The economic “recovery” from the greatest crisis since the Great Depression has left over 30 million U.S. workers and youth unemployed and underemployed and wages plummeting. “Recovery” means the bosses’ profits are rising, as there there are fewer workers who must work harder to increase the bosses’ productivity.

Billions have been handed over to the bankers and auto bosses while millions of families continue to lose their homes. And that’s as “good” as it’s going to get.

Now the bosses are squealing that the recovery is weakening and yet another major economic crisis looms. At best, they say, mass racist unemployment, as high as 50% among black males and higher among black youth, will continue for years. While Congress haggles over extending unemployment benefits, increased funding for the $3 trillion oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sails through uncontested.

The racist rulers need a working class that is ready to sacrifice and fight for U.S. imperialism. They’re losing in Iraq and Afghanistan and have Yemen, Pakistan and Iran waiting in the wings. So far, they’ve had some success in getting workers to sacrifice. They’ve yet to win workers ideologically to fight for them.

Nowhere are these sacrifices more evident than in the U.S. auto industry. This month Obama visited a Michigan GM plant and a Chicago Ford plant. This  is after Ford announced $4 billion in second quarter profits and GM announced profits for two consecutive quarters for the first time in years.

And why not? Obama and the UAW leadership teamed up to close dozens of plants, cut wages by as much as $30,000/year, and destroy more than 200,000 jobs. And that’s just since the meltdown of 2008-2009. Billions of dollars and maybe a million jobs were sacrificed long before that. The starting pay for a GM, Ford or Chrysler worker has been cut by more than half, and they’ll have no pension if and when they retire.

These massive sacrifices took place with a minimum of resistance, highlighted by the three-month strike at American Axel in 2007 and Ford workers rejecting a final round of concessions in 2008.  The UAW, now led by religious, “social activist” president Bob King, has reached a new low by claiming the bosses’ profits as a “victory” for the workers. “We saved the auto industry, and U.S. jobs.” It’s no accident that King, the former UAW-VP at Ford, which made the greatest profits, is now the UAW president!

Open Union-Corporate Alliance
Signals Impending Fascism & War

While having a passive working class helps the rulers cut wages and steal jobs, it’s a double-edged sword. They need a politically-motivated working class to mobilize for a future of poverty and expanding war. In order to win them, they have to put workers in the streets to give vent to their frustrations. That’s a very risky proposition for the racist rulers and their union front men.

So it is with that in mind that the NAACP, UAW, Teamsters, SEIU, TWU, ATU and hundreds of unions and “progressive” community and religious organizations are planning the “One Nation” march on Washington, D.C. on October 2. In the short-term, it’s a counter-attack on the Tea Party and a mass “Get-Out-The-Vote” effort (for Democrats) in the mid-term Congressional elections just a month later. “One Nation” is a reference to Obama’s campaign pledge of “no blue states, no red states.”

This is all part of the rulers’ and Obama’s attempt to lump workers and bosses under one nationalist flag. They want to win workers away from viewing themselves as a working class exploited by the bosses’ class.

But beyond the elections is the more sinister effort to begin to win the working class in earnest to a future of war and fascism. U.S. imperialism needs more than our wages and health benefits. They need our commitment and our very lives. After 9/11, Bush told everyone to “go shopping.” That was a serious error for which the rulers never forgave him. Workers and youth can’t be won to war and fascism in the mall. They have to be in the streets.

PLP accepts this challenge. As the rulers try to put a million workers in Washington, D.C., we will be there fighting for the political leadership of the working class, fighting to have anti-racism, internationalism and communist revolution make an impact on the mass movement. This can’t be done with a few lone wolves handing out leaflets with the “right idea.”

This can only be accomplished by mobilizing our base in the mass movement to weigh in in a big way. On our jobs and in our unions we will organize not just against the racist Tea Party, but to oppose Obama and our union “leaders” as well. It wasn’t the Tea Party that cut 200,000 auto jobs and slashed our wages in half!

In the schools and campuses, we can organize busloads of youth to oppose the plans the rulers have for us to kill and die for U.S. imperialism. And we should organize contingents of unemployed workers to march, whether they are recently laid-off transit workers, former Stella D’Oro strikers or those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

A racist system that can’t provide jobs should be destroyed. Communist revolution will smash racist unemployment. We can win the masses to break away from their misleaders and fight for communism. In the build-up to October 2, the ball is very much in our court.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, August 31 — “Get Out! This is our hall!” “Traitor!” “Go Home!” That’s how hundreds of GM workers greeted UAW International reps on August 15. The standing-room only crowd of hundreds of stamping plant workers, members of UAW Local 23, had no intentions of cutting their wages in half to save their jobs. As the International reps headed for the doors, the workers jumped to their feet and started chanting, “Take [UAW Local President] Ray [Kennedy] With You, Take Ray With You!”

As part of the GM bailout restructuring by Obama, this plant is to be closed. JD Norman Industries made an offer to buy the plant, but made 50% pay cuts a condition of the deal. Last May, the workers voted 384-22 against reopening their contract. Despite this, Kennedy and the UAW International continued to negotiate with GM and JD Norman, reaching a deal they planned on ratifying at the August meeting. This is what new UAW President Bob King calls the 21st Century UAW, where the bosses and the union partner up to screw the workers.

They gave workers one day’s notice and provided them with “highlights” of the proposed contract before trying to bum-rush them into cutting their wages in half. Instead, the workers told newly-annointed UAW Region 3 Director Mo Davidson to take a 50 percent pay cut. One worker said, “They’re not representing us, they’re representing their 17 percent stake in GM,” referring to the UAW’s stake in GM as a result of the federal restructuring and bailout.

The majority of workers here have high seniority and many are GM “migrants,” having moved from plant to plant as factories shut down. They are not afraid of one more closing. They have learned the hard way, from years of exposure to GM’s and the UAW’s “whipsawing” of one GM local against another, that concessions don’t save jobs.

By casting their fortunes with those of the auto bosses, the UAW has gone from 1.5 million members to under 350,000. 150,000 of those are in casinos, legal aid offices, college campuses, state and city workers and more. The domestic auto industry is over 50% non-union and the restructuring of the past few years has cost yet another 200,000 jobs and seen wages cut in half. The devastating racist nature of these attacks is evident in the streets of Detroit, Flint, St. Louis, Lansing and a host of other GM towns.

The current crisis of 30 million unemployed and underemployed will be with us for years. The UAW hopes to increase its numbers by partnering with the bosses and enforcing a low-wage economy. UAW President King hides behind the banner of “social justice,” but will put thousands in the streets to march for the same Democratic Party politicians who have failed workers so miserably while expanding the endless “oil war on terror.” GM workers are exposing the real nature of the UAW leadership. Building a mass PLP in basic industry will ultimately crush these maggots and lead the working class to power.

Who poses the graver danger to the working class?

Openly racist, right-wing politicians who oppose the building of a mosque near Ground Zero? Or liberal U.S. imperialists who fear that an anti-Islamic image may hinder their drive for Mid-East oil profits as they slaughter millions?

Is it Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who led a 300,000-strong, lily-white Tea Party/religious revival on the Washington Mall to boost Republicans in the November elections? Or Obama-led Democrats seeking to rally millions more for looming wars with Iran, China, and Russia?

Is it conservative billionaires, like Charles and David Koch and Rupert Murdoch, bankrolling the Tea Party bigots? Or the far more powerful liberal Rockefeller faction, whose “charitable” foundations and think-tanks in fact further U.S. imperialism‘s mass murders behind racist characterizations of Arab, South Asian and Muslim workers in the media and in soldier training?

Both camps are sworn enemies of our class. Racist Tea Partiers target immigrants and unions but the Obama administration has increased fascist oppression of immigrant workers through using National Guard troops at the border and raiding factories, thereby terrorizing and deporting far more immigrant workers than the former could hope to (see CHALLENGE, 7/21/10).

While all these bosses are our class’s enemies, the Rockefeller-led liberal imperialists, with their empire challenged, control the U.S. war machine which can deal death and suffering to billions of workers worldwide. These liberal forces are the main danger to our class because they have a broader base in the working class through their mass organizations and therefore can mis-lead millions into supporting their policies and achieve ruling-class aims, much more effectively than the Tea Partiers.

Bosses’ Split Widens As U.S. Economic, Military Woes Deepen

The mosque flap reflects a crisis-driven, growing division between two capitalist factions, each trying to win popular support. Liberal politicians front for the owners of Exxon Mobil, JP Morgan, and the like, who need to re-enforce and expand their shrinking global spheres of influence through ever wider military invasions and occupations. War means “shared sacrifice” not only from the working class but also from companies in the form of higher taxes and tighter, centralized regulation.

War-making also requires workers’ obedience to the central government, including willing military enlistment, not just relatively meaningless flag-waving. To garner a voter base, however, conservative U.S. capitalists preach a “don’t-tread-on-me” anti-government creed to angry white workers victimized by economic collapse. The right-wingers say the U.S. can solve its military problems with “off-the-shelf,” low-tax “solutions,” with little sacrifice from bosses or workers.

Right-leaning bosses obstruct the imperialists’ war and regulation agenda for a variety of reasons. Some, like media baron Murdoch, are first-generation billionaires, still in the acquisition stage, battling regulation and taxes as obstacles to establishing a dynasty. Murdoch had to fight the Federal Communications Commission and liberal Ted Kennedy tooth and nail to buy up broadcast outlets.

The Kochs’ huge family-owned energy-textile-forest products business — which bankrolls the Tea Party — gains nothing from the main rulers’ developing expansion of their current Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. Koch Industries’ Mid-East footprint is confined to Turkey. Koch does not operate in Exxon Mobil’s, Chevron’s, (and British allies Shell’s and BP’s) oily treasure troves in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait or the Emirates.

In addition, the NY Times, the liberals’ leading mouthpiece (8/28/10) denounced billionaire hedge-funder Paul Singer as a top Republican contributor bent on reversing Obama & Co.’s recent attempts to forcefully regulate Wall Street. Hedge funds — essentially high-stakes gambling — make tons of money for investors but create none of the wartime manufacturing capacity and infrastructure the imperialist wing sorely needs and wants.

Bosses’ Dogfight Over Iran War Plans Behind Mosque, Electoral Battles

At the heart of the mosque debate lies the main U.S. rulers’ prospects for successfully occupying Islamic oil-rich Iraq and Afghanistan — key transport route for Central Asian oil and gas — and the direction of their next major conflict, with Iran’s nuclear-arming ruling ayatollahs. Anti-mosque, anti-tax conservative leaders want an “on-the-cheap” strike by Israel, costing no more than the U.S.’s already yearly $3 billion in military aid to that nation’s rulers:

“Almost two dozen Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers co-sponsored a new resolution late last week that expresses their support for Israel ‘to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.’” (Foreign Policy, 7/26/10)

War-Making Liberals Need Boots on the Ground, Not Just Air and Sea Raids

Contrary to the right-wingers’ approach on Iran, Richard Haass, head of the arch-imperialist, Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think-tank, worries about mosque protests sparking popular  uprisings in U.S. imperialism’s most crucial region, hampering action against Iran: “Strident statements by Americans that appear to be anti-Muslim [have] the potential to take a toll on prospects for U.S. policies throughout the greater Middle East, including U.S. efforts designed to…stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, and isolate Iran.” (CFR website, 8/23/10)

Meanwhile, imperialist guru Gary Hart — co-author of the Clinton-era Hart-Rudman reports which predicted 9/11 and prescribed police-state militarization — warns against the Tea Partiers’ “bomb-Iran-now” proposal. He favors rebuilding overstretched U.S. land forces for a more massive invasion and occupation of the oil and gas giant. Give it time, says Hart:

“Such an attack would place great stress on our military. We cannot continue the Afghan war, prop up the neighboring Iraqi government, and create a third battlefield in the Middle East. It is folly to assume that a U.S.-Iran war can be carried out by the Navy and Air Force alone.…We have at least a year, and probably more, to weigh Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions, and to rally regional and global opposition to them.” (Hart’s “Matters of Principle” web log, 8/23/10)

But Hart may very well be wrong about time being on the side of U.S. imperialists. China’s rapid rise and thirst for oil, and Russia’s determined re-emergence, both as U.S. rivals, fuel their ally Iran’s hostile ambitions. And Israel’s bosses, emboldened by their unpunished massacres of Palestinians, might not wait for Washington’s O.K. to bomb Iran. Nobody knows just what will happen.

Anthony Cordesman, a top analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) — another Rockefeller-funded policy foundry — sure doesn’t. He says, “This is a ‘game’ without clear limits or rules, and where outside players like Israel can suddenly change the board.…‘stability’ can rapidly turn into large-scale violence” (CSIS, 8/13/10)

No matter what results, the inter-imperialist rivalry driving the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, et al, spells death and destruction for the working class worldwide. Siding with the Rockefeller-led liberals will intensify that slaughter.

Effective working-class action against the rulers’ wars does not hinge on whether or not to build a mosque near Ground Zero, or on voting for the “better” candidate. For us, the ultimate solution is a communist revolution to crush both the liberal and conservative political misleaders, and the war-making, profit-hungry billionaires they serve. Building PLP while exposing and attacking these anti-worker fakes in workplaces, barracks, schools and neighborhoods will bring us closer to that goal.

BRONX, NY, September 1 — If you walked into this little restaurant, you wouldn’t notice him sitting there nursing a coffee. And you wouldn’t notice the steady stream of men and women that come in when they can, to either pick up or drop off the latest copies of CHALLENGES. They are former Stella D’Oro workers, who struck the company for 11 months only to lose their jobs when the company was sold and moved.

They are bruised, but not beaten, still fighting back. Now they are fighting the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International union leaders, who have made it much harder for unemployed members to reach the “Golden 80” and qualify for a full pension.

“Golden 80” refers to a combination of age and years of service. So if you are 60 years old with 20 years of service, you qualify for a full pension. As of July 30, workers like the Stella D’Oro workers, who reach “Golden 80” while unemployed due to plant closings, will take a 40% cut in benefits, including those who only needed a month or two to qualify. If they hit “80” with less than 15 years of service, they will take a 60% cut. This is especially vicious as it targets the oldest workers who are the least likely to work again given the current economic crisis and mass racist unemployment.

One woman said, “I worked 27 years for this company and contributed to my pension. I need three months for Golden 80 and they want to give me 40% less!” The wife of a worker who was one month short of his “Golden 80” reported that this has made him physically ill, unable to sleep and suffering from high blood pressure. Another worker said, “We fought for a year and a half. We stood up for this union and they give away our pension!”

The union claims that the cuts were needed because the pension fund is in danger of going broke. But at the same time they were cutting Stella workers, they were cutting $300 supplemental checks to current Golden 80 retirees. Also, Stella D’Oro had to pay a $12 million penalty to the pension fund in order to withdraw from it. Yet, none of that money is being used to help the victims of the plant closing.

By mid-August the Stella workers were fighting back. They found a lawyer who has taken their case, but they will really need to rekindle the mass actions and militancy of their strike in the fight to protect their pensions. If they win, so will every BCTGM member.

As this fight unfolds, we are trying to organize Stella workers to join a contingent of unemployed workers in the October 2 march on Washington, D.C. (see page 1).  Out of this struggle we will be in a better position to organize the unemployed, fight racist unemployment, and build the revolutionary communist PLP