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Draft on the Way: Obama’s War Budget Makes Workers Pay
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- 21 July 2011 83 hits
The U.S. ruling class’s “debate” over raising the debt limit above $14 trillion and cutting the budget is all a cover to hide the goal of forcing the working class to foot the bill for U.S. imperialism’s global wars that are slaughtering workers internationally.
Wars for control of Mid-East oil and gas and for strategic footholds against China and Russia cost U.S. imperialists a fortune — $3.7 trillion so far in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, as battlefields widen to Libya, Yemen, Somalia and beyond, the current depression leaves U.S. rulers with inadequate ready cash. So Obama and the major capitalists he serves are pushing a budget plan that shoves even more war burden onto the backs of workers.
Obama’s proposal for 2012-2020 slashes $655 billion from the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits workers have earned. (White House Budget, published in 2010) This includes lowering Social Security benefits and gradually raising full retirement benefits from age 65 to past 66 and eventually to age 69. Consequently, millions more workers will die on the job before they can retire.
Meanwhile, the needs of struggling U.S. imperialism belie his promise to curb the military budget by 7%. In fact, the imperialists themselves demand a whopping 67% boost. (See CFR’s Sebastian Mallaby quote below.) The only significant “cost-cutting” move likely at the Pentagon, one now pushed by the highest brass, is restoring the draft. Most draftees, unlike career enlistees, get rock-bottom pay and no pension.
Lying Obama Promises Tea Partiers Pentagon Cuts; Bigger Bosses say ‘Forget about ‘em’
Obama’s phony Pentagon pruning aims solely at appeasing obstructionist, anti-tax Tea Party elements in Congress. The latter front for smaller domestically-minded U.S. capitalists who don’t directly benefit from the bigger bosses’ expensive and expanding war agenda. But the main U.S. imperialists, whose profits depend on war, and who bankrolled Obama into office and fill his cabinet, reveal the intentional hollowness of his rhetoric.
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s leading think-tank, representing the Rockefeller-dominated wing of U.S. rulers, such as Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan Chase. They seek to undermine Obama’s cheap talk and rally Republican imperialists, the socially-liberal and fiscally-conservatives like Senators John McCain and Maine’s two Senators, part of the old Nelson Rockefeller wing of the G.O.P.
Boot wrote in the conservative Weekly Standard (7/18/11), “Obama’s proposed cuts...would seriously impair the military’s ability to meet its global commitments.” Boot then lets loose a flood of rhetorical questions that pretty much lay out his bosses’ money-burning order of battle for the near term:
“Should we completely pull out of Afghanistan? Even with the overly hasty withdrawal of surge forces ordered by Obama, we still will have 70,000 troops there at the end of next year, costing at least $70 billion. Pulling out troops even faster risks giving jihadists their biggest victory since 9/11.
“Perhaps we [U.S. rulers] should stop fighting pirates off the coast of Africa? Stop fighting in Libya so that arch-terrorist Muammar Qaddafi can claim a victory over the West? Stop targeting al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen and elsewhere? Stop deterring China, North Korea, or Iran? Stop patrolling the Persian Gulf through which much of the world’s oil flows? Stop fighting cyberattacks emanating from China and Russia?”
Obama’s Ruling-Class Handlers Want Massive 67% Boost, not Mini 7% Cut, in War Funding
Of course, all this call to expansion of U.S. rulers’ wars means mass murder of untold numbers of workers in these countries. Boot obviously seeks a “No” answer to the military cut question. His colleague, CFR fellow Sebastian Mallaby, goes much further, urging drastically increasing war funding and reducing workers’ living standards. In a piece entitled, “American Power Requires Economic Sacrifice (CFR website, 7/7/11) he says:
“...[I]f the U.S. has the will to allocate a rising share of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] to the Pentagon, it can sustain its global dominance for a long time to come. After all, defense claimed more than a 10th of U.S. GDP during the 1950s, compared with just below 6 per cent today. But military budgets on the scale of the 1950s entail social and economic sacrifices.”
Mallaby refers unmistakably to reducing health care’s 17% share of U.S. GDP. Furthermore, his demand to revert to 1950 military budget allocations of one-tenth (10%) from the current 6% means a two-thirds increase, or 67%.
Anti-Worker Draft Coming Back as ‘Money-Saver’
From the Korean War in the 1950s to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s, U.S. rulers maintained the draft. Today, massive unemployment and under-employment of over 30 million workers forces job-seeking youth to enlist, which may help make recruitment adequate for U.S. bosses now. But that won’t be the case if rebellion reaches Saudi Arabia, Big Oil’s biggest energy source, and sets the whole Middle East aflame or if armed conflict breaks out with Iran’s or China’s bosses. Then the U.S. “all-volunteer” forces won’t be able to cut it, economically or politically.
With pay raises, benefits and pensions, the volunteer force costs the bosses too much. And only a shrinking segment of the population, increasingly poor white workers, seems won to enlisting. So here comes conscription again, in the guise of “economizing.” The Air Force Times (7/14/11) reported that, “The Pentagon is considering massive changes to the force — including a draft — amid fears that new and far deeper budget cuts are looming just over the horizon…. It quoted General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “You may just shift the balance of the services from active to Guard or reserve or to — the dirty word — a draft. Those are all different characters and they have different costs that you can manage.’”
A new draft would force millions of U.S. youth into a war machine that would kill them and millions of our sister and brother workers worldwide. (World War II saw 14 million in the U.S. armed forces, with half the current U.S. population.) But, at the same time, in laying bare to millions the horrors of capitalist war, it would also expand the opportunities for communist revolutionary anti-imperialist organizing in the military.
Historically, the two great communist-led revolutions in the last century, in Russia and China, arose out of the imperialist World Wars I and II.
With our lives, labor, declining wages, and ever-diminishing living conditions, workers have paid for capitalists’ wars for centuries. Aside from the incalculable money loss, their harm to our class amounts to billions of human beings impoverished and murdered. We must turn the tables on the profit-driven killers by building for communist revolution to destroy them.
Our Progressive Labor Party works towards this goal, as is evident from PLP’s immersion in, and helping to lead, class struggles: for a community library (page 7); among transit workers in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. (page 6); for client-worker unity against budget cuts in New Jersey (page 7); among hospital workers in NYC (page 1) and in Chicago (page 6). PLP joins and leads these battles to be able to raise revolutionary communist ideas and recruit these workers to build a mass Party.
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NYC Summer Project Youth Learn, Spread and Are Inspired by Communist Ideas
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- 21 July 2011 89 hits
NEW YORK CITY, July 16 — “Fight Back!” could be heard ringing through the streets as Progressive Labor Party marched in Harlem to arouse the working class. We had a flyer that denounced Obama as a racist puppet of the U.S. ruling class. Our militancy, multiracial unity, and revolutionary politics won many workers to pump their fists, clap their hands, and chant along with us. This final march of the Summer Project illustrated our success and power to win workers to PL’s communist ideas.
The NYC Project began with an orientation that included over 50 young people — teachers, workers, soldiers, students, parents; women and men; black, Latino, Asian, and white — the backbone of our Party and its friends. We discussed why PLP was having the Project.
A group of largely undocumented workers spoke in Spanish about unemployment; a PL soldier outlined the role of imperialism. Racist health care was analyzed as well as PLP’s organizing among transit and hospital workers (see CHALLENGE 7/20). PL brought young people together from all over the U.S. — Chicago, LA, Baltimore, and beyond — to both recognize that we’re fighting the same enemy and that the working class is facing similar conditions everywhere.
Racist Cop’s Threats Fail
Tuesday started off bright and early as we surrounded an unemployment center in Trenton, NJ (see page 7). We rallied outside and handed out flyers. A racist cop almost drove his car into a group of disabled people in his rush to try to intimidate us. He waddled out of his car wearing a bulletproof vest, hoping to scare us, but did not succeed. He would be the first of the bosses’ attempts to shut down our rally.
The unemployment center’s security force confiscated CHALLENGE from all the workers who walked into the building. The state will always break its own laws whenever it chooses to prevent workers from hearing communist politics. New Jersey’s fascist governor Christie is spearheading attacks on the working class’s education, health care and aid checks, the latter amounting to only $140 a month! How are workers and their families expected to live on such a pittance? Our rally could have been a spark in a tinderbox; the bosses fear the potential of the working class to rise up and smash them.
‘Give me a CHALLENGE….They took mine…’
A black woman health care worker came angrily out of the building towards us saying, “Give me a CHALLENGE; they took my copy and I want one.” She was mad about their confiscating her paper.
On Wednesday, we headed to the Bronx. Comrades there did an excellent job organizing our site, ensuring that food and drinks arrived. Young people from LA performed a great skit: some comrades acted the role of bosses; another group were communists; and a much larger group acted as the working class. A debate ensued which helped raise the awareness of all to understand and contrast the bosses’ arguments with the ideas of communism. An enriching discussion followed on what it means to build a base in the working class.
Force Shutdown of Recruiting Center
After the study group, we all moved in a disciplined manner to a military recruitment center in the Bronx where we distributed 400 CHALLENGES on the surrounding corners and picketed the center. The recruiter became so upset when we showed up that he shut down the center. Speeches in Spanish and English condemned U.S. imperialism.
After the rally, the HBO film “No Contract, No Cookies” and another “independent” film on the Stella d’Oro strike were screened, with about 10 former Stella d’Oro workers present. A sharp discussion followed, illustrating how the strike was both a school for communism and an inspiration to us in the class struggle.
Thursday was Harlem Day. After individual groups sold the paper in the morning, we picketed the military recruitment center there. We distributed a flyer denouncing Columbia University’s racist expansion, exposing Obama’s racism and attacking U.S. imperialism. The racist KKKops showed up and began following us, “escorting” us over a 10-block march. They told us to turn off our bullhorn. As one young person put it, “I was scared of the police, so I chanted louder to not have to think about them.” When we arrived at the Columbia employment agency, we condemned them for not providing jobs and for stealing homes from black workers.
Afterwards, we attended a forum on anti-communism based on Grover Furr’s book “Khrushchev Lied,” which exposed deceitful questions on the New York High School History exam. We also heard about the attack on PL teachers at Brooklyn’s Clara Barton H.S. The forum helped us sharpen our arguments against those who spread the bosses’ lies about the history of the world communist movement. They spend billions of dollars to portray Stalin as a “mass murderer” because they fear his communist ideas.J
Summer Project Impressions
(The following are three expressions of volunteers’ experiences.)
“I really enjoyed the diversity of the Summer Project and how hospitable the host-comrade was. It inspired me in ways that no other experience could. The rallies we held had an outcome that I did not know was possible from an organization that is frowned upon as much as the PLP. The anti-communism forum was one of the most helpful in teaching us on how to defend communism. It showed how far the bosses and pigs go to make sure their despicable way of living prospers.”
“The NY Summer Project was different in atmosphere and surroundings, but in some ways similar to the LA Project making you realize the struggle is the same everywhere, like the issues with the government. The NY project was a fun experience.”
“My experience during the Summer Project was inspiring, and I learned more about what is going on in the world. My comrades taught me how to be strong and fight for what is right. We are the workers and we will not let the bosses rule us.”
(Write to CHALLENGE with your Summer Project experience.)
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Racism In S.F. Transit, Driven By Capitalism; Muni Workers Fight Back
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- 21 July 2011 84 hits
SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 — Once again, the San Francisco mass transit (Muni) drivers are leading Bay area workers in class war. For a second time they rejected a give-back contract with a resounding two-to-one vote, 994 to 488. These NO votes show the potential for Muni drivers to stick together and act in their class interest, a terrifying possibility for corporate San Francisco.
Drivers’ vote defied the combined forces of the city’s labor leaders, the Democratic political elite, and San Francisco’s downtown big business interests. Labor leaders publicly denounced the drivers. Meanwhile, local billionaires campaigned against city worker pensions (Fortune Magazine, 6/13).
Corporate money passed a City Charter amendment, Proposition G, which specifically attacked the drivers’ salary formula as the way to “fix Muni.” Muni management boasted that it would save $41 million from union concessions. Corporate-controlled media promoted vicious, anti-working-class lies, many of them coded against black and immigrant drivers. All of these forces joined the standard fascist chorus: “We need shared sacrifice.”
Pushing the fraudulent ideology of all-class unity, the leadership of Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 250A had recommended the contract package as a “win-win.” Here is what the workers are slated to “win”: a pay freeze, big cuts in full-time jobs and transit service, reintroduction of part-time work, and the weakening of worker rights to allow speedy firing.
On June 13, an “independent” arbitrator used Proposition G to shove the rejected contract down the drivers’ throats. The arbitrator had the full backing from the union leadership, which worked to sabotage any real strike preparations.
The media attacks fueled intense anger and resistance among the TWU membership. Many members devoted their time and energy to turn out the NO vote, hoping that the credible threat of a strike would make management back down. Activists forced the leadership to call a strike authorization vote and passed a resolution against binding arbitration.
As many rank-and-file leaders now recognize, a NO vote is not enough. With workers now saddled with the contract, new debates are raging: Can we really do job actions or strike independent of the union? Will the courts save us from Prop G? How can we mobilize to overcome our fears and divisions? How do we unite with passengers and other Bay Area transit workers to make this a class war against corporate San Francisco?
Despite the threat of firing and other reprisals, activists see the need for militancy and tighter organization within the membership. When the union is siding with the bosses, workers cannot afford to wait for an official go-ahead to sanction their next move.
Muni workers need to unite in mass strikes and demonstrations with working-class passengers. Local 250A’s path of legal action — playing the bosses’ game by the bosses’ rules — is a dead end. Communist leadership is needed to fight for workers’ power and to get off the reform politics treadmill, where bosses will always be free to take back the crumbs won in yesterday’s struggles.
‘Shared Sacrifice’ Is Coded
Racial Scapegoating
Presently, Muni drivers are 80% black, Latino, and Asian, many of them immigrants. Since the 1980’s, growing numbers are single parents, most of them women.
Racism and sexism have always lain at the heart of Muni contract negotiations and city elections. As one driver with relatives in the South told CHALLENGE, “Racism is worse here than I ever experienced in Alabama.” As the driver noted, it has made no difference that departing executive director Nate Ford (who’s leaving with a $384,000 severance package) is black. During the recent negotiations, Ford was part of the management team that spent $100,000 on a PR firm to leak stories that attacked drivers. This created a hostile, racist, anti-worker atmosphere where passengers complained that some drivers were “rude” and “overpaid” and “don’t even speak English.”
The new Muni contract neatly dovetails many aspects of racism. The transit agency plans to bring in part-time drivers to eliminate up to 7.5% of full-time jobs and cut the pay of current drivers. Muni used to offer jobs where black, Latino, Asian and immigrant youth could move up the economic ladder. Now incoming workers will face full-time bills with part-time pay. This system forces them to accept these conditions with a gun to their head; their alternative is unemployment. Meanwhile, service cuts targeting mid-day and off-hour transit fall hardest on those with the lowest incomes, another example of institutionalized racism. Poorer, geographically-isolated neighborhoods are sacrificed to bolster rush hour “trunk” lines leading to downtown businesses. Profits, as always under capitalism, come first.
Muni management, like all servants of the capitalist class, works overtime to divide workers with racism. In the short term, this strategy gives the bosses the cover they need to destroy the drivers’ standard of living and impose inequitable service cuts. Over the long haul, it’s an essential tool for the rulers to maintain an economic system based on social control and profits for the few. Reform victories cannot change that fundamental system. We need a communist revolution to replace capitalism with a society run by and for the working class, where mass transit will take all workers where they need to go.
“It’s disgusting,” said a Whittier mother of the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) latest attempt to demolish the community center and library known as “La Casita.” Last fall, the Whittier parents kept the building open with a heroic and grueling 43-day sit-in. After following all CPS stipulations on how to keep the center open, La Casita parents were surprised when demolition workers showed up with permits. This shows that no matter how hard workers fight, the bosses will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. Regardless, the parents quickly jumped into action to stop the CPS demolition.
The next day, with the demolition crew scheduled to arrive at 6 AM., the Whittier parents, with support from the community, mobilized 60 workers, teachers and students to begin a new sit-in. Only one demolition worker showed up at 6:30 AM, scouting the area to check on the protest. A PLP member and a La Casita mother attempted to win this worker’s support. He refused. With true working-class solidarity, the Whittier mother gave the worker her phone number, saying that while the bosses aren’t coming for your neighborhood now, they will be soon, and we can help.
At 7:45 AM, the Chicago KKKops blocked off all roads leading into La Casita. In response to this fascist attack, PLP members and allies went door-to-door in the neighborhood informing residents about the situation, trying to get them involved in the fight-back. This made many sit-in’ers feel more confident that no matter what CPS and the KKKops did, we would respond.
At the heart of this struggle are the CPS’ lies. They planned to build a library in the adjacent school by cutting in half two classrooms that are already overcrowded, with 30 or more students. Additionally, this second-floor library would be inaccessible to handicapped students since the school has no elevator. A CPS spokesperson pretended to care about the students’ well-being, saying it doesn’t make sense to have services outside the school. Yet CPS refuses to renovate the school “cafeteria” where students eat in a basement with sewage water running on the ground.
The mass media has helped to spread pro-CPS distortions, stating, “Parents protest construction of library” without giving the parents’ side of the story. However, it makes sense that the bosses’ media would further the bosses’ interests against the working class.
PLP will continue to lead, and be led by, the valiant parents of La Casita in order to save the center from demolition. Yet we must fight the cause of this and all working-class struggles: capitalism. To do this, we ask La Casita parents and friends to join PLP to fight for a communist revolution. Only with
East Orange, NJ, July 12 — “Can’t you see what they are doing to us? Listen to these people we need to start fighting back,” yelled an angry black worker standing in line to collect his monthly welfare check. He was one of hundreds exposed to PLP’s ideas as we organized over 30 students and workers to rally in front of the Essex County Development Center.
Racist Cutbacks and Unemployment
As the ruling class continues to spend more money on imperialist wars across the globe, the working class is facing more and more cuts. A recent study by Brown University put the cost of “post 9/11” wars at around $4 trillion.[1] Meanwhile 300 General Assistance (GA) clients lost their Emergency Assistance benefits. Thousands had their “benefits” suspended without notice (while still eligible) pending state review. Even those that do get GA get only $140 a month!
While the bosses talk about unemployment being at 9.5% in NJ, that number is at least doubled for the mostly black and Latino workers of Essex County. In Newark it is over 20%. This is why PLP calls it racist unemployment. While it hurts all workers, it is always worse for black, latin and immigrant workers.
Meanwhile, the Democrat controlled State Legislature voted to force thousands of public employees to pay huge increases in their pension and health care coverage contributions.
While the workers and their clients real interests are to unite against the bosses’ tremendous attacks, many are motivated by a lack of class-consciousness and see the person on the other side of the glass as the enemy rather than the bosses who profit. This is not a coincidence. The capitalists spend billions promoting racist, anti-working class ideology so that workers don’t see who their real allies are.
Workers welcome CHALLENGE and PLP
As we sold CHALLENGE to the workers waiting to get into the building, it was clear from their comments that they saw the Republicans and Democrats as no more than attack dogs for the bankers, bondholders, and billionaires who are profiting from this. Last year alone, the banks received almost $3 billion.
PLP showed that, besides just attacking the Republicans and Democrats, we must smash capitalism, the main cause for these attacks. We exposed the racist cutbacks and called for clients and workers to unite as the first step towards building a communist revolution. Many of the workers eagerly took CHALLENGE. As the crowd got more and more energized, the cops tried to stop our rally but with no success. One woman came running out saying, “[The cops] wouldn’t let a guy in because he had one of your newspapers. They made him throw it out. But they didn’t see mine cause I put it in the pile of other papers.” After she said that the workers on the line folded up their papers and put it in their pockets so they wouldn’t get taken away.
Many workers also left their contact information and urged us to keep in touch. This has given us a chance to build a base amongst the many unemployed workers here in NJ. Through base building and class struggle our aim is to win many of these workers to be leaders in our party.
[1] http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts
