PARIS, October 12 — French airline workers proved last week that they won’t take the capitalist rulers’ cuts “flying down.” In defiance of union misleaders, several hundred workers raided the Air France-KLM headquarters, broke up the Central Works Council meeting and forced the company’s top executives to flee and clamber over a chain-link fence. Two senior execs had their suit jackets and shirts ripped off their backs.
The company provoked workers’ rage by announcing it would eliminate nearly three thousand workers, including pilots, ground crew and flight attendants, and require pilots who kept their jobs to fly 100 hours a year extra with no pay. Whenever capitalist competition cuts into profits, the bosses aim to make workers pay the price.
Air France is also notoriously racist. In 2014, the company marketed their long-haul flights to Asia with an ad campaign featuring white women in yellow-face makeup. More recently, it was revealed that companies chartering planes from Air France could choose the skin color of its cabin crew personnel from a group of 1,166 workers classified as African, Caribbean, Asian, Eurasian, Indian or Western (Le Canard Enchaine, 10/7/15).
Meanwhile, most union leaders condemned the workers’ attacks on the bosses as “acts of aggression.” Pro-boss union delegates were thanked by an airline director for helping him flee the hall. These class traitors try to pacify the rank-and-file by calling one- and two-day “strikes.” About half of the dozen rival unions at Air France have called a “day of action,’ a weasel-word expression that allows “moderate” unions to ask off-duty workers to demonstrate, while more “radical” unions try to organize a walkout. The phony strike failedn—not a single flight had to be cancelled!
Air France is not alone in trying to solve the bosses’ economic problems on the workers’ backs. Lufthansa, the German airline, has had several strikes over the past two years over plans to cut jobs and base crews in countries with lower wage and working conditions. SAS and Norwegian have seen work stoppages this year over staffing and pay, while baggage handlers in Spain have struck Ryanair for months. In both France and Spain, air traffic controllers have struck over job security and wages.
Once again, the French Socialist government revealed its pro-capitalist colors by aggressively pursuing those who attacked the bosses; five workers were hauled in for questioning on October 12. After the French presidential elections next April, Air France plans to axe another five thousand jobs. The current cuts are intended to soften up workers before that knockout punch.
Airline workers need to take the throttle away from their pro-boss union leaders and wage an all-out fight against the cutbacks, and against the capitalist system that demands them.
When U.S. President Barack Obama traveled to Kenya and Ethiopia this summer, capitalist rulers in both Africa and the U.S. worked overtime to foster illusions about the trip. The chair of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, called it a “historic visit” and a “concrete step to broaden and deepen the relationship between the U.S. and the AU.” The bosses’ media focused on future benefits promised by Obama: a joint campaign against terrorism, shared technology, and the alleviation of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three people are undernourished and more than 250 million live without access to clean water (borgenproject.com).
But Obama’s true mission was hidden. His real job was to counter recent inroads in Africa by Chinese bosses, and to pave the way for more U.S. capitalist investment—and more exploitation of African workers. Of particular interest to the U.S. rulers: gas extraction in Tanzania’s Mtwara region, oil production and power supply, and an expanding market for U.S. industrial goods, including firearms to warring ethnic groups.
Addressing the African Union, Obama said the U.S. planned to provide an additional 30,000 megawatts to 60 million households and business in Africa. He also pledged to assist African governments to eradicate terrorism—a point of rank hypocrisy, since up to half of U.S. arms sales to corrupt militaries in Uganda and Burundi have wound up in the hands of the al-Shabab terror group (wired.com, 8/2/11).
Obama, who serves the main finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, pushed both Kenya and Ethiopia to enter the fight against al-Shabab. In fact, the U.S. government has played a concealed but significant role in arming groups like al-Shabab, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram. The capitalists’ strategy is to divide populations into ethnic groups and promote conflict and civil war, making the working class more vulnerable to imperialist exploitation. It’s no accident that U.S. government aid is funneled to countries with productive oil reserves, like Libya, Egypt and Sudan, or to areas in Tanzania where natural gas and coal as well as oil have been discovered. To shore up its control of these markets, U.S. imperialism invaded Libya and backed the forces that assassinated President Muammar Gaddafi.
African workers cannot rely on the African Union and its ruling-class governments, all of which profit from racism, sexism, and capitalist inequality. Only a communist revolution can eliminate mass poverty and establish a society that serves workers’ needs!
Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran—hailed by the capitalists’ liberal media as a step back from global war—is in fact a strategic move toward broader imperialist conflict. It is another sign that the U.S. bosses are not yet ready to launch an all-out invasion, at least not until they’ve put their own house in order. The current U.S. presidential campaign, with the Republican Party in disarray and leading Democrat Hillary Clinton even less trusted by voters than Donald Trump (washingtonpost.com, 8/20/15), reflects the rulers’ predicament. For now, they have neither the political leadership nor the working-class base for a new military draft, an essential element in a major ground war.
The workers of Iran have suffered under more than 30 years of U.S. sanctions on trade, finance, energy, and technology. These restrictions have sent the prices of meat, milk, bread, and medicine soaring. Workers have been forced to buy on a black market run by the same officials and military officers supposedly targeted by the U.S. ruling class. Obama’s “peace” pact is designed to end these sanctions in return for a 10- to 15-year pause in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. The U.S. bosses hope the agreement will buy them time to mobilize to fight the larger imperialist wars coming down the road, most likely against China or Russia or both.
From Iran to China to Detroit, the Progressive Labor Party is fighting to unite workers in a mass international organization. We aim to smash imperialism with communist revolution, and to build a world without the horrors of child-killing sanctions or war. The international working class can’t rely on phony deals made between the biggest thieves on the planet. We need a world where we run society for ourselves!
U.S. Bosses Know War Is Coming
In their 2015 edition of The National Military Strategy, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—the top uniformed servants of U.S. imperialism—estimate that an “interstate war with a major power” is a “growing” probability. A related article published by the U.S. Army War College (Strategic Studies Institute, 4/8/15) warns: “….the United States has almost no excess industrial or logistics infrastructure, or human capacity to mobilize for war.” To address this looming crisis, the article argues, U.S. bosses must end their internal partisan splits, raise taxes to finance their military, and most likely restore the draft. As the author concedes, none of this will be easy:
The public might bear these costs if the stakes were high enough, but policymakers could not automatically assume so…. Today, the public is unaccustomed to crushing taxation or postponed consumption. It would not take long for dissatisfaction to grow, possibly generating pressure to negotiate a settlement short of victory.
This is a prescription, plain and simple, for more fascism: lower wages, higher taxes and prices, more racism and racist police terror to stave off insurrection, and millions of working-class children conscripted for imperialist slaughter.
Sign Now, Slaughter Later
For Iran’s capitalist bosses, expanding their dominance in the Middle East matters more than any short-term deal with the U.S. For decades, the U.S. bosses have been waging trillion-dollar wars to secure their control over the region’s oil—a “vital” national interest, according to the Carter Doctrine espoused in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Today, Iran and the U.S. are locked in proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. As Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-affiliated Iran watcher, observed in the Huffington Post (9/26/15):
Tehran is so deeply entrenched in the well-established and instituted ideological, sectarian (Sunni vs. Shia), and ethnic (Persians vs. Arabs) norms that it is impossible for the government and Iranian leaders to change the character of the state.
Translation: The Iranian bosses aren’t likely to ally with the U.S. any time soon.
U.S. strategists acknowledge that Obama’s Iran gamble may turn out badly. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has countered U.S. sanctions with technical, military, and diplomatic aid to Iran. Most recently, Russia “moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict” with an agreement to share intelligence on the Islamic State with Iran, along with Iraq and Syria (New York Times, 9/27/15).
Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations (a leading think tank bankrolled by U.S. finance capital), has sounded the alarm over a potential alliance between Iran, Russia and China. Haass favors Obama’s nuclear deal because “it buys you 10 or 15 years” (MSNBC, 7/27/15), but warns, “there is also the danger that Iran will fail to comply….What matters is that non-compliance be met with renewed sanctions and, if needed, military force” (Huffington Post, 7/15/15).
Turn Imperialist War Into Class War!
The workers of the world have nothing to gain by relying on any boss. Capitalism can bring us only more terror. The laws of imperialist competition will compel capitalist rulers on all sides to intensify fascist terror—to discipline our class and force us into their military killing machines. The Progressive Labor Party is building our movement in more than two dozen countries. It is open to all workers, students and soldiers who want a world free of racism, sexism and imperialism. Join us! Help us turn imperialist war into class war for communism!
KOLKATA, INDIA, September 15 — Hundreds of students at a public engineering
university raged in protest at the cricket association’s attempt to privatize one of the campus cricket fields—a seemingly small struggle that reflects a big surge in working-class consciousness and rebellion.
Privatization is the process whereby publicly owned property is given—or rented at a low cost—to private businesses, which then make a profit at the expense of the working class. Such actions by the rulers destroy the illusion of any division between the public and private sectors. In reality, both are controlled by the capitalist bosses.
Bosses’ Bribe Rejected
The association claimed the university’s fields would be turned into “world-class venues” to which students would still have access. They pledged to maintain the upkeep and even build viewing galleries. They also promised this action would lead to more sports development on campus. But we refused to take the bribe!
This is usually a quiet campus; there hasn’t been a major demonstration in more than ten years. Yet today we erupted in protest. Today we forced the dean to call off the deal between the university and the cricket association. Today we asserted working-class student power.
Students Rebel
The cricket field struggle adds to the recent wave of protests and strikes in India. Kolkata in particular has a long history of anti-capitalist militancy. Last year, at least 30,000 students from
Jadavpur University shut down parts of this city of millions to protest cover-ups of sexual abuse and police brutality against students.
Students at a New Delhi college went on indefinite strike on June 12, when the actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan was appointed chairman of their school. Students are continuing to cripple this premier film university despite the ministry’s effort to pacify them.
Through a communist lens, this is an opportunity to build international solidarity. The protests in Kolkata are part of a fight against capitalism worldwide. It’s up to communists on other campuses — from Chicago to Mexico to Israel — to link their local fightbacks to the uprisings in India.
Class War Rages
Students are only one part of the working class that’s fighting back. On September 2, as many as 150 million workers from nearly every sector — from banking and insurance to mining, shipping, manufacturing, and transportation — went on a national day-long strike against fascist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic reforms. Bosses lost $3.7 billion in profits.
Of course, the out-of-power reformist political parties and union misleaders used the strike to build their base of support against Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party currently running the government. The BJP has a mass base in the viciously racist and sexist Hindu nationalist movement, the Hindutva, which bears many similarities to Hitler’s Nazi Party (see CHALLENGE, 2/25/15). While the BJP is openly fascist, the opposition parties and union heads differ only in their strategy. They share the same goal: to maintain a capitalist dictatorship over the working class.
But the workers and students who took the streets in defiance of the police and the capitalist state weren’t out to back one group of politicians over another. Politicians don’t control us! The working class in India is fighting for better working and living conditions. The task of Progressive Labor Party is to show that only a communist
society can meet workers’ needs.
Our movement must follow two key strategies. First, we must make the fight against capitalist divisions front and center. We must reject racist, sexist, ethnic, caste, and religious discrimination—these are the main forces holding back our struggle! Second, we must organize among the masses to become a revolutionary force of hundreds of millions. Progressive Labor Party is building that movement worldwide, from the
Indian subcontinent to Africa to Latin America. We welcome everyone in the working class to add strength, wisdom, and leadership to the struggle to build communism.
BALTIMORE, September 23—The Northeast District police station is home to the racist animals who beat unarmed Black man Tyrone West to death in July 2013. This evening, a toilet was symbolically placed in front of the station’s sign. We chanted, “Killer cops in cell blocks!” This marked the 113th West Wednesday rally, led by Tyrone’s inspiring family every week without fail.
Over the last two years, much has been learned in the struggle to indict and jail the state terrorist gang of cops—as many as 15 of them—who assaulted Tyrone after a traffic stop. They repeatedly called him the “n” word, pulled him from his car by his dreads, and proceeded to mace, Taser, beat, and club him to death!
At today’s rally, a member of Progressive Labor Party explained that there are two classes of
people in the world: the big business owners and the working class. When the business owners hold state power, that’s capitalism. When the working class holds power, that’s communism — a society of sisterhood and brotherhood where we take care of one another. As the PLer explained, only a revolution can move us from today’s rotten world to a communist world. All things change. Racist, murderous cops — and the system they serve — will one day be eliminated!
The West Wednesday mobilizations offer a taste of the bright future we’re fighting for. Members of the West family appreciatively hug everyone who attends. And this week, as usual, nearly everyone took a copy of CHALLENGE.
Cops’ Job: Guarding Capital
Through this struggle, protesters have witnessed how the mayor, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, the police, the medical examiner’s office, the state legislature, and the media have lined up behind racism. None of these officials have done anything about Tyrone’s murder.
Although eyewitnesses described in detail the horrific violence of the kkkops as they beat Tyrone to death, the cops were given immunity even before they completed their testimony. They remain free to brutalize and kill again.
The job of the police, a profession descended from the slave patrols of the 18th and 19th centuries, is to uphold the bosses’ laws and protect private property. The entire legal system is designed to serve the ruling class and oppress the working class. About 75 percent of U.S. law deals with property relations, including businesses, machinery, money, and stocks—everything of monetary value. One half of one percent of the population owns most of that property. The legal system is their system.
After more than two years of struggle and learning from experience about the true nature of the capitalists’ government and police, it’s become common to hear speeches at West Wednesday that lay the blame for Tyrone’s death squarely on the system.
Ignite Rebellion,Build Revolution
In April, the outrageous police murder of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray ignited a righteous rebellion against police terror. The protests against the murders of Freddie and Tyrone are part of the same struggle. The persistence of the fight for justice for Tyrone West has advanced antiracism in Baltimore. At the first pre-trial hearings for the six cops who killed Freddie Gray, as these racist thugs tried to get their charges dropped, we held a West Wednesday rally outside the courthouse.
Ending police terror and changing the world is a long process. Let’s not forget that the struggle to defeat slavery in the U.S. took more than two hundreds years. Like chattel slavery, the wage slavery of capitalism will also be abolished. To achieve that goal, Progressive Labor Party is organizing for a communist revolution. Never give up! Dare to struggle! Dare to win!
