The U.S. ruling class has a lot on its plate. Inter-imperialist competition is forcing the bosses to prepare for both smaller, regional wars and the broader world war to come. China, Russia, Japan, and the European Union powers are vying with the U.S. to control oil and other resources and to maximize profits from cheap labor. History shows there is no way to negotiate or cooperate out of these conflicts. They can be solved only by war.
But the capitalists cannot successfully pursue these wars without boots on the ground to do the killing. They must gain loyalty and support from the world’s workers — the same workers they need to exploit and brutalize in their racist system (see box).
Most workers today are opposed to the bosses’ current dogfights. Even without a mass movement to galvanize them, they understand that capitalist wars cannot serve their interests. Here, then, is the opportunity for communists to turn these imperialist wars into class war — as the Bolsheviks did in Russia during World War I, as the Chinese communists did during and after World War II. Here is our chance to lead the working class in revolution to destroy the profit system. Then we can establish communism, a worker-run system free of bosses, profits, unemployment, poverty, racism, and sexism. That is the goal of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.
Regional Wars vs. World War
Should U.S. capitalists continue to invest in regional invasions or keep their powder dry for an eventual World War III? Those are the strategic alternatives framed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the U.S. imperialists’ leading think tank. The latest issue of the CFR’s Foreign Affairs (November-December, 2014) opens with two opposing pieces: “More Small Wars,” by Max Boot, and “Pick Your Battles,” by Richard Betts. This is no armchair discussion; these writers are active participants in the bosses’ mass murder. Boot advised U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Betts consults for the CIA and the Army War College. And the CFR itself represents the finance wing of U.S. capitalism, the interests who have most to gain or lose from armed conflict. Among its main backers are ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and the Rockefeller family.
But this either-or debate is a false formulation. Imperialist war is both inevitable and incremental. As U.S. bosses combat their many overseas rivals, we can expect both kinds of war.
Boot points to more than 30 potential targets for a U.S. invasion, including Syria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Ukraine. “Given how many of these conflicts involve U.S. allies or interests, it is wishful thinking to imagine that Washington can stay aloof.... Since Washington doesn’t have the luxury of simply avoiding insurgencies, the best strategy would be to fight them better.” That, says, Boot, means more ground troops and a greater effort at “nation building,” code for long-term military occupation.
In rebuttal, Betts dismisses the slaughter of millions in the Middle East and South Asia by the last four U.S. presidents as “half measures” and mostly failures: “Of the U.S. military actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, only the first can be counted a success.” He concludes:
[T]he time has come to focus again on first-order dangers. Russia is back, and China is coming. These prospective opponents could not just hurt U.S. allies; they could inflict epochal damage on the United States itself....Now the United States needs to temper the ambitions unleashed by its post-Cold War dominance [and] to prepare for bigger wars for bigger stakes against bigger powers.
Oil and ISIS
In response to territorial gains by the Islamic State, Obama is doubling to 3,000 the number of U.S. military “advisers” in Iraq. It’s not just Iraq’s oilfields, as vast and profitable as they are, that the U.S. capitalists worry about. ISIS seeks “the next step: control of an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea,” says industry insider Oil Price (11/4/14).
It continues: “Access to the sea is absolutely crucial to the group’s survival as an oil-and-gas-producing state. In recent weeks there have been repeated missile attacks from Islamist forces around Latakia,” Syria’s main port.
Meanwhile, General John Campbell, Obama’s Afghan warlord, posed a parallel question in Foreign Policy, another ruling-class journal: “Do...we need more NATO forces in certain locations for longer? I’ve got to do that analysis and we’re just starting that now.” Foreign Policy answered his question for him: “The Taliban are gaining ground in key districts in the south and east of Afghanistan” (11/8/14).
U.S. Elections Boost Warmakers
Back in the U.S., where liberal Democrats took a beating in the midterm elections, ruling-class media guardedly proclaimed victory for interventionist Republicans over isolationist Tea Party challengers. “Establishment Republicans, who had vowed to thwart the Tea Party, succeeded in electing new lawmakers who are, for the most part, less rebellious” (New York Times, 11/9/14).
Imperialist war hawk John McCain, who advocates a land invasion of Syria with land forces, will now chair the Senate’s powerful Armed Services Committee. With former isolationists Ted Cruz and Rand Paul now in the fold and backing U.S. bombing of ISIS, McCain is aggressively promoting the rulers’ war aims around the globe. In collaboration with his fellow Republican chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, he’ll be banging the drum on “arms for Ukraine’s government, examination of our strategy in the Middle East, our assets with regard to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the region, China’s continued encroachment in the South China Sea” (Daily Beast, 11/5/14).
Obama Unleashed
As chief executive, Barack Obama has the last word on war policy. Contrary to conventional wisdom about lame ducks (presidents completing their term of office and are ineligible to run for re-election) , Obama’s war-making powers may be enhanced in his last two years in the White House. The election results will give Democrat Obama greater freedom to side with Republicans on military appropriations.
As a historical parallel, the CFR website (11/8/14) cites George W. Bush, who made a number of pro-imperialist moves after GOP voting losses in 2006:
….freed from many domestic political pressures -- [Bush] instituted significant foreign policy changes. He fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and oversaw a major strategy shift in Iraq, including a troop “surge” and adoption of counterinsurgency doctrine....Looking ahead to the next two years, it’s easy to see a similar series of events unfolding....Indeed, President Obama will be free — should he desire — to implement an array of foreign policy “course corrections” via executive action. Obama can unilaterally set a policy regarding the U.S. stance toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (something urged by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel). He can revisit the glideslope for U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, as informally recommended by the general in charge of forces there.
Even more ominous is Obama’s strengthened ability to “correct course” on Russia, whose “military aircraft conducted aerial maneuvers around Europe this week on a scale seldom seen since the end of the Cold War, prompting NATO jets to scramble” (Wall Street Journal, 11/8/14). With gross understatement, a Pentagon spokeswoman said, “We don’t think those flights help de-escalate the current situation at all.”
China looms as another top target for Obama and his masters. On the eve of the president’s upcoming trip to the world’s second-largest economy, Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times top China hand, stated (11/9/14), “In tfhe East China and South China Seas, [President] Xi has taken an aggressive approach to maritime disputes. There may be a thaw, but risk remains of military accidents, escalation and even war.”
Whatever their differences, in short, U.S. capitalists are displaying greater unity around their central mission: the escalation of inter-imperialist war. Communists have their marching orders too — build the international PLP to smash racism and sexism, and turn imperialist war into class war for communism.
BOX:
U.S. Bosses’ Dilemma: Getting Boots on the Ground
As CHALLENGE has noted (10/29/14), U.S. capitalists are short on real allies in the Middle East, which contains the largest reserves by far of cheaply extractable oil. With only token support from other powers for their assault against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Taliban in Afghanistan, they need to step up military recruitment of U.S. youth. The bosses are flooding TV with commercials about “serving your country.” They’re re-instituting Reserve Officers Training Corps on college campuses, with a special emphasis on grooming more black officers. They aim to reform education to focus more on patriotism and pro-war ideology. In Washington, as a bipartisan war coalition spends more billions of workers’ money on war, Barack Obama will pursue “executive actions” to pressure the GOP on immigration reform and other ploys to buy off workers and youth.
But with their system in crisis, U.S. rulers face a dilemma. Nearly seven years after the outset of the “Great Recession,” mass racist unemployment persists. Since the capitalist system depends on super-profits from the super-exploitation of black and Latin workers, along with lower wages for women workers, the bosses must ramp up racism and sexism. To divide the working class, they must scapegoat Muslim, South Asian, Arab and Chinese workers, blaming them for the shortage of jobs for black and Latin youth.
Despite the bosses’ best efforts, imperialist war is a hard sell. As their police kill and imprison black and Latin youth in cities large and small, from New York and Los Angeles to Ferguson, Missouri, it becomes much harder to recruit them to the military. Desperate to fill their enlistment needs, and fearing a compulsory draft would be too unpopular (at least for now), the capitalists are marketing military “careers” to unemployed black youth and promises of citizenship to undocumented Latin youth. They are even taking small steps to reduce the number of black and Latin youth behind bars, though the U.S. prison population of more than two million is still the largest in the world. (China and Russia, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist rivals, rank second and third.)
Bosses’ Election Bust
U.S. workers’ alienation may be at an all-time high. In the recent U.S. elections, only 36 percent of eligible voters actually voted, “the lowest it’s been in any election cycle since World War II, according to early projects by the United States Election Project” (Washington Post, 11/10/14). The big story in the bosses’ media was that the Republicans trounced the Democrats. The real story is that both parties are controlled by the same big business interests that financed the elections. Whatever their differences, both parties are driven by the goal of U.S. imperialists to maintain their top-dog status. And both parties know they must enlist U.S. workers — whether with a “democratic” carrot or a fascist stick — to slaughter their working-class brothers and sisters around the world.
Opposing these ruling-class attacks means organizing workers and youth worldwide to wage class war against the exploiters. A communist party is essential to lead this war. Progressive Labor Party, active in more than twenty countries around the world, is dedicated to that aim. Join and build PLP!
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PLP College Conference Building the Fight vs. Fascism
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- 13 November 2014 62 hits
EAST HARLEM, November 8 — Fascism is imminent, but the future is bright for the working class. Youth are ready to learn and to fight. Progressive Labor Party’s College Conference to Smash All Borders helped youth realize their potential to lead a communist revolution.
The conference drew over 80 youth and professors from California, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, DC. This conference was a product of our practice in fighting racist police brutality against black and migrant youth. Throughout a rally through East Harlem, the willingness to fight back under PLP’s leadership was evident.
We Don’t Just Talk, We Fight
After a day of discussion about fascism and fighting back like Ferguson, we did just that: fight. Fifty protesters began picketing at the corner of a train station on Lexington Ave and 125th Street. The entire rally and march was led by new and young PL’ers and friends. For nearly everyone who volunteered and stepped up, it was their first time making a speech, leading chants, holding a banner, or helping with security. For one student who kept the march disciplined in rows of two, it was his first time at a rally! Everyone learned how to lead on the spot. Our disciplined militancy drew a lot of workers’ attention.
We disrupted traffic and marched to the public housing projects with “Hey hey, ho ho! This racist system has got to go!” In June, the cops raided and arrested 39 black workers and youth at the Grant and Manhattanville projects (see CHALLENGE, 11/12). They broke down doors with battering rams, trashed whole apartments, and handcuffed the elderly and children. A comrade who is fighting these fascist terror attacks spoke about the blatantly racist nature of the New York Police Department and called for everyone to pack the courts on November 17, the next court date for victims of the raid. Project residents responded by taking CHALLENGE and putting their fists in the air.
The cops also took notice. Two NYPD cars drove up to our rally, blaring their sirens in an attempt to drown out the chant of “NYPD KKK!” Instead of being intimidated, we chanted louder. More cops followed us for the remainder of the march: at least four cars, two vans, and two detective cars. “Get off the streets!” they shouted. We continued to march. A group of middle and high school students joined us, chanting, “If We Don’t Get It, Shut It Down! Ferguson! Shut It Down! Harlem! Shut It Down!”
In that moment we felt powerful. Residents nodded their heads and smiled. The cops did not expect a group of multiracial communists denouncing capitalism in a working-class neighborhood like East Harlem. As we marched, the cops’ attention to us reflected just how powerful organized youth and workers can be.
Fight like Ferguson
The rally would not have been possible without PLP’s actions in Ferguson, Missouri, where the rebellion has taught the Party’s youth a lot about how to fight. Ferguson demonstrates that black workers are the key to communist revolution. The very foundation of global capitalism is racism. Black youth are hit the hardest, as a measure for the bosses for how far they can go in oppressing and dividing the working class. Militant black workers have served as an inspiration for the international working class, beginning with Haiti, the first country to abolish slavery after a violent rebellion. Ferguson confirmed our communist understanding that anti-racism must be at the forefront of every struggle. This is reflected in the growth of PLP’s college work and in our black, Latin, and South Asian leadership.
Internationalism
A woman comrade from Mexico informed the participants about the rise of fascist conditions and the murder of 43 student fighters in Mexico City. Comrades from Haiti and Switzerland sent solidarity greetings. While there are many ruling classes, we see only one international working class. When student fighters in Mexico City are killed, youth in the U.S. should rally on campus, at the Mexican consulate, in immigrant neighborhoods.
In the keynote speech, a student leader from Chicago said, “Police murders of black youth will only intensify and deportations will only increase. But we have to do our part and organize resistance so that we can ultimately follow in the footsteps of that Red Army in the Soviet Union that crushed fascism where it stood. Wherever workers are met with fascism, they are also fighting back. And as revolutionaries we have to throw ourselves into these fights, because we must view every struggle as a school for communism and as a platform to build deeper ties with the working class.”
Professors and students have the task of carrying out the lessons from the Conference back to their local areas. We will continue to fight like Ferguson, to be bold and on the offensive against racist violence on our campuses and in our neighborhoods.
Fighting fascism ultimately means building one communist organization of billions across the world. PLP’s College Conference sowed seeds for that revolution. We are a fighting organization with tremendous potential to grow among youth. That’s why we say our future is bright.
BROOKLYN NY, October 21 — “We want justice for Kyam Livingston, killed in a Brooklyn cell!” rang out as the Committee for Justice for Kyam Livingston rallied in the Flatbush neighborhood where Kyam had lived. Today’s demonstration was bigger than last month’s, more neighbors joined the rally and many more watched and listened across the street from the rally or stopped as they exited the nearby subway. Hundreds of leaflets and over 250 CHALLENGEs were eagerly grabbed up by the rush hour crowd.
PLP has supported this fight from the start. We salute the family for their resolute commitment to continuing the struggle against the racist and callous treatment which caused Kyam’s death. What does it mean to get justice for Kyam? Can this family or others who have lost loved ones to racist police terror get justice under the rule of capitalism?
For months we chanted “we want the names, we want the tapes.” The cops who run Brooklyn Central Booking had refused to provided the names of those who were on duty in the Central Booking jail on July 21, 2013 when they denied medical attention to Kyam until she died. Likewise, they refused to acknowledge that there were video tapes of the holding cell let alone provide copies of them to the family. The months of struggle from the family, the community and the Party on the streets of Brooklyn helped us get that information.
The family has said that they want Brooklyn Central Booking to be cleaned up — to literally clean up the dirt and get red of the vermin — and changing the treatment of those held in the cells. It also means getting rid of those whose actions caused the death of Kyam. This is more difficult, because the atmosphere of the so-called criminal justice system is dictated from the top. The ruling class needs to politically divide the working class and intensify the oppression of black workers, and so wants racist, vicious treatment to be the usual way black workers and especially youth are dealt with by the system. While the cells might be clean for a while or a cop “thrown under the bus” here and there, the ruling class relies on terror here and around the world to make sure they remain in power.
While in some ways Kyam’s death was different from other racist police murders because the cops don’t even claim that she posed a threat or had a weapon, it is a part of the bigger pattern of racist murders by cops who view the lives of black and Latin workers unimportant and without value.
The main way that capitalists stay in power is by dividing all workers using racism, sexism and nationalism, and especially terrorizing some. In rare cases, some crumb will be thrown to try to pacify the workers, such as an indictment or even conviction of a racist cop. PL’ers have constantly raised the message of fighting for working-class unity to defeat racist police terror and destroying the ruling class, who rely on it for their very existence. We say the only way to win real justice is to destroy the capitalist’s system with communist revolution, and in order to get there we must fight back like Ferguson against each and every racist police murder with working class multi-racial unity.
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Petraeus Out of CUNY — We Won’t Fight Your Imperialist Wars
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- 13 November 2014 62 hits
NEW YORK CITY, October 29 — Nearly 30 students, professors and members of a Harlem church protested a talk by war criminal David Petraeus in Manhattan this evening. He was having a “conversation” with conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks, hosted by the Macaulay Honors College of City University New York, which hired the former commander of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and later CIA Director to teach a seminar course.
Last year hundreds of CUNY students and faculty demonstrated against his presence on a regular basis, to the point where he now is surrounded by dozens of NYC cops every time he appears publicly.
We chanted “Petraeus Out of CUNY” and “1, 2, 3, 4, We Won’t Fight Your Imperialist War; 5, 6, 7, 8, Petraeus Out, We Won’t Wait.” The last chant was particularly significant since many of the people in the audience were older, well-dressed business people who would never think of sending their children or grandchildren to the Middle East or Central Asia to risk their lives.
The people from Wall Street who admire Petraeus have big stakes in U.S. wars of occupation: (1) control over trillions of dollars worth of resources (oil and gas in the Middle East, a fortune of precious minerals in Afghanistan); (2) billions in profits from companies that produce the helicopters, jet fighters, tanks, cruise missiles, drones and other weapons; (3) markets for U.S. goods; and (4) profitable investment opportunities for U.S. companies.
So, who does the ruling class think will do the fighting for them? Who will come back in coffins, or with shattered bodies and minds? It will be working-class youth who will die and suffer, as well as inflicting widespread death and pain on those being occupied and attacked. That’s why Petraeus is at CUNY, to convince its working-class students to join ROTC, to serve in the military and to politically support the U.S. empire and its crimes. But the people who were demonstrating outside — a diverse group from many countries — aren’t buying what Petraeus is selling and have committed themselves to fighting imperialism.
Students spoke eloquently of last year’s many struggles at CUNY. A person from a church in Harlem described how NYC cops raided a housing project in Harlem, arresting many young people, which he called an “imperialist attack at home” and called for supporting the arrested youth at their court hearings.
Another speaker pointed out that Petraeus is a war criminal whose death count keeps rising. From 2003-2005, Petraeus was in charge of creating, arming, training and funding Iraqi paramilitary units to crush the Sunni insurgency. These units were formed out of Shia militias, who kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Sunnis. That sparked a brutal sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias in 2006, that took the lives of tens of thousands. The victory of the Shias consolidated the rule of Nouri al-Maliki, who in ensuing years did everything possible to antagonize the Sunnis, resulting in the rise of the fundamentalist Islamic state, which now controls much of Sunni-majority Iraq.
Petraeus is currently teaching at Macualy Honors College and is expected to teach again in Spring 2015. The seminar is titled The Coming American Decades, a course that examines how the U.S. and its North American allies can continue to maintain world domination when capitalism is in crisis. The course meets Monday afternoons at 555 West 57th Street. Surely this war criminal deserves another greeting from our students and faculty.
Many students are starting to understand that the problems we face — war, racism, sexism, poverty, unemployment, low wages, global warming — are due to capitalism, and that we need to make a revolution. We distributed CHALLENGE at the rally and are committed to building a revolutionary party to rid ourselves of people like Petraeus and his corporate masters.
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Fight Like Ferguson Forum: Can There Be A Good Cop?
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- 13 November 2014 64 hits
NEW YORK CITY, October 27 — Bringing home the events and the fightback against racist murder by cops in Ferguson, PLP members helped organize a “Fight Like Ferguson” forum at Hunter College today. The event’s purpose was to review the current state of resistance in Ferguson and its dynamics and to discuss concrete methods for linking that resistance to the worldwide struggle against racism.
A three-member panel gave a presentation, followed by questions and discussion. About 30 people from Hunter and other City University colleges attended. PL’ers invited the audience to the 2014 College Conference the following week. Everyone in the audience took CHALLENGE.
The first panelist gave basic information about Ferguson and drew parallels between the violence of police repression and brutality seen there with that of the Israeli state-sanctioned violence seen in Palestine. There was a brief overview of the history of Zionism in the Middle East and its relationship to indigenous and later refugee populations.
Our second panelist had captured live footage of nighttime protests, showing both resistance and police tactics, as well as interviews with members of the Lost Voices collective, a central group of working-class youth involved in organizing and coordinating the protests. After showing 15 minutes of raw footage (to be used in a forthcoming, independently produced documentary) the panelist then discussed connections between the roles of police repression, mass incarceration, and maintaining capitalist exploitation.
The third panelist focused on what can be done to continue to fight. Beginning with a description of living conditions in Ferguson, he continued with anecdotes of being on the ground there, and the different methods used by the resistance to stay ahead of the police and keep up the pressure on them. He also discussed what can tactically be done by people to broaden the resistance to exploitation and racism in a class society. The event formally ended with a general discussion on the content of the panel discussion.
A common theme seen in all of the discussion boiled down to a controversial question: can there be a good cop? Two Muslim South Asians in the audience, a targeted ethnic group on campus and throughout the city by the NYPD, wondered if it’s only individual cops or all cops who are racist. Members of the audience were largely divided. Some believed it’s possible for individual cops to act ethically; others argued that this can’t be. PLP members in the audience and panel pointed out the ideological foundations of policing, and the role that the state apparatus plays in the consolidation and maintenance of power by the capitalists.
Every cop’s job is to ultimately protect capitalism: private property, profits, businesses. For the bosses, a good cop is one who terrorizes and kills our class. For the workers, a good cop is a dead cop.
Despite some disagreements during the discussion, there was general agreement that we have to continue to make concrete fightbacks against racist oppression. We will be sure to follow up on the members of the audience to plan more struggles on campus. PLP strives to give leadership to these struggles, and direct them to a communist revolution and a bright, communist future.
