July 14 — It’s hard to keep track of how many prime ministers (PM) Japan has had over the past five years. One after another has been dumped or given up because, like their U.S. counterparts, the country’s politicians have no solution to economic stagnation, poverty and underemployment. Voters handed Naoto Kan, the latest PM, a serious blow last Sunday as his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost control of the upper house of parliament in national elections.

Much like the U.S. voters who placed blind faith in Obama’s promises of real change — national health care, bringing troops home, etc. — Japanese voters wanted to believe in the promises made by the DPJ to end corruption, unemployment, and obsequious adherence to U.S. diplomatic policies.  On the surface this seems like yet another blow to the international working class. But with a communist analysis the “failure” of the DPJ can provide an opportunity to expose the bosses’ electoral shell game for the sham that it is and organize workers for communist revolution, the only real alternative to the horrors of capitalism.

Last September they voted the old ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), out of power, and for the first time since the end of World War II they voted in a new ruling party, the DPJ, whose leader Yukio Hatoyama, became the new prime minister. To stimulate the economy, Hatoyama had promised an end to exorbitant highway tolls and to provide cash subsidies to families with children. The DPJ had also promised to renegotiate a 2006 agreement with the Pentagon to transfer the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station (with 4,000 marines) near Naha to the Henoko district of Nago city, a more remote spot on the island of Okinawa. The agreement was worked out as a “response” to mass demonstrations against the Marine Corps after a brutal kidnap and rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three marines in 1995. Like Obama, Hatoyama has backtracked on all of these campaign promises.

In the fall 2009 election that brought Hatoyama to power, his party’s candidates on Okinawa won seats in parliament by promising to fight to get the base entirely removed from Okinawa. There was even talk of moving all the marines to Guam, where the Pentagon is planning a major expansion of facilities with the enthusiastic support of liberal U.S. Democrats like Hawaii’s Neil Abercrombie. On April 25, more than 90,000 people demonstrated in Okinawa against all the bases there. (More than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based in Okinawa.)

Ignoring popular demand and the plight of a fellow “liberal party,” the Obama cabinet adopted hardball tactics, attacking individual Japanese leaders and using the “North Korean threat” to publicly justify the military build-up in Northeast Asia to counter the Chinese build-up. Hatoyama caved in to the U.S. political assault and reneged on his promises regarding Okinawa. These failures caused a split in his own party, and he was forced to resign as prime minister in June, to be replaced by a middle-of-the-road party hack, Naoto Kan.

There are many complex issues involved in these developments. We see the bankruptcy of bourgeois electoral politics and the collusion of the far right (open fascists, the LDP) and the liberal upstarts.

We see the arrogance of the U.S. imperialists and the priority they place on maintaining an arc of bases facing their Chinese rivals. It is an open secret that U.S.-South Korean military exercises, including a U.S. Navy nuclear sub, threatening North Korea, were the real cause of the recent sinking of a South Korean destroyer. North Korea seems to be on the verge of collapse and, pushed by the Chinese imperialists, the country has fully moved to a market economy.

We also see blatant racism against Okinawans and other super-exploited Asian workers, including utter disregard for the needs of the people of Guam and North Korea by the imperialist powers. 

As earlier CHALLENGE articles have pointed out, neither electoral politics nor the weak-kneed revisionist parties like the Japanese “Communist” Party (JCP) or the Social Democratic Party (SDP) have any answer for the economic and social crisis in Japan, much less the threat of imperialist war.

The Japanese workers and youth need a clear revolutionary communist line like that of PLP. They have to rid themselves of confused ideas about nationalism and patriotism and the illusion that small reforms — moving a base instead of getting rid of all U.S. and native imperialists — can lead to positive and lasting changes. 

After China embarked on a modest plan to re-valuate its currency upward before the June G-20 meeting in Toronto, the Western press continued to attack it for “intentionally” devaluing the renminbi (alternatively known as the “yuan”). The NY Times’ Paul Krugman (6/24) has led the charge, calling the revaluation an act of “bad faith” and “an attempt to exploit U.S. restraint,” even advocating trade sanctions on China.  But further investigation reveals these attacks are based not on fact but on the inter-imperialist rivalry heating up between U.S. and Chinese rulers.

Dating back to 2005, the U.S. has claimed China has unfairly undervalued its currency, giving an advantage to Chinese producers and exacerbating the U.S.-China trade deficit. Many in the media and in Congress have even blamed China’s currency valuation for the current economic crisis in the U.S. that was actually set off by the latter’s own weakness.¹

In reality, currency valuation has became a highly speculative business ever since the dissolution of the 1971 Bretton-Woods Agreement and the dropping of the gold-standard. Analyzing all the various models for valuating currency, in 2007 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that the renminbi could be undervalued by as much as 50% or as little as 0%, depending on which model was used. That same year Morgan Stanley used four separate models to valuate the renminbi and found it was, at most, 1% undervalued.² The IMF continues to assert that the undervaluing of the renminbi is either minor or non-existent.³

So why the continued attacks on China? They represent the increasing  inter-imperialist rivalry between U.S. and Chinese bosses. China has become an increasingly attractive bogeyman for the collapsing U.S. economy (for more on these myths see “China Bashing” in “The Communist,” Summer 2008). Attacks on Chinese “job-stealing” and currency “manipulation” are used as a smokescreen for the internal weaknesses of U.S. capitalism.

Anti-China rhetoric also serves as a basis for increasing U.S. attacks on growing Chinese imperialism. As stated clearly in the 1999 Hart-Rudman Report, U.S. bosses see their future as resting on their ability to contain Chinese economic growth.⁴ Efforts to force China to artificially inflate the value of its currency are aimed at decreasing Chinese exports and making China’s domestic market more amenable to foreign imports.

This revaluation would severely punish China’s workers and stifle China’s economic growth, all while rewarding Western speculators.⁵ Not surprisingly, Chinese capitalists have not been eager to play the U.S. bosses’ game.

 The hollowness of Western attacks on China was revealed last April. On the eve of a Congressional report detailing Chinese economic villainy, the Obama Administration chose instead to back off its anti-China rhetoric after China agreed to relax its laws against foreign capital inflows into the Chinese domestic market.⁶

U.S. capitalists are using these attacks to try to pry their way into growing Chinese markets while simultaneously mentally conditioning U.S. workers for a potential future war with China. China has responded by shifting its export markets from the U.S. to the European Union and Russia.⁷ China has also repeatedly expressed its interest in selling off U.S. treasury bonds.⁸

The current tension between U.S. and Chinese capitalists will not ease until one imperialist is able to fully impose its will over the other. As Lenin noted in “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” this is the pre-condition for major inter-imperialist war in the modern era. J

Sources:

The Communist, “China Bashing Simply a Smokescreen for U.S. Bosses Weakness,” Summer 2008; Andrew Fischer, UNRISD Paper, “The Perils of Paradigm Maintenance,” 11/26/09, p 7-13.

 The Communist, p 7.

 Andrew Fischer, Monthly Review, “The Great China Currency Debate: For Workers or Speculators?” 6/25/10.

US Commission on National Security/21st Century, “Phase I: Report on the Emerging Global Security Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century,” 9/15/1999, p 70, 138.

 Monthly Review.

 Monthly Review.

 The Communist, p 8.

 NYT, “China Losing Taste for Debt From the US,” 1/7/09; NYT, “China Grows More Picky About Debt,” 5/20/09.

CHICAGO, IL, July 1 — “We don’t get paid for this job,” the president of the Chicago Board of Education told parents at the June meeting.

“I’m glad to hear that you are displacing teachers and screwing our children’s education from the bottom of your heart,” a parent replied, in the spirit of two years of struggle by teachers in CORE (Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators), parents, students, and community groups. Speaking out — and demonstrating, when the opportunity arises — helps to mobilize and organize forces to oppose these attacks on education.

The Board wanted to use the meeting to solve its “budget crisis” on the backs of students and school employees, but the discussion didn’t go as planned. As one speaker said, “You guys should be ashamed.” Another pointed out, “Schools are more than bricks and mortar. Why should we terminate quality teachers?” Under capitalism, there is always plenty of money for imperialist war, bank and corporate bailouts, and politicians’ pet projects. But there is never enough for workers’ needs.

For example, the Chicago Public Schools CEO, Ron Huberman, claims that they might need to fire 2,700 teachers and raise the average class size to 35 to save $150 million and close their budget gap. Yet Mayor Daley is hoarding $250 million in “Tax Increment Funding” for his private slush fund. As always under capitalism, the question is more than dollars and cents; it’s about who profits — and at whose expense.

While Chicago’s disinvestment in its schools is a disgraceful case of child neglect, money alone won’t solve the problem. The content of U.S. public education is primarily aimed to give working-class students a salute-the-flag fast-track to fighting in imperialist wars, toiling in minimum-wage jobs, or suffering racist unemployment.

Parents and teachers spoke passionately about teachers who spend their own time and money and devise creative and effective ways to reach all students. The scores of people in the audience applauded these remarks, while Huberman and the Board members sat stone-faced or worse. (One board member fell asleep, and another was busy texting.) As one of about two hundred “honorably-terminated” teachers said, “We have been left on the street with no job and no health insurance.”

A PLP member underscored that racism continues to be perpetuated by Board policies. Because this administration claims to be “data driven” (meaning if student test scores don’t go up, teachers could be fired), the speaker used data to expose its racism. There are 2,100 fewer African-American teachers now than in 2002, a drop from 40 to 30 percent of the total teaching force. Thirty percent of white students attend selective enrollment high schools, or three times the proportion of students in general. Finally, 72 percent of African-American students attend segregated, low-performing schools with the greatest chance of being reconstituted (or “turned around,” as the Board likes to say) with all new staff. 

The PLP member concluded by stating, “The data-driven conclusion is that the Board runs a racist school system that provides separate and unequal education for over 70 percent of the system’s African-American students. In addition, it is decimating the system’s African-American teaching force.” Loud applause and handshakes from the audience, frozen stony faces from the Board. In an era where many think the U.S. has moved “past racism,” it is incumbent on communists and others to expose it at every opportunity. Capitalism will not be destroyed unless anti-racism leads the fight. 

School systems across the country are facing the worst cutbacks in decades, while Obama’s promises to withdraw from Afghanistan are coming undone barely six months after he made them. In a brazenly honest way, education secretary Arne Duncan has vowed to “let no crisis be wasted” in the ruling class’s ongoing strategy to solve their economic and military problems through attacks on the working class. This is the same Duncan who accelerated the re-segregation of the Chicago school system, coupled with a noxious cocktail of education “reforms” now being imposed throughout the country through the bribery of Obama’s cynical “Race to the Top.”

Charter schools, merit pay, data-driven teacher evaluation, standardized exams — none of these bosses’ ploys can meet the needs of students. Teachers must not be fooled into siding for or against any of these schemes. They’re all intended to deliver students more efficiently into the hands of the ruling class, to be exploited in the workplace or the military. It’s a contradiction for the rulers to “leave no child behind” in a “race to the top.” In such a race, working-class kids will inevitably lose because the capitalist education system was never designed to prepare all students to succeed.

Major ruling-class figures are saying so themselves. In the May/June 2008 issue of “Foreign Affairs,” the house organ for the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class, prominent pundit Fareed Zakaria wrote, “If the United States cannot educate and train a third of the working population to compete in a knowledge economy, this will drag down the country.”

If we do the math, that’s two-thirds of the working class that the rulers plan to leave behind. They are using the latest financial crisis as an opportunity to trim spending on classrooms and pension funds. They need a school system that will preserve the status quo of class relations. Under capitalism, a portion of workers is always disposable. In a society founded on slavery, these are mostly black and Latino workers. With rising racist unemployment devastating millions, the ruling class needs schools to help reorganize society and to crush the idea that a job is a basic right.

Nobody in education — no liberal in the White House, no union misleader — is dealing with the heart of the matter. The basic drive of capitalism toward imperialist war and increased exploitation of the working class makes education reform a joke. The exceptional cases where schools do a better job of educating our youth can only be viewed as oases in a desert of racist neglect, not as models that the bosses will reproduce for all. Education reform will make education for the masses a meaningless process of test prep. Teachers also stand to be more sharply exploited, and will be forced to work harder for less money.

Communists need and value every one of us. Each individual contains the potential to understand and change the world. Through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of working people banished disease, illiteracy, and imperialist exploitation from their societies under the leadership of communists. These magnificent movements were reversed, but their achievements can and must be replicated and deepened. Communism, and only communism, leaves no child behind. Join PLP!