Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia puts the U.S. on a collision course with Beijing. At the same time, the U.S. bosses’ economic crisis could threaten their long-term ability to prevail militarily over China. As a result, they’re seeking a worldwide coalition against their imperialist rivals.
Meanwhile, Chinese expansionism is already threatening near-term conflict that the U.S. ruling class may be unable to avoid, ready or not. Obama is “rebalancing” U.S. forces to East Asia while maintaining bases in the Middle East to control oil and gas resources and supply lines — the reason it has fought two wars in the region and murdered millions of workers since 1991. But China’s bosses need the same resources to supply their expanding economy, another threat to U.S. domination.
That’s why China’s capitalists, in addition to launching a blue-water (deep-sea) navy, are forcibly claiming title to oil-rich islands in the South China and East China seas. Their goal is to turn their rivals’ operations in the area into acts of war. In fact, ExxonMobil and Chevron are already drilling there, both for oil and to enlist potential U.S. war partners the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam.
Ironically, these three nations have all suffered mass murder by the U.S. war machine: the conquest of the Philippines in 1898, which launched the U.S. as an imperialist power; Japan in World War II, with the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fire-bombing of other Japanese cities; the invasion of Vietnam two decades later, which killed three million workers and peasants there.
The nationalist outlook among leaders in these countries (criticized by the Progressive Labor Party as far back as the Vietnam War) could lead them into an alliance with the capitalist butchers of the U.S. Then again, popular opposition to uniting with U.S. bosses could upset the applecart.
U.S. Bosses’ Main Option:The Military
Given this emerging crisis, U.S. rulers must rely on their military. New Navy warships, originally designed for inshore fighting in Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been redirected to the east. On March 1, the first four of 55 U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships left San Diego for Singapore. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “the fast-moving ships are intended to patrol maritime traffic with allied navies, including private oceangoing cargo ships and pirate threats, while monitoring the increasingly tenuous intent of Chinese vessels, all at the contested southern door to the South China Sea” (2/28/13). Singapore commands not only the strategic China seas but also the Malacca Straits, a major chokepoint for Middle East energy supplies headed to China.
On the webpage of Foreign Affairs magazine (2/22/13), the mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and U.S. finance capital, Professor Michael Klare of liberal Hampshire College foresaw less than smooth sailing:
In the East China Sea, China and Japan are squabbling over a cluster of small, uninhabited islands called the Diaoyu by the Chinese and the Senkaku by the Japanese. Japan has administered the islands since the end of World War II, but China, Taiwan, and Japan all lay claim to them. In the South China Sea, meanwhile, tensions have flared over several island groups, most notably the Spratly and Paracel islands.... China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all of these islands, and Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines claim some of them. Little more than rock formations, the islands possess hardly any value in and of themselves. But they are believed to sit astride vast undersea reserves of oil and natural gas — lucrative caches for whichever country can get to them. Beyond the economic boon it would be, the Chinese view acquisition of the islands (along with the recovery of Taiwan) as the final dismantling of the imperial yoke of Western powers and Japan.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, major firms such as Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil have partnered with the state-owned oil companies of Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines to develop promising reserves in maritime territories claimed by these countries as well as China.
[R]egardless of whether it was Obama’s intention when he pivoted to the Pacific, he has surely increased the chances that rash and potentially incendiary behavior by any one of the countries hashing it out in the South and East China seas could lead to war.
Rulers Prepare for Future Wider War
U.S. rulers recognize the probability — and the necessity — of a future wider war with China. Though they may not be fully prepared for it at present, they may soon be drawn into one. Their economy is stagnating. Bitter if unfocused anti-capitalist anger rules popular sentiment. According to Major Fernando Lujan, an Army strategy planner and fellow at the imperialist CFR, the bosses would prefer U.S. War Lite, where Special Forces troops can go anywhere at a moment’s notice:
Looming budget cuts, ground forces worn down by years of repeated deployments, and a range of ever evolving security challenges from Mali to Libya and Yemen are quickly making “light footprint” military interventions a central part of American strategy. Instead of “nation building” with large, traditional military formations, civilian policymakers are increasingly opting for a discrete combination of air power, special operators, intelligence agents, indigenous armed groups, and contractors, often leveraging relationships with allies and enabling partner militaries to take more active roles (Foreign Policy, 3/8/13).
But if things heat up in, say, the South China Sea, a quick remobilization is on the boards, regardless of budgetary or political constraints:
As the Army and Marines begin to cut 100,000 personnel during the next few years, policymakers and senior military leaders have announced plans to retain an expansible, experienced force that can be reconstituted rapidly in the event of a major war.
What the U.S. war machine prefers is a slow but steady ramp-up to a potential world war. Julia Gillard, prime minister of stalwart U.S. ally Australia, has pledged loyalty — along with working-class cannon fodder — to war-maker Obama: “[W]e are delighted with the pivot or the rebalance. The U.S. has been a continuing presence in our region....We have fought alongside America in every war” (Washington Post, 3/10/13). Aiming at the South China Sea region, Obama has already posted 2,500 U.S. Marines to Darwin, Australia’s northernmost city. Washington also threatens to use its post-WWII “right” to defend Japan and the Philippines by armed force.
Imperialist Crisis A Revolutionary Opportunity for Our Party
Out of their weakness, U.S. capitalists have yet to reveal their schemes for militarizing the U.S. for global war. They disagree fiercely among themselves and know that working-class loyalty to them is thin. The rulers also know they need a military draft, which could provoke mass popular opposition based on U.S. workers’ and students’ experience with the slaughters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The imperialist crisis over China can be a revolutionary opportunity for our Party and the working class. Millions of workers worldwide may not be ready to lay down their lives in the service of U.S. capitalism. Their reluctance can enable PLP to organize to expose and oppose the rulers’ war plans in the shops and unions, schools and universities, churches and communities — and especially in the military.
A good start is to win our friends and co-workers to march this year on May Day. The international workers’ day represents the antidotes to the poison of capitalism: anti-racism, anti-sexism, strikes against mass racist unemployment. May Day reflects workers’ commitment to turn imperialist wars among the bosses into class war against the entire system.
March on May Day! Join Progressive Labor Party!
BROOKLYN, NY, March 11 — Hundreds of mainly black youth gathered on the corner of Church Avenue and E 55th street tonight, angered over the murder of their friend Kimani Gray by the racist NYPD. It hasn’t even been a year since Shantel Davis was shot down in cold blood by Phillip Atkins, a plainclothes officer operating out of the KKKlavern, otherwise known as the 67th precinct.
The cops claimed, as usual, that Kimani had a gun but one woman at a window declared he was unarmed and his friends said the cops never identified themselves. The cops put eleven bullets into this 16-year-old, who lay face down on the ground pleading for his life.
Tonight Kimani’s friends were having none of the cops’ lies. At the vigil, two people spoke on a bullhorn, setting the tone. A black woman, who boldly confronted Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at an open forum in the fall, angrily denounced the cops as racist and demanded they stop killing black youth. Shantel Davis’s sister urged the youth to get involved in the fight for justice against racist police murder and recounted her numerous marches to the 67th precinct since June. She has since appeared on local radio and invited the whole community to her next planning meeting, this coming Monday night.
Then, dozens of enraged youth took to the streets down Snyder Avenue. When it was proposed to march down Church Avenue, the major thoroughfare, the youth shouted yes! We going to Church!
Hundreds poured into the streets chanting “NYPD! KKK!” They surged across the streets and sidewalks. Cars and buses were forced to stop. The goal was the 67th station house itself, which the young rebels pelted with rocks and bottles. This same band of youth beat an effective retreat back to their memorial to Kimani, having suffered only one arrest. The NYPD was caught flat-footed. The city bus commandeered to dispatch officers to the scene was pummeled by youth on its way to the precinct.
When two cops were surrounded by about 36 youth, an NYPD van pulled up nearby. The officers inside assessed the situation and moved on. The two surrounded cops were heard later on that night exchanging stunned and angry words about how they had been potentially hung out to dry by their fellow cops.
Cops Serve Bankers
The rage of these young rebels was somewhat disorganized. Fruits they lifted were joined by garbage cans that were pelted at every cop car across a mile-long stretch of this major thoroughfare. A Rite Aid pharmacy surveillance video was used to make arrests of youth. A bank window was shattered, but the youth’s consciousness hasn’t yet tied the role of the banks as the rulers of the system to the racist cops’ role as the bankers’ servants. That’s PLP’s job.
In the following day’s Daily News, an article “reporting” on the rebellion smeared Kimani as a criminal misfit. This is similar to the bosses’ media attacks on Shantel in Brooklyn, Ramarley Graham and Reynaldo Cuevas in the Bronx, Vincent Smith, Jr. in Indiana, Albert Purnelli in Philadelphia, Manuel Díaz and Joel Acevedo in California, Damaël in Haiti, and millions of children murdered by the bosses’ guns and drones worldwide.
There is no mention of how thugs like billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly force our youth from school to prison or the military everyday. According to the NYPD’s own reports, 9 out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent. Our youth have been stop-and-frisked over four million times since 2002, over 95 percent of them black or Latino. The cops use their stop-and-frisk policy to build up a record against hundreds of thousands of innocent youth to be dragged out as “fact” in future incidents.
Young black and Latino workers and students worldwide are considered cannon fodder for the bosses’ wars and at the point of racist cops’ guns from New York City to Port-au-Prince and beyond. This struggle is part of an international one against racist police brutality in a decaying capitalist system. It will surely lay the foundation to spoil the bosses’ plans for continued imperialist wars.
The militant youth displayed the proper reaction to racist police murder. The old action taken by Kimani’s friends points the way to the kind of fight-back the whole working class needs to defeat capitalism and its racist cops.
BROOKLYN, NY, February 14 — This is a racist attack on the residents of Red Hook. The State of New York is coming for our patients’ lives. The power to stop this comes from us when we are united…Writing letters will not do it!
That’s what a Long Island College Hospital (LICH) paramedic said to hundreds of co-workers and community residents at a rally to stop the proposed hospital closing. And it brought the crowd to their feet!
Hundreds of hospital workers are struggling to stop the closing of Downstate Central and LICH. These hospitals serve primarily black, working-class neighborhoods. LICH serves Red Hook, an area devastated by superstorm Sandy and the massive public housing projects there.
These closure threats follow the attack on Brookdale Hospital and the closing of Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway a year ago. The largest of all the hospital unions, Local 1199/SEIU, with over 200,000 members in NY, has kept the workers at each of these sites isolated from each other. Rather than mobilize the workers to shut the City down and up the ante against the racist profit system, they handle each case individually, citing mismanagement and corruption as the root of the problem.
When Brookdale was threatened with closing almost two years ago, LICH 1199 leaders argued that Brookdale should close because it would mean more job security at LICH! Then last summer, this same crew called the cops on a retired 1199 member who attended a meeting about the LICH closing and argued for a strike. Not only did they have him removed, these rats had him arrested and falsely accused him of making terrorist threats. Now the chickens have come home to roost!
No doubt, there is a cesspool of corruption as the politicians throw millions of dollars at private consultants, subcontractors and the corrupt hospital management firm, Continuum. These thieves make obscene salaries while hospitals are short on toilet paper and the most basic supplies. But more to the point, Democratic Governor Cuomo and the Feds are cutting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals by 50 percent. These cuts are racist to the core, aimed at the unemployed, children and the elderly. As the black woman doctor who heads the neo-natal unit said at the rally, “We’re fighting for our babies.”
Cuomo says they “are running out of money for these hospitals,” yet the rulers have deep pockets for their continued carnage in Afghanistan and Pakistan and potential imperialist attacks on Iran and N. Korea. Ultimately, these spreading wars are potentially headed to another world war between the U.S. and China.
The good news is that healthcare workers and patients are in a fighting mood. PLP has a base at both hospitals, including hundreds of CHALLENGE readers who have led mass actions. Together we can try to lead workers past the obstacles the unions, courts and politicians place before us. Maybe we can stop the closings and maybe not. But by fighting back we can build the revolutionary communist movement which is the only way we will ever have free health care for all. Having a healthcare workers contingent at this year’s May Day March is our next big test.
- Information
Worker-Student Unity Battles Columbia U.’s Billionaire Board
- Information
- 14 March 2013 67 hits
NEW YORK CITY, March 8 — Today several hundred chanting students joined workers in another militant solidarity march on Columbia University’s (CU) campus. The 35 Faculty Club workers are fighting for a decent wage, for pay during school breaks and against all their tips being stolen. Many students and workers, a faculty member and community supporters spoke about the millions of dollars CU spends to pay and renovate the home of President Bollinger and to take over West Harlem while refusing to pay a living wage to workers.
Many speakers mentioned the humanistic, liberal pretenses of CU. If you scratch a liberal, you find a capitalist. Liberals are capitalists who try to put a nice veneer on their hunger for profit. CU has an endowment of billions and large real estate holdings. Seventy-five percent of CU’s Board members are bankers. Their role is to train new capitalist leaders and money managers while simultaneously teaching students to set themselves apart from workers.
The growing Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) group sees clearly how oppressed these workers are and how their working conditions contradict the university’s avowed goals. The chants reflect the power of, and need for, worker-student unity. More and more students are joining the struggle.
Marchers took over 70 CHALLENGES and May Day flyers. PL’ers can win these militant students and workers to see themselves as lifelong fighters for a society based on equality and production for need — a communist society.
Rely on Rank-and-File Workers,Not Union Mis-leaders
We need mass support from workers in other unions on campus. As reflected in labor struggles worldwide, union leaders neither seek support from other unions nor offer it when other unions are striking. Although most campus workers seem supportive, the union leaders refuse to organize it. This mirrors the recent school bus workers’ strike, which had widespread support, but whose leaders stopped it dead to please local politicians. Pro-capitalist union misleaders today are invested in winning favor with politicians and favors for themselves. It will take mass action from all rank-and-file campus workers to fight this and future struggles. We cannot rely on any bosses but only on the power of the working class.
AUSTIN, TEXAS, February 23 — Over 2,000 angry parents, teachers, students and community members rallied today, demanding an end to STAAR (the state’s latest standardized testing scheme) and to fight the $5.4 billion cuts in education.
The crowd this year was angrier and more militant than in the past. The rage could be felt as the multiracial mass led by two all-black marching bands strode up the main downtown avenue toward the capitol. Liberal misleaders of the march led chants of “Si se puede” (“yes, we can”) and “Save our schools.” PL’ers, joining in with rank-and-file students and teachers, led militant slogans: “The banks got bailed out, schools got sold out!” and “Up, up with education, down, down with deportations.”
At the rally speaker after speaker condemned STAAR. Signs in the crowd called on parents to openly defy the exam by opting their children out of taking it. Thousands read a student leaflet exposing the billions paid to the testing company Pearson to create and administer the new state exam. With these developments there is a potential to win thousands of students, parents and teachers to PLP’s communist ideas.
Out of School into Prison or the Army
While the STAAR exam threatens all Texas students, the impact it is having and will continue to have on working-class mainly black and Latino students is devastating. The latest STAAR results have shown that the lowest scores occur in the poorest schools. The reality is that thousands of these black and Latino students will be pushed out of school and into the prisons or the army, serving as cannon fodder for the next imperialist war. This fact reveals the truly racist nature of the standardized testing movement.
Two black students spoke about a struggle in their mainly black high school to stop a charter school takeover. One of the youth described how he regularly attends school board meetings where he attacks the board for their compliance with the charter school. Thousands cheered this sophomore’s actions, which were a sharp contrast to the empty platitudes of the school bosses who were invited to speak.
Several superintendents and board presidents spoke out in opposition to the cuts and the testing-mania. But there is true hypocrisy when the very people who implement the cuts on a local level claim to be leading the fight against them. These school bosses are as much to blame for the cuts as the politicians they condemn. Pearson bosses and the servants of capitalism in the government rely on the compliance of these school boards and superintendents to maintain their capitalist system.
The overarching theme of the rally was to blame “greedy” and “incompetent” Republicans and companies like Pearson for the problems in education. The cuts are actually caused by a capitalist system in crisis, one both Democrats and Republicans are attempting to “cure” off the backs of working-class youth. In reality, the liberal rulers pose a higher threat to the working class, as they are better able to pacify and trick workers. The rally called for everyone to vote for “pro-education” Democrats.
PL’ers called to “vote with your feet” toward revolution. Hundreds of leaflets and CHALLENGEs were distributed, calling for communist revolution as the only solution to the problems of education. People were very receptive to PLP’s ideas and we plan to intensify our CHALLENGE sales at future events.
Tie Budget Cuts, Tests to Capitalism’s Racism
There is much potential for the Party’s ideas to grow in the fight against budget cuts and standardized testing. The line of the liberal misleadership to vote for change has a strong appeal in a period where many see no alternatives to capitalism. We must be vigilant in connecting the budget cuts in education and the standardized testing movement to the racism inherent under capitalism. And we must continue to put forward a sharp line of class-conscious anti-racism and
anti-sexism in these movements. It is around these ideas that we will win thousands to PLP and expand the fight for equal education to a fight for communism!
