I just saw the hilarious new movie, “Horrible Bosses,” and want to recommend it to CHALLENGE readers. It is a full-fledged comedy about three buddies who decide, after realizing that they have no other options, to kill their bosses!

Each of the three has a different situation: Nick (Jason Bateman) is a dedicated white-collar worker whose deceitful, treacherous, and completely evil boss (Kevin Spacy) chastises him for being two minutes late for work, among other things. He fails to give him a promotion after leading him to think he’ll get one for months, just to trick him into working harder. Nick tells the boss he’s going to quit, but the boss threatens to blacklist him with all the other companies in the field.

Kurt (Saturday Night Live’s Jason Sudekis) is another hard-working office worker for a small family-owned industrial company, and shows genuine concern for his coworkers. When the druggie, immoral, hedonistic son (Colin Farrell) takes over as head of the company after his father’s death, he threatens to fire Kurt if he doesn’t fire two other workers.

The third main character is Dale (Charlie Day), an innocent, young, and engaged-to-be-married dental assistant who is sexually harassed by his female boss, a dentist played by Jennifer Aniston.

The three men realize that each is stuck in a situation that they can’t get out of. They also realize that each of them would not be able to find another job in the failing economy, and are left with the decision to find a way to kill each other’s bosses.
    The rest of the film deals with the bumbling plans of the three men to carry out the killings. There are great supporting roles played by other top actors, especially Jamie Foxx as an equally bumbling potential hit man. A couple of his scenes expose the subtle racism of the three men, making their plans even more difficult. But in the end, things work out in a way that would generally please readers of CHALLENGE.

The film is not for everyone — much of the humor revolves around drug and sexual themes. But the jokes are there from the start of the movie until the end, and the contempt we feel for the three bosses does not dwindle. That was my main worry before seeing the film — that the writers would let the film’s bosses off the hook at the end. But all three bosses get what they deserve. There’s even a cameo at the end, by an actor many will recognize (I won’t give that away), who plays a new boss, but it’s clear, in a humorous little scene, that he’ll be no better!

“Horrible Bosses” is obviously not meant to be a political film, but it can still be useful to communist organizers. It would be a fun way to introduce topics like class structure, capitalist methods of management, and how the threat of unemployment keeps us as wage slaves. It is also interesting to note that this movie is one of the few that deals with sexual harassment of women against men — which is of course far less common than the reverse — but in the movie’s case could only happen because the male worker
was employed by the female dentist.

Finally, I suggest that this movie be seen by comrades and their friends, followed by a discussion of what life would be like in a world without any bosses. There could be rich talks about several topics: the pitfalls of sexism, racism, and drug abuse; how wage slavery exploits us not just economically but emotionally, and intellectually,  as well; 
why the increasing threat of unemployment leaves workers with few options; why you can’t kill off the bosses without killing capitalism; and finally, how the workplace could be organized under communism, with workers directly in control of their environments.

Red Critic

Annie Jacobsen and her new book “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” have been popular with NPR, the New York Times, the Daily Show and Democracy Now. Her book is a rehash of what goes on at the U.S. military testing base in the Nevada desert. However, what is grabbing headlines are the allegations made in the book’s final section.

Jacobsen alleges that the “Roswell Incident” –– in which a UFO supposedly crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947 –– was actually a failed Soviet propaganda campaign. She claims that the UFO in question was a Soviet spy plane designed by the Nazi Horten brothers and flown by 12-year-olds who had been genetically/surgically altered to look like aliens by the infamous Nazi Josef Mengele. The plane was crashed in the U.S. in order to cause a War of the Worlds panic (reference to H.G. Well’s novel that details the conflict between invading Martians and humans) that would serve as a cover for a Soviet invasion. The grand mastermind of this plan was, “naturally,” Joseph Stalin.

This theory is yet another method to equate two diametrically opposing forces: the Nazis and Soviets. Nazism is a variety of fascism (a form of capitalism in crisis) at its most brutal combining vicious racism with sexism and nationalism. While Nazism is inherently anti-working-class, the Soviets were fighting for a workers’ state. The Soviets vehemently fought the Nazis. Yet the U.S. continues to keep the workers in the dark through outright anti-communist lies.

Jacobsen’s anti-communist nonsense was spewed forth by a single anonymous source (most likely her over-active imagination) without any concern for facts or evidence. The media, owned by the ruling class, has been praising the book’s unscientific allegations. But facts are stubborn things, and they belie Jacobsen’s tale.

Immediate problems arose in Jacobsen’s story. Nazi Mengele did not disappear after the abandoning of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945, but rather fled the Soviet Red Army, an odd behavior for a supposed ally. He worked in concentration camps, including Gross Rosen, before taking a job as a medic for the Wehrmacht (armed forces of Nazi Germany).

After the Soviet Union crushed Mengele’s beloved Nazi regime, he continued fleeing west to Argentina on a CIA pipeline eventually ending up in Brazil. At no time was he ever in the Soviet Union, a country which would of course have executed Mengele if it got hold of him. Likewise, the Horten brothers fled west in the face of advancing communists. One brother wound up in Argentina, while the other took a job in the newly U.S.-imperialist-reconstituted West German Luftwaffe (air force).

Of course, these factual problems only add to the ridiculous rational problems in Jacobsen’s fairy tale. For instance, how did an un-aerodynamic flying saucer aircraft, which neither Nazis nor U.S. engineers could fly, make the 6,000-mile journey from the Soviet Union to New Mexico? An aircraft so small that it had to be flown by 12-year-olds couldn’t have held enough fuel for the trip, either.

If this was all a propaganda stunt to terrorize people in the U.S., why was the aircraft crashed in the desert of a barren, low-populated state? Why not LA or Times Square? If this master plan was a stunt to trigger World Was III, where was the war? Where is the evidence of Soviet forces on the brink of invasion? And why did the anti-communist U.S. conceal these horribly abused children from the world media? U.S. fabricated a myriad of stories (and clearly still do so) about the Soviet Union, yet they let this golden opportunity slip? If these were indeed 12-year-olds, how was Mengele working on them in 1935 in the USSR when he was known to be in Nazi Germany at that time? Apparently, Jacobsen’s math is as bad as her journalism.)

These inconsistencies are due to Jacobsen’s poorly constructed, poorly reasoned, anti-communist lies. It stands as proof that the U.S. media will promote any lie that defames the first workers’ state. The capitalist class will go to any lengths to defame and erase the memory of the Soviet Union because it stands as proof that workers can take state power from the capitalist class, resist continuous capitalist invasions, and build a better world in the process. Every time that they fabricate another ludicrous lie about the Soviet Union, they hope to obliterate the memory of real, working communism further out of workers’ minds.

By organizing workers into the PLP, we keep the memory and dream of communism alive for the working class. We build for the day when we can destroy the capitalist state and use communist state power to smash the capitalists once and for all.

A ‘‘study’’ rivaling Nazi experiments on World War II prisoners were carried out in Baltimore’s poor neighborhoods by the Kennedy Krieger Institute, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, which for six years ‘‘knowingly expos[ed] black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning...exploring the hazards of lead paint’’ (NY Times, 9/16).

Lawyers in a class action suit said ‘‘more than 100 children were endangered by high levels of lead dust in their homes despite assurances from the...Institute that the houses were ‘lead safe.’’’ The Institute provided no medical treatment to the children, who ranged in age from 12 months to five years old.

The ‘‘children were enticed into living in lead-tainted housing...and intentionally subjected to lead poisoning,’’ said the suit, presumably to ‘‘assess the success of lead paint...abatement measures.’’ The suit stated that, ‘‘Nothing about the research was designed to treat the...children for lead poisoning.’’ Baltimore has the highest lead poisoning rates in the U.S.

One court compared the experiment ‘‘to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment which withheld medical treatment for African-American men with syphilis’’ (NYT).

One lawyer declared that when parents signed consent forms, the contracts failed to provide a complete and clear explanation about the research. David Armstrong, father of the lead plaintiff, said he was not told that his son, aged 3, was being introduced to elevated levels of lead paint dust. During the two-year experiment, the child received no medical treatment for lead. Later when he took his son to a pediatrician, he discovered the boy had blood lead levels 2½ to 3 times higher than before the experiment began.

‘‘I thought they had cleaned everything [in the apartment] and it would be a safe place,’’ Mr. Armstrong said. ‘‘They said it was ‘lead safe.’’’

The Institute’s CEO said, ‘‘The research was conducted in the best interests of all the children enrolled.’’

Such are the depths to which capitalist racism sinks. Only by exterminating this stinking system will the working class ever be free of such racist attacks on our children.

CHICAGO, September 3 — J.C. Brizard, the new Chicago schools CEO by way of the Broad Superintendents Academy, is pushing a racist attack on this city’s predominantly black and Latino student body as well as an assault on teachers’ wages. He wants to add 90 minutes to the school day and two weeks to the school year in “exchange” for a 2% raise. That’s 29% more work for 2% more money.

More time in school may or may not be a good thing for students, depending on how the time is used. But contrary to the lies of Brizard and his boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, this move has nothing to do with improving conditions for students and everything to do with lowering costs to educate working-class children. This cost-cutting means that fewer students will learn to read and develop basic skills. They will be primed to fall victim to minimum-wage jobs — if any at all, given today’s massive unemployment. Many will be driven to join the military out of economic desperation. 

Capitalism uses public education primarily to justify the profit system and to exploit the working class. It “educates” students to believe in the system while setting them up to accept mass racist unemployment as “natural” and to “do their patriotic duty” to fight in the bosses’ oil wars.

Brizard is doing the work he was trained to do by the Broad Academy. Its website’s home page reveals its purpose: “Wanted: the nation’s most talented executives to run the business of education.” It goes on to say, “Without dramatic changes, the U.S. economy will continue to suffer…. Our standard of living will decline, our democracy will be at risk and we will continue to fall behind as other countries far surpass us.”

U.S. rulers have not suddenly developed a soft spot in their hearts for jobless and other working-class families. Their use of words such as “our” and “we” and “us” hides the fact that it’s their economy. Their concern about economic “suffering” has nothing to do with the high unemployment and low wages that disproportionately affect black and Latino workers. Rather, they’re concerned with the falling rate of profit faced by U.S. corporations. This is due to the nature of capitalism in general and to the low wages paid to workers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in particular.

Teachers are tired of being maligned by the bosses’ media and getting blamed for the educational ills that stem from capitalism’s inequities. Strike talk is widespread in many city schools. Class consciousness is uneven, as it is everywhere today, and much work remains to be done before a strike can occur. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract expires next June 30.

PLP is helping to build for a strike. While some union leaders regard striking as a last resort if contract negotiations break down, PLP views strikes as empowering; they give workers a taste of running society in their interests instead of those of the capitalists. They’re a heightened form of class struggle. They’re potentially schools for communism.

In general, capitalists generate higher profits by paying lower wages, getting more work per hour from each worker, and moving more of the money workers pay in taxes into the pockets of the rich. In education, this can mean paying teachers less, raising class size, and using tax money for corporate welfare instead of for students.

Schemes like the New Markets Tax Credits and Tax Increment Financing allow charter school operators and their financial backers to steal millions in tax money while governments at all levels keep shrinking school budgets.

The longer school day and year proposed by Brizard and Emanuel will force teachers to work longer hours for essentially the same pay. A 2% raise for working 90 minutes a day and two weeks more per year amounts to $4.31 an hour for the additional labor. Chicago school bosses are pushing this plan in the media and directly to teachers through school principals. They have bypassed negotiations with the CTU on this issue because they want to divide and conquer teachers and to weaken the union. At the same time, the bosses aim to portray teachers as greedy and uncaring, an effort to divide them from their natural allies: students and parents. 

Brizard won staff members at three schools (out of more than 600) to sign waivers to the CTU contract and agree to work 40 minutes longer every day. These schools are receiving $150,000 bonuses. Since the ruling class is stealing money from the education budget, this bonus could not possibly be given to every school. It’s a wedge used to get a small number of schools to agree to a longer day with virtually no pay increase, a dangerous precedent.

The teachers’ immediate answer to these attacks must be a citywide strike. But a strike also offers workers longer-range gains. During a strike, workers can see more clearly that governmental institutions — courts, cops, politicians — serve the interests of the capitalists. It can create an opportunity for them to rely on each other, bond as a fighting unit, and begin thinking about a world without bosses, a communist world. Chicago PLP school workers will strive to make that potential a reality.