Recent actions by U.S. allies suggest rapid deterioration in the strength and influence of U.S. capitalism. This increasing weakness is the result of intensified inter-imperialist rivalry driven by a continuing crisis of overproduction. Last fall, after Russia began operations in Ukraine against a U.S.-sponsored coup, the U.S. rallied its allies to impose economic sanctions against Russia. But the French still wanted to deliver two ships they were building for Russia.
Although the French delayed the ship deliveries, the most important sanctions agreed to by the U.S. and its allies in 2014 were refusals to make new capital loans to Russia, both short- term and long-term. But again the French and German ruling class did not want to disrupt their growing economic relationships with Russia. The most important loans to be cut off were loans to refinance existing long-term loans, which did not even require renewal until 2015. This meant that the major sanctions seemingly imposed on Russia by the U.S. and its “allies” last fall were, in fact, NOT fully imposed.
Consider also the cease-fires demanded by the U.S.-led alliance to stop the Russian operations in the Ukraine. After refusals by the Russians to fully comply, the U.S. demanded that its allies impose new sanctions and make stronger military threats. However, French and German bosses ignored the U.S. demands and went separately to Moscow to negotiate a cease-fire with Vladimir Putin. Later, pushed by the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) engaged in some military posturing but Secretary of State John Kerry has been shut out of cease-fire talks in Ukraine. The U.S. faces reduced influence in the Middle East as well. The Saudis and other players now act without deference to U.S. interests.
NATO, World Bank, IMF Under Siege
In addition, Britain, a longtime ally of the U.S., announced that it would not continue making its specified annual payment to NATO. It also announced general cutbacks in military funding with the intention of reducing its level of engagement as a U.S. ally in Iraq and the Middle East.
Finally, the recent formation of the China-sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, designed to provide a direct alternative to financing available through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The World Bank and IMF are post-World War II structures set up by the U.S. and its allies to guarantee U.S./European capital dominance. At the invitation of the Chinese government, almost every major U.S. European ally became a founding member of this new arm of Chinese finance capital, despite objections from the U.S. and Japan. Britain, Australia and South Korea also joined over U.S. objections. Simultaneously, China delivered a pledge of $50 billion to Pakistan to fund infrastructure development—far more than the total U.S. investment in Pakistan. Japan countered with an offer of its own of $110 billion for Asian development.
Workers Suffer as Thieves Fall Out
These recent examples of actions by so-called allies of the U.S. demonstrate that it is highly likely that U.S. finance capital understands that it no longer has reliable long-term strategic allies. The desertion and independent actions of these allies are driving a rapid deterioration of U.S. power and influence politically, economically and militarily. Basically, the so-called allies are all hedging their bets as competition intensifies.
Each imperialist power must ratchet up the exploitation of its own working class and the workers it exploits internationally in order to survive in the inter-imperialist dogfight. As the rivalries intensify, threatened capitalists must extract more profits from the working class. Among the examples: a reduction in living standards worldwide, the refugee crisis in Iraq and Syria, mass incarceration, police killings, the detention of thousands of immigrant women in the U.S., the intensifying exploitation of the working class in Pakistan, and strikes for better living conditions in China and Russia.
At this time virtually all events in the world are driven or influenced by these inter-imperialist contradictions. Inside the U.S., the rulers’ inability to agree on domestic and international policy is also driven by these intensifying international conflict. When U.S. policy-makers make a move, one or another imperialist rival trumps them. Only increased exploitation of the workers whom the U.S. still controls can compensate for ground lost to rivals. Meanwhile, much of U.S.-based production and domestic assets are owned by international competitors.
Gridlock Marks Decline of U.S. Empire
The troubles facing the U.S. ruling class are not primarily caused by disagreements internal to the U.S. capitalist class or by capitalist competition between sectors of U.S. capitalism. Rather, they result from intensifying inter-imperialist competition. While appearances may suggest that different strategies generated by partisan political or economic viewpoints — from Hilary Clinton and Jeb Bush to Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders — cause congressional gridlock, the driving dynamic and cause of gridlock is the rapid erosion of U.S. as the international power and economic influence in the world. Competition from U.S. rivals, including all its former allies, are causing increasing instability of U.S. financial and political power on a daily basis. That is why no short-term U.S. policy succeeds for more than a few weeks. That is why no new long-term strategy can be agreed on. The politicians and their blathering simply reflect this reality.
Workers in every region can grasp that they are the joint victims of imperialism. As workers increasingly understand the role of inter-imperialist rivalry and its immediate effect in their factories or schools, they will be better able to fight their own local bosses, develop international working-class unity, and destroy preparations for inter-imperialist war. Ultimately, workers can make imperialist war the incubator of revolutionary communism.
Recent tensions between the U.S. and China reflect a sharpening battle among imperialists for the world’s wealth. The U.S., top dog since World War II, is struggling to maintain control over resources, markets and exploitable labor. With critical shipping routes and huge oil reserves in the South China Sea at stake, a clash between the U.S. and China looms as a potential prelude to all-out war, the inevitable outgrowth of imperialist competition.
As always under capitalism, the international working class will bear the brunt of this conflict. Imperialist war will end only when the working class, led by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, seizes state power. Only communism can serve workers’ needs. Only a communist society led by PLP can truly make us free.
Challenging U.S. Supremacy
Over the past 18 months, China has escalated its campaign to claim sovereignty over the South China Sea, a 1.4-million-square-mile stretch of the Pacific. By building two thousand acres of artificial islands as military outposts, China is asserting its dominance over Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and other smaller capitalist powers in the region. But its main thrust is to challenge U.S. naval supremacy from the Pacific to the Mediterranean.
On May 25, five days after a U.S. surveillance aircraft was warned away from a disputed reef where China is building an airstrip, “a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman called on America to end its ‘provocative behaviour.’ Global Times, a state-owned newspaper known for its hardline views, said war would be ‘inevitable’ if America kept complaining about the island-building” (Economist, 5/30/15).
Meanwhile, the U.S. is countering China’s activity in the Pacific and any threat to its military bases in Guam. Under a 10-year defense pact signed in April 2014, the U.S. will have access to eight military bases in the Philippines—including two with ready access to the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, the site of China’s chain of island fortresses. As the opposing imperialist powers fortify their positions, a Philippine military consultant said, “Once one side crosses, then it will be like a tripwire, all hell will break loose” (Straits Times, 5/31/15).
The Next Pearl Harbor?
Island building reflects the Chinese bosses’ long-range planning for the same scenario that led Japan to strike Pearl Harbor and ignite World War II: a U.S.-enforced oil embargo. Beijing is well aware of its vulnerability as an oil importer. Much of its energy supply travels thousands of miles over seas patrolled by the U.S. Navy.
In response, the imperialist generals of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are undertaking a massive buildup for a potential World War III. On May 26, they released an official “white paper.” According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. bosses’ leading think tank:
China is building a military to fight and win wars. The Chinese military is focused on ensuring recent investments in the PLA translate into genuine warfighting capability. The white paper clearly states that the PLA intends to “endeavor to seize the strategic initiative in military struggle, proactively plan for military struggle in all directions and domains, and grasp the opportunities to accelerate military building, reform and development” (CFR, 5/27/15).
Beijing’s anti-U.S., blue-water push dovetails with its Maritime Silk Road project. It aims to extend its maritime influence through Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Kenya—and, via the Suez Canal, to Greece and Italy in the Mediterranean Sea, a U.S. lake since the Soviet implosion of the 1980s.
As Foreign Affairs, the CFR’s journal, reported:
On May 21, Russia and China concluded ten days of joint naval exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, which included live fire drills. China and Russia both see opportunity in a weakened southern Europe. In 2008, the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) invested 4.3 billion euros to operate one of the three terminals at the Greek port of Piraeus and rebuild a second terminal there, a venture that would give China’s Maritime Silk Road an important outlet in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas company, is seeking to develop a new gas pipeline via Turkey and Greece, bypassing Ukraine (5/26/15).
Back in the Pacific, the U.S. is beginning to marshal its own potential World War III alliance, using China’s expansionism as a lever to hasten Japan’s remilitarization. Last July, it backed a Japanese resolution to end the longtime ban on deploying its military overseas (Washington Post, 5/23/15). For the first time, Japan will join the U.S. and Australia in a major military exercise, “a sign of the growing security links between the three countries as tensions fester over China’s island building in the South China Sea” (New York Times, 5/26/15). In addition to its military build-up in Asia, the U.S. is pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) as an economic front against China’s ambitions. But the U.S. capitalist media is openly acknowledging that these tensions may be headed toward military conflict:
The debate in Washington is over whether Chinese restraint should be encouraged through diplomacy and appeals to legal principles and international norms, or imposed by force. Either way, restraint is not assumed (Wall Street Journal, 6/2/15).
Workers Will Pay the Price
As the U.S.-China rivalry escalates, the ruling class will use anti-Chinese sentiments to rally U.S. workers to fight for the capitalists’ spoils. Likewise, workers in China will make and man the guns to kill their working-class brothers and sisters. Our party fights to rid the world of ruling-class wars for profits. Join PLP today!
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Pakistan May Day Women and Farm Workers Unite vs. Bosses
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SINDH, PAKISTAN, May 1 — More than 1,000 workers marched here today, demanding an end to the anti-labor contract system, to recognize home-based women workers as workers under labor laws, and to implement the labor laws and safeguards for agricultural workers. No law can protect workers from capitalist exploitation. PLP asserted that we need to build a communist movement to defeat imperialism and overthrow capitalism with workers’ power.
The mass May Day was staged by the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), Home Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), and Sindh Agricultural General Workers Union.
One speaker said that workers — from the fields to the factories — were facing brutal exploitation. While there may be labor laws for the industrial sector, they are merely on paper and remain unimplemented. He called the ruling class here an agent of finance capitalists and imperialists, working to privatize and end state subsidies of oil, gas, food and water. The union leaders team up with the bosses to feed workers illusions. The bosses’ laws don’t protect workers. Workers protect workers. Every fight we engage in exposes the ruling class. What’s more, each fight toughens us up. We build confidence in our ability to fight for communist revolution.
Militant Women Workers
A woman speaker attacked the deprivation of millions of home-based workers who use their homes as factories and produce goods for industrialists. These mostly women workers are part of the production process and make up a 40 percent share of the national economy. These women work two jobs simultaneously, as a waged factory worker and as an unwaged worker in the family. The speaker said those working in this “informal labor sector” are not even recognized as workers by the ruling class government. More than 15 million home-based workers have been demanding their basic rights for the last 20 years, and now they are organizing. This fight against sexism is going to hit the bosses where it hurts. These women had a militant contingent on May Day.
Finally, a leader of the farm workers said that though technically they are covered under labor law Sindh Industrial Relations Act 2013, the laws are never enforced. The landlords force them into private jails. Forced labor is also common. Agricultural workers are treated worse than animals.
The non-Muslim workers are facing even worse attacks in the name of religion. This includes the Kolhi (descendants of the hunting-gathering population that once subsisted on Thar Desert’s fauna), Bheel (a majority-Hindu tribal community) and Meghwars (the “untouchable” community under the Hindu caste system). Girls are kidnapped, sexually tortured, and forced to change their religion. Religious leaders, the government and the courts are all responsible for this reign of sexist, racist terror.
A mass revolutionary communist PLP will bring this struggle to its logical conclusion — the overthrow of the bosses. The religious and military fascists will be eradicated with communist revolution. For that, we need one international party, not unions. It’s fertile ground and dangerous work, but the harvest will be abundant.
Brooklyn, May 21—Today marked the 22nd monthly anniversary of Kyam Livingston’s death while held in a Brooklyn holding cell and denied medical attention. Led by her mother, neighbors, friends and PL’ers, demonstrations against the racist murder of Kyam at the hands of her NYPD jailers have been held every month since.
In this struggle, as well as in the campaigns for justice for Shantel Davis, Kiki Gray and too many more, our message has been consistent. We have called for working-class unity — for men and women, Black, Latin and white — to join this fight against racist police terror. We have brought this message into unions, churches, schools and other organizations, securing support for the struggle and bringing out members of those organizations to participate in the demonstrations and other activities. Our message that we all have a stake and obligation to fight back has been well received.
We have explained that racist murders by the police are not the actions of “a few bad apples” but are caused by the capitalist system’s need to terrorize working-class communities and dampen fightback against the exploitation all workers face. This occurs most often in Black, Latin and immigrant neighborhoods. The systemic nature of this violence is shown by numerous cases where no charges are brought against the kkkops, or they are simply let off by a judge.
We’ve drawn two lessons: capitalism must be overthrown with communist revolution if we want to end this police terror, and we must build working-class fighting unity to do this. At the rallies, hundreds of Challenges are distributed to workers on their way home and or those stopping to listen to the speeches. Our 2015 May Day March through the heart of this Flatbush neighborhood was well received, as thousands of CHALLENGEs were distributed and thousands saluted our march and joined in our chants.
But even within a positive struggle, bad ideas can surface. Today’s rally was attended by a group from “Black Women’s Lives Matter.” They argued that white men shouldn’t have spoken at this rally, and that they benefit from their white skin and gender. They also said that fighting sexism is more important than fighting racism. In fact, they spent more time attacking the white male committee members than they did attacking Kyam’s murderers. The “identity politics” of this group divides the working class. After they spoke, Kyam’s mother spoke, saying she was heartened by support, but felt the need to name and thank the members of the Justice for Kyam Committee after the verbal attack by this group.
Many people are drawn to the fight against police terror. This is a good thing. Each brings their understanding of the world to this fight. PLP and CHALLENGE have been fighting this issue since our birth, 50 years ago. “Police War on Harlem” was the headline of our first edition! Our members walked the walk and talked the talk in the Harlem Rebellion, as we have in countless struggles since. We welcome the exchange of ideas. Communist revolutionaries have long said we have nothing to lose but our chains, we have a world to win!
Indiana — A group of students got together and organized an anti-police terror rally on campus. The rally was organized by three student organizations, Students for Social Change, Black Student Union, and the Latin Cultural Club, where PL has a solid base.
The aim of the rally was to show solidarity with Walter Scott in Charleston, South Carolina, Justus Howell in Zion, Illinois, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. PL’ers and friends gave speeches detailing the injustices of capitalism and how it needs racism and police terror to sustain itself. Connections with the struggle in Ayotzinapa and Palestine were made as well.
Building Leadership
In the initial planning of the rally, there were some questions as to how the university, which is very bureaucratic, would respond to an unplanned protest. Despite this uncertainty, we continued with having the rally and dared the administration to stop us. They never did.
The number of students at the rally was small. Initially there were about seven, but that number grew to fifteen after some students passing by decided to join.
We managed to get out about 30 CHALLENGEs even though the area we selected (mistakenly) wasn’t as highly trafficked as we had at first thought. Even though we didn’t find as many passersby as we wanted, friends who are new to giving leadership were strengthened and politicized by organizing the event.
After the rally, they were already saying, “When are we organizing the next one?” and “The next one should be at City Hall, so we can call out the mayor.”
Communism: A Long-term Struggle
Campus work in Indiana is very modest and is rebuilding itself. But even with these slow gains, the work is solid and has a sound foundation. We have learned first-hand that quality is primary over quantity, and that students can be won to multi-racial unity. We are continuing the struggle to win our base to communism, not just in theory or practice, but in both.
This takes a long-term outlook on revolution, because even after the eventual seizure of state power, the actual revolution is just beginning. Taking power will be a hard task to complete, but reorganizing society will be an even harder one. However, it is what is to be done if we wish to have a world free from exploitation, wars, racism, sexism, and any other obstacle that oppresses the working class.
