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From Syria to Ferguson — Imperialist Crisis, Communist Opportunity
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- 02 October 2014 65 hits
Three trends in the Middle East are accelerating toward a broader global conflict:
A sharpening imperialist rivalry that is driving Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar revitalization of the U.S. nuclear war machine (New York Times, 9/22/14).
A growing disagreement among U.S. rulers as to how to handle the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) amid a two-front war in Syria, the potential overrunning of a fractured Iraq, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s expanding ties with Iran.
The pressing need by the U.S. ruling class for more intense fascism, including profit-driven wage cuts, heightened racism to protect super-profits, and a militarized response to crush working-class rebellions.
But the rulers have a problem. As recent polls on the question of U.S. ground troops in the Middle East have shown, workers have not signed on to the bosses’ war plans. This opens the door for an organized working class, led by the Progressive Labor Party, to wage class war and communist revolution for workers’ power and to destroy the imperialist profit system. Only a society run by and for workers — communism — can end the problems caused by capitalism: depressions and mass unemployment, racism, sexism, poverty, environmental degradation, and unending wars.
Obama’s extended air bombardment of Iraq and now Syria — a close ally of Iran, Russia and China — brings the prospect of global conflict ever nearer. As they blast ISIS from the air, some U.S. strategists are also seeking to arm rebels to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, which may or may not prove feasible. Even were they to succeed, the response would be harsh from Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.
Meanwhile, the main, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists is facing the sudden need to prevent ISIS from seizing major oilfields in Iraq and, even more important, Saudi Arabia. These fields are the linchpin of U.S rulers’ status as the world’s leading imperialist power. The U.S. uses 25 percent of the world’s oil (Politifact.com). Its military depends on it. Even as the bosses find alternative domestic energy sources, they still need to control the distribution and pricing of Middle East oil. They need to protect the profits of core ruling-class enterprises like ExxonMobil and Chevron. Equally important, they cannot afford to cede these strategic riches to their imperialist rivals.
Fierce Debate Among U.S. Imperialists
At the same time, the U.S. bosses have long recognized the need to prepare for an inevitable military confrontation with China and/or Russia. The difficulty of managing these two necessities is fueling a fierce debate among U.S. imperialists over Syria-Iraq policy.
One camp calls shelling Syria a mistake that bolsters a U.S. enemy in Assad and does nothing to build public support for greater war goals. Another camp sees the shelling as a needed first step toward the march of U.S. troops into Damascus, the Syrian capital — a probability acknowledged on September 28 by House Speaker John Boehner.
On consecutive days, the New York Times, U.S. finance capital’s leading mouthpiece, published two editorials: “Wrong Turn On Syria: Helping Assad?” (9/24/14) and “Wrong Turn On Syria: No Convincing Plan” (9/25/14). The first said, “In the short term, Mr. Assad stands to benefit most from America’s military incursion” and the suppression of ISIS. It also warned that ISIS leaders view American intervention “as a recruitment tool.”
The second editorial faults Obama’s failure to win the public or Congress to the new militarism that his capitalist handlers require: “In the absence of public understanding or discussion and a coherent plan, the strikes in Syria were a bad decision.”
But Kenneth Pollack, a national security official under President Bill Clinton who later pushed hard for President George W. Bush’s Iraq war, thinks that ISIS could be a useful pretext for Obama to mount a U.S.-backed civil war in Syria and rid itself of Assad. Writing in the journal of the ultra-imperialist Council on Foreign Relations, Pollack proposed that the U.S. could achieve its goals without U.S. ground forces “by building a new Syrian opposition army capable of defeating both President Bashar al-Assad and the more militant Islamists” (Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2014).
Another Foreign Affairs article, “The Retrenchment War,” follows U.S. imperialists’ thinking that there are bigger fish to fry than ISIS — namely, the task of mobilizing the U.S. for a potential World War III.
On September 24, the Times countered that with a skeptical assessment that the build-up of an effective “moderate” Syrian rebel force “could take years, assuming the strategy works.” These differences reflect the disarray and indecision from the White House on down.
Bosses Need to Mobilize U.S. for Potential World War
The advance of ISIS is not altogether a negative development for U.S. rulers. They can point to the group as another “weapon of mass destruction” (a la Iraq), an excuse to bolster a failing NATO and their own war industries at the expense of decent wages and social services for U.S. workers.
Retrenchment was recently promoted by CFR chairman Richard Haass in his brief for militarization, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home.” This ruling-class manifesto spells out the need to rebuild infrastructure to world-war capacity, forge wartime political consensus within a fragmented U.S. capitalist class, and win working-class youth to kill their overseas brothers and sisters.
Forced to defer a highly unpopular military draft, the bosses are pushing patriotism through “national service.” This strategy would use immigrant Latin workers and youth both to fill the gap in military recruitment and to supply the millions of low-paid laborers needed to rebuild domestic infrastructure. In sum, it is a plan to put the country on a war footing.
Rulers’ Dilemma, Communists’ Opportunity
Once again, however, the rulers face a dilemma. The jobless black and Latin youth the bosses need as cannon fodder are the same youth their racist cops are tormenting and killing on the streets of cities large and small, from Chicago and Los Angeles to Ferguson, Missouri. In New York, under liberal Mayor Bill De Blasio and recycled police chief Bill “Broken Windows” Bratton, the NYPD made more than 137,000 misdemeanor arrests in the first seven months of this year. According to an editor at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, “More than 86 percent of those arrested were minorities. Those numbers are nearly identical to arrest data from the same period last year” under the previous mayor, the more openly racist Michael Bloomberg (NYT, 9/26/14).
Oppression inevitably generates rebellion. While the bosses need racism to sustain capitalist profits, it also undermines their promotion of war fever and mass enlistment in the military.
Meanwhile, the U.S. capitalists have to be unnerved by a development involving its main imperialist rival and its leading regional threat. As the Times reports (9/21/14):
Two Chinese warships have docked at Iran’s principal naval port for the first time in history.... The visit to the port of Bandar Abbas is an example of the growing ties between China and Iran. China is already the principal buyer of Iranian oil.... Iran’s main competitor in the Persian Gulf is the United States Navy, which has a base in Bahrain and stations at least one aircraft carrier in the region. On several occasions, Iran has threatened to choke off the strategic Hormuz Strait, a narrow waterway between Iran and the United Arab Emirates that is a gateway for 40 percent of the world’s oil and gas shipments.
U.S. rulers suffer from a depressed economy, decaying industry and infrastructure, a divided capitalist class, and an alienated, war-weary working class. The bosses are expanding their stockpiles of nuclear and conventional weapons and a proven readiness to use them, at the risk of hundreds of millions of workers’ lives. All the more reason to build a revolutionary communist party and to destroy this barbarous system.
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Red Leadership Needed to End Cholera and Occupation
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- 02 October 2014 63 hits
Port-au-Prince, September 15 — Several so-called progressive organizations held a sit-in at the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) today to demand justice — reparations — for the victims of cholera. They also demanded the departure of MINUSTAH, the United Nations troops that have been occupying Haiti since 2004. It was these same troops that brought cholera to Haiti in 2010, 10 months after the devastating earthquake. Over 8,500 people have died, and 350,000 have suffered from the illness.
Dozens of cholera victims, the majority women and elderly, gathered at the entrance of MSPP. They travelled hours from the Central Plateau (epicenter of the cholera epidemic) and Carrefour, a suburb of the capital. They waited over an hour in the scorching sun for the “leaders” to arrive.
PLP members participated in this and other numerous anti-cholera, anti-MINUSTAH protests over the years to point out the racist nature of the UN and imperialist onslaught in Haiti. Our position is to demand mass solutions: vaccinations, cholera treatment centers and a total modernization of sanitation and water systems, paid for by UN and the imperialists, rather than individual solutions.
As important as winning those would be, they will not end the struggle of workers in Haiti to build a real future for the working class. We fight to give revolutionary leadership to the struggle, not to rely on the “good will” of the courts or ruling-class imperialists and their local lackeys. We brought signs and led chants, asking the crowd to radicalize the movement by blocking MSPP’s gate and stopping vehicles.
That’s a strong contrast to the young bourgeois opportunist politicians who promised the people benefits and made them believe in the possibility of receiving money from the UN. They didn’t chant and tried to move away from those who did, showing that these participants were motivated not by class consciousness but by the opportunity to gain some personal benefits.
These pseudo-leaders tried to behave like superstars, only talking to the press, and not allowing demonstrators to speak at all. They would never speak, as we did, to the workers of the world, calling for a united fight against the health problems and lack of care faced by oppressed workers worldwide. Despite their claims to be on the left, they have no revolutionary ideas. Cholera is a disease of poverty; bosses like these are seldom among the victims.
This kind of experience shows that only revolutionary communists can lead the fight against capitalism and imperialism. We will continue this fight against not only against the bosses but also against the corrupt opportunists who serve the bosses’ interests. In doing so we will sharpen the class consciousness of workers and students here in Haiti and throughout the world. We have an egalitarian, anti-racist, anti-sexist world to win.
A few days ago, as an active member of a community organization, I was part of a large protest in front of two fast food restaurants, one of which belonged to the giant multinational corporation, McDonalds.
The protest was part of a national campaign conducted by many community organizations and trade unions demanding a $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers and their right to a union, since their current miserable wage barely covers expenses to support their families. These workers, as all workers under capitalism, are exploited.
This protest started very early in the morning, before dawn, because this was a national action where many workers were going on strike and others would participate in civil disobedience.
I was part of the protest in New York that was quite militant and in which 2,000 people participated. Thirty four people were arrested for civil disobedience and it’s possible that the police had a list of those who were to be arrested beforehand.
Slogans were militant, including “Strike, Strike, Strike!” and “Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!” among others.
One detail everyone noticed was the incredible number of cops surrounding the protest. I said loudly, “They thought they were in Ferguson, and were afraid of the power of the working class and of the truth.” That was why they pushed us from the center of the street and forced us to march on the sidewalk.
A woman claimed the cops were there to protect us, and some comrades, me included, argued that cops weren’t protecting us, that they were protecting the bosses’ interests; that the cops were there to repress and arrest workers, the way they did in Ferguson and around the world.
I had the chance to distribute 200 CHALLENGEs during the march, which were well received, although some were thrown down the street, but I picked them up and gave them to other workers who took them and put them away to read later.
I was very moved when I saw workers so early in the morning, chanting our slogans. That’s why I believe it’s good to continue working in community organizations, trade unions, churches, etc. I believe that’s the way to expand our Party to become a massive international party, and to be consciously ready for the time of the revolution, take power for the working class, and build a communist society.
Red Fighter
NEW YORK CITY, September 21 — An estimated 310,000 came from all over the country to march in New York’s People’s Climate March. A contingent of PLP marched among them, distributing hundreds of CHALLENGEs and talking to marchers about the causes of climate change.
This massive march showed important developments in the environmentalist movement — it was more integrated and there were many people carrying signs attacking capitalism for climate change. These marchers want to see laws or reforms go into effect to protect the environment. Many were open to us as we explained that capitalism cannot be “cleaned up.” It is the nature of a profit-driven system notorious for short-sighted decisions to grab onto and maintain its major source of profit — fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
One day after the march, heirs to the Rockefeller fortune announced they will divest $50 billion in holdings in fossil fuels. This is nothing more than a crucial ploy to co-opt support from the working class. This sum of money is a drop in an ocean of profits this ruling class family squeezes from the working class. It is also a distraction because these are the same heirs that control ExxonMobil and drive U.S. imperialism.
The integration at this march is key, as racism is the ruling class’ strongest weapon against the working class. To work to end climate change, capitalism must be smashed. Smashing racism is key to that fight.
This march was held days before the UN Climate Summit, but considering the competition that is inherent in capitalism, climate change conferences will always disappoint the world’s working class. Capitalism is by its nature a dangerous system — dangerous to workers and dangerous to the environment. Only when workers everywhere take state power under the banner of communism will we eventually be able to stop global warming. Only with workers running the world can we make the decisions that best protect us. That means a PLP-led revolution for communism.
Brooklyn, September 30 — School starting back in New York this year has meant much more than in recent years. Besides catching up on Math and English, students and staff have needed to address the multiple racist murders committed by kkkops across the country. The liberal politicians and the media have tried to convince workers that all they need is to vote and look to the courts for justice. This line did not resonate with the working class of Ferguson though. They took the streets for two weeks in rebellion. Students, parents and staff in schools in New York are now trying to follow their lead.
On the first day of school, English and Social Studies teachers initiated with lessons discussing the murder of Mike Brown and the resulting uprising. This was not enough for students. They wanted to take the streets.
The Student Government Organization of one Brooklyn school led a study group of about 30 students and staff. Students who attended had been grappling with ideas like “Is it still racist murder when a black officer kills a black youth?” and “the role of police in general” since the first day of class discussions. The next day, they made posters and chant sheets. Throughout the week, they organized their friends, teachers and parents to attend a rally after school on a Friday.
The turnout was outstanding. About 50 students, teachers and parents chanted “The police are violent and we will not be silent” and “Mike Brown means we got to fight back!” The students led the rally from start to finish. Their vigorous chanting encouraged many in the liberal neighborhood to join in as they walked by. Then, the rally was closed with a speech by a student who encouraged all in attendance to continue to organize and fight until there was “real justice”. She explained that to her this meant an end to all police terror and racism.
When parents, students and teachers are united in the fight against racism, Progressive Labor Party has tremendous potential for growth. Every conversation that emphasizes the need for revolution over reform to end racism and police murder is potential for new comrades to join our fight. When our class is under sharp attack by the bosses, we must be ready to fight back.
Events like the murder of Mike Brown, Shantel Davis, and children in Palestine lay capitalism bare for what it truly is: a system that can never serve the needs of the working class. These glaring examples draw a line in the sand and force everyone to choose sides. Workers in Ferguson and around the world have chosen the side to fight back. PLP will continue to push that fight towards communist revolution, the only system that will provide real justice for the working class.
