1. Big bosses want to sucker workers into support for war: Liberal Rulers' `Immigrant Reform' Means More Exploitation for all Workers
2. Using port flap to build anti-arab racism
3. Are U.S. Rulers `Losing Latin America'?
4. Dialectics School Teaches:
   Workers Can Change History
5. PLP'ers Lead Disruption of Racist Minutemen Meeting
6. Protesters Defy Racist Gary Cops After Murder of Black Teenager
7. UAW Sabotages Flint Delphi Protest
8. Expose AFL-CIA:
   D.C. Transit Workers Lead Solidarity Rally
9. Racism, War Budget Closing 26 San Fran Schools
10. Youth Revolt Growing Against French Rulers' Attack on Jobs
11. Chavez's State Capitalism No Road to Workers' Power
12. `New Century' = Old Deception
    LA HOTEL WORKERS MUST REJECT CLASS COLLABORATION
13. Mexico: Red Ideas Embolden Workers' Battle with Boss
14. Profit Drive Kills Sixty-Five Miners In Mexico
15. PLP Proud of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
    50 Years Ago Krushchev Slandered Communism
16. Road to Katrina:
    1927 Flood Restored Slavery in Mississippi
17. UNDER COMMUNISM:
    How Will Children Be Raised?
18. LETTERS
    1. What is Fascism?
    2. CHALLENGE responds:
    3. The Contradiction of Religion and Materialism
    4. Bavaria Workers Screwed by Hacks, SabMiller Bosses
    5. Developing Writers For CHALLENGE
    6. On the `Under Communism' Column
19. REDEYE ON THE NEWS
    1. US in Arabia: 50 years of oil-run moves
    2. Super-snoops can't avoid hitting millions
    3. Buy your own kit, US tells troops in Iraq
    4. Top Lawyer says money makes the rules
    5. Kids need quarter million to dream of Olympics

---

Big bosses want to sucker workers into support for war: Liberal Rulers' `Immigrant Reform' Means More Exploitation for all Workers

The U.S. ruling class is preparing for expanding imperialist wars. The top rulers need an immigration policy fitting those plans. These murderers are desperate for more low-paid immigrant workers for war production as well as for their children to fill more boots on the ground in the Mid-East. (One in five U.S. children is born to immigrants.) They need an immigration policy guaranteeing Mexico's social stability and keeping it from moving toward a Brazilian-led anti-U.S. bloc.

While the Minutemen attack immigrants at the border and across the U.S., the top liberal imperialists want to put many of the country's 11 million undocumented workers on the road to legalization and allow more to enter as "guest workers." This dispute pits the interests of an increasingly challenged U.S. imperialism against those of the Republican Party's right-wing. No wonder the New York Times -- mouthpiece of the biggest, most viciously racist bosses -- cries crocodile tears over the plight of immigrant day-laborers and editorializes for legislative reform! (2/25)

The Minutemen swine champion mass deportations, which divide and weaken the working class. They support the Sensenbrenner House of Representatives bill to build a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and criminalize of anyone helping undocumented immigrants in any way.

Meanwhile, Senators Kennedy and McCain are sponsoring a bi-partisan bill that might "legalize" many undocumented workers while deporting those unemployed for over 45 consecutive days. It would control immigrants and enforce stronger border control.

For years, the labor union leadership has supported every anti-immigrant measure, along with protectionism, racism, and nationalism. Suddenly they "support" the immigrants' rights to organize. Part is opportunism since immigrant workers play an increasingly key role in all sectors of industry. Also, they need more dues-paying members as their ranks shrink to ever lower levels. At Caterpillar, for example, the union is welcoming into its ranks workers making less than half the wages of senior workers. (NY Times, 2/26)

The AFL-CIO and SEIU follow the dictates of the top imperialists. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) explains (see box page 2) that reforming U.S. immigration policy to allow legalization of undocumented immigrants and a guest worker program is crucial to improving relations with Mexico and other Latin American countries.

With the U.S. native population aging, and sharpening competition from their rivals, U.S. rulers need a loyal, low-paid workforce in key industries -- controlled by immigration reform -- while they slash higher-paying jobs. And the nation's growers want more workers -- braceros -- to pick their crops. The liberals want selective deportations -- not to deport everyone but to create terror. They're focusing mainly on Latino youth to join the military, to vastly enlarge the Army for an expanding fight for U.S. dominance of Mid-East oil beyond Iraq.

The liberal imperialist bosses are organizing a movement to "defend" immigrants against the Minutemen and the Sensenbrenner bill. PLP has boldly exposed and fought the racist Minutemen. We're stepping this up, bringing more co-workers and students to marches against the Minutemen and Sensenbrenner's bill. We must fight in the liberal-led movements, to expose their leaders seeking to "welcome" immigrants into exploitation and war. The liberals push elections, not class struggle from the shops to the streets.

Communists and anti-racists continue to fight like hell against all forms of anti-immigrant racism, from the Minutemen and Colorado Congressman Tancredo to McCain, Kennedy and SEIU's Stern. There can be no communist revolution without massive, sharp anti-racist fight-back. Racism is the mortal enemy of all workers.

Now more than ever, immigrant workers are in key positions and have tremendous potential power, a fact the liberal racists seek to hide. The bosses have been forced to open key weapons-producing industries and the military to immigrants because of increasing global competition and declining recruitment to the armed forces. By organizing in industry and the military against the racist imperialist bosses, immigrants can unite with black workers -- also concentrated in basic industry and the military -- as well as with white workers to build a powerful force for revolution. This will happen as communists work with their co-workers and in the mass movement exposing the liberal wolves in sheep's clothing.

The deadly message of Stern and Durazo (Hotel Workers' union head)? Accept slave labor wages, capitalism and imperialist war and just vote for liberals to "save us" from the Minutemen and Sensenbrenner. PLP's message is immigrant workers taking the lead in fighting for power for our class through communist revolution against the open and liberal racists. This will ring true to masses of workers, when coupled with CHALLENGE networks, anti-racist and anti-imperialist actions, close friendships, and day-to-day struggle against the racist exploiters.

Using port flap to build anti-arab racism

The liberals' criticism of Dubai's impending U.S. port takeover runs deeper than opportunistic election-year Bush-bashing or a rulers' dispute about anti-terror tactics. It's all that and something graver, part of an effort to position the U.S. for future global conflicts. The ports flap reflects similar battles between potential U.S. allies and enemies worldwide. Among imperialists, financial competition over strategic industries inevitably leads to war. Lenin noted this in 1917, in "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," amid the carnage of World War I. He examined decades of British, German, French and U.S. moves to acquire key production capacity and infrastructure that preceded the shooting. He specifically focused on rivalries in shipping, steel and energy, sectors that remain crucial today.

By opposing the ports deal, Democrats like Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Jon Corzine advance U.S. militarism in several ways. Now every big business transaction involving foreigners will come under a national-security microscope. By labeling the Dubai bosses as less trustworthy than their British predecessors, the liberals give a big boost to the anti-Arab racism the rulers need to motivate troops and the home front. They're also working to keep important military supply lines in friendly hands. P & O, the firm Dubai wants to buy, runs piers not only in Newark, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, and New Orleans, but in Corpus Christi and Beaumont, Texas as well. These Texas harbors ship more than half the heavy arms (tanks, etc.) bound for Iraq.

Hoping to enlist working-class support, Clinton & Co. have turned to the utterly corrupt, Mafia-ridden, pro-imperialist leadership of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In conjunction with Democratic politicians, these hacks are holding flag-waving "Goodbye Dubai" rallies that recall ILA boss Teddy Gleason's role in advising the Pentagon on port efficiency in Vietnam during the genocidal U.S. war there.

Immediate concerns, especially the war in Iraq, roped Bush into blessing Dubai's purchase in spite of U.S. imperialism's long-term requirements. Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is providing the U.S. military with bases for the Iraq occupation. At any given time there are tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the UAE. Furthermore, the UAE is currently taking delivery of $6.4 billion worth of U.S. military equipment, mostly state-of-the-art fighter aircraft. For the moment, Bush can't afford to offend Dubai's ruler.

Geopolitics underlies a host of global takeover squabbles. France is vigorously protesting Mittal Steel's buyout of Europe's Arcelor, which would make Mittal the world's biggest steel producer. Mittal is run from London by a newly-rich Anglo-Indian family and the U.S. establishment. Along with those family members, U.S. investors Wilbur Ross and Lewis Kaden sit on Mittal's board. French bosses worry about Mittal's allegiances.

Ross ensured the existence of the U.S. steel industry, essential in future wars, by buying up bankrupt companies like Bethlehem, while lowering costs by eliminating workers' pensions. [Ross did the same with coal, gobbling up failing mines that might be needed in case arms demand spiked. He owns the Sago pit that murdered 12 miners in January.] Ross then "sold" his International Steel Group to Mittal.

Kaden is an old Bethlehem exec, who belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. imperialism's top think-tank. While Europe's bosses rage at Mittal, they raise only token opposition to German Eon's bid to become the world's largest gas supplier, and thus a European champion, by acquiring Spain's Endesa. And, closing ranks on another front, the U.S. Congress, alarmed at Beijing's growing military threat, helped Chevron thwart a Chinese attempt to take over Unocal.

Lenin got it right. When capitalists hash out international business deals, they are often sharpening their swords for war. In the U.S. today it's the liberals who lead the death march. The working class can answer these attacks by building an international communist movement. Here, a step on that road is winning workers and youth to participating in PLP's May Day marches on April 29 in New York City and Los Angeles. That process can lead them to joining the Party to lead the struggle for workers' power.

Are U.S. Rulers `Losing Latin America'?

U.S. rulers are bogged down in Iraq and face increasing challenges from China's bosses. Their nightmare scenario is Iran and Shia-controlled Iraq outside U.S. imperialist control. The European Union is the main investor in South America, with China a growing factor. U.S. bosses have huge investments and trade with Mexico and cannot afford to lose them to Mercosur (the Brazilian-led Free Trade group). A huge NAFTA transportation corridor is being built from Mexico to Kansas City to receive shipments from Asia and transport them throughout the U.S. (Monthly Review, Feb. 2006) One quarter of Mexico's active workforce lives and works in the U.S. In 2005, they sent $22 billion back to Mexico, representing 22% of Mexico's national budget. One of every five families in Mexico depends on money sent from the U.S. A racist Georgia law taxes this desperately-needed money.

In a widely-publicized article in Foreign Affairs Magazine (published by the CFR, the top U.S. imperialists), entitled "Is Washington Losing Latin America?," Peter Hakim, President of the Inter-American Dialogue, stresses the importance of U.S. immigration policy: "Latin Americans see immigration as a solution both to their own high unemployment and low wages and to the huge demand for workers in the U.S. They argue that the U.S. should accept larger numbers of immigrants. Instead, Washington has stiffened enforcement measures at its borders, an action that has not reduced illegal immigration but has raised the costs and risks of entering the United States and kept many immigrants in the underground economy where exploitation is common. Worse, state and local governments in the United States are increasingly implementing harsh anti-immigrant initiatives, and armed civilian volunteers occasionally take it upon themselves to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border to keep immigrants out."

"For many Latin American countries, especially Mexico, U.S. immigration policy has become the most important issue in their bilateral relations with the United States....U.S. and Latin American policymakers largely agree on the basic principles that should guide a new U.S. approach to the issue -- including a substantial increase in the number of temporary workers granted lawful entry to the U.S., the development of some procedures for some undocumented immigrants to earn legal status, and the effective enforcement of any new legislation." The roadblock to this lies within the Republican Party, whose right-wing favors deportations and the Minutemen.

Dialectics School Teaches:
Workers Can Change History

BROOKLYN, NY, Feb. 18 - A one-day conference was organized by PLP high school and college students to further understand the revolutionary communist philosophy - dialectical materialism. About 50 people participated, including a transit worker and a survivor from the Katrina capitalist disaster.

The introduction described why we study dialectical materialism, noting that everyone subscribed to a philosophy even if they don't realize it. The presentation featured four points of view, ranging from the religious to scientific, and mixtures of both. Participants were asked to choose which one most closely represented their view and why. As people responded, a comrade asked how one would assess a situation and gain the truth, stemming from their point of view. The discussion centered on a young woman who had been arrested at a college fair (see CHALLENGE, 12/01/04).

The first workshops focused on philosophy and science, and materialism vs. idealism. The first discussion examined the question of where do ideas and inventions come from, such as the creation of the automobile and the idea of someone or something being "cute." One high school student said ideas come from the need for a solution to a problem and daily interactions among people. The groups then considered the scientific method and why we should study philosophy. A method is needed in order to analyze/prove the correctness of an idea. Then we focused on how to determine the truth. That discussion was livelier because it involved opposing philosophies: belief in a god vs. a dialectical materialist outlook. Many defended religious beliefs quite sharply, even though they saw the correctness of a scientific approach to understanding and solving problems.

We were then asked if one can be a communist and still believe in god since these were two contradictory ideas. Some were very critical of the church and believed that a personal or individual relationship with god was the way to go, while others still believed in church teachings. It was a healthy debate on how to determine which ideas are correct, which ideas oppress the working class.

In these debates, we reached an understanding of idealism and materialism in the philosophical sense. This segment ended with the questions, "can humans change history and under what circumstances?" Most people agreed that humans can change history but we must agree on the correct philosophy and then take action on it.

The evening session dealt with the first law of dialectics, contradiction, explored during a discussion of sexism. Some of our friends realized it wasn't a personal "man-vs.-women" issue but one of one class dominating another; that men didn't benefit from it. A false contradiction was created between sections of the working class, preventing them from uniting against the real enemy - the capitalist leeches. The primary contradiction related to sexism is not man vs. women but workers vs. bosses. Similarly, racism was also discussed in these terms: not white vs. black but class vs. class; white workers don't benefit from racism but, in fact, racism hurts them also.

Finally, one comrade said we must study theory to analyze what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China, where working-class state power reverted back to capitalism. (For further analysis, see page 8.)

We in PLP intend to learn from their mistakes and pick up the torch to carry out the violent overthrow of capitalism with revolutionary communist theory to guide our class to defeat our class enemy.

PLP'ers Lead Disruption of Racist Minutemen Meeting

VALLEY FORGE, PA., Feb. 25 -- A group of PLPer's, along with other anti-racist groups, demonstrated against the racist anti-immigrant Minutemen here today. After phone calls flooded the town convention center demanding they be denied a room, they rented one at a nearby hotel and attempted to spew their anti-worker propaganda.

A group of 30 counter-demonstrators picketed outside to alert the public about the racist event inside. We held signs and shouted pro-worker chants. Young comrades led this protest, maintaining the spirited picketing and were greeted by approving honks from passers-by.

Another group went inside to interrupt their gathering, chanting "Smash racist deportations, working people have no nation!"

While the racists pushed us back out of the hallway, the cops -- protecting the fascist Minutemen -- arrested four protestors. The approximately 50 people attending the meeting were now aware of the racist nature of the group they were checking out. They heard us, and our disruption may have caused some second-guessing among those inside the room, putting the Minutemen leaders on notice that their views are being opposed. Without any interruptions or protests, they might have felt they're being accepted.

It's important that we fight the racists in every way possible when these scum try to openly recruit to their anti-working class filth, letting them know militant anti-racist workers and youth will unceasingly oppose them. We learn from each experience. Next time we'll be even better prepared.

Protesters Defy Racist Gary Cops After Murder of Black Teenager

GARY, IN -- On February 4, the streets echoed with chants of "No Justice -- No Peace, No Trigger-Happy Police!" With a megaphone, posters and under police surveillance, more than 60 activists rallied against the racist police murder of 16-year-old Vincent Smith Jr., arousing the city from its submission to racist bosses and officials.

Three weeks earlier, Vincent became another victim in the war between cops and workers when he was shot in the back of the head by Officer Levi Randolph. Randolph, seven years on the force, claimed Vincent reached for a gun while fleeing a burglary at his cousin's house.

Vincent, however, was unarmed and shot in the back of the head while running away, as reported in the corporate media. But they failed to mention that Randolph reportedly shot someone in a similar manner several years before enlisting to protect the bosses. The Gary police force has a number of cops who were apparently convicted of felonies and then were "pardoned" so they could become the kind of cops the bosses like.

Not an uncommon story in Gary or many other cities. But this time a rally was organized by a local campus group and joined by students from Chicago State University, members of the community, including from Vincent's family, and some PLP members from Chicago, showing there are people willing to fight against the racist, anti-working-class oppression ravaging the city.

Some residents were afraid. "These people are scared," said one. "They know if they stop and join [this rally], the police will recognize them and make them pay later." But undaunted, others did join the chants that were heard four blocks away, shouting in front of the police station, "Capitalism Means -- We Got To Fight Back!" The protest was a success and many local workers bought CHALLENGE and agreed with PLP's revolutionary outlook.

The following Saturday, some local anti-racist students circulated petitions in the community calling for the indictment and jailing of cop Randolph. Dozens of people are now circulating petitions throughout the area.

However, racism and capitalist corruption are not limited to this cop! It's time for action in one of the country's most notoriously racist cities. Gary's workers are ready to step up, but unless we fight to win workers, students and youth to PLP's revolutionary communist politics, local activism will just lead to liberal reforms that maintain the system of oppression which has made Gary a racist wasteland of closed factories, unemployment, failing schools and police terror. Building a struggle against this racist terror can be an important step in building this revolutionary movement.

UAW Sabotages Flint Delphi Protest

FLINT, MI, Feb. 16 -- Today about 75 active and retired auto workers from Flint, Detroit and Saginaw demonstrated outside the Flint East Delphi plant to protest the closing of the Spark Plug & Oil Filter production here and the concessions GM and Delphi are forcing on workers.

The UAW Local 651 leadership tried to use a snowstorm to call off the protest, spending all day in the factory telling workers it was cancelled, even though schools were open and the sidewalks around the plant were shoveled and clear.

The real reason behind the sabotage was a call to the Local leadership from UAW Headquarters asking them, "Are you with us or with them," referring to the Soldiers of Solidarity (SOS) reform movement. This didn't sit well with the picketing workers or the Local 651 members who organized the protest.

GM, Delphi and their UAW partners are working hard on a concession contract while they play out their bankruptcy court drama. They're hoping that a series of postponements and delays will give them time to settle things while wearing us down. The delays also give the bosses time to build up inventory and give GM time to line up other suppliers should a strike shut Delphi.

As in previous protests, American flags were in abundance. This attempt to make the workers' struggle "patriotic," and the bosses "unpatriotic," reflects a serious political weakness in the SOS movement. It's a far cry from the militant, anti-racist, pro-revolutionary movements that rocked the auto bosses in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Groups like DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the PLP-led Workers Action Movement (WAM) and others led mass violent actions, wildcats and sit-down strikes, fighting the bosses, cops and union sellouts. Then, carrying an American flag meant you were on the other side. It wasn't our flag then, and it's not our flag now.

As the Delphi struggle unfolds and May Day is on the horizon, "Save American Jobs" must give way to "Workers of the World, Unite" for GM and Delphi workers to have a fighting chance.

Expose AFL-CIA:
D.C. Transit Workers Lead Solidarity Rally

Washington, DC, Feb. 15--Seventy-five unionists rallied in solidarity with the Tehran bus drivers at the Iranian Interests Section here today. A PLP-led group of D.C. Metro transit workers turned an AFL-CIO "photo op" into a rally for workers' internationalism. The Metro workers electrified the rally, linking the attacks on workers here to those on workers abroad. Their signs read, "From Tehran to NYC to D.C., Workers of the World Unite!" Two Metro workers were new to such an action and were impressed that the union, under red leadership, would make such a move.

The president of ATU Local 689, the transit worker's union, is a member of PLP. He addressed the rally, saying, "The bosses here are the same as the bosses in Tehran. In Tehran, they jailed workers for going on strike. In New York, they imposed millions of dollars of fines on the workers, and showing their true racist nature, called the strikers `thugs.'"

Throughout this speech, listeners cheered our message of solidarity and anti-racism. Afterwards, the Metro workers led the rally in chanting, "Same enemy, same fight, Workers of the world must unite!" We distributed about 30 CHALLENGES.

Conversations afterwards centered on the importance of communist leadership. Metro workers know that without a communist president, the union wouldn't have been there. They see the stark difference between communist leadership and the opportunists who seek union office for personal gain. Workers saw the difference between the AFL-CIO leadership's speeches and chants and those of PLP. The rally re-energized communist work at Metro.

The need for international solidarity was evident to all the Metro workers at the rally and many more who couldn't attend. The fact that actions occurred worldwide was also inspiring to all of us. However, without communist leadership, rallies and actions will be only as powerful as the AFL-CIO's bullhorn: barely a whisper.

The AFL-CIO hypocrites say they support transit strikers in Iran, but Transport Workers Union international president Mike O'Brian, a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, ordered striking NYC transit workers to return to work and scab on their own strike!

The AFL-CIO called this rally to back U.S. imperialism in Iran and the rest of the Middle-East, not to support striking bus drivers. They're adding their voice to the growing ruling-class chorus attacking Iran's growing influence in the region. The New York Times (2/16) reported, "the Bush administration, frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, proposed...to spend $85 million to promote political change inside Iran by subsidizing dissident groups...to destabilize the...current Iranian government."

The labor-fakers didn't lift a finger to support transit strikers in NYC, Sweden or Nicaragua. Known as the AFL-CIA throughout Latin America, it has a long, bloody history of serving U.S. imperialism and smashing pro-working class, anti-U.S. rulers' movements.

The AFL-CIO always sides with U.S. rulers' war plans. PLP fights for international workers' solidarity and to overthrow the war-makers, from Washington to Tehran.

Racism, War Budget Closing 26 San Fran Schools

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 26 -- "The greatest lesson our kids can learn is how to fight the system," said a mother who had just moved here from back east. It was the third time a school attended by her first-grader was threatened with closure.

Both she and her son later took part in the January 30th one-day strike in which 200 of 225 students were held out at John Swett Elementary. Officials say "declining enrollment" is the "reason" for the closings. After years of racist cutbacks, we must move beyond appeals for mercy or such officials' rationales. The trend in schools here closely matches Oakland's and other districts nation-wide. As teachers in the Bay Area's two largest cities prepare to strike, the lack of a teacher-parent-student alliance as active as at John Swett is becoming painfully obvious.

"Financial concerns and educational policy sometimes are at odds," the S.F. School Commissioner Sarah Lipson told an angry crowd of parents protesting the District plan to close 26 schools. They're all in poorer and mostly African-American neighborhoods. Her neutral language hides the real issues driving both the cuts and the opposition to them.

The immediate factor underlying the attack is the war economy. The Federal government's latest spending plan continues military expansion that drains money from two-thirds of Federal Agencies. The Federal deficit will far eclipse the previous record, reaching $423 billion. Military spending (not counting the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan) will top $439 billion -- a 45% increase over five years.

The immediate effect underlying these attacks is intensified racism. With 60% of white students in private schools, S.F. already has the highest percentage of children in private schools nationally. Yet a public school like John Swett is being closed despite its location where the school age population will continue to rise. Meanwhile, the capitalists blithely talk about raising over $100 million to finance a new football stadium.

As bad as this is, these attacks will intensify as the U.S. capitalist class mounts more wars to cope with a deepening economic crisis and fiercer competition overseas. More imperialist war is not in workers' interest anywhere.

These contradictions enhance the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of communism. Slowly parents and teachers are in motion, resisting the effects of capitalism, its wars and sharpening racism. Reaching out with the ideas in CHALLENGE today can lead more and more teachers, parents and students to understand the need to organize for workers' power -- communism. Tomorrow, that militant parent quoted above will be telling us: "The greatest lesson our kids can learn is how to fight the system and replace it with a better, classless one!"

Youth Revolt Growing Against French Rulers' Attack on Jobs

(Part I -- CHALLENGE, 3/1 -- described the developing movement in France of up to a half million workers and students in nearly 200 cities -- mass demonstrations and strikes closing two universities -- opposing a new law, the "CPE" or contract for first employment, which would give the bosses a freer hand in laying off workers, and in hiring temporary and part-time workers, all leading to tremendous job insecurity and denial or loss of benefits.)

PARIS, Feb. 28 -- The anti-CPE movement continues to grow. A dozen universities are now on strike. Demonstrations are taking place here and in the country's major cities today, responding to a call from the university and high school unions.

On February 16 demonstrators in Rennes attempted to enter the prefecture, breaking windows, but were dispersed with tear gas. They continued demonstrating in the city center until 1 a.m. That day in Brest 400 students occupied a McDonald's restaurant, a symbol of job insecurity.

On February 23 there were widespread protests: 5,000 people demonstrated in Paris, chanting "C comme chômage" (as in unemployment), "P comme précaire" (insecurity)] and "E comme exploité" ( exploited); 2000 people protested in Rennes; in Toulouse, students blocked entry to two universities, welding the doors shut to some buildings; and 1,000 students took to the streets there, attacked by police using tear gas and riot sticks; 1,000 demonstrated in Bordeaux and 400 in Brest; 250 protesters stopped traffic on the main highway near Lorient and spoke to motorists before letting them drive on.

These young people want a steady job enabling them to live independently of their parents and start their own families. Capitalism requires a workforce disciplined by job insecurity. It cannot satisfy the needs of young people here, or anywhere.

An official study found that youth 15 to 24 constitute 9% of France's working population, but in 2002 accounted for 14% of the unemployed -- 25% of those who were laid off that year -- and 27% of the job-seekers. (The unemployed are those who have lost a job; "job-seekers" include those who've never had a job.) "For people under 25, alternating short periods of unemployment and temporary work has practically become the rule."

Job insecurity hits young blue-collar workers harder (see chart page 6) and is even worse for minority youth in the housing projects, whose unemployment rate ranges from 25% to 37%.

Passage of the CPE law will worsen this insecurity. Unfortunately, the political machines of the Socialist and Communist Parties largely control the anti-CPE movement. Their goal is not to destroy the capitalist system that creates job insecurity. They are limiting the movement to a single-issue approach that allows them to pose as a left-wing alternative to the government in the run-up to the 2007 presidential and legislative elections.

Most of the leaders of the main university student union, UNEF, align themselves with one of three Socialist Party (SP) factions, while high school student leaders belong to one of two SP factions.

Recent French history shows that following these Socialist misleaders is a dead-end for workers, young and old. In 2002 the Socialist government adopted measures forcing workers to work longer for smaller pensions (a move which lost them the presidential and legislative elections that year). In 2005 one SP mayor called on the right-wing government to use the Army to crush the rebellion in the housing projects. Lately they have been praising the U.K.'s Tony Blair and "New Labour."

Now the Socialists and their Communist Party allies are ferociously attacking the CPE. Laurent Fabius, who jumped on the anti-European constitution bandwagon (see CHALLENGE, 5/25/05), advocates creating a special temporary work contract for young people -- a watered-down CPE.

Jean-Louis Borloo, Minister for Employment, has portrayed the CPE as an answer to minority unemployment. He's able to pose -- hypocritically -- as a friend of minority youth by telling the truth: the fake leftists have no plan to counter racist unemployment in the housing projects.

In reality, the CPE will not create new jobs for minority youth or for anyone else. Two French academics, Pierre Cahuc and Stéphane Carcillo, have just published a study which predicts the CPE would create 70,000 jobs and reduce unemployment rolls by 95,000 over the next two years. This in a country where over 2.3 million people are unemployed! The report says "this [CPE] reform is going to cause an increase in hiring in the short term, but at the same time we will see an increase in lay-offs." Cahuc was named to the Council of Economic Analysis by Prime Minister Villepin.

Having passed the French National Assembly, debate on the CPE bill began in the French senate on February 23. The government intends to pass it before March 3 in order to undercut the March 7th demonstrations. The Socialist and Communist Parties are trying to delay the vote, notably by introducing 600 amendments.

Since Chirac's government party, the UMP, doesn't have a majority in the Senate, it needs the support of the centrist UDF (Union for French Democracy) to enact the CPE bill. The UDF has tabled amendments to reduce the 24-month trial period, and has said its support will depend on acceptance of these amendments.

Thinking workers can easily see that the positions of all these parties only differ on how far and how fast to go in increasing job insecurity here. Polls show public satisfaction with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has fallen to 43%, the lowest level since he took office.

The CGT trade union confederation has called for "powerful demonstrations" on March 7 opposing the CPE. However, it left strike decisions to its member federations. The CGT's public services federation -- France's main public sector union -- has called for a strike on March 7. The Force Ouvrière trade union confederation has called on all its member federations to strike on March 7.

But all the efforts of students and workers in the anti-CPE movement will be to no avail if they do not reject the sellout leaders of three sets of organizations: the fake left political parties and their allies in the student and trade unions.

Situation of young people aged 15 to 29 on the job market in 2003

                             holders of a vocational      holders of a university      
                             training certificate or      degree                       
                             technical school                                          
                             certificate                                               
worked at temporary jobs     19.2%                        8.8%                         
all year                                                                               
combined work and            20.8%                        14%                          
unemployment                                                                           
were unemployed all year     8.7%                         6%                           
total suffering from         45.7%                        28.8%                        
insecurity                                                                             

(Statistics from the INSEE, a French government agency)

Chavez's State Capitalism No Road to Workers' Power

(The following is part 2 of a series begun last issue written by a new young comrade who recently returned from Brazil and Venezuela.)

Everything the government has done pours from Chavez's mouth during his epic speeches; ideology is directed from the top, to a profoundly fragmented mess of loosely-coordinated social/community/labor groups below, uniting only on the streets and only to protest some new threat Bush makes to Chavez. There's no coherence, class consciousness, or unifying cause to the "Bolivarian" movement, except a vague but fierce "opposition to U.S. imperialism." There's not a single group that can be considered even a socialist (let alone communist!) vanguard force for the workers and majority poor (80%) that has roots in the working class.

As reported in CHALLENGE, Chavez follows a tradition of populist regimes (a la Argentina's Peron) that virulently opposed the ruling feudal oligarchy through "siding" with the working classes and campesinos. For the feudal landowners, both forces are dangerous threats to be resisted. To the new bourgeois class (Peron, Chavez), while the oligarchs are a force to be overthrown, the workers and campesinos are forces to be disciplined and brought under control. Peron once said that his reforms doled out to the working class were the best defense against communism. For the workers and campesinos, it all spells FASCISM.

Peron, overthrown in 1955, was returned to power in 1973 by the ruling class to placate a wave of workers' mass uprisings. It had begun with the 1969 El Cordobazo, a rebellion in the industrial city of Cordoba, led by autoworkers. Peron and his wife Isabel, who succeeded him in 1974 after he died, launched a reign of terror through the AAA death squads (Argentina Anti-Communist Alliance), killing many militant workers and youth who believed in his populism. This paved the way for the fascist military dictatorship which ruled from 1976 until 1983, and which launched a dirty war that killed 30,000.

In the case of Venezuela, let's consider:

The Venezuelan economy has seen the ninth consecutive quarter of sustained growth. At 9.4% growth in the past year alone -- largely in construction, commerce and communications -- Venezuela's GDP is expected to double in less than ten years. On July 4, 2004, Chavez inaugurated a roundtable with U.S. businesses, signing deals totaling $624.5 million in less than 48 hours. He paraphrased JFK, calling for an "Alliance for Survival," a partnership between the U.S. and Venezuela based ideologically on Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, a horrifying blank check for renewing and entrenching U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

Chavez touts nationalism since if he internationalized the struggle and put class warfare into materialist terms, he would awaken the working classes and nail the door to his own casket. Nationalism will guarantee the workers' militant, yet loyal subservience to his administration. He uses the UNT -- his pro-Chavez union federation -- as the outspoken advocate of state intervention and monopoly in the nation's basic industries, as the state extends its reach merging with industry. Historically, fascist rule legitimizes private entities into arms of state power. Nationalism will guarantee the growth of the "corporate state" (fascism) in Venezuela.

In the international context, the changing social relations Chavez represents is interwoven with China's strength as a growing imperialist player. Since the Iraq invasion effectively nullified China's 1997 oil agreements with Saddam Hussein, China's need for oil and the need to control the sources of oil will reach cataclysmic proportions. What makes Chavez such a threat to U.S. imperialism is not his flirtation with Fidel Castro but his cleverness in playing off two major imperialist rivals. Should Chavez bail on the U.S. and deal exclusively with China, the U.S. economy would be heavily affected. That's why, as CHALLENGE has indicated, the U.S. must keep China purchasing oil from U.S. companies in the short term, while facing inevitable war with it in the long term.

(To be concluded next issue)

`New Century' = Old Deception
LA HOTEL WORKERS MUST REJECT CLASS COLLABORATION

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9 -- Five hundred hotel workers and their supporters poured onto Century Boulevard, near LAX airport, shouting "The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!" This kicked off a union drive for workers in four large airport hotels. Or was it?

Rank-and-file hotel workers -- black, Latin, Asian and white -- have poured a huge amount of energy into unionizing their co-workers into UNITE-HERE, Local 11. Some have union experience on other jobs and in other countries. Others are new at union struggles. Their main concerns are wages, hours, health benefits, workload and harassment from supervisors.

But union leaders, together with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, tried to turn the march into its opposite. Their signs, leaflets, chants and speeches were almost all about their "Coalition for a New Century." Its goal is to turn the area surrounding the airport into a convention center and tourist attraction. Leading the rally was LA City Councilperson Janice Hahn. UNITE-HERE organizing director Kurt Peterson explained, "We want to partner with the city and industry."

So while rank-and-filers are angry and want to fight the hotel bosses, their so-called "leaders" want to "partner" with them. "UNITE-HERE leaders have participated in ground-breaking labor-management partnerships," trumpets the union website.

R. Palme Dutt explained this strategy, known as "social fascism," 70 years ago in "Fascism and Social Revolution." Europe's Social-Democrats advocated class collaboration of the working-class organizations with the capitalist State in the 1920's and 1930's. They "prepared the way ideologically" for fascism and "assist[ed] fascism to power."

The same treachery continues today within the immigrant-rights movement. United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta and UNITE-HERE leader Maria Elena Durazo (a leading candidate to head the LA County Federation of Labor) urged immigrant workers to join with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in backing the Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill. (See article, front page ) Interestingly, the Growers Association also supports the same bill. When workers unite with the bosses, they'll be defeated every time.

Attendees at a recent pro-immigrant rights event were sharply divided over Huerta's call to support Kennedy-McCain. "They tell us it's about family reunification and a path to citizenship," one activist commented, "but that's only one quarter of it. The other three-quarters is more border control and law enforcement."

PLP will continue to bring the message to angry hotel LA hotel workers that workers must unite with our class brothers and sisters here and internationally to fight the bosses and their class-collaborationist allies. Ultimately we'll triumph through communist revolution.

Mexico: Red Ideas Embolden Workers' Battle with Boss

MEXICO CITY -- "We know how to lubricate the machines, and even familiarize ourselves with the dies. In the same way we can lubricate our minds with communist ideas since they get drowsy and contaminated by capitalist illusions."

This idea is heard almost every day during lunch throughout our transportation company. We build consciousness in our co-workers by showing them we can perform whatever job necessary, belying the bosses' contention that we're only good for the most laborious jobs. Meanwhile, we're subjected to the most intense speed-up. And, if that isn't enough, video cameras film us through special glass windows that blur the threatening silhouette of the boss as he watches to make sure you're working hard.

While not tied with chains and shackles, we must recognize that the chains of ignorance hide our unparalleled potential power as the only source of value.

The supervisors threaten us to work harder and faster, not miss work and obey all their orders because in this crisis, "you won't get another job like this." We suffer such harassment daily and haven't had a wage increase in five years.

But a worker is like a sleeping lion -- you only have to wake him up with PLP's communist ideas. This occurred when the workers demanded a wage increase.

Even though the boss had been warned and his abuses denounced, it wasn't until then that he began trembling like a wet rat. The boss listened to all the workers listing their most pressing needs. Then he said the company had many problems; that we should be grateful to have a job; and that the company hadn't made a profit in years, but still continued investing so we could keep our jobs.

This confused many workers, who became fearful and lowered their guard. This strengthened the boss's position. Then a comrade spoke and with a simple but significant example, told the workers:

"Let's suppose that Pedrito collects 5 bottles and Juan washes them and Luis paints them and another worker goes door to door selling them for 2 pesos each. After collecting 10 pesos, another person who did nothing, who didn't leave his family, who didn't get sick inhaling paint fumes, who didn't get tired going door to door selling bottles then tells us, "Give me 8 pesos and the rest is for all of you." Fellow workers, who did the work? Who generated the wealth?" The workers then flexed their muscles and forced the boss to give them a wage increase.

With this explanation of surplus value, it became clear that communist ideas and PLP's leadership can organize the workers to ultimately destroy the capitalist system.

Despite some comrades being fired, the seed of communism continues to grow.

"Comrade, keep sowing your seeds. One day we'll reap the harvest."

Profit Drive Kills Sixty-Five Miners In Mexico

COAHUILA, MEXICO, Feb. 28 --"Everyone talks about how much wealth we have here, but what do miners get from it? Nothing. I have always dreamed that injustices like this will one day end, and that all will change. I'm sure I will die just dreaming," said Maria Alvarez, sister of one of the 65 miners murdered at the coal mine Pasta de Conchos here. (Quoted by La Jornada, Mexico City daily, 2/26)

Capitalism has destroyed the dreams of millions of workers like Maria Alvarez and her brother. According to the International Labor Organization, 15,000 miners die each year in coal mines worldwide due to the rotten working conditions stemming from the owners' drive for maximum profits.

This May Day we in PLP will honor all these miners and all workers murdered by capitalism from Coahuila to Baghdad to West Virginia (where 14 miners were murdered recently under similar conditions) by redoubling our efforts to end this vicious system.

PLP Proud of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
50 Years Ago Krushchev Slandered Communism

On February 25, one of the darkest days in international working-class history marked its 50th anniversary. That date in 1956 Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev gave a "secret speech" at the 20th Communist Party Congress to denounce Joseph Stalin, portraying him as a bloodthirsty monster.

U.S. and European bosses reveled at the spectacle. Here was Khrushchev, Stalin's successor and the head of U.S. imperialism's mortal enemy, condemning the supposed "crimes" of the leader who had done more than anyone in the second half of the 20th century to champion workers everywhere in their fight to overthrow capitalism.

The bosses' media, in both Europe and the U.S., have highly publicized this anniversary of Khrushchev's notorious diatribe. From our class's point of view as well, the event remains important, because it contains valuable lessons for future revolutionary struggle.

The rulers indeed hated Stalin but not for the reasons announced in Khrushchev's speech or in volumes of CIA-sponsored lies about Stalin as a mass murderer. They hated him because he represented the specter of communism and the violent end of the profit system, and he symbolized the Soviet Union as the international center of the communist movement. It was those "crimes" that led the big bosses of every imperialist power to label Stalin as "worse than Hitler."

The PLP has written extensively about Stalin's achievements and errors. The history of the old communist movement is far too rich and complex for us to attempt a summary in one article. Nonetheless, this occasion calls for a general summary.

Young workers and PLP comrades can learn much from studying Stalin's successes and failures. On the positive side, he led the Soviet Union in its transformation from backward nation to modern industrial giant. He built socialism, which saw the greatest pro-working class economic and political reforms in human history. He championed anti-racism and the emancipation of women. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union proved beyond a shadow of doubt that workers could rule society in their own interests and in service of their own needs.

When U.S. and European imperialists rearmed Germany and pushed Hitler to destroy both the USSR and socialism, Stalin bought enough time to prepare for the eventual onslaught, stood steadfast through the havoc of Hitler's invasion, and despite tens of millions of casualties, led Soviet society and the Red Army until the Nazi beasts had been ground to dust.

Even Stalin's principal enemies recognized that he had no peer as a statesman and political leader. Winston Churchill, for example, admired him for taking "... a backward country with an illiterate population and turn[ing] it into a global powerhouse with a nuclear bomb" (New Telegraph, Feb. 25, 2006).

But Stalin also committed grave errors. They were not his alone. He followed the line of Marx and Engels, the giants who founded the communist movement, and of the great Lenin, who led the Bolshevik revolution. The PLP has extensively analyzed these errors elsewhere, and once again, we urge all workers and Party comrades to study them. Stalin and his predecessors believed in "two-stage revolution." They didn't think that workers could be won at the outset to the politics of communism, and so they advocated socialism, which had a foot in both camps.

On the one hand, it unleashed torrents of working-class energy and creativity, producing the achievements sketched above. On the other hand, it maintained the wage system, material rather than political incentives and, inevitably, social inequalities. Infected with these poisons, the Soviet Communist Party inevitably turned into its opposite.

Although he spoke on both sides of his mouth about nationalism, Stalin basically promoted it. Nationalism is a disguise for all-class unity and therefore fatal to the principle of working-class internationalism. Stalin mobilized Soviet society to fight World War II for "Mother Russia," rather than for the international working class. The deadly results became evident shortly after Hitler had gone to his grave.

Closely related to nationalism was the fatal flaw of uniting with "lesser evil" bosses and imperialists, justifying the alliance with the illusion that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Communists from post-World War II Europe to Indonesia paid for this error with rivers of blood, as the so-called "lesser evil" bosses pounced on them the moment an opening presented itself.

Khrushchev's infamous speech did not cause the death of the old international communist movement. The errors committed by the movement's champions and heroes, including Stalin, had made this death inevitable. Khrushchev's disgraceful performance was merely the sign that the Soviet Union had become an imperialist country in its own right.

The rulers are celebrating Khrushchev's speech because the spirit of communism continues to haunt them and because, despite Stalin's faults, he remains the greatest leader the old communist movement produced in the 20th century. The bosses can never do enough to lie about him and discredit him. We in PLP should strive to emulate his class hatred, his tactical brilliance, his resoluteness in the face of overwhelming odds and his courage. We have a long way to go before we reach hailing distance. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the millions who fought for a world without capitalism. But we also recognize Stalin's mistakes and continue struggling to avoid them. It isn't easy. Opportunism -- the temptation of capitalist ideas -- is the prevailing ethic in a world ruled by the values of the profit system.

But we can eventually win. Despite the obstacles we face today in the absence of a communist center with state power, dark night must have its end. Stalin, the Soviet working class, and the Red Army crushed Hitler. Inspired by that example, we can continue to build a new communist movement, which will sooner or later obliterate the profit system and replace it with a worker's dictatorship and a decent society.

Road to Katrina:
1927 Flood Restored Slavery in Mississippi

"Rising Tide; The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 And How it Changed America," by John M. Barry

The flood had been expected for days, and whites had fled town. But the black and poor had no escape route. As the waters rose, desperate families hacked through their ceilings and clung to rooftops. The National Guard herded blacks at gunpoint into squalid refugee camps, where they were imprisoned without food or fresh water. The Red Cross became storm troopers. An indifferent President refused to visit the flooded regions, while local and state authorities bickered...

Sound familiar? The year was 1927, the president Calvin Coolidge, and the town was Greenville, Mississippi. To know the road that led to Katrina, you must read this book. Although written in 1997, it foreshadows Katrina with eerie accuracy.

The Mississippi River was human-engineered for disaster. For decades it had been reshaped for profits, by scouring a deep-water shipping channel to the Gulf. Effective flood prevention would provide natural outlets; instead banks were protected only by levees. These misguided policies made the river unstoppable in floods. Over time, loss of sediments caused New Orleans to sink into a fragile bowl surrounded by water.

In 1927, New Orleans was a national center of finance capital, and the Mississippi Delta was ruled by cotton and timber kings. Their plantations were worked by black sharecroppers, in debt slavery. So dependent were Delta planters on black labor that they resisted the Klan out of self-interest, because it might induce blacks to migrate north.

After a year of monster storms, the river burst its levees and flooded seven states. Thousands were drowned, and one million (1% of the U.S. population!) became homeless. Greenville was the worst. Refugees lined the levees for eight miles. Government boats arrived to evacuate them, but Greenville's planters feared the permanent loss of their workers. At bayonet point, the National Guard forced refugees back and sent the steamers away. One ship, built to hold thousands, left with 33 whites.

Greenville's entire black population was forced into Red Cross camps on the levee. Such prisons, literally called concentration camps, were set up across Mississippi. Black men wore ID tags indicating work status and plantation of origin. They were forced to work as slaves, sandbagging levees and loading barges; if they resisted, they were whipped and their families denied food. White overseers with guns patrolled the camps. No one was free to leave.

According to a memo, "Plantation Owners desiring their labor to be returned from Refugee Camps will make application to the nearest Red Cross representative" who "will issue passes to refugees." Blacks approached the brink of armed rebellion after a cop murdered a black man who refused to return to the levee after working all night.

Ironically, New Orleans was never in real danger, because broken levees upstream spent the river's force. However, city bosses didn't understand this and feared financial panic among investors. For those who doubt the existence of a ruling class, what happened next is revealing. City bankers met in a smoke-filled room and conspired to dynamite a levee, flooding neighboring St Bernard's parish, home of working-class descendants of immigrants. To cover their butts, they called in favors, from Washington to Chase Manhattan. Herbert Hoover, disaster czar, approved the plan. (Hoover, who manipulated and betrayed black supporters, vaulted to the presidency on his "success" in flood relief, while Huey Long rode a wave of populist reaction to become Louisiana's "Kingfish.")

Despite its exposé, the book is flawed by paternalistic racism. The author dwells in dramatic detail on the ruling Percy family of Greenville planters. Will Percy, the boss's son, is portrayed sympathetically as a poetry-writing liberal; his father is praised for resisting the Klan. The reader is blindsided in Chapter 25, when Will emerges as a despicable racist thug, the boss who restores slavery. Barry does not give comparable weight to African American sources, though these are plentiful: the events happened within living memory. Although black leaders from the NAACP to the black-owned Chicago Defender denounced the outrages, blacks remain relatively voiceless throughout this book.

From the Chicago Defender, May 7, 1927: "The ugly specter of Race hate has reared its head above the angry waters in the flood area... Men, women, and children of our group, who were conscripted, forced to leave their homes to top levees and prevent, if possible, a flood in their respective cities, are now refugees in `Jim Crow' relief camps. This vast army of destitute persons, nearly 100,000, the majority of them farmers and laborers from 75 villages and towns of seven flood-torn states of the South, are experiencing worse treatment than our forefathers did before the signing of the emancipation proclamation."

UNDER COMMUNISM:
How Will Children Be Raised?

Most children are part of the working class, the class that will control society under communism. To the capitalists, working-class children are just the future means to their (the capitalists') profits. Working-class parents, on the other hand, care about what's good for their children. But there is little discussion or writing about how to raise children for their own good. Parents are not taught how to nurture their children, and are even persuaded to feel that it's nobody's business how they raise them. But a collective approach is always the method most likely to achieve the outcome we want.

Under communism, children probably will spend most of the day in a collective situation, under the supervision of many caring adults. They'll learn cooperation from an early age, and competition will be discouraged. (As a past example, Soviet children were given blocks that were too large for one child to move around, requiring others to help.) Students will not be ranked, and there will be no such thing as failure in any school subject. This will encourage classmates to help each other to learn, rather than trying to outdo each other.

Some classic theories, even under capitalism, resemble communist principles. For example, Stephen Glenn in his book "Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World" says that children need to develop (1) perceptions of their capabilities, (2) the feelings of contributing meaningfully, (3) the ability to work well with others, (4) the knowledge of limits and consequences, and (5) the use of strong judgment skills. Glenn emphasizes awareness of children's own power or influence over life. He apparently doesn't realize that only under communism will working-class children have the ability to influence society.

Alfred Adler (the 19th-20th century Austrian psychiatrist) taught that (1) children are social beings and behave as they see themselves in relation to others, (2) behavior is goal-oriented, toward belonging and feeling significant, (3) maladjusted behavior stems from discouragement, (4) children and adults need to contribute to society, based on concern for others, and (5) children and adults both require dignity and respect. But youth have a vague understanding that a profit-based system is interested only in sorting them for different forms of exploitation, through forcing them to compete with each other and then ranking them.

To prepare them, capitalist schools train children to take tests rather than to think creatively. As a result, many drop out or rebel. Then dealing with rebellion becomes a primary task of teachers and parents.

Under communism, the basis of education will be vastly different. Whereas children's books today emphasize fantasy, under communism they will teach real working-class history and how to run society for the benefit of the class. Whereas today books are racist and sexist, under communism they will teach why the capitalists needed these divisive horrors and how the working class overcame them once it seized political power.

Under capitalism, even young children feel the stress of inability to achieve a fulfilling life through competition. Under communism, fulfillment will come from contributing to everyone's welfare. Is it any wonder our children exhibit anger, self-destructive behavior and depression? And then they're drugged for invented psychiatric disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which mainly results from the contradictions between what they learn in school and what they learn from their own, and their parents' real lives.

In a communist society we will experience some of the same joys and problems we face today in raising our youth. But families will not be left to fend for themselves. While children may develop various abilities, these will enable them to contribute in various ways. Working-class children worldwide will become more than capable of running the future communist society. (This column welcomes thoughts on this and other subjects from all our readers, including youth, parents and teachers.)

LETTERS

What is Fascism?

After receiving several issues of CHALLENGE, I must say I'm very pleased with the paper. However, I highly recommend you change one thing.

The use of "fascist" in this newspaper is so rampant it's almost to deduct the power of the word, and ignore political science. It's highly imperative we appeal to intellectuals, and anyone with fairly simple political knowledge will flag the absurd use of "fascist" immediately. Fascism is a specific government system in which one nationalist, totalitarian ruler with militarist tendencies makes all decisions. He almost always incorporates highly religious and mystical viewpoints on world matters. Fascism also directly supports capitalism with the belief that there is an elitist, grandiose corporation that makes the country's goods. The products of capitalism favor the fascist leader and his corporate beneficiaries greatly, as it was easy to see in Nazi Germany's extensive use of IBM, Volkswagen and Audi in their war effort.

Yes, the fascists are the communists' greatest ideological enemy in many ways. But by simply calling fascist anything that is racist, nationalist, or capitalist, we're undermining our audience, political science, and jeopardizing CHALLENGE'S reputation. It's crucial we remain politically intelligent and credible to appeal to one of the most important groups to persuade: the teachers and other highly-intellectual and integral relayers of Marxist ideology.

CJ

CHALLENGE responds:

Thanks for your comments. While sometimes we might overuse the term fascist, in general we use it correctly. Your explanation of fascism is incomplete. It's not just something related to capitalism; it is capitalism in its most brutal form. Hitler didn't come to power as a sole ruler, (although he was a dictator); he came to power with the full support of the German ruling class and international capitalism (i.e., Henry Ford). They saw the Nazis as the road to strengthening German capitalism with the goal of destroying the new Soviet Union. (See "Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power, 1919-1933, by James Pool). Fascism in the U.S. is not born from a mystical person like Bush, but rather from a decision of the U.S. ruling class (principally the liberal Eastern establishment).

Many elements of fascism already exist in the U.S., even before 9/11, including Clinton's increase of 100,000 cops, welfare repeal and immigration "reform," and have been accelerated since -- the wholesale round-up of Middle Eastern and South Asian workers; the readiness to allow thousands of casualties related to Katrina; the institution of torture as a principle of the U.S. military; the attacks by racist cops in the big cities; the smashing of trade unions; the virtual illegalization of strikes; the concerted attempt to drive masses of workers into poverty; and so on.

On the other point: it is important to win teachers and others like them to Marxist ideology, but it is even more important to win workers, soldiers and students to it. The working class is the key force in fighting fascism and imperialist war and in the struggle for a society without any bosses: communism.

The Contradiction of Religion and Materialism

I recently participated in a day-long PLP dialectical materialism workshop in Brooklyn. My breakout group included high school students, teachers, transit workers, scientists and nurses. We discussed how childhood development and learning illustrated the relationship between actual experiences, emotional responses, and idea formation. Such ideas can help us solve a problem or improve an existing object or function. One participant reasoned that an idea could also be developed out of need.

We discussed the scientific method and application. The high school students explained the application of scientific method/process using experiences from their classes. We figured out that this method was not isolated within science. One HS'er exclaimed, "You use it every day!"

The longest discussion involved philosophy and religion. Interestingly, religion emerged as a key part of the development of personal philosophies. Religion dictates how one should believe and behave; such rules can conflict with one's own personal view. Members discussed how they disagreed with the church's condemnation of people who are gay and with gay marriage, saying that sexual orientation was irrelevant to being a good person, providing a healthy family life, or being a good communist. Though one can be religious and a Party member, it's important to analyze the contradictions between the two!

Religion teaches people to be passive participants in the world by accepting their lot in life, not fighting against oppression, because God has a "plan" for every individual life; to go against God means not entering Heaven after death. PLP reasons that the life we're living now is worth fighting for, against the exploitation, or "our lot in life." Understanding that the ruling class historically and currently uses religion as an "opiate of the masses," all workers must unite and fight against the bosses, against ideas that remove power from workers' hands -- as if we don't know exactly what we need.

I gained insight from this experience and a better understanding of materialism. Not only will I apply the principles better but I'll be able to discuss and explain them with friends. I look forward to future workshops.

D.C. Militant

Bavaria Workers Screwed by Hacks, SabMiller Bosses

For workers in Bavaria, the Colombian brewery now owned by the multi-national SabMiller Corp., conditions have gone from bad to worse. Bavaria's bosses have imposed their own Plan Colombia (the U.S.-Colombian rulers' local war plan) against the workers. This accelerated after the union hacks signed a totally sellout contract. Now, basically there is no union at the plant. After the militant strike of a few years ago, the union hacks sold out, allowing the bosses to cut workers' rights even more, rights won through many past struggles. Now, there's no resistance to the bosses' onslaught.

The company has devised new schemes to lower wages, tricking workers into believing they're now "strategic partners" in Bavaria. This has led workers to push a labor "co-op" plan (instead of a real union), using temporary inexperienced labor to handle the machinery. This is increasing industrial accidents in the plant.

The remaining workers are being terrorized -- punished for any simple mistake, suffering arbitrary firings and speed-up. One worker lost a finger because of being sped up. Another worker may lose his legs after being run over by a forklift. Stress is causing heart problems among many workers. This also affects those laid off after many years in the plant, and given miserable severance pay. Now they can't find jobs in this high-unemployment country and live in poverty.

We in PLP must step up our efforts to rebuild our forces among these and many other workers here. We must show them they're not alone, that there is a solution. DESAFIO must be brought to these workers.

A Red Worker, Colombia

Developing Writers For CHALLENGE

"We've carried out very important activities," said a farm worker comrade here in El Salvador. "It's necessary to publish them in the paper. For example, after the last meeting our club met and discussed the guide about how to write for the paper."

A university student added, "Then workers from other countries can realize the struggle for communism is international. It would also help to organize more people."

The work to build the fight for communism is ceaseless. Recently we had a very important meeting with a good group of farm workers, city workers and students to continue studying how to write for CHALLENGE.

We discussed the world and national situations, along with reading and criticizing an article in the paper that reviewed our last cadre school. One youth said, "It's the first time I really feel good about coming. I want to write, but first I'd like to do a draft of the article and then bring it to a club meeting to improve it."

"I like to read the paper, but I can't write," said another. "You have to change the `I can't' to `yes I can,'" commented another comrade. "You learn to write by writing."

Bourgeois education gives us a mechanical understanding. It stops us from thinking. CHALLENGE helps us to think fully, especially to strengthen our critical understanding of capitalism. We agreed to begin writing articles to use for May Day in our local edition of CHALLENGE.

After the meeting we toured the area to enable the groups of youth from different areas to socialize. This helps consolidate the communist camaraderie between rural and city youth.

Writing and collectivizing the planning of CHALLENGE articles is an important job of the leadership here, along with developing youth leaders so they can take the fight for communist revolution into their hands.

Comrades in El Salvador

On the `Under Communism' Column

In the March 1 issue of CHALLENGE a letter proposed changing the name of the column, "Under Communism" because readers might misinterpret "under" to mean that "communism is 'over' the people" and that "communism is a plan made by experts separated from the people." An alternative title was proposed, such as "Communist Life," or "something like that."

We sympathize with the reader's attempt to guard against such misinterpretations, but disagree that the possibility of misinterpretation necessitates a title change. The column's editors, along with the editors of CHALLENGE, take great pains to see that all articles clearly demonstrate that any separation of "experts" from the people has no place in a communist society.

There is, however, a sense in which communism is indeed "over the people." The term "people" in this context can mean one of two things - either a group of individuals or a class, in this case the working class. The latter has a collective existence that is more than just the sum of the individual workers. Shared exploitation and oppression, and general cooperation among members of the class, often produce collective resistance that unites those involved into a single entity and not just a loose group of individuals.

In an organizational sense, the class is "above" the individuals. Therefore, the communist society will be run collectively by the working class "above" the individual workers and their families, but in their class interest. Communism will not be "above" the class as a whole but will be the Party enmeshed IN the working class. Collectively, the Party, and workers not yet in the Party, will make decisions on the organization of society in which they live. They will dictate the manner of housing, food, education, medical care and the laws by which they rule - "over" the remaining members and supporters of the old ruling class. They will forcibly prohibit attempts to return to capitalism.

As such, for the foreseeable future both classes will live according to and "under" communist principles. It remains for us communists today to show workers that this in no way resembles the way the capitalist bosses and their government are now above the workers.

Editors of "Under Communism" Column

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

US in Arabia: 50 years of oil-run moves

Keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz has been bedrock American foreign policy for more than a half-century.

Fifty-three years ago, British and American intelligence officers conspired to help bring about the overthrow of Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh...and his plans to nationalize the Iranian oil industry....Power was then effectively concentrated in the hands of Shah Mohammed Reza Pehlavi....

By January 1980, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had driven the shah from the Peacock Throne, President Carter made absolutely clear in his final State of the Union address that one aspect of our foreign policy remained unchanged:

"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

The Reagan administration announced its intention to continue defending the free flow of Middle East oil, by whatever means necessary...

Subsequently, the United States began establishing military bases in Saudi Arabia...The defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, laid out Washington's concerns:

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil...

What Mr. Cheney said was correct then and remains correct now. (Ted Koppel, NYT, 2/24)

Super-snoops can't avoid hitting millions

...Widespread wiretapping programs produce so much information....

Even if the probability that the purported terrorist profile is accurate were an astonishing 99 percent...most of the hits would be false positives.

...Let's...assume that one out of a million American residents has terrorist ties -- that's approximately 300 people -- and the profile will pick out 99 percent, or 297 of them. Great. But what of the approximately 300 million innocent Americans? The profile will...pick out 1 percent of them, "only" three million. (NYT, 2/12)

Buy your own kit, US tells troops in Iraq

It's been widely reported that the administration has failed miserably to provide the life-saving armor that all of our vulnerable soldiers need. But less well known is that even basic items are not provided -- such as ballistic glasses that are less likely to fog up in Iraq's 120-degree heat, shirts and socks that wick sweat away from the body, helmet sweatbands, and water pouches. These are products that can make a life-or-death difference....

The Pentagon, however, says that such items are too costly, so soldiers wanting them must get them on their own...

Paychecks for soldiers are as low as $14,000 a year -- why should their safety be a matter of personal affordability? (Jim Hightower)

Top Lawyer says money makes the rules

At various times in his career, Hayes has advised or represented Si Newhouse, Anna Wintour, Puff Daddy, Daniel Libeskind and Lizzie Grubman, as well as lots of guys with names like Pistol Pete and Little Georgie. At the moment, he is handling the case of Stephen Caracappa, the retired cop accused of being a Mafia hit man. Hayes charges a lot -- in part to pay for his collection of flashy handmade suits -- but he knows his way around....

The two main things he learned in the Bronx, Hayes says, are that "most of the time, law is about power," and is less concerned with justice than with money, and that "everything works the same way as the crime business" -- meaning that there is always a way around the rules. (NYT, 2/15)

Kids need quarter million to dream of Olympics

...It seems no one ever talks about how much those moms and dads spent to help their children reach the Olympics...

If you want your child to compete in skiing in the 2022 Winter Games, plan on spending $295,449. That includes $149,100 for private lessons, $114,000 for travel-related expenses -- "by the time he's 14, he'll be jetting to Switzerland for summer competitions" -- and $21,153 for clothing....

Training a figure skater for the Olympics will cost you a bit less. The total for private lessons, travel, skates and clothes, including "a seamstress to sew thousands of sequins into several costumes" : $232,178. (NYT, 2/18)

 

a href="#It’s Not Just Bush!">"t’s Not Just Bush! Liberal Hawks Want Our Youth to Die in Imperialist Oil Wars

a href="#Beware AFL-CIO ‘Solidarity’: Iran, D.C, NYC">Be"are AFL-CIO ‘Solidarity’: Iran, D.C, NYC: Transit Workers, Unite!

Cartoons, Racism And War

a href="#Chavez’s ‘Socialism’ Won’t End Workers’ Exploitation">Chavez’s"‘Socialism’ Won’t End Workers’ Exploitation

Debating Communism on the Road to New Orleans

a href="#Katrina Survivors Picket White House, Blast Rulers’ Criminal Negligence">"atrina Survivors Picket White House, Blast Rulers’ Criminal Negligence

H.S. Students, Teachers Defend Anti-Racist Protestors

Teenager Nixes Pledge, Iraq War

a href="#Boeing Strikers’ Defeat Shows Need To Expand Communist Base">"oeing Strikers’ Defeat Shows Need To Expand Communist Base

• Expensive Imperialist Wars Define Political Climate
• Union Misleaders’ Patriotism Undermines Workers

a href="#Mass Demonstrations, Student Strikes Hit French Rulers’ Labor ‘Reforms’">Mass"Demonstrations, Student Strikes Hit French Rulers’ Labor ‘Reforms’

Community College Faculty Fights Piece Work

Fighting for Revolutionary Class Consciousness at CUNY

a href="#Miners’ History the Road to Follow in Altoona, Pa. Strike">"iners’ History the Road to Follow in Altoona, Pa. Strike

• Giving Strikers A Communist Slant

Red Coal

a href="#Indian Airport Workers’ Strikes Stop Cops, Scabs">"ndian Airport Workers’ Strikes Stop Cops, Scabs

Workshop Responds to CHALLENGE

Revolutionary History: Secret Police No Match for Bolshevik Base Built Through Iskra Networks

a href="#UNDER COMMUNISM…">"NDER COMMUNISM… Will You Have Your Own Toothbrush?

LETTERS

a href="#Religion’s Mass Murderers Are No Joke">"eligion’s Mass Murderers Are No Joke

Explanations Missing From Transit Articles

• CHALLENGE says

CHALLENGE comments

Fighting Racism in Turkey

Another Name for Communist Column?

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• US aim: Make Iraq safe for oil contracts
• Majority Rule? We don’t get it by voting!
• US nudges Bolivia army toward a coup
• Army shifting to Latino cannon-fodder
• Replacing Bush won’t stop capitalist wars
• Comics tie Cheney hawkishness to gunshot

 

• ---

a name="It’s Not Just Bush!">">"t’s Not Just Bush!

Liberal Hawks Want Our Youth to Die in Imperialist Oil Wars

As U.S. imperialism faces a future of widening and intensifying warfare, Democratic politicians and other liberals are leading the effort to militarize society. Military challenges from China loom over the horizon, while Iraq’s insurgency, Iran’s nuclear threat and Hamas’s victory show that U.S. rulers have yet to conquer the Middle East. They now realize securing the oil-rich region will take several more invasions entailing far more troops and casualties than before.

Former Senator Gary Hart writes of "American lives lost in Gulf Wars I and II, and probably III, IV and V." (New York Times, 2/5/06) Hart knows a thing or two about U.S. imperialism’s goals for the 21st Century. He helped formulate them. Democrat Hart co-chaired Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Commission. As early as 1999, it envisioned a U.S. "galvanized" by terrorist attacks, voluntarily sacrificing "blood and treasure" in wars against Mid-East and superpower rivals. For these adventures, the Pentagon will have to recruit or force millions into service.

Bush, however, squandered Sept. 11th’s enlistment-boosting potential, and liberals have lambasted him for it ever since. The latest Bush-bashing call to arms comes from the National Security Advisory Group (NSAG), a Democratic Party-sponsored collection of war criminals that includes Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright, defense boss William Perry, and generals Wesley Clark and John Shalikashvili. Drenched in the blood of Serbian and Iraqi children, these liberals whine in their January 2006 report, "Bush...has failed to mobilize the American people....There has been no John F. Kennedy-like "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" speech — no call to national service." It may be necessary, the NSAG concludes, to restore the draft: "The strains on the nation’s ground forces are serious and growing, and the viability of the All Volunteer Force is at risk."

To meet coming requirements, the liberals demand that the army add 30,000 soldiers immediately, "make it easier for ‘middle-aged’ Americans (30- and 40-somethings) to join," and mend fences with universities that ban ROTC (officer training programs). Most of all, say the Clinton loyalists, "This country needs a Commander-in-Chief who can...inspire a nation of young people to serve."

Although a change in the White House is two years off (provided the rulers refrain from dire measures), Democrats are injecting a big dose of militarism into the November congressional elections. Calling themselves the "Fighting Dems" and "Band of Brothers," more than 40 Democratic candidates, all military veterans, vow to retake the House of Representatives, combat partisan obstacles to warmaking and "turn the map of America from Red and Blue to Red, White and Blue. (The blossoming love-match, noted in the press, between the Bush and Clinton families reflects the same battle-hungry bi-partisanship.) In Washington on February 8th, Wesley Clark and John Kerry led a speech-fest for the aspiring warrior-lawmakers that hammered a common imperialist theme: more youth in uniform killing and dying for the rulers’ profits.

Liberals’ approaches to the ruling class’s troop-raising imperative range from blatant to subtle. The New York Times (2/10/06) wonders in loud indignation how "Rumsfeld's Defense Department can produce a $439 billion spending plan and still skimp on the one thing the American military desperately needs: expanded ground forces so the weakened and cannibalized Army can meet the requirements of Iraq without hurting its ability to respond to other threats."

With only minor misgivings, the Times (2/9/06) gloated over one racist success the Pentagon has had in assembling cannon fodder, "recruiting Latinos has become one of the Army’s top priorities. From 2001 to 2005, the number of Latino enlistments in the Army rose 26 percent, and in the military as a whole, the increase was 18 percent." Harvard University, on the other hand, in addition to quietly restarting ROTC, runs a low-profile Rockefeller-funded project on "civic engagement" that steers Ivy League grads into government jobs, especially military ones.

Bush’s pro-tax-cut State of the Union Address and business-as-usual budget show that the main U.S. rulers are some distance away from winning the nation’s whole capitalist class to the agenda of war and sacrifice they so sorely seek. But we shouldn’t let the bosses’ temporary disarray cloud the reality that ever deadlier imperialist wars are the order of the day. No matter what stage of mobilization our class enemy is at, we should be fully on a war footing in building the Progressive Labor Party.

a name="Beware AFL-CIO ‘Solidarity’: Iran, D.C, NYC"></">Be"are AFL-CIO ‘Solidarity’: Iran, D.C, NYC

Transit Workers, Unite!

On February 15, demonstrations were scheduled be held in several countries, supporting the Tehran Yahed Bus Company workers’ strike in Iran (see photo above) and protesting the Islamic government’s repression. (See CHALLENGE, 2/15) Ironically, the AFL-CIO, which is sponsoring one such demonstration in Washington, D.C., has not backed any workers’ struggles lately here in this country.

As a matter of fact, the Amalgamated Transit Union’s (ATU) international leadership opposed the most militant recent strike in the U.S.: New York’s three-day transit walkout, an anti-racist struggle which objectively spit in the face of the bosses’ war budget and broke the strike-breaking Taylor Law. The ATU hacks sided with Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and the city’s entire ruling class in attacking these mostly black and Latin transit workers.

The militant Tehran bus workers deserve real international solidarity, not the phony one pushed by the AFL-CIO pro-boss hacks. So why is the AFL-CIO now supporting transit workers in Iran?

The answer to this question lies in the international situation. Currently, the holy rollers ruling Iran are in the gun sights of the U.S. military. Ironically, Iran’s rulers helped the U.S.-UK occupation of Iraq because it toppled their hated enemy Saddam Hussein — they fought a bloody eight-year war 20 years ago — and has brought pro-Iranian Shiite politicians to power there. But they have their own plans to control the Persian Gulf’s oil wealth. They don’t want to share it with U.S. bosses. Other imperialists — Russia, China and even India — have developed good relationships with Iran’s rulers. The latter two U.S. rivals want to get their oil independent of the chokehold of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco and Shell.

So the "solidarity" protest called by the AFL-CIO to support the Iranian bus workers against the ayatollahs is an action to aid U.S. bosses’ military aims in the region and therefore is really a pro-war action.

Cartoons, Racism And War

Meanwhile, the Iranian and Syrian bosses (also in the Pentagon’s gun sights) are using the cartoons buffooning the Prophet Mohammed to launch massive protests advancing their own interests. The racist cartoons published in the Danish fascist newspaper Jyllands-Posten (with heavy pro-Nazi and Italian fascist tendencies) have prompted violent reactions in the Muslim world. On one hand, these cartoons reflect the growing anti-Muslim racism in Western Europe. Denmark — a country of 5.4 million — has over 200,000 Muslims in Denmark. Just a few years ago it had none. Copenhagen, the capital, has denied permits to build mosques. There is no Muslem cemetery there, so the "Muslims who die [in Denmark] have to be flown back to their countries of origin for proper burial." (NY Times, 2/11)

The fundamentalists and rulers of Muslim countries are taking advantage of this racism to win the masses to their own fascistic causes. The Iranian rulers want to divert workers and youth from fighting for their own class interests (like the bus workers), but to blame others for their oppression. Egypt’s Mubarak prefers that the masses worry about causes other than their oppression and misery, like the recent sinking of a ferry boat whose bosses’ negligence murdered almost 1,000 Egyptian workers.

Workers worldwide must oppose anti-Muslim, anti-Arab racism while simultaneously opposing the imperialists’ war drive for oil. The Tehran bus strikers and workers across the Mid-East deserve real solidarity and leadership, like the kind provided by the Washington ATU Local 689, under communist leadership. Its members are organizing a component of the AFL-CIO rally calling for working-class unity and solidarity to crush all fascist terrorist governments, both in the U.S. and Iran. Workers don’t need the phony "support" of U.S. and British union hacks or reactionary Mid-East fundamentalists. Workers need to rebuild the international communist movement — which at one time had mass support in Iraq, Iran and the entire region — and wrest the leadership of the masses from the reactionary jihadists and religious zealots of all stripes.

a name="Chavez’s ‘Socialism’ Won’t End Workers’ Exploitation"></a>Chav"z’s ‘Socialism’ Won’t End Workers’ Exploitation

The following was written by a new young comrade who just returned from Venezuela and Brazil.

Part 1

Occasionally we fall victim to believing in miracles — miracles that abandon every scientific principle used to analyze social conditions. Some of us may fall for electoral miracles, as we read the latest news coming out of Venezuela, Brazil and now Bolivia and Chile. While very new to the Progressive Labor Party, I was driven to PLP through its scrupulous analyses in CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. I have just returned from Latin America, spending one month in particular in Venezuela to study Chavez and the "Bolivarian Revolution."

I believed in "el proceso"; it is very fashionable, especially for Trostskyists, anarchists and others on the "left" to elevate Venezuela as the international standard-bearer of "socialism for the 21st century." In a world ruled by the seemingly invincible power of monopoly capital and the ruins of the once-revolutionary socialist states now run by bastions of private capital and social misery, Hugo Chavez stands out. He shines with his charisma, lively, intelligent, and often humorous speeches, and his well-documented social missions funded by Venezuela’s immense oil wealth.

This series seeks only to show that, (a) Chavez is merely a liberal capitalist representing a new constellation of power in Venezuela, and (b) understanding Chavez’ regime is impossible without considering its international context, in particular its relation to China.

Firstly, the U.S. propaganda machine is so virulently anti-Chavez, it is tempting for those already discontented and seeking alternative theories to be drawn not just to Chavez’ charisma, but also to some results of his government’s first few years: Venezuela will be free of illiteracy (97% functional literacy rate); the Federal District of Caracas has either annihilated illiteracy or will do so soon.

The once theoretically state-owned oil company PDVSA has been seized from the previous regime’s oligarchy, which had used the profits to fund fabulous big toys and buildings. PDVSA — which in the U.S. alone owns five oil refineries and licenses over 14,000 gas stations under its U.S. subsidiary CITGO — has financed social programs and public works projects. Venezuela has set up a Caribbean oil initiative called Petrocaribe, which has provided discounted oil at long-term interest rates favorable to the poor island nations struggling to cope with rising oil costs. It has even offered this deal to Colombia’s President Uribe who, despite being a Bush ally, recently called Chavez a "brother." The two nations are now jointly building a pipeline through Colombia to the Pacific to service China, under the pretense of diversifying Venezuela’s oil clientele.

Venezuela provides 16% of U.S. daily oil needs. In the face of environmentalist demonstrations, it has just signed a new deal with Chevron for joint oil exploration with PDVSA from which Chevron will reap tremendous profits and devastate Venezuela’s environmentally fragile Orinoco region. Currently, Ecuador is pressing charges against Chevron-Texaco for dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste and millions of gallons of crude oil into the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Here in the U.S., PDVSA has launched a discounted oil program that began last Thanksgiving in the South Bronx and then in Boston through a partnership of CITGO and Bobby Kennedy, Jr.’s Citizen’s Energy Corp., which will deliver 1.2 million gallons of oil to "poor" families in that area. Kennedy’s company will determine who will receive the oil. Chavez has launched a $100 billion project to build a national infrastructure linking the least-developed parts of the countryside to the industrial and commercial centers.

A new national campaign (under the names of "Mission" Robinson or "Mission" Ribas dealing with tackling specific social programs) called "Mission Science" will aim at "democratizing the sciences" and making scientific innovations and developments available to "the people." This is, of course, in addition to the well-publicized introduction of 20,000 Cuban doctors into Venezuela’s poorest regions.

The state is now guaranteeing food at highly subsidized prices and will overhaul the nation’s healthcare system entirely, modeled on Cuba’s centralized system of hospitals/clinics/polyclinics. Chavez and Castro plan to staff these hospitals with a future generation of doctors training at the new Latin American Schools of Medicine in Havana and Caracas.

Finally, and the most important ideologically, Chavez has declared the construction of "socialism for the 21st century," stating "socialism" as a "thesis to be reclaimed" and re-forged. He has advocated worker occupations of factories (ALCASA, a huge aluminum plant and Invepal, a paper processing plant are the first "models" of "revolutionary worker co-management.")

A new pro-Chavez union federation, the UNT, has been formed to oppose the blatantly corrupt older CTV. The UNT has enjoyed skyrocketing membership as a federation with radical-sounding rhetoric and organizing in unorganized sectors, demanding worker-state co-ownership. A typical "co-managed" factory means the workers hold a 49% stake in the company while the state holds 51%.

The UNT has vehemently denied similarities made to German "worker co-management" introduced by social democracy. Some in the "opposition" decried this as more radical than the German approach. Yet the idea, essentially, is a product of Germany’s big labor misleaders’ great sellouts to the bosses. Workers are being armed through popular defense organizations; Venezuela has openly defied the FTAA (Free Trade of the Americas) and is nearing full membership in MERCOSUR (Common Market of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay).

Everywhere in Caracas (literally), graffiti reads "FATHERLAND OR DEATH," if not "VIVA CHAVEZ." Chavez relentlessly calls Venezuela’s anti-imperialist struggle a national one, a struggle of national life or death. This message is transmitted through an appeal to the country’s "true patriots," the true "Bolivarians," who will take up 19th-century bourgeois independence leader Simon Bolivar’s sword against enemies of the state.

A materialist perspective hardly needs a light tug at the loose string of yarn before things start to unravel, and the truth in all of its sadistic and barbaric aspects reveals itself.

Chávez has in fact done nothing in his presidency to really tackle the root of poverty in Venezuela and around the world: private property, meaning the factories, big multi-national banks, multi-national corporations, foreign oil companies and foreign investors are raking in record profits. Private management or "co-management" means workers still produce socially but their labor produces commodities to be exchanged on the market, for profits. This is opposed to a rationally planned communist economy devoted to the socially necessary and socially useful production of use-values with no market exchange value.

Wage differentials haven’t been touched; inflation, while relatively slower in the past year, is still the highest in Latin America (although the Venezuelan government argues the availability and quality of social programs has dramatically reduced the cost of living; who’s fooling who here?). Private property has not been touched in Venezuela. Save for a few unused plots of land taken here and there, and some highly-publicized land deeds to local Indian tribes, land distribution in Venezuela remains as frightful as the rest of Latin America. But all the rhetoric about the "Bolivarian Revolution" might seduce us into thinking economic relations have really been subverted in favor of the workers and campesinos. (To be continued.)

Debating Communism on the Road to New Orleans

In mid-December, several PLP members rode with a busload of mostly college and high school students to a conference and march in Mississippi and New Orleans organized by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF). One bus captain, a young black man, encouraged everyone to introduce themselves. We did so with CHALLENGE and communist ideas on racism.

Initially it was difficult to engage students in conversation. However, when we offered CHALLENGE to the young bus captain, he asked lots of questions. He and a young woman in a math tutoring program that brought all the high school students asked questions about revolution, religion and communism. It was productive.

The next day we arrived in Jackson, Mississippi for the "Survivor’s Conference." We distributed PLP literature inside the conference and in individual discussions, struggled against nationalism in general and black nationalism in particular in a principled manner, declaring that communists fight for internationalism. This really set us apart from all the revisionists (phony leftists) who all supported some form of nationalism. The whole conference was infested with sprinklings of nationalism from the liberal to the most overt.

The following day we boarded the bus for the march in New Orleans. With new riders joining our original group, the 2½-hour bus ride was filled with conversations about communism, human nature and how the Chinese dealt with drug use and dealers after the revolution. There was loud discussion with lots of disagreement.

One man from a revisionist group supported the Chinese Communist Party’s contributions. I asked him if he’d heard of PLP. He replied that he had, that during the 1960’s PLP was known as "ultra-leftist" because we criticized the National Liberation Front and Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh. He said these criticisms outraged the "left." I asked him, based on events in Vietnam today, were we wrong? He replied, "No."

Meeting workers from New Orleans and listening to their stories was a life-changing experience for all of us from Chicago. The young bus captain addressed the whole bus, especially the high school students, and referred to the earlier passionate discussion. Surprisingly he said, "Many of you heard a discussion we had on the bus and you thought that disagreement is a bad thing. Well, what you heard was a good thing, because in the process of discussing ideas, that’s how you come to understand truth. So never be afraid of discussion and disagreement. That’s how we learn."

I later received an e-mail from the guy in the revisionist group, saying he hadn’t experienced such honest and open discussion in a while and thanked us for it. This trip gave me increased confidence in the Party and its line of principled struggle. We’re working in the PHRF and will continue the fight.

A Comrade

a name="Katrina Survivors Picket White House, Blast Rulers’ Criminal Negligence">">"atrina Survivors Picket White House, Blast Rulers’ Criminal Negligence

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 8 — Today, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina survivors, mostly from New Orleans, converged on this city. About 200 marched in front of the White House to scream at the system that betrayed them. Between the demonstration and the post-rally reception, hundreds of PLP’s "Capitalism Kills" leaflets were distributed.

At the demonstration, pickets saw the leaflet’s title and demanded copies. Whenever we yelled, "It’s not just Bush, it’s the whole system and these rich bastards that control it; they don’t deserve our respect," there were cheers of "right on!" and "that’s right!"

At the candlelight vigil and brief speak-out held after the rally, some talked about God and religion, but most participants mainly wanted to relate their own experiences. They were upset at the ACORN groups’ coordinator for severely limiting the number of survivor-speakers.

However, those who did speak were inspiring. A young survivor referred to Katrina in the first person, calling "her" "the best thing that ever happened to me," because "she" shook things up with the reality of class and race. Knowing the horrendous stress Katrina victims have been under all this time, the poet also asked, rhetorically "…and they [the rich] wonder why things are so ‘bad’ with us [survivors] in Houston right now?"

Our leaflet pointed out that trusting the rulers to listen is an illusion. They know what’s happened and don’t care. Deep down, the survivor-demonstrators clearly know this. Whenever a speaker claimed that "dialogue" with the rulers can succeed, one woman bellowed, "They don’t care!"

Judging by their reactions, some survivors do not see the need for revolution. Rather, capitalism teaches working people that honest, raw anger is "inappropriate." Instead, it must be "tempered" and "dignified." That leads to workers being satisfied more with small reforms rather than with changing the system.

When the rally ended, about one thousand survivors swarmed across the street to the AFL-CIO headquarters for the post-rally reception. The lobby of this "House of Labor" gleamed in marble. Using an expensive, eardrum-splitting sound system, union officials pleaded — over the dismissive din of crowd conversation — that "the labor movement will be there for you. We will march with you. We will come where you want us to. We are with you!" Few believed this. Then, when a top hack asked how many in the room were "union brothers and sisters," only a few people raised their hands. As if any of the victims of this racist catastrophe owe these pro-capitalist bureaucrats anything. The only time the crowd paid attention was when an actual survivor took the mic, and shouted for the rest of the room to listen because "what I’ve got to say, we’re gonna take it to the streets."

Meanwhile, PL’ers continued to distribute leaflets. At least eight solid political contacts were made, mostly New Orleanians living in Houston. A young woman living there as part of ACORN’s rebuilding effort was told of PL’s tentative plan to go to New Orleans in March and help with reconstruction. She really liked that idea, and also PL’s politics. She said she’d get in touch with the Party down there. Similarly, a young working-class mother of two also wants to talk immediately with the Party where she is relocated.

Perhaps the best feature of this rally was to see how resilient everyone was, despite the horrors visited on them. The New Orleans dancing and music at the reception event proved strongly the old adage that you can take the people out of the place, but not the place out of the people. As people returned to their buses, we left the scene elated. By reaching out to, and eventually recruiting, the survivors of Katrina and the millions of other victims of capitalism, we can lay much more solid groundwork for a communist future.

H.S. Students, Teachers Defend Anti-Racist Protestors

Students and teachers here have started a fund-raising campaign to defend the college students arrested in an anti-Minutemen protest. Students are wearing buttons on campus saying "Defend Anti-Racist Protestors" and "Stop Racist Attacks on Immigrants." The teachers’ union local passed a resolution calling on teachers to support these students with fund-raising events and with a guest editorial in the union newspaper.

We invited one defendant to speak to a student club meeting about the case, about racism against immigrants in general and about the racist Minutemen in particular. Some of us shared our experiences about our participation in an anti-Minutemen protest. We also held an outdoor noon-time rally where students hang out. Several of us spoke in English and in Spanish, and raised $60 for the defendants.

We’ve reported how the Minutemen strictly enforce immigration on the Mexican-U.S. border, but not on the Canadian-U.S. border. This is a blatant racist attack on Mexican immigrants. It’s linked to pushing immigrant workers to join the U.S. Army which will put them on the front lines to be "awarded" citizenship in a country to which they may make it back alive.

Link Minutemen to Army Recruiters

Many of our friends differ about this. They hate the Minutemen; they don’t trust the military recruiters who are flooding our campus; but they don’t really think these things are connected. We’ve pointed out that the bosses are using the Minutemen to scare immigrant workers into relying on politicians to gain a limited amnesty or guest worker permit, while desperately trying to find enough Latino soldiers to fight their wars. The bosses are using the Minutemen to prod us into joining the Army as a way to get our citizenship papers.

We’re planning more fund-raising events, including at least one more noon-time rally at another part of the campus. We’re also distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES while discussing PLP’s ideas exposing borders between countries as something the bosses establish to serve their purposes. In a revolutionary situation, we would destroy these capitalist-created borders in order to unite workers and help us defend the revolution from the bosses’ attacks.

West Coast High School Club

Teenager Nixes Pledge, Iraq War

NAZARETH, Feb. 3 — A teenage student at Nazareth Area H.S. won his case in refusing to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Fourteen-year-old Sam Smith said he wouldn’t participate because he opposes the Iraq war and because he’s an atheist, saying the Pledge "bugs him."

"You should be pledging your allegiance to all mankind," Smith told the local paper, adding, "I don’t believe in nationalism at all."

The school district maintained that any student refusing to stand and recite the Pledge needed a signed letter from their parents. That form contained a veiled threat of harassment by other students to pressure those who wouldn’t conform to the school’s views. The form letter said, "We worry about [students refusing the pledge] being singled out by other students when they elect to do an act that is not being done by many of the other[s]."

Smith thought that was ridiculous. "That’s like saying if everyone in the class is smoking, then you could be singled out for not smoking," he said. "It’s just telling you not to think."

Smith argued the rule violated his right to free speech. Other students seemed to agree. One sophomore said Smith, "Shouldn’t get grilled or discriminated against for not wanting to do it."

The school dropped its requirement for a parental note when Smith said he would be calling a lawyer to represent his case.

a name="Boeing Strikers’ Defeat Shows Need To Expand Communist Base">">"oeing Strikers’ Defeat Shows Need To Expand Communist Base

Huntington Beach, CA Feb. 1 — Fifteen hundred Boeing rocket workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), voted 60% to 40% to end an 87-day strike here and at plants in Alabama and Florida. The main company demand, elimination of retiree medical coverage for new hires, remains intact. With the defeat of this relatively long strike, Boeing will reinvigorate its campaign to make us pay for the bosses’ high-priced imperialist dreams. Aerospace workers need to answer with international unity and industry-wide strikes, particularly targeting racist super-exploitation among subcontractors. Such intensified class struggle will be driven by the expansion of our revolutionary communist base, demonstrating the potential power of the working class.

An unholy alliance of union misleaders and the company wore down these strikers. Company spokesman claimed a 38% scab rate. The union hacks dished out gobbledygook about a "substantive" if not "substantial" new offer. This "new substantive" offer is identical to the original sellout except for minor details in medical coverage.

Boeing’s profit, meanwhile, is really both substantive and substantial — increasing a whopping 258% on record commercial orders of over 1,000 planes. After eliminating retiree medical coverage for new hires in its latest engineers’ contract, the company is now going after 1,200 UAW members in its Pennsylvania plant, without a contract since Sept. 1. Boeing is clearly on a rampage to eliminate retiree benefits spurred on more by the general political climate than the company’s immediate financial situation.

Expensive Imperialist Wars Define Political Climate

The day after the contract vote The Seattle Times ran a banner headline: "Iraq War is costing $100,000 per minute." Upon seeing this, a friend at Boeing in the Seattle area — the last place left with retiree medical benefits for new hires — saw the handwriting on the wall. "You guys are right," he admitted to a CHALLENGE seller, "there’s not going to be any money left for pensions after all these wars."

The Pentagon is screaming for cost containment for all their fancy killing machines, given the projected trillion-dollar price tag for the Iraq war. (Who knows how much blood and money we’ll have to sacrifice if the bosses succeed in their long-range plans to send upwards of five million troops to secure Mid-East oil? See CHALLENGE, 1/18.) In fact, 15 Boeing V.P.’s are presently under investigation for one form or another of price gouging. But this is capitalism and it’s the workers — in this case, at Boeing — who ultimately will pay for the bosses’ imperialist wars.

The defeat of this strike is reversing the momentum created when the Lockheed workers overrode their union misleaders to strike for future workers. Our Party and friends helped bring this fight to the Seattle-area locals. The momentum built with the Seattle-area strike and the NYC transit strike, where black workers took the lead. For a while, no IAM leader would dare accept the elimination of retiree medical benefits for new hires. With this rocket contract vote, the misleaders have the green light to pave the way for long-planned concessions.

Union Misleaders’ Patriotism Undermines Workers

Rather than build the kind of industry-wide strikes which could "up the ante" in the battle against these war cuts, the IAM leaders held pitifully small rallies wrapped in patriotic bunting. In essence, they told the strikers, "You’re weak and small in number. It’s better to show your allegiance to the bosses and their imperialist war plans than look for power from the masses of workers, which could provoke a real confrontation."

"They’re picking us off, one small group at a time," complained a Boeing machinist.

We also must look beyond our shores for allies, as well as to other U.S. plants. Millions of our working-class brothers and sisters are employed building arms, or are in industries that can quickly be converted to weapons production, as the inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens.

The U.S. ruling class, in particular, is desperate to maintain its military and political hegemony while facing a relatively declining manufacturing base. The union misleaders tell us our future lies with these bloodsuckers. It’s a fools’ game! If this strike taught us anything it’s that lining up behind our nation’s bosses insures a future of wars and war-inspired cuts for workers.

The bosses will launch their wars and war cuts; there’s no way to reform this system to meet our class’s needs. Nevertheless, upping the ante with industry-wide strikes, both union and non-union, could help us understand both our potential revolutionary power and give us more real-life experiences fighting the obstacles to achieving that power. Such broad strikes could target subcontractors, home to the majority of aerospace workers and the site of vicious racist exploitation. We’ll learn who are our friends and who are our enemies; the need to build working-class international unity; and the need to fight all the bosses, regardless of which flag they fly.

The possibility of increasing our revolutionary forces comes with increased class struggle if we focus on expanding our CHALLENGE networks and recruitment. That’s the second lesson of this strike — and the most important: building for communist revolution is the only viable answer to the attacks by this system hell bent on an imperialist bloodbath that squanders both our young people and our retirement.

a name="Mass Demonstrations, Student Strikes Hit French Rulers’ Labor ‘Reforms’"></a>"ass Demonstrations, Student Strikes Hit French Rulers’ Labor ‘Reforms’

PARIS, FRANCE, Feb. 13 — Between Feb. 2 and 7, up to half a million workers and students demonstrated in nearly 200 cities nationwide to protest new government measures that would result in a massive increase in job insecurity and insecurity in working conditions. A student strike has shut two large universities. French bosses, in their drive to maximize profits, have been pressing for more widespread use of temporary workers and complete freedom in laying off workers, especially youth, during a "trial period" which lasts 24 months! They’ve been demanding that France fall in line with the rest of Europe which — in the U.K., Spain, even Germany — has more "flexible" labor laws.

Until now, France has strictly limited temporary work contracts, to be used only to meet sudden increased company needs, or to replace temporarily absent permanent workers, and then only for 18 months.

Despite this legal "protection," the number of permanently temporary workers has ballooned in France, as it has worldwide. In Europe, France is the second-biggest market for temporary work. In 2001, two million people — 2.3% of the working population — had a temporary work contract.

Years ago, small companies were granted looser labor laws and lower employee contributions to social security, "to allow these poor little companies to compete in the market."

Last summer the government imposed the CNE (contract for new employment) which allows companies with fewer than 20 workers a 24-month trial period before a job becomes permanent. This involves 95% of French companies, employing four million workers — 29% of the country’s workforce.

After quelling last fall’s rebellion in the housing projects, on January 15 the Chirac-Villepin-Sarkozy government decided to extend these measures through the CPE (contract for first employment). This will allow the same "flexibility" to companies with over 20 workers when they hire people under 26.

Employers can easily lay off workers during the trial period. The CPE will allow the bosses to blackmail young workers into accepting unbelievably bad working conditions. Even if workers comply with all the boss’s demands, there’s no guarantee they’ll be kept after the trial period ends.

In addition, employer contributions to social security are being cut. The government justifies this because unemployment figures are slightly better. But it has been aggressively striking unemployed workers from the rolls and baby boomers have been retiring. Reducing social security contributions will force workers to pay more — and directly — for unemployment benefits.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin — meeting the bosses’ demands — is enabling workers over 57 to top off their inadequate retirement pensions by returning to work, subject to discussion between the bosses and union leaders.

Finally — following another bosses’ demand — Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is rewriting the immigration laws to allow only skilled or university-educated workers to immigrate into France.

All this is leading to the government’s complete re-write of the law on temporary work contracts by this summer. It is all these measures that will produce massive insecurity. This is a huge attack on young people, the trade union movement, temporary workers, the unemployed, and the anti-globalization movement. Not surprisingly, resistance has erupted.

A joint trade union demonstration of up to 100,000 emerged on February 2 to defend public services and demand higher wages. Many demonstrators were high school students and their teachers. Condemnation of the CPE was a main theme.

On February 7, up to 400,000 people participated in 187 protests around France, responding to a joint call by the trade unions and the university and high school student unions. A Humanité-CSA poll showed 58% of the population opposing the CPE.

The center of student protests has been at the University of Rennes II. Prior to February 7, 1,500 students held a mass meeting. On that day, 12,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Rennes. The following day saw a mass meeting of 2,500 students held outdoors because there was no indoor amphitheater big enough for the crowd. Students voted to shut down the university. They’ve occupied the buildings and organized picket lines. The striking students are working to educate non-strikers, who generally oppose the CPE but complain that the strike limits their movements on campus.

The university hospital workers joined picketing students. One explained that the number of temporary workers at the hospital has tripled over the past several years.

The university administration is trying to use the student movement to pursue its own agenda of obtaining more government credits. Thus the board of regents approved a motion favoring the student demands. Of course, these are the same regents who extended temporary work at the university hospital!

Now students at the University of Toulouse occupied campus buildings today to protest the same CPE.

On February 13 students at Rennes II were to vote on whether to continue their strike. A new demonstration was scheduled for February 14. (Next issue: The machinations of the government and the political parties.)

Community College Faculty Fights Piece Work

BOSTON, Feb. 3 — More than two dozen part-time faculty at Roxbury Community College (RCC) have pledged to refuse to teach for reduced pay this semester, challenging an unjust policy that exists across the Massachusetts Community College system. The policy requires that adjuncts who teach courses with low student enrollment be further underpaid, basing their salaries on the number of students in the class (a form of piece work). (Full-timers have not faced such a pay-cut, yet.) In addition to the pledges, hundreds of faculty and students signed a petition to the college President calling for the elimination of this exploitative policy.

Throughout higher education, each year more and more adjunct faculty are hired to replace retiring full-timers. This two-tier system saves these publicly-funded colleges millions of tax dollars, which can then be diverted to fund the U.S. war machine. It divides faculty into the have-less and have-nots. The have-nots (adjuncts) are subjected to intolerable wages and working conditions. Even though adjunct faculty are covered by a union contract, they receive no health or retirement benefits and have almost no seniority rights. They work semester to semester, with a high level of fear and demoralization.

At RCC, the super-exploitation of adjuncts also has a racist character since many more adjuncts than full-timers are black and immigrant. Also, the downgrading of faculty degrades the education of the black and immigrant student population.

Adjuncts are also second-class citizens within the faculty union which has not fought to eliminate the two tiers. This has alienated the adjuncts from the union, which they see as an elitist organization that defends only the full-time faculty. (But given the existence of two tiers, the union has failed to protect full-timers as well - their pay, workload and seniority rights have slid backwards since the 1970's, following the expansion of the use of part-timers.)

With this campaign against "piece work" at RCC, the union has won enough unity to challenge one of the hated anti-adjunct policies. However, the most important victory is strengthening the unity between faculty, staff and students. That's the only way we'll be able to defend our jobs and fight the massive attack on public higher education, part of the general class war being waged against the working class. Strengthening this unity means struggling against elitism, individualism and fear within the faculty.

We cannot accept the increased use of adjuncts with second-class status simply as "the way it is." Nor can we accept the way management frames the issue, as a problem "for adjuncts only." We need to win all faculty away from the notion of "serving the college." This blurs the class realities and leads us to ally with the administration that is hired to carry out the policies of the corporate-controlled Board of Higher Education.

We must make the main contradiction not between full-timers and adjuncts, but between the fight for equality versus the acceptance of inequality. As we struggle to unite the faculty, we have an opportunity to build class consciousness. Spreading the readership of CHALLENGE will be an indispensable part of making this happen.

Fighting for Revolutionary Class Consciousness at CUNY

During the NYC transit workers’ three-day strike last December, nearly 100 City University of New York (CUNY) workers — all members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union — joined the picket lines and marched in solidarity with the strikers. These academic workers were motivated by class consciousness — the idea that those who work for a living, whether blue, white or pink collar, belong to the working class, whose interests are opposed to the interests of the capitalist class, represented in this strike by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and MTA Chairman/real estate tycoon Peter Kalikow.

The Progressive Labor Party’s CUNY club helped organize faculty support for the strike, taking people from our schools to the lines, and encouraging other teachers to do likewise. Our pro-working-class colleagues were thrilled to see public workers militantly resisting the rulers’ plans to make us pay for our pensions and health care. CUNY professors and staff have worked for three years without a contract because management refuses to give us more than token salary increases, or to improve our pitiful dental and drug plans. Even for this, management is insisting on "productivity" concessions.

Elitist notions of "professionalism" are eroding as professors and staff realize that their own wages are not much different from those who run the trains and buses. The median salary for a full-time CUNY professor is $57,000 annually, while adjunct faculty — part-timers who teach the majority of CUNY classes — average $22,000.

The capitalist class’s huge ideological apparatus — TV, newspapers, the schools — denies concepts of class or class interests. Their ideology ridicules the powerful and correct Marxist understanding that classes exist and that the capitalists and their politician servants constitute a ruling class whose interests dictate governmental policy — from pension "reform" to oil wars in the Middle East.

The rulers’ ideology promotes division within the working class. For example, those with college educations, especially advanced degree holders, are encouraged to think they’re "smarter" and deserve higher salaries and greater benefits. People performing mental labor are led to feel superior to those performing manual labor. The professors and staff who picketed on those frigid December days did so because they long for a working-class unity enabling us to stand up to those who want to erode our salaries and working conditions, while sending our youth off to die in imperialist wars.

One thing differentiating us from some of our leftist colleagues and friends — our co-workers who we join in various activities — is our belief that revolutionary politics need to be brought into the reform movement. We believe it’s impossible to reform capitalism to meet the needs of working people. The demise of the old communist movement and the rise of the right-wing, including red-baiters and gutter racists like David Horowitz, have persuaded many anti-capitalists inside universities that revolutionary politics must be shelved. However, we in PLP think attacks on labor and civil liberties (moving toward fascism), and imperialist wars to control dwindling oil and gas reserves, all cry out for Marxist class analysis and the vision of a society run by and for workers.

The PSC, led by progressive activists, has fought hard and long for a decent contract, while opposing tuition increases for CUNY’s working-class students (the majority black and Latin, mostly from low-income families). Our friends have devoted considerable time and energy to these vital campaigns, and PLP’ers have joined this effort. Yet tuition continues to rise (more than 200% in 14 years) and is slated to rise again this year.

Recently, Governor Pataki, who is trying to burnish his "tough-on-labor" credentials in order to attract corporate donations for his Presidential campaign, rejected the tentative PSC contract as "too generous." The capitalists and their bought politicians don’t intend to give workers, including professors or students, what they need — either decent health care plans or affordable education.

Despite calls by conservative professors to stick to "bread and butter" issues, the PSC has firmly opposed the U.S. war in Iraq, and pushed for anti-war resolutions at the American Federation of Teachers convention. Hundreds of PSC members have marched in Washington, D.C. and NYC against the war. PLP members also have been active in building anti-war committees and clubs at our schools. Yet the Iraqi occupation continues, supported by Democratic Party standard-bearers like Hillary Clinton. Bi-partisan plans are being made for attacking Iran. Those who hate imperialism and its death and destruction, must fight its capitalist roots.

As CUNY teachers and staff, the rulers’ special role for us is producing future generations of politically docile workers, convincing them that capitalism is the best game in town; that it is "natural," with no alternative; and that if people are dissatisfied with their jobs or lives, they should seek individual, not collective solutions. Along with our friends, we in PLP are trying to create a red opposition, from elementary to graduate school, which tells students the truth about capitalism and imperialism and presents an alternative.

In the past, some European leftists advocated turning universities into "red base areas." But the ruling class will never allow their educational system to be controlled by its enemies. Instead, the "red base area" is the revolutionary party, the center of anti-capitalist education operating within the capitalist educational system, drawing in new faculty, students and parents. We energetically participate in political battles to win reforms, but out of which we must build the revolutionary PLP to win the ultimate prize, a new society, a communist world.

a name="Miners’ History the Road to Follow in Altoona, Pa. Strike">">"iners’ History the Road to Follow in Altoona, Pa. Strike

The recent West Virginia mine disasters raise the question of the fight for the unionization of coal miners. Some people out here in the Western Pennsylvania coal fields say the real solution to miners’ on-the-job safety would be to organize a local of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) at every mine.

If I were a coal miner, I’d definitely rather work in a union mine than in a non-union one. In reality, most miners understand the difference. This is a positive thing.

In fact, union safety committees have the right to "red tag" unsafe mines and shut them down. Also, a union miner can report unsafe conditions without fear of being fired. That’s not true for a non-union miner.

The murderous coal bosses do everything in their power to bust the union. The union represents a degree of mine workers’ power that the bosses can’t live with.

But the union leadership or bureaucracy, which supports the capitalist profit system and relies on the bosses’ government agencies, will not wage the kind of battle needed to organize the non-union mines.

Historically speaking, the UMWA was built through class struggle by rank-and-file miners. It’s interesting that when those trapped miners died in the Sago mine, some miners and other workers said they were going to arm themselves and get justice on their own. Throughout U.S. history, miners waged armed battles against company gun thugs to win justice.

Many coal miners have been willing to put their lives on the line to organize a union. However, the UMWA leadership will attempt to channel the miners’ militancy into support for so-called liberal Democratic Party "friends" of labor.

While I support the unionization of miners, I know that capitalism can’t be reformed to meet the needs of miners and other workers. In reality, a miners’ class-struggle fight for unionization must become a school for communism and workers’ power. Ultimately, the only real solution to the problems facing miners, such as safety on the job, is communist revolution and workers’ power.

Giving Strikers A Communist Slant

Trying to inch along that road, I went with a friend of mine to Altoona, Pa., where some electronics workers were striking for a new contract. The company had hired scabs. The strikers told the bosses they’d work under the old contract until a settlement was reached, but the company locked them out, telling them they "were no longer needed." The workers are continuing to picket, realizing this is a union-busting scheme. I decided to visit these workers and give them copies of CHALLENGE.

Altoona can be a very right-wing area. Recently some local skinheads held a Nazi rock show and beer bash at a nearby hall. The local press said 125 white racists attended.

I told a friend, an electrician, about the strike. He offered to drive me there. So I donned my Pittsburgh Steelers coat and off we went.

When we arrived, about 12 workers were picketing. I told my friend that if we got our asses kicked, it would be for a good cause. We approached the strikers and said we were from Cambria County and came to show our support for their strike. We chatted a while about the Super Bowl and the strike. Then I said I had a paper which always takes the side of the workers and handed them a couple of CHALLENGES.

They looked them over and then asked me, "A communist paper, huh?" Another asked if I was a communist. I replied that I wanted to see a society controlled by workers instead of by super-rich bosses and their servants in the Republican and Democratic parties. Then they asked if my friend was a communist and he said he agreed with me.

The workers kept the papers, we didn’t get our asses kicked and after a while we left. So now some more workers have been introduced to our revolutionary communist paper. Not a bad experience at all.

Red Coal

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 9 — Today, PL’ers held a rally at the hotel residence here of Wilbur Ross, condemning the owner of the mines in which 14 workers were killed because his only concern is profits at the expense of workers’ safety. (See CHALLENGE, 2/4 and 2/18) We held up large "Wanted For Murder" posters with his photo pasted on them, distributing leaflets with the same headline.

The limo and private car drivers standing outside the hotel saw our posters and told us they knew Ross and often drove him around. One friendly driver spoke with us for quite a while.

People entering the hotel were shocked to hear their neighbor called a murderer. They took leaflets, some even shouting that he wasn’t a murderer.

But our revolutionary communist pro-worker, anti-boss politics exposed Ross for what he is, a killer of his workers.µ

a name="Indian Airport Workers’ Strikes Stop Cops, Scabs">">"ndian Airport Workers’ Strikes Stop Cops, Scabs

In the second week in February, 23,000 workers struck India’s airports for four days, defying the courts, the law, the local police, the Rapid Action Force (SWAT plus) and the Indian Air Force. Airport bosses admitted their hands were tied; they dared not hire scabs for fear the strikers would attack them. The strikers blocked roads leading to the main airports as well as terminal entrances. Headlines screamed about "Chaos at the Airports" and the "adverse affect on India’s international image." The "Indian miracle" promoted at the last Davos Big Business confab is a hell for workers.

Stopping privatization was the workers’ main demand. The private companies scheduled to acquire the airports plan to fire 40% of the workforce. The so-called "communist" parties won't risk their position in the coalition government and are calling on it to lead the drive towards "modernization." Whether private or public, the workers will bear the brunt of the costs of streamlining the airports. Only communist revolution can halt these attacks. Building a real communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, is the only road to that goal.

Workshop Responds to CHALLENGE

BROOKLYN, NY, Jan. 28 — Today activists in unions, faith-based organizations, schools and anti-war groups met to discuss CHALLENGE-DESAFIO’s role in bringing communist ideas to our friends in these areas. Our goal was to increase circulation and encourage more people to write for the paper.

Beforehand, we all were to introduce the paper to someone who’d never seen it. We also each discussed with at least one person what they thought about articles in CHALLENGE. With those who have already read it, we asked if they could circulate it to one or more friends.

After an initial session about the paper’s role in combating the problems facing the working class, in discussing our efforts in expanding circulation, many reported an increase. We agreed that each of us should make an ongoing plan to build circulation.

Next we had an exercise in writing articles. We divided into small groups to write an on-the-job article, a health-related series and a movie review. Questions before us included: What goes into writing a good article? How long should it be? Who are our readers? How do we present revolutionary ideas?

For quite a few, this was the first time they’d ever experienced such a discussion and exercise. Everyone agreed this was a well-spent afternoon which should be repeated soon.

Revolutionary History:

Secret Police No Match for Bolshevik Base Built Through Iskra Networks

The Czar’s secret police, the Okhrana, is thought by many to have been one of the most efficient political police forces ever. Nonetheless, it was never able to smash the revolutionary socialist movement organized along scientific principals by leaders like Lenin. Lenin credits the Bolshevik newspaper, Iskra, and the networks of mass distribution the Party built around it with preserving and nurturing the revolution.

Okhrana agents spied on suspicious persons hourly, day and night, without any interruptions. Its special brigades shadowed its prey throughout all Russia, even across Europe, from city to city, from country to country, hoping to uncover the Party’s organizational make-up.

Okhrana’s greatest successes came from its internal spying. One example was Julia Oréstovna Serova who worked as an Okhrana agent until 1910, when she was uncovered by the Bolsheviks. Occupying relatively leading Party positions, she supplied the Okhrana with important information about the Bolshevik organization in St. Petersburg and the provinces. Her betrayals led to many arrests of Bolsheviks, including the entire Petersburg Bolshevik committee on March 1, 1905.

Even though the Bolsheviks were masters at clandestine work, they could not completely prevent the Okhrana’s infiltrations. The Czar’s minister Stolpyn built gallows all across Russia. From 1905 to 1912 thousands of Bolsheviks and revolutionary workers were executed. Thousands more were exiled or imprisoned. Yet the Bolsheviks were able not only to survive these vicious attacks but to grow during this fascist period. Five years later they led the Russian working class to power! How? The answer lies in their newspaper Iskra and the Party’s networks of mass distribution.

Iskra, the all-Russian newspaper for which Lenin fought so hard, played two very important roles in this period — (1) to enable the Party to survive, to function under all circumstances and to grow; and (2) to train new leaders and the working class in general. From these networks they organized Party clubs and study groups and through them influenced the class struggle, which in turn led to bigger Iskra networks.

How did the Bolsheviks deal with the Petersburg arrests? If, for instance, their organization consisted of 70 members and each one had a readership and a political base of 10 others, this put 700 people under Iskra’s influence. Shortly after the arrests, the Party leadership would send a couple of members to reorganize the cells from that base of 700. The Bolshevik cells would be active again in a matter of a week or two, to the dismay of the Okhrana and the ruling class.

The leaders of these new Party organizations come from the workers, students and soldiers who had been reading Iskra for years. The all-Russian newspaper had given them an overview of the need for revolution and an understanding of the class struggle and the need for ideological struggle — in the fields, factories, schools and army; in the villages, towns, cities and the provinces; nationally and internationally; outside and inside the Party.

The weight Lenin gave to the Iskra networks can best be shown by his reaction to an infiltrator, who was responsible for smuggling Iskra into Russia. As a member of the Central Committee, the spy sat at Lenin’s side. "That way we have their whole propaganda apparatus," read the Okhrana’s archive. Lenin differed, saying, "He sent dozens of the best revolutionaries to death but he was forced to help create tens of thousands." If he had stopped introducing Iskra into Russia, it would have blown his cover and he would have been useless to the Okhrana, like the spy Julia who ended up committing suicide.

The Okhrana was helpless in stopping Iskra, much less in destroying its all-important networks that won and trained masses of workers to fight for revolution, and maintained the Party under all circumstances. It behooves us in PLP to learn from the Bolsheviks’ rich experience to be able to face the challenges that lie before us on the road to communist revolution.

a name="UNDER COMMUNISM…">">"NDER COMMUNISM…

Will You Have Your Own Toothbrush?

Communism means sharing and an end to "private property." But what do communists mean by "private property"? For example, does the end of "private property" mean that one will not even own a toothbrush, or your own clothes?

These questions are not as silly as they might appear. After all, anti-communists — particularly the capitalists, who stand to lose the most from a communist revolution — attempt to discredit communism in many ways. One way is to claim the communists say you must surrender all your personal possessions.

However, the "private property" that will cease to exist is profit-making private property, such as factories, mines and banks. These will all be owned in common by the entire working class — wherever communism exists. Common ownership of such sectors of society removes the basis for capitalists to exploit workers and steal the value of our labor which produces their private profit. (For a full explanation of profit, see the PLP pamphlet "Political Economy: a Communist Critique of the Wage System." @www.plp.org)

Working-class take-over of all public enterprises and functions will address the collective needs of our class, rather than the profit needs of the tiny capitalist class.

For example, communism will provide free mass transit, and much more of it, with people mainly traveling together instead of mostly alone in their cars. Schools will encourage students to think, work and solve problems together. Housing will be transformed so people interact more freely, often eat together, and even shovel snow or otherwise care for our residential surroundings collectively. Under capitalism, people shovel out their own driveways, sidewalks and parking spots, or mow their own lawns — though there are many examples in U.S. rural history of people working together on projects, such as barn raisings, corn huskings and quilting bees.

However, under extreme circumstances, such as world war preceding a communist revolution, people would likely be motivated to share all available housing, food and resources.

But what about that toothbrush? Don’t you want to have your own personal, private brush for mucking around in your own mouth? Do you really want to share your toothbrush with friends and neighbors? Or your underclothes?

Even as the Party and working class make gigantic strides toward redesigning institutions to be more collective, people still have individual bodies. Those bodies have needs, and the working class, led by their mass communist party (PLP), will take a reasonable and scientific approach toward meeting those needs.

Our mouths are full of bacteria. We may want to share many things, but not oral germs or toothbrushes. And it’s neither necessary nor practical for people not to own their own clothes.

However, there may be a collective aspect even to toothbrushes. Dentists now recommend electronic toothbrushes. The heads rotate or vibrate rapidly, much faster than one can do manually. They do a better job removing plaque, thereby helping to prevent tooth and gum disease. Under capitalism, these devices are expensive. Under communism they would be available to everyone. These base units could be made available to several people in a family; each one could use their "personal" toothbrush head.

So the idea that under communism you would be forced into unhygienic behavior or lose even the shirt off your back is just anti-communist nonsense. There would be plenty of personal space.

The working class will constantly need to coordinate individual physical and psychological needs while building a world based on sharing.

LETTERS

a name="Religion’s Mass Murderers Are No Joke">">"eligion’s Mass Murderers Are No Joke

The Danish newspaper that printed the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb as a turban is a neo-Nazi outfit linked to German and Italian fascism. It printed the cartoon mainly to spread more racism against Muslim immigrants in Europe.

Those Muslims are so "uncivilized" about their religion; they have no sense of humor, unlike some Christians. Let’s see:

Maybe it was the lack of sense of humor of the Christian rulers of Europe which brought us the Dark Ages (setting Europe back to pre-Roman Empire times), the Crusades, the Inquisition, colonialism, the slave trade, the Salem witchhunts, endless wars, the holocaust, and on and on.

Just a couple of months ago, millions of born-again Christians didn’t appreciate the sense of The "Book of David," a liberal TV show about a disjointed Episcopalian priest’s family — one son was gay, the other an adopted Chinese and the daughter a pot smoker — was cancelled after three episodes because of pressure from born-again Christian fascists.

It’s O.K. in the U.S. to slander science like evolution and invent crap like "Intelligent" Design and creationism, but raise doubts here about the Bible or Christianity and in some places your life will be in danger.

When a Spanish priest told Inca king Atahualpa to accept the Bible as the word of God and the road to salvation, Atahualpa shook the Bible, put it by his ear and, hearing no "words," threw it on the floor. Spain’s conquistador Pizarro took care of this kind of sense of humor by murdering Atahualpa and tens of thousands of Incas.

When another priest told Cuban Indian leader Hatuey to accept Christianity and he’d go to heaven, Hatuey asked if his Christian torturers would also go to heaven. When the priest replied "yes," Hatuey said he’d rather go to hell. Hatuey was burned alive by these good Christians.

For decades, hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants (many of them Indians) were murdered in Central America by the followers of Washington’s holy rollers, like Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efrain Montt, a born-again evangelist, whose daughter is engaged to a right-wing U.S. Republican congressman.

As Karl Marx said, religion is the opiate of the masses.

A. Teo

Explanations Missing From Transit Articles

The coverage of the NYC transit strike was informative. However, we need to improve an aspect of our CHALLENGE articles. They always present a contract\strike in the context of a "war economy" and of the current stage of capitalism — "inter-imperialist rivalry." These are part of our communist assertions that underlie the transit strike articles.

These assertions state facts concluded from a communist analysis and appear to be written for people who already agree with them. The steps that help other workers arrive at these conclusions are missing. CHALLENGE could be more helpful with articles that comprehensively show how we reached our conclusions.

What workers think is important to investigate. Our experience is that many, many working-class people see "guns vs. butter" as the direction of the U.S. economy — given trillions in spending, debt financing and tax cuts for the rich; — one effect of the war is less money in transportation budgets. Do they therefore feel, as CHALLENGE might conclude, that they can do something on the job about this?

In another city’s transit agency where PLP has exposed how the Transit Authority represents big capital and how they benefited from transit, a transit worker told us she talked up support for the NYC strike. She told co-workers that the $450 million New York City lost each day shows how much transit workers produce and how little we get back. But she didn’t want to discourage people about strike action if the settlement was bad, because that was the level they were at. She said the war was connected to City deficits but felt she couldn’t develop that connection with many co-workers. Still, a year ago she supported a PLP-sponsored union resolution that bus drivers should not collaborate with the police to transport arrested anti-war protesters, even though she had done it once. How she can influence co-workers is an on-going discussion.

The NYC strike demands reflected the basic idea of class unity. Strikers agreed to fight the trend of contracts settled on the backs of new workers. They struck against the MTA demand that new workers pay more for pensions and retire later. However, the demands didn’t oppose the Iraq war or U.S. imperialism.

While on paper TWU Local 100 is against the Iraq war (a resolution), there isn’t a lot of action from the members on this issue. There are Local 100 members in a Transportation Unit of the National Guard. Also, the predominantly black and Latin workforce probably has many families with relatives in the military. This situation can pull both ways in positions about the war. Probably most members are against it individually — polls show a high percentage of black and Latin workers oppose the war.

CHALLENGE says, "The strike showed that workers are not willing to pay for hundreds of billions the bosses need for their endless imperialist wars."

Does that mean that the transit workers consciously view a strike as a weapon of collective action to carry out their individual position against the war or to stop it?

After seeing transit workers bring NYC to a standstill, do our friends then conclude that strikes are a weapon in the hands of the working class to interfere with the war? Could this happen? Do our friends want to join us in developing this transformation?

Will transit workers look mainly at the economic outcome of the settlement and conclude that strikes are not worth it, as our transit friend worried above?

In our attempt to follow up with some NY transit workers, we found that many of our communist assertions rang true but required lots of explaining as to why. For example, we discussed the PLP pamphlet "Unfair at Any Fare" which exposes how Finance Capital (Wall Street banks and investment houses), ran the NYC transit system into the ground when they owned it. They then made billions by financing bonds for the City to buy it. We updated this robbery by indicating today’s differences when U.S. capital has problems competing worldwide and will attack transit workers even harder to lower labor costs while still collecting on the debt.

We asked each other what changes were needed in transit and other workers’ thinking to impel them to spread the illegal strike further, instead of returning to work without a contract. We asked them to evaluate what Local 100 members thought about the strike and the war. We’re continuing this dialogue about the war, the need for communist organizers in the union, revolution, communism, the need for a party, etc. We think this will help develop agreement with CHALLENGE’S communist assertion that, "The strike was a mass political and anti-racist struggle."

Long-time CHALLENGE sellers

CHALLENGE comments: We welcome the letter-writers’ critique of the paper’s reports on the transit strike. Yes, it is important to give explanations that enable workers to understand what’s behind our communist conclusions. If we didn’t do that enough in the many articles we wrote and letters received, we will try to do better in the future, and need your help.

On the point about whether this was a strike against the war or war economy: In the main article (CHALLENGE, 1/18) datelined Jan. 2, second paragraph, after saying that, "The strike showed that workers are not willing to pay for…the bosses…endless imperialist wars," there followed an explanation of the link between these wars and the need to attack workers’ conditions. It stated: "Even if the workers didn’t view this as a strike against the war economy, the bosses certainly do."

We continued in this article and others to explain that the reason for the bosses’ (and their media’s) vicious, massive attack on the strike stemmed from the fact that it would hurt their ability to pay for, and wage, war if other workers — who have been surrendering to the cuts in wages, pensions and health care benefits — were to follow the example of a strike that broke the bosses’ laws.

No doubt the workers didn’t make their demands because they opposed the war — which that first quote above may have implied (although, as you state, probably a majority are opposed individually). But we were indicating that this was the objective result of a strike involving the very things the bosses were trying to cut in order to pay for the war, and a strike against the bosses’ law, at that./

The similar understanding of some strikers were revealed in the string of quotes we printed that our members heard on the picket lines, such as, "I fought in Nam and the Gulf War. This is how they repay us, by attacking workers…. These wars are all about making money for the rich."

And another one, from a worker who shouted to a cheering crowd of strikers, "This is a fascist society! The bosses are no different from Hitler!"

The level of the workers’ understanding of the links between these issues — even if the demands weren’t directly linked to the war — was mirrored in a letter in the last issue which reported that workers plastered the front page of CHALLENGE ("The Revolutionary Communist Newspaper") on the front of a token booth for the whole world to see.

We also did explain how the bankers profit from the workers’ labors in the first three paragraphs of the article entitled, "Banks Are the Big Winners" in the January 18 issue.

On transit workers viewing a "bad economic outcome" as making strikes "not worth it": yes, the bosses spread this false idea to induce workers never to strike. But particularly NYC transit workers have a militant history of "no contract, no work" which they attempt to follow in the teeth of strike-breaking laws. The reason they struck is precisely because they knew they'd get a lousy contract without a walkout, which has happened in the past. If they do get a "bad economic outcome," many, if not most, will attribute it to an incompetent, sellout leadership, not because "strikes are not worth it." Many realized that without threatening a strike, and/or striking, they'd never have achieved whatever advances they've made. Of course the bosses always try to reverse whatever gains workers make.

On the point about the "communist assertion" that "The strike was a mass political and anti-racist struggle": The ruling class itself made this a major issue, from the mayor’s racist accusation of this predominantly black and Latin workforce as "selfish thugs" and "thieves"; to the NY Times worrying about the "clash of race, culture and class"; to the slew of TV, newspaper and radio talk show references to the fact that these workers saw themselves as victims of racism, which helped to drive the strike. They were equated with the 9/11 terrorists!

We tried to indicate through the many articles as well as letters from PLP members reporting on picket line events and reactions to CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets, that a strike that breaks the law, which provokes the ruling-class assault that ensued, including blatant racist attacks, really was "a mass political and anti-racist struggle."

Since you, our readers — and CHALLENGE sellers — are part of the "staff" that produces the paper, we would hope that you all see yourselves as helping to write the explanations that are necessary to prove our communist politics, as your letter is attempting to do.

Fighting Racism in Turkey

I have been following your website from Istanbul. Good work, brothers and sisters.

I was born here, am 25 and work in a bank. We are proudly fighting racism with our art movement in Turkey. Islamic fanaticism is growing here and we youths are trying to combat these fundamentalist ideas.

Good luck to your movement in the fight against racism.

Anti-racist fighter in Istanbul

Another Name for Communist Column?

The new column, "Under Communism" is a great addition to the paper. It helps develop the understanding that communism is a way of life, not just about taking money from the rich, etc.

However, I believe the title should be changed, maybe to "Communist Life" or something like that. The current title could be interpreted to mean that somehow communism is "over" the people. It doesn’t need to have that meaning, but it can feed into the anti-communist idea many have that communism is a plan made by experts who are separated from the people.

A title like "Communist Life" has a more positive, strong sound to it. It would also enable us to tell stories about "communist life" that existed even though communist political-economic systems have not yet been established, such as writing about the Subbotniks in the young USSR.

Please consider changing the name of the column to "Communist Life," or something like that.

A Regular Reader

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

US aim: Make Iraq safe for oil contracts

Bush will not withdraw our forces until U.S. oil companies have secure access to Iraq’s resources….

Prior to the 2003 invasion, foreign companies had been limited to no access to the Iraqi market. Only Iraqis or citizens of Arab nations could own a business in Iraq. The oil sector was fully nationalized....

Following the invasion, the Bush administration implemented orders that have the effect of law allowing for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises, 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi business....These orders were enshrined in the October 15 Iraq constitution.

The Iraqi Oil Ministry aims "to begin signing long-term contracts with foreign oil companies during the first nine months of 2006," according to [one] report.

Signing the contracts is just the beginning, U.S. companies also need a safe place to work. This is where the U.S. military comes in and it is why Bush refuses to bring the troops home. (Antonia Juhas, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time," Regan Books, to be published in April 2006 www.ipsdc.org) (MinutemanMedia.org, 1/18)

Majority Rule? We don’t get it by voting!

The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax….

There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times…. (Molly Ivins: Creators Syndicate, 1/20)

US nudges Bolivia army toward a coup

Less than a month after an assertively anti-American president took office in Bolivia, the Bush administration is planning to cut military aid to the country by 96 percent….

The cut holds the potential to anger Bolivia’s powerful military establishment, which has been responsible for a long history of coups. (NYT, 2/9)

Army shifting to Latino cannon-fodder

From 2001-2005, the number of Latino enlistments in the Army rose 26 percent….

The enlistment of African-Americans, a group particularly disillusioned with the war in Iraq, has dropped off sharply, to 14.5 percent from 22.3 percent over the past four years….

Latinos often wind up as cannon fodder on the casualty-prone front lines. African- Americans saw the same thing happen during the 1970’s and 1980’s…

Hispanics make up only 4.7 percent of the military’s officer corps.

"The fear is that the military is going to try to replace, consciously or unconsciously, African-Americans with Hispanics…" (NYT, 2/9)

Replacing Bush won’t stop capitalist wars

…In Munich this weekend, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, staking out a position that is more hawkish than anything the Bush administration has said in public, put the predicament this way:

"There is only one thing worse than military action," he said, "and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." (NYT)

Comics tie Cheney hawkishness to gunshot

What do you do when the vice president shoots someone?....

Even Mr. Cheney’s most loyal friends could only brace themselves for the one-liners to come….

"Something I just found out today about the incident," Jay Leno said Monday on the "Tonight Show" on NBC. "Do you know that Dick Cheney tortured the guy for a half-hour before he shot him?"….

… "The Daily Show"…correspondent Rob Corddry, introduced as a "vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst," said that "according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush," and "everyone believed there were quail in the brush," and "while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he would still have shot Mr. Whittington…" (NYT, 2/14)

1. Racism, Imperialism, And Hamas: More
   Instability And War In Mid-East
2. When Israel Used Hamas .
3. Ford, GM workers need mass strike, global unity
4. U.S. Military Mixes Terror, Torture and Bombs with A Little `Charity'
5. BUSH: STATE OF DISUNION
6. Protest 60% Cuts At Delphi But Must Unite With Auto Workers Worldwide
7. Militarization is Hazardous to Public Health
8. Iran's Ayatollahs Follow MTA-Bloomberg-Pataki Footsteps
9. Bosses Murder 2 More Miners; War Budget Lays Off Inspectors
10. Spreading CHALLENGE Among Workers: This Mission is Being Accomplished
11. Expose Liberals' Anti-Immigrant `Good-Cop' Role
12. Bolivia: Choosing One Imperialist Over Another Is Not Road to Workers' Power
    1. REVOLUTIONARY? OR CAPITALIST DEMAGOGUE?
    2. EVO'S `NATIONALIZATION' NO THREAT TO IMPERIALISTS
    3. IF MORALES IS NO THREAT, WHY HAVE U.S. RULERS DEMONIZED HIM?
    4. INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRY FUELS BRAZIL-U.S. DISPUTE OVER HEMISPHERIC CONTROL
13. Not Fooled by Chavez's Fake Revolution, Youth Joins PLP
14. LETTERS
    1. STRIKE SPARKED WORKING CLASS
    2. Transit Workers Reject Pro-Boss Leaders
    3. Workers Post Challenge on Token Booth
    4. Widespread Support for Strike
    5. Reform Activists Open to Revolutionary Ideas
    6. School Rules, Food Sickens Students
    7. What Are Workers' Real Values?
    8. Garment Workers Expose Bosses' Shameless Greed
    9. No `American Dream' for this Transit Worker's Family
15. Redeye on the news
    1. Junk-food profits boost diabetes explosion
    2. Mass wiretaps: `virtually all' on innocents
    3. Biz `gifts' to docs just keep on growing
    4. Big biz bribes judges who try their cases
    5. Slandering ex-slaves to justify Jim Crow
    6. One way a free market ruins world health
16. `Jarhead' Promotes Sacrifice for Imperialist War
17. Alito Hearing Cover for Intensifying Presidential Power
18. Under Communism: War And Communism in Poland, 1944

---

Racism, Imperialism, And Hamas: More
Instability And War In Mid-East

Hamas' recent electoral triumph throws a monkey wrench into a crucial piece of U.S. imperialism's deadly machinery. For decades, U.S. rulers have employed Israel as a hired gun to help them control the Middle East and its oil. Israel's wars, pre-emptive military attacks and racist atrocities against anti-U.S. Arabs have lessened the Pentagon's need to intervene directly in the region in defense of the U.S. oil empire and its profit-makers -- Exxon-Mobil ($36 billion net profit in 2005, an all-time high for a corporation), Chevron-Texaco, Halliburton & Co..

To play the enforcer role for their U.S. backers, Israeli bosses need some degree of internal stability. Now Hamas, like Al Qaeda, represents those bosses in the Middle East who want to control the major share of the exploitation of Palestinian workers.

Some say the responsibility of governing will soften Hamas. But Michael Hertzog, an Israeli general, warns, "Granting Hamas legitimate political status and access to the prerogatives of state power seems to be asking for trouble." Hertzog quotes the threat of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar, "We will join the Legislative Council with our weapons in our hands." (Foreign Affairs, March-April, 2006) Amatzia Baram, senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, thinks "Hamas is more likely to maintain a confrontational stance" and "in the worst case... spark a regional war." (New York Times, 1/29/06)

However, these policy planners gravely underestimate the danger by failing to frame the Hamas flare-up in the context of intensifying imperialist competition in the oil-rich region. Not only has Israel become a less reliable gunslinger for the U.S., but the scale of conflict has gone far beyond the proxy stage, starting with Gulf War I in 1991.

The current "Palestinian question" results directly from the scourges of the profit system, racism and imperialism. Hamas' rise to power, like that of Islamic fundamentalism as the main apparent opponent of imperialism, is one more outcome of the destruction of the old international communist movement.

Israel's Zionist founders, like all capitalists, knew they could boost their profit rate by super-exploiting Arabs, thereby suppressing the wages and living standards of all workers. (Currently 32% of all workers in Israel live under the poverty level, compared to 10% less than 20 years ago; in 2003 the average salary of senior managers in the top 100 companies was $700,000, excluding perks).

To counter rebellion against the apartheid-like second-class status of Palestinian workers, Israel subjected them to military rule from 1948 to 1966. The rulers later tweaked their tactics of oppression. Israeli storm troopers have always gunned down Arabs indiscriminately. But in the 1980's, U.S. bosses began to encourage Israel rulers to deal with phony Palestinian leaders who could keep a lid on dissent and herd workers into low-wage labor camps. The most notorious was Yassir Arafat. In return for renouncing violence, Benjamin Netanyahu and Bill Clinton made Arafat the effective boss of outfits like the Gaza Industrial Estate, where hundreds of underpaid workers toil for Motorola, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Proctor and Gamble and Xerox.

U.S. imperialism further impoverished the Palestinians at the time of Gulf War I. Washington policy-makers, fearing that Kuwait's 400,000 Palestinian oil workers might side with Saddam Hussein, instructed Kuwait's ruling Emir to expel them all. Many returned to Israel jobless.

Hamas' Aim: An Islamic Ruling Class to Replace Western Oil Bosses

The vote for Hamas was largely a vote against U.S.- and Israeli-imposed poverty, apartheid-type racism, killer cops and the rampant corruption of the late Arafat's ruling Fatah party. But it was a serious political error for the Palestinian working class. Hamas' policies are quite literally suicidal. It represents yet another faction of capitalists willing to shed workers' blood for profit. Hamas' sole aim is to replace Western oil bosses with an Islamic ruling class.

Internal turmoil sharpened by the Hamas crisis undermines Israel's already waning ability to bail out the U.S. militarily. The peak of Israel's usefulness for U.S. rulers came in 1973. With the U.S. still mired in Vietnam, Israel took on and beat the combined might of Egypt and Syria. To do so, Israel put over a tenth of its population on the battlefield (a feat U.S. rulers only approached in the Civil War and World War II).

In 1981, Israel did Washington's dirty work with air strikes on an Iraqi nuclear plant. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, where support for Iran's newly-enthroned ayatollahs was running high. In a display of U.S.-sponsored ruthlessness, Israel -- under Sharon's orders -- massacred several refugee camps during the invasion. Such actions today could trigger a domestic explosion.

But as bad as it was for U.S. rulers after the Shah's ouster from Iran in 1979, their military position in the Middle East is even more precarious now. Proxies like Israel can provide only marginal help. Gulf Wars I and II taught hard lessons -- which the Bush gang has yet to learn -- about the Persian Gulf and troop strength. The U.S. couldn't take Iraq with 750,000 soldiers in 1991. It surely can't hold it in 2006 with 150,000.

With China entering the fray, the U.S. will have to mobilize millions in the foreseeable future. That's why the Pentagon itself released a report last week that the army was stretched "to the breaking point." While ostrich-like Rumsfeld ignored the problem, the top general in Iraq, George Casey, concurred. Madeleine Albright and William Perry, Clinton's Secretaries of State and Defense, have issued a report with conclusions identical to the Pentagon's. The liberal Democrats only differ with the Bushites over how to wage more deadly and wider imperialist wars.

The Hama's crisis threatens more local wars and underscores the inevitability of combat magnitudes more deadly than the current U.S. killing sprees in Iraq and Afghanistan. The history of the last century shows that workers, organized and led by a communist party, can transform such imperialist wars into revolutions for workers' power.

When Israel Used Hamas .

Israel "aided Hamas directly...[in the 1970's] the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.

According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies. (Richard Sale, UPI Terrorism Correspondent)

Ford, GM workers need mass strike, global unity

DETROIT, Jan. 24 -- "Why would any U.S. Toyota or Honda worker join the UAW watching this go on?" asked a Ford worker, referring to recent health care concessions which his local voted down

2-1. Another added, "The global economy can't be stopped, but building plants around the world looking for the cheapest wages creates more poverty everywhere. Paying pennies an hour doesn't create any new markets, while workers here either losing, or afraid of losing, their jobs aren't going to buy any new cars either." The first worker replied, "The bosses are global, but so are the workers. But we need international leadership. Our union leaders are backing the companies instead of the workers around the world."

These workers were discussing the recent plant closings and job cuts announced by GM and Ford, what one "specialist in manufacturing efficiency" called "the sad story of two armies in retreat, a retreat that is feeling more and more like a rout." (NY Times, 1/25) GM announced that it lost $8.6 billion in 2005, $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter alone, just four days after Ford announced it would close 14 factories over the next six years and eliminate up to 30,000 jobs. The St. Louis assembly plant will close March 10.

If GM and Ford are "armies in retreat," then the two Ford workers quoted above are soldiers in that army. And like the soldiers in the Russian army during World War I, or U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, soldiers in a losing army have the potential to rebel, revolt and, with communist leadership, lead the working class to power. While the UAW leadership is rushing to the aid of its billionaire masters, PLP is organizing soldiers in the global car wars to unite with autoworkers worldwide, and build a mass international PLP to lead the struggle for communist revolution.

GM lost more than $5 billion in North America, as sales slumped and its market share dropped to 23.6%, the lowest since the 1920's. Like Ford, last November GM announced plans to close 12 factories and cut 30,000 jobs. Along with Chrysler's restructuring, the "Big Three" U.S. auto companies will have cut 140,000 jobs since 2000. The sharp decline in auto jobs has hit black workers particularly hard, down by 33% in the last 25 years (Report by Center for Economic and Policy Research)

Hundreds of thousands of active and retired workers and their families are being thrown overboard to meet the fierce competition from Asia and Europe, especially for the U.S. market, which last year sold 16.9 millions cars and trucks. Almost 60% went to foreign-based auto companies and Toyota is about to overtake GM as the world's biggest automaker. In March, Toyota is expected to announce annual profits of more than $11 billion.

The plant closings and job cuts come as the UAW leadership gave Ford and GM billions of dollars in health care concessions midway through the current contract. GM got $15 billion in current and future health care concessions. Meanwhile, Delphi workers, most of whom are former GM workers, are angry and want a mass strike. (See article page 3.) A Delphi strike now could shut GM almost immediately and force it to spend its $20 billion cash-on-hand, driving the auto giant into bankruptcy. This could create an airline-industry scenario of union-busting, massive concessions and jobs cuts throughout the auto industry.

As the struggle in auto heats up, May Day looms on the horizon. Building networks of CHALLENGE readers and distributors among the soldiers in these "retreating armies," can lead to a block of autoworkers participating in May Day and making their presence felt in the class struggle. This is the short-term plan on the long-term road to revolution.

U.S. Military Mixes Terror, Torture and Bombs with A Little `Charity'

When I was a soldier in Iraq, my unit ran humanitarian missions. We gave truckloads of food to children at the local orphanage, blankets to the farming families around our base, and boxes and boxes of water to the barefoot kids on the side of the road. All together, all the supplies we distributed in a year couldn't last the community more than a month. But most troops in my old unit thought, "At least we are trying to help the Iraqi people." Still, in other units, the chain of command ordered troops do things many in the U.S. and even in the military wouldn't believe.

At an anti-war event, a young black veteran, let's call him Jay, told me how he couldn't sleep at night. Jay is easy-going and barely past his teens but he'd seen and done things most people haven't.

"We zip cuffed this one guy and I shot him in the back of the head," he said stuttering. Jay said his unit never really faced insurgents. "It was more gangsters. Guys with guns who didn't look behind their weapon, aim, or take cover. We killed them. But most of the time it was civilians. We'd knock down a door of a house, it didn't matter which one. We'd find the men of fighting age and beat them up. Sometimes we killed them."

Jay says his unit operated on its own. "Sometimes we cut off an area for the special forces. No civilians, no military, nobody was allowed through. Most of the time we were on our own." He said his unit targeted civilian men in mosques, dug graves, and burnt bodies to keep their actions secret.

Jay was discharged because of his injuries. Some details - what his unit was, where and when he was in Iraq, and even his name -- have been changed or withheld to protect his identity. But the fact is, the U.S. military uses terrorism, torture and bombs mixed with a little charity all to remain the Number One super-power in its rivalry with other imperialists, even though the media that reaches here about troops in Iraq focuses on humanitarian missions.

Red Vet

BUSH: STATE OF DISUNION

Bush's State of the Union speech again exposed the differences between various sections of the ruling class. The Democrats and the main voice of the liberal capitalist establishment, the N.Y. Times, criticized Bush for not appealing to the population to sacrifice even more for a future of endless wars and sharpening imperialist rivalry: "Simply calling for more innovation is painless. The hard part is calling for anything that smacks of sacrifice -- on the part of consumers or special interests, and politicians who depend on their support. "(NYT editorial, Feb. 1)

Again, the liberal bosses are angry at the Bush gang for not preparing the country for more and more wars. "After 9/11, the president had the perfect moment to put the nation on the road toward energy independence," says the Times, "when people were prepared to give up their own comforts in the name of a greater good. He passed it by, and he missed another opportunity last night."

It's a big mistake to still believe the Democrats and the liberal section of the U.S. ruling class are "more enlightened" than the Bushites and Neo-Cons. They differ tactically over how to prepare the workers to shed more blood and their pensions, health plans and wages. In order to meet the growing challenges facing U.S. imperialism -- from Baghdad to Beijing -- the liberal wing wants to discipline those bosses and politicians who care more about their own narrow interests than about the entire system.

Protest 60% Cuts At Delphi But Must Unite With Auto Workers Worldwide

DETROIT, MI, Jan. 23 -- Today about 75 active and retired Delphi workers and their supporters, including workers from the nearby GM Truck and Bus plant, picketed Delphi World Headquarters on Crooks Road (the actual name!). The demonstration had been planned to coincide with Delphi boss Steve Miller's attempt to void the UAW contract in bankruptcy court. Miller is demanding a 60% cut in wages and jobs, but delayed the actual court threat until mid-February. The workers, part of a rank-and-file effort called Soldiers of Solidarity (SOS), decided to keep their appointment.

One rally organizer pointed out that Delphi has factories worldwide worth millions, but is only declaring bankruptcy on its U.S. plants. While exposing the bosses' corruption and bad management, he declared that Delphi workers here could maintain their wages and benefits and still be "competitive" in the world auto wars. Competitive against whom?

We support the Delphi workers' struggle against these massive attacks and will help build a strike movement that can shut down Delphi and the wounded GM, (Delphi's parent and main customer). But we're not competing against workers in China, Mexico, India, Germany or South Africa. We're building an international movement of industrial workers to overthrow the bosses with communist revolution. You can't have it both ways. The UAW's outlook of demanding "better" bosses and supporting U.S. automakers against "foreign" competition has put the union on the brink of extinction.

We have another idea. "Workers of the World, Unite!" That's the outlook we'll bring to Delphi workers in the coming battle.

Militarization is Hazardous to Public Health

PHILADELPHIA, PA, Dec. 14 -- As thousands of healthcare workers gathered at the American Public Health Association's (APHA) annual meeting, the liberal wing of the ruling class was preparing to spring a deadly trap. When Senator John Kerry took the stage, you could almost hear the trap snapping shut. Although some held anti-war signs and banners during his speech, the audience's enthusiastic applause showed that doctors, nurses and other public health workers were momentarily caught in this trap.

Public health has become a key front in the battle to win support for imperialist war. Not only do the bosses count on health workers to sell their racist doomsday scenarios to the public, they need health workers to keep their fighting forces fit. After 9/11, Bush and the bosses began to militarize public health, subjecting workers to dangerous and unnecessary smallpox vaccinations and perverting public health science for imperialist war (restructuring public health, medical and nursing curricula to teach bogus epidemiology like bio-terrorism). Most public health workers and professionals lacked the political focus necessary to understand this assault, let alone plan to resist it.

However, a conference highlight was the Iraq war veterans' workshop. Soldiers and their families exploded the myth that the military takes care of its own. A young vet spoke about the daily psychological terror he suffered since returning from Iraq. He remembers the gruesome smell of burning bodies and cannot function at work or at home because of these hallucinations. The VA hospital won't treat him for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because he cannot prove to them that he was in a combat zone.

Outraged parents spoke about their son's descent into alcoholism and eventual suicide after returning from Iraq. A mother spoke about the racism that her son was being taught in boot camp and the hatred he expressed towards Muslims in phone calls and letters he wrote home even before his deployment. These soldiers and their families left no doubt that this is a public health emergency!

To combat this, APHA planted a few soldiers in the audience to repeat the Pentagon's lies, but they only served to galvanize the audience against them. It only proved that the bosses are trying to avoid any discussion of the military's massive failure to care for GI's.

The bosses have used every tactic to prevent public health workers from seeing that class status, more than any other variable, determines who gets sick and who doesn't. The latest tactic has been to blur the lines between public health and the military, which began long before this meeting. Many APHA members are military officers and for years the military has set up recruitment and public relations displays advertising careers in the military as public health services plus bombs.

Corporations also compete for space, advertising products and services with obvious military applications. The MITRE Corporation boasts having "played a critical role in developing some of the most sophisticated command and control systems in the world." It provides technical assistance to the Air Force and has organized the Pentagon. When I asked the project coordinator why a company whose stated objective was "to contribute to winning the war on terrorism, and...to advance the military's transformation into a 21st-century fighting force" was advertising at a public health fair, she replied that the technical expertise supplied by her company had applications for disease surveillance. (And an M-16 can be used to open a can of beans!)

Although the APHA has passed dozens of resolutions condemning war and the use of torture, it continues to permit the military to advertise at APHA meetings. This year, members of the Maternal/Child Health section began an online discussion about the need to give military recruiters the boot. When the discussion gained momentum, APHA staffers asked us to take our conversation elsewhere.

It was clear that the APHA leadership didn't share the membership's anti-imperialist views. These members petitioned the APHA leadership to have an anti-military booth adjacent to the military recruiters. Instead, APHA agreed to a "Peace Booth" in an obscure corner of the exhibit hall, using paid staffers to man the booth. APHA staffers are employed to court congressional members and routinely silence the membership in order to curry favor with those in power.

The effort to kick military recruiters out of APHA was useful for organizing the struggle to wean healthcare workers from the illusion that the liberal Democrats offered a long-term solution or that once the war was over, government funding would be re-directed to social or health programs.

On December 12, Bush arrived in Philadelphia to sell his "victory" strategy and public health workers joined the street protest. They were mostly white and their message was disorganized. The anti-war movement has failed to involve working-class people of all backgrounds as evidenced by the number of people who simply walked by the protesters on their way to work. Unless the anti-war movement adopts a coherent, anti-imperialist focus and engages black, Latino and Asian workers, it will never be a mass movement worthy of working-class support.

Iran's Ayatollahs Follow MTA-Bloomberg-Pataki Footsteps

While U.S. and Iranian bosses quarrel over nukes and oil, they have a lot in common when it comes to attacking workers more and more. On January 28, 17,000 Tehran bus drivers struck the government-owned Vahed Bus Co. As of Jan. 30, over 700 strikers, student supporters and the families of many drivers (including children) had been arrested, many dragged from their homes by thousands of cops who were unleashed to break the strike. The strikers were protesting the jailing of six executive board members and the union president (the latter imprisoned for a month). Several other board members who've been summoned have refused to comply.

Tehran University students published a statement backing the strikers and went to a number of bus depots to support the pickets. Many were arrested at Area 6 Terminus and haven't been heard from since.

The workers' "crime" is to demand decent wages, reinstatement of laid-off drivers and introduction of collective bargaining.

Tehran's mayor says the drivers' union is "illegal." The regime is preparing for a showdown, aiming to crush the strike with a mob of 10,000 vigilantes. The drivers have received warm support from the capital's residents and workers in many other sectors, as well as from around the world.

Bosses Murder 2 More Miners; War Budget Lays Off Inspectors

MELVILLE, W.Va., Jan. 23 -- Another mine, another coal boss, another safety violation -- and two more miners murdered.

Following close on the heels of the murder of 12 other miners in the Sago mine barely three weeks before, on Jan. 21 the lives of Don Bragg, 33, father of two, and Ellery Hatfield, 47, father of four, were snuffed out when a fire erupted on a conveyer belt 900 feet underground in the Alma mine here in Logan County. And sure enough, the drive for profits by the mine owner, the Massey Energy Co., led directly to these deaths.

A miner there, granted anonymity because he feared being fired, told the N.Y. Times (1/22) that this wasn't the first such fire in the Alma mine. "I work at the belt that caught fire and had to put out a fire at the same exact spot just a couple of weeks ago when the sprinkler system didn't work," he said, referring to a Dec. 23 fire. "I reported the fire to my supervisor," he told the Times, "and he ignored it." Had the sprinkler system been working, brothers Bragg and Hatfield might be alive today. But Massey's profits come before fixing sprinkler systems.

Government records show that since last June the Alma mine has been cited at least 12 times for violations involving fire equipment among 100 safety violations overall. But the federal government is just as guilty as the bosses here; its safety agency withdrew a proposal in July 2002 that would have required conveyer belts to be made with fire-resistant materials.

The Massey company -- a notorious union-busting outfit -- is intent on hiding safety hazards, as noted in a 2001 report from the state's Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training which cited "a lot of questions about Massey's use of contract workers and also whether the safety records it was keeping were accurate." Bosses barred rescue units with advanced equipment from entering the mine. (ABC-TV, 1/20)

While the governor is "expressing anguish" and the state's liberal Democratic billionaire Senator John D. Rockefeller IV cries crocodile tears -- "We are in pain," he moans -- the carnage in West Virginia continues. His use of "we" hides the class nature of these murders. Rockefeller and Massey are not in pain; it's the miners who are, while these bosses rake in the profits.

Although West Virginia Congressional Democrat Nick Rahail (whose district includes the Alma mine), whines that "every coal mine health and safety law on the books today is written with the blood of coal miners," the existence of those laws doesn't seem to halt the trail of blood. He says "the health and safety of coal miners [are being] sacrificed on the altar of budget-cutting," yet he and his politician buddies all voted for the war in Iraq which is the source of the budget cutbacks and layoffs of federal mine inspectors.

These 14 miners at the Sago and Alma mines are every bit a casualty of this imperialist war as are the 2.200 GI's and 100,000-plus Iraqi workers dying in Iraq. Until our class succeeds in destroying this profit system with communist revolution, the rich will get richer while workers will continue to die in these bosses' wars, at home and abroad.

Spreading CHALLENGE Among Workers: This Mission is Being Accomplished

"Comrade, mission accomplished. The delivery was successful," said one of the new CHALLENGE distributors, after having given a co-worker a copy for the first time. We're sharpening the campaign to build a political base, based on networks of our revolutionary communist newspaper and the class struggle.

The response has been very encouraging because four co-workers in one area have agreed to distribute the paper and the majority of those who receive the paper help us economically. Part of this political struggle over the paper is for the workers to understand the need to support it financially. For example, 25 of the last edition were distributed and we collected $36. Other comrades in other parts of this same company distribute a similar number. This will be a constant struggle with ups and downs, but we'll try to make it always move forward.

The paper's distribution and discussions about our next contract struggle are proceeding simultaneously. While talking with a group of workers about the contract that expires this year, a black worker said, "All of these past contracts, we've been giving in, giving our benefits and wages, but the more we retreat, the more they push us against the wall. I think that in this new contract, we have to dig in our heels and fight or we'll end up leaving our children a working hell. We have to unite to be able to win."

A comrade said, "To really win, it's not only this struggle. For the liberation of the working class we need to educate ourselves politically, learn about the revolutionary history of the working class, and the fight against racism." After this discussion, this co-worker took CHALLENGE for the first time.

The general sentiment of the majority of workers is that if we strike, we should fight to win, not return to work conquered without a fight. These discussions have provided the opportunity to push the sale of CHALLENGE as a way to sharpen the discussions about our contract and about fascism, and to show that, like all U.S. workers, we face cuts in our pensions and medical benefits to pay for imperialist oil wars. This fight is not only one against our boss, but against the whole bosses' state.

The political development of the workers who are regular CHALLENGE readers is clear. The conversations reach revolutionary political levels about many topics. For example, recently five workers met at lunch and one asked, "What are we going to talk about today?" We discussed the homeless, racism and religion. While different points of view were presented, ultimately a scientific analysis of society prevailed, as did the need for communist revolution. At the end, an older worker concluded, "It's time to go back to work, friends. Later we'll continue looking for scientific solutions to the problems of the world."

Expose Liberals' Anti-Immigrant `Good-Cop' Role

Recently we've been involved in a campaign to increase the hand-to-hand distribution of CHALLENGE at the schools where we work.

At one school's parent center, several parents and campus security aides talked about the unity we had in a struggle at school, and at the multi-racial demonstrations against the Minutemen.

Everyone received CHALLENGE. They saw the photograph of the demonstration at the Home Depot. We also noted how the bosses' media want to convince workers they're powerless in the face of the racists, while they use racist terror against immigrants to lower the wages of all workers. They want us to see the McCain-Kennedy amnesty/bracero bill as the "solution." The bosses always want workers to rely on liberal politicians as their "friends" instead of relying on our own organization.

This discussion skipped from English to Spanish because some parents didn't speak much English and others spoke no Spanish at all. The Spanish-speaking parents were reading CHALLENGE for the first time.

Meanwhile, an African American parent who has read the paper off and on for a year and a half -- she had been so interested in the article about the communist influence on Rosa Parks that she had sent it to her sister -- pointed out the word "Communist" on the CHALLENGE masthead. "This is really important. There are a lot of misconceptions about this word -- but it's a good thing."

The struggle against the Minutemen highlighted the importance of supporting the anti-racists charged with felonies for protesting against these fascists. Many Latino students are aware of the Minutemen. The politicians use these gutter racists to win workers to accept the new "guest-worker" and punitive "amnesty" programs.

We've been getting more CHALLENGES to students, emphasizing the potential power of immigrant workers in the factories and of all workers in organizing against this racist system. One young African American student comrade explained to a meeting of teachers state-wide how a student group at her school is organizing against the Minutemen and that an injury to one is an injury to all. It helped everyone to realize the potential of a united working class.

Discussions have also focused on the federal government's role in trying to win working-class youth -- especially immigrants and the children of immigrants -- to join the Army to fight for U.S. imperialism. We've linked the plans of the liberal politicians to the flood of publicity about the Minutemen, citing this as the "good-cop-bad-cop" tactic. The National Service Plan, the Dream Act and McCain-Kennedy -- which "puts immigrants on the road to legalization" -- are all part of the "good cop" plan to project the Federal government as youth's "protector" from the Minuteman fascists (the "bad cops").

Using CHALLENGE in our discussions with young people and winning them to distribute it to their friends will counter the bosses' plans to win these youth to patriotism. It will help them to fight for the working class, whether in the factories, in school or in the military.

Bolivia: Choosing One Imperialist Over Another Is Not Road to Workers' Power

On Jan. 22, Evo Morales was sworn in as Bolivia's first-ever indigenous-mestizo president. Having projected a radical image, can he fulfill the expectations of change that millions of oppressed Bolivians need and expect?

Bolivia is rich in natural resources and has the hemisphere's second largest natural gas reserves. Yet its 85% indigenous-mestizo population finds 64% living below the poverty line, 50% on less than $1 a day. That's the result of 300 years of brutal Spanish colonialism and 200 years of racist capitalist exploitation.

Bolivia's workers, especially the miners, have a proud history of mass, militant struggle against the racist rulers. The horrific racist oppression they face can only be smashed with a violent revolution led by a communist party that fights for communism. This definitely is not on Morales' agenda. In fact, his election is a smokescreen enabling the rulers to advance their class interests, while trying to make angry workers believe that capitalist "democracy" can meet their needs.

REVOLUTIONARY? OR CAPITALIST DEMAGOGUE?

Populist rhetoric, Che Guevara T-shirts and socialism in his party's name -- Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) -- made many think Evo represented a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. But he doesn't even proclaim to be a Marxist, much less a communist. MAS doesn't mention the word socialism anywhere except in its name. Morales's concept of socialism is not even the failed transition belt to communism of the old communist movement. A la Venezuela's Chavez, it's based on "cooperatives to end poverty."

Assuring the capitalists/imperialists who rule Bolivia, Morales said in a recent interview, "When it comes to Che Guevara .... I don't accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the way in the '50's and '60's, but we want a democratic revolution." His vice-president Linares made it even clearer, "We admit that Bolivia will still be capitalist in the next 50 to 100 years." In another interview, Morales said, "I do not want to expropriate or confiscate any assets. I want to learn from the businessmen."

EVO'S `NATIONALIZATION' NO THREAT TO IMPERIALISTS

The day before his inauguration, Morales was invested as leader in an ancient indigenous ritual. That night, in an hour-long meeting in his home with Thomas Shannon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs, and U.S. Ambassador Greenlee, Morales pledged cooperation with Washington.

And to assure Brazilian bosses and the European imperialists, during the inauguration one of his ministers, Carlos Villegas, announced that "although Mr. Morales had threatened during the presidential campaign to nationalize the hydrocarbons sector, the new government would respect the property rights of foreign investors." (London Financial Times, 1/22/06).

He also said, that the oil companies "Repsol [Spain/Argentina] and Total [France] were willing to renegotiate their contracts to give a greater share of their profits to Bolivia. Petrobras [Brazil] has said it is prepared to accept lower profits."(Financial Times, 1/22/06).

He hopes to satisfy and calm his followers with these renegotiations and his "symbolic nationalization," which, he said, would "...consist of giving the ownership of the hydrocarbons first to the state when these are in the ground and then to the oil companies when the hydrocarbons have been extracted...."

IF MORALES IS NO THREAT, WHY HAVE U.S. RULERS DEMONIZED HIM?

U.S. imperialists fear mainly two things about Morales. First, that unfulfilled expectations, fostered by his irresponsible campaign promises to angry workers, might detonate a civil war in Bolivia, further destabilizing an already unstable strategic region. Second, that he will join the Brazil-led MERCOSUR bloc and eventually move Bolivia completely into the European imperialists' camp.

As it is, European imperialists and Brazilian capitalists are the biggest investors in Bolivia. They've invested some $3.5 billion in Bolivia's oil and gas industries and have gobbled up Bolivia's gas reserves. Spanish-Argentinean REPSOL and Brazilian Petrobras each own about 25 % of the gas reserves; French Total-Elf and British Gas another 14% each. U.S. Vintage Petroleum owns only 2.1%. With the 20% left to the state, Morales plans to reestablish the state energy company, in which the Chinese imperialists are expected to invest $1.5 billion. Petrobras also owns two refineries and a quarter of Bolivia's gas stations.

INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRY FUELS BRAZIL-U.S. DISPUTE OVER HEMISPHERIC CONTROL

As the European Union (EU) and Chinese imperialists increase their investments in South America, their need to bring the area under their direct control increases also. And as the struggle between the encroached imperialists (the U.S.) and the newcomers intensifies, so do instability, exploitation and military build-up to war.

The massive social unrest in Latin America has its roots in the chronic mass poverty, racism and unemployment ruthlessly imposed by the super-racist exploitation by all imperialists and local capitalists alike. Now some of these vultures are using it to attack U.S. imperialism in the region.

The worldwide hatred of U.S. imperialism is more than justified. But if this anger is not channeled into revolutionary action led by a communist party, these movements will always be nothing but pawns in the inter-imperialist dogfight.

Since the Soviet Union's collapse, former U.S. allies, especially the EU, have been moving more aggressively into the U.S. backyard. The EU has become Latin America's (all countries from Mexico south) second largest investor with a total stock of $192 billion, compared to the U.S.'s $284 billion. But the EU is by far the main investor in South America (all countries south of Panama) with a stock of $96 billion, exceeding the U.S.'s $67 billion. Besides the EU placing about 87% of its South American investments in MERCOSUR, it is MERCOSUR's and Chile's main trading partners. The EU is also Latin America's second most important trading partner, a trade that's more than doubled between 1990 and 2004.

This, and the emergence of China as a powerful trading partner and investor, coupled with the rising cost of oil, have made possible the survival of Cuba's Fidel Castro and the rise of demagogic politicians like Chavez, Brazil's Lula, Argentina's Kushner and now Evo Morales. Last year direct and indirect trade with China gave the Brazilian rulers a $54 billion surplus and enabled them to repay their entire debt to the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF). With help from Chavez's oil revenues, Argentina also paid off the IMF. Now, Chavez wants to create a South American energy bloc to sell energy to the highest bidder, especially to China. Therefore, Bolivia -- with its gas reserves -- is strategic to Brazil, Chavez's plan and to the U.S.

The ruling classes behind these politicians want to break the chains that bind them to the U.S. bosses. They're looking for more lucrative relations with other imperialists, who also need to control these markets, raw materials and cheap labor. Both butchers finance and foster these populist-nationalist movements that in no way threaten capitalism and only attack U.S. imperialism.

With possible similar scenarios in Peru and Ecuador -- and Chile being dependent on its neighbors for energy -- the balance of forces is inclining toward Brazil, MERCOSUR, the EU and Chinese bosses. Instead of freedom from oppression, those movements will lead to more racist exploitation and death on the imperialists' battlefields. Only the growth of the international PLP can insure that the struggle of our class brothers and sisters won't foist another capitalist butcher on them but will liberate them with communist revolution. This alternative can motivate the Bolivian workers and all workers to travel the decisive road to power.

Not Fooled by Chavez's Fake Revolution, Youth Joins PLP

(A friend wrote me the following letter. For many years I had been mailing CHALLENGE to his mother, which led to an intense conversation between him and me about politics, the state of the world and communism. Shortly after he wrote this letter, he joined PLP and has enthusiastically pledged to build it on his campus. Everything we do counts! -- A Comrade)

The talk we had stayed in the back of my mind for a very long time. I considered your arguments and reasoning constantly. It left a deep impression on me, more perhaps than you may have realized.

After my university classes in Sao Paulo (Brazil), I've been checking the PLP website every day at an Internet café. I've followed CHALLENGE-DESAFIO postings, and been working to understand the Party's theoretical pieces, especially on sexism and racism. I've also started a thorough self-study of dialectics with the pamphlets posted, and the PDF of "What Is Philosophy?"

I've only just begun to realize that the foundation of my knowledge of history (let alone Marxism!) is based on the same prejudices and preconceptions, learned in school and published virtually everywhere in the media and "left" and liberal publications. They taught me to fear communism and to judge the communists no differently than the Nazis. To a degree, I bought the myth that the "noble path" is to moderate my views and try to "change the system from within."

I wanted to write you for sometime, but now feel I must. Every day that passes compels me to take action, even if I'm studying abroad right now.

I spent a month in Venezuela, viewing the "Bolivarian Revolution" and staying in the horrifyingly large barrios that encircle Caracas and other spots in the interior. I now realize that the so-called "revolution" contains few, if any, of the essential qualities that can genuinely free Venezuela and the world, both practically and ideologically (especially ideologically!). Private property has not even been touched; most of Venezuela's 9.8% economic growth in the third quarter was carried by the private sector's massive explosion. Chávez just signed a new joint-exploration contract with Chevron, which I learned (from CHALLENGE) is being sued in Ecuador for dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste.

I'm concerned about how fast Chávez is capturing the imagination of the "left" while the fundamental contradictions in Venezuelan society have not been addressed. The "Bolivarian" movement is far too fractured and incoherent to present any kind of program at all, radical or reformist.

Nonetheless, while I attended the Youth Festival in Caracas, an organizer privately told us she thinks we're probably being monitored by the U.S. government through our e-mails. I was listening to her with another friend of mine, a labor organizer from New Jersey, who later told me his friends in the States had been arrested with suspension of habeas corpus, and their computers confiscated.

My friend had infiltrated a Minutemen meeting in New Jersey. Suddenly a PLP contingent stood up and disrupted the entire thing, really shaking up the place. While he isn't in PLP, another friend with him was held and questioned by police in New Jersey while we were in Venezuela.

When I return to the U.S., I want to continue the conversation we started this summer and talk about PLP. I'm really excited!

New Youth Party Member

LETTERS

STRIKE SPARKED WORKING CLASS

As part of building towards a communist revolution, our Party club made a collective effort to provide as much support as possible to New York's striking transit workers. The club members teach in separate schools so we were forced to take individual initiative in mobilizing strike support.

One member took students and teachers to the picket line near their school each day. Joining the smaller picket line enabled her to make strong connections with five workers. The strikers were happy to receive the donations she'd collected for them; to greet the students she brought with her; and to hear her communist ideas. One worker drove her students home.

Another member, relying on his close friends at his school, organized the writing of a letter. He and two other teachers helped do this. This collective struggle helped bring one friend closer to the Party and turned another acquaintance into a CHALLENGE reader. The collective work of team teaching during the strike sparked creativity within the teaching staff. One of the member's close friends used CHALLENGE articles in the classroom as part of a lesson on great strikes.

Another club member raised over $300 for the strikers. This far outdid the teachers union's request of a $1-per-teacher donation to the union. He also brought students to the picket lines. When they arrived there, the strikers were milling around. The appearance of the Party member and his students sparked the workers' enthusiasm to start a loud picket line. They offered their megaphone to the group, enabling the Party member to give a political speech that fired up the workers. This kind of leadership has made teacher discussions of workers' struggles commonplace at the school, advancing class consciousness.

Although another member was new to his school, he raised many issues with his colleagues. His leadership enabled the strikers to use the bathroom at another comrade's school. Serving the workers in this way created the basis for many good political conversations with the workers.

This strike opened many possibilities for Party work, and taught us some lessons on how to organize and take individual initiative as we seek a revolution that can destroy a system based more and more on fascism and endless wars.

Red Teacher

Transit Workers Reject Pro-Boss Leaders

While the rest of the labor movement is bowing to the bosses' demands for give-backs of pensions, health care and wages to pay for the estimated $1 trillion cost of the Mid-East oil war, 11,234 NYC transit workers voted to reject another give-back, sellout contract. Although the vote reflected only a slight majority, workers were facing a racist, anti-labor media that characterized them as "thugs" and "9/11 terrorists." Also, the union's executive board voted 37-4 for the sellout while imposing heavy fines on their own members for speaking against it. Transport Workers Union (TWU) members stood tall and defied the Taylor Law and the phony deal negotiated by the union leaders with the MTA bosses. The court has fined the workers $35 million collectively.

During the 1966 transit strike, I remember President Lyndon Johnson demanding similar give-backs and wage cuts "in the national interest" during another imperialist war, the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. TWU president Mike Quill said, in effect, to hell with your war and your no-strike Condon-Wadlin Law -- you're not taking transit workers to the poorhouse. We shut NYC down for 11 days and won not only needed wage increases and a pension but also amnesty from the no-strike penalties.

CHALLENGE was well-received and appreciated by almost all the workers I met during the strike and its aftermath -- on the picket lines, at rallies, meetings and throughout the transit system. Your paper's analysis of the contract's economics and the political framework that shaped its provisions was a much-needed perspective for transit workers. Your Party should not underestimate its influence in this struggle or let up on trying to build a base among these workers, who, despite the tremendous obstacles mentioned above, showed great courage and a fraction of the power and political understanding they possess.

They have an opportunity to use these qualities to build a new, strong leadership that can take on the fight against the supposedly all-powerful bosses and show them who really runs this city.

Retired transit worker

Workers Post Challenge on Token Booth

On my way to see a play with members of my mass organization, I passed a subway token booth. Taped against the booth's inside glass was a bright orange flyer reading, "Why Toussaint Screwed Us Again." It was an anti-sellout leaflet commenting on the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 President, Roger Toussaint, and his recent misleadership during the strike.

I had brought a CHALLENGE just in case my new friends got around to talking politics. I decided to give the paper to the token booth clerk, pointing to a page-three article with ideas similar to the leaflet. Pessimistically, I didn't think much of it and wondered whether I made the right decision to give my only copy of the paper to a stranger I probably wouldn't see again.

The next day, my girlfriend was walking past the same booth and stopped in her tracks. The orange leaflet was gone. In its place was the front page of CHALLENGE folded out. The paper took up so much space it was hard to see the clerk. My girlfriend called me on my cell phone and said, "We need more of what you gave to the worker."

I couldn't believe it. At best I thought the clerk would read the article I showed him. I never thought the CHALLENGE front page would be hanging up three shifts later at the main token booth of a train yard. Dozens of TWU workers pass there every day.

CHALLENGE hadn't been up when I returned home from the play the night before. I asked my girlfriend what the toll booth clerk looked like and it wasn't the guy to whom I'd given the paper. That means the original worker from the night before had shown it to other workers and a few of them decided to display it in the booth.

This small show of agreement with what Progressive Labor Party had to say about the strike doesn't mean we've made the needed ties with these workers. But if we follow up this kind of agitation with years of on-the-job struggle and develop deep social and political relationships, hopefully CHALLENGE will be the workers' flag in the next battle between the bosses and labor. I never saw that token booth clerk again but for now, I carry two papers with me -- just in case.

Red Straphanger

Widespread Support for Strike

Just after the NYC transit strike ended, two friends who had supported it sat and discussed the reactions of people we had spoken to about it -- friends, neighbors and passers-by. We were particularly struck by one fact: the very people who the mayor said would be hurt the worst and therefore wouldn't back a strike were the people who were the strongest supporters of the workers' action. Bloomberg's smear campaign against the transit workers didn't seem to work with the least advantaged workers. They understood that if the union had not struck, it would have no leverage to win a fair contract. The strike was their only weapon.

After walking from Queens into upper Manhattan each of the three strike days, a young woman from Eastern Europe, a single mother who works as a cleaning lady, said, "They shouldn't have gone back, they didn't win anything yet."

A retired union worker who walked back and forth to his volunteer job three miles from home noted that his union acceded to pension benefit cuts years ago and said that workers starting at his job now will retire on a pension one-fourth of his. They'll become the pensioned poor.

Several busboys walking from middle Brooklyn into Midtown Manhattan remarked that they don't have a union and that this strike helped them see why it would be a real important thing for them and their families.

The two friends who started this discussion know that unions were the best thing the working class ever won but we weren't able to hold on to that victory. The leadership was co-opted, the unions were busted and now less than 15% of the working class has one. We know we need to win that fight again, once and for all.

A retired NYC teacher

Reform Activists Open to Revolutionary Ideas

My friend and I were chatting with a new acquaintance at a mutual friend's party. She works in a coalition dealing with state-wide issues like health coverage and the minimum wage. She hoped that extending Medicaid to more under-insured workers would be a step toward state-wide universal health insurance. I explained why an important section of the ruling class needs to force insurance companies to give up their outrageous profits as middlemen in the health industry. She was especially interested when I said that the imperialists need to create the appearance of caring about low-income workers, while really rationing care, so they (or their children) can be won to fight the bosses' wars.

The discussion turned to the limits of what reforms can be won in the present war economy. She said sometimes people don't get involved because they think it's hopeless. I replied that I thought that it would take a revolution, not reforms, to get what workers need; therefore it's important to fight around these local issues in a way that would build a revolutionary movement. She agreed a revolution would probably happen eventually, and that it's important to do what we can now to ensure it will be led by "progressives," not religious fascists.

Our mutual friend reads CHALLENGE, so I'm asking him to show it to this woman. Maybe I've been too influenced lately by fear-mongering and repressive legislation, or maybe things are starting to change, because I'm just now realizing how many people really are open to PLP's ideas.

A Comrade

School Rules, Food Sickens Students

A student passed out in my classroom today. She had eaten only an ice-cream cone for lunch, and said she felt dizzy. She fell to the floor directly on her head and knocked herself unconscious. I asked the nurse to call an ambulance, but she said she didn't have the authority due to the new Chancellor's regulations. Only a principal can call an ambulance, and our principal delegated that authority to the head of the deans. The head dean is reluctant to call one unless a student stops breathing!

The student hadn't eaten in the cafeteria because she didn't want that food. Another student in my classroom became sick to her stomach from eating the cafeteria food. My school should read the book "Fast Food Nation." They're doing nothing about the quality of the food here.

The school administration has the audacity to tell students they need to eat better and provide valid reasons why they need to do so, but do nothing to provide for their needs to do just that. The vending machines, full of junk food, compete directly with the cafeteria's snack food section for the students' dollars.

How widespread is this regulation on ambulance calling? The school system is responsible for ambulance or health charges a student incurs at a hospital, but the capitalist system is sacrificing the health of our children and their nutritional needs to fund and fuel the U.S. imperialist war machine, and spending the blood of our children to fight it.

I look forward to working with the student PL'ers in this school to help organize a fight-back.

Red Teacher

What Are Workers' Real Values?

Workers are busy every day just trying to survive under this "living hell," capitalism, but we need to clearly focus on which values really motivate them.

Is it reform struggles around wages and benefits? Sure, we'd all like a few more dollars to live on, a better health plan and pension, but what motivates our co-workers deep down? Shall we appeal to reforms with narrow self-interest? Or to the values of a deeper humanity?

Several years ago, PLP members and their friends at MUNI -- the San Francisco Municipal Railway's transit system -- confronted and defeated the bosses' plan to institute a more fascist contract, highlighted by a two-tier wage system.

For several months, PLP members consistently distributed CHALLENGE, leaflets and got to know a number of bus drivers, resulting in some revealing discussions.

One day we asked several drivers, "What do you think of George and Martha's (the MUNI PLP'ers') leadership? One driver replied, "You can trust them to level with you." Another said, "You can't trust the others, the so-called union leadership." They'll make promises and sell us out to the management, under the table." A third worker said, "You can go to George and Martha. They're honest; they'll put all the cards on the table."

And so we got a glimpse of what our co-workers value most -- integrity, honesty and truthfulness.

Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.

West Coast Comrade

Garment Workers Expose Bosses' Shameless Greed

"It's Christmas, and time for charity," said the supervisor in a garment factory where 90 of us work. The idea was for every worker to bring from $10 to $15 in products as gifts to a nearby homeless shelter. All the workers, mostly women who are paid the minimum wage, responded enthusiastically. "Even though we don't have much, at least we have work," said one worker. "We can give something to those who have nothing," "It doesn't hurt us to give them something, because we know what it is not to have anything," said another.

The bosses gave us some bags with the company's logo on them for the gifts we bought. The day before Christmas, the 90 workers, the supervisors and the bosses walked two blocks to the shelter. The bosses and supervisors took photos and videos showing the bags, the company logo and the people receiving the gifts.

Some workers became very angry. They explained to the homeless people receiving the gifts that they came from the workers, not the bosses; that the bosses were trying to look good at the expense and sweat of others.

Returning to the factory, there were many discussions about the bosses' shameless greed. They fill their pockets with hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, and all of it comes from the profits they make off our labor. The bosses don't have a tiny speck of "charity" when it comes to the workers. Since Christmas, several workers have been fired for coming late to work. The bosses' oppression and thirst for profits oozes out of every pore.

The bosses lie and say that workers only think of ourselves and our paychecks -- individualism. The opposite is true. Workers are motivated by a desire to improve living conditions not just of ourselves but of the whole working class. The bosses cynically try to use this for their own benefit.

These experiences help us understand the need to unite and learn to fight for a system where the workers don't have to depend on charity or exploitation, but produce to meet the needs of all workers worldwide.

A Garment Worker

No `American Dream' for this Transit Worker's Family

A young black transit worker thanked us for the CHALLENGE articles on the strike. He said workers pasted them up in many workplaces, with arrows pointing to the headlines, and were happy we wrote such positive stories. He thought we raised good questions about the strike's strategy, especially that it represented a fight against racism.

After discussing the economic aspects, he emphasized that the issue of respect was paramount, that the bosses treated them with disdain, writing them up for every insignificant "infraction." He was angry about how workers were treated in general. When he takes his daughter to the emergency room for treatment for her asthma, they're treated in a racist manner, sometimes forced to wait for hours and lectured about "not knowing how to care for her." With his rent rising, he has no chance of owning a home and reaching the "American Dream."

He feels his daughter has no future. While his own father was a transit worker who does own a house, he himself won't reach that point, so there's little likelihood his own daughter will be able to go beyond their present circumstances.

In a discussion about communism and revolution, he was open to the idea that the workers were paying for the problems of capitalism, that we had to look beyond the solutions presented by the union.

CHALLENGE seller

Redeye on the news

Junk-food profits boost diabetes explosion

Type 2 diabetes is sweeping so rapidly through America we need not waste time giving children bicycles. Just roll them a wheelchair....

We have created this monster by allowing trash food marketers to prey on our children....

An American child born in 2000 has 1 in 3 chance of contracting diabetes in his lifetime. An African American has a 2 in 5 chance. At current rates, every other Latina born in 2000 will get the disease. Fast Food soda and sugar snack companies are well represented in the Fortune 500, but the costs on the other end are staggering. (Boston Globe, 1/11)

Mass wiretaps: `virtually all' on innocents

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans....

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism..." (NYT, 1/17)

Biz `gifts' to docs just keep on growing

The gifts, drugs and classes that makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices routinely give doctors undermine medical care, hurt patients and should be banned , a group of influential doctors say....

But Dr. David Blumenthal, an author of the article, said it was "not very likely" that many in medicine would listen to the group.

"I'm not very optimistic,"....

The drug industry spends tens of billions of dollars a year to woo doctors, far more than it spends on research... (NYT,1/25)

Big biz bribes judges who try their cases

...Mr. Delay's junket habit is something he has in common with the nation's judiciary....In 2000, the year of Mr. Delay's lobbyist-financed St. Andrews trip, nearly 100 federal judges engaged in distressingly similar behavior. These judges attended all-expenses-paid private seminars for judges held at resorts offering excellent golf, tennis, skiing and spa services. The trips were underwritten by monied interests out to influence judges to rule in favor of corporate interests on issues like environmental protection and liability for harmful products. (NYT, 12/20)

Slandering ex-slaves to justify Jim Crow

Eric Foner wrote "Forever Free" to combat what he calls our "sheer ignorance" of the 15 years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the withdrawal of the last federal troops from the South in 1877....

What could be worse than ignorance?

Horrible history: the distortions, misinformation and myths that passed for "the facts of Reconstruction" for nearly a century after 1877. In that history...was a "tragic era" of military occupation, corrupt state governments, heavy taxation, wasteful spending and, worst of all, "Negro rule": the enfranchising of ignorant, gullible, bestial black men. All seemed lost, until the Ku Klux Klan arose and expelled the carpetbaggers, dragged and scalawags back to the white side of the color line and put the former slaves in their place. Home rule was restored, the south redeemed.

That's not a caricature. That was Reconstruction at our finest universities...and it was Reconstruction in popular novels, histories and films, most notably D.W. Griffith's repugnant classic, "The Birth of a Nation." Woodrow Wilson, a political scientist and Princeton professor before he became president, viewed the film in the White House. It is "like writing history with lightning," he said, "and my only regret is that it is so terribly true."

It was terrible, but not true -- as African-Americans knew.... "The vast economic and political power of the South's white elite hung in the balance," he writes ....

Landowners and merchants wanted laborers to plant and pick their cotton -- on terms as close to those of slavery as they could get. (NYT, 1/29)

One way a free market ruins world health

...25 percent of all doctors in the United States are foreign medical school graduates. A large majority -- 60 percent -- come from the developing world, where doctors are scarce and countries are being destroyed by AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases....

By luring and keeping large numbers of immigrant doctors, the American medical establishment is reducing medical care where it is needed most. (12/14)

`Jarhead' Promotes Sacrifice for Imperialist War

Many label the Iraq War as this generation's Vietnam; and for many, Sam Mendes' "Jarhead" is this generation's anti-war film. The story is based on Anthony Swofford's book about his Marine service in the First Gulf War, in which he attempted to tell "the bad news about the way war is fought and why, and by whom for whom."

Like the book, the movie doesn't try to sugarcoat war. Unlike the book, however, it glorifies the "raw" side of war, depicting it as an "unfortunate, but necessary" campaign waged in "the larger interests" of the U.S. In this way, it hopes to win workers to "sacrifice" themselves for future wars waged in the ruling class's interest.

As the film starts, after the troops arrive in Iraq, and are on the way to their assigned posts, they begin discussing the politics behind the war. One Marine says the bosses and their corporations are behind the invasion. Immediately Troy, one of the Marine snipers, ends the conversation saying, "F--- politics. We're here. All the rest is bullshit."

This cynical statement sets the tone for the rest of the movie, that war is not political. The audience is supposed to forget the U.S. ruling class's profit motive behind its invasion of Iraq, and instead see imperialist warfare as something that happens "for the greater good of the nation."

In a very political way, however, the film spends much time presenting war as an auditory and visual entertainment spectacle. In one scene, the troops are watching a scene from "Apocalypse Now." In the crowded theater, they recite the lines word for word, anticipating the impending destruction of a small Vietnamese village. The scene glorifies the unity of the Marines forged in the anticipation of the racist murder of the "enemy." Death and destruction are presented as necessary complements to a shared sense of purpose and national identity.

In another scene, Sergeant Siek (played by Jamie Foxx) is sitting in the Iraqi desert, his face illuminated by burning oil wells. Foxx professes his unquestioning love for the Marines, saying, "Who else gets a chance to see shit like this?" Here, imperialism is seen as an adventure experienced only by a privileged few ("The few. The proud. The Marines.") In this way, the film acts as a recruiting video for working-class youth, reinventing imperialist invasions as "exciting," once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Throughout, the film uses sexism to portray the Marines as male warriors whose manhood is forged in the heat of battle. Women are either highly objectified or not depicted at all. Just as the liberal rulers are pushing the fascist idea of "sacrifice" for the greater good of imperialism, the film uses sexism to depict warfare as a right of passage where "boys become men" through shared sacrifice for "their" country. It's this message of patriotic "sacrifice" that will propel the next wave of U.S. imperialist invasions.

As the U.S. progresses toward fascism in the face of its declining economic and political power, and while its quagmire in Iraq drags on, the corporate media -- in order to build support for U.S. imperialism -- will no doubt continue to churn out films that encourage workers to "sacrifice" themselves. Only a PLP-led mass communist movement that takes control of politics, economics and culture can destroy the capitalist drive toward endless war and fascism.

Alito Hearing Cover for Intensifying Presidential Power

Workers have given a big yawn to the wall-to-wall media coverage of Bush's recent picks for the Supreme Court -- John Roberts (now Chief Justice), Harriet Meirs (withdrawn), and Samuel Alito. Whoever gets appointed will serve the bosses and use the courts to protect the rich.

But for the bosses, the fight is over how they will wield power against their billionaire rivals and the working class. Hidden beneath the squabbles over abortion and religion lie the real question; how much power does the President have?

Originally most power was in the hands of the states rather than the federal government. In Washington most power was in the hands of Congress rather than the President. But with the development of imperialism and rivalries on a world scale between major capitalist powers, the ruling class needed to be able to discipline itself and mobilize for war. From the 1950's to the '70's, the Supreme Court was used as a battering ram to centralize power and force through policies that the rulers wanted in order to discipline sections of the ruling class and blunt worker rebellions, like outlawing segregation or legalizing abortion.

But now the Bush team wants to use the court to uphold the theory of a "unitary executive." In Alito's words this means, "The President has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing." Alito, Meiers and Roberts all believe the courts should only limit the President's power in the most extreme cases. They're not really hard-liners on abortion or religion. It's their views on presidential power that all three have been pushing the envelope.

John Yoo, who teaches at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote the Justice Department memos justifying torture, secret prisons, imprisonment for life without any charges or court review. In his latest book, "The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11," Yoo says when the U.S. is at war, the President has the authority to imprison, interrogate and torture those believed to be associated with the enemy. During wartime, the President can regulate speech, search homes and spy on the population. He also says the President can start a war anytime he wants. All Congress does when declaring war is "recognize the state of affairs -- clarifying the legal status...rather than authorizing the creation of that state of affairs." Yoo cites the powers of European kings to declare war and says that the U.S. is at war whenever the President says so. Bush is free to declare war on "terrorists" and claim all the powers of a wartime president. Yoo also claims that no treaty or international law can limit the President's power.

Two weeks after 9/11, Yoo wrote, while at the Justice Department, "The centralization of authority in the President alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch."

This plan to centralize power is at the heart of many disputes within the ruling class. Consider the National Security Agency's wiretapping scandal. Who cares whether the NSA or the FBI does the wiretapping and what difference does it make if they have to fill out a form which is almost always rubber-stamped by a secret court? The point of exposing the NSA is to weaken Bush politically and block his plans to concentrate power. That's also what's behind all the corruption scandals (who would have thought that Congressmen take bribes?). This is a counter-attack by those who fear that the Supreme Court is going to let Bush do whatever he wants. While they were appellate judges, both Roberts and Alito upheld policies that Yoo rationalized. That is why Bush nominated them and what policies and actions they are likely to support on the Supreme Court.

Under Communism: War And Communism in Poland, 1944

Anna Louise Strong, a U.S. communist writer, entered Nazi-occupied Poland in 1944 with the Soviet Red Army during World War II. Her book, "I Saw the New Poland" (1946) shows how the National Committee of Liberation used many communist concepts to organize the population. She also noted the shortcomings of its nationalist politics, which helped promote the return to capitalism when the war ended -- this time with enterprises primarily owned by the state, but profit-oriented capitalism nevertheless.

In the liberated city of Lublin, the Marxist Polish Workers Party grew rapidly, working in the Committee to build a new society on the ashes of the old. Strong says, "What enabled the Committee to expand...was not money, or foreign recognition, but control of certain housing facilities...and certain stores of food....It induced the peasants to turn in food quotas for feeding the cities."

With food, shelter and an army at their back, "peasants and workers could come to congresses and schools" where mass organizations were built and political struggle encouraged. "Brilliant engineers and famous scientists could offer their services and the Committee could keep expanding to take them in. Always provided -- it was a big proviso -- they were patriots [sic] willing to work for their shelter and three meals in a government dining room."

The Committee organized on the communist principle "from each according to ability, to each according to need." Unfortunately (with hindsight), the Committee also organized on the capitalist principle of nationalism. Nationalism unites workers with capitalists within a particular country, and disarms workers in the class struggle against their exploiters/oppressors.

In Warsaw, while fighting continued, Army political workers held mass meetings, attended by thousands. One explained:

"You dodge across streets and you hunt up active citizens and the ones that are willing to work. You get them to clearing streets and pulling folks from under fallen houses and cleaning wells. You start with half a dozen members and then you get a chairman and a vice-chairman. Then more people join and you begin to divide into sections."

They distributed food, criticized and evaluated the work and started thousands of house and block committees. "You don't think you are getting anywhere, but when you sum it up like this, you see how much it is," one reflected.

Despite inspiring stories about fighting Nazis, escapes from concentration camps and the volunteer work of rebuilding, Strong, like many she interviewed, embraced both communism and nationalism. She did not see, as we can from her book and from hindsight, how nationalism and a united front with the capitalist bosses would destroy the seedlings of communism in Poland.

The Red-led National Committee of Liberation planned - with the Soviet Union's blessing -- to unite with the Polish capitalist government-in-exile in London. Though these capitalists opposed the Soviet Union before the war, and their army attacked anti-fascist partisans, the Committee thought it had to compromise with these enemies. They disastrously handed over the hard-won gains to a Provisional Government of National Unity.

Strong doesn't say what happened to the grass-roots organizations. She mentions that Poland's industrial base (the coal mines, steel mills and shipyards) would be government-run. Though called "socialist" on that basis, the capitalist-led National Unity government guaranteed that workers were never in control. Poland therefore was never in any sense communist. It was state-capitalist from the start and run primarily by the capitalists.

PLP has different goals. Imperialism's endless wars and inability to manage or prevent catastrophes create the need and the opportunity. In war-torn and devastated cities -- from Baghdad to New Orleans -- we'll organize people around communism, not nationalism or socialism. Workers, armed and organized, will take control of housing, food and the entire means of production. There will be no coalitions with our class enemies or building of socialism: we will fight for workers' power. "From each according to commitment, to each according to need" will not be a temporary emergency measure, but the basis of a fierce struggle for an enduring communist society.

 

Rulers Plotting: 5 Million Troop Invasion To Control Mid-East Oil?

• Oil is Behind it All

Angry Delphi Workers Show Up Auto Billionaires

Profits First, Safety Last Rules the Coal Fields

• Record Of The Sago Mine

a href="#Transit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget">"ransit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget

a href="#Auto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford">"uto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford

a href="#Hektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks">"ektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks

a href="#Could Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?">"ould Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?

• a href="#‘Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!">‘Gre"test Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!

a href="#Bankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War">"ankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War

• Pensions And The Trillion-Dollar War

a href="#Ideas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle">"deas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle

a href="#300 Anti-Racists Protest Fascist ‘Minutemen’">30" Anti-Racists Protest Fascist ‘Minutemen’

D.C. Winter Project Advances Communist Goals

Red Professors Fight for Communist Politics at Modern Languages Association Convention

El Salvador: Youth Take Lead At School for Red Politics

LETTERS

Katrina: Face of U.S. Fascism

Capitalism Holds New Orleans by the Throat

Profiteering From Hurricane Victims

Murders of Miners Have Long History

Transit Workers in U.S. and Iran: Same Enemy, Same Fight

Evolution: A Materialist Breakthrough

Airport Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Racism

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

• Dems just want to polish up Fed snooping
• Behind 'ethnic' wars is oil or mineral $$
• Spy bio shows US plots vs. worlds rebels
• China kills ‘wonders’ of barefoot-doctor days
• Texas Rev. says US has slid into fascism
• ‘Syriana’ Is Sugar-coated Poison

UNDER COMMUNISM: Collectivity Among Soviet Women and Men Combat Pilots in World War II (Part 3)

In Memoriam: Mary Finney

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Rulers Plotting: 5 Million Troop Invasion To Control Mid-East Oil?

By resuming their nuclear program while vowing to "wipe Israel off the map," Iran’s capitalist ayatollahs have provoked a diplomatic crisis threatening expanded U.S.imperialism -led warfare in the Mid-East. U.S. rulers desperately want the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Iranian bosses but are unlikely to get the rulers of China to agree.

China’s bosses view Iran as a major energy source and thus a strategic ally. Iran holds one-tenth of the world’s oil and is the second largest natural gas producer. In late 2004, Beijing and Teheran signed a $100-billion oil and gas deal. Iran’s nuke move also suits energy-hungry China’s need to weaken U.S. influence in the Middle East.

Washington promises to pursue every diplomatic avenue before resorting to armed force against Iran. But it insists that force may ultimately become necessary. Senator John McCain warned, "The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off of the table," because "there’s only one thing worse than the U.S. exercising the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran." (CBS, 1/15/06)

McCain’s "option" involves U.S. or Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear plants. But even before such action, the impasse could spark intensified fighting in Iraq.

Iran’s Capitalist Mullahs ‘Principle Winner’ in Saddam Demise

In a Jan. 12 speech, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, said Iran’s Shiite theocracy had exploited the chaos and political vacuum in neighboring Iraq and had become the "principal winner" after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. "For most purposes, Iranians own the south," he said, referring to the oil-rich region where Shiites form an overwhelming majority. A harsh U.S. response to Teheran — sanctions or bombing raids — could cause pro-Iranian Shiites in Iraq to rebel against the U.S. presence there.

Should such a scenario cause Iraq to fall into anti-U.S. hands, the dominant wing of U.S. capitalists envisions a massive re-invasion of the entire Persian Gulf region. On Oct. 19, Col. Wilkerson spoke to an applauding audience at the liberal, Rockefeller- and Soros-funded New America Foundation think-tank. He said, "If we leave [Iraq] in a way that doesn’t leave something there we can trust, we will [have to] mobilize the nation, put five million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade."

Wilkerson noted that before Gulf War II, Powell had spoken of an all-out invasion targeting Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq that would have taken years to prepare. " We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly." But Bush & Co. pulled the trigger in April 2003, aiming the gun solely at Baghdad.

Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor and frequent speaker at the Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations, thinks the Iran standoff could prove to be "the origin of the next world war," eventually pitting the U.S. directly against China. He wrote an article in London’s Sunday Telegraph (1/15/06) from the viewpoint of a future historian. It began, "By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict — far bigger in its scale and scope than the wars of 1991 or 2003 — were in place."

Ferguson pretends to look back on an exchange of nuclear missiles between Iran and Israel in 2007. After that came "the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shiite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran." The only way to avoid such a disaster, says Harvard’s Ferguson, is a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran.

Oil is Behind it All

U.S. ruler’s current predicament with Iran and the scarcity of available responses underscore a shift in military policy born of political weakness. From 1953 to 1979, the U.S. relied on its "twin pillars," Iran and Israel, to police its Mid-East oil empire. But ever since the U.S. has had to use its own troops.

The U.S. had installed the Shah of Iran in a CIA-backed coup and armed his regime to the teeth. But when the ayatollahs grabbed state power (and oil) for themselves, Jimmy Carter uttered his famous doctrine: Persian Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States; the U.S. would counter any nation’s attempt to seize it with direct military action. Carter began, and Reagan continued, a huge U.S. naval build-up in the Gulf. Bush, Sr. sent 700,000 U.S. troops into Kuwait and Iraq. Clinton ordered the Air Force to bomb Iraq. Bush, Jr. invaded Iraq again. Now, with the old pillars threatening to annihilate each other, U.S. rulers are compelled to contemplate the mobilization of 5,000,000 soldiers.

The scenarios above may or may not come to pass. Nevertheless, the various nations’ rulers’ ruthless competition for oil’s "geopolitical leverage" make them plausible. We can’t predict specific events. But we can and must constantly point out that when imperialists prattle about diplomacy in public, behind the scenes they’re planning for war. Putting into practice the red politics in CHALLENGE is the answer to imperialist war.

Angry Delphi Workers Show Up Auto Billionaires

DETROIT, MI, Jan. 8 — Today about 500 workers from Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Toledo, Kokomo and other cities, joined by 20 workers from Windsor, Ontario, demonstrated at the opening of the Detroit International Auto Show. Most were Delphi workers protesting the largest parts supplier’s attempts to cut wages and jobs by two-thirds. The rally also targeted plant closings and health care concessions at GM and Ford, and among Detroit City workers, who also participated.

In one sense, the rally had much in common with the victims of the recent West Virginia mine cave-in. These auto workers are caught in the economic cave-in of a rapidly changing world, poking around in the dark, desperately looking for a way out. The main reason they’re in the dark is because they share much of the political outlook of the UAW leadership. The latter did not even show up or organize anyone to attend, even though UAW headquarters at Solidarity House is just blocks away.

For one thing, there were more American flags than black workers, not a good sign. One young worker carried a sign that said, "Keep the Profits Here at Home." Another held a sign that read, "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet," but Chevrolet was written in red Chinese characters.

These workers and others have bought the "big lie" that all the auto manufacturing jobs are leaving the U.S., mainly to China. This is the UAW’s argument, and on the surface it could appear that way. After all, GM just passed Volkswagen as the largest automaker in China and just tripled its investment in India. Meanwhile, its closing 12 plants, eliminating 30,000 jobs and ripping concessions out of the hides of active and retired workers here, while Toyota, Mercedes and Hyundai are growing.

But looks can be deceiving. Last year the U.S. market sold 16.9 million cars and trucks produced by 1.1 million autoworkers, which means there are about as many U.S. autoworkers as there were 30 years ago, producing about the same number of cars. But they aren’t mainly Ford and GM workers anymore. GM and Ford and are losing market share and the UAW its membership. GM’s share is the lowest since the 1920’s, and the UAW has failed to organize one transplant from Asia or Europe. The parts suppliers are now more than 50% non-union.

As for the GM and Ford jobs in Asia, they didn’t exist before, because there was no market there. All the patriotic "Buy American — Save American Jobs" talk has left the UAW leadership and those that swallow its line, defenseless in a world where cars are produced everywhere, by many players, and the potential markets of China and India draw factories like giant magnets.

This struggle in auto reflects the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry shaping events in the world. Nationalism, which has never advanced the revolutionary communist movement, is more destructive today than ever. This situation cries out for a mass PLP, from Detroit to Cuautitlan to Beijing, based among industrial workers, and on the principle, "Workers of the World, Unite!" That’s the light that will lead workers out of the darkness and to power. Slowly but surely, with patience and a sense of urgency, that process is underway.

Profits First, Safety Last Rules the Coal Fields

The death of twelve miners in the Sago Mine was no "accident." It was the predictable result of billionaire capitalist Wilbur Ross’s cut-it-to-the-bone-and-milk-it-for-all-its-worth management.

The latter is symptomatic of how the U.S. ruling class must attack workers in a period when its need to control oil supplies drives it into imperialist wars in the Middle East, killing tens of thousands of Iraqi workers and U.S. GI’s while sending miners here to an early grave.

Under capitalism’s profit system, even well-run mines are frightening places. The average Appalachian mine seam is less than five feet high. Some barely reach 20 inches!

Generally, coal mines have aged safety equipment and profit from lax enforcement of feeble federal and state "safety" rules. "Almost every…piece of safety equipment is nearly identical to those used more than 20 years ago." (NY Times, 1/10/06). Had the Sago miners had hand-held radios, they could have been directed safely out of the mine, instead of turning away from the exit because they believed their escape path was blocked — which it was not. Some miners say they must accept unsafe working conditions or become jobless.

Miners die instantly from roof falls, electrocutions and explosions, as well as from black lung disease, which still slowly kills 1,000 miners annually. The technology to prevent it has been available for 100 years, but Bruce Watzman, VP of the bosses’ National Mining Association arrogantly remarked: "We’re not in the self-rescuer manufacturing business." (NY Times, 1/10/06) 

Record Of The Sago Mine

Horizon Natural Resources (HNR) had owned several mines, including Sago. With HNR in bankruptcy, in September 2004 a federal bankruptcy judge allowed it to terminate its union contract with the United Mine Workers. Ross’s International Coal Group (ICG) took over the mine last November. (An ICG member had been on Horizon’s Board of Directors.)

An-eleven week safety review of the Sago Mine, ending 12/22/05, revealed 46 violations of federal health and safety rules, including failures to safeguard against roof falls and to control methane. With fines set at $250 per violation, fines were cheaper than compliance; blood was part of the bottom-line equation.

Ross makes his millions by finding bankrupt industries where workers’ benefits like health coverage and pensions can be shed via bankruptcy courts. Before concentrating on coal, Ross made untold millions off the backs of steel workers. His ISG bought Bethlehem and LTV Steel and was able to lower wage scales and dump health and pension costs. He made deals with the steel workers’ union to stay open, or reopen mills, based on this cheaper labor.

Yet Bruce Raynor (of the UNITE-HERE union and the "Change to Win Coalition") says, "I really think the future of domestic manufacturing is people like Wilbur Ross." (NY Magazine)

Murderous conditions will exist in the mines and elsewhere as long as capitalist society exists. Loss of pensions, health coverage and union pay rates are sweeping the U.S. We don’t need a stinking system that forces us to choose between job safety and a job, that won’t provide decent health care or a secure retirement after lifelong work. Ultimately, only a worker-run communist society is the answer.

a name="Transit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget">">"ransit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget

NEW YORK CITY. Jan. 18 — "We did not strike to give more and get less, but that’s what happened," transit worker Richard Watson told the NY Times (1/10) after a meeting called by union president Roger Toussaint to urge workers to accept what amounts to a wage-cut contract agreed to by him and the MTA bosses. There is a lot of anger among NYC’s 33,000 rank-and-file transit workers who are voting on this agreement that ended the militant 3-day strike which shut down the world’s largest transit system.

The proposed 10.5% wage "increase" over 37 months is more than wiped out by the introduction of health care payments, fines of 6-day’s wages and an expected 3.5%-per-year rise in inflation (10.5% over three years).

The fact that the workers defied the anti-strike Taylor Law and refused to sacrifice for the bosses’ war budget turned the strike into a mass political anti-racist struggle — something missing for many years in the U.S.

This defiance of the rulers’ state power scared the bosses, particularly in this age of endless wars and a police state. Once workers start thinking — and acting — against the bosses’ government, they become more open to the communist idea of fighting beyond reforms and for workers’ power. Our Party’s ideas were welcomed by the strikers; thousands of communist leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed during the strike.

As one worker told a PL’er at a Manhattan bus depot picket line, "The bosses are the real criminals. Look what they did to the Enron, Northwest and GM workers. They cut our wages and steal our benefits and then call us ‘thugs’ for fighting back. Workers are never safe."

Precisely. No matter how hard workers fight within the limits of capitalism — for reform gains — "workers are never safe" from the bosses’ attacks to take away any gains.

This strike was even more significant occurring as it did during a murderous imperialist war which could cost over a trillion dollars, (see page 4) money which comes from the cutbacks in pensions, wages and health care.

Finally, this strike was forced by an angry, militant rank and file which is predominantly black and Latin, workers who have suffered — and fought against — racism their entire lives. Another reason the bosses are ready to heap lies of "thuggery" and "selfishness" on the strikers: the rulers fear the leadership that black and Latin workers can give to the entire working class — polls indicated 75% of the city’s black workers backed the strikers. The rulers want to split white workers from uniting behind that kind of militant leadership.

After ending the strike with a lousy projected settlement, Toussaint is pushing the rank and file to accept it. Toussaint doesn’t act this way because he fears jail or fines (although that might be a factor). He plays this accommodating, sellout role — as do all the city’s union misleaders who urged him to call off the strike — mainly because he and they defend the capitalist system that is stacked against the working class.

We must support the workers if they do reject this sellout. But most important, workers must realize that as long as the bosses hold state power and control the courts, cops and media, we won’t be free from their racist system of wage slavery. Building a mass communist leadership among workers and fighting for a new society without bosses is the only way out of this dark endless tunnel. Putting into practice the red politcs in CHALLENGE is the answer to imperialist war.

a name="Auto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford">">"uto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford

CUAUTITLAN, MEXICO — Recently current and laid-off Ford workers met with PLP members here. We remembered previous struggles we waged with whistles and yells; we opposed Ford’s attempts to get us to support their production plans that would mean more layoffs and increased workloads. One worker recalled disagreeing with us then, believing that Ford’s plans would bring more jobs.

Now he sees we were right. The company’s plans made more workers jobless, and subjected those remaining to huge workloads. He said workloads and hours are so difficult that sometimes he wants to quit, even though jobs are scarce.

These workers, and many others, know that the auto industry is in a worldwide crisis and that the only way Ford can survive is by exploiting workers to the maximum. They also understand that unemployment and exploitation are increasing as Ford, Volkswagen, GM, Nissan, Toyota and all the world’s auto companies fight for markets, resources and cheap labor, from North America to China.

"The most important thing is our people" — that’s always been Ford’s hypocritical cry, but the only thing these bosses and all capitalists really care about is maximizing profits. That’s the essence of capitalism and is evident in the countless arbitrary technical shutdowns and the layoffs of thousands of workers. In 1990 there were almost 7,000 Ford workers at the Cuautitlan plant. Today about 500 remain, working under increasingly brutal workloads with less benefits.

Recently Ford announced it was closing six plants in North America, including the bus assembly plant here, eliminating 30,000 jobs in all. This is the result of fierce international competition, especially from Asian rivals like Toyota, which is grabbing a large market share from GM and Ford in the rich North American market. GM, still the world’s largest auto company, is closing 12 plants and also eliminating 30,000 jobs.

Ford’s new management reorganization will cut another 4,000 salaried jobs. The auto bosses’ competition for market share is sharpening. To stay in the race, Ford must convince workers to support its production changes. The bosses know the only way to survive is to super-exploit the workers, here and worldwide. Supporting the bosses’ production plans won’t guarantee our jobs. Even workers who were company favorites also lost their jobs.

We can’t expect the sellouts who run the union to defend us, since they always defend Ford. In the long run, the bosses will resolve their crisis of overproduction and sharpening competition through war, using racism as their main weapon.

As long as capitalism exists, our lives will be subject to the decisions of the bosses and of their competition for maximum profits. That’s why the working class needs to organize in a mass international PLP.

We plan to spread CHALLENGE to more workers here. This way, we can show how economic crises and the bosses’ fascism expose their system, which will build revolutionary communist consciousness among workers. We must destroy this system of exploitation and build a communist society which eliminates wages, bosses, racism, sexism, nationalism and the crisis of overproduction. "Long Live Communism!"

a name="Hektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks">">"ektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks

CHICAGO, IL Jan. 11 — Today about 120 Hektoen workers took part in a one-day strike at the CORE Center, across the street from Stroger Cook County Hospital. About 30 County workers, also in contract negotiations, joined the picket lines on their lunch break.

The Hektoen strike is a continuation of what could be the start of something big. It follows on the heels of the three-day NYC transit walkout, where 34,000 black, Latin and white workers waged an illegal strike against attacks on their pensions and health care. It continues a mini-strike wave at Lockheed, Boeing, Northwest Airline mechanics and others. It follows a demonstration of almost 500 GM-Delphi workers at the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, and could set the stage for a bigger strike of County and Hektoen workers together.

More workers are in a fighting mood as a result of the deteriorating oil war in Iraq, the mass racist terror that is following Hurricane Katrina and the endless attacks on health care, pensions, wages and jobs. Hektoen workers are striking against racist budget cuts, aimed mainly at the patients they serve. They’re refusing to accept a war contract that attacks their own health care while they’re on the front lines of the fight against HIV/AIDS and TB, diseases that thrive on racism and capitalist poverty. Hektoen is funded mainly by CDC (Center for Disease Control) grants which are being diverted away from public health to Homeland Security bio-terrorism.

To reach this one-day strike, Hektoen workers overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement between SEIU Local 20 and the bosses and then voted almost unanimously to authorize a strike. The bosses imposed the rejected contract, and the union leadership has thrown obstacles in the workers’ path every step of the way.

The union gave Hektoen a 10-day strike notice, so they could rearrange their clinic appointments. The notice had a typographical error, dated January 2005 instead of 2006, so two days before the strike management told workers the strike was "unauthorized." The union leaders then informed the strike committee that, "We don’t have the laws on our side; there’s the possibility that workers might be fired."

The workers shot back, "We’re not asking for permission. The strike is on!"

The day before, the local president tried to convince us to "reschedule" the strike, but we weren’t buying it. The real leadership has emerged from the workplace, not the downtown union offices.

The strike was very spirited. Every picketer received a PLP leaflet and many got CHALLENGE. The union has no plan to get the bosses back to table. They’re hoping we’ll draw the wrong conclusions and say, "See, there’s nothing more we can do," and accept the imposed contract. We see it as the beginning of a long struggle that can escalate to a strike of County and Hektoen workers together against racist budget cuts that are financing the $6 billion-a-month war in Iraq. We want a world where our patients will not have to beg for health care and the workers that serve them will not fear getting sick because treatment is unaffordable.

In order to reach that point, we need more workers reading and distributing CHALLENGE, more attending PLP events and participating in other struggles. We have a long road ahead of us, but we’re on the right track.

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"This is from the transit company website. Take a look." A worker held out a copy of a Board of Directors’ agenda item authorizing over half a million dollars for a labor consultant to help the transit bosses negotiate three contracts expiring this summer. Everyone understood the company wasn’t spending the money to increase our wages and benefits. So much for the illusion that management would leave us alone, after provoking strikes over pensions and medical in the last two contracts.

Raising Communist Ideas

A week later many workers watched the New York City strike. One asked, "This is going to affect us, isn’t it?" Several workers wanted to meet to discuss the latest developments in southern California and on the East Coast.

At previous meetings we’ve tried to connect the sacrifices forced on workers at United Airlines, GM and Delphi to the competition U.S. companies face globally, as well as discussing the war budget. With the holidays approaching a meeting was set up right after Christmas lunch.

The bus was over half full as 20 workers discussed the gutsy transit workers who broke the anti-strike law in New York. A friend brought copies of a PLP flier supporting the strikers. We put one inside CHALLENGE for everyone on the bus.

We discussed the serious situation we’re in. "If the company is in trouble, maybe we should ask for nothing in the new contract and just try to hold on to what we’ve got," a concerned worker commented. "At least until the war is over and the economic picture improves." This man has a newborn son. Someone asked, "How old do you think your baby boy might be by the time things will have turned around for the USA?"

The Party’s aim is to make crystal clear to workers the depths to which U.S. bosses are preparing to drive us to maintain their world dominance. They must wage war wherever their profit interests are threatened — especially in the Middle East — for many years to come. The profit system makes imperialist war inevitable. We aim to help mobilize workers to fight these coming attacks with a clear view of the stakes in this fight

a name="‘Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!"></a>"Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!

And how will imperialism’s "vast military deployments" be paid for? U.S. rulers and their liberal politicians want "American taxpayers to keep paying for it…Either social security and Medicare shrink or the Pentagon shrinks." (Foreign Affairs column, New York Times, 1/4/06) Could the big bosses spell out their war plans any more clearly?

A system planning to sacrifice so many for the profit of so few should not continue to exist. Only the working class armed with communist ideas in the factories, in mass transit that carries millions to their jobs in the large cities and revolutionary soldiers in the military can take power from this murderous class of capitalist billionaires. We can organize a revolution. From the black smoke and blood of their oil wars we can build a communist world.

Workers will take communist ideas as their own by steadily increasing the number of CHALLENGE networks of readers and sellers, and using these ideas to sharpen the class and political struggle against the union misleaders. With transit workers asking for more meetings and more workers reading CHALLENGE, the way forward is becoming clearer.

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Whether it is an Enron-type crisis or a New York City transit strik, we’re now forced to look at pension systems we once thought only experts could analyze.

Two things stand out immediately. First, if wealth is power, these pension funds show the working class might very well be sitting atop a Mount Everest of potential power. But in reality it shows workers having as much power as a snowball in hell. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

In "Banking on Death," Robin Blackburn writes, "There are thousands of pension funds worth over $1billion [each], with dozens in the United States worth more than Bill Gates." Pension funds account for over half the value of the world’s stock markets — some $13 trillion! Never mind having "a voice at the table," as the AFL-CIO keeps begging for; with wealth like this we should control the table!

In reality, of course, we control next to nothing. Investment bankers and brokers (capitalists or their close friends) manage our funds and, through a battery of legalities, strip the policyholder of any influence.

In the 1980’s and early ’90’s, for example, these funds were used to finance junk bonds. A type of speculator, known as a corporate raider, would buy a profitable company. The aim wasn’t to run the company but to cash in by selling off its operations as quickly as possible. Since these speculators lacked sufficient funds to buy these companies outright, they borrowed huge sums from other (institutional) investors. Pension funds were a ready source.

Often the end result of these corporate raids would be that a big company is broken up into smaller franchises. With each sale, the junk bondsman would skim off a profit and repay part of the loan from the institutional investor. Each new owner of a smaller franchise, of course, would look for a new labor contract, leading to worker layoffs, cuts in wages and benefits, speed-up and so on. The Greyhound strike of the 1980’s grew from one of these junk-bond raids. In short, pension funds were mobilized to impoverish the working class.

This money could have been used to build subsidized housing, recreation centers, or health clinics for retired members. Nothing says they must be invested in the stock market. Nothing, that is, except the relative absence of communist ideas, which point out how workers should develop political goals in our own interests. The fact is the bosses’ legal system makes sure vast sums of money are never put at the disposal of the working class. In part, that's why the rulers worry so much over who sits on the Supreme Court.

How these funds are used has now become more acute. Today, pensions have surfaced as an issue because U.S. capitalism must pay for a costly series of imperialist wars. The main capitalist grouping can no longer afford to put these vast sums at the disposal of just any capitalist or corporate raider. Today, they must be channeled into the government’s war coffers.

Yesterday, our pension funds — controlled by capitalists — were used to finance the impoverishment of millions. Now they will be used to finance the murder of millions. Some might say that even our retirement plans make a powerful argument for communist revolution.

Pensions And The Trillion-Dollar War

The demand by the NYC transit bosses to make pensions more costly for the workers highlighted the claim nationally by governments and private employers that pension costs are skyrocketing. They want to cut back, eliminate or replace workers’ pensions with 401(k)s — which absolve employers from committing to defined future pension payouts. NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to cut or make pensions more costly for all city workers.

But who created this "crisis"?

In 1981 pension payments claimed 24% of NYC’s budget. In 2000, it had sunk to ONE percent! Huge returns from pension fund investments in a booming stock market led many local and state governments and private bosses to stop contributing to pension funds.

At the height of the boom, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani diverted more than $800 million from the pension system to finance tax cuts. But even as City Hall stopped paying, workers still were required to fork over at least 3% of their wages into the pension system.

Starting in 2003, when the City increased its pension contributions, it still amounted to only 8% of the total budget, one-third of the 1981 percentage.

So when the bosses cry "broke" on pensions, they’re hiding the fact that they didn’t pay anywhere near their share for nearly two decades. Now they expect the workers to make up the difference for this robbery, or take a huge cut in their pensions for which they worked all their lives on promises they were living the "American Dream."

Yes, nationally there’s a big pension problem, created by a system dependent on the boom-and-bust stock market for income and the bosses’ commitment to financing a trillion-dollar expense for imperialist war. Conservative columnist Paul Craig Robert questioned the competency of the White House "when a $70 billion war [in Iraq] became a $2 trillion war." These figures are based on a recent study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia U.) and Linda Bilmes (Harvard).

Where will they get these trillions? Even as they borrow hundreds of billions (incurring huge interest to bondholders for those loans), to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and balance the budget, look out private and public pensions, Social Security, Medicare and workers’ wages! Capitalism always takes its profits and war costs out of workers’ hides.

a name="Ideas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle">">"deas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle

About 40 workers in my factory, angry over the amount of "mandatory" overtime forced on us, confronted our shop manager. When 40 workers stop production for an hour, the boss realizes we’re not producing profits. Our immediate goal was met: the hours were reduced, temporarily. But the important lesson here is that profits are the bosses’ only concern. When the workers collectively stood together in solidarity, the bosses had to listen.

One worker close to me said, "This is all because of you." This was good in the sense that when the bosses attack, workers know to turn to the ideas of PL. But I pointed out there was one woman in particular who really took charge and made sure that everyone responded. She realized it takes more than one person to pull off something like this. Even one of the bosses’ snitches told me he had never seen this before.

My club’s main focus has been increasing ties and winning more CHALLENGE readers among industrial workers, with the goal of building unity around communist ideas. Since we average 60 hours per week at work, not a lot of people were easily able to find time to socialize with co-workers off the job. However, a group has begun to take shape, although development within the group is uneven.

One worker, Chris, was pretty quiet and didn’t seem to trust too many people. But after a few discussions we ate breakfast after work one morning, to hang out. Once outside the workplace it was easier to become better acquainted. We’ve now been to each other’s homes several times for dinner. He invited me to go camping with him, another co-worker, and a large family that does this annually.

While there we talked about the war, Katrina (which happened while we were camping), and about how children are raised under capitalism. This enabled me to introduce him to CHALLENGE. He didn’t snatch it right out of my hands, but he didn’t run away either.

After numerous discussions of the Party’s ideas since then, Chris gladly takes a copy every issue. Now I take him two copies because the last time I asked him about an article he said he hadn’t read it, adding, "My wife took it."

Since then, after many pot lucks on the job, picnics in the park and dinners with more workers, friendships have developed based on respect and trust. Thanks to these relationships and workers’ class anger, those 40 workers confronted the boss.

Chris and I were both facing the contradiction between the individual and the collective. My commitment to intensify my political work sharpened this contradiction, indicating that I hadn’t been making the Party primary.

Chris cynically viewed people as "lazy," which was why "they didn’t move up." He said if he was able to "move up on his own" it meant anyone could "if they weren’t so lazy." When I asked him how he reached his position, he told me how a co-worker stuck her neck out for him, talking to the head of that department, and still had to convince the boss to give him a shot.

It was easy to point out that he hadn’t gotten the position by himself. Then I asked him if he thought the shop could exist if everyone "moved up" to his position and no one was left to do the other jobs. This is one of many conversations that have led to him participating in more collective activities, such as the pot lucks and the picnics.

We both have a long way to go, but with time, practice and consistent evaluation we can build a bigger network of CHALLENGE readers/sellers/writers as a stepping stone to our bigger goal of recruiting to the Party and building for communist revolution. These practical experiences have convinced me of the need and the possibilities of increasing this CHALLENGE network.

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GLENDALE, CA., Jan. 7 — PLP members joined about 300 people to demonstrate against the racist Minutemen who were protesting a day laborers' center across the street from Home Depot here. Many laborers joined the action. The angry protestors confronted the Minutemen. They saw clearly how racist provocateur Joe Tuner would station himself amid a group of demonstrators as five or more police squad cars would pull up ready to arrest anyone who laid a hand on him. This led many (who we didn't know) to take up the chant, "The cops, the courts, the Minutemen, all are part of the bosses' plan."

This was the title of our PLP leaflet which detailed the role of the Minutemen in helping the rulers push for more "border security" as part of Homeland Security. In addition, coming immigration bills will be advanced as "helping" immigrants get on the "road to legalization" which, for many, will include joining the military. Over 100 demonstrators took CHALLENGE, including many of the day laborers. The crowd took up the class-conscious chants of "Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras "and "La clase obrera no tiene frontera." (Workers' and their Struggles Have No Borders.")

We also talked with many about the coming trial of two anti-racists facing a racist frame-up for protesting the speech of Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist at a meeting of the infamous CCIR (California Coalition for Immigration Reform, initiator of Proposition 187 and racist attacks on immigrants for decades). At that one, known racist Hal Netkin ran his car into demonstrators and wasn't charged with any crime, while anti-racists face felonies for merely protesting.

Unionists, churchgoers, students and teachers are all raising money to help defend these anti-racists. (More next issue)

D.C. Winter Project Advances Communist Goals

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This area’s youth leadership led a Winter Project during semester break to develop ourselves through intense study and by spreading communist ideas. We wanted to counter the ruling-class ideological domination of our high schools and colleges by building the Party and strengthening our knowledge. We had to confront the contradiction between reform and revolutionary work: building a mass party capable of seizing state power, destroying its incorrigible institutions and keeping it communist.

The Metro Transit Struggle

Metro workers helped lead discussions about revolutionary ideas related to the NY transit strike. Armed with CHALLENGE and a flyer tying the NY strike to D.C., four of us spoke about communism to Metro workers at bus stops. We then rode the bus driven by a comrade who gave us a tour of his route, explaining gentrification, racism and police brutality while we distributed literature to welcoming riders. Our driver comrade remarked on how he could see everyone reading CHALLENGE in his rear view mirror, and said, "It’s beautiful. I wish you all could see what I see right now." One woman was so enthused by the paper that she said we need to get this information into her church. She gave us the name of her church and its pastor, and encouraged us to distribute literature there.

The Hampton Struggle and the MLA

Hampton University students told their story of repression by academic officials (see CHALLENGE, 1/4). As a result of a reform-versus-revolution discussion, they’re considering developing a paper distribution and discussion network in their dorms. The Winter Project also supported our comrades in the Modern Languages Association by agitating outside the convention, handing out 400 PL flyers specifically targeting the MLA issues, and selling 60 CHALLENGES.

Stalin and the Soviet Union

Some interested students requested a discussion of the Stalin-era USSR. Based on several readings, PLP’s position became much clearer. PLP rejected the cult of the individual decades ago. Our job is to advance communist theory and practice to the working class, not glorify some "great man." PL is often labeled "Stalinist" because we insist that anti-communist lies and distortions about the period when Stalin led the Soviet Union are vicious attempts by the ruling class and its intellectual lapdogs to keep workers oppressed by hiding their true history. We’re proud of this position! We defend the Stalin-era government for its many achievements, while criticizing its errors. The Stalin-era USSR developed under incredible pressure from the imperialist powers, a crucial fact that is often ignored in the ruling-class accounts of the "purges." In fact, these "purges" rid the communist government of collaborators and saboteurs, and helped make possible the defeat of Hitler, in sharp contrast with the "quislings" (traitors) roaming free in Western Europe, softening those countries for the Nazi conquest.

Membership In The Progressive Labor Party

Several students from the Project are seriously considering joining PLP. We argued that building a revolutionary communist party is the only thing that will permanently destroy capitalism. PL membership means agreeing in general with the Party’s analysis of the world and of revolutionary strategy, and agreeing to engage in struggle over the development of the line to better destroy capitalism; selling CHALLENGE-DESAFIO — the Party’s primary organ of communication and network-building; engaging in mass organizations while advancing PL’s ideas; donating money to help sustain the Party; and accepting and upholding democratic centralism, the means by which the party works.

We moved a number of young people closer to the Party, and removed some obstacles that hold them back from fully understanding and committing to our ideas, and to the only party with truly revolutionary goals, for a society of, by and for the working class!

Red Professors Fight for Communist Politics at Modern Languages Association Convention

PLP members of the Modern Languages Association (MLA) brought communist ideas to the group’s annual convention by fighting for and winning militant resolutions developed by the Radical Caucus, and by providing revolutionary Marxist analyses of literature and current educational policy in many of the sessions. The MLA is the world’s largest association of academics, bringing together English, Literature and Language college teachers and graduate students from around the world. One successful resolution committed the MLA to oppose the "Academic Bill of Rights" (a transparent right-wing assault on campus leftists led by the notorious David Horowitz) and to defend professors who oppose capitalism, exploitation and imperialism in their classes.

Over 10,000 professors, teachers, and graduate students attended this year’s December convention, mostly women presenting research findings and trying to get decent-paying, full-time jobs. Few attendees were black or Latin. The capitalist cutback attacks on higher education has meant fewer working-class students in college, more badly paid, part-time teaching jobs, super-exploited graduate student labor and harsher discipline against all teachers.

These real-life conditions have led most attendees to understand that liberal Democratic Party "answers" won’t change things, but they do not yet see the possibility of a radically different society, a communist society, led by the working class, in which racism, sexism, imperialist war and poverty would be abolished by ending exploitation. This was our special contribution to the conference.

PL members and friends sold CHALLENGE both inside and outside the convention, and discussed PLP’s more profound goals with colleagues. In the open debate and struggle over resolutions, PLP’ers rejected the classless slogan of "academic freedom" advanced by liberals, noting that the slogan, like "free speech," is often used by racists and anti-communists to cover up their building of fascist movements and their attacks on workers and communists. PLP believes that racism and fascism must be crushed in all forms, including suppressing the speech and writings of racists and fascists.

PLP’ers also argued that "the right to unionize" will get workers only so far since it accepts the limits of working within — and ultimately defending — capitalism. As long as the capitalists hold state power, than they can always (and do) turn around the reforms that workers may wrench from them. Instead, PLP’ers explained how the present attacks in the U.S. are endemic to capitalism, a part of the growing racist repression for which "fascism" is the only appropriate word, and that fundamental revolutionary change is needed for liberation.

While the MLA will never be a revolutionary organization, it is one vehicle of struggle against capitalist, anti-communist and racist ideas, a kind of "school for communism." The next step is to win more of our professor friends to take revolutionary ideas onto their campuses and into their classrooms to strengthen the fight against imperialism and war.

El Salvador: Youth Take Lead At School for Red Politics

EL SALVADOR — "It’s my first experience hearing what communism offers the working class," said one of the CHALLENGE readers who was meeting in a PLP-led discussion group. "The FMLN teaches you only how to paint signs and put up electoral propaganda."

"For the first time, I feel very good sharing my ideas with you about how I think work should be carried out under a communist system," said another comrade, a textile worker. "I’ve been around religious groups, the FMLN and in all of them I’ve only seen corruption and tricks for the workers."

"This is what the working class needs," said a young comrade who reviewed his experiences in an electoral party before joining PLP.

This group of comrades, mostly youth, met in the country’s most beautiful mountains to discuss three points: (1) An international report given by a Party leader; (2) Dialectical Materialism, led by a university student; and (3) writing for CHALLENGE, led by a comrade responsible for editing letters and articles for the paper.

Farm workers and city workers, teachers and university students all expressed satisfaction at being there. It was a festive day for all the youth from many cities. They listened to music, some hearing Bella Ciao and the Internationale for the first time. They asked to reproduce the CD’s in order to share them and listen to them in their clubs. Some brought guitars and sang protest songs from Latin American groups.

Those who had traveled far to get there were very enthusiastic, never tired or bored. There were serious moments — including criticism and self criticism — but also time to see a beautiful river.

In discussing the international report, one youth related the situation in the country to the Free Trade Agreement between El Salvador and the U.S. This sparked a broader discussion about the growing fight between the US, China and the European Union and how this affects El Salvador’s working class.

The comrade who led the discussion on dialectical materialism was well-prepared. Before the meeting he said, "I’m really worried because I’m still learning this material myself." A leader told him, "Prepare, but remember that the discussion is collective and you’ll be giving the introduction."

The presentation went very well, becoming more profound in relating dialectics to theory but also its application to everyone’s daily life. This shows how these young workers, farm workers and students can use dialectics to analyze reality. When one of the youngest participants was questioned about whether she understood the importance of contradictions and deciding which was the main one, she replied "For me, the main contradiction is the internal, since if I’m not convinced of the Party’s ideas, how can I convince others."

A CHALLENGE reader noted, "Here I’m seeing the importance of involving our children in political discussion. They learn more quickly and won’t be as easily contaminated by capitalism as we were."

The last point concerned the importance of writing for CHALLENGE, that it isn’t only informative, but is a tool for oganizing the Party.

At the end, everyone took responsibility for spreading communist ideas in their mass organizations, and in organizing more groups to read and distribute CHALLENGE.

LETTERS

Katrina: Face of U.S. Fascism

Recently, my partner and I spent three days in New Orleans, viewing the devastation first hand and working in the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been uprooted in ways unimaginable. Four months after Katrina, 30,000 people are still living in temporary housing. FEMA is paying hotels $150 a night to house people, instead of seeking permanent housing solutions. On February 7, those subsidies will end and thousands will be out on the street.

While we were there, a Quality Inn hotel attempted to evict Katrina survivors. We were able to get the eviction postponed, through political and legal efforts. About 100 people, called on short notice, protested at the hotel and spoke with residents, many of whom had no place to go but the streets. The hotel wanted to kick people out; Mardi Gras season was approaching. Driving through the French Quarter, you’d never know about the devastation just a short distance away. Tourists in the Quarter partied as if the hurricane had never happened.

Meanwhile, in the lower 9th ward, where 14,000 mostly poor African-American people had lived, the whole area was uninhabitable. Block after block of rubble, stench from the accumulation of wastes, no electricity, gas, or water, and no FEMA trailers for people to use while rebuilding their homes.

One look at the levee shows why. The part of the levee alongside this neighborhood (and other poor neighborhoods) is less than two feet wide and made of non-reinforced cement. It was no match for the huge surges of water which easily broke through it. In contrast, the levee protecting the French Quarter is a steel-reinforced, half-block wide street with hotels and shopping centers atop it.

During a community meeting in the lower 9th ward, residents spoke passionately about the lack of responsiveness of all levels of government. The Army Corp of Engineers had begun bulldozing the area, making no attempt to contact owners of the houses they planned to demolish. They were stopped temporarily when about 100 people surrounded the bulldozers and threatened to make a "citizens arrest" based on a Temporary Restraining Order granted earlier.

In New Orleans, lives have been devastated by a capitalist system that cares more about profits and oil wars than people’s needs. Over 100,000 people were left in New Orleans to die, and they surely would have if the hurricane had hit directly. Still, thousands were killed by the breaking of the "sand-castle" levees by the water Katrina stirred up. Fascism is not too strong a word to describe the utter disregard the system is showing for the lives of our New Orleans brothers and sisters.

One of the most striking aspects of our visit was the hundreds of volunteers, from college students to retired people, from all over the continent. Between these volunteers and the thousands of black and white working-class New Orleanians angry at the government, there are many opportunities to organize and help out. All CHALLENGE readers should seriously consider either going to New Orleans, helping to support work in your city, or in other ways spreading the word and contributing to this important anti-racist fight.

The volunteers and New Orleans residents I met during our short stay were extremely open to PLP’s ideas about capitalism and communism. I think our Party should go to New Orleans with as many people and for as long as is feasible, given the other important work we’re doing. The face of U.S. fascism is clearest right now in New Orleans, and we need to be there to point workers and students in the direction of communist revolution as the only solution.

Midwest Reader

Capitalism Holds New Orleans by the Throat

Some may ask, "Why didn’t all of the people evacuate when told to do so?" We have been through so many hurricane threats that we didn’t know which one to take seriously. Besides that, our rulers told us that since the devastating Hurricane Betsy of 1965; our levee system was built in such a way to protect us from anything. They lied.

There were some people who could not leave New Orleans to flee to safety. I saw them taken out of their houses by helicopter a day after the storm. Some were dead.

Did we make a "choice" to stay? Yes. I did because my old 1986 Toyota would never have made it. I also based my "choice" on what our city rulers had told us over the years.

If we had mass transit out of the city, I would have left. But where were our city buses? All neatly parked in the bus yard…

The ultimate question is: Could this happen again? YES, YES, YES! If you fly over the New Orleans area you’ll see a city surrounded by water. But there’s money to be made by having a city like New Orleans. The tourist industry rakes in millions each year, especially off the backs of tens of thousands of black people who are kept poverty-stricken by this racist system. The greedy claw of capitalism holds New Orleans by the throat and won’t let go. It’ll be interesting to see if, and why, New Orleans will be rebuilt.

You’ll notice I now have a Houston address. I’m not going back to N.O. I will return when it’s safe (not now) and see if I can salvage anything out of my apartment. Stay there? No.

The greed also comes in the form of the New Orleans Energy Co. and the South Central Bell Telephone Co. They both sent me bills for services during the hurricane. I phoned them both and called them capitalist swine! They both have transferred my bill to a collection agency. I got a letter from one agency. I called and told a lady the whole truth about their bill. She seemed to understand that, at the moment, I have no means of support. But capitalism doesn’t know the word "compassion." They’re not sitting or swimming in water. Perhaps they should be!

Red Reader

P.S. — I’ve enclosed two recent pictures of the New Orleans that Mayor Ray Nagin wants us to return to. He’s come to Houston twice to ask us to return. I hit him with an egg on his bald head.

Profiteering From Hurricane Victims

The holiday season and last year’s devastating worldwide "natural disasters" have inspired the collective desire to help the working class’s suffering members to become stronger than ever. But the bosses are taking advantage of workers’ class instincts to help each other and are using volunteer service to eliminate the need for state aid. Their manipulation and exploitation is often difficult to detect. As a social service employee and PLP member, I’ve spent many hours leading many disgruntled workers in my organization to oppose such exploitative demands.

Following Hurricane Katrina, a non-profit organization — NCR — established a toll-free hotline number to place victims in new housing. NCR operates through private rental payments and funds from the Office on Housing and Urban Development to manage housing projects for low-income seniors in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Advertised on CNN, through FEMA and the Red Cross, the NCR hotline received much publicity for its "outstanding service to hurricane victims." Potential callers were informed that they would reach "trained housing specialists" to help them relocate and establish new and better lives.

But the truth about the NCR hotline is not so glamorous. To staff this housing hotline the organization mandates my fellow social service employees and me to drop our current caseloads of 50-100 low-income seniors to answer hotline calls. We weren’t trained as "housing specialists" and the company e-mail suggests we use internet resources such as Yahoo, Craigslist, and Santa-for-Seniors to meet the complicated needs of hurricane victims. In addition, the organization emphatically states that it’s "God’s mission" for the mostly part-time staff to work through evenings and weekends without pay. Super-exploitation at its finest!

I’ve struggled with many co-workers to view the Katrina disaster as a failure of the racist capitalist system, and to see that NCR’s opportunist hotline is a lose-lose situation for all workers: the social service workers are super-exploited, their current senior caseload needs are neglected and Hurricane Katrina victims are once again screwed by the system. The only winners are the NCR bosses whose profits increase as hotline publicity spreads nationwide to win them more housing contracts.

To date, the hotline has received 724 calls and has only placed 46 individuals in housing units, failure even by capitalist standards. This proves that workers don’t benefit from the opportunist activities of private enterprise. What the homeless Hurricane Katrina victims, along with all oppressed workers, do need is organized communist leadership. Without the drive for profits, workers could be given centralized training and resources to assist disaster victims efficiently and effectively. To achieve this, PLP continues to build a base among the working class at work, in the military, in school, at church and in our neighborhoods to fight for real revolutionary change.

New Jersey Comrade

Murders of Miners Have Long History

I’ve lived most of my life in the Western Pennsylvania coal fields, and some of my relatives and friends worked in the mines, so I’m very aware that this is a dangerous occupation.

The coal bosses’ murder of 12 miners in West Virginia last month (see CHALLENGE (1/19) is not just a recent development. Historically, U.S. coal bosses have murdered hundreds, if not thousands of miners over the years. In 1942, 63 miners were trapped in an explosion caused by a build-up of carbon monoxide or "black damp" at the Sonman mine near Portage, Pa., a stone’s throw from Johnstown. When rescue workers reached the miners, they were already dead. The former said many of the victims appeared to be sleeping. Some had written brief letters to their loved ones, one scrawling "I love you" on his lunch pail.

The Portage Historical Society made a video about this tragedy, titled "63 Men Down"; the actors were all local people. An investigation proved that the coal bosses were the culprits in this disaster. Initially they claimed they had checked for carbon monoxide gas, attempting to compel an employee to testify he had done so. But the latter refused and was fired.

Eventually the truth came out, provoking an outpouring of righteous anger at the mine owners. Today, there’s a statue of a miner on Portage’s Main Street to honor these workers.

But the capitalist USA is not the only country in which coal mining is a dangerous occupation. In capitalist China, 5,000 miners were killed in privately-owned mines last year. So miners in the U.S. and China have a common enemy: the capitalist system. Only a communist revolution that leads to a true workers’ state and workers’ power will ensure that coal mining, and all other jobs for that matter, will be safe. It’s clear that attempts to reform capitalism don’t cut the mustard.

Red Coal

Transit Workers in U.S. and Iran: Same Enemy, Same Fight

My co-workers and I have had many conversations about world events and workers’ struggles. Recently we discussed the NY transit strike and the fines and threats of jail for workers and their leaders; the attack on retirement benefits of public workers; the recent jailing of transit union officials in Tehran, Iran; and the subsequent strike of 9,000 bus drivers which appears to have won the release of those leaders.

Someone brought in an article detailing U.S. military and diplomatic preparations for attacking Iran in 2006, and it seems like transit workers in both countries are being attacked as part of those war preparations.

Though, I know little of Iran’s transit workers’ history, it appears that an attack on an independent organization like their union would be consistent with silencing potential opposition to the leading clergy’s regional ambitions. In the U.S., with all parts of society totally in debt, the curtailing of retirement benefits to the largest generation of retirees in history would be a way of paying for past, present and future wars.

I believe it was Mao who said that for the U.S., or any other country’s ruling class, to attack other countries it had first to attack the workers within its own borders even harder. Since what most workers want is a decent and stable life, and these ruling classes have just the opposite planned for us, this might be a good reason for workers in both countries to build solidarity and connections.

An Internationalist

Evolution: A Materialist Breakthrough

The recent column, "What Will Science Be Like Under Communism," [CHALLENGE. .01/04/06] acknowledges the importance of Darwin’s "powerful" and "confirmed" theory of evolution, including the central role of natural selection. However, the article might give the impression that PLP opposes this theory. For example, it says "[evolutionary theory] partly reflects the capitalist social relationships of Victorian England — a highly individualistic society, marked by workers competing for jobs subservient to capitalist exploiters competing for profits.…Not all relationships among members of a species or between members of different species are competitive.…In today’s capitalist society, similar false ideas are passed off as ‘objective science.’ "

Natural selection is a materialist explanation for evolutionary change among living organisms. Certain small changes in an animal (or plant) — changes that arise largely by chance — give that animal a reproductive advantage over similar animals without those changes. Reproductive means that the population of slightly-changed animals produces more offspring than the population of unchanged ones.

There can be several reasons for this advantage: the changed animals compete successfully for food with the unchanged animals; the changed animals are better able to fight off predators from another species; or the changed animals are better able to adapt to changes in the environment. Eventually the small changes become permanent in this animal population.

Natural selection is a biological process. Capitalist competition is a social process. The laws of capitalism — discovered by Marx and Engels — should not be confused with the laws of evolution. True, some writers following Herbert Spencer in the 19th century, promoted the pseudo-scientific "social Darwinist" idea that the competition and poverty of capitalism is "explained" by the laws of evolution. Darwin, however, didn’t deal with this, and the theory of evolution has nothing to do with how capitalism works.

We should be careful to distinguish the false application of evolutionary biology to social phenomena (such as capitalism, imperialism, racism or war) from the great materialist scientific breakthrough that was Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is especially important in the face of today’s right-wing religious attacks ("intelligent design") on evolutionary theory.

A Reader

CHALLENGE comments: Thanks to "A Reader" for pointing out the possible false impression about PLP’s approach towards Darwin’s theory. We agree with Karl Marx that Darwin’s contribution to natural science was one of the most important advances ever made. The above letter also explains natural selection very clearly. One additional point: all of us, Darwin included, are influenced by the society in which we live, and our ideas are, in part, shaped by the nature of our social relationships. All of us, both individually and collectively, must intensively wage the struggle to overcome capitalist ideas every day of our lives. Darwin reflected the capitalist ideas of Victorian England not in his explanation of evolution, or even of natural selection as the main mechanism of evolution, but rather in the incidental point he advanced about the "survival of the fittest," as the article "What Will Science Be Like Under Communism" explains.

Airport Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Racism

Citizen and immigrant airport workers in SEIU passed a resolution condemning our governor's racist anti-immigrant campaign, begun a month ago to justify racist cutbacks. Utilizing false data from the Center for Immigration Education, a racist think-tank used by the fascist Minutemen, the governor wants all state and local police to ask Latino workers about their immigration status whenever they have contact with them.

This is fascism. The state government wants to criminalize a whole group of workers. Already the racist airport police have started asking Latino airport workers if they're legal residents. There is much post-9/11 anti-immigrant racism at the airport. With the Department of Homeland Security things could get worse.

Our union resolution not only calls the governor a racist, but supports recent anti-racist struggles from the Hurricane Katrina victims to the rebellions of African and Arab youth in France. Capitalist bosses need racism worldwide to make super-profits off of workers, be they African, Arab, Latino, or Asian. That's why PLP is building an international communist movement. Only communist revolution can eliminate racism. We're trying to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE among workers who support the resolution and spread the fight against anti-immigrant racism throughout the airport and into our communities. This is a racist attack on all workers.

Airport Red

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Dems just want to polish up Fed snooping

The antiterrorism law…expanded the government’s investigative powers after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Administration and Congressional officials said they expected a compromise on the renewal bill in coming weeks between the White House and members of both parties….

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who said he voted to block permanent renewal of the act in part because of the revelations about the spying program, said Tuesday that there was room for a deal.

"Look," Mr. Schumer said, "this is one that should be able to be worked out because the sides are relatively close." (NYT, 1/4)

Behind 'ethnic' wars is oil or mineral $$

Civil wars are much more likely in countries with oil or other mineral wealth….

The leaders of insurgent armies certainly magnify ethnic grievances as part of their grab for spoils, but sectarian hatred usually isn't sufficient to start civil wars. These wars are started by local elites that are essentially making an investment. They decide to commit violence now in the hopes of grabbing great wealth later. The people who do the killing might be whipped up by ethnic grievances, but the people who lead the civil wars are usually rational and greedy. (NYT, 12/18)

Spy bio shows US plots vs. worlds rebels

[CIA Agent] Edward Lansdale…during the cold war… was the Zelig of Washington’s global counterinsurgency effort, squelching a rebellion in the Philippines, plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba and blocking a potential Communist takeover of Vietnam in the first days of America’s involvement….

In 1950, Lansdale was sent to the Philippines to quell a growing Communist insurgency. There, he orchestrated what one journalist later called "a brilliantly led counterrevolution,"….

"Do what you did in the Philippines," Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Lansdale before sending him to Vietnam in 1954. "Lansdale went to play an immense role in creating and maintaining the new regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam…."

John Kennedy thought of Lansdale as America’s James Bond, and in the early 60’s Robert Kennedy put him in charge of Operation Mongoose, a fantastical $50 million plan to topple Castro….

Lansdale flickered on in the public consciousness after Vietnam, providing counsel to Oliver North in his effort to aid the contras in Nicaragua….

Some two decades after Lansdale’s death in 1987, the flawed assumptions that guided his thinking still thrive. Just ask the American pundits and policy makers fond of calling people like the former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi the "George Washington of Iraq…." (NYT, 1/15)

China kills ‘wonders’ of barefoot-doctor days

China’s economic reforms have turned an almost uniformly poor nation into an increasingly prosperous one in the space of a mere generation. But the collapse of socialized medicine and staggering cost increases have opened a yawning gap between health care in the cities and the rural areas, where the former system of free clinics has disintegrated….

Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980’s, China’s socialized medical system, with "barefoot doctors" at its core, worked public health wonders.

From 1952 to 1982 infant mortality fell from 200 per 1,000 live births to 34, and life expectancy increased from about 35 years to 68, according to a recent study published by The New England Journal of Medicine. (NYT, 1/14)

Texas Rev. says US has slid into fascism

Listen to the Rev. Davison Loehr. A Vietnam veteran and graduate of Chicago Divinity School, Loehr is senior minister at the First Universalist Church in Austin. That’s Austin, Texas!

Loehr may be among the first ministers to use the f-word. In his new book, America, Fascism, + God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher, he does not mince words. His Nov 7, 2004 sermon warns:

"You may wonder why anyone would use the word ‘fascism’ in a serious discussion of where America is today. …I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying." (Dolph Honicker: Pythian Press)

‘Syriana’ Is Sugar-coated Poison

Syriana is an important film about the dangers to U.S. bosses of inter-imperialist rivalry in the fight to control world oil markets. This film is preparing the U.S. population for the next Mid-East war, and eventually for war with China, by raising the levels of education about, and the commitment to, U.S. domination of the Mid-East.

The movie is quite gripping. Scenes and plot lines cut in on each other in an almost random manner, supposedly representing the chaos and unpredictability characterizing the conflicts surrounding the control of Mid-East oil. A slogan of the movie, "Everything is connected," emphasizes that what happens on the ground (i.e., war or even assassinations) results from what happens in the courts, the state and the boardrooms. It requires work to follow the film, warming us up to the fact that it requires work to understand the situation in the Mid-East.

One of the main story lines is: a CIA agent (George Clooney), with decades of experience wreaking havoc in the Arab world, gets himself onto the bad side of two major U.S. oil firms seeking to make a merger work. Events unfold too rapidly for him to distance himself from past assignments and an evil coterie of oil executives, lobbyists, Arab royals and high-powered Washington lawyers who are positively ruthless in their individual quests for power and move — quite literally — to destroy him.

Perhaps the most compelling plot line surrounds Pakistani youth who are laid off by the evil new mega-corporation and are seduced by Islamic fundamentalists with shady ties to an oil-rich royal family. The stories of these workers are told with a surprising humanity that borders (gasp) on a lack of racism. That is saved for the Matt Damon character’s relationship with an "enlightened" royal (more below).

Additionally, the film has none of the overt cheerleading for the Democratic Party characterizing, for instance, Michael Moore’s work. The film paints the U.S. Establishment quite harshly. The movie’s strengths exist in order to inject its poisons into the viewer more effectively.

Poison #1: An oldy but goody — the myth of the "honorable cop." The viewer is left with a hope that a horribly corrupt system can be saved if only the "right people" are in charge. This time we wind up rooting for Clooney, the CIA terrorist who is betrayed by his bosses, and the Arab Prince who wants to bring Democratic reform but is in bed with the Chinese bosses.

Poison #2: Arabs are ruled by incompetent, wasteful and stupid royal families and deserve to be ruled by Westernized comprador [local pro-imperialist boss] elements that will bring "democracy," "market efficiency" and "stability" to the region while maintaining enough Muslim veneer and social spending to keep Bin Laden’s recruitment in check. In the vein of classic racist colonialist claptrap, dating back to Rudyard Kipling, it takes a brilliant white economic adviser (Matt Damon) to lead a Western-educated emir’s son by the hand along the road to liberal capitalist nirvana.

Poison #3: Perhaps the most difficult to capture, the film makes economics, not politics, the driving force behind the miserable world situation. Impossibly powerful economic forces drive even decent men to commit foul acts (Syriana’s Bennett Holliday) and leave the viewer feeling powerless. Resistance comes in flashes of anger and acts of terror but ring hollow with futility.

For all of its weaknesses, Syriana is an important film to discuss with workers and students. It can be a launching pad for PL’s politics; we need to emphasize the idea that the only way to destroy the society represented in the movie is by workers organizing together worldwide to destroy ALL the bosses internationally and create a world controlled by workers: communism.

(Next issue, a review of Jarrhead).

UNDER COMMUNISM: Collectivity Among Soviet Women and Men Combat Pilots in World War II (Part 3)

(Part 2 described the struggle for recognition of equality by women combat pilots. This final part describes solidarity between the women and men. Quotes from Anne Noggle’s "A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II.")

"My navigator, Larisa Radchikova, and I completed the first mission, but on the second one we were caught by enemy searchlights after we had dropped our bombs. The anti-aircraft guns fired at us fiercely from all directions, and suddenly I felt our aircraft hit. My left foot slipped down into an empty space below me; the bottom of the cockpit had been shot away. I felt something hot streaming down my left arm and leg — I was wounded.

"An airwave lifted us, and I managed to glide back over the river to the neutral zone. The Germans could see us in that zone and went on firing at us. We got out of the cockpit with difficulty, because both of us were wounded. Large splinters were sticking out of my body. My navigator was wounded in the neck. We walked very slowly toward the hills where our troops were supposedly located.

"Larisa was wearing army high boots, and they were squeaking and making so much noise that I made her take them off so we would not be detected by the enemy. All the way from the landing place to the Soviet lines she walked through mud and impassable roads with nothing on her feet but socks. I was trying to take care of her and she was trying to take care of me!

"A sentry came out of the darkness and questioned us in a thick Kazakh accent. Larisa replied in shock ‘Are you Russian or German?’ And they were Russian! We were taken to their dugout. I had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of my arm, and one of the soldiers tried to pull [it] out with pliers, but he couldn’t.

"It was a number of hours before we arrived at a field hospital where severely wounded soldiers were waiting their turn to be operated on. I had lost much blood and was very weak. We sat on a bench awaiting our turn for surgery. As long as I live I’ll never forget mortally wounded soldiers whispering to us to jump the line and go ahead of them for surgery, because their own minutes of life were numbered."

Another woman recounted, "[During a mission] I saw our commander wounded in his chest and right arm. I couldn’t hold the control stick — it was beyond my physical capacity. I dashed to the flight engineer for help, but he was on the floor, bleeding from six bullet wounds. We touched the ground — our commander was barely conscious but still managed to control the plane. I can hardly account of how I energized myself to drag our commander out through the hatch, but I did.

"He wanted us to leave him because he was so badly wounded, and he had his pistol ready to shoot himself if the fascists came. I didn’t obey him and stayed with the wounded.

"Months later, this commander transferred me to Kiev toward the end of the war because our regiment was attacked again and again, and on each flight we returned with bullet holes in the fuselage. He made this decision because he felt that he bore responsibility for my life; he was saving me from a wild bullet. I sobbed for several days, not only because I was losing my crew but because I would never cross the front again."

This short series on Soviet women pilots during World War II has shown how the world’s first society to be controlled by the working class, led by its communist party, inspired women and men to fight for women’s equality. Old sexist habits inherited from capitalism die hard, and require constant struggle, by both men and women. We have seen how this hard-won equality of opportunity for women unified and benefited both women and men. We have seen how the fight to build a communist society can inspire selfless heroism from both.

Finally, we’ve seen how all this occurred despite the weaknesses in this first historic attempt to destroy capitalism — weaknesses such as maintaining the wage system and elitist inequalities, that eventually led the Soviet Union back to capitalism, rather than on to communism.

Today’s international working class has the benefit of their gigantic achievements and, through PLP’s contributions, an understanding of the weaknesses. PLP will fight to guarantee that communism will ultimately seize a permanent hold throughout the world.

In Memoriam: Mary Finney

Mary Finney, a long-time member of Progressive Labor Party in New Jersey, died on January 6. She succumbed to a series of debilitating illnesses, against which she had fought a hard battle for many years.

Mary first joined the Party in 1971. We met at a time when she was fighting the welfare department to get child care for her kids. She had been told she was "$5 over the eligibility limit." Mary had recently lost her first husband; he died in an accident while driving a truck. Party members joined Mary in confronting welfare officials about this unjust denial. Suddenly, Mary and her family were "eligible" after all.

Our student comrades looked up to Mary as a strong woman comrade and a real fighter. Once becoming active with the Party, she wanted to know everything about what made us tick. She learned quickly, growing from her experience as a black woman fighting racism and oppression, both of which she hated with a passion her entire life. She always had friends from many different backgrounds, men and women, young and older.

Some of her main qualities testify to why she became involved, then active. Mary had a wonderful heart. She wanted the best for other people, and she always put herself second to the needs of others. Once, when a Party member visited her in her small apartment, Mary had taken in three people newly arrived from Haiti. Without resources, they had knocked on her door. Mary let them spend the night.

Mary was always a hard worker, holding many different jobs in her life, from factories like Arts Metal in Newark to her work as a home health aide in Bergen County. She worked until she was too sick to continue.

As was said at her funeral, Mary wanted a better world for every worker on earth. She knew it would take a decisive revolutionary struggle by millions of people to achieve it. She tried to stay in that struggle herself, before the pressures of life took her away from it.

Like many working-class families in Newark, Mary was forced to shuttle her seven children and belongings to a series of apartments. She was always fighting for Section 8 housing, which she acquired only after becoming disabled.

Despite all the stresses confronting her, Mary never, ever lost sight of the goal of communism. Towards the end of her life, she rededicated herself to that struggle. One of her last political acts was to attend a May Day celebration in New York City. Finally, Mary was victimized by the oppressive system she fought so hard to change.

No one should have had to go through the hard times and suffering that Mary experienced, especially toward the end of her life. And when we achieve the world for which Mary and so many others like her have fought, no one will.

(Ed. Note: Much of the above eulogy was delivered at Mary’s funeral service, attended by 250 people at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, NJ.)