and become stronger and more committed comrades.

As a collective we were able to make decisions and overcome last-minute change of plans. During the Boston Social Forum, we chose workshops that were best for making contacts to build a base in Boston. We expanded our numbers and sharpened our arguments against liberalism and for communism. Although very hectic, it pushed us to have nightly discussions on what we had done and to plan for each day.

Our team attended a conference on Haiti where activists from many countries shared their struggles in organizing the working class, emphasizing overthrowing capitalism through revolution. One comrade explained our work among LA garment and transit workers and the need for the working class to fight the bosses. He indicated that we must take it in our own hands, not rely on politicians to reform the system. To overthrow capitalism we must also organize among the military.

A Haitian woman activist conveyed the necessity of organizing workers even under the most oppressive conditions. Many commented and shared their own experiences in organizing the working class. The role of women was discussed, declaring that without women there cannot be a revolution, that it is imperative we struggle against the sexism that still persists in our organizations.

The speakers' successes and struggles reinforced my feelings about our work within the working class to fight for communism. We ARE making a difference. It further strengthened my commitment to PLP. When the four-hour conference ended, everyone's experiences inspired us to fight harder.

We also organized a demonstration in a working class neighborhood against police brutality and the killing of Luis Gonzalez. We showed them CHALLENGE which presented an alternative to Bush or Kerry. This was the first time that some in our group had ever sold the paper publicly. It was a huge moment. CHALLENGE helped initiate many discussions with residents. They left their apartments and asked for it and listened intently to our message. They had been waiting for people to give them an alternative to a capitalist system that oppresses them daily.

We also distributed leaflets and sold CHALLENGE at a hospital, where I sold my first paper to someone I didn't know. This helped shed fears I had and by this practice I was able to see the reality of communist politics.

The PLP workshops and banquet brought a sense of comradeship and energy that we all needed. We met comrades from all across the U.S. and around the world who are struggling for the same goals. It felt very comfortable to seek advice from the leadership about our problems. PLP is not divided into "leaders" and "followers," but rather into experienced members helping everyone to become leaders. In return, veteran members learn from newer ones. This relationship strengthens the Party.

The Boston Project brought us a more dialectical understanding about our flaws and our successes as a group. Learning from the mistakes, we became better organizers and better comrades. Despite emotional and physical stresses, as a team we made qualitative changes and experienced growth that solidified our commitment to PLP and our goal of a communist revolution.

A Summer Project comrade

Turning Attack into Fight vs. Fascism in NYC Schools

Since June I’ve been sitting in a New York City Dept. of Education office with four others who’ve been removed from their schools, just sitting. I’m one of over 1,000 NYC educational staff being punished in this way. Ninety-nine percent have done nothing to harm children, but are only "guilty" of standing up for their students, fellow workers or themselves. This punishment creates a chilling effect, not only on the targeted people, but on the entire school staff. One might think I like it just sitting here taking it easy and earning a good paycheck, but I’d much rather be working with my former students.

This all started in 2000 when I was working in a high school. I organized the staff in my department, helping unite people to oppose administrative harassment, and served as liaison to the school’s union representative. The relentless attacks on me forced me to transfer to another school, but the administration there made it clear I wasn’t welcome. They gave me very little work to do in my role as counselor. When my passion and enthusiasm led me to work with many students sorely in need of service, I wasn’t given a place to meet with them and was told "not to enter classrooms to drum up business," something I’d never done. After five months, the principal told me to ignore my job description, trying to stop me from performing needed work, even interrupting a session with a student and her parent without any explanation to tell them not to see me again.

The next day I was given a letter advising me I was barred from the building, for "unprofessional behavior." I had no idea why and have still not been told of any charges against me five months later. The union contract allows the administration six months before issuing charges against accused workers, a provision unknown to many school staff. Some have been sitting in limbo for years.

This system intimidates school staff from fighting back. Many of the accused are also older and pressured into accepting retirement rather than fighting their case, forcing out experienced, higher-paid senior staff. Most importantly, it’s one more example of fascism within the schools, where students are treated like criminals. They must pass through metal detectors, are harassed by armed cops in the halls, and arrested and handcuffed for minor infractions. Military recruiters are everywhere.

While I’m in detention with other school workers, we’re discussing the nature of the system and how to bring this situation to the attention of our union delegates, parents and students. Being banished together, we’ll use this opportunity to learn why capitalism needs fascism and how to become more effective fighters on our jobs.

Red Teacher

a name="AIDS Conference Hides Bosses’ Rule">">"IDS Conference Hides Bosses’ Rule

While delegates to the XV International HIV/AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand debated the causes and remedies of the HIV epidemic behind a double layer of police security in a climate-controlled convention center, the sexual exploitation of men and women proceeded apace just meters away. The theme for this year’s conference, "Access for All," drew criticism from some of the 20,000 participants, who argued that stigmatization and gender inequality have rendered this slogan meaningless.

HIV-positive individuals accused the Gilead drug company of not making antiretroviral drugs cheap and available. Activists shouted down U.S. Ambassador Randall Tobias, former V.P. of AT&T and former CEO of the Lily Drug Co., exposing him as a liar who gutted the global fund.

Much of this hatred seemed misdirected. Protesters didn’t lay bare the economic and social conditions that allow states, drug companies and healthcare super-monopolies to reap profits from phony attempts to alleviate HIV. Workshops concentrated on assisting "sex workers," encouraging abstinence and voluntary testing and ending AIDS stigma. Buzzwords like "empowering," "capacity-building" and "social justice" seemed to be everywhere. Yet their analysis ended with lame discussions on A,B,C’s (Abstinence, Being faithful, using Condoms), and changing local customs, culture and morality. The failure to challenge the fundamental social relationships that determine who gets sick and who stays healthy makes these forces complicit in this multi-national corporate smokescreen.

Thailand is manufacturing its own generic versions of the antiretroviral drugs made by U.S. and European companies and is distributing them cheaply to Thai citizens, but thousands of HIV-infected immigrant workers must pay much more for the same drugs. The Thai government’s effort to legalize prostitution, already an institution there, fueled by the decades-old presence of U.S military personnel and, more recently, Western tourism, is a thinly-veiled attempt to tax and profit from this trillion-dollar-a-year industry.

The Thai government has insisted on legalizing, rather than simply decriminalizing prostitution, thereby excluding it from occupational safety and health standards. Thailand has the highest number of internally-displaced persons (IDP’s) in Southeast Asia. While these IDP’s are already a huge source of revenue for profiteers, the government denies them freedom of movement, access to medicine, education and legal work.

A Conference participant

CHALLENGE Comment: Thanks for writing. We urge you and all readers to read the report on this conference in the last issue of CHALLENGE (8/4), which focuses on capitalism’s role in the AIDS plague that is killing tens of millions, especially in Africa and Asia.

When writing about "sex workers" and prostitution, the writer refers to "fundamental social relationships" that "determine who gets sick and who stays healthy," but doesn’t explain this is the profit system, capitalism.

When writing about denying "sex workers" safety/health standards, he seems to imply that prostitution is some legitimate "industry" rather than capitalism forcing women and children into this degrading way of staying alive, fueled by capitalism turning sex into a commodity. Capitalism is the source of the AIDS epidemic, prostitution and drug profiteering. Communist revolution will end the "sex trade" overnight, by abolishing wage slavery and building a society based on meeting the needs of the international working class, including restoring the dignity of, and respect for, women.

Workers in Germany Need PLP

Schröder's Social-Democratic government, in alliance with the Green Party, is "reforming" the pension and retirement laws, to increase the years workers will need to retire. This "reform" will force workers to pay to cover the German bosses' deficit and help corporations become more competitive in the world market. The cuts will also help finance a European military machinery. Airbus is already building a new plane useful for both civilian and military transportation. Germany, France, Spain and Britain are collaborating in this project, to compete with Boeing.

Similarly, German bosses are also imposing "health reforms," forcing workers to pay more for their health care. Beginning in January, workers, including the unemployed, will no longer have free doctor or dental visits.

A recently-hospitalized school worker had to pay 10 Euros ($12.50) a day, something unimaginable in the past. European bosses want to turn the clock back on workers' rights and conditions to catch up with the USA, where 44 million lack health insurance.

Unemployed workers now fear losing their benefits entirely. Soon the government will cut 200 euros ($250) a month from jobless benefits. Since last January, an unemployed person whose spouse works will also receive less benefits. Seasonal workers will have to report three months in advance before they stop working, so the Arebitzamt (local Labor Dept.) can find him/her a job and avoid paying jobless benefits.

Meanwhile, the DaimlerChrysler workers struck on July 14-15 (see page 4). The auto bosses plan to save 500 million Euros ($625 million), threatening to move to South Africa. As usual, the IG Metall union hacks did their dirty work, betraying the workers.

Workers lack an alternative to this massive bosses' attack. They need PLP's revolutionary communist politics. Some of us are already trying to build a PLP group here, contacting immigrant and other workers.

Throughout Europe, bosses are taking away benefits won by workers through decades of struggle. Reforms won under capitalism are only temporary; workers have only one option: destroy it and its laws, and fight for communism, a society without wage slavery, without "markets" and currencies, where workers organize themselves to satisfy the needs of their class.

An Immigrant worker in Germany

a name="PLP Study Group Moves GI’s To Want To Be Involved">">"LP Study Group Moves GI’s To Want To Be Involved

(The previous three articles in this series reported on the involvement of sailors and marines in some practical work, on their participation in a May Day event and on a dinner at a May Day marcher’s house in which the GI’s debated nationalism, God, drugs, Bush/Kerry and capitalism.)

All our previous activities led to the first study group to discuss our Party, its line, history and goals. A veteran comrade, mentor and friend agreed to chair it. Another comrade attended, to offer perspective and history.

Five people attended, three sailors and two marines. I thanked everyone for coming and turned it over to the veteran comrade. He gave good overview of the Party and what we fight for, stressing the struggle against racism as central to our work; the fight against sexism; all forms of nationalism; and the ultimate goal of establishing the dictatorship of the working class.

It started well, with questions and dialogue: How could a society function without religion? Do we respect culture in our fight against nationalism? Is it possible to have egalitarianism/equality within capitalism? Must we do away with the entire capitalist system? Does destroying the capitalist system automatically destroy oppressive ideologies?

The discussion was intense, good for our first meeting. I answered the last question on destroying oppressive ideologies by saying that eventually, they would wither away — after much class struggle — because they’d no longer have any justification/backing from the state. I stressed that it’s the capitalist state that continues to manufacture these oppressive thought systems. I cited former Alabama Governor George Wallace, reasoning that it wasn’t just his individual racist thought that empowered him to deny black students entry to the University of Alabama, but the power granted to him by the state. In a communist society, there would be no free speech for racism, which would be punished by the workers’ state.

Overall our first meeting was successful. We’re currently planning our next one to dig deeper into the issues that were highlighted.

After class my two new marine friends had some interesting questions. Firstly, why did I join the Navy? One asked why I would join the enlisted ranks if I already have a college degree. Why not apply for Officers Candidate School and become an officer?

I said first and foremost, I’m a political organizer and was searching for the best place to organize for the Party. I felt the Navy offered me a great opportunity. I also thought I could pass the Navy fitness standards more easily than the Marines or the Army.

On not being an officer, I told them we look to organize those most affected by the system, those who have the greatest revolutionary potential. Clearly, that’s much more present among the enlisted ranks, those who do the dirty work but do not receive much credit, than in the officer ranks.

My friends were very intrigued by all this and wanted to know how they could help. I replied they were already helping by attending meetings and asking me questions.

We then discussed the causes of the Iraq war, the fight for oil and the U.S. ruler’s aim to maintain global supremacy. We talked about Halliburton and Vice-President Cheney’s connection to it. We lunched at a local park where I shared CHALLENGE with them as we continued to discuss the Party’s ideas. I was very impressed with my new friends’ political knowledge, especially on Cheney’s connection to Halliburton. They give me hope that our class will win one day, hopefully in my lifetime!

Navy Red

(Next: the conclusion — a "field trip" and the need for unity with white GIs.)

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

From commune to cutthroat

If his gruesome death was shocking, the life of this peasant boy in the rolling hills of northern Sichuan Province is repeated a million fold across the Chinese countryside. Peasants like Qingming were once the core constituency of the Communist Party. Now, they are being left behind in the money-centered, cutthroat society that has replaced socialist China.

China has the world’s fastest-growing economy but is one of its most unequal societies….The income divide between the urban rich and the rural poor has widened so sharply that some studies now compare China’s social cleavage unfavorably with Africa’s poorest nations.

The skewed distribution of wealth has already begun to alienate the country’s 750 million peasants….The countryside simmers with unrest….Even in a country that ruthlessly punishes dissent, some three million people took part in protests last year.

…In the days of Mao Zedong’s radical egalitarian ideology…Farmers had a semblance of collective welfare when they lived in communes, though standards were lower. (NYT 8/1)

Voting doesn’t work for us

You can forget the chatter about an exit strategy for American troops. There isn’t one.

Employment here in America is another topic on which the presidential candidates will not tell the voters the cold, hard truth. There are not nearly enough jobs available…Families are being squeezed like Florida oranges as good jobs with good benefits — health insurance, paid vacations and retirement security — are going.

It may well be that candidates can’t tell voters the truth and still win. If that’s so then democracy American-style may be a lot more dysfunctional than even the last four years has indicated. (NYT 8/2)

Why U.S. wants army to stay

Perhaps the most sobering assessment of what lies ahead has come from recently retired Col. Douglas MacGregor, one of the military’s leading intellectuals and a harsh critic of the outcome of our invasion of Iraq.

"We must face facts," MacGregor told congress last week. "Saudi Arabia may be reaching the end of its fragile existence. Iran is in the race to develop and field nuclear warheads for its already impressive arsenal of theater ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the hope that it will be positioned to pick up the pieces if we just leave. A nuclear armed Pakistan could lurch openly into the Islamist camp on very short notice. Back off now, Iraq will ulcerate and regional order will eventually disintegrate. The oil may well stop flowing from the Persian Gulf and chaos could infect the whole region, producing a global economic disaster." (Atlanta Journal – Constitution 7/22)

War profits = family losses

Economist Doug Henwood estimates that this war, if the U.S. military stays there for three more years, will cost U.S. households an average of $3,415. (Minutemanmedia.org 7/21)

US: 7 million criminalized

The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report released today.

The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. (NYT 7/26)

Children slave for "Coke"

For more than half of his young life, he has spent long days cutting sugar cane. He has the machete scars to prove it, and so do his four brothers and sisters, aged nine to 19.

…Across Latin America, more than 17 million children between the ages of five and 14 are working….Child labor perpetuates poverty by drawing the younger generation into the same low –wage manual jobs as their parents, often at the expense of education…widespread child labor helps depress wages.

"I like it because I get to be with my father," said Miguel Angel Orellano, 9.

Human rights fault the...companies that ultimately purchase refined sugar, among them the Coca-Cola. (GW, 8/5)

1. Uncle Sam Says
   I Want You For Imperialist War
2. Elect Communist PLP'er To Head 6,000-Member D.C. Transit Union
   1. DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES
3. Bosses' War Wracks GI's Minds, Slaughters Iraqis
4. Sailors Celebrate May Day
5. Fight to Expose Pro-Boss Union Hacks At Teachers Convention
6. AN OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF LOCAL 689 CONCERNING THE UNION ELECTION
7. ëCommunity Policing' Fuels LAPD Racist Brutality'
8. Fight over Imperialist War Erupts At Church Convention
9. Student Class Anger hits Iraq War, Lesser Evil Politics
10. Water Privatization Creates Apartheid Worldwide
11. Marching With Criminal Bosses Won't End Mexico's Crime
12. Unemployment is Hazardous for Your Health
    1. Unemployment Kills
    2. Ending Unemployment Means Better Health for All Workers
13. LETTERS
    1. Prisoner Abuse Is Capitalist Business As Usual
    2. The Bill Could Give You a Heart Attack
    3. MICHAEL MOORE: PROÖ.
    4. Ö.AND CON
       Moore Earns $30,000/hr
    5. Impressed by Multi-racial May Day
    6. Church Anti-Racists Fight White Skin Privilege Theory
    7. Brando: One of the Greatest Actors
14. A Perspective on Cuba
15. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. US mum on KKK types
    2. CIA'er: US actions fuel war
    3. ëGood' capitalists must rob too
    4. US stalls on Iraq oil $$
    5. Drug co. bribes doctors
16. EU-U.S. Imperialist Rivalry: More Poverty for Workers
    1. EU FINANCIAL PENETRATION OF LAC HAS INTENSIFIED
    2. HUGE INVESTMENTS MEAN MORE POVERTY FOR WORKERS
17. Bosses Taking Over Anti-Globalization Movement
    1. Movie Review:
       Fahrenheit 9/11 Attacks Bush, Endorses Liberal Imperialists

---

Uncle Sam Says
I Want You For Imperialist War

The U.S. military's shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan expose the rulers' inevitable need to restore the draft. Their ever-expanding wars will soon require millions of troops that stagnant recruiting cannot provide. The only thing stopping them from implementing the draft now is widespread, though unorganized, popular opposition. Young workers are not so willing to serve in the Pentagon's murder machine. Working-class parents don't want their children killing and dying for Exxon Mobil's profits. But with imperialist wars stretching U.S. armed forces to the breaking point, the rulers have already begun forcing people into uniform. In late June, Army brass took a significant step towards restoring the draft by recalling 5,600 retired soldiers involuntarily.

However, while the government is funding and staffing draft boards and two conscription bills are pending in Congress, the rulers are trying hard not to let the cat out of the bag. The New York Times (7/3/04) printed a blatant lie: "Top lawmakers, joined by Pentagon leaders and administration officials, say that there are definitely no plans to resume the draft." The rulers' reticence goes far beyond election-year concerns. They fear the draft as much as they need it, remembering well the rebellions the draft sparked during the Vietnam War. In a Washington Post (7/1/04) opinion piece, "Why We Need the Draft Back," Noel Koch, a military aide to Nixon and Reagan, wrote, "In the late 1960s, America's cities were set aflame by the civil rights revolution; in the early '70s, the campuses of the nation's universities were in similar peril. The draft was a target of anti-war protests." Koch could also have mentioned the wave of mutinies and rebellions that rocked the U.S. military at the time. These militant acts, Koch says, forced Nixon to make a "tactical retreat" and end the draft. So a draft can work two ways. Sending hundreds of thousands into the army against their will offers great potential for GIs organizing inside the military against the very rulers that sent them there.

What Koch describes as dark days in fact were shining ones for the working class. Our Party led many of the struggles that Nixon's lackey laments. In them, we won many workers and students to a revolutionary communist outlook. The Party grew. We are now in a period that both resembles and differs from the Vietnam Era. Today, just as then, U.S.-led wars lay bare the fundamental murderousness of U.S. imperialism and the profit system in general. The level of class consciousness, however, has taken a nose-dive since then, primarily because the old communist movement has collapsed. Thus, ongoing U.S. atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, like prison torture and the slaughter of noncombatants, cause little useful outrage. Well-meaning anti-war activists have quickly joined Move On and other "Dump-Bush" movements that aid the more dangerous, liberal, Kerry camp of war-makers.

The lesson for us is clear, although we were slow to grasp it. In workplaces, communities, schools, and other mass organizations, our Party must take the lead in exposing the rulers' war crimes and their wasting of working-class youth as cannon fodder. No one else can or will attack both the Bushites and the liberals. No one else calls for organizing workers, soldiers and students to fight the real cause of imperialist war: the profit system. Our protests and other activities during the Democratic Party convention in Boston later in July will attack the other war Party: Kerry and the Democrats.

Elect Communist PLP'er To Head 6,000-Member D.C. Transit Union

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23

- Progressive Labor Party member Mike Golash has been elected president of the 6,000-member Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union (ATU). He defeated incumbent president Hicks 2,000 to 1,483 after the previous election was overturned. Amid an imperialist war in Iraq and the rapid rise of a Homeland Security police state, in the face of racist attacks and police terror, and in the shadow of the White House, this local of mainly black workers told the bosses and union hacks, "I'm with Mike!" This is a victory full of opportunities and dangers. Our job is to turn a mass base for a communist into a mass base for communism.

Working at Metro for 28 years, Mike has consistently distributed CHALLENGE to thousands of workers, built a base for PLP, led class struggle and been involved in all union activities, from wildcat strikes to the softball league. In 2000, he was elected Financial Secretary, and came in second running for the presidency in December, 2003, carrying three bus garages - Northern, Western and Bladensburg. Approaching that election, Mike and a group of Metro workers organized a campaign committee, and regrouped as a PLP study group after the election.

Mike filed an election protest because Hicks had used large amounts of union money to pay for his campaign. The International Union ruled that the entire election should be re-run to prevent Department of Labor intervention.

Mike campaigned for ending the racist multi-tier wage progression, militant struggle against management and for international workers' unity against imperialism. The committee issued two leaflets, one attacking Hicks for being an incompetent sellout, the other attacking nationalism and anti-communism (see text, page 3). Suddenly, the campaign committee mushroomed. Old union friends joined study-group members to press for Mike's election. By election time, the committee had representatives at all 34 polling places.

In the six months following the previous December election, while Mike was back to driving a bus and building the Party, the union was deteriorating. Hicks flipped out at one union meeting of 400 workers, screaming that he was running the union his way, and marching up and down the aisles cursing at the workers. He was also giving away the store to management in contract negotiations, agreeing to let Metro reduce its pension contribution and to a management plan for "alternative discipline."

Fearing for the very life of the union, workers, as well as the executive board and former union leaders, threw their support to Mike, but for different reasons. The executive board and former leaders wanted to save their union from going down the tubes and protect their pensions. Many of the especially oppressed younger drivers sensed a chance to finally stand up to management. This sense of hope for bold militant, incorruptible leadership swept through the system, creating a great opportunity for sharper class struggle and recruitment to PLP! This contradiction between the rank and file and the "leadership group" will certainly intensify.

DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Reform does not lead to revolution. The natural pull of the reform movement is to the right, to keep the working class tied to capitalism. In the 1930's, communists fought their hearts out to organize industrial unions, including the ATU, to win the 8-hour day and health insurance, to fight racism, and much more. But the more the reform movement consumed them, the further away they moved from building and leading a revolutionary movement.

The old communist movement eventually collapsed from its own internal weaknesses. Today the international working class is suffering more death, disease, war, genocide and fascist terror than at any point in human history. We will not make that same mistake. While we try to lead the fight for the immediate needs of the workers, more importantly we will fight to build a mass base for CHALLENGE and revolutionary communism, and recruit workers to PLP. This is a very complex and difficult process. It won't be easy. But in fighting for every small gain we will constantly expose to the workers how these endless reform struggles put us on a treadmill that always submarines any apparent gains, and why the cause of every problem, every grievance is the capitalist profit system itself.

Already the Metro bosses and union sellouts are plotting to sabotage the union's new red leadership. If we do our job right, we will face serious attacks. The bosses may take a harder line against Mike to "prove" that workers should not choose communist leadership. Legal and physical attacks, from the government, management or pro-boss union goons, could occur at some point, and workers will have to defend Mike's leadership and PLP.

In order to win workers to the Party and advanced communist politics, we must rely on many workers to spread the distribution of CHALLENGE. These readers and distributors will be the first to grasp communist philosophy, history, politics, economics and strategy. They will also be the most likely to lead militant class struggle around communist ideas, on and off the job.

We can organize discussions at the bus barns around all issues, from why Kerry and the Democrats are enemies of the working class, to why the war in Iraq is caused by inter-imperialist rivalry, to how the wage progression policy is a racist attack on all workers, and how all these attacks are part of a capitalist system that must be destroyed with a communist revolution. And we must look ahead to building the Party's influence far beyond this one local and workplace.

This victory could be a mixed blessing. But we have confidence that the Party and the Metro workers, over time and through much struggle, with advances and setbacks, will build the revolutionary movement in the capital of U.S. imperialism, a system that offers the working class only endless wars, cutbacks, racist terror and mass unemployment. If workers in many other industries follow the lead of the PLP-led workers in Local 689, and are offered the same communist politics, this development can be repeated widely. It's up to each and every one of us.

Bosses' War Wracks GI's Minds, Slaughters Iraqis

"More than one in four veterans of ground combat in Iraq show signs of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder" [PTSD], according to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine of 6,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Miami Herald, 7/1) One in six "reported symptoms of major depression, severe anxiety or . . . " PTSD. (New York Times, 7/1)

These victims go beyond the toll of dead (853) and well over 16,000 wounded and injured, many of the latter also suffering mental illness.

More than 90% reported being shot at; 86% said they saw someone killed or seriously wounded; and over half said they killed at least one person, combat or civilian. And this study was conducted when the "war was one of ëliberation,'" before the time when most of the casualties occurred.

None of this compares to the suffering of the Iraqi people who have been bombed for 13 years and have seen over half a million children die from the effects of destroyed infrastructure, contaminated water supplies and lack of medicine. Imagine the incredible stress on the millions of Iraqi families who have lost loved ones and seen limbs blown off their parents or children.

Imperialist war is engaged in mass slaughter, all to secure U.S. control over oil supplies in the Mid-East and to establish at least forteen new permanent U.S. military bases in "independent" Iraq.

The Journal's study says the PTSD symptoms, the "flashbacks and nightmares," will become more common as time passes. A "study of veterans of the Persian Gulf War found that the prevalence of post-traumatic symptoms more than doubled between an initial survey and a second one two years later." (NYT, 7/1)

Moreover, more and more troops will be stressed out as the "unofficial draft" deploys still more troops for longer periods. In early June all individual tours of duty were extended until their entire units return home, keeping thousands for months longer than expected. As the imperialists find their military stretched thin fighting two wars simultaneously, their drastic measures - deploying thousands more from South Korea and Germany, and calling up 5,600 from the Individual Ready Reserve, soldiers who had already left the service and did not join the Reserve - will add to the carnage.

Not to be outdone by the Bush administration's butchery, the Democrats are calling for still more cannon fodder. "Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a chief proponent of more troops" declared there is an "urgent need to increase the size of the Army," saying the Bushite's policies to "maintain the nation's military commitment around the world has been woefully inadequate." (NYT, 6/30) This coincides with Kerry's demand for 40,000 more troops in Iraq.

But a larger army will create more anger and frustration among more soldiers and still greater potential for rebellion, to win more workers and youth - both inside and outside the military - to oppose the rulers. All this can spur the growth of the Party.

Sailors Celebrate May Day

(Part 1 of this series - CHALLENGE 7/7 - reported the involvement of sailors and marines in practical work, including discussions growing out of viewing films linking Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the plight of Vietnamese youth and a rebellion in a Salvadoran neighborhood, followed by participation in a community meeting challenging the rulers' defense of police brutality, leading to the conclusion that the system causes this evil.)

May Day 2004 - This was easily the crowing jewel of my experience so far. Two of my new Navy friends decided+to make the trip.+(A third wanted to come but had duty that day.) We arranged to meet at 6:00 a.m in the day room but I slept through my 5:30 alarm. When one of my+new buddies had to wake me up, I knew that this would be a good+day.

We met at a comrade's house and got engaged in political discussion and world politics. As the van pulled away, everyone was in good spirits. When we arrived at the rally, it was in full+swing. We joined a picket line during the speeches. I agreed to a request from an elder comrade to work the bullhorn+and we kicked off the chants: "Racism means FIGHT BACK! Courts mean FIGHT BACK! Cops mean FIGHT BACK!"

One of my buddies was+on the street corner distributing CHALLENGE. He+estimated that he distributed over 50 copies that day. My other buddy was mingling in the crowd,+getting to know people. As our picket line progressed and we+began marching, the cops began getting aggressive, prompting the chant,+"Killer cops mean we have to fight back!" The crowd was really getting into it. One buddy really liked the chant, "Bush, you liar, we'll set your ass on fire!"

Afterwards, we had a dinner and listened to poetry, rap and motivational speeches on the state of the+world and of our movement. While both my buddies+were really moved+by the day's events, one seriously challenged our position on nationalism, leading to some good exchanges. I continued to stress that our Party blames oppression on the capitalist system, not on a+group of people. It's capitalism that continues to manufacture racist and sexist ideas and practices. He asked me if I thought that whites benefited from the system. I said that different levels of oppression do not equal privilege, that white+workers, indeed ALL workers, are punished by capitalism. Yes, black and brown workers are hit the hardest, but the wages+of all workers are pulled+down when black and brown workers'+wages are cut. That's why the Party advocates that smashing racism and the construct of "race" is central to destroying capitalism, that+fighting capitalism is the fight against racism. As Marx stated, "labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in+the black skin is in chains." The exchange was good; we'll continue on this subject and many more.

My buddy also talked with another young comrade from South America who's in the Peace Corp. It was good to see him networking with other young+soldiers for the+working class. After the dinner, we heard a good pep talk from one of our older comrades and then returned home. I felt good, knowing we had made some advances on May Day 2004 towards building the Party. (Next issue: a dinner at the home of an activist mother whose son was a victim of police brutality; and our first study group.)

Navy Red

Fight to Expose Pro-Boss Union Hacks At Teachers Convention

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7 -

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the country's second largest teachers union, is holding its biennial convention here starting July 13. Progressive Labor Party members will be there bringing communist politics to the delegates, and to fight the AFT's collaboration with the ruling-class attacks on the working class.

The union is led by Sandra Feldman, who followed Albert Shanker into AFT leadership. Shanker worked with the CIA in building anti-communist unions worldwide through the 1960s and '70s and Feldman picked up his mantle. She's a member of the ruling-class Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Rockefeller-built organization which develops policy for the liberal Eastern establishment.

What's the head of a workers' union doing helping develop policy for our exploiters? Feldman and the rest of the AFT leadership have the important job of winning teachers to support the rulers. So the rulers must win teachers to the idea that they're not workers, but "professionals," whose interests are tied to the bosses' interests.

Within this class struggle, the fight against racism is crucial. Teachers are training the next generation of workers. The big-city school systems, overwhelmingly black and Latino, are set up to provide the bosses with minimum-wage workers, if they have jobs at all, leaving them the "option" of being used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars. The schools have become racist prisons which send youth off to war, unemployment or a life of poverty and jail. Teachers are in the unique position of either fighting this oppression, uniting with their students and parents, or becoming a tool of the ruling class.

The AFT leadership has already chosen its side: supporting the Democratic Party and the ruling class's pro-war and fascist policies. When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, the AFT was the first union to jump on the pro-war bandwagon. Just last month, the AFT's largest local, NYC's UFT, rallied with the cops - whose job is to control workers and terrorize the very youth in these teachers' classes - to demand contracts, while refusing to help other unionized school workers resist a sellout contract.

Local unions have brought many resolutions to this convention. We will be helping support the anti-war and anti-racist resolutions. We will attack the drive to support Kerry - the AFT's drive for "anybody but Bush" hides the fact that Kerry, as a representative of the liberal Eastern wing of the ruling class, doesn't stand for anything strategically different than Bush. Kerry's call for 40,000 more troops in Iraq now, and for creation of a National Service with an option for military service, will continue to send working-class youth to fight other workers in a war for U.S. bosses' control of oil. In trying to win teachers to a class perspective we unite teachers with students, parents and other workers, in struggle against the ruling class. That class perspective is crucial to building a movement to get rid of this system once and for all.

The following letter was distributed to D.C. transit workers.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF LOCAL 689 CONCERNING THE UNION ELECTION

Dear fellow 689 members,

I wanted to deal with a couple of touchy issues around the campaign for the presidency of our local: race and politics. These are big issues, even when unspoken. So here goes.

I know from the feedback I've received that quite a few members decided not to vote for me last time because they preferred an African American in the position of president. At one level, I sympathize with this view. The history of slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, and continued racist discrimination makes every step towards black leadership seem vitally important. However, the nature of that leadership, the "content of their character," is equally important. I ask you to compare the candidates on their integrity, character, maturity, and dedication to the fight against racism. Hicks has betrayed your interests time after time; I have dedicated my energy since 1976 to securing your interests. I have energetically fought grievances, launched a campaign against racist wage progression, fought sexist attacks on women workers by supervisors, and even helped lead a strike to maintain our cost of living clause many years ago. It is true that, as a white man, I have not personally and directly experienced racism; however, I have seen the incredible damage racism causes and how racist conditions ultimately harm us all, and so I have dedicated over 40 years of my life to fighting against racism, from slugging it out with the Klan and Nazis to fighting against the institutional racism of Metro's management. As president, I will continue to do so. I urge you to put aside any misgivings you may have about voting for a white candidate.

I also know that some people decided not to vote for me because I am a communist, a member of the Progressive Labor Party. Unfortunately, most people don't know the truth about communism because the media and politicians have consistently distorted the truth about it (just like they are lying now about Iraq). In fact, communists have for over 100 years led the opposition to the capitalist system of racism and exploitation. Communists led the formation of integrated, industrial unions in this country, including transit unions! Communists believe that militant, multi-racial unity in the working class is needed to fight racism and the rich capitalists who benefit from racism and all forms of exploitation. We also believe that it will take a revolution to overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a communist society in which the working class will control the government. It's not surprising that the billionaires and their corporations and government are eager to lie about communists. So please, don't let the bosses' propaganda through the school system and the media stop you from bringing a communist to the leadership of the union.

I hope these comments have been helpful to you in thinking through your decision in the upcoming election.

Mike Golash

ëCommunity Policing' Fuels LAPD Racist Brutality'

LOS ANGELES, July 6 -

On June 23, Stanley Miller put his arms in the air and let two cops arrest him after an early morning chase. Racist cop John Hatfield ran up to the prone Miller and brutally kicked him in the head. Then he beat him eleven times with a heavy-duty flashlight while the original two LAPD goons held Mr. Miller down and three other racist cops looked on. The LAPD's racist beating of this black man was shown on local television at the end of a police chase.

Many people in the working-class communities of South-Central L.A. and Compton were outraged. But the local "leadership," like John Mack of the Los Angeles Urban League, "urge[d] calm and demand[ed] that the LAPD thoroughly investigate." (LA Times, 6/24) These sellouts are jumping to be on one of two community oversight panels created by competing political groups.

Mayor Hahn and a potential mayoral opponent, former police chief Bernard Parks, are using this beating as a political grandstand. These hacks are only arguing about whom can best win the public to fascist community policing. This program is part of the ruling class's homeland security plans. It attempts to win community "leaders" to work with the police and snitch on their neighbors, enabling the police to harass and terrorize the community and jail even more black and Latino working-class youth.

The community "leadership" claims that racist Police-Terror Chief Bratton is "working better" with the community than the racist Darryl Gates. But Bratton has only increased the brutal and racist attacks on young people with his "Broken Windows" strategy of viciously enforcing laws against graffiti and loitering while "reaching out to the community." If this is an improvement, then the community is screwed!

A Progressive Labor Party leaflet denounced the LAPD and the capitalist system as the real terrorists. PLP explained that community policing will never end the racist police attacks. Only revolution can remove the basis of police terror and racism - capitalism. We showed how the bosses need cops to control angry workers during this period of imperialist oil war and fascist budget cuts.

People were excited to see a leaflet that told the truth. Many exclaimed that the police have always been the terrorists. One man took 20 leaflets to post at his church. Another man really appreciated our condemnation of war, budget cuts and capitalism. He said he would read the leaflet and CHALLENGE to see about revolution and communism.

The cops who enforce terror on workers got caught in their daily racist actions. We have an opportunity to expose capitalism's racist nature. If we are bold in our organizing, we can channel the masses' anti-cop anger towards joining PLP. Then we can fight for the best antidote to racist cop terror: communism.

Fight over Imperialist War Erupts At Church Convention

The annual convention of a liberal religious denomination seemed like a Democratic Party rally. Speakers and workshops continually pushed voter education and mass registration campaigns. While technically non-partisan, there was a roaring near-consensus around "Anyone But Bush." Hundreds of people trooped off one night to see and cheer "Fahrenheit 9-11."

However, a sharp political struggle on the convention floor exposed a deep rift over the question of Iraq, imperialism and, indirectly, about capitalism. In fact, "immediate withdrawal" aroused the main debate at the convention.

Hundreds of delegates signed a resolution calling for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year and for an end to the privatization of the Iraqi economy. But church bureaucrats pressured the resolution's author to craft a "compromise" calling instead for support for U.N. Resolution 1546. Some compromise!

UN 1546 supports the ridiculous lie that the occupation of Iraq "ended" in June (despite the presence of 140,000 U.S. troops, and more on the way) and that the CIA's man Allawi now heads a "fully sovereign and independent" Iraqi government. It provides a major role for "international financial institutions and other organizations" [read: imperialism] in the "reconstruction of the Iraqi economy" and blesses the presence of U.S. troops until 2006.

Another resolution, calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and bases from Iraq and the rest of the world, garnered nearly 200 signatures but was mysteriously "lost." However, a groundswell of grass-roots support for an "immediate withdrawal" amendment forced the leadership into a half-hour debate before nearly 1,000 people. An Arab-American delegate attacked the racism behind the idea that Iraqis need the U.S. to tell them how to set up a government. A woman spoke of her grandson, a soldier recently returned from Iraq. Others eloquently denounced the war as an immoral and unjustified attempt to control Mid-East oil.

But from the presiding minister's speech on day one to the parliamentary maneuvering at the final voting session, it was clear that the leadership was determined to guarantee "1546" and not "immediate withdrawal." It emerged that the church's "Washington Office" was getting political leadership from a former State Department official who held high positions in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. "We have to stay in the mainstream," a staff person whined. "They were just typical liberal imperialists," observed one of the delegates. Not surprisingly, "immediate withdrawal" was voted down.

Minutes later, an anti-privatization clause was voted out. ("If the Iraqis want private enterprise, they should be allowed to have it," said the State Department guy!) This vote was so close that the leadership declared another such clause "moot" and took it out without risking another vote. Unfortunately, the vast majority of delegates - including most who had wanted "immediate withdrawal" - voted for the final resolution, mistakenly thinking that "some anti-war resolution was better than none."

Many, at the conference and beyond it, were surprised by this debate and shocked by the leadership's tactics. This prompted some good discussions with new and old friends. "We need to be better organized the next time," said an anti-imperialist delegate. That's true, but there's also a need to organize around sharper politics. John Kerry is the liberal imperialist candidate, and "Anyone But Bush" is the liberal imperialist line. Voter education and registration campaigns are how the liberal imperialists keep grass-roots people "in the mainstream." They actually want to replace Bush with Kerry, who better represents their long-term imperialist interests.

The hard-working organizers for "immediate withdrawal" should not be discouraged by losing a few votes. They made a valuable contribution in exposing to their co-religionists the difference between liberalism and anti-imperialism. They opened the question of the connection between war and capitalism. There will be many opportunities to build on this in the future and to advance the long-term fight to destroy the system of wars and exploitation for profit.

Student Class Anger hits Iraq War, Lesser Evil Politics

At the end of the semester, we organized a demonstration at the military recruitment center across from our college to oppose and expose the imperialist war in Iraq, military recruitment on campus and the fascist torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. Given that it was only a few weeks before finals, it was impressive to see a goodly number of students and faculty unite on these issues.

We showed how it's a war on the working class, exploiting and deceiving young working-class men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan for capitalism. Links were also made between the prisons in the U.S. and Iraq, conveying the international struggle of workers against racism, imperialism and fascism.

Students made signs saying there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans; one student carried a picture of Iraqi torture victims in protest. It was invigorating to see the energy and class anger of many students throughout the march.

By giving Iraq "sovereignty," the Bush administration was again trying to restore credibility to U.S. Imperialism. The liberal wing of the ruling class has attacked the Bushites as "the enemy" of "American democracy" and the betrayer of the "American people." This picture plays on people's justified anger and says Bush is the problem, prompting workers to vote for the "lesser evil" (Kerry), as seen in the new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." Replacing one capitalist with another won't cut it. We must expose capitalism as the root of imperialist wars for profit and the exploitation of the working class.

Significantly, the demonstration and the semester's activities exposed many students to communist politics. Some are now attending study groups, helping distribute flyers to industrial workers and receiving CHALLENGE. We must struggle against the false consciousness liberals are spreading to the working class. Workers need to hear from us, the Progressive Labor Party. Reaching these workers and students will strengthen our Party. Build PLP and fight for communist revolution!

Water Privatization Creates Apartheid Worldwide

The July 7 CHALLENGE described the crisis the world's working class faces due to water privatization. But how have these multi-national corporations come to own water - a fundamental resource for human life?

The World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Intra-American Development Bank (IADB) - through their tremendous financial influence - force governments in developing countries to privatize their public utilities and social services in order to qualify for multi-million dollar loans, so-called "poverty reduction." By imposing trade agreements and structural adjustment programs (SAP) on developing countries, the WB, IMF and IADB allow large multi- national corporations to own a developing country's water, sanitation and electricity system, as well as many social services like health care and public education. The revenue generated by the sale of these systems and services is supposed to help pay the tremendous interest rates these banks charge. Meanwhile, the local bosses in these countries make a pile for themselves for negotiating these sellouts to the imperialists and use those loans to buy weapons to suppress the masses' opposition. Of course, there's no global institution that defends workers' interests.

The World Trade Organization has total authority over these agreements. It was established in 1994 to defend the interests of the multi-national (imperialist) corporations by enforcing privatization contracts through a system of secret courts and closed-door ministerial meetings that have the power to sanction "disobedient" countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and South America (in that order) have the largest number of active or pending water privatization contracts with multi-national corporations. For instance, after the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in South Africa with the promise that it would end apartheid and provide water and electricity to all black townships, the ANC sold out the working class and signed agreements with the IMF and WB. Then the French company Suez was permitted to buy many of South Africa's municipal water systems and convert community water wells into coin-operated pumps. This forced poor people, who couldn't afford the fee, to collect dirty stagnant water. This led directly to the largest cholera epidemic in recent South African history. (New York Times, 5/29/03) Richard Makolo, a well-known anti-Apartheid activist, argues, "Privatization is a new kind of apartheid. Apartheid separates whites from blacks. Privatization separates rich from poor. (NYT)

Other examples: In May 2003, Aguas y Alcantarillado, a private corporation supplying water to San Jose, Costa Rica, issued 400,000 service cut-offs to residents who were unable to pay the increased water rate. (NYT, 5/26/02). In August of 2000, responding to the demands of the IMF, Nicaragua had to prepare a 5-year plan to privatize the water service for Leon, Chinadega, Matagalpa, the capital city Managua, and on indigenous land in Jinotega. In Honduras and El Salvador, the government is moving to sell the state-owned water services to private corporations, destroying poor communities' hopes of finally receiving running water. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the U.S. Bechtel corporation increased the water fees by as much as 400%. (http://www.democracyctr.org/bechtel/index.htm)

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, the French corporation Suez wrote a water service contract that guaranteed them 19% profit per year on their investment. In order to obtain that guaranteed profit, water rates rose dramatically. Most of the burden fell upon the poor, and service cut-offs increased by 30%. (Business Week, 7/17/03)

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg describing the destructive reality of inter-imperialist rivalry for water privatization worldwide. Capitalist competition turns everything - even water - into a commodity to accumulate profit. While U.S. Bechtel and French Suez rake in unprecedented profits from the sale of water, untold numbers of people are dying due to lack of water. Only a system based on competition for maximum profit would make people suffer and die every day due to lack of water while two-thirds of the planet's surface is covered by water.

(Next issue: what in the capitalist system pushes multi-national, imperialist corporations to privatize water, and what's the solution to this world water crisis?)

Marching With Criminal Bosses Won't End Mexico's Crime

MEXICO CITY, June 27 -

Hundreds of thousands participated in today's mega-march against crime. The marchers were manipulated and deceived by the rulers, politicians and mass media to become not only victims of common criminals but even greater victims of the biggest criminals of all: the capitalists responsible for the conditions that spawn petty crimes.

The Bankers' Association who helped finance the event wants people to forget the mega-frauds involving many of these same bankers. This corruption, combined with capitalism's financial and industrial system, is responsible for mass unemployment, gross poverty and inequality, drug-money laundering and other aspects of society's decay. The bosses of Bimbo, Mexico's biggest bread company, also funded the march. These are the very bosses who've hired goon squads to attack their workers fighting for better conditions. One cannot fight crime without waging class struggle against all these criminal bosses and bankers.

President Fox and his right-wing Party (PAN) also manipulated the growing fear and anger of the masses over spreading crime to hook them into a fascist movement supporting the call by the police chief and Attorney-General for the death penalty, even though recent polls showed most people believe cops and ex-cops are mainly responsible for the crime wave in Mexico City and surrounding areas.

The liberal opposition to Fox, like this city's mayor, doesn't support the march organizers, knowing full-well it's just a rally for the next presidential elections. But that hasn't stopped them from imposing "Zero Tolerance" on crime in the city. Former right-wing NYC Mayor Giuliani received $4 million to "advise" city authorities on imposing this program.

We in PLP must redouble our efforts to win workers to our communist politics exposing capitalism and crime as birds of a feather. The participants in this march were unknowingly marching for a police state - meaning giving the biggest criminals more power. The fight for communism will be a long and hard one, but it is the only road to end crime and its cause: capitalism.

Unemployment is Hazardous for Your Health

Unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalism. The ranks of the jobless vary in size as economic conditions change but unemployment never disappears completely. The bosses' economists define "full employment" as approximately 5% unemployment, which amounts to 10% when including those who've given up looking for work or are working part-time because they can't find full-time jobs.

The existence of this permanent pool of jobless workers (which Karl Marx called the "reserve army of labor") benefits the bosses in two ways. During economic expansion, the unemployed can be swiftly integrated into companies hungry for workers. During economic downturns, they become a tool to depress overall wages: the bosses can threaten employed workers with being replaced by the unemployed. Unemployment is not a mistake, bad luck or a temporary problem of a cycling economy. It's a necessary and permanent part of the capitalist system.

Unemployment Kills

Unemployed workers and their families are a lot less healthy than the employed. British surveys for 1985-86 show that the unemployed reported nearly 30% more chronic illness compared to the population as a whole. This is no surprise. With little or no income, even the basic health-maintaining necessities of life - food, clothing, heating, and home maintenance - are compromised. Doctor's visits are postponed. Depression and psychological illness, marital strain, and family breakdown - along with alcohol and drug abuse - threaten the unemployed worker.

Some years ago, Britain's "shadow" employment minister, Frank Dobson, said, "In plain English, [unemployment] kills and maims." It kills mainly by way of cancer, suicide, accidents, and violence. A middle- aged man who loses his job doubles his chances of dying in the next 10 years. One study in Edinburgh found that from 1968-87 the unemployed were 11 times more likely to attempt suicide.

Some have argued that it's not unemployment that causes bad health but rather people in bad health tend to lose their jobs. But surveys, including one from the British Office of Population Censuses and Surveys Longitudinal Study, showed that the high death rate of unemployed men could not be explained by the state of their health before unemployment.

About ten years ago, Business Week ran an article on Homestead, Pennsylvania, a city deserted by the faltering U.S. steel industry. Half the town's former steelworkers were collecting unemployment benefits or working at minimum-wage jobs. The residents called their city "a national disaster" and listed "the used-up men recently dead of heart attack, stroke, or suicide."

Ending Unemployment Means Better Health for All Workers

Just as unemployment lowers wages of the working class as a whole, it can also depress the health status of all workers. When unemployment rises, workers become relatively more expendable. If workers get sick, they can be more easily replaced. Therefore, bosses can invest less in maintaining workers' health because there is a bigger replacement pool. The bosses will still get their pound of flesh - and if that flesh is used up faster than before, no problem: just substitute another desperate body. No wonder unemployment is correlated with a general decline in health statistics. Listen carefully - when the unemployment rate rises, you can hear the bodies dropping.

Under communism there will be plenty of useful work for everyone. Top priority will be making life better for humanity everywhere, not profits for a small class of capitalist parasites. Unemployment ravages workers' health. It's a form of social murder. The "public health" solution is clear: end unemployment with communist revolution.

LETTERS

Prisoner Abuse Is Capitalist Business As Usual

While the uproar about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war continues worldwide, here in the U.S. this practice is business as usual. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "There shall neither be slavery nor involuntary servitude unless duly convicted of a crime."

This may seem like an acceptable statement, not really worthy of notice until dialectically analyzing to whom this applies.

The 2.1 million people now imprisoned in the U.S., mostly black and Latino, mirrors the old slavery plantation. After the so-called Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the bosses then figured out how to continue capitalizing on free labor - thus the 13th Amendment. (The Proclamation did not free all slaves, only those in slave-holding states that had seceded.) To say the U.S. is "appalled" at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war is to literally blow smoke in the eyes of every conscious worker in this hemisphere. Stories of prisoner maltreatment here at home have been surfacing for years with no indignant outcry of rage.

On April 26 in Indiana, organizers called on over 1,300 prisoners to support a passive resistance campaign protesting inhumane treatment and conditions and systematic violation of our human rights. The organizers urged: unity regardless of race, religion or "gang affiliation"; boycotting the gymnasium, thereby forcing the staff to shower hundreds of prisoners within the housing units; mass filing of grievances with the prison grievance and with the governor's newly-appointed ombudsman to investigate both prisoner and civilian complaints and abuses; and an organized silent protest at mealtime.

If our complaints were not addressed, it called for a peaceful work strike/stoppage against the slave-labor factory-type work the prisoners perform. The organizers want to reduce the problems that stress out the prisoners, to decrease the possibility of destructive inmate-against-inmate violence.

The bosses' "answered" with a lockdown of the facility, is keeping inmates in their cells 24 hours a day, cold-sack lunches for meals and no visitation rights even for family members. They could have either taken the grievances seriously or denied them. But they responded with this vicious repression that will intensify the psychological stress and actually increase the danger of destructive violence. If the system treats U.S. citizens in this manner for asking for humane treatment, why would anyone be surprised at the treatment of prisoners of war?

We must speak out against the continuous oppression of our working-class sisters and brothers who have families and loved ones caught up in the system and are being forced to support those slave-labor programs. We should understand that these vicious prison practices are not caused by just a few sadistic individuals, but represents how capitalist society must routinely act. Now is the time to build a movement against the capitalist roots of this problem, even as we struggle against these specific forms of capitalist oppression.

An Indiana reader

The Bill Could Give You a Heart Attack

I recently had a pace-maker/defibrillator implanted in my chest. When the cardiologist was trying to convince me to have the procedure, he said, "500,000 people die every year in the U.S. from ëSudden Cardiac Death.' This can save your life." He didn't need to say much more. The whole procedure took less than two hours and I was kept in the hospital overnight.

I do feel a lot better, but I was really eager to see the bill. Finally it came - $142,000! The device alone was about $75,000! No wonder a half million people die every year. It's not because the technology doesn't exist to save them, but that people can't afford it. About 45 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance and millions more have lousy insurance. Capitalism creates heart diseases a million ways - stress, poor diet, smoking, hazardous jobs, etc., and only saves a fraction of the victims. If it wasn't a disease that affects the rulers themselves, there still might not be many advances.

Anyway, I'm one of the lucky ones; my wife has good insurance. But I promise to wear this battery out fighting for communist revolution!

Takes A Licking But Keeps On Ticking

MICHAEL MOORE: PROÖ.

I am a CHALLENGE reader. I don't agree with PLP on everything, but I enjoy the paper. But it upsets me when you find it necessary to attack Michael Moore. What's your reason for attacking him? Because a bunch of large corporations are associated with his film?

In a society controlled by the ruling class, it's impossible for a film to get to more than a couple thousand people without the support of large corporations. In the right-wing community in which I live I've seen many people who were once obedient to right-wing fascism begin to have their minds opened to the reality that another world is possible. Who opened their minds? Michael Moore! Moore is able to communicate with the masses of people in a brilliant way. Sure, he's not as far left as we would like him to be, but he's able to mobilize the masses against Bush, and occasionally capitalism. We should support him, and try to show his followers the path of Socialism. We should not attack him for not already being on it!

Moore Fan

Ö.AND CON
Moore Earns $30,000/hr

I'd like to share a little information on Michael Moore to dispel the myth that he's a working-class advocate. A friend of mine works at a West coast university that hosts different entertainment and speakers as a "service" to the local community. Through school money and donations from wealthy individuals the university subsidizes major acts to perform that otherwise could not afford to do so, i.e., an orchestra or a dance troupe that isn't guaranteed to make money through ticket sales.

After the hype of "Bowling for Columbine," Moore was invited to come and share his message. The fee for this "voice of the working class" came out to $120,000 for two speeches - all told, four hours work! As a comparison, a dance troupe of nearly 100 people would typically cost as much and high profile public speakers are generally paid $10,000 per speech. Also, at his request, Moore was put up in a five-star hotel, was fed a catered meal from a gourmet restaurant and was provided with several luxury SUVs for his entourage.

During his speech, an audience member asked why the ticket prices were so high ($75). Moore said the promoters were to blame. In fact, the university tried to lower his price, but he wouldn't agree. The fact that the university agreed to pay and host him points to its own agreement with his message. But many honest people who attended believe in the "down-to-earth" and pro-worker Michael Moore. He is really just another high-paid servant of the ruling class.

West Coast comrade

Impressed by Multi-racial May Day

A small group of us from Purdue University attended our first May Day event in Chicago on May 1. When we left from West Lafayette, Indiana, for the 130-mile trip to Chicago, we didn't know what to expect. We were especially impressed by the combination of people there from all racial groups and occupations. It showed us that every-day people are a part of the radical, anti-capitalist movement.

The event gave us much to talk about on the long ride home. We hope to participate in another May Day event like this.

Some Purdue students

Church Anti-Racists Fight White Skin Privilege Theory

We have fought the neo-racist doctrine of White Skin Privilege (WSP) in our denomination since it first appeared in 1992. In our church, this doctrine states that racism is based on systemic power, sanctioned by the state, but the struggle against racism cannot be carried out in a multi-racial manner since all whites, especially white workers, "benefit" from racism.

This became the official position of our denomination's social justice bureaucracy and a concerted effort was made to impose this view on all the churches. However by 2002, thanks in part to our efforts, the position had been temporarily defeated, except among hard-core neo-racist liberals.

Our class analysis says the bosses try to bribe sections of the working class with citizenship, higher wages, the right to vote, etc., to keep the working class divided based on "race." Numbers of white workers have been won to this tactic and have acted against their own class interests as racist terrorists for the bosses in oppressing blacks and other minorities, and anti-racist white forces. Since capitalist ideology is primary in our lives and racism is a major capitalist ideological tool, we're all infected with this poison. Some whites, as well as non-whites, will fight to the death against multi-racial unity.

The primary aspect of our class analysis is that prejudice is the result of racism, not its cause. At its best, WSP confuses appearance with essence. Capitalism is the essence, racism is the appearance.

It is extremely important to widely distribute the Party's literature on the capitalist nature of racism. The agitation must be sustained and patient.

We attended meetings, went to conferences, did mass leafleting, sponsored programs, developed an anti-racist course, joined the enemies' committee and converted most of them to friends, and organized denomination convention sessions. What you can do depends on your political base and the nature of the mass organization.

Finally, we must try to win all those we influence to the following anti-racist principles: Racism is both an ideological weapon and a political economic system created by capitalism, initially to justify slavery. While there's no scientific basis for "race," racism exploits white workers while super-exploiting black, Latin and Asian workers. Therefore, no worker benefits from racism. Most of all, racism can be and has been fought, and sometimes temporarily defeated, but only through full-scale multi-racial unity where possible.

To strengthen our fight, we must greatly increase the distribution of CHALLENGE. Secondly, we must deepen our ties to those we are trying to win. Too often we make agitation and action primary over consolidation. Although we added three new people to our group, we still rely mainly on meetings rather than intensive base-building as the basis for consolidation.

All victories under capitalism are temporary. Only the ideological lessons we learn from our victories or defeats are permanent - as reflected in winning people to join PLP.

Two Anti-Racist Veterans

Brando: One of the Greatest Actors

Possibly the greatest actor ever to come out of the U.S., Marlon Brando died on July 1. Brando took on some roles he shouldn't have - he had little respect for the actor's craft. But he also acted in some strongly anti-racist, anti-imperialist roles, such as "Burn" and "A Dry White Season," which never brought much money nor - unsurprisingly - earned good reviews.

But with all the praise he received upon his death, there's nothing critical being said about his most controversial role: Terry+Malloy in "On the Waterfront." This movie was made by a bunch of sellout ex-communists like Elia Kazan and Lee J. Cobb to justify their informing during the so-called McCarthy era - which more properly should be called the Truman era.Elia Kazan, the worst of the lot, lately has been "rehabilitated" after decades of condemnation. People like DeNiro and Martin Scorsese pimped for him when the Academy Award frauds gave him an honorary "Oscar." Some people, like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris, refused to stand for the tiresome standing ovation he got, and the press attacked them for their principles. Various reasons have been advanced for why Brando accepted the role of an informer in a longshoremen's union.

(There were plenty of worse unions at the time, but the longshoremen, like the equally-attacked Teamster's union, could bring the country to a standstill, and the rulers feared that power and the example it could set for workers generally.) Some people said Brando took the role because he felt he owed Kazan, his original director on Broadway, for giving him his break.

Whatever, one thing Hollywood and the whoring reporters reporting on Brando's death refuse to discuss is what Marlon Brando said about what he'd done in accepting that role: he declared that it was the worse mistake of his life. Who could say it better?

A Playwright from Brooklyn

CHALLENGE comment: It should also be noted that when Kazan appeared for his "Oscar," PLP helped lead hundreds in a demonstration against this anti-communist stoolpigeon's fingering of communists and left-wingers. And it was to Brando's credit that he refused to appear when he won his second Oscar but instead asked a Native American woman to come on stage and read his protest of U.S. genocide against Native Americans

A Perspective on Cuba

(The following was supposed to have appeared as an introduction to the Cuban Perspective article in the current issue of "The Communist" magazine but was omitted by mistake.)

The "Cuban Question" continues to be on the political agenda in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. The Bush administration, courting the votes of the anti-communist Cuban exiles in Florida, has tightened the embargo on Cubans in the U.S. visiting their relatives back home to once every three years. This has backfired, causing rarely-seen anti-Bush protests by exiles in Miami. The Democrats are taking advantage of this rift to try to prevent Bush from again stealing Florida in the November election.

While the embargo is being tightened, Repsol, the Spanish oil company, has discovered potentially huge oil deposits in the area of the Gulf of Mexico controlled by Cuba (25 years ago, the waters were divided among Cuba, Mexico and the U.S.) Repsol is so certain of its findings that it has rented a huge Norwegian oil platform for almost $200,000 a day. This could improve Cuba's economic situation, and assure control of the government by the current bureaucracy once Fidel Castro dies. It would also accelerate the process of "market socialism" (state capitalism mixed with private capitalism) now operating in Cuba.

There are also U.S. capitalist groups (currently mainly agri-business) which oppose the U.S. embargo. The London Financial Times (6/19) reported that U.S. oil companies might also press for ending the embargo, to be able to invest in this new oil bonanza. All this could sharpen the U.S.-European- Chinese imperialist rivalry in Latin American and the Caribbean.

For Cuba's working class, the future must be a struggle against all forms of capitalism. Some say it's difficult for a small island (and one so close to the U.S.) to build real communism alone. But a fight for real communism in Cuba could inspire the entire world's working class and could turn the tables in the class struggle. Workers could take the offensive, instead of being on the defensive as is mostly true in the world today.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

US mum on KKK types

In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex, F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon - a cyanide bomb - big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot buildingÖ.

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar its owner. He didn't even issue a press releaseÖ.It's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. AshcroftÖreluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist? Ö.Murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhereÖ (NYT, 6/22)

CIA'er: US actions fuel war

A new book by the senior Central Intelligence Agency officer who headed a special office to track Osama bin Laden and his followers warns that the United States is losing the war against radical Islam and that theÖ.threat is rooted in opposition not to American values, but to policies and actions, particularly in the Islamic world.

(NYT, 6/23)

ëGood' capitalists must rob too

What drives executives to cook the books seem painfully obvious: it's greed, isn't it? [But] Competition, a primal force of capitalism, can steer even the nongreedy executive down an unethical path. Andrei Shleifer, an economics professor at Harvard, argues that if unethical behavior drives down corporate costs, rivals will be compelled to do the same just to stay in business.

"Evidence tells us very clearly, even the most saintly C.E.O.'s were involved"Öbecause of market pressure.

The principle works equally to explain accounting fraud, bribery or the use of child labor, Mr. Shleifer says. For instance, if a company gains a cost advantage by hiring children, and can thus offer lower prices to consumers, its rivals have a powerful incentive to hire children, tooÖ.

"The keener the competition, the higher is the pressure to reduce costs, and the more pervasive is corruptionÖ" (NYT, 7/4)

US stalls on Iraq oil $$

Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion" on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolutionÖwould appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi peopleÖ.Instead, the U.S. stalled.

Given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraqi's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true. (NYT, 6/29)

Drug co. bribes doctors

The check for $10,000 arrived in the mail unsolicited. The doctor who received it from the drug maker Schering-Plough said it was made out to him personally in exchange forÖ his commitment to prescribe the company's medicines. Two other physicians said in separate interviews that they, too, received checks....

Doctors who demonstrated disloyalty by testing other company's drugs or even talking favorably about them, risked being barred from the Schering-Plough money stream....

The question [is] whether drug companies are persuading doctors - often through payoffs - to prescribe drugs that patients do not need or should not use or for which there may be cheaper alternatives. (NYT, 6/27)

EU-U.S. Imperialist Rivalry: More Poverty for Workers

Part II

(The previous article reviewed the inter-imperialist rivalry over Latin America, the Summit of the Latin American, Caribbean and European nations, their push for multi-lateral decision-making and warned workers not to side with any capitalists, local or imperialist. In this article we will show how the European imperialists' investments are penetrating into what the U.S. rulers consider their backyard.)

EU FINANCIAL PENETRATION OF LAC HAS INTENSIFIED

European investors are the principal source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flowing to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While the EU's FDI in LAC averaged less than $5 billion during the 1990-1994 period, in 1997 it equaled the U.S. and has surpassed it since. In 1999, the EU invested $43 billion in LAC, compared to $20 billion from the US.

In 2001, the EU's FDI in LAC dropped to $29 billion and has continued declining since, but it still exceeds the US. Several reasons explain this decrease. First was the 50% drop in global foreign direct investment, mainly due to the world crisis of over-production. Secondly, much of the investment flurry in the previous decade was fueled by privatization programs in many countries. There's not much left to privatize. Thirdly is China's emergence as a haven for cheap labor. And finally there's the cost of integrating the Eastern Europeans nations into the EU. Despite the investment decline, the imperialists still suck $20 billion yearly in profits out of LAC.

In addition, EU investments have generated greater sales. In 1999, European transnational companies (TNCs) operating in LAC accounted for 50% of the sales of the 100 largest TNCs in the region, compared to 43% generated by U.S. companies. That same year, 7 of 10 largest TNCs in LAC were European, as were 5 of the 10 biggest banks. In South America, total assets of EU companies now surpass those of U.S. companies and are approaching the U.S. level in Central America and Mexico. Total EU assets in LAC climbed to $275 billion in 2003, with Brazil holding 38%, Argentina 26% and Mexico 13%.

Besides defying U.S. hegemony in the region on those fronts, the EU has also emerged as Latin America's second trading partner - being the first with MERCOSUR (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), with the Andean Group (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), and with Chile. The EU doubled its trade with LAC between 1990 and 2000. In 2003, this amounted to $91.3 billion. Brazil is its main trading partner (34%) and Mexico, despite NAFTA, is second (25.3%). With the integration of the Eastern European nations into the EU, these economic ties are bound to expand, not shrink.

Russian President Putin's recent visit to Mexico is another example of other imperialists targeting the U.S. backyard. Besides gaining some commercial agreements, Russia will build a military helicopter factory and other arms plants in Mexico. In South America, China is moving in more aggressively, investing heavily in Brazil's mining industry and strengthening their economic ties.

HUGE INVESTMENTS MEAN MORE POVERTY FOR WORKERS

Despite the huge influx of capital in the so-called developing countries, poverty has increased. Latin America has one of the highest rates of unequal distribution of income with the top 10% gobbling up 48% and the bottom 10% only 1.8% of all income. Extreme poverty rose from 93.4 million people in 1990 to 102 million in 2003. Poverty overall rose from 200 million people to 226.6 million in the same period.

Sao Paulo, which produces 40% of the gross domestic product of Brazil, has over two million unemployed workers. Brazil was one of the main recipients of FDI, especially from the "caring" EU.

Only money sent by relatives living abroad has kept the masses of workers in the LAC region from being further ground into poverty. Last year it was $40 billion - $30 billion from the U.S. and the rest mainly from Europe. This exceeded the $36.5 billion in FDI that the LAC received that year.

Capitalism-imperialism, whether the U.S.-globalization model or the Euro-globalization one, has nothing to offer the working class but poverty, fascism and wars. There are no lesser-evil capitalists or imperialists. We can only rely on the workers, students and soldiers from our class that have been won to communist ideas, to turn the next imperialist bloodbath into a fight for communism. That's our challenge. To accomplish this, LAC workers need to build a mass Progressive Labor Party.

Bosses Taking Over Anti-Globalization Movement

Along with the Democratic Party convention, Boston will also host the Social Forum, an outgrowth of the World Social Forum (WSF). Starting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the WSF was created as the capitalists' reaction to mounting militancy against globalization.

In November 1999, over 50,000 protesters descended on Seattle, Washington to confront the World Trade Organization conference. Nationalists, environmentalists, anti-globalists, trade unionists of all stripes and some communists participated in a variety of demonstrations, confrontations, and teach-ins to disrupt the conference. The workshop leaders called for reforming capitalism, not destroying it. And the leaders pushed national sovereignty, not workers' internationalism.

For the next 18 months, at every gathering of the major world powers these protests grew, both in numbers and militancy. Davos in Switzerland; Washington, D.C.; Melbourne, Australia; Prague, the Czech Republic; Nice, France; Quebec, Canada; Gothenburg, Sweden; Genoa, Italy.

As they grew, so did the repression of the state. In Genoa, Italy, 150,000 overcame fascist police measures. Reviewing the trend, the British business magazine "The Economist" warned, "Many of the issues they [the protesters] raise reflect popular concern about the hard edges of globalizationÖabout the poor being left behind, harming the environment, caring about profits more than people." Escalating police terror by itself was seen as counter-productive - live ammunition used at Gothenburg, a protester killed at Genoa. An ideological offensive was needed.

It is tempting to see the idea of a Social Forum being formed when World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab found himself trapped by demonstrators in Melbourne. "If I have learned one thing from here," he commented, "I will try in future to install a dialogue corner were some business people and some people in the street could meet and just exchange ideas."

In fact, the WSF was created out of a far more deliberate process. Within weeks of the Seattle demonstrations, while protesters were still glowing about its success, leaders of the French Non Governmental Organization (NGO), ATTAC, the Brazilian employers' Association, and the head of Brazilian NGO's met to counter what they considered the "failure of Seattle."

In their eyes, Seattle hadn't created a credible program to reform the international financial system (which favors U.S. imperialism). Unlike the majority of protesters, ATTAC doesn't want to smash the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, but rather to reform them (favoring French and European imperialism). The Social Forum aimed to "re-educate" the street so that it too favored "credible reforms" rather than "pie-in-the-sky demands" like abolishing the IMF! In 2001, the French government gave ATTAC about $360,000 in grants.

Yet ATTAC was not alone. By the time of the first Forum at Porto Alegre, the WSF was funded by a host of other "partners." For example, one was the Heinrich Boll Foundation, associated with the German Green Party which supported the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and was part of the Shroeder coalition government. Another is the Ford Foundation, long infamous as a conduit for CIA money.

(Next issue: how NGO's - really GO's - push identity politics rather than class solutions.)

Movie Review:
Fahrenheit 9/11 Attacks Bush, Endorses Liberal Imperialists

Much hoopla has been made of Michael Moore's new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." From a liberal perspective, it's an informative movie, exposing the Bush administration's obvious flaws in losing support for the war in Iraq and it's unilateralism - it's go-it-alone strategy. For conservatives "F 9/11" is a liberal, fiction-filled propaganda movie, with its ultimate ambition to win people to vote Democratic in the 2004 election. From a communist perspective, this movie, while attacking some corporations, basically not only promotes capitalism but is also anti-working class in its attempt to use the vilification of one section of the ruling class in order to ally with another.

Moore uses his signature style of fusing news footage, narration and journalism to make his case against the Bushites. It begins with the racist disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida that guaranteed Bush's "victory" in 2000. That election exposed the scam of voting and "democracy" under capitalism. Moore uses this as the pivotal moment in U.S. history where everything went wrong, negating the fact that for centuries U.S. workers have faced slavery, fascist terror, unemployment, wars, etc.

The movie then targets Bush for his incompetence and his connections to the Saudi ruling class, including Papa Bush's connections to the bin Laden family. Moore talks to several government officials who verify that after 9/11, while commercial aircraft were grounded, the bin Ladens as well as other high-ranking Saudis were flown out of the country. Moore dishonestly ignores the deals the U.S. has been making with the Saudis since Roosevelt, when 60 years ago that president offered the House of Saud U.S. support in exchange for "cooperation" on the flow of oil and oil profits.

The rest of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a liberal critique of the war in Iraq - the U.S. should have gone in with more troops, enlisted more of their European allies, etc. - while exposing the ruling-class ambition to exploit that country's black gold. Moore depicts corporations like Halliburton at conferences licking their chops over profitable contracts they will reap from the war. Moore completely absolves the liberals for its complicity in the war.

Worst of all, the film never, ever exposes the Clinton Administration's murderous policies in Iraq after the first Gulf War. The sanctions imposed on Iraq after Gulf War I prevented the country from repairing its infrastructure, t hat - according to UN studies - caused the deaths of approximately 5,000 children every month for 12 years. By the end of that decade, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis had died due to U.S./British sanctions and bombings.

Probably the movie's most effective parts involve Moore's interviews with workers in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. One worker says he was watching media coverage of the war and, noticing the devastation, said the same destruction existed in Flint. Moore later follows two Marine recruiters as they attempt to recruit young workers to the military, and how they're sneaky about it, concentrating on poor working-class neighborhoods.

The danger of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Moore's attempt to unify audiences into the "we" as all Americans, that "our" country was taken away by the evil neo-conservatives and "we've" got to take it back. Moore never explains that the U.S. contains two antagonistic classes - the rulers and the workers - and that young workers forced to fight in imperialist wars are serving the bosses' class interests, not their own.

Lila Lipscomb, a mother who lost her son in Iraq, expresses her grief and sorrow but explains that she's patriotic and loves her country. Moore empathizes with her and says, "It's a great country isn't it?"

At the end of the movie, he narrates, "In time of need, it has always been the young poor, who have stepped up." (!) The young have basically been drafted into the military because the future for many in poor urban areas has always been bleak (2.1 million workers are in jail, 70% black and Latin). The military coerces young workers with the "carrots" of money and education.

This movie and the 2004 election, if successful for the Democrats, will further establish liberal fascism and a police state, with many believing that the U.S. is great so "get out and vote." Liberals want to put a smiling face on fascism to maintain ruling-class power. But most importantly they need millions won to their line to fight in wars for capitalism, a "mission" at which the Bushites have flunked miserably. Workers must understand the racist nature of capitalism, that it can never represent workers' class interests, no matter who is the president of the U.S.

(For a more detailed critique of Fahrenheit 9/11: "The Problem is Bigger than the Bushes." )

1. Gov't Guesstimates Jobs: Racist Unemployment Still Rampant
2. Bushites' Iraq Fiasco: BIG BOSSES NEED KERRY TO SAVE OIL EMPIRE
3. Bin Laden Challenges Exxon
4. Fight `Outsourcing' with International Workers' Unity
5. NEA Teachers' Lesson Plan: Fight Racism, Imperialist War
6. N.J. Pickets Oppose U.S. Rulers' Torture
7. Organizing Sailors to Become Working-Class Political Leaders
8. COKE: Sweet For Bosses, Exploiting Child Labor in El Salvador
9. IMPERIALIST BATTLE OVER LATIN AMERICA SHOWS NEED TO BUILD MASS PLP -- Part I
   1. LACEU SUMMIT
      CHALLENGED U.S. RULERS ON THREE FRONTS
10. $10/Hr Still Poverty Wages for Home Health Care Workers
11. SEIU Pushes Kerry But Workers Respond to PLP's Red Ideas
12. Imperialist Rivalry Peaks in Nepal
13. LETTERS
    1. U.S. Protectors of Scabs are Torturers In Iraq
    2. Boycott Cops' Rally -- A Class Act
    3. All Workers Must Back Mideast Masses
    4. Veteran, New PL'ers Built May Day
    5. Reagan Never `Forgot' The Rich He Served
    6. U.S. Imperialism Has Long History of Torture
    7. Anger Over Sellouts Sparks Red Politics
    8. 82 Million Uninsured While Health Care Bosses' Profits Soar
14. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. From Honduras to Iraq
    2. Women earn 60% less
    3. $ystem ruins China health
    4. If Nazis guilty, so is US
    5. Torching Afghan women
    6. Motive in Iraq: Profits
15. Ford, GM, IBM Armed Hitler Before and During WW2
    1. U.S. BOSSES SET UP SHOP IN NAZI GERMANY
16. Privatizing Water Kills As Capitalists Thirst For Profits

---

Gov't Guesstimates Jobs: Racist Unemployment Still Rampant

The Bush administration and the media have been flooding us with reports of the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It seems the government is constantly juggling numbers to come up with an "accurate" (and lower) unemployment total, which is always off the mark.

Lately big job gains are being reported by the Labor Department. However, this flies in the face of workers "still reporting...difficulty finding full-time work." (NY Post, 6/8)

One reason for this difficulty could be that job growth is not all what it's cracked up to be. "Right now," according to N.Y. Post Business Page writer John Crudele (6/8) "most of the growth...is coming from new companies the government thinks -- but can't prove -- are being created." [Our emphasis -- Ed.] While revisions in calculations were made in 1991 after "massive mistakes concerning jobs and wages" were discovered (including the double-counting of new jobs), Crudele says "Washington is still guessing at the number of jobs in this country.... Polls show voters aren't very optimistic about the economy despite the jobs figures."

"I don't think he [Bush] has created anything," Lonnie Steele, 57, of East Flat Rock, N.C. told the Associated Press (6/14) in a report entitled, "Voters don't think Bush has created a million jobs."

Even the latest "optimistic" government reports show unemployment of black workers rose in May to nearly 10% because of racist unemployment while the jobless rate for all workers remained at 5.6%. As CHALLENGE has shown previously, the true rate is probably double that, given all the categories the government excludes from its count.

This is now further confirmed by a Reuters dispatch reporting the U.S. government's "alternative measure...[of] the hidden unemployed,... not included in the official unemployment rate."

That rate "is dramatically higher, at 9.7% in May, compared with the official...5.6%. That's an extra 5.96 million, in addition to the 8.2 million `officially' unemployed..." This adds in "workers who have not actually looked for work in the past four weeks, including `discouraged workers' who have given up altogether. They also include those who have given up looking for full-time jobs and have settled for part-time work...."

"None of the unemployment measures include the 1.7% of the male wage-earning population who are in prison, or another 1.36 million men...." (Reuters, 6/14)

In addition, to this 14.1 million, also excluded are people on welfare who can't find jobs and those youth who joined the military because they couldn't find work.

But there is still further fraud in the government's figures. Crudele reports from the government's own website (www.bis.gov/web/web/cesbd.htm) that, "Of the 248,000 jobs that Washington says sprang into existence in May..., 195,000 materialized from...guesstimate[s]. The same thing happened in April (with 270,000 jobs just a guess) and March (153,000 guess)." A top economist at the Labor Department says it won't know until "this time next year whether the figure [the 195,000 guess] is accurate."

Furthermore, the N.Y. Times reports (6/11) that in the first quarter of 2004, "4.5 million workers...applied for unemployment insurance." However, slightly fewer than 40% of U.S. workers are actually eligible for these benefits. This is 40% of a possible total of 11.5 million jobless.

Unemployment is inherent to capitalism. In a planless economy in which every company tries to capture as big a section of the market as possible, overproduction is inevitable. Those companies who lose in this struggle are driven to reduce labor costs -- layoffs -- to try to maintain profits. The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate the profit system that creates it.

Bushites' Iraq Fiasco: BIG BOSSES NEED KERRY TO SAVE OIL EMPIRE

U.S. rulers are answering nationalist and fundamentalist threats to their Mid-East oil empire in typical capitalist fashion, with indiscriminate murder. On June 15, anti-U.S. insurgents shut down all crude exports from Iraq by blowing up pipelines feeding its southern oil terminal. Sabotage earlier had stopped shipments from northern fields. So, on June 19, "a U.S. military plane fired missiles...into a residential neighborhood in Fallujah, killing at least 20 and leveling houses.... Outraged residents accused the Americans of trying to inflict maximum damaged by firing two strikes -- one first to attack and another to kill the rescuers. `The number of casualties is so high because after the first missile we jumped to rescue the victims,' said Wissam Ali Hamad. `The second missile killed those trying to carry out the rescue.'" (Associated Press, 6/19) Meanwhile, liberal critics of Bush's war-making, those close to the Exxon Mobil-Chevron Texaco-Shell-BP axis, are calling for a Kerry administration to send an even more deadly U.S. force to Iraq.

Control of the Mid-East's oil gives U.S. rulers such great profits and leverage over their competition that they will stop at nothing to keep it. They invaded Iraq hoping to seize its oil fields from the pro-Russian and pro-French Saddam Hussein. They wanted to boost production from a pre-1990 2.5 million barrels per day to six million, as Philip Carroll, the former Shell boss who governed Iraq just after the U.S. "victory," once boasted.

A U.S.-controlled Iraq with the capacity to pump at that level could have become the main "swing producer." U.S. oil firms could then have set world prices, broken OPEC and hedged threats to their mother lode of oil, Saudi Arabia [see box]. But today's zero barrels a day is a lot less than the dreamed-of six million. Oil bosses are furious at Bush for not putting enough GI boots on the ground in Iraq to wipe out U.S. opponents and secure the oil infrastructure. "There has to be basic security, a stable government," Carroll lamented. (Bloomberg, 6/18) And in a gross understatement, Stratfor, an influential policy analysis outfit, says Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond "is not thrilled with the Bush administration's approach to foreign policy," (6/8)

Liberals, aiding the oil barons, demand more U.S. killing power. Writing for the liberal Brookings Institution (6/4), military analyst Michael O'Hanlon says "success in Iraq [that is, maintaining a U.S. stranglehold on its oil] is too important to allow the present size of the U.S. Army to predetermine our options for deploying troops there.... The only conscionable response is to increase the size of the U.S. ground forces.... No more time should be lost -- about 40,000 more troops, mostly Army soldiers but perhaps some Marines as well, should be added to the U.S. military." But O'Hanlon warns that low recruitment "could leave the country with few choices besides a return to the draft, with its even greater problems of a much less proficient and committed military."

Bush's mishandling of Iraq is fueling an unprecedented elect-Kerry movement among high-ranking foreign service and military officers, who traditionally have steered clear of electoral politics. On June 16, a newly-formed group called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change issued a statement at the National Press Club in Washington. In it, 27 former ambassadors, generals and admirals said they were "deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests." Liberal Jimmy Carter long ago identified these "interests" as the U.S.'s ability to dominate other nations militarily and economically, especially with the oil weapon.

Many of the signers belong to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a liberal policy factory closely tied to the Exxon Mobil-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital. Two -- Charles Freeman, ex-ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and General Joseph Hoar -- participated in a 1997 CFR study laying out a blueprint for a post-war Iraq six years before the U.S. invaded. Another, ex-CIA chief Admiral Stansfield Turner, recently lectured CFR members on the need for a police state in the U.S.: "We are going to have to integrate the policeman on the motorcycle in Montana with the domestic spying done by the FBI or an MI5 [Britain's secret police], and it's going to be a very big operation." (CFR transcript, 5/4)

These Kerry backers -- just like the Bushites -- have the blood of millions of workers on their hands. Their interests lie in advancing U.S. imperialism, no matter what the cost in human lives. Jumping on their Kerry bandwagon, as an alternative to Bush's butchery, would only strengthen the U.S. war machine.

Instead of participating in the rulers' electoral circus, we should organize against all bosses and build Progressive Labor Party to destroy their system, replacing it with a communist society that has no class interest in war, unemployment, racism and poverty.

Bin Laden Challenges Exxon

In the most lucrative and strategically important business deal on earth, Saudi Arabia sells Exxon Mobil (and some others) vast amounts of cheap crude oil on secret terms. It's mainly the Saudi Aramco connection that allows Exxon to sell over 8 million barrels a day of petroleum products, while it pumps only 2.5 million barrels of crude from its own wells. When Saudi royals nationalized Aramco in 1976, they, unlike Iran and Iraq, didn't expel their American partners, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco. According to Anthony Cave Brown in "Oil, God, and Gold" (Houghton Mifflin, 1999, p. 361), "The American[s] would have access to seven million barrels of crude oil per day...at forty-seven cents per barrel." The going rate then was $11. The would-be oil barons of al Qaeda seek to overthrow this sweetheart arrangement, which continues in some form today. According to Exxon Mobil president Rex Tillerson, "We are the largest purchaser of Saudi crude oil exports -- making Saudi Arabia the single largest supplier of raw materials to Exxon Mobil's worldwide refinery system." (Exxon Mobil press release, 4/27)

Wanting the oil profits for themselves, bin Laden's thugs have a strategy of scaring the more than 30,000 U.S. nationals out of Saudi Arabia, for whom they now provide oil industry and military expertise. Al Qaeda's recent beheading of a U.S. military contractor caused many to flee. But U.S. rulers won't let their Saudi oil bonanza go without a major war. If al Qaeda threatens to seize power, the U.S. rulers' response will make their Iraqi slaughter look like a picnic.

Fight `Outsourcing' with International Workers' Unity

Much has been made of job losses in the U.S. due to outsourcing jobs overseas. The latest Labor Department figures for the first quarter of 2004 showed 16,000 layoffs because of relocation of jobs, of which 60% (9,600) moved to another part of the U.S.; only 4,633 went abroad. But, then again this doesn't include companies with less than 50 employees or larger companies where less than 50 actually applied for unemployment benefits. Wall Street's Goldman Sachs, including the smaller firms, estimates outsourcing overseas of 250,000 to 300,000 per year, although still a small part of a labor market of 130 million.

But whatever the figure, workers finding new jobs after being laid off because of this outsourcing are earning $2 an hour less, on average. (Miami Herald, 6/12) Based on a 40-hour week, that's $80 weekly or over $4,000 less per year. These U.S. workers are suffering as a direct result of U.S. imperialism and racism. U.S. bosses ship jobs overseas seeking cheaper labor, then use racism to blame these "foreign" workers for the job losses, and then pay U.S. workers thousands less in their new jobs (if they can find any). Thus, imperialism super-exploits workers overseas and its racism helps to lower wages here.

Only the unity of workers internationally can fight this world capitalist attack on all workers and prevent the bosses from pitting groups of workers against each other. And only communist revolution can finish off the system that causes this worldwide suffering.

NEA Teachers' Lesson Plan: Fight Racism, Imperialist War

The National Education Association, the country's largest union, is holding its annual convention of 10,000 delegates in Washington, D.C. this July. Like other union gatherings this summer, the NEA convention will likely become a campaign rally promoting John Kerry for President. We should reject both Kerry and Bush and the capitalism they represent. Instead we should fight for a system that puts workers' needs first, a system based on cooperation and production for need, not profits.

We will work with others backing resolutions which condemn torture in prisons in the U.S. Afghanistan and in Iraq, and expose Kerry's plans for national service as a cover for bringing back the military draft. We plan to organize among the thousands of NEA delegates who are opposed to war and fascist torture, and to win them to see that instead of supporting the Democrats, the only real alternative to the evils of capitalism is communist revolution

Teachers are painfully aware that the students we educate face a world of rising unemployment, restricted opportunities, reduced benefits, mayhem, jail and war. The schools themselves have become racist institutions in which declining attention is paid to black and Latin students, dragging down the education of white working-class students as well. This is a world based on the exploitation of workers, where oil is a curse, not a blessing and whose "leaders" use nationalism and religion to win workers and youth to fight wars and kill other workers to benefit the fabulously wealthy. But teachers are in a position to educate these students and their parents about the causes of these problems -- and what we can do about them.

U.S. capitalists have a problem trying to maintain their economic dominance. European, Chinese and other imperialists are beginning to challenge the U.S., over the war in Iraq and with the rising importance of the European Union's currency (the euro) and its threat to the dollar as payment for the world's oil. The main section of the U.S. ruling class is upset with the way Bush has met this challenge. His huge tax cuts for the rich have short-changed their military. Of course, it has also decreased spending on social services such as health care and education.

Now the Rockefeller wing wants to dump Bush so John Kerry can "do it right," meaning his call for 40,000 more troops in Iraq and unity with others to help pay the price of conquest. 

Kerry seeks to reinstitute the draft, calling for a program of National Service (www.JohnKerry.com) with options for strengthening the Patriot Act -- a Police Corps and the creation of a new community defense service to work for the government -- and for recruiting more soldiers through National Service with options for the military. He describes it as "the highest form of service." He would reward this service with Pell grants for college. This follows the "United We Serve" task force recommendation that the Pell Grant be tied to national service.

No matter what form military recruitment takes, working-class young people will serve in the rulers' wars. Teachers giving them a critical perspective and class consciousness can help our students -- future workers and soldiers -- understand that they can unite with other workers worldwide, rather than seeing them as their enemy.

The issues in the schools and at the NEA convention must be seen in light of the events described above. The real question is whether we should support the exploitation, profits-before-people, racism, sexism, nationalism and wars of the rulers' imperialist system at all or whether we should fight to overthrow it and replace it with a communist system based on cooperation, production for use, internationalism and people first, last and always.

N.J. Pickets Oppose U.S. Rulers' Torture

NEWARK, NJ -- On June 3, a militant group of people from mass organizations around the city picketed the Federal Building protesting the U.S. military's horrific torture of prisoners at Abu Gharib prison in Iraq. Several drivers honked their horns in support as they passed Broad Street reading signs like,: "U.S. Biggest Terrorist" and heard the rousing chants: "Money for Jobs, Not for War!" and "Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Racist War Has Got to Go!"

Speeches from demonstrators denounced U.S. imperialism, including the tortures at Abu Gharib as part of the U.S. racist campaign for world domination of markets. One speaker related the torture to the Patriot Act's racist treatment of Arab workers in the U.S. under which the government interrogates, imprisons and deports them as well as quelling and silencing dissent here.

Many workers grabbed leaflets and others bought CHALLENGES, agreeing with the demonstrators' politics against the war in Iraq. Some said they didn't trust any politicians anymore and agreed that maybe we do need a new system. Right now we need mass demonstrations, resolutions in union, churches and other mass organizations denouncing this torture and opposing the U.S. ruling class that orders it. Friends and comrades of PLP must spread the message to workers worldwide that the working class needs to make revolution against the war-makers and build a society based on the dictatorship of the working class!

Organizing Sailors to Become Working-Class Political Leaders

In a previous CHALLENGE article (4/14) I detailed my positive experience with sailors in boot camp. Now for my progress with sailors/marines in post-boot camp, which has emboldened me even more. The key is to get my buddies involved in our work on a practical level so it doesn't come off simply as theory but as an actual struggle that can be won -- if we're consistent and on the ball. Here's some practical involvement which has brought sailors/marines closer to our Party and its view that working-class soldiers and sailors don't have to become torturers like those in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

A chapter of a movement of mostly young progressives who fight the expansion of the exploitation of prison labor recently held a film festival. I invited several colleagues to join me, two sailors and one marine. On the way to the event one stressed that the black people's fight today in the U.S. today is for acceptance, for them to be able wear their dreadlocks to work, and so on. I challenged this, saying America today is more than willing to accept us if we're willing to serve imperialism. I suggested he look more closely at urban police departments. In fact, the cop who killed a black University student had dreadlocks.

 The first film that night dealt with Palestinian youth kidnapped by Israeli authorities and held against their will. One youth we saw was held in detention for almost a year, abused in prison, beaten, denied schooling and interrogated daily. Another film explored the plight of youth in Vietnam after the Vietnam War, their daily struggle for survival. The last one portrayed the 1992 rebellion against police brutality in a mostly Salvadoran neighborhood. It described why these workers fled to the U.S (escaping torture and El Salvador death squads funded by Reagan and the CIA). Once here, instead of receiving peace and justice, they suffered unemployment, underemployment, lousy schooling, substandard housing and daily harassment/torture by the cops. 

 Afterwards, everyone felt quite moved and motivated to struggle over what they'd witnessed. One seemed more concerned with the struggle against police brutality and couldn't see why we cared about Palestine or Vietnam. I stressed the inter-connectedness of U.S Imperialism/capitalism, how police brutality here is linked to the oppressed Palestinian child, how the U.S. sends billions to the Israeli government. He nodded when I said that in order to win workers' power we must build solidarity with all workers across all borders! One must expand the fight for your home beyond the nation where you were born to the CLASS you belong to! This is home! The experience was a good one and helped our work.

The following week, the same sailor who challenged our global view traveled with me to an anti-police brutality meeting to hear how the goons -- cops -- would "reform" themselves through a consent decree negotiated by the U.S. Justice Department. A grassroots group had pressured for this decree. Now we were witnessing how the capitalist state, even on this level, will use a reform movement to strengthen its grip on the working class. We see this nationally with the election of black and Latino politicians, along with black and brown cops.

My Navy buddy felt it was an oxymoron, the police (the feds) monitoring the police. When he raised his hand to question this, he quickly discovered how the police are trained to deceive you into thinking they're "for the people." The representative of the Chief of Police answered that the Federal Justice Department was committed to justice and ensuring that the County police were held accountable. This is the same Justice Department named for J. Edgar Hoover, the notorious FBI director, who -- through the infamous Counter Intelligence Program -- spied on countless organizations fighting for justice and freedom. My buddy wasn't buying this. Neither were the others present.

 Several mothers whose sons were victims of police brutality were angry at a process that gives more deference to the cops than to the victims/survivors forced to bury their sons with no justice! (The Chief's representative told us the police were included in negotiating the consent decree while the community was locked out.)

Both mothers expressed outrage over the fact that the cops who beat and tortured (in one case killed) their sons are still on the force despite the Federal consent decree, the hiring of the first permanent black Police Chief, the election of the second black County Executive, and so on. Many community members now understand that it's the system, not only the police chief or the County Executive, that must be challenged. We in PLP pushed our colleagues to see that the system must be destroyed! (Next issue: celebrating May Day.)

COKE: Sweet For Bosses, Exploiting Child Labor in El Salvador

Coca Cola is having lots of problems which its most recent CEO -- like the others before him -- couldn't solve. He was forced to resign. This prompted a rare N. Y. Times' editorial (6/18) criticizing the company for doling out hundreds of millions of "shareholders' dollars" to incompetent CEOs. Of course, the Times doesn't worry about the workers who produce these millions. Workers should not take sides with any bosses, but must be concerned with how their profit-making screws us.

Firstly, Coca Cola's products damages the teeth and health of tens of millions of people worldwide. It's not only saturated with sugar and other sweeteners, but it also used to use coca paste (how it got its name), the source of cocaine. Supposedly, coca leaves are no longer used in the U.S. market but they're still part of the product bottled overseas. (For an interesting article on Coca Cola, cocaine, the CIA and Papa Bush's fortunes, see www.skolnicsreport.com, April 2004).

But Coke is wreaking havoc in other ways. We've reported on Colombian Coca Cola bottlers employing paramilitary death squads to murder activists in the Coke workers union. Now it appears Coke is using child labor to make super-profits. The UN declared June 12 an International Day Against Child Labor. It's estimated that 200 million children are now super-exploited worldwide. Some try to justify this by saying "cultural" reasons cause parents to bring their children to work, particularly in agriculture in the world's poorest countries. But this also occurs in the U.S. and European agri-business, where migrant labor (mostly undocumented immigrant workers) is common. Parents feel forced to bring their children along to augment the family's meager poverty wages paid by expoiting bosses.

In El Salvador, child labor is commonly used in cutting sugar cane. One-third of the country's sugar cane workers are under 18, many of whom began working when they were 8 (according to a 6/14 Human Rights Watch report (Argenpress.info). The ILO (Int'l Labor Organization) estimates that from 5,000 to 30,000 children under 18 participate in what it calls "dangerous work" in El Salvador's sugar cane fields. The ILO has a group there fighting for the immediate end to this child labor. But calling on capitalists to end it won't do the trick, another reason why PLP organizes for communist revolution to destroy capitalism, a system based on all forms of wage slavery.

"Dangerous work" means the children must use machetes and other sharp objects to cut the sugar cane and root out the leaves, laboring nine hours a day in unbearable heat. There are many "accidents," but basically it's up to the workers to find medical help. Official figures show 22,000 children die worldwide because of "industrial accidents." But the real number is far higher.

Child labor continues because it's very profitable, both for the plantation owners and for the corporations that buy the sugar they produce. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this super-exploitation's final product -- sugar --is Coca Cola. The local Coke bottler buys sugar from Central Izalco, El Salvador's biggest sugar mill. At least four of the plantations supplying Izalco use child labor. Of course, Coke has an international "code" forbidding child labor, but it only covers direct suppliers, not the plantations. Obviously the code is worthless.

Millions of children are also being used to wage imperialist wars for one boss or another, whose armies are predominantly youth. After years of civil war, "peace" has brought nothing but more deaths and misery to the workers and youth of El Salvador (including drug-dealing gangs trained in the U.S.). The leaders of the former FMLN guerrillas have now turned into electoral politicians, selling out the hundreds of thousands who died and fought the U.S. death-squad lackey rulers. For our children's sake, let's fight to destroy capitalism once and for all, for a society without Coke and bosses and their sellout politicians, where all the children can be children. Join the communist PLP and end this living hell.

IMPERIALIST BATTLE OVER LATIN AMERICA SHOWS NEED TO BUILD MASS PLP -- Part I

As PLP has often pointed out, the main contradiction in the world today is inter-imperialist rivalry. This rivalry, driven by economic laws integral to capitalism, inexorably leads to more and wider wars, and eventually, as Lenin wrote, to world war. Therefore communists learn capitalism's economic trends to enable us to alert the working class of the impending dangers and be better prepared to turn the imperialist war into a class war for communist revolution.

Economic laws dictate capitalist crisis, fascism and wars. Only when communist revolution is spread worldwide, destroying capitalism itself, will these horrors end. This won't happen spontaneously, but only by PLP fighting hard and skillfully for its ideas among all workers, youth and soldiers.

The collapse of the state-capitalist Soviet Union's empire left the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power. But it also opened the gates to fierce inter-imperialist rivalry by eliminating the threat that forged unity among the western imperialists. The European Union (EU), having become one of the U.S. rulers' main contenders for world hegemony, is attacking U.S. supremacy economically and politically, globally and regionally -- and is making advances.

This process has its twist and turns, its ups and downs, but the trend points to the decline of U.S. supremacy as the number one imperialist. It isn't, and won't be, a peaceful process. The many armed conflicts in the world reflect this inter-imperialist dogfight. Eventually, the major imperialists will clash on the battlefield.

U.S. bosses won't surrender Latin America or the rest of its empire peacefully. In 1962, they came very close to nuclear war over tiny Cuba. Hundreds of thousands were murdered in Central America to protect the U.S. control of the region from pro-Soviet and pro-European forces like El Salvador's FMLN and Nicaragua's Sandinistas. The U.S. invaded Panama to stop Noriega from making the Japanese yen that country's main currency. Under the guise of the "war on terror and drugs," the U.S. has established more military bases across Latin America.

These sharpening contradictions among the imperialists don't mean World War III will start tomorrow but simply that it, and more wars, are inevitable. Presently none of the U.S. rulers' rivals are ready or willing to challenge the U.S. militarily, but that's just a question of time. They'll be propelled by these sharpening external and internal contradictions. European bosses are grappling with the development of their military, and with their future relationship with Russia and China, both nuclear powers. They certainly realize there can't be multi-lateralism without military backing. Having fought two wars for world supremacy, they must know that fulfilling this ambition will require another one.

LACEU SUMMIT
CHALLENGED U.S. RULERS ON THREE FRONTS

The recent summit of Latin American, Caribbean and European (LACEU) rulers in Guadalajara, Mexico, further intensified this power struggle. The EU imperialists outlined their strategy on three fronts to challenge U.S. world hegemony with "Euro-globalism." The first was political, calling for a return to multi-lateralism among the industrialized nations in the decision-making process of world affairs.

The second front was economic. It called for regional integration, multi-lateralism in the regulation of the world economy and the creation of an EU that could compete with the U.S. in international markets. To reduce U.S. hegemony in this hemisphere, the summit decided to officially sign next October the free trade agreement between the EU and MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), to which Mexico has applied for membership.

The third front was the social one. The European butchers want to portray themselves to the world's workers as benign imperialists, while attacking U.S. policies that guarantee its hegemony in Latin America and elsewhere. They say they favor creating organizations that promote "fairer income redistribution" globally and that protect the environment and human rights. The EU funds many Non-Governmental Organizations and mass movements in the Latin America -- Carribean area, that attack U.S. policies on all these fronts, especially against the U.S. free-market globalization and the creation of the U.S.-sponsored FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas).

Workers shouldn't fall for this trick. Capitalism produces for profits. No imperialist/capitalist will ever put the well-being of workers above the bosses' class interests. This condemns billions of people to abject poverty and to death from starvation and curable deceases. They have needs, but no money. Communism, on the other hand, means production for human needs. There won't be anything for sale, or money to buy it. Society will produce to fulfill all the needs of the international working class.

(Next issue, the intensification of European penetration into Latin America.)

$10/Hr Still Poverty Wages for Home Health Care Workers

BROOKLYN, NY, June 21 -- "We were sold out! The home health care agencies and the 1199-SEIU leadership are good for nothing!" declared a striking home health care worker upon hearing that they had "won" $10 an hour by 2007.

On June 7, several of us workers from a Brooklyn hospital joined the picket line in solidarity with strikers. Many CHALLENGES were sold to this militant group of underpaid workers.

Local 1199-SEIU had called a three-day strike beginning on June 7 for these 25,000 workers. Almost all of the workers' contracts had expired; others had never even had one. The union demands included vacation, sick and bereavement leaves, health coverage and a $10 hourly wage.

Thousands of workers showed up to picket on the strike's first day. Many were chanting for more money, that $10 was unacceptable. The bosses' politicians' message at the rally was how evil Bush is and how good capitalism and "democracy" is for everyone.

At 9 AM, the union leadership reported some agencies had settled and that the workers should return to work. The workers immediately raised their hands and shouted angrily, "No way! We're not going back!"

The 1199 SEIU leadership, seeing the workers' defiance, quickly called a vote. The strikers' position to stay out won overwhelmingly. They continued picketing and also marched through midtown Manhattan, snarling traffic for hours.

Over the next two days, many workers did return to work, following an agreement with several agencies. The union leadership was, and continues to be, very passive. They aim to get out the vote for the bosses' Democratic Party politicians and get workers to accept any and all rotten contract deals.

Many agencies still haven't settled. The new contract will have little impact on the workers' lives. Under capitalism, it's practically impossible for such workers to feed, clothe and house their families under these wage-rates.

The home health care workers, mostly immigrant women, provide compassionate care in homes of people discharged from hospitals. The bosses' home health care system is based upon agencies netting enormous profits from low-paid workers.

Medicare and Medicaid finance the system, from workers' taxes and bosses' profit extracted from the working class. The funds are channeled through "certified home health care agencies."

They subcontract to "licensed home care service agencies." After paying high administrative costs and siphoning off huge profits of the $17 an hour paid to the agencies what's left is trickled down to pay workers $7 an hour.

Since U.S. rulers are spending billions of dollars of our money on their war in Iraq, even less remains for social service programs. The bosses are out to reduce the cost of health care and drive down workers' wages. We must organize the working class to build the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in the CHALLENGE and through PLP's 2004 summer project.

SEIU Pushes Kerry But Workers Respond to PLP's Red Ideas

San Francisco, June 22 -- At an SEIU march for health care here, the union shirts were red, but the message they carried -- "Laborers for Kerry" -- was not. Allying with Democratic politicians, the union had printed thousands of stickers reading, "I am a health care voter." It was a clear push to vote for Kerry.

Meanwhile, a committed group of communists from Progressive Labor Party hoisted a banner with a sharply different message: "Capitalism kills workers every day! It will never provide decent health care for all workers! From S.F. to Baghdad, the fight for real healthcare is the fight for communism!" A large majority of the workers who we spoke with agreed the Democrats were dangerous. Many bought CHALLENGES. Ten workers gave contact information on the spot.

Clearly SEIU members are not firmly committed to the Democratic Party. This is good news because, as CHALLENGE has consistently pointed out, Kerry and the Democrats are 100% for the imperialist war for oil in Iraq. Democrats like Clinton have launched some of the most vicious attacks on the working class in recent times, such as the huge increase in imprisonment and the destruction of welfare. While the SEIU contributed $13 million to the Democratic Party over the past four years, the overall trend for workers conditions was down, down, down.

This is a critical time. While the SEIU's membership is not highly committed to the "social-fascist" (so-called "lesser-evil" but still fascist) Democratic Party, they haven't reached the level of attacking the Democrats and adopting revolutionary ideas. But their openness to PLP members at the march demonstrates that when PLP exposes social-fascism, workers are interested.

PLP will approach these contacts to promote the understanding that workers need a political solution "outside the box" of capitalism -- that the only solution is communist revolution. Unions will never fight for communism -- but that doesn't mean communists won't fight in unions. Communists and their allies will remain in unions and student-labor groups to fight against the system while advancing the need for revolution.

While PLP makes this fight, organizations like SEIU are training their own leaders. After the march, SEIU kicked off a youth conference for this purpose. There, PLP members met several young people friendly to PLP's communist analysis. (Details next issue.)

Imperialist Rivalry Peaks in Nepal

Nepal used to be known as an idyllic Himalayan Shangri-La, a paradise for mountain climbers and hippies. Well, very few people refer to Nepal that way now. It's a microcosm mirroring the rivalry among the world's large and small imperialists.

Life was never a paradise for Nepal's peasants and workers. The so-called "Democratic Monarchy" created in 1990 didn't represent most of the people. This contradiction exploded when a Maoist group (CPN-Maoist) began an armed struggle against the government. Then several years ago they halted their rebellion and joined talks with the government.

But this didn't last long; the rulers were using the negotiations to their own advantage. Amid all this, the royal family was almost wiped out by one of their own. The new king who took power wasn't content with being a figurehead, ruling as an autocrat and limiting bourgeois democracy.

The Maoists returned to armed struggle, spread throughout Nepal as well as spilling into neighboring India. In May, the Bushites' war "against terror" reached Nepal, declaring the local Maoists "terrorists." India, worried about support by local armed groups -- and possibly by Pakistan as well -- for Nepal's Maoists, has also stepped up its intervention in Nepal, helping train its Army, supplied with M-16s by the U.S. army, and training by the UK.

Meanwhile, the Nepalese ruling class and its international backers are trying to re-introduce the façade of "bourgeois democracy" to placate the angry masses. They want to draw the fake leftist Unified Marxist-Leninist Party back into a coalition government. By doing this, "Mr. Deuba [the new Primer Minister] would take one big group out of the daily protests on the streets of Kathmandu, the capital," reports the Financial Times (6/19-20). "The protesters...demand that King Gyanendra stay inside the gilded cage of symbolic power that was built for the monarch by the...1990....constitution."

Strikes have erupted alongside the daily protests and armed struggle. The "Maoists latest bandh (strike) shut down all Nepal's schools and colleges for 12 days, a sign of their growing strength." (FT)

The rulers have a two-pronged plan for the Maoists: war plus -- knowing the limitation of Maoist politics -- winning them to join their government. The FT adds that the U.S. and UK want to help "bring the Maoists into the mainstream," renounce violence and participate in elections. In the past, the Maoists agreed to negotiate with the rulers. Their rebellion now is limited to demanding the abolition of the monarchy and for a "people's assembly." They're not fighting for communism, destroying capitalism and all bosses.

Maoism fights for "new democracy" -- a form of state capitalism they would lead. This same line led to the reversal of the communist-led revolution in China.

Internationally, the big backers of Nepal's Maoists are the RCP Avakianites, the same outfit behind the Not in Our Name group in the U.S. anti-war movement. They basically agree with "Anybody but Bush," which translates to "elect Kerry", another warmaker (see editorial page 1).

In today's world, the imperialists and capitalists are competing ever fiercer for markets, resources and cheap labor, with the entire globe divided among various bosses, the prospect of "peace" and freedom in Nepal is a mirage. Nothing short of fighting for communism is a waste of the lives and militancy of Nepal's workers and peasants.

LETTERS

U.S. Protectors of Scabs are Torturers In Iraq

The Visteon strikers in Indiana who recently fought security guards and cops (CHALLENGE, 6/24) furnish one more reminder about the role of cops and company goons. On June 8, in New York City, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president Randi Weingarten spoke at a joint contract rally of the UFT, the firefighters and the NYPD. She praised this as "real solidarity."

But cops are not workers and the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) is not a union of workers. It's a fascist group defending cops, particularly when they kill or torture workers and youth (and in NYC, mostly black and Latino workers). If there's a strike or any real militant workers' action, the same cops Weingarten praised will attack teachers or any other workers. This rally was another sign of how reactionary and racist labor hacks like Weingarten have become.

On security guards -- I don't know which outfit was used against the Visteon strikers, but many of these private security companies are being used to torture Iraqis. Vance International is a private security group (mercenaries) serving the U.S. military in Iraq. Longtime CHALLENGE readers may remember that Vance attacked striking Pittston miners in 1993, Caterpillar strikers in 1994 and Detroit newspaper strikers in 1995, cracking the skull of one striker.

When professional strike-breakers double as torturers and become the dual enemies of workers internationally, it shows that opposing the war in Iraq represents the class interests of all workers.

A Comrade

Boycott Cops' Rally -- A Class Act

On June 8, UFT President Randi Weingarten called on all union members to march in solidarity with NYC kkkops and firefighters to "invest in NYC's Brightest, Bravest and Finest." Our Party collective decided we should boycott this rally and instead organize something at our own schools.

The UFT chapter leader at my school wrote to all members urging them to march and make the biggest rally yet. He also distributed buttons calling for a fair contract. I responded with a letter to all teachers urging them to boycott the rally. I said that although solidarity and militancy were crucial to the future of the working class, it was wrong to march with the cops; the cops are our class enemy because of the racist way they constantly harass our students; and that at rallies they protect the bosses and arrest protestors. This was the first time I had called on teachers, in a mass way, to oppose the union bosses. I was a little nervous.

The following day many teachers approached me to thank me for having written the letter. Some said they completely agreed. One told me she had never thought about the cops in that way, that I had a good point. I received no negative comments. Although a few teachers went anyway, many didn't, mainly because of their hatred of the union bosses. Self-critically, it would have been better for me to call for some kind of action, not just a boycott. That could have produced more communist struggle.

Red teacher

All Workers Must Back Mideast Masses

U.S. imperialism is decaying. In the long term it will be defeated. The images of torture in Iraq are rapidly shattering the already flimsy image of U.S. "democracy," in the Arab world and elsewhere. Arab rulers, either allied or conflicted with the U.S. still helped sustain it in the 1991 Gulf War, but have little credibility now, or in the future, in the eyes of the proletariat and poor masses of the Mid-East. These exploited workers have the double burden of national rulers as well as imperialist exploiters.

The countdown is on for Arab ruling classes. This is a partial defeat also for the bigger imperialist countries, including the U.S. The main part of the U.S. ruling class is apprehensive about Bush's go-it-alone policy. They favor a military alliance with UN support, as in 1991. The Bush administration policy has contributed to the loss of confidence in Tony Blair and, after the March 11 attack in Madrid, to Aznar losing the Spanish elections and the new Prime Minister Zapatero withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq.

Forces like France's Chirac are waiting for the occupation of Iraq to go under UN supervision that could ensure European countries a bigger share of the oil robbery.

The struggle in Palestine and Iraq is one against occupation and imperialist exploitation. While there is no communist movement able to liberate workers and oppressed masses from capitalist exploitation at this point, the fight is necessary. It is not enough just to speak of solidarity.

We must ask ourselves how to win workers and proletarian masses to communist revolution. Many European workers are indifferent to these struggles against occupation and imperialist exploitation because of Islamic influence among the masses. This is wrong. These struggles are really similar to those among Korean, Argentinian, Ecuadorian, Bolivian and Venezuelan workers who fight governments and the IMF under the wrong leadership. The same is true for Italian, French, U.S. and Spanish workers who struggle under the wrong trade union or political leadership. In fact, this process of proletarians fighting to free themselves from the mis-leadership of local rulers as well as from imperialists is only the first step.

It's a product of the absence of an international communist organization that PLP wants to build, but it doesn't make all these struggles less important. Amid such struggles, workers must make a conscious effort to understand what's happening around them, to build a growing consciousness and re-build workers' solidarity and the necessity of a working-class organization.

We must always attack all signs of indifference some workers have about these struggles. In Iraq, for example, there are wide struggles over unemployment, the lack of electricity, repression and occupation. The fight against the occupation is a problem for all of Iraq's workers.

The struggles against the war in our countries, against racism and torture as well as to win U.S. soldiers to fight against U.S. imperialism (and capitalism in general) are the keys to winning Middle-Eastern workers to fight for communism and to build a mass international PLP to destroy the entire system and the class of bosses who run it.

A Red Italian immigrant in Germany

Veteran, New PL'ers Built May Day

Our modest collective has participated in many past May Day marches. Usually this organizing involved chartering a bus, selling tickets and bringing a small number of workers to Washington. This year, because of changing political conditions, we organized our first May Day event in our home town. It was a difficult but rewarding experience.

Although as communists, we struggle for change, we found this change in our May Day organizing tough to accept. Marching with the Party in Washington or New York had become a tradition for us. Breaking with tradition is trying, even for revolutionaries. After much discussion we realized we need flexibility to build the Party in a fascist state.

Our collective has been very uneven about commitment to political activism. A few comrades are more aggressive about base-building and on-the-job struggle. Others are more reserved, less able to get involved with people. (Everyone gets fired up about fighting the Klan.)

Recently some of our less active members have shown a desire to increase their commitment to building the Party. The more active ones had a political struggle about how to involve these others. The time being short, we thought relying on newcomers might make us less efficient. But the bosses are always propagandizing about the "inefficiency of collectivism." As communists it was our duty to give leadership to our less experienced comrades and develop their growing commitment. Ultimately this communist approach paid off. We organized a May Day celebration that was an inspiration to all who attended.

The dinner was cooked by hospital workers who run a part-time catering business. The working-class food was enjoyed by all. Afterwards there were four speakers. The first three were leaders of reform organizations. The last speaker, a Party member, reviewed the history and tradition of May Day.

At our next meeting, the collective discussed the event. We were pleased with the outcome but were also critical of our political weaknesses. As PLP members we usually attack reformers as misleaders of the working class. But these speakers were friendly to the Party. It seemed inappropriate to attack them after having invited them to address us. Our comrade spoke about revolution and communism but his speech seemed tacked on at the end of the event. We concluded that we should have allowed time to discuss the speeches. This would have enabled us to advance the Party's ideas on reform and revolution more clearly. Such discussion groups are already part of our plan for May Day 2005.

This new style of work is filled with opportunity and danger. There's clearly a danger of drifting into reformism, but there's also the opportunity to bring the Party's line to many more people. Our collective is confident that PLP's experience and revolutionary politics will guide us along this exciting new path.

May Day organizer

Reagan Never `Forgot' The Rich He Served

Ass-kissing reporters are sobbing over the death of Ronald Reagan. We're supposed to feel bad for this pimp who, until the current Bush, probably caused more suffering than any president in history

Like Bush, his targets were the poor. The rich came out even more ahead than before Reagan took office --and they were doing great off our labor before Raping Ron.

The man who most severely cut benefits for people on welfare and old people developed Alzheimer's Disease toward the end of his reign of terror.

High-paid Secret Service bodyguards have told how they dumped bushels of leaves into Reagan's pool, for him to fish out with a net, so he could feel useful. Meanwhile, thousands of poor people were thrown out on the street into poverty, with no medical benefits to protect them. I was listening to a National Public Radio sob-fest about Reagan, and a white teacher in Boston called in and said her black students -- unlike the people she'd been hearing on this show -- said they had no good feelings for Reagan. "Another rich white man," one called him, and she quoted a second student about the use of the word "tragic" concerning Reagan's death: "He was ninety. Didn't they know he was eventually going to die?" (Poor people, as victims of capitalism, often have a clearer view of what's going on than the deluded people who buy the myth of the" two-party democracy." Today [6/10] is the next to last day of Reagan's lying in state. Big deal. He lied in state every day of his eight years as leader of the capitalist world.

North Country Red

U.S. Imperialism Has Long History of Torture

It was standing room only at a recent community-group forum on military recruiters in high schools. Amid the speeches given by Brooklyn students, teachers and veterans of the Vietnam and Iraqi wars was one by an Iranian teacher who gave a detailed analysis of torture committed in the name of U.S. Imperialism. She chronicled endless incidents of inhumane acts of torture, from the Middle East to Central America and the United States. One of her main points to the mostly young audience was that this latest torture scandal in Iraq is not an isolated incident. It's a systematic one that has been occurring for generations. Amid all the hoopla about the late president Reagan's "legacy," we should remember it was on his watch that the now incompetent CIA unleashed a lot of this torture on the world. So let's not end the Reagan-bashing just yet. He might be gone but the precedent he set is still butchering workers.

Red college student

Anger Over Sellouts Sparks Red Politics

"Trust me, we won. I don't know how much we'll have to pay for medical when this is all over, but we won." The union president was urging the shop stewards to sell the story to the membership.

In the fall, MTA mechanics struck for five weeks over medical benefits. We went back after getting the small stuff and the president's promise that our medical would be "solved" by an arbitrator.

The rotten fruits of this union president's "victory" will show up as an extra $100 deduction in next week's paycheck. For retirees under 65, the cost is a stunning $246 per month.

Many, many workers are angry and complaining. "How can a lower-tier service attendant making $15 an hour pay $l00 a month out of take-home?"

"I heard a story about the grocery workers," said a welder. "The retirees got shafted just like our retirees. I've got to re-think my retirement."

Someone asked the union office secretaries who administer the health plan, "Getting a lot of worried phone calls, are you?" She said, not joking, "We're going to need security around here soon."

Slowly, through CHALLENGE sales and distribution of news clippings from CHALLENGE and the bosses' papers, workers are realizing capitalism is becoming more unstable. We're making a down payment on this Iraq war by paying more for medical. That's how the bosses force us to help stabilize their rotten system. But even this won't do it. We're in for more and more war.

A "quickie" study group occurred when some workers wanted to know about the communist politics of a Party member and what he thought could be done about the medical cuts.

Discussing these cuts and the weakness of striking alone, one new worker was attacking communism in a very loudmouthed way. The PL member said, "You seem to have learned a lot about communism when you were in the army's special units. How about I bring an article from a communist paper and we'll all read it and discuss what it says about communism." The other workers agreed and even the new guy had to go along.

Several days later the PL'er brought the article "Timkin Lays Off 1,300" from the mid-May CHALLENGE. All were appalled by the hypocrisy of Bush and his friends, the Timkin bosses. The workers don't yet grasp the solution of communism. But one said, "If you were a boss, what would you do?" This makes the point in reverse. The class of bosses have no choice but to lay off workers, exploit cheaper labor and make war for control of profits. But the communist asked, "Does the working class have to continue to suffer so bosses can make higher profits?" An opening has been made for several new CHALLENGE readers, and to develop the point of this question.

Southern California Comrade

82 Million Uninsured While Health Care Bosses' Profits Soar

Approximately one-third of all people in the U.S. under the age of 65 were without health insurance for some part of 2002-2003, according to a study by Families USA. That's 82 million people, two-thirds of whom had no coverage for six months or longer. The study labels this "an enormous epidemic" and attributes 18,000 deaths between ages 18 and 64 to lack of insurance, the sixth leading cause of death in the country, more than AIDS or diabetes. And these deaths don't even count children!

Under capitalism, this $1.6 trillion healthcare industry reaps tens of billions of profits for drug companies, equipment suppliers and hospital conglomerates, among others. Meanwhile, in half the states a family earning the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour -- $10,700 annually -- makes "too much" money to be eligible for Medicaid!

Such are the statistics of poverty and death:

* Nearly 43% of black families and nearly 60% of Latin families were uninsured for some part of 2002-2003 because of the racist nature of health care;
* More than 80% of these uninsured were connected to the workforce;
* One-fourth of families earning between $56,000 and $74,000 per year were part of this uninsured group;
* Seventy percent of uninsured adults in poor health were unable to afford a doctor;
* Forty percent of these families say to obtain health insurance they would have to cut down on food, rent or utilities.

The study blamed this enormous increase in those without health insurance on rising costs [read profits], unemployment, state budget cuts and bosses passing on the costs of insurance to workers who can't afford them. Add these components and they equal one cause: CAPITALISM. No profit system can provide decent health care for the working class. Only communism can achieve that.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

From Honduras to Iraq

...US ambassador to Iraq....Negroponte was one of a group of officials involved in Central America....The US policy in Central America in the 80s was essentially that the ends justified the means. Many of those involved in the atrocities in Central America were graduates of the School of the Americas where interrogation techniques of the kind that have come to light in Iraq were taught. When Negroponte was ambassador in Honduras his building in Tegucigalpa became one of the nerve centers of the CIA with in Latin America with a tenfold increase in staff. Now a man who has been accused of not spotting human rights abuses taking place in front of his eyes in Honduras is being sent to Iraq at a time when allegations of human rights abuses are at the heart of the occupation. (GW, 6/17)

Women earn 60% less

Forty years ago, the Census Bureau reports, women made, on average 59 percent of what men made. Now they make 77 percent....such measures substantially overstate what women earn over time . . . Women work far fewer hours than men on average and often drop out of the work force for years at a time. Usually they do so for child-rearing and to tend to the family . . . researches found that the average woman earned $273,592 over 15 years, compared with $722,693 for men ( in 1999 dollars)....But hours alone do not account for the discrepancy in pay over time. The economists' analysis turns up continuing evidence of gender segregation. A far higher proportion of females have had jobs that pay at the bottom of the income scale. . . . Women also often take low-paying temporary or part-time jobs that provide few benefits so they can be home for the family. This in turn creates a labor pool that business can consistently exploit, encouraging companies to orient their operations to use such low-paid workers rather than create better jobs. (NYT, 6/10)

$ystem ruins China health

In the past 25 years the "Chinese miracle" has made many people richer but also made

them sicker and less able to afford medical care once provided free. Tuberculosis and bilharzia are making a comeback, HIV cases are rising at the rate of 30% per year and Sars has emerged as a new threat... Once one of the proudest boasts of the communist party, the healthcare system is in tatters. The abolition of rural cooperatives in 1978 left 800 million peasants with-out health insurance.... In the battle against tuberculosis,...China is now the only country in the western Pacific region where families have to pay for childhood immunization....WHO and foreign governments are now telling Beijing that its free market reforms have gone too far.(GW, 6/17)

If Nazis guilty, so is US

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them - so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the criminals. This doctrine is the product of an American initiative. Devised by Allied judges and prosecutors at the Nuremberg tribunals, it was a means to impute responsibility for wartime atrocities to Nazi leaders, who often communicated indirectly and avoided leaving a paper trail....If this is now the standard in international law - which the United States and the United Nations are applying to rogue leaders like the former Yugoslavian president, Slobodan Milosevic - what does it mean for Washington?(NYT,6/10)

Torching Afghan women

Mallali was burned all over, it took her 24 hours to die. In a suicide note to her parents she explained why she had chosen such a horrific end. "Her husband's family was treating her like an animal," said Mr Shah, tears trickling down her cheeks... She found it hard to live like a slave. Several hundred young women are burning themselves to death every year in western Afghanistan... "There are many more pressures on young Afghan women today because they have learned what freedom is... Girls know they should have rights, and they are prepared to burn themselves to show society that they do not have them yet."... Despite an increase in the number of girls in school, most Afghan women enjoy no more rights than they did under the Taliban. Most of the country is not controlled by the government but by warlords as misogynistic as the Taliban. (GW, 6/17

Motive in Iraq: Profits

Al Qaeda is stronger than ever and poised to strike in spectacular fashion... That is not just the opinion of pessimistic liberals in Washington think tanks.That is the view from the heart of US intelligence....Anonymous (as he has to describe himself)....He argues that al-Qaida targets America for what it does, not what it is. Bin laden finds support around the Muslim world because of US support for Israel, the US military presence on the Arabian peninsula and in other Islamic countries, and US support for corrupt westernised regimes in those countries...."

In that light, the Bush Administration has only made Americas' position worse by the invasion of Iraq, which Anonymous describes as . . . "a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage". (GW, 6/17)

Ford, GM, IBM Armed Hitler Before and During WW2

PART 1

The biggest U.S. corporations and banks helped Hitler and the Nazis wage World War II.

While Bush was "honoring" the 10,000 U.S. and Allied soldiers who died on D-Day, the fact is that his granddaddy, Prescott Bush, and other U.S. bosses made huge profits producing for the Nazi war machine. The planes, trucks and tanks manufactured by Ford and GM plants in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, the oil supplied by Rockefeller's Standard Oil (now Exxon), the synthetics supplied by DuPont, the technology supplied by IBM and ITT, all contributed to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, Western Europe and North Africa, the rocket bombing of Britain and the Holocaust.

The main factor that upset this U.S. corporate/Nazi alliance, seeking decades of super-profits in a fascist Europe, was the communist-led Soviet Union.

U.S. bosses had two reasons for supporting Hitler: (1) to destroy the USSR and its example to the world's workers of an attempt to establish a profit-free society; and (2) to reap huge profits from supplying his Nazi war machine, guaranteed by the fascist smashing of unions, strikes and left-wing organizations. But inter-imperialist rivalry helped spoil all that. The main section of the U.S. ruling class ultimately realized that the Nazis were looking to grab the whole imperialist pie, threatening U.S. imperialism itself. That, plus the fact that the Soviets were later chasing the Nazi army westward towards Berlin, impelled U.S. bosses to join all out in the fight against the fascist Axis, mainly being waged by the Soviet Red Army (see CHALLENGE, 6/24).

U.S. BOSSES SET UP SHOP IN NAZI GERMANY

Many of the largest U.S. corporations, banks and Wall Street investment houses were already prospering in Germany before World War II erupted in Europe (see box). Ford had its plant in Cologne; GM took over the country's largest auto manufacturer, Opel; Standard Oil was linked to I.G. Farben; IBM established its Dehomag branch; the Union Bank, managed by Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather and an eager supporter of Hitler, was tied to the German steel baron Thyssen who financed the Fascists' rise to power. It was Prescott's Nazi profits that helped his son, Bush, Sr., launch his oil business.

Once Hitler seized power in 1933 with the backing of Germany's biggest bosses, it was open season for profit-making. This had occurred amid the worldwide Depression, with production and profits down. Street battles between the Nazis and Communists were common. The bosses feared a "red" revolution similar to the one in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), although very militant, mainly pursued electoral politics ("after Hitler, Thaelmann" -- head of the KPD)). The KPD's path shortly became the line of the international communist movement (the Comintern): uniting with "lesser evil" capitalist forces (the "United Front Against Fascism"), such as the SPD (Social-Democrats) which ran the trade unions. But the SPD was more anti-communist than anti-Nazi.

The Nazis had no illusions in bourgeois democracy and used the Brown Shirts and the Gestapo to smash strikes and all opposition to fascist capitalism. Thousands of communists, trade unionists and even social-democrats were thrown into the first concentration camps, the precursors of the Holocaust. With a combination of repression, patriotism and crude anti-Semitism, many workers accepted, fought and died for the Führer. Workers "were little more than serfs, forbidden not only to strike but to change jobs," driven "to work harder [and] faster." Now all capitalists could cut wages mercilessly, including Ford, GM, Coca Cola and the rest.

As the Nazis geared for war, production and profits rose accordingly. The Ford plant's annual profits increased 20-fold from 1935 to 1939. By 1938, GM's Opel plant was netting $14 million annually. From 1933 to 1939, IBM's branch profit went up 400%. As Germany re-armed, all these U.S. corporate branches converted to war production.

The engines in the trucks captured by the D-Day invaders in 1944 were made by Ford and GM. Some partly-assembled Ford vehicles were shipped from Dearborn, Mich. to its plant in Cologne and completed just in time to be used in Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ford also supplied the Nazis with strategic raw materials, millions of pounds of rubber and copper. Texaco and Standard Oil helped Hitler build up his oil stockpile, supplying 94% of German imports by September 1941 (Germany had no oil). Oil was essential to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Albert Speer, Hitler's armament minister, said that without synthetic fuels from U.S. firms, the Germans "would never have considered invading Poland." (Michael Dobbs, International Herald-Tribune, 12/3/98) GM's main factory in Russelsheim assembled the JU-88, the workhorse of Germany's bomber fleet. At one point GM and Ford together accounted for half of the Nazis' entire production of tanks. GM's Opel plant produced the all-wheel drive trucks particularly useful in the mud of the Eastern Front and in the North African desert. Ford set up a non-vehicle factory near its Cologne plant that was involved in developing turbines for the infamous V-2 rockets that devastated London

The German concept of the "Blitzkrieg" was used to swiftly conquer Poland, the Balkans, France, Holland, Belgium and Norway. This kind of warfare involved perfectly synchronized attacks by land and air, requiring highly sophisticated communications equipment. ITT supplied most of that apparatus. IBM's Dehomag plant sold them state-of-the-art technology which, according to Edwin Black ("IBM and the Holocaust," p. 208), enabled the Nazis to "achieve scale, velocity [and] efficiency." IBM, he concluded, "put the `blitz' in the `krieg' for Nazi Germany."

Then, as the Nazis conquered country after country, the U.S. companies rode their coattails. Ford and Coca-Cola expanded into these occupied areas. Ford's plants in France, Holland and Belgium became extremely profitable based on its unconditional collaboration with the Nazis. Ford built a tank factory in France's Algerian colony which supplied General Rommel's Africa Corps on his advance into Egypt.

No wonder GM chairman William Knudson and ITT boss Sosthenes Behn were enchanted with Hitler. No wonder Hitler gave prestigious awards to Henry Ford, IBM's Thomas Watson and GM's export director James Mooney.

(Next issue: Soviets put crimp in Nazi/Western goals; U.S. Bosses play both sides after Pearl Harbor; U.S. technology used in the Holocaust.)

Sources: "Profits Uber Alles," American Corporations and Hitler by Jacques Pauwels, 6/8/04; <http://global research.ca/articles/PAW406A.html>

Charles Higham: "Trading With the Enemy," 1983; Ralph Levering: "American Opinion and the Russian Alliance," 1976; Edwin Black: "IBM and the Holocaust," 2001; Billstein, Fings, Kugler and Levis: "Working for the Enemy: Ford, GM and Forced Labor during the Second World War," 2000; Silverstein: "Ford and the Fuhrer"

Privatizing Water Kills As Capitalists Thirst For Profits

Without question, water is one of the most important resources for human life. Without a constant supply of clean water, humans will quickly die. Water is also one of the most abundant resources in the world. Yet according to the UN's World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, three billion people -- around half the world's population -- have no access to clean water.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.1 billion don't have dependable access to water at all. At any given time patients suffering from water-borne diseases occupy approximately half of the world's hospital beds. In the past 10 years, diarrhea, contracted from drinking contaminated water, has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II -- about one every ten seconds.

While the figures are probably even higher, these statistics paint a picture of modern capitalism's murderous reality. In almost every country, water is not considered a fundamental human right, but rather a commodity that the ruling class owns. They sell this commodity and reap tremendous profits. Maude Barlow, director of the liberal environmentalist Blue Planet Project, estimates that water and sanitation service is a two-trillion dollar global industry! Many of the world's poorest people have barely been able to subsist on well water or subsidized state-owned water utilities. But recent developments in the global economy have dramatically changed poor people's access to even the most basic water sources.

Worldwide, multi-national corporations are taking advantage of the World Trade Organization's decision to allow corporations to buy public utilities and social services. (See General Agreement on Trades and Services (GATS) in the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement.) Large U.S., British, German and French corporations are rushing to buy municipal water utilities. These corporations create so-called "Private-Public Partnerships" that guarantee them tremendous profit on the backs of workers, peasants and indigenous communities. These "Partnerships" have increased water rates by as much as 400% in some areas, converted community wells into coin-operated pumps, and shut off water service for enormous percentages of poor communities who are unable to pay the increased rates. The results of water privatization have been devastating.

Those who can't pay for privatized water are forced to drink contaminated water from canals and stagnant ponds. In many developing countries, women must walk an average of over 7 km. (4 miles) to collect water, and they must carry an average of 20 kg. (44 lbs.) back home. The WHO reports massive outbreaks of cholera and typhoid because of water privatization in Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Cholera is a potentially life-threatening disease contracted from bacteria-contaminated drinking water. Someone with cholera who doesn't get the proper anti-biotics and rehydration medicine will die in four days. The immune system of infants, young children and elderly people are least capable of fighting water-borne diseases. Therefore they die in larger numbers during a crisis. Without expensive technology it is difficult to sanitize water. Poor people with access to forests must cut down trees to build fires to boil the water. This leads to deforestation in poor communities as well as increased lung diseases for people (mostly women) who must breathe in the smoke from the fires.

(This series will analyze what communists mean when we say we need a world based upon need, not profit. The next two articles will review which institutions help convert water into a commodity and how the world capitalist system necessitates the commodification of water.)