General Clark: Warmaker Liberal Style
a href="#AFL-CIO Patriots Use Immigrants’ Fight to Back Rulers’ War">AF"-CIO Patriots Use Immigrants’ Fight to Back Rulers’ War
Capitalist Politicians Deadly Road for Freedom Riders
Fighting Racism in Hospital Helps Build PLP
a href="#Woman Warns Killer Kops: ‘You’ll pay for this!’">Woma" Warns Killer Kops: ‘You’ll pay for this!’
GI in Iraq Wrestles With Cannon Fodder Role
a href="#Anti-Globalists Don’t See Capitalism As Root of Super-exploitation">"nti-Globalists Don’t See Capitalism As Root of Super-exploitation
a href="#‘Third Way’ Won’t Solve Salvadoran Workers’ Problems">‘Third"Way’ Won’t Solve Salvadoran Workers’ Problems
a href="#Environmentalism: A Communist Perspective — Part I">"nvironmentalism: A Communist Perspective — Part I
a href="#‘Twelve Months That Changed the World,’By Larry Lesueur; Borzos, 1943">Re"ders Review: ‘Twelve Months That Changed the World"
a href="#‘The Years Of Rice And Salt’ By Kim Stanley Robinson">Re"ders Review: ‘The Years Of Rice And Salt’ By Kim Stanley Robinson
NJ Symphony: $$$ for instruments, pay-cuts for musicians
a href="#Communist PLP’s Answer To Capitalism’s Chamber of Horrors">Co"munist PLP’s Answer To Capitalism’s Chamber of Horrors
"The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountains"
LETTERS
NYC Union Hack Helps Close School
Tenants Fight Back Against Bronx Slumlord
a href="#Strategy for GI’s">"trategy for GI’s
How Can We Practice Communism under Capitalism?
Red Leadership in Mass Organizations
State Hospital Sickens Workers
Bosses Closing VA Hospitals While Casualties Soar
a href="#Leni Riefenstahl, Art for the Führer’s Sake">L"ni Riefenstahl, Art for the Führer’s Sake
General Clark: Warmaker Liberal Style
Just three days into his campaign, a Newsweek poll declared war criminal Wesley Clark the Democrats’ front-runner for president in 2004. The media blitz promoting the four-star general’s candidacy represents an important step in the liberal U.S. rulers’ drive to mobilize society for wars of ever-increasing scope. The U.S. military already faces a troop shortfall in Iraq; invading Iran or North Korea will require hundreds of thousands of soldiers that the Pentagon does not yet have; confronting China, Russia, or an anti-U.S. European coalition in the coming decades will take millions. To help fill that need, Clark 2004 aims to stir up patriotic war fervor in a humanitarian guise.
Clark’s run immediately received the blessing of E.J. Dionne, who heads the liberal Brookings Institution’s "United We Serve" project. As CHALLENGE has reported, "United We Serve" is part of a major ruling-class effort to channel the surge in public spirit that followed Sept. 11 into a program of universal national service, mainly in the military. Dionne asked a leading question in the Washington Post (9/21/03), "In the wake of 9/11, which ‘experience’ is more relevant — Clark’s in foreign policy and war, Howard Dean’s as a chief executive, albeit of a small state, or the extensive legislative experience of most of the rest of the field?"
The liberal media present Clark as a rational, "humane" alternative to the warmongering Bush crowd. But very little separates mass murderer Clark from the current crew of butchers:
• Clark volunteered for duty in Vietnam (where he was wounded) and not only supported U.S. imperialist aggression there but said "we" could win that war by going "all out."
• In the 1980s and ’90s, Clark was commander of refugee camps in Miami and Fort Allen, Puerto Rico, incarcerating Haitians fleeing the U.S.-backed fascist Duvalier dictatorship and its successor. U.S. government documents obtained by the Haitian Refugee Center revealed that the refugees were packed together under appalling conditions and were sprayed repeatedly and indiscriminately with highly toxic chemicals. Soon male inmates began to develop female breasts and female refugees were subject to a much higher rate of cervical cancer than the rest of the female population. Clark was chief of operations at the U.S. Navy internment camp at Guantanamo, Cuba, in charge of this whole operation.
• Clark became supreme commander of NATO under Clinton. In 1999, when the Serbian dictator Milosevic tried to upset U.S. control of the world’s oil trade with his own pipeline deal with the Russians, Clark directed a massive bombing campaign that killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians. A Spanish pilot, Capt. Martin de la Hoz told the Spanish weekly newspaper "Artículo 20" (6/14/99): "There was a…coded order from the North American military that we should drop anti-personnel bombs over Pristina and Nis. All…missions…were planned in detail, including attacking planes, targets and type of ammunition by U.S. high-ranking military authorities…. They are destroying the country," the F-18 pilot said, "bombing it with…toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped by parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison crops and weapons of which even we still know nothing about." While they protected Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco, Clark and Clinton claimed to be saving ethnic Albanians. Clark’s "humanitarian" high explosives (Weapons of Mass Destruction?) blasted homes, schools, hospitals, trains and busses.
• In that same war, when the Russians landed troops at the Yugoslav airport in Pristina, Clark ordered the commander of British forces to drive the Russians out, causing the British general to reply, "I’m not going to start World War III to satisfy your ego."
•Clark has long-standing ties to the liberal establishment. In February, months before announcing, he made a pilgrimage to the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, a leading think-tank, along with Brookings, for U.S. imperialism. In his speech there, Clark told the main rulers what they wanted to hear about using the UN to gain allies for U.S. military adventures and covering warfare with the fig leaf of "nation-building." Clark also bragged that he had become a CFR member in 1974 on the recommendation of Nelson Rockefeller himself. From 1975 to 1976, Clark was a White House Fellow under the Ford-Rockefeller regime.
•Since his retirement from the Army in 2000, Clark has kept busy aiding the liberals’ agenda of war and fascism. He often appeared on CNN calling for a larger, more deadly U.S.-led force in Iraq. He served on the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. In October 2002, it issued a report calling for massive electronic eavesdropping and data collection to facilitate the jailing of "enemies." The surveillance plan Clark helped create goes even farther than the drastic schemes devised by Admiral Poindexter and Attorney General Ashcroft.
Clark’s campaign may or may not succeed. But the remaining candidates are all just as eager to carry the battle flag of U.S. imperialism. Not one serves the interests of the working class.
a name="AFL-CIO Patriots Use Immigrants’ Fight to Back Rulers’ War"></">AF"-CIO Patriots Use Immigrants’ Fight to Back Rulers’ War
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20 — Hundreds of CHALLENGES and 1,000 PL leaflets were distributed at a rally here while the AFL-CIO was busy building patriotism and giving out mini-U.S. flags to hundreds of its rank-and-file members. After a speaker sang the U.S. national anthem and a small group started chanting "USA, USA, USA!," a CHALLENGE seller said in a loud voice to those nearby, "To hell with ‘USA! USA!’ Whether we live here or in Mexico, we’re nothing but exploited workers! The bosses and their flags have done nothing for us!"
Then workers in the laborers’ union asked him for a stack of communist leaflets to take back to their local. They bought his last CHALLENGE. A group of UCLA students also asked for leaflets —which attacked racism and imperialist war and called for communist revolution — to take to their friends.
Some unionists talked to their fellow workers at the march, most of them in unions, linking the cutbacks with the war budget. Their information sheet began, "Uncle Sam has a problem: military recruitment." A woman in the Laborers’ union said, "Oh, this is so right. When my son applied for a special loan for school, they told him he had to register for the army to get it!"
The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride organizers say its purpose is to fight for immigrant workers’ citizenship. The LA rally began with Maria Elena Durazo, sellout leader of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union, calling for a "moment of silence as the colors are raised and our national anthem is sung." She praised the Latino veterans who raised the flag, stressing patriotism and respect for the U.S. military.
Since last year MIWON (Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers’ Organizing Network) and the AFL-CIO have been organizing for immigrants to receive citizenship and driver’s licenses. A local Democratic Party honcho, Gil Cedillo, has been stressing these demands since 1998. The California State Legislature recently passed a bill (SB 60) allowing immigrants with a federal Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) to apply for driver’s licenses. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service requires the payment of taxes on any earnings regardless of immigration status. This makes the TIN a de facto recognition of the presence of large numbers of "illegal" immigrants in the U.S. economy, forced to contribute their labor power to U.S. bosses for poverty wages. An amendment SB 60 removed a requirement for a high-tech fingerprinting system.
Some politicians say the bill almost declares amnesty for "illegal" immigrants, "covering up terrorists" working in the shadows of California industry. This bill’s backers include the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the LAPD and some insurance and auto executives.
The AFL-CIO leadership, a pawn of the liberal ruling class, changed its fierce anti-immigrant position to try to seduce immigrant workers, using citizenship status and driver’s licenses. They’re helping the rulers’ drive to ensure no one in this country is "un-accounted for," as they continue to hunt down Middle Eastern, South Asian and Arab people. They want to maximize use of racial profiling.
Of course, many honest people want to fight for the rights of immigrants and are attracted to this movement. But the leaders are trying to win immigrant workers to patriotism/nationalism, key components in the growth of fascism. This ideology makes it easier for those in power to use immigrants for war and fascism.
Many students and workers to whom CHALLENGE sellers talked, and who took more leaflets and papers to pass out at their locals and schools, were disgusted by the flags and nationalist/patriotic rhetoric. It’s crucial to work with them in this movement, especially in the unions, at school and in the military. They’re open to rebelling against the bosses’ imperialist wars and fascism and joining PLP.
FASCIST ALERT!
JERSEY CITY, Sept. 23 — As the Freedom Rides head into New York City on October 4, a local fascist, Hal Turner, is trying to rally members of the Aryan Nation, Ku Klux Klan and the National Alliance to protest the Ride when it stops at Liberty State Park here on the 3rd. Turner is a racist who broadcasts a shortwave radio show and has been ranting against immigration reform.
In the last few years, racist attacks on immigrants in the New York metro area has increased: In Farmingville, Long Island, day laborers have been terrorized and fire-bombed; racist police terror has murdered SantiagoVillanueve and Jose Ives.
Members of Progressive Labor Party will be supporting undocumented workers in these actions but we want workers to realize that workers have no nations. Nations and borders are set up by the bosses to claim exploitation rights over as many workers as possible.
The international working class must unite to fight back against the rulers of capitalism. And PLP will be there to defend and protect our class against fascists like Turner and his cronies. Our Party has a rich history of fighting against anti-immigrant groups like Voices of Citizens Together in California and of fighting neo-Nazis right here in NJ— a history that will surely continue.
Capitalist Politicians Deadly Road for Freedom Riders
QUEENS, NY, Sept. 20 — Today 250 people (mostly Asian and Latin immigrants) marched to build for the Oct. 4 mass rally at Flushing Meadow Park, the final stop of the Freedom Ride for Immigrant Rights. The Freedom Ride organizers expect 100,000 people at that final rally. Obviously there are many workers who want to fight the horrendous racism suffered by immigrants, documented or not. Since 9/11, the harassment of immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America has taken a giant step forward.
Most people at today’s march and rally were rank-and-file janitors and hotel, restaurant and domestic workers. The event was organized by three unions — SEIU, 32BJ (building workers), HERE (hotel and restaurant workers) and UNITE (garment workers) — as well as a dozen or so community groups. Many of the union organizers were young and politically progressive. One was a former student of a PLP teacher and agreed to speak to the teacher’s class about the October 4 rally. The speakers from the community groups — like the Latin American Workers Project and Workers Abaaz, which organizes South Asian domestics — seemed very working class and committed to fighting the terrible conditions their members face daily.
Despite the movement’s working-class base, the leadership is committed to a legalistic strategy wedded to the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO leadership is clearly the main organizing force behind these local actions and the October 4 rally. Brian McLaughlin, the president of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and a NYS Assemblyman, was one of the main speakers. The rest included a Congressman, another assemblyman, and a City Council member, all Democrats. They all boasted of their "struggle" for local laws that would guarantee language access and immigrant confidentiality policies, but said new national laws were also needed.
However, the leadership of the movement has not demanded any specific legislation in Congress for amnesty or family reunification, so it appears doubtful there’ll be any legislative victories soon. Instead, the immigrant rights movement will be used by the AFL-CIO as part of its campaign to defeat Bush in 2004 and elect a Democratic Congress. The union officialdom intends to use the growing working-class anger over economic decline and the costs of empire to put the Democrats back in power. Meanwhile, the patriotism of the movement’s leadership serves the Pentagon’s current plan to recruit more soldiers for the bosses’ endless imperialist wars (see CHALLENGE editorial, 10/24).
It’s good that we in PLP participate in this movement to bring our communist politics to those wanting to fight racism, and point out that as long as capitalism exists there will be racist/fascist terror, wars and super-exploitation. We must champion the need for class unity of foreign-born and native-born workers, the need to reject capitalist borders — just as capital ignores borders — and embrace labor internationalism. Workers of the world, unite!
Fighting Racism in Hospital Helps Build PLP
Last month a multi-racial group of union housekeepers marched into the CEO’ s office of this large East coast teaching hospital demanding the bosses fire a nurse who had publicly humiliated a housekeeper and refused to apologize.
Here’s the story: a nursing unit received a lunch of pizzas and sodas as a "prize" from the hospital. The unit clerk invited Ann, the unit housekeeper, to have a slice. As she was leaving the unit’s "break" room with her pizza, nurse Jane, a clinical specialist, demanded to know why Ann was in the break room, because "you steal." This confrontation happened in front of patients, co-workers and nursing students. Ann is black, the nurse is white. The latter’s comments stunned everyone. Ann has worked at the hospital 28 years and is no thief.
Initially the bosses tried to smother this incident and the racism it represents. When they learned we were organizing, they tried to get the nurse to apologize. She refused.
In the past, PLP’ers would immediately issue a flyer attacking this racism and calling for multi-racial unity and communist revolution. Then, after a big controversy for a few weeks, it would blow over. At times we’d have demonstrations across from the hospital with a handful of the more committed workers. Maybe one or two workers would come closer to PLP and our CHALLENGE distribution might increase a little.
Our leadership often drew an apology or forced the racist to quit. The mainly black union workers liked our attacks on racism, but continued to see the mainly white nurses and doctors as their "enemy." But the nurses and doctors would view it as an attack on them for being white. The conflict between the mainly white nurses and the mainly black union members remained as bad (or worse) than ever. While the workers stayed divided, the capitalist attacks on patient care continued.
Now we’re trying a different approach. What we used to do from the outside we can now do from within the union. The workers recognize us as bona fide union leaders and so do the bosses. We can lead a march through the hospital itself into the bosses’ office. We can organize union committees and meetings enabling us to work with more and more workers. We’re not marginalized, but mainstream.
A union committee was organized to direct Ann’s case. A grievance was filed. The committee participated in, or heard reports from, the many meetings with the hospital bosses. Contingency plans include petitions and a union leaflet. The leaflet, accepted by the union committee, attacked the nurse’s elitism and racism because it undermined the unity needed by nurses and union members to fight the attacks on patient care. The leaflet also linked the U.S. war budget to those attacks.
Before its "official" distribution, some union members saw it and liked it so much they immediately copied and distributed it. The flyers were hung everywhere on the nurse’s floor.
The union committee now plans a more general campaign against the divisive environment created by the bosses and their healthcare cuts and will bring this fight into the regular union labor-management meetings. This will help us focus on the bosses’ war budget’s attacks on patient care.
Our union organizing leads to sharper political struggle with more workers, discussing how racism and equality are the basic issues here. Why does the nurse, with her Masters Degree, refuse to apologize to the black housekeeper even though many think she should? Many believe it’s because Jane thinks she’s better than Ann.
This leads to more general discussion about how many of the newly-graduated, mainly white nurses don’t respect the experience and knowledge of the mainly black support staff; some of whom have worked there over 20 years. Meanwhile, we are struggling with the nationalist, anti-white feelings of the black workers at the highest level ever.
We also point out how the nurses’ capitalist education teaches elitism, racism and sexism. And most importantly it enables PLP’ers to explain that we participate in such fights because capitalism is based on such inequalities and the working class needs the equality of classless communism. One such discussions led to a young worker joining PLP.
We’re learning as we proceed. We constantly try to guard against being opportunist, liberal or reformist. Our barometer will be the number of new Party members and new CHALLENGE readers we develop. We’ll keep readers informed as this fight continues.
a name="Woman Warns Killer Kops: ‘You’ll pay for this!’"></a>"oman Warns Killer Kops: ‘You’ll pay for this!’
I attended a demonstration on Sept. 17 during the hearing in Newark, NJ, for the cops who murdered Santiago Villanueva, a Dominican immigrant from Upper Manhattan. When he suffered an epileptic attack while working in a Bloomfield, NJ shop, the cops answering the 911 call saw him suffering the seizures. But instead of helping him, the cops acted in their usual racist manner — allegedly "thinking he was on drugs" — attacked and handcuffed him, causing his death.
The hearing, already postponed from two months before, was a waste of time since the main judge was absent. The cops asked for another extension. While this was happening, a woman surprised everyone, rising to yell at the cops, "You’ll pay for this." The presiding judge threatened the woman with arrest if she did it again.
There was a rally outside where the same woman voiced her anger at the cops, comparing them to Hitler’s Nazis. She invited all to return to next month’s hearing. Everyone promised to bring more people then.
An Upper Manhattan Worker
GI in Iraq Wrestles With Cannon Fodder Role
This summer a family member was sent to the Middle East, as were many other men and women from working-class families. He’s the eldest, and as with many fatherless working-class families, the eldest son carries a father’s burden. Needless to say my entire family was crushed by the news that their father-figure would soon be at war for reasons that could not be seriously justified by Bush, Congress or the bosses’ puppets in the U.S. media. In one of our last conversations before his deployment he said "Man, I don’t want to kill any of those people, and I hope it doesn’t come to that." This is a contradiction that family members in the military are forced into by the bosses’ capitalist system of deepening perpetual imperialist war.
"This is a working-class man," I said to myself as I thought of my brother at war with my Arab working-class brothers; he will assess this contradiction as a working-class person and come to a working-class conclusion. Several weeks later I heard from him. He was still working through this contradiction. He said he felt like "...a sheep getting herded around the third world." But he was glad to be getting a few days of R&R (Rest & Relaxation) away from his "Bedouin cell." Yet, still no answer to his contradiction.
The next time I heard from him he was much clearer about his feelings that this war is not in his interests. He found that the military’s idea of "R&R" for working-class troops is a "swimming pool in the middle of the desert with the sun beating down on your head." And contrary to the terrorist profile the U.S. media stamps onto Arabs, he found "these people have their own culture, their own world." Finally, realizing he didn’t belong on the bosses’ side, he said "I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I feel like an intruder."
This is where many of the troops are mentally. They’re looking for answers to contradictions staring them in the face. It’s our responsibility to provide answers to our class brothers and sisters. When we had last gotten together, I had given our brother material on imperialism and inter-imperialist rivalry. This information will be increasingly important to him in the coming months.
I’m writing this with the hope it may inspire readers to initiate this kind of communication with their family members overseas. These are our soldiers, not the bosses’; we must win them to communism and PLP and to refuse racist, destructive and self-destructive orders. Only through communist revolution will these contradictions truly be resolved. Workers, Students, Soldiers, Unite!
I’ll keep CHALLENGE readers up-to-date on the progress made by this brother of ours.
A Red Student
a name="Anti-Globalists Don’t See Capitalism As Root of Super-exploitation">">"nti-Globalists Don’t See Capitalism As Root of Super-exploitation
The Cancun, Mexico, meeting of the World Trade Organization was a failure before it started. "Little or nothing can be done to change subsidies and custom duties," said the World Bank’s Uri Dadush, even before the meeting began.
This is the third international gathering of world rulers organized during the Vincente Fox regime. All have failed. This meeting collapsed in a few days once the imperialists of Europe, Japan and the U.S. totally rejected the poorer countries’ demand that they lower subsidies to farmers.
Amid the growing crisis of world capitalism — marked by endless wars and super-exploitation of workers — and intense imperialist competition for markets, resources and labor, very few concessions can be given to the smaller capitalist countries.
In Mexico one million farmworkers lost their jobs when corn was imported. Throughout agriculture, 7 of 10 workers are unemployed, victims of the crisis of overproduction and capitalist competition.
In Mexico, different imperialists are fighting each other to find local investment partners in the energy industry. Local bosses’ associations like CONCAMIN and CPARMEX and their political allies in Mexico’s Congress are divided over privatization. But they’re united on super-exploiting the workers. Whether privatized or public, the energy bosses won’t serve the needs of the working class (consumers or energy workers). Workers’ needs can only be satisfied by abolishing private property altogether. This fight would put our class on the offensive.
The antiglobalist movements in Brazil, Mexico and worldwide believe hunger and other disasters caused by the profit system can be alleviated without destroying capitalism in all its forms. The globalists John Sellers (Ruckus Society) and Kevin Danaher (Global Exchange) want, "To build a local movement to defend democracy." But this will only perpetuate capitalism and its exploitation. They mislead millions who want to fight for fundamental changes.
Capitalism is the problem; workers must destroy it by taking state power through communist revolution, led by their Party, PLP. That’s the only way to end unemployment, exploitation and misery in the cities and the fields. Join PLP.
a name="‘Third Way’ Won’t Solve Salvadoran Workers’ Problems"></a>‘T"ird Way’ Won’t Solve Salvadoran Workers’ Problems
San Salvador, El Salvador — "These guys [leaders of the fmln, former guerrilla movement] from San Salvador think they can get us to do anything they want," said a farmworker about the current 2004 presidential electoral campaign. "We come from a war in which the main thing we cared about was the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism. We knew what our goals were. Today these electoral opportunists want to use us for their personal benefit while we who built the FMLN sometimes don’t have enough to eat." (The fmln in small letters is the current electoral party. In capital letters it stands for the previous armed group.)
On September 19, hundreds of workers organized by the fmln, in unions and social organizations, marched down the main streets of the capital against the privatization of health services and to support the fmln candidate for president, Shafick Handal. Many city workers, farmworkers and students honestly believe the fmln is a good option to resolve workers’ problems. But the truth disproves this.
The capitalist system worldwide is bankrupt. The big capitalists must resort to imperialist war, fascism and the super-exploitation of the working class to resolve their crisis. El Salvador isn’t isolated from this misery. The fmln fights to get the crumbs left over by the bosses, but the working class needs the whole pie. As a class, we produce everything and we should receive everything to meet our needs. Even though the fmln promises to oppose privatization, they also invite European and U.S. capital to invest here, and exploit us. These corporations demand maximum profit and insist on privatizing or cutting back services, which the fmln will go along with.
But there are thousands of workers who reject this electoral circus. Some refuse to participate in these marches, even though many see the struggle against privatization as a good one against the capitalist system. Unfortunately, with or without privatization, the workers’ services and wages are being cut.
We don’t have to accept the "lesser evil." There is another alternative. Not the "third way" that Handal pushes, but true liberation of the working class through communist revolution. The 12-year guerrilla war was only one battle in this long war.
The bosses use elections to fool us, to try to avoid a real workers’ revolution. Under the rules of the electoral game, we must kneel before the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund, before the imperialists, whether they’re U.S. or European.
PLP’s goal is to stoke the fires of workers’ anger, not put them out. Our fight within the unions and mass movement is to win the workers to take power through a revolution for communism. Join PLP.
a name="Environmentalism: A Communist Perspective — Part I">">"nvironmentalism: A Communist Perspective — Part I
Many people today believe the excuses given by the bosses and their lackeys that environmental problems are due to a combination of overpopulation, technology and limited resources. This idea is nothing new. In the 1790’s, political-economist Thomas Malthus concluded that the population was growing faster than the food supply. His solution? Kill off the "extra" people through war and disease. Today, the Earth’s six billion people are multiplying faster than ever. Yet it’s estimated that under the right system of production and distribution, and with existing technology, California’s agricultural production alone could feed the entire planet.
In the past century, capitalism has:
•Intensified global warming and the risk of climate-based disasters. At present rates, global temperatures will rise an average of 4.5ºF. in the next century, compared to a rise of only 1.8ºF. in the past 10,000 years!
•Recklessly mismanaged food and water resources to produce more profitable (but less healthy) foods for western consumers, leading to widespread man-made famines. The meat and dairy industries alone squander 5,400 gallons of water and 16 lbs. of grain and soy to produce 1 lb. of beef.
•Irresponsibly used up non-renewable resources. Since 1940, North Americans alone have consumed more than all humans in history, leaving behind a trail of un-recycled waste from personal and industrial consumption.
If the bosses continue the exploitation of our labor and environment, the results may be catastrophic. But they hide the truth by telling workers that environmentalism eliminates jobs, by spreading propaganda that pollution is strictly an "individual problem," or by minimizing or denying the impact on the environment. The bosses aim to pit workers against the environment and convince workers to clean up "their" messes.
Though these problems have received much attention since the environmental movements of the 1970’s, many of the groups involved lack an analysis of capitalism that would provide people with an understanding of the root cause of environmental problems and their connection to socio-economic inequalities. For instance, the various "Green" parties confuse many people. These groups target individual corporations as the cause of environmental disaster, letting capitalism as a system off the hook. Their demands are virtually impossible to achieve because the law of capitalist competition forces every corporation to sacrifice workers and the environment in order to make profit. Their advocacy of environmental and economic reforms spreads the illusion that workers’ lives can be fundamentally improved under capitalism.
Then there are the "radical" environmental groups that advance the idea that humans are the problem. They believe there’s a contradiction between human need and the environment. They use anarchist "direct-action" techniques to boycott companies and forcibly prevent things like animal testing, logging and deep-sea trawling. But their strategies have had few results beyond raising awareness of the problem. Their solution is a return to primitive, less-intensive, low-tech forms of production. In the name of animal rights and saving the environment, their solution would mean the death of billions of humans due to extremely low productivity.
Communists understand that environmentalism is fundamentally a question of social organization and development. Overpopulation or technology are not the root causes of these problems. Like slave and feudal societies before it, capitalism imposes limits on social development. Capitalists talk only of "sustainable growth" — meaning a future of endless profits and exploitation. While workers toil to make profits for the ruling class, billions are denied access to the vast array of goods and services they create. Wasteful and profit-driven forms of capitalist production and consumption wreak havoc on the environment under normal conditions, not to mention the severe waste and destruction caused by constant economic crises and imperialist wars. The result is that capitalism causes man-made shortages while destroying our health and environment.
Capitalism is creating a social and environmental nightmare. Only a communist society can take us beyond capitalist limits and avert environmental catastrophe. Communists must think in terms of a sustainable economy, where human need and a healthy environment complement each other. What’s good for the environment is good for workers! A rationally- planned economy run by workers and founded on production for human need will bring an end to the inequalities, wastefulness and damage caused by capitalism. If used responsibly, the Earth’s resources can sustain communist society on Earth well into the future.
(The remaining three sections of this series will discuss Consumerism, Diet and Energy, with a communist critique of capitalism’s toll on workers and their environment and will outline a communist solution to the environmental and social misery inflicted by the bosses.)
Readers Review:
a name="‘Twelve Months That Changed the World,’By Larry Lesueur; Borzos, 1943"></">‘T"elve Months That Changed the World,’By Larry Lesueur; Borzos, 1943
I found this book interesting and inspiring. On Oct. 12, 1941, American correspondent Larry Lesueur set sail from Scotland for sub-zero Archangel. [This was the port in the Soviet Union, above the Artic Circle, that received supplies for the Soviet war effort. — Editor]
Lesueur said, "The opportunity to see Russia for the last time under Soviet Communism was the greatest adventure that the tottering world had left. No reporter, I felt, could possibly turn it down!"
One of Lesueur’s jobs was to broadcast war news from the Soviet Union back to the U.S. In Kuibyshev he met Miss Burrows, an announcer, a gray-haired black woman born in Harlem. She spoke Russian with a decided American accent, and addressed Lesueur as "comrade." Miss Burrows began the broadcast of Soviet war news with the traditional words, "Workers of the world, unite!"
In May of 1942 Lesueur prepared to return to New York. He met a Soviet officer in Moscow and asked him, "What about Stalingrad?" "He looked at me long and proudly: ‘Stalingrad will never fall!’" [The Soviet victory over the Nazis at Stalingrad, a five-month battle, was the turning point of the Second World War — Editor]
If you pick up this short (345 pages) well-written book, you won’t want to put it down. I didn’t!
Oakland Comrade
a name="‘The Years Of Rice And Salt’ By Kim Stanley Robinson"></">‘T"e Years Of Rice And Salt’ By Kim Stanley Robinson
A drawback in contemporary literature is its general lack of revolutionary depth. It’s refreshing to find a novel that actually has a critique of the oppressive capitalist system and a kind of rewrite of the Communist Manifesto. Kim Stanley Robinson’s current novel "The Years Of Rice And Salt," asks what if the black plague had utterly decimated the population of Europe, and Islam and China were the world’s sole dominant civilizations?
The story’s leading characters are reincarnated throughout about 1,000 years of history and tell their stories. This hocus pocus was actually pretty well done, but without the materialistic view necessary for a complete understanding of the world around us.
I like the way Robinson attacks the Sufis for turning Islam into a vehicle to control the populace. He illustrates how religion was used to galvanize the people to fight wars not beneficial to them. He shows how the sultans and rulers continually warred with each other over land and resources, putting the burden on imperialism as opposed to anti-European nationalism and other racist ideas. Robinson’s enemy is imperialism, sexism, racism, slavery and war.
In one chapter, two of the central characters write books. One can best be described as a "Vindication On The Rights Of Woman" and the other a type of Communist Manifesto. Seeing actual Marxist ideology in a mainstream book was both refreshing and alarming. Since the bosses’ popularize revolution in order to control it, I become alarmed when I see revolutionary speech in a novel. But after finishing it, I think it’s a novel we can read and use to help win others to fight for communism. Since we fight against the same enemies as those in the novel, and he uses a scientific, practical type of centralism as the ultimate model of government, this book could be a great help to our movement.
The novel teaches some of the fundamental belief systems of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism that can help us understand these religions and identify with workers who follow them, enabling us to spread the seeds of communism amongst the fertile soil of the religiously oppressed proletariat.
His line is by no means completely consistent with PLP’s. But this book helps to illustrate the failure of imperialism and its offspring of racism, sexism, classism, et al, and at the same time advances Marxist ideology as the solution to these problems. This should give us a firm foundation upon which to build our Party. So if you’re looking for an entertaining read that actually attacks the great evil of imperialism, this is the book for you.
Red Reader
$$$ for instruments, pay-cuts for musicians
The gala opening of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra…seemed particularly fitting…. The orchestra…acquired a collection of 30 priceless historic stringed instruments….
The orchestra had plenty to celebrate tonight…. [having] signed a new two-year contract the day before. This…involved a pay cut for the musicians — something that…is likely to figure in the contract negotiations of more and more American orchestras in coming months. (NYT, 9/12)
a name="Communist PLP’s Answer To Capitalism’s Chamber of Horrors"></">Co"munist PLP’s Answer To Capitalism’s Chamber of Horrors
The Progressive Labor Party believes that communist revolution offers the only answer to the terrible problems confronting billions of workers around the world. In 2003, these problems include:
•Grinding poverty, which forces nearly half the planet’s population to live on the equivalent of $1-$2 a day;
•Wars for profit and world domination, which turn working-class youth into cannon fodder for the greedy rulers;
•Mass unemployment, which the rulers use cynically to discipline workers and hold down wages;
•Police-state terror, whose primary purpose is to prevent workers from organizing to fight in our class interests;
•Racism, which doubly impoverishes non-white workers with twice the jobless and poverty rates of white workers, thereby lowering conditions for ALL workers, and in the U.S. keeps over two million people in jail (the highest in the world), 2/3 of them black and Latin males.
•The special oppression and degradation of women, which, along with racism, the bosses need to super-exploit our class and keep us divided;
•A "me-first" culture of selfishness and cynicism, which misleads us into believing the lie that since things will never change, our best bet is the callous scramble for individual success.
Of all these abominations, the last is the worst. The profit system’s ideology keeps us imprisoned in this society’s chamber of horrors. Only by learning to reject capitalist ideas, capitalist values and capitalist philosophy can we throw the capitalist monkey off our collective backs. History shows that sooner or later, people rebel against poverty, terror and degradation. But if the rebellion doesn’t take a road leading to fundamental change, then even the broadest, most militant mass movements are doomed to fail.
Only communism can bring fundamental change. Only the working class, spearheaded by industrial workers and soldiers, has the potential to make this change by carrying out revolution and seizing state power. But the working class won’t organize itself spontaneously. A unique political party, a communist party, is required to lead this process.
The Progressive Labor Party exists for this reason. In our 40-year history, we have led many struggles, made many mistakes, learned a lot and witnessed the gravest defeat the international working class has ever suffered. The collapse of the old communist movement has left the world’s workers temporarily without a center and a magnet. The retreat to "free-market" capitalism in once-socialist China and the former Soviet Union has given U.S. imperialism a blank check to do its dirty work. The mayhem Bush & Co. are spreading in Iraq and Afghanistan and Clinton’s 1999 aerial war of terror in the former Yugoslavia serve as sorry examples.
But cynicism and despair aren’t the answer. Nor must we fall for the deadly illusion that a "lesser evil" politician can bring us anything but more of the same. The alternative to Bush isn’t Howard Dean, Gen. Wesley Clark or any other "white knight" the bosses try to pass off as the savior of the moment.
The alternative to Bush and the system he represents is communism, a qualitatively different system. To bring it about, the Progressive Labor Party is trying to become a qualitatively different party.
We are a Party of the working class. We consider ourselves Marxist-Leninists. Marxism is a living science. The defeats of the past were due to serious errors committed by the once-great Communist Parties of the former Soviet Union, China, and other countries. We criticize these errors and strive to learn from them. We live under a dictatorship of the bosses. Following Marx, Lenin, and other giants of the world communist movement, we continue to endorse the concept in which the working class rules, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, creating a society in which production serves the needs of all workers instead of the profits of a few bosses. This remains our long-range goal.
Our outlook is international. We believe in the idea of "one class, one goal, one flag, one Party."
We aren’t a debating society. Learning to make revolution and to seize state power requires constant practice. In politics, class struggle is the main form of practice. As we engage in all kinds of struggle, big and small, we analyze our activity and attempt to identify our errors so that we can avoid repeating them and strengthen ourselves collectively in the process. Our measure of success in all our events and actions remains the growth of our Party through recruitment and the spreading of its ideas, primarily through the circulation of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO.
Making revolution requires winning hundreds of millions of workers to fight for it. This process in turn demands that our Party develop deep, solid personal-political relationships with workers and others. In 1968, we adopted a policy of "Building a Base in the Working Class." That policy is as valid today as it was then.
Building the Party, correcting errors and winning workers require a collective approach. This society tries to overwhelm us with individualism and to drown us in subjectivity. A PLP leader remarked years ago: "If you could bottle and sell subjectivity, we’d all be billionaires." Only communist collectivity, called "Democratic Centralism," and the communist method of criticism/self-criticism can help move us beyond bourgeois navel-contemplating. We have to learn to view the Party as the main thing in our lives and the working class’s needs as paramount over our personal needs and desires. This isn’t easy, to say the least. Capitalist thinking remains programmed into us 24/7. Only the Party can lead us over a very long time to make the necessary changes in our outlook.
The working class needs a Party, and its Party needs leaders. Communist leadership must be tested, committed and capable. It must be humble and approachable in dealing with Party comrades and workers. It must also be ruthless and shrewd in dealing with the class enemy and any threat to the Party from without or within. We are developing such a cadre of leadership. We still have a long way to go.
Finally, revolution requires a long-range outlook. A year, a decade, or even an individual lifetime doesn’t provide an accurate gauge of strategic victory in the class struggle. We are dealing with the strongest, most murderous ruling class in history. Our class has sustained a severe body blow. Class consciousness remains at a low level. The bosses appear able to inflict harm at will. Yet we must not view things statically. We must not fix on things as they are at the present moment. The specter of communism continues to haunt the rulers. The lull in strikes, class struggle and rebellion is temporary. The self-defeating poisons of nationalism and religion will not mislead workers forever. Our Party and its ideas can provide the antidote.
We have a job to do: to bring revolutionary class consciousness into the mass movements and win political leadership of workers and others.
In February and March of 2003, before and during Bush & Co.’s invasion of Iraq, millions upon millions of workers and others mobilized on every continent for the largest single-event demonstrations in history. They were protesting against a particular imperialist war. However unclearly, they were also seeking an alternative to imperialist war in general. Without knowing it yet, these millions, along with millions more not yet in motion, are victims of capitalism in search of a communist party. We can and will learn to make the PLP the beacon that guides them in the historic struggle to destroy this obscene system.
"The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountains"
In June1945, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, told the following fable at the end of a party congress. It still holds value for revolutionaries and workers today.
An old man lived in northern China long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wanwu, obstructing the way. He called his sons, and hoe in hand they began to dig up these mountains with great determination. Another greybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains." The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can’t we clear them away?" Having refuted the Wise Old Man’s wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs.
Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism, the other is feudalism. The Chinese Communist Party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we, too, will touch God’s heart. Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can’t these two mountains be cleared away?
LETTERS
NYC Union Hack Helps Close School
"We can’t trust the unions any more, honey," a veteran teacher told me. She’s right. The unions are in cahoots with the bosses. And the working class certainly can’t trust the bosses to take care of us as the rising tide of fascism militarizes this country for war.
This tide is growing in education, as reflected at my high school. The latest attack was the "restructuring" of the school, another word for "closing." The main high school will be converted into six smaller schools in the same building. This will increase the number of administrators and create a "cleaner bureaucracy," according to the "positive" spin woven by our union chapter representative. The 6-fold increase of administrators will enable them to more closely monitor what’s taught in the classroom.
The announcement about the closing came in a meeting in the auditorium. Teachers were shocked as we had been told as recently as that very morning that the school "had a chance to remain open," if we "worked harder to increase the state standardized scores." The crowd grew angry, since many of our staff already had been "excessed" (read: "laid off").
One veteran teacher furiously attacked the principal, the superintendent and the education system attempting to remove our jobs. The arrogant superintendent replied, "This is the way it is and I can’t change it." Feeling the anger, he asked the union chapter leader to help out.
Standing side-by-side with the principal and superintendent, the union leader attacked teachers "who were lazy and didn’t teach" as a major reason for these moves. He was trying to divide us.
Then one worker attacked the union "representative," the first of a rising tide of working-class rage vented against the administration. The superintendent mentioned that he had told the principal about the school reconstruction three hours after he’d heard about it. But the principal had informed us that very morning we still had a chance to keep the school open — an outright lie!
We then were told that nobody would lose a job "this year," unless school registration declined. When we asked what we could do if we can’t get a position in one of the new small schools the answer was, "That’s your prerogative." In other words, it’s our problem.
The microphone was freely passed between the principal, the superintendent and the union chapter leader, displaying a coziness with each other, on the same side against the workers.
I spoke and used the example of another "reorganized" school. I indicated the school’s staff would now be divided and fractured, and that the expanded administration would use sorely-needed classrooms for office space. The meeting ended shortly afterwards. The general feeling among my co-workers was one of betrayal, that the union wouldn’t help us.
Then in the hall talking to my fellow workers, the union leader attacked me for "making people scared of losing their jobs." He was trying to cover for each concession made to the bosses. His verbal assault implied he knew much more than he was willing to share with us. The union "leaders" keep the bosses’ secrets from the workers.
I will continue to build ties with the staff, both teaching and janitorial, and will distribute more CHALLENGES to those who are leaning towards PLP, to be able to recruit them. I will also struggle to raise the class-consciousness of the workers, to make clear that this rotten system cannot be reformed – it must be smashed!
A comrade in teaching
Tenants Fight Back Against Bronx Slumlord
Landlords lease space to maximize profits from renters. They service buildings to the degree it’s profitable. If they can get away without paying for services, they will. In my six-story building in the Bronx, NY, the landlord is refusing to fix the broken elevator. Dozens of black, white, Muslim, Albanian, Caribbean, Asian, Latino, Russian and other working-class residents of two neighboring buildings signed a petition for a rent reduction and had a meeting with a woman from a housing non-profit group, to take the landlord to court.
But the elevator was only the tip of the iceberg. The landlord owns six adjacent buildings, including mine, and there are over 1,000 violations. The non-profit group didn’t know exactly how many because the computer records don’t register above 999!
Two of the buildings’ elevators have been broken for months and three residents are in wheelchairs. The landlord has only one super with a staff of three for all six buildings. During the blackout the emergency lights didn’t work. The roof leaks. The trash compactor chute doors are gone. Lights and safety mirrors are missing in the hallway and many apartments need numerous repairs.
Even if we win a rent reduction and repairs are made, under capitalism, we’re still dependant on the landlord for maintenance and services. Substandard housing compels the working class to fight for better living conditions but this is only a short-term solution. The landlord may slack off his obligations again if he can get away with it and he’ll always be profiting from our rents and from building workers’ wages. A long-term solution is communist revolution led by PLP, where workers will rid the world of landlords and establish living conditions, maintenance and building services according to our own needs, not the landlords’ and other bosses.
The fact that a multi-racial, international group of tenants has organized to fight back shows that workers can unite against the bosses. Because of long work and school hours, it wasn’t until I helped collect signatures that I really talked to anyone in my building. Now I plan to sell CHALLENGE and talk with my neighbors about organizing a long-term solution to broken elevators, missing lights and leaky roofs.
Neo
a name="Strategy for GI’s">">"trategy for GI’s
CHALLENGE correctly predicted the war in Iraq and that the bosses’ drive for control of Middle East oil is the underlying cause of the war. Recent articles have pointed out some tactical differences between Bushite neo-conservatives and Eastern Establishment bosses, while at the same time emphasizing that all these bosses support U.S. power and control in the Middle East.
CHALLENGE has clearly distinguished our Party’s communist line from the various revisionist-nationalist positions of other "left" groups. Rather than pandering to the military ("we support the troops") or writing off all GIs as hopelessly reactionary, our paper tries to win soldiers and sailors to an anti-racist, anti-imperialist and ultimately communist outlook. Recent articles include racism in the military, organizing in the army, and increasing dissatisfaction with the extended deployments in Iraq.
But I wonder if we’re not missing an opportunity to advance a communist position on the Iraq war and other imperialist adventures. During the Vietnam War, PLP distributed a pamphlet entitled, "Turn the Guns Around." That slogan may not have been the clearest (it could mean shoot yourself in the foot so you’ll be sent home). But the basic idea was a sharp expression of communist politics. That is, the most politically advanced and concrete expression of opposition to imperialist war is for soldiers to organize, turn their guns on their officers and link up with communist-led workers engaged in strikes and insurrections. This isn’t an idle fantasy. It happened during the Russian Revolution. I don’t think we’ve emphasized this enough in our headlines, articles and pamphlets around Iraq.
"Turn the Guns on Senior Officers" is one suggestion. (Maybe we should cut junior officers, e.g., those coming out of ROTC, some slack. Maybe.) Other slogans could include "Revolutionary [Communist] Mutiny" or "[Communist] Fraternization With the Enemy." Whatever the wording, we want to distinguish ourselves from the liberal-revisionist position of "Bring the Boys Home." Some version of the old "Turn the Guns Around" makes that distinction and points toward the vital role that soldiers and sailors will play in communist revolution.
Red Vet
How Can We Practice Communism under Capitalism?
Recently my wife and I were talking with friends whom we’d known for nearly 20 years. I’m retired, my wife and friend are laid off and my friend’s wife is still working. She said, "We’re all going to have to be more collective in these hard times." I asked, "How would we do that?" She replied, "We recently took in my brother and sister when they were unemployed and didn’t have a place to stay. We tried to share the house, meals and space. But it’s hard."
I remembered 25 years ago, I lived in a cooperative union housing development in San Francisco) established in the early 1960s by the ILWU (Intern’l Longshoreman and Warehouse Union) and HUD (U.S. Housing and Urban Development). It was moderate income and, multi-racial. Most members took a progressive, somewhat collective outlook on child care, education and other community problems. You could only accrue $1,000 in equity each year on your apartment. Unfortunately, after I moved members voted to take the equity off.
Money is another problem under capitalism. Several of us in PLP were discussing retirement. When I said, "I put my company retirement into an IRA" it provoked many questions and some sharp comments. Recently, like many workers, I had to dip into my savings.
You wish to be communists, but the reality is we live under capitalism. So what do you do? It would be good to hear from other CHALLENGE readers on this.
Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE-DESAFIO.
A West Coast comrade
Red Leadership in Mass Organizations
An earlier article on South Africa saying the anti-Apartheid struggle was "co-opted by black rulers" missed the point. It overlooked the fact that the African National Congress (ANC) was a bourgeois nationalist umbrella organization, including the South African Communist Party as a leading and active member. The valiant struggle put black capitalists in power while allowing capitalism to resume its exploitation without the problem of international sanctions, and leaving black workers in misery. This same umbrella coalition approach also preserved capitalism in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Does anyone know of literature showing what it was like for communists working in those or other umbrella groups? What pressures did other members of the umbrella groups exert? Did the Soviet Union actively discourage communists from pursuing a revolutionary line, or was it more a lack of revolutionary perspective? Did Communists worry about being overwhelmed in these movements but were unable to prevent it?
This could be useful since we’re trying to do revolutionary work in mass organizations whose perspectives are fixing or reforming capitalism. Obviously, some things have changed. There’s no longer a Soviet Union facing Western capitalists. And the Party is not a partner in the mass organization, though we are trying to exert leadership in various caucuses and even establish branches of mass organizations. Some historical guidance, either positive or negative, would be useful.
West Coast Comrade
State Hospital Sickens Workers
I work in a New York State hospital, where new buildings are being erected with new offices, new security systems and more sophisticated computers; with loads of money being paid to contractors.
Meanwhile, workers’ salaries are ridiculously low; retirees’ jobs are not replaced; the bosses don’t replace workers on vacations or taking sick days, forcing others to work twice as hard; and now you must pay more for doctor visits.
A cleaning worker with eight years experience earns $23,000 a year; a supervisor in the same area gets $34,000; a departmental head, $60,000; and the president is paid more than the rest combined. The bosses get the most money and do the least. (That’s how capitalism works.) In this hospital students perform dangerous experiments in the labs, some even risking death. Last December, a lab worker took his own life, jumping from the eighth floor. A co-worker said, "Who can take these low wages, lousy treatment, and many demands made on us? This is no life..." Our biggest problem is job cuts, putting more pressure on those remaining.
In the end, the bosses have nothing good to offer workers, only war and misery. The military gets tens of billions while health, education and housing are reduced to rubble. But workers have a different plan. We’re bringing communist ideas to workers, discussing war, imperialism and fascism. We’re increasing the number of CHALLENGE readers and will struggle ceaselessly to organize a system where workers can live without exploitation or oppression. Capitalism and all its lackeys must be destroyed.
A Brooklyn comrade
CHALLENGE As An Organizer
When I was a union leader in Latin America, my union received CHALLENGE regularly. It was a bit difficult for me to understand how a communist party inside an imperialist country could have such organized ideas. I liked the ideas of one party, one class, one flag, proletarian internationalism and the direct struggle for communism, although this last idea wasn’t as clear to me. I contacted Party members which increased my knowledge of the political line.
If it wasn’t for CHALLENGE I would have never met the Party and these ideas. Today I’m an active member and struggle every day to organize more workers around our ideas. In my case CHALLENGE was a political organizer. I know there are many other workers who are tired of this miserable system of misery and would welcome PLP’s revolutionary ideas.
A while ago we talked to a worker who we met at a march. He barely knew how to read or write. When he joined our study group and didn’t understand many things — like the Russian or Chinese Revolutions, he would study these events five and ten hours a week. One day we attended a PLP training school and this worker was making the main report. Other workers asked him which university he had attended and he replied, "The PLP university"; "everything I know, I learned in the Party." Nowadays he’s an outstanding leader, loved by his co-workers, an organizer for communist ideas.
CHALLENGE is a paper that teaches revolutionary, political ideas, analyzing the past and present with the goal of advancing to a communist future. In our study groups and discussions we must help each other in the readings of dialectics and politics to advance understanding of our ideas.
A comrade
Bosses Closing VA Hospitals While Casualties Soar
I was invited to testify for some veterans' groups at a New York City Council hearing to prevent the closings of veterans' hospitals here and around the state. This would dump all their patients into an already overcrowded Brooklyn facility.
Although I had protested outside City Hall many times, I had never been inside. I arrived early to get through any "terrorist" red tape. I was escorted up an opulent circular marble staircase past aristocrat-like statues and furniture placed on a plush red velvet carpet leading to the Council chambers. Its ornate dome made the room look like a palace.
As the first called to testify, I said veterans' hospitals should be expanded, not closed. NYC supplies the largest percentage of GI's in Iraq, suffering the greatest number of casualties, which the government has grossly under-reported. I said we should focus on the real reasons for the war. I quoted a soldier in Iraq who declared, "There is no reason for us to be out here! We're protecting the oil is all, and as for the war supposedly ending, it hasn't." I suggested that one sure way to protect veterans' health was to bring the troops home now, fight for jobs and against the closings of veterans' hospitals.
Another veteran said that although they were 9% of the U.S. population, they comprised 35% of the homeless, attesting to the lack of care for the emotional wounds of their war trauma. He predicted many veterans' deaths if the hospitals close. The wait for a doctor's appointment is now six months or more. There's an even longer wait, overcrowding and inaccessibility for disabled veterans who now would be forced to travel long distances, discouraging them from seeking help and increasing their depression.
A member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War recited a chant they use when marching against the war: "If they tell you to go, there's something you should know; they wave the flag when you attack; when you come home they turn their back." He said, "It is hypocrisy to wave yellow ribbons and say you 'support the troops' and then close hospitals that the wounded and disabled would need. They did it to the atomic vets after World War II [those ordered into the A-Bomb testing area as an "experiment" - Editor]. They did it to Vietnam veterans sick from Agent Orange/dioxin. They did it to the veterans of the 1991 war with Gulf War Syndrome." He asked, "Will they be able to do it again?"
As I was leaving the hearing it suddenly hit me that the place looked just like the Winter Palace I had seen in the movies about the Russian Revolution. I started to envision thousands of unemployed, veterans, immigrants and city workers charging up the marble stairs and smashing all those symbols of this bloody capitalist system.
Korean War vet
Win Immigrants to Communism
The CHALLENGE editorial (9/24) on the "Freedom Ride for Immigrants" unmasks the warmaking and fascist plans of the bosses and their lackeys. But it omits PLP'ers experiences in the last 30 years of giving political leadership to the immigrant section of the working class in the shops and the fields. Every Party effort in spreading communist politics among immigrants has been supported by these workers. The editorial didn't show the Party's potential for giving communist leadership to these mass movements promoted by the bosses. Nor does it take into account the views of workers involved in them or present a plan for the latter's political advancement.
Immigrant workers are attracted to the Freedom Ride and other similar events built by the politicians because of their desperation and vulnerability. But our practice has shown that these workers are winnable to our ideas. To win them we need many ingredients. An analysis of the situation is necessary but not sufficient; we need to take their conditions and struggles seriously, so they can take our communist politics seriously. Despite any disagreement with our ideas, through a process of developing close ties with them, sooner rather than later they will seek our leadership and our Party. This is my experience in many years as a communist organizer in the labor movement.
Where will the millions of workers that will join the Party come from? Mainly from the mass organizations and movements manipulated by the bosses and their politicians. The bosses' ability to impose their politics is partly because we don't make enough of an effort to win the masses to our ideas - underestimating the workers' potential and overestimating the influence of the sellouts. If we try and fail to stop the bosses' plan, at least we'll win many workers to the party.
If the bosses' plan is to win immigrant workers to become cannon fodder, this gives us an opportunity to win more soldiers to communism. Day after day immigrants die, victims of unemployment, racism and the Immigration Service. According to official figures, 430 immigrant workers die each year, more than have died in Iraq so far. What have we done to build a movement against these murders?
The Freedom Ride can be transformed into a movement against this racist genocide and against imperialist war. The goal of this letter is to encourage those comrades in the Party who are seriously trying to give leadership with our communist ideas inside the mass movement led by the capitalists.
An immigrant worker
a name="Leni Riefenstahl, Art for the Führer’s Sake"><" /"Leni Riefenstahl, Art for the Führer’s Sake
The German moviemaker Leni Riefenstahl, who made films that glorified Nazism, died this month at 101. Some bourgeois critics praised her work as high art, trying to distinguish it from her fascist politics. But for communists, the issue isn’t whether to deny or dispute anyone’s talent but in each instance to resolve what’s primary. Of course talented people like Riefenstahl can have fascist politics. It doesn’t negate their talent, but it shouldn’t elevate that talent to an artificial equality with the political ramifications of their work. What’s primary about the movies "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" is not their cinematic artistry but the fact that they were clearly Nazi propaganda films, just as what’s primary about "Potemkin" is not the Soviet director Eisenstein’s brilliant film-making but the fact that he used his brilliance to serve the revolution.
Actually, the one inspiring thing is that Riefenstahl never managed to live down her Nazi connections; the almost 60 years she spent saying she was "just an artist" didn’t really convince anyone. Even though she mounted a career as a still photographer, she was never able to work in film again. And even her still photography depicted the same sort of fascist glorification of certain types of physiques — in photos of people in the Sudan — as she exhibited in "Olympia." In the U.S., D. W. Griffith, despite using many innovative techniques, never lived down the blatant pro-KKK bigotry of his movie "Birth of a Nation," and his "reply" film "Intolerance" never obliterated the taint of racism.
A couple of years ago, PLPers in LA joined others to protest the presenting of a special Oscar to Elia Kazan. He never totally lived down naming names to McCarthy, even though "On the Waterfront" is accepted as a great film (it conveniently glorifies Marlon Brando’s character for naming names, albeit naming criminals to the police). The point is that Riefenstahl, Griffith, Kazan and others like them always had — and under capitalism will have — followers willing to make a rather artificial separation between art and politics, and between art and the artist, and who will acknowledge their artistic accomplishments and political failings at the same time.
We can’t fall into that trap. A good line in a bad movie once said that what defines who we are is not our abilities, but our choices. These people chose to use their talent to serve fascists. That must be condemned, and condemned as primary over whatever talent they may have had. It might become a little more problematic with artists whose work didn’t have a blatantly political message but who had reactionary personal lives, like Salvador Dali, who had close relations with Spain’s fascist Franco.
But when intellectuals under capitalism decide to put their ability and training at the service of reactionary and oppressive ideas, the artificial separation of art and artist becomes nothing more than a rationalization for selling out. Riefenstahl was a pig, and we need to point that out consistently. With people trained in bourgeois intellectualism, that precise wording might not win them over, but that’s the essence of it. Riefenstahl shilled for the Nazis, and even if she did it well, ultimately that’s what counts (and, in one sense, makes it even worse). Her lame excuses, and her movies, could never — and hopefully will never — obscure that.
A Moviegoer
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$87 BILLION FOR WARS
While Racist Unemploymewnt Rages On
A funny thing happened to George W. Bush on his way back from the aircraft carrier where he announced the end of the major fighting in Iraq. UN headquarters in Baghdad was destroyed, police headquarters was attacked and more GI's have been killed since Bush's Hollywood theatrics than before. In Iraq, thousands are protesting in the streets, the lights aren't working, the oil isn't paying for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq, and apparently Islamic terrorists are tripping over themselves to join Saddam's Ba'athist remnants to "bring it on" to U.S. imperialism. Meanwhile, Bush's "road map to peace" was torn to shreds in an explosion of suicide bombers and Sharon's missiles. And the Taliban and al Qaeda's holy warriors are back in control of chunks of Afghanistan.
Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and the Middle East said, "There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together. We're in danger of failing." (Washington Post, 9/5)
On top of this, the U.S. economy is plagued by soaring deficits,two days before Bush's speech another 93,000 jobs disappeared. U.S. troops and their families are less than enthusiastic and the F.B.I. is warning that more terrorist attacks may not be far off. "mission accomplished" is starting to look more like "mission impossible."
Against this backdrop, Bush went on TV September 7, to start his search for an additional $87 BILLION to continue the occupation of Iraq. With hat in hand, the "Go-It-Alone" gang is on its way back to the U.N. as well as to old Saddam Ba'ath army members who want to rebuild a security force.
According to the New York Times (editorial, 9/8), "Washington has been compelled to recognize that it cannot succeed in securing Iraq alone and badly needs much more United Nations help. Yet the White House still resists paying the necessary price of accepting broad U.N. authority over rebuilding Iraq's institutions and economy.... Realistic negotiations are needed with France, Germany and Russia over the terms of a new Security Council resolution that could open the door to expanded international peacekeeping forces and financial help with the huge reconstruction costs that lie ahead."
This is what was at the heart of the squabble among the bosses before the invasion, whether to create a U.S. empire by ruling alone, or whether to lead a World War 2 FDR-style "grand alliance" except this time with France, Germany, Russia and the U.N. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is regaining the upper hand in this fight, but that's only half the battle.
At least as important is the fact that Bush has failed to win the working class, inside and outside the armed forces, to sacrifice for Exxon Mobil's oil profits. "While Mr. Bush is getting more specific about the numbers, he has yet to really tell Americans that they will have to make sacrifices to pay the bill." (NYT, 9/8) The main wing of the ruling class is pushing hard to win the population to a sense of duty and sacrifice so that U.S. imperialism can kill millions more in unending wars to keep the profits flowing. The Bush bashing will escalate to a fever pitch up until the 2004 presidential elections, but workers should beware the siren's song.
On October 25, there will be a mass March on Washington to End the Occupation of Iraq. Like the King-Dream march last August and the upcoming Immigrant's Freedom Ride, the main wing of the ruling class is hoping to use the anti-racist, anti-imperialist sentiments of the masses and lead them to the voting booth. Through the Democratic Party and the unions, the churches and community organizations, campus and student groups, they hope to mobilize the working class to support their deadly plans.
On our jobs, in our schools, communities and barracks, we should begin mobilizing for this march to challenge the rulers for the political leadership of the masses. By mobilizing our co-workers and students to participate under the political leadership of PLP, we can have a big impact on the march and those we bring to it, helping to energize the movement for communist revolution.
`Freedom Ride' Ploy to Win Immigrants as Cannon-fodder
The "Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride" is a campaign conceived by the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class to win the "hearts and minds" of millions of immigrant workers and others to a more inclusive patriotism. It's organized by a coalition of unions, business, churches, students and Democratic and Republican officials. Patriotism is central to winning the population to willingly sacrifice "blood and treasure" for the U.S. bosses' wars for world domination and control of oil. Patriotism is also crucial for implementing the fascist Homeland Security.
But 11 million undocumented workers -- the coalition's estimate -- cannot feel patriotic when they are excluded from citizenship. Neither can their millions of U.S.-born children and relatives nor the legal residents who resent anti-immigrant bashing.
The liberal U.S. bosses think this must change because "...hard-working, taxpaying immigrant workers cannot become full participants in this country without a national commitment to legalization." ("United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship," published by the Brookings Institute, a liberal bosses' think-tank) Their Freedom Ride coalition proclaims: "The goal of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is to help draw a new map to the road to citizenship."
Immigrant workers and their U.S.-born children are a substantial part of the U.S. population, comprising 40% or more in major cities like Los Angeles and Miami. They also play a key role in industries from agriculture to services to manufacturing. Now U.S. rulers need to integrate them more aggressively into the military.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. bosses' position as the world's number one imperialist power is increasingly being challenged. Both Republican and Democrat officials openly state that the U.S. must crush that opposition. Military supremacy with its huge expenditures and control of Middle Eastern oil are crucial to their strategy. This means war and more war.
But the U.S. military is already stretched thin. Anger is growing as GI's face stiffening resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan. The liberal U.S. rulers are calling for "more boots on the ground" to control Iraq's oil and to expand the fight for U.S. domination of the Middle East. Where will these soldiers come from?
One source is the millions of undocumented workers they're planning to "legalize," the millions to whom they'll grant citizenship and millions more of their sons and daughters. The vast majority are Latin Americans. Statistics show that the group currently most willing to "re-up" is Latino males. "United We Serve" suggests that "National service...could be part of a renewed discussion about the need to acknowledge the contributions immigrants make to American society. Why not make a two-year commitment to national service one pathway to legalization? Union leaders and employers together could identify eligible current and future workers for screening by appropriate authorities." (p.85)
National Service is the liberal bosses' program to move the U.S. population to "civic action," to sacrifice for the "national interest" like serving in the military and in Homeland Security. "National service is essential to democratic citizenship," states "United We Serve." It also suggests that 3.8 million felons could become full citizens again by completing two years of national service, yet another ploy to force mainly black workers, victimized by the bosses' racist cops and injustice system, to serve in the military and Homeland Security.
Even if all demands for immigrant workers were met, they would not be freer in the "land of opportunity." Almost 50% of all Latino families live below the official poverty level and earn the lowest wages. Many lack medical care. This is the future U.S. bosses have in store for all U.S. workers.
Under the guise of demanding "good things" for undocumented workers, the union hacks and politicians (who were the most virulent anti-immigrant spokespersons), are trying to seduce immigrant workers and their well-meaning supporters into goose-stepping for the U.S. bosses and fighting their imperialist wars. We should not fall into this trap. Patriotism is an ideology invented by capitalism to serve its needs for war and fascism. Workers owe allegiance to no boss and no country.
The working class has no borders which is another capitalist invention to stake out the territories and pit workers who they control and exploit against each other. Our interest lies in unifying the international working class under one flag, one Party and one political line in order to overthrow this racist murderous system and build a communist society based on serving the needs of our class. We will participate in the Freedom Ride to urge participants to join PLP and fight to end the profit system and its exploitation of all workers. We are confident that immigrants and their children who are pushed into national service will be won to fight against the bosses' imperialist war and fascist homeland security and for communist revolution.
Kissinger's 9/11:
`73 Coup in Chile
Early in August, the leadership of the CUT (Labor Federation) organized a general strike here in Chile, but in a way that wouldn't really affect the interests of the ruling class. On TV, Martínez, head of the CUT, said the strike wasn't against the government but against the "economic model" imposed on workers and the companies that were taking advantage of it to attack the working class. Martínez exposed himself as a class traitor and a liar since the government supports the economic model. No wonder the working class is confused and demoralized.
September 11 is also a sad day for workers and their allies here in Chile. Three decades ago on that day a group of terrorists trained and backed by the U.S. ruling class caused the murder of thousands [and the torture of hundreds of thousands]. No, it wasn't Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fundamentalists trained by the CIA and its Saudi and Pakistani buddies to wage anti-communist jihad against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. This time the terrorists were anti-communist Christian fundamentalists led by Chilean General Pinochet, the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, right-wing Cuban exiles from Miami and other fascists.
They were all directed and financed by the CIA and Henry Kissinger (Richard Nixon's National Security chief and soon-to-become his Secy. of State). The coup overthrew the democratically-elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende. Among the murdered were some U.S. citizens (as depicted in the movie "Missing" starring Jack Lemon). It was just prior to this coup that Kissinger had observed he saw no reason why "a certain country" [Chile] should be allowed to "go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." (Harper's Magazine, Feb. 2001)
Pinochet and Kissinger are still around and haven't paid for their terrorist crimes. Lagos, Chile's current President, is a right-wing "socialist." He's not even interested in pro-working class reforms as was Allende. Rather he's one of Bush's best allies in the Southern Cone.
The "far left" from Allende's time has also changed. In the pre-coup years, The Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was the biggest and most militant group. Pinochet's fascist secret police (DINA) killed MIR's leader, Miguel Enríquez in a shootout a year or so after the coup. Now the "new" MIR doesn't mention workers' power or even revolutionary socialism. It defends liberal diversity and multi-culturalism. Some of the "old MIR's" former leaders want the group to disband, saying "things have changed." Enríquez's son is now senior partner of a production company. I heard him recently on TV; he sounded like an up-and-coming CEO.
All these politicians and sellouts are now just interested in making sure capitalism functions smoothly without the disruptions of the Allende or Pinochet era. Political marketing is now their MO. Meanwhile, conditions for most workers are going from bad to worse, as the general strike showed, despite the CUT leaders' treachery.
Comrade in the Southern Cone
Cops Protect Fellow Nazis--Again
INDIANAPOLIS, IN, Aug. 24 -- Over 200 anti-racists protested against the 30 Nazis on the statehouse steps today. The young and vigorous anti-racist crowd enthusiastically followed PLP chants such as, "Death, Death, Death to the Nazis! Power, Power, Power to the Workers!" PLP members sold 120 CHALLENGES and distributed 250 leaflets. The anti-fascist youth listened to our communist speeches and said they were glad we were there, even people who disagreed with us. One young man in dread-locks told his friend, "That's it, that's the paper." Turned out he had been reading it on and off for years. A Latin youth gave us $5 for DESAFIO. A student told us he would print the PLP leaflet in his school newspaper. Although the Nazis were allowed to plug their loudspeakers into the Indiana State Capitol Building, the cops prevented CHALLENGE sellers from entering the rally site with our literature.
This particular group of fascists had organized among disaffected young people here for months. They advanced a strong anti-immigrant message both here and in Berwyn, Illinois in June, where PLP-led forces beat down several Nazi supporters. The anti-immigrant message is one that the fascists and capitalist ruling class have always used, but have intensified since Sept. 11, leading to dire consequences for the working class. People of Middle Eastern/South Asian/Arab descent have borne the brunt of anti-immigrant attacks, as have Latin immigrants. The capitalists benefit from these racist divisions among the working class, fueled by the Nazis as well as mainstream politicians. The bosses lay off workers and shut down plants and then get workers to blame each other for what the bosses have done.
Since 9/11, the U.S. government has forced all immigrants from certain countries to report to the Immigration Service. Thousands have been held and/or deported in this racist round-up. Yet not one member of a racist militia group was subject to this kind of treatment after one of their members blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, killing 167. Racism will never be ended as long as capitalism exists, and capitalism will never be destroyed if we don't fight racism. That's why PLP continues to lead the attack against racism in all its forms, and is always there when the Klan and Nazis come to town.
After the demonstration, the police led the crowd on a circuitous route, using their horses and tactical teams to divide the anti-racists into smaller groups, leading many to see more clearly the racist purpose of the Klan in Blue. Our task is to channel the enthusiastic spirit of these and other young people into the building of a mass revolutionary PLP which can end this racist capitalist system once and for all.
Voting Can't End Capitalism's Racist Nightmare
WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug. 23 -- Today thousands of anti-racists marched to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, considered a turning point in the civil rights struggle. It was marked by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and, combined with the militant black rebellions of the 1960s, led to the passage of civil rights legislation. Today's march organizers were launching a voter registration movement to kick out Bush and the Republicans as the way to stop increasing racist attacks.
In contrast to this official "vote Democrat" line, PLP organized for this event around revolutionary ideas, pointing to capitalism as the source of racism, calling for a mass, violent revolution against the profit system. Fighting racism is central to such a movement. We distributed thousands of flyers and hundreds of CHALLENGES at Howard University and the surrounding community, exposing the losing strategy of relying on the bosses' politicians.
Today we marched from Howard U. to the Lincoln Memorial assembly point with the By Any Means Necessary movement, which recently had organized major protests at the Supreme Court against the attack on affirmative action. Our banners and slogans were very popular with other marchers as our militant contingent joined the protesters on the Mall.
Another PLP contingent joined with the People's Coalition for Police Accountability in circulating a petition and leaflet demanding the firing and indictment of racist Prince George's County cop Charles Ramseur, who shot an unarmed young black man in the back, paralyzing him for life. Over 250 marchers signed the petition. Hundreds more flyers and CHALLENGES were distributed.
PLP's militant, grassroots, revolutionary strategy contrasted with the ineffective and misleading electoral strategy of the event's speakers. A great number of marchers were open to revolutionary, militant ideas, similar to the 1963 march.
In 1963, the Democratic Party, the Kennedy's and the unions, which used their funding to control the agenda of the major civil rights organizations, toned down the politics of the march. Mainstream civil rights leaders like King accepted this situation because of their limited reformist politics.
The leadership of that march rewrote the speech of John Lewis, then leader of the more militant SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), to keep the speeches free of any revolutionary spirit. Ironically, on that very day, Kennedy signed legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress breaking a nation-wide railroad strike.
Malcolm X labeled the event the "Farce on Washington." He declared that the mass of black workers and youth were militant and revolutionary, saying the '63 march could have been a pre-revolutionary activity, sparking militant actions to shut down the country. He argued that this movement had been hijacked and derailed by the Liberal Establishment's control of the main civil rights organizations.
PLP hails the bold spirit of the 1963 marchers and identifies with the anti-racist, activist spirit of today's participants. We supported the militant black rebellions in the 1960s as the way to go. (PLP members were arrested and accused of being behind the 1964 Harlem Rebellion.) But the mis-leadership of this current movement is still trying to co-opt our brothers and sisters into dangerous electoral and legislative traps. Act to spread revolutionary ideas within the mass movement so that racism can finally be crushed with communist revolution!
Building a Revolutionary Party:
Make Communism the Voice of the People
Communists aim to become tribunes of the people, particularly the working class. Making communism the voice of the workers has been a challenge at this large healthcare institution. Years ago we began with one organizer advancing the outlook of building a mass PLP and making CHALLENGE a newspaper read by, and speaking for, thousands of workers here. That remains a difficult goal, but progress has been made and lessons have been learned.
Base-building is the key ingredient. Developing close personal/political ties with many workers, built around CHALLENGE and leadership of class struggle, has led to several black and Latin workers joining the Party, and an expanded CHALLENGE circulation. Being socially and politically involved with the workers raises everyone's morale and enriches our "personal" lives while building the Party.
In the early days, Party organizing was based mainly on socializing with workers at lunch, after work, in bridal and baby showers, funerals, cabarets, picnics, sporting events, alcohol and drug abuse interventions and exploring other opportunities to build solid ties with the workers as we gained confidence in each other.
After years of struggle, our CHALLENGE distribution dramatically improved when we recruited a black worker who made this her mission. She helped recruit another black worker and they led a struggle to increase CHALLENGE circulation. CHALLENGE is the thread that ties together our base-building and class-struggle fights.
Years of communist activity in the union involves us in almost all aspects of the workers' fights: grievances, contract negotiations, organizing and participating in marches on personnel and CEO offices. In 2002 we linked the fight against the Iraq war to the bosses' effort to take back our pay raise. During that fight, non-Party workers boldly posted PLP flyers everywhere. ["Fight all OIL WAR cuts! Fight for Communism!"] PLP members and our base have been continuously at the heart of almost every struggle.
Now workers want to know what the Party thinks on almost every question affecting them. We have friendly relations with a broad spectrum of workers -- from ex-Marine Corps sergeants to members of the Nation of Islam. A recent hiring wave of part-timers brought in many younger workers. Many veteran workers have introduced them to the PLP delegate. Our most immediate task is recruiting and developing these younger black, Latin and women workers.
An important part of our plan will be to link the bosses' endless oil wars to the fights on the job. Our August PLP newsletter exposed how the billions of tax dollars spent on the bosses' military could provide healthcare for virtually the entire working class. Future CHALLENEGE articles will describe our experience in pursuing these goals.
Internationalism Elects PLP Steward
Cleaners in an SEIU local elected a PLP member for shop steward this August. These workers come from many different nations -- Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Somalia, etc. Many fled from economic and political oppression caused by U.S. imperialism, only to face anti-immigrant racism here. A supervisor physically assaulted a Somali worker, sparking a grievance against this racist pig. Somali workers are singled out for racist attack because they're Muslims in the post-9/11 U.S.
The workers who are regular CHALLENGE readers played a big role in getting our comrade elected. Many papers are distributed at this job. We are trying to reach as many international workers as possible. While electing a PLP member is good, the best response to the racism and wars of capitalism is for many of these workers to join PLP and to bring our revolutionary communist politics to their friends and relatives, from San Salvador to Mogadishu to Chicago to NYC to Managua.
The only way we will get justice for our class and an end to racist oppression is through communist revolution.
A Comrade
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U.S. `Democracy' Hits Iraq -- Arrest Jobless Marchers
On July 29, hundreds of unemployed workers, led by the Union of the Unemployed (UOTU), marched to the office of the U.S. puppet Governing Council to demand jobs and unemployment benefits. The UOTU is Iraq's fastest growing labor organization. At least four million Iraqi workers are unemployed in a country of 25 million (equal to 46 million unemployed in the U.S.). They erected a tent encampment outside the council's gates, and refused to disperse as U.S. troops had ordered. At 1:00 A.M. the troops attacked the workers and arrested 21, including Union leader, Kacem Madi.
The UOTU says it will continue its demonstrations. One arrested Union member, Ali Djaafri, 58, said his experience was "very humiliating. At no other time during the occupation has my resentment towards the U.S. soldiers been that strong."
Millions of Iraqi workers are facing extreme poverty brought on by the Bush gang's pre-emptive invasion. Many used to provide vital services like health and education, working for government-owned enterprises that have been closed down and slated for U.S.-directed privatization.
The Bush administration has given contracts to U.S. corporations with long anti-labor records. All have fought unions and 8 of the 18 have no unions. They include Stevedoring Services of America, which helped lock out the West Coast longshoremen last year, and MCI Worldcom, which used bankruptcy and fraudulent records to wipe out retirement savings for thousands of their workers, along with $2.6 billion in public pension funds.
Haliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root are using subcontractors that bring their own workforce into Basra for repairs and reconstruction while experienced Iraqi workers are frozen out. The head of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions declared, "War makes privatization easy: first you destroy the society and then you let the corporations rebuild it."
When Bush, Rumsfeld and "presstitutes" like the New York Times' Thomas Friedman talk about "bringing democracy to Iraq," they mean the capitalist brand that criminalizes workers demonstrating against unemployment.
Workers everywhere should support their Iraqi brothers and sisters. We should raise the issue in our unions and hold protest actions at federal buildings.
Prior to the CIA-engineered coup in 1963, which later brought Saddam Hussein to power, Iraq had a vibrant communist-led labor movement. Iraqi workers have a long history of supporting communist politics. However, the Iraqi Communist Party has long since become a reactionary force, even joining the U.S.-puppet Iraqi Governing Council. We don't know the politics of UOTU's leadership, but Iraqi workers must rebuild the revolutionary communist movement to fight the U.S.-UK occupation forces, Hussein's Ba'athists, Islamic fundamentalists and all imperialists. This Herculean task is the only way out of the endless bloodbath spreading across the Middle East. It is the only way the international working class will be able to eventually destroy the war criminals in the White House and Wall Street and establish a worker-run communist society, free of profits and bosses.
China's Capitalist `Success' Rooted In Slave Wages for Millions
In 1971, China's Mao-Zedong wined, dined and starting doing business with Kissinger and Nixon, the so-called ping-pong diplomacy, so named because the deal-making was preceded by a "cultural exchange" involving competition between U.S. and Chinese ping pong teams. CHALLENGE said it opened the doors to capitalism in China and called it a tremendous betrayal of the international working class, particularly those in Vietnam who were being bombed "back to the stone age" by U.S. bosses.
Many attacked us, saying "how dare PLP criticize Mao and the Chinese communists," but history has proven us correct. China is fast becoming the manufacturing center of world capitalism. The Boston-based New Balance company now manufactures 6 million pairs of shoes -- 60% of its total annual production -- in China.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Snow just visited Beijing to pressure the government to "float" its currency, the yuan, which is now pegged to the dollar and was told, "Tough luck!" The Chinese bosses know well that a low-valued yuan, combined with the super-exploitation of Chinese workers, are enabling profits in what they call "market socialism" -- capitalism -- to bloom.
Some companies like healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, and Ikea are riding the Chinese boom while others are being left behind, particularly the Southern-based textile industry and some smaller scrap metal outfits. Cheap imports from China are hurting these industries, causing mass layoffs here. Even should China float its currency, increasing its value, it will still have a major weapon: the world's largest pool of low-paid workers. The Wall Street Journal (9/4) says this is the main threat "not only [to] manufacturers in the U.S., but also those in Mexico, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in Asia."
Mexico's maquiladora industry is being hit hard. China's super-exploitation of labor, coupled with the world economic crisis and its damaging effect on the U.S. market -- which has consequently decreased its imports from Mexico -- has led to the loss of 250,000 jobs in Mexico in the last 12 months.
Ironically, by not "floating" the yuan, China's bosses are helping to keep the U.S. economy afloat. China's huge trade deficit with the U.S. and its consequent accumulation of dollars has led China to buy U.S. treasury bills, "helping the savings-short U.S. economy [to] keep spending and investing, and keeps U.S. long-term interest rates from rising."(WSJ)
But capitalism, even "market-socialism" style, has its limits. Already, China's capitalism is "overheating," mainly in the banking and housing business. (New York Times, 9/4)
Eventually the deal-making diplomacy which betrayed the Vietnamese workers fighting U.S. imperialism, will turn into a trade war and another shooting war. This is the nature of the capitalist beast, whether labeled free market, globalization or "market socialism." Our job is to rebuild the international communist movement, from Beijing to Detroit, learning from the strengths and mistakes of the old movement, and fight for a world without any capitalists. Join the PLP!
Heat Deaths = Capitalist Murder
The recent heat wave in Paris and other European cities was the worst in decades. But it wasn't just uncomfortable. It was deadly. The media focused primarily on France where literally thousands of "excess" deaths occurred, meaning death rates were much higher than usual.
The exact figures for this public health catastrophe have been hard to come by. First estimates were between 1,500 and 3,000 deaths. The most recent estimate, based on funeral home reports, is over 13,000.
Most deaths occurred among older people, from their 70's to 90's. Some were living alone, without air conditioning. But one report suggests that half of these deaths occurred among nursing home residents. What are we to make of such a catastrophe occurring in a developed country at the beginning of the 21st century?
Heat death is common in many countries. Every summer in the U. S., for example, some older people die from hyperthermia (extreme elevation of body temperature). Numbers vary, depending on how bad heat waves are in various cities.
But heat death is completely preventable. With adequate hydration (i.e., drinking enough liquids) and cooling, no one has to die from hyperthermia.
The technical knowledge exists to prevent these deaths. But capitalism fails to provide the basic living conditions -- the right kind of housing, air conditioning, social supports, and emergency medical services -- that could prevent thousands of hyperthermia deaths each year.
Yes, sometimes it gets hot. The question is, when this happens what do the bosses' governments do to ensure that older people, living alone or in nursing homes, get the fluid and cooling they need? And you can bet that in France few of these older persons came from society's upper echelons. They were likely to be retired workers, shopkeepers or farmers. The ruling class takes care of its own, even in the worst of "natural" heat waves.
Government officials hypocritically blamed families and doctors for going on vacation. Everyone knows that a large percentage of French people take long vacations in August -- vacations, incidentally, that workers fought for. So how come provisions weren't made to increase hospital staffing and monitor conditions in nursing homes? How come the public health system didn't make arrangements to look in on older people living alone?
The fact is, under capitalism these elementary preventive measures are not high priorities. In their absence, when extreme "natural" conditions occur (heat waves, earthquakes, floods), people die.
Over 150 years ago, communist leader and theoretician Frederick Engels described the early deaths faced by Irish and other workers in the early 19th Century as "social murder." The heat deaths in France and other developed countries are another example of social murder. The profit-hungry bosses have caused these deaths just as surely as if they had sent these older workers to gas chambers or bombed their nursing homes.
Capitalism has a long, miserable history of failing to protect workers against natural disasters. The best "public health" measure to prevent social murder is communist revolution. Under communism, older workers will not die alone -- dehydrated, disoriented and burning up in apartments and nursing homes. Communism can and will provide housing conditions with built-in, round-the-clock social supports so that heat death becomes one more atrocity of the past.
Chicago County Hospitals are Really Sick
Chicago, IL, Sept. 9 -- Since the Members First reform slate was elected to lead SEIU Local 73 Health Care Workers Union last July, management has been testing the strength of this new leadership.
In the County Hospital system, the bosses are taking workers to pre-disciplinary hearings and firing people for being sick or making work errors that result from working under-staffed and under stress. Meanwhile, many vacant positions go unfilled, slated to be eliminated at the end of this budget year. Many workers who recently retired under the Early Retirement Initiative have not been replaced. Instead the bosses use Temporary and Agency workers. Favoritism is used in making promotions. Union members are in an uphill struggle trying to protect the few rights we have in our contract.
Mt. Sinai Hospital defaulted on its mortgage payment and laid off the engineers in favor of a sub-contractor. When workers marched on the boss and explained how they had dedicated their working life to this hospital, the CEO replied, "You were paid well for that work."
At the brand new Stroger Hospital (formerly Cook County Hospital), patients wait for days in the emergency room until a bed is available or they are transferred to Oak Forest or Provident, far from where most of them live. Many are stressed out from waiting so long and some have psychological issues. There are too few beds for medicine and surgery patients. Many patients must wait overly long in the recovery area because their beds were given to someone else while they were in surgery.
The Pharmacy often runs out of medications. Patients are sometimes discharged without their medications, forcing them to go to a drugstore and pay full price -- which they can't afford -- which is why they come to Stroger in the first place. Many patients wait in the Pharmacy 18 to 24 hours because they can't afford another round-trip carfare.
Countless grievances are being filed, but capitalism can never meet the needs of unemployed, sick workers who have been used and abused by the system. While Bush seeks another $87 BILLION to tighten his oily grip on Iraq, County hospitals will always be understaffed and the union will always have more fights than it can possibly handle.
We need more direct work actions instead of waiting weeks and months under the grievance system. In the struggle for decent health care for our patients, a safe workplace and jobs that can provide for our families, we can help workers understand capitalism and learn how communism will provide jobs and health care for all. Several CHALLENGE readers are participating in PLP study groups. The union is one avenue through which workers can fight back under capitalism. PLP is the blueprint for the communist world that will provide for all workers' needs.
FROM THE FLINT
SIT-DOWN TO UAW, INC.
FLINT, MI, Sept. 2 -- The United Auto Workers (UAW) union unveiled a $350,000 monument commemorating the great Flint sit-down strike in which workers seized and occupied General Motors plants for 44 days and nights from December 1936 to February 1937. At the Labor Day ceremony, UAW President Gettelfinger described how the strike was preceded by more than a year of agitation and organization by "union activists," both inside and outside Flint, and called the historic strike "a watershed event...that paved the way for better wages, better working conditions and better lives...across the United States." (Oakland, Mich. Press, 9/2)
All too true. But this labor faker neglected to mention that the strike was led by communists. Six of the seven members of the in-plant Strike Committee were members of the Communist Party and the two "activists" leading the organizing outside the plants, Bob Travis and Wyndham Mortimer, were militant left-wingers closely associated with the communist leadership.
But the UAW turned into its opposite a long time ago. By the early 1940's, the Communist Party's own opportunist reformism made it easier for a pro-capitalist leadership to take over the UAW. Today, the "union" is more like UAW, Inc. As of March 31, 2003, the UAW had a net worth of $1.1 BILLION. The General Fund had a cash balance of $59.7 million and the International Union earned a total of $10.8 million on investments in the previous three months. The Strike Fund alone was worth almost $820 million.
The Flint Sit-Down, which broke the laws and took on the cops and National Guard, sparked tremendous growth in a time of severe economic crisis, organizing four million industrial workers in the next four years. However, under generations of patriotic pro-capitalist junior partners, the UAW has lost 750,000 members since 1979 and today is trading wages and benefits in exchange for the bosses agreeing to sign "neutrality" clauses giving the union new members.
It's no wonder the pro-boss union leaders want to hide the leading role communists played in organizing basic industrial workers. This is one of the clearest examples that reform doesn't lead to revolution. As PLP expands our base among industrial workers, we will lead workers to go all the way and destroy this system of wage-slavery with communist revolution.
(See the PLP website, wwwPLP.org, for the complete text of the pamphlet, The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike Against GM.)
Politicians' Electoral Tricks Won't Solve Salvadoran Workers' Problems
EL SALVADOR -- The capitalist crisis here has plunged the working class into a bottomless pit filled with unemployment, hunger, disease, desperation and death. This crisis is caused by the greedy murderous bosses in El Salvador as well as the international crisis of overproduction created by world capitalism. Coffee and cotton producers here can't find buyers because the market is shrinking and is filled by others. Privatization is intensifying which is part of the drive for maximum profits, creating still more unemployment and misery. The only thing keeping the economy somewhat afloat is the $2 billion Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. send home.
In the coming presidential election, both the candidates of the right-wing ARENA party and the liberals of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front), say they can solve these problems. But until capitalism is destroyed, no matter who's in power, workers' problems will remain, under a system in which production is based on exploitation, and profits will continue to line the pockets of the bosses.
Shafik Handal, FLMN presidential candidate, says, "Capitalism has many good things to offer us. Only under a law of free competition can Salvadoran businesses develop better." This statement smacks of any common bourgeois politician. But Handal and the FMLN promise "revolutionary change" that will free the Salvadoran working class from capitalist super-exploitation.
Decades ago Handal, ex-leader of the now defunct Salvadoran Communist Party, rejected communism as the road to working-class liberation. He says we can take "good" things from capitalism to create a "third alternative system." But capitalist exploitation cannot be resolved by magic or politicians' tricks. Only a world run by the working class for our own class interests can free us from the evils of the profit system.
Handal hasn't stopped screaming to the four winds about the "benefits" of national capitalism and of the many friends the FMLN has among both the U.S. and European imperialists. With this outlook, the FMLN and Handal look for electoral alliances with right-wing parties like the PCN (Party of National Conciliation). In '70's and '80's the PCN "disappeared" and tortured thousands of city workers, farmworkers and students. With friends like this, the workers don't need enemies.
The political cynicism and opportunism of the MLN, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Workers' Party of Lula in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela are incapable of resolving the worsening problems of the working class. Much of this ideological retreat stems from the demise of the old communist movement led by the former Soviet Union and China, which fought for socialism. When these countries returned to open capitalism, it created disillusion and confusion among the world's workers. But if was capitalism that failed, not communism. The science and goal of communism continue to be the hope of millions of workers.
In El Salvador, the rest of Latin America and throughout the world, millions died fighting for a future without exploitation or capitalism. The mud thrown on them by people like Handal, Lula and Ortega will not stop the fight for real communist revolution.
Contrary to the electoral parties, PLP says that elections and reforms won't stop the bosses' fascist attacks and wars. Communists in PLP worldwide will intensify the exposure of these capitalist wolves in sheep's clothing and fight for the masses to take the future into our own hands, to destroy all capitalist exploiters along with their henchmen.
A Taste of Communist Struggle
SEATTLE, WA., Sept. 5 -- "Last time I came here was in '99," said a young student, a machinist trainee, at our monthly Party study group. "There were many more workers driving into the Boeing plants, a lot with big pick-ups. There aren't so many workers now, but they're more interested. I got out all of my [communist] leaflets and had only one CHALLENGE left." This young student joined a few out-of-town guests and over twenty workers and students -- members and friends, many in mass organizations of one kind or another -- for a continuing discussion on the PLP documents Road to Revolution III and IV in the middle of our 4-day, end-of-summer, mini-project. "Yeah, he was bold!" added a newer comrade in admiration.
This session focused on the lessons of the Russian Revolution. Two new leaders prepared a "time line" of the revolution so all would have the facts at hand. Veteran comrades added additional historical information. Then a co-leader of the youth club asked everyone to name at least one positive thing and one weakness about that historic event.
The struggle intensified. Will the racist, imperialist media determine the ideology of the working class? ...Or will CHALLENGE and bringing our communist politics to class struggle ultimately carry the day? Which is primary: what the bosses do or what we do? What are the limits of struggle today and what will determine the ultimate direction of history? What type of organization should we build: a revolutionary communist party based on class politics or a collection of nationalist organizations allied around identity politics? Should we really focus on industrial workers and soldiers, as the Bolsheviks did?
We tried to answer these questions in practice. We distributed three hundred copies of the most recent Boeing CHALLENGE article at the plant gates and within the factory. The ensuing discussions with workers reminded us of the importance of a broad communist presence at all times, not just at contract time or during union elections. We followed up the next day selling papers and leafleting to soldiers and their families. Some GI's took papers and leaflets to distribute in the barracks, arranging to stay in contact. The last day we visited Boeing workers and others interested in the Party. All told, we sold over 200 copies of the latest CHALLENGE (during the project and the two weeks proceeding) and distributed hundreds more communist flyers to soldiers, students and Boeing workers.
Everyone liked the project, including the late-night social activities. The project served to "whet the appetite" for more communist struggle. Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!
Patriotism A Killer For U.S. Workers
VALPARAISO, IN, July 30 -- "We're giving our enemies our defense technology and your 225 jobs." That's what U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., said, and he's the liberal! Visclosky was speaking to 150 workers protesting the closing of the Magnequench plant, which produces rare-earth magnets used in U.S. imperialism's deadly "smart bombs." Magnequench, Inc. bought the magnet-making factory about two years ago and is now relocating the operation to China. The plant will close Sept. 30.
The rally was organized by United Steelworkers of America District 7, who, along with the Democrats, turned a rally for jobs into a rally for war. Union organizer Mike O'Brien called Magnequench President Archibald Cox, Jr. "a traitor to this country," by moving the plant to China.
Layoffs at the plant began in mid-July, when about 30 workers were dumped. Frances Arney, single mother of four, lost her job at the start of a second round of layoffs. "Today they let me go after six years and 40 days," she said. One more day would have meant an additional $125 and another month of health insurance coverage.
Democratic Party politicians and the union leaders are totally impotent in the face of mass layoffs and racist unemployment, so they wrap themselves in the bosses' flag and cry, "Treason!" But it's all a cynical attempt to take workers' anger and turn it into more patriotism and war fever. As far as "giving away the war machine," forget it. U.S. imperialism has a long history of "trading with the enemy." (See the book by the same name.) U.S. bosses were entertaining a Japanese trade delegation when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and dozens of U.S. corporations, including Ford and GM, had factories up and running inside Nazi Germany all during WWII. In fact, they received money from the Marshall Plan for any factories that were accidentally bombed by U.S. pilots!
Mass racist unemployment and factory closings are reasons to reject patriotism, not embrace it. Many workers already grasp this. One sign at the rally read, "U.S. and Chinese Workers...United in Poverty." We will expose the Democrats and union leaders and build a movement that knows no borders, for international communist revolution.u
Industrial Workers Key to Bosses' War Machine--WIn Them To Communism
(With this article, CHALLENGE begins a series on the role of the industrial working class in the struggle against imperialist war and for communist revolution.)
When the liberal media bemoan the fate of industrial workers, watch out. The crocodile tears mean the bosses are planning to get us into a mess even worse than the horrors of racist unemployment. As CHALLENGE has regularly pointed out over the last several years, U.S. rulers' need to dominate the world will lead to a series of ever-widening wars.
These wars have already begun. The U.S. military is bogged down in open-ended occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. More conflict is on the horizon. The politicians are squabbling about the number of soldiers required for present and future imperialist invasions. The political blowhards will make a big issue of this question during the 2004 presidential campaign. Regardless of the tactical details, millions of young U.S. workers face a future under arms.
But besides the battlefield component of the imperialists' war machine. there's also the industrial component. Millions of workers are needed at the point of production to provide the hardware of warfare. The discrepancy between this need and the reality of today's mass manufacturing layoffs highlights one of the profit system's sharpest economic contradictions. On the one hand, capitalism's boom-bust cycles make unemployment inevitable. On the other hand, the system demands a huge workforce to produce the tanks, airplanes, bombs and ships required by an imperialist military.
Mobilizing For War
The rulers are acutely conscious of this problem, in both its historical and contemporary dimensions. In 1924, they created the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) to train military officers, government officials, and business executives "in the field of national security." Previous ICAF leaders read like a civilian and military Who's Who of U.S. imperialism. The ICAF currently focuses its attention on "material acquisition and logistics," in other words, mobilizing the economy for warfare. It has an entire department of Grand Strategy and Mobilization. The sobering conclusions of its Industry Surveys for the year 2000 add a new dimension to the liberal rulers' complaints about the ineptitude of the Bush crowd's economic policies. According to this report:
U.S. aircraft industry dominance "has eroded to the point that necessitates vigorous action...to preserve this vital element of national power";
"There are not enough people in the education pipeline to meet the high-technology engineering requirements of the electronics industry." The big high-tech military bosses are so desperate for new recruits that Raytheon sends its "female engineers to Girl Scout meetings to promote the engineering field for women," and "the defense electronics section of Northrup Grumman has a "mentor program for under-privileged high school students in Maryland that includes free college tuition";
"Steel remains vital to the United States economy and its military." But the ICAF wizards recognize that the steel industry hasn't been profitable. To meet security needs and help the steel bosses make profit, corporations must "divest themselves of...legacy costs" like "long-term employee benefits and liabilities" -- in other words, cut the pensions of hundreds of thousands of retirees, as in the recent bankruptcy-takeover scam at Bethlehem Steel;
"The construction industry is facing an unprecedented nationwide shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labor." It needs "240,000 workers each year to replace those that are retiring or leaving." The ICAF's approach of dangling carrots to win new high-tech workers turns into a stick where construction is concerned: "Calling up reserves or drafting civilians will be policy options if the threat is severe enough."
War Industries Face Deficit
A related 1999 report by Inforum, a University of Maryland think-tank, underscores the ICAF's worries. Entitled "Constraints to Increased U.S. Defense Spending," it warns that for two "full-scale" conflicts like Iran and North Korea, the "required commitments of manpower, ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles, and ammunition could be much larger than...at any time since World War II." The report goes on to predict a 750,000 deficit between the number of workers available and the number needed in key war-related industries between 2003 and 2005. Below is a partial breakdown:
Shipbuilding and repairing . . . .174,000
Engineering and architectural services. . . . . . . . . 118,000
Aircraft and missile parts . . . . . .101,000
Aircraft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73,000
These figures cover only the workforce needed to supply the military for action against Iran and North Korea. They don't begin to approach the millions more the bosses will require to conscript for war production when the inevitable struggles take place between the U.S. and other major imperialists.
Despite today's layoffs, the idea that the U.S. profit system no longer needs a large industrial and manufacturing workforce is an absurd illusion. Industrial workers are more crucial than ever to society. As Karl Marx explained 150 years ago, the growing numbers of unemployed constitute a "reserve army," which the bosses plan on drafting either directly into the military or else into war production under police-state conditions. When the liberal politicians talk about unemployment, this is their real agenda. The racist slave-labor "Workfare" scheme of the liberal Clinton administration was an important step in this direction.
But the same working class which the bosses need to generate their profits, build their war machines and fight their wars has the potential to shut down the war machine, turn the guns around, and smash the racist warmakers. Only two classes can hold political power: the capitalists or a communist-led working class. Our Party's chief priority remains winning industrial workers and soldiers to fight over the long haul for communist revolution.
(Next: Why are the liberal rulers suddenly so concerned about workers' health and the low level of math and science education in the U.S.?)
GENERAL, YOUR TANK
IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests
and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomb is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries
more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
Bertolt Brecht, German Communist Poet and Playwright
CIA -- Criminal
Intelligence Agency
The CIA...recently graduated the largest class of new officers in [its] history.... Many are assuming fake identities and heading overseas. Their job will be to steal secrets....
It is difficult work, says Steven Aftergood, a longtime observer of the CIA with the Federation of American Scientists.
"Basically, what you're trying to do...is to persuade the other fellow to betray his country, to commit a crime, and to run the risk of severe penalty." (Associated Press, 8/22)
LETTERS
Rulers' Lies Help Sicken 9/11'Heroes'
Sometimes truth sneaks into the bosses' media, especially local outlets. In this case, our Oakland channel interviewed the leaders of a well-known search-and-rescue squad from nearby Menlo Park. These guys (I think they're all firefighters) are trained and equipped to fly anywhere in the world to help in major earthquakes and such. Of course, they helped in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Their leader said that since their return from 9/11, three-fourths of them are sick! He said at times he'll cough "like a 70-year-old with lung disease." Triggering this story was the announcement that the Bush administration ordered the EPA to say the air at Ground Zero was safe, when they knew it was anything but!
My point is, these are their best guys. These are their American Heroes. Even so, it means nothing to our rulers to lie outright, and consign them to possibly lingering deaths.
The reporter closed this sad story by asking the leader if he would ever again trust the government. "Never," he shot back.
PL should get to these guys. The seeds of revolution are falling to earth all around us, in places we might not think of looking. Husbandmen [cultavators] are needed, to nurture, weed and water. The fruit will appear.
Bay Area Reader
`Recruit Locally,
Think Globally for Communism!'
This summer I visited a Middle-Eastern country and had discussions with some young people, ranging from the latest music and movies to politics. For the most part, these youth were very aware of their position as members of the working class.
During one discussion, I mentioned how people seemed to have more "material" possessions than on my last visit. One youth agreed -- more cars, more televisions and clothes -- but with these things had come car theft, home break-ins and muggings. When I asked how this could happen with all the police patrols, one young man replied, "The police are not here to protect us. They're here to protect the president and businesses and to put down any rebellion or demonstrations." A young woman agreed saying, "Yeah, one time when my parents called the cops because they thought a thief was breaking into a neighbor's home, the policeman's response was, `Go check it out yourself.'" I noted that it must be a global job description for cops because it's the same in the U.S.
When discussing what must be changed, most thought it needed to be in the country's leadership. The current president has been in office since 1987, and has just announced that "for the good of the country, and in the interest of all citizens," he's "willing" to run for re-election next year.
When he first came to power. he said he'd only run for one term -- four years. True to form, he's a liar like all politicians worldwide. I raised the idea that just changing presidents wouldn't be enough. A change in the system is needed. Capitalism is running things here. For things to get better for workers, capitalism must be destroyed.
When I asked what they thought of communism, one young man replied that communism had failed and doesn't work. I said it wasn't communism that had failed, it was capitalism that failed in those countries that were-called communist. Communist leaders have made errors in the past but communism is the only system that serves the interest of the working class. As evident in our daily lives, capitalism only serves the interest of the rulers.
Most agreed that capitalism didn't serve them, but another youth asked, "Why should I give up all I have so someone else could have something?" His friend asked, "What do you have to give up?" We all had to laugh at that, even the person who asked the original question. I added that capitalism gives us the illusion that we have so much, when in reality workers have very little or go into debt just to acquire a few things.
The conversation moved to the war in Iraq. Most understood that U.S. rulers want to control the region's oil. I agreed but added that U.S. rulers want world domination; control of oil is only one step towards that goal. They also want to control the olive groves in this country, and any other markets in their imperialist drive for world supremacy. Most agreed but admitted they hadn't thought of that before.
Interestingly, the question of Muslim fundamentalism never came up. The only time we talked about religion was when they asked me why I didn't believe in any religion. The ones I spoke to ranged from Muslims who go to the mosque every Friday to say their prayers to a few who didn't believe in God at all.
When I asked if we could stay in touch once I returned home, to talk more about change -- maybe I could send them some literature -- they all liked the idea of staying in contact, but not to discuss politics. They feared the government would read their mail or investigate them. I agreed we must be cautious, and if I could think of a way that would be safe I'd let them know. We exchanged E-mail and home addresses and promised to at least stay in contact to discuss music and movies.
On my return home, I thought more about how correct the Party's line is, that we need a worldwide movement for communism. The liberals say, "work locally, think globally." We need to recruit locally and build globally, for communism!
NY Red
Social Action on Church Calendar
I joined a church a year ago that has less than 200 members, is very active, is a bit conservative, but has members who are politically progressive. In working on a number of tasks I've made dozens of new friends and acquaintances. Some are quite close and take CHALLENGE. From among our church "small group" we've formed a separate bi-weekly discussion circle we call Think/Speak/Act (T/S/A) to which some others have come occasionally.
Though often focusing on theological topics, the discussions are often political. We usually connect the ideas with concrete problems which our neighbors face, many of whom are very poor. We hope to become the nucleus of a church committee to organize social action in our community.
Recently, after our "small group" studied the relationship between Christians and Jews, six members of the discussion circle attended a synagogue service to meet people there. Also, knowing that since 9/11 many Muslims have been targets of racist attacks, two of us attended a service at a local mosque where we met some of its members and leaders.
We're currently planning to "partner" with a family in or near our church that needs help at home. One member of T/S/A and I went to an anti-war rally in January, and recently watched the movie "Bowling for Columbine." He and I often discuss national and world politics.
Another close friend told me last Fall, before he knew I'm a communist, that on a trip 32 years ago to the Soviet Union he gained a new, clearer understanding of the slogan, "From each according to ability, to each according to need"! He said that while touring the countryside, a guide explained that the billboards they saw weren't advertising a product, but were signs praising the excellence or special effort of some nearby worker. He said this deeply impressed him. And although he recently told me, "I'm not a revolutionary," it's clear he has the spirit and desire for fundamental change that millions more will have in the future.
A Pennsylvania comrade
Racist LAPD To Use Licenses vs. Drivers
Some of us went to a rally sponsored by the unions and churches in downtown LA to support the right of immigrant workers, regardless of status, to have a driver's license. We sold many CHALLENGES to the hundreds present. But we were surprised that one of the main speakers was racist LA Police Chief Bratton, of "community policing" fame. He said that he and the LAPD favored this measure because it would help tremendously with law "enforcement." Not surprisingly, Gov. Davis supported it also. Then the California Legislature passed a law allowing all immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. While such a license is a necessity. it also helps locate people for the bosses.
A reader
School Bosses' Job: Control Discontent
I'm active in my union and write a summary of the monthly city meetings which I distribute to the members at my school. I wrote the following letter in response to a disagreement with my statement that the administration doesn't fight for education.
****************
Thanks for your comment. It's nice to have some feedback on these reports.... One reason I issue these comments is to get people to think about what's going on and why, and to get a dialogue going.
I agree with you . . . that the administrators of this school work very hard (but certainly not [at] every school) but only in the limited way you mean it, not in the bigger picture that I meant.
Individual school administrators (such as ours) may work very hard within the limits set up by the school district, but these limits of money and personnel insure that we can't meet the needs of teachers and students.
We need a lot more time, money, personnel and resources to do that and to deal with the issues confronting our students. Sufficient resources will only come...when a big campaign is waged to force the school district to do it. Even then, other schools will begin to make demands on the school district, which it will not be able to meet within the limits...[set] by the government. This campaign, then, must take on a bigger scope -- a state and national reprioritization of resources. The whole system will have to be radically changed to put people first.
My point is that people (even if well-meaning) are limited by the resources the system allocates to schools (and to other human services...). A campaign is necessary to increase those allocated resources.
"Leaders" who do not lead this struggle (and this especially includes union "leaders") are providing a disservice to the people they are "supposed" to lead.
Union leaders "should" be playing this role. However, the role of the Administration is expressly not to play this role.... Their job is to control the discontent, not lead the struggle to meet the needs of the discontented.
Thanks for your response,
A union activist
Liberals Let
Bush Off Hook
People who think voting for liberals will solve their problems should ponder this: Democrats claim they were against Bush's help-the-rich tax cuts. Now Bush is asking Congress for $87 billion more deficit as things go wrong in Iraq. But not a single Democrat says, "O.K., if you want the money, repeal the fat-cat tax cuts."
Why no such logical demand? Because they're all part of a government by profiteers -- capitalism.
Ancient Red
Bronson's `Death Wish' Movies Reinforce Rulers' Racism
Charles Bronson, who died on August 30, was best known for his five (!) "Death Wish" movies. Along with the Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" series, these films were part of the conservative backlash against the legal reforms of the 1960's, in which criminal suspects were afforded some minimal protection, at least on paper if not always in practice. (The 1966 Supreme Court Miranda decision is probably the best known.)
Such movies were the cultural expressions of this right-wing backlash. They argued that those arrested ("probably guilty" anyway, they claimed) had "too many rights," that the police were being handcuffed in their efforts to protect the public, and therefore crime was rising. Bronson's character is a liberal businessman who sees his wife and daughter raped (his wife dies), and decides to take matters into his own hands when the police can't solve the crime.
To avoid the charge of racism, the rapists and criminals in "Death Wish" are mostly white. But sales of the book that the film was based on skyrocketed because of the movie's popularity. Written by a third-rate novelist, Brian Garfield, the book is thoroughly racist. The criminals in the book, including those who attack the wife and daughter, are black or Latino. The white businessman assassinates a series of low-level street criminals, not the original attackers. The novel's main character, really a neo-Nazi, is sympathetically portrayed. He looks around at the people on a NYC subway car and thinks half of them should be physically eliminated.
In the novel's last pages, taking place in Harlem at night, the protagonist murders a young black boy whose crime (get ready for this) was throwing rocks at a passing subway train. He then turns around and sees a white cop staring at him. The cop has witnessed the murder, but the murderer can't bring himself to shoot the officer ("we're on the same side"). Then the cop turns his back, in a show of solidarity with the racist murder. End of novel.
There are far more effective movies with the same theme, that the police should be allowed to use brutal methods to bring criminals to justice. In my opinion, the most skillful is "L.A. Confidential," set in the 1950's. Russell Crowe plays the thuggish Bud White, who murders an unarmed black man without losing the affection of the audience because he is rescuing a Mexican woman who has been raped and tied up. Guy Pearce is the officer who wants to play by the rules and seeks to clean up the corrupt, racist L.A. police force. Ultimately, he is won over to Bud White's strong-arm tactics, but it's "acceptable" because the target now is no longer black males but the corrupt, murderous white police officials and D.A.
The movie is well-acted and brilliantly directed, and wants us to believe that the new L.A. police will combine both brains and respect for the law (the Pearce character) with necessary force (Crowe), and that's what the public wants and needs. Even though the black characters in the movie are innocent of the diner murders of which they're accused, they're guilty of the rape and so the audience shouldn't mind when the law-abiding Pearce and the thuggish Crowe combine to blow them away without the annoyance of a trial. Support for racism and fascist police tactics have reached higher artistic heights than the now, largely forgotten, "Death Wish" movies.
A Comrade
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)
28% pay cut for less-skilled
The real problem is what has happened to the least skilled -- and least paid -- workers. From 1979 to 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real earnings of men without high school diplomas fell by a horrifying 28%. For women, whose pay was already lower, the decline was still 9%. (NYT, 9/7)
Greed system must be smashed
The Triangle Waist Company fire...killed 146 garment workers on the afternoon of March 25, 1911.... As David Von Drehle makes clear in his outstanding history, "Triangle," the overwhelmingly young, female victims of the fire -- at least 123 were women, and of these at least 64 were teenagers -- were betrayed by the greed of their employers....
Girls who worked 84 hours a week for as little as $7 were immolated because their bosses kept stairway doors locked to prevent theft....
The fire followed close on the heels of "The Uprising of the 20,000,"an epic four-month strike....
The shop owners tried to crush them by hiring pimps and prostitutes to attack their picket lines, "as a way of saying that the strikers were no better than whores themselves." The police, controlled by the owners' allies in Tammany Hall, then arrested the strikers for disturbing the peace, roughed them up and hauled them before Tammany magistrates who fired and jailed them....
One of the factories...was the Triangle, whose owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had led the resistance to the strike....
The booming new business of ready-to-wear clothes....turned on the smallest efficiencies and on "sweating" every cent out of labor costs.
One of these efficiencies was arson. Everywhere that Blanck and Harris went, fire seemed to follow -- four of them between 1902 and 1910, at three different locations....
They did not start the fatal blaze that March 25, but as Von Drehle points out, the need to burn off excess stock periodically meant that no fire precautions had been taken -- no sprinklers, no fire drills....
Blanck and Harris managed to beat a manslaughter rap with the help of a smart lawyer and a tainted judge. They made $60,000 from the fire -- more than $400 per dead worker -- and two years later were caught locking another stairwell door in yet another firetrap factory. (NYT, 9/7)
Many prefer a life of equality
Mr. Cai expressed a common ambivalence about China's recent history....
"Life was poorer under Mao, but it was also more equal," he said. "These days there's more rich and more poor. Overall, I think it was better under Mao." (NYT, 7/29)
Honored historian stays red
Mr. Hobsbawm is...a committed communist who never really left the party (he let his membership lapse just before the collapse of the Soviet Union)....
He [is] an emeritus professor at the University of London and holds countless honorary degrees around the world, from China to Sweden....
In "Interesting Times," he praises aspects of Communist Russia and argues that in some countries, notably the former U.S.S.R., life is worse now than it was under the Socialist system....
Mr. Hobsbaum does...a section explaining why he did not abandon Communism in 1956.... He says he was strongly repelled by the idea of being in the company of those ex-Communists who turned into fanatical anti-Communists. More important, perhaps,...he was...tied by an almost unbreakable umbilical cord to hope of world revolution, and of its original home, the October Revolution, however skeptical or critical of the U.S.S.R." he writes.
"Let's put it this way.... I still think it was a great cause, the emancipation of humanity. Maybe we got onto it the wrong way,...but you have to be in that race, or else humanity isn't worth living...."
He commands a loyal following, particularly in Latin America.... At a literary festival in Parati, Brazil...[he] was accosted by fans demanding his autograph as he walked around town. (NYT, 8/23)
Pope ordered sex cover-up
A confidential order issued by the Vatican 40 years ago instructing Roman Catholic bishops to conceal cases of sex abuse is set to reignite controversy over the church's treatment of suspect priests.
The document, On the Manner of Proceeding In Cases Of The Crime Of Solicitation, and bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII, threatened those who spoke out about the inquiries with excommunication. (GW, 8/27)
To Our Readers
This is a three-week issue of CHALLENGE. Our next issue will go to press on September 10.
CHALLENGE is having a fund-raising campaign. Contrary to the lying bosses’ media, we report and analyze events from a communist-working class point of view. Any contribution helps. Make checks or Money Orders to CHALLENGE PERIODICALS and Mail to:
PO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11002, US
Forty Years after the ‘Dream’: Capitalism Is Still a Racist Nightmare
a href="#Liberal Bosses’ Hitler Youth Plan:">"iberal Bosses’ Hitler Youth Plan
After Blackout, Liberal Calls For Centralized Control
Calif. Recall Chaos Hinders War Drive
a href="#Under Capitalism ‘Workers have as much security as a pig at a barbeque’">Un"er Capitalism ‘Workers have as much security as a pig at a barbeque’
Preparing European Public Opinion for War (against the U.S.?)
Jailing The Unemployment Problem
UMass Bosses and Cops Hold Ph.D in Racism
a href="#LA Summer Project Unites Students, Workers, GI’s">"A Summer Project Unites Students, Workers, GI’s
LA Transit Worker-Rider Unity Can Fight Contract Cuts, Fare Hike
a href="#Union Leaders Pose As ‘Fighters’">Un"on Leaders Pose As ‘Fighters’
a href="#Bumpy ‘Rides’ for Immigrant Workers">Bu"py ‘Rides’ for Immigrant Workers
Maynard Jackson Ensured His Place By Betraying His Base
While Iraq Erupts, Taliban (and drugs) Are Back in Afghanistan
a href="#Mid-East: Bush Snatches Defeat From Jaws of ‘Victory’">Mi"-East: Bush Snatches Defeat From Jaws of ‘Victory’
A-Bomb Holocaust Shows U.S. Rulers Champs At WMD
LETTERS
a href="#Verizon Worker: ‘I Can Hear You Now’">Ve"izon Worker: ‘I Can Hear You Now’
Discussing Communist Ideas In The Classroom
Hotels Clean Up From Immigrant Labor
Working Class Needs Communist Power
Forty Years after the ‘Dream’
Capitalism Is Still a Racist Nightmare
Forty years ago this week, more than 200,000 anti-racists converged on Washington, D.C., to hear Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech. Workers and youth came with their unions, churches and student organizations to build the fight against racism and for equality.
A new stage of the struggle was just beginning. A month after King’s speech, four young girls were murdered by the Klan in the Birmingham church bombing. Nine months later, a multi-racial group of three civil rights workers investigating the burning of a black church in Mississippi were killed by the racists. Thousands of others were brutalized by police dogs and fire hoses. Millions were inspired to move into action. Mass struggle created mass heroism. No one was left untouched.
Forty years later, all workers need to revive the mass struggle to end racism and gain equality. But we can’t achieve these goals under capitalism, which turns dreams into nightmares. The capitalist profit system is bound by the fiber of racism. Only communist revolution can end this racist system. And building an integrated, international, anti-racist movement is the key to making communist revolution.
The world is very different than it was in 1963. In many ways, racism is worse today. Over 2,000,000 people are imprisoned in the U.S., more than any other country in the world. Half are black men, most convicted of non-violent crimes. Nearly one of four young black men in the U.S. is in jail or on probation or parole. Almost every week brings a new shooting of black workers and youths by big-city cops.
The unemployment rate, at a 20-year peak, remains twice as high for black workers than it is for whites. Furthermore, it’s increasing at twice the rate for black workers, with better-paying factory jobs taking the biggest hit. Social programs are under intensifying attack, especially since Clinton, "the first black President," abolished welfare. Millions have been forced into either prison labor or Workfare. The public schools keep failing one generation after the next.
The increase of immigrant workers has led to new forms of racist terror, from vigilante border patrols to mass round-ups and deportations under the guise of "fighting terrorism." U.S. bosses aim to rule the world through unending wars and a fascist police state at home. On the one hand, Bush uses Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell to justify the latest imperialist attack on workers across the globe. On the other hand, black, Latin, and white working-class youth are used as cannon fodder to secure the profits of Exxon Mobil, Chase and Citigroup, Halliburton, etc.
The demise of the old communist movement has left the international working class defenseless in the face of unprecedented capitalist poverty and misery. For example, during the heroic 1967 Detroit Rebellion against racism, the Chinese Communist Party announced to the world its support of black workers and youth fighting racism in the U.S. saying "It is right to rebel." In contrast, when workers rebelled against a racist police murder in Benton Harbor, Michigan last June, Jesse Jackson raced to the scene to declare, "Our fight is not with the police."
Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other lightweight mass "leaders" want to use our anti-racist anger to elect the Democrats. But the liberals can’t solve our problems, and in fact are more dangerous. In the face of growing war, exploding police terror, mass deportations and a rising fascist state, they want us to remain too passive, too cynical, and too afraid to take matters into our own hands. They want to throw dust in our eyes to keep us dreaming.
That’s the challenge for PLP members and others who want to build a mass, anti-racist, revolutionary communist movement. On our jobs, in our schools and unions, in our churches and community organizations, we must take on the racist bosses more aggressively. We must sound the alarm that war and fascism are all this system has to offer, and that every struggle, whether big or small, must build the revolutionary communist PLP.
We don’t need to dream. We need to wake up.
a name="Liberal Bosses’ Hitler Youth Plan:">">"iberal Bosses’ Hitler Youth Plan:
‘Service and Sacrifice’
(The following is based on a discussion at a recent meeting of the PLP steering committee).
For several years, the liberal wing of the most murderous ruling class in history has been campaigning for "service and sacrifice." This effort is kicking into high gear just in time for the 2004 presidential election circus. Workers should expect the worst.
The liberal presidential candidates, and the think-tanks defining their agenda, are attacking the Bush White House on two fronts. First, they believe Bush squandered an opportunity to take proper advantage of the 9/11 terror attacks to turn U.S. society into a fascist police state. They despise his half-baked effort to build fascism on the cheap.
Second, they condemn Bush’s underestimation of the need to entice or force large numbers of workers into the military. Ruling the world requires a much larger, more politically committed land army than the U.S. can presently field. The liberals complain that the present military can’t even pacify Iraq. The bosses need to win millions of U.S. workers and others to decades of war but so far Bush is coming up short.
The arguments dividing Bush and his liberal critics turn on how best to meet the needs of U.S. imperialism. None represent the needs and interests of the international working class. They’re all our class enemies, but the liberals represent a deadly trap, especially because they claim to be "on the workers’ side" and use the AFL-CIO to push this idea.
The Brookings Institution is one of the liberals’ most important strategy factories. They’ve released a book entitled "United We Serve: The National Service and the Future of Citizenship" which calls for suckering millions of young people into a form of pro-war, fascist "team spirit." The authors and editors make clear the connection between "homeland security" and future imperialist wars.
One asks: "Would Pearl Harbor have been a defining event if it had not been followed by national mobilization and four years of war that altered the lives of soldiers and civilians alike?" Then President Roosevelt used the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to mobilize 14 million U.S. workers and youth into the military for World War II combat duty and tens of millions of men and women into the factories for armament production, for a war the bosses had planned all along.
Bush flunked a similar test: "In the immediate wake of September 11, the administration’s failure to call for any real sacrifice from citizens fortified my belief that the terrorist attack would be the functional equivalent of Pearl Harbor without World War II, intensifying insecurity without altering civic behavior." (Walter Galston, Maryland University professor and Clinton’s deputy assistant for domestic policy; italics ours.)
Most of the leading Democratic 2004 Presidential candidates and a number of important Republicans are jumping on the United We Serve bandwagon. This is not a purely partisan squabble. Arizona Republican John McCain, the Vietnam War "hero" criminal, has nothing but contempt for the "business-as-usual" attitude espoused by many Republicans after 9/11. Rudolph Giuliani, NYC’s mayor then, urged people to express their patriotism by coming to New York and taking in a Broadway show or going to a restaurant. McCain emphasizes that ruling the world requires more mental toughness than it takes to go on a tourist binge: "We failed many Americans when they said, ‘What can I do to fight this threat…?’ and we told them…they should take a trip or go shopping. I don’t think that was the right response." (From July 30 press conference to promote United We Serve). McCain wants to offer $15,000 in college tuition to anyone who signs up for 15 months in the military: "If it’s anything we’re short of today…it’s soldiers…it’s security."
Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings bigwig, warns that the only way U.S. imperialism can field enough troops to occupy Iraq through 2004 is to take "the unthinkable step of sending back...people who returned from there a year before." (L.A. Times, 8/12) He fears this will discourage reenlistment and predicts that in the short term, "the Army [will]…need to generate two to four fresh brigades for Iraq, and another couple in Korea." And this refers only to the current hotspots: Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan and perhaps Liberia. What of Iran and what of the still far off but inevitable wars with China, Russia and other major imperialist powers?
The rulers are sitting on the horns of a dilemma. They have assembled the most destructive military machine in world history, and, within limits, can use it at will. But the more they use it, the more they need to replenish it and keep using it. This means men and women under arms, in the millions and eventually tens of millions. At the moment, the U.S. working class is far from being politically committed and the Bush team seems at a loss to win them. The liberals have identified the problem and defined their goals but so far haven’t managed to inspire too many people.
Another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, whenever it comes, will give the ruling class another chance to make up for Bush’s 9/11 fiasco. Whether or not they succeed is another story. Bush and Giuliani didn’t start a stampede to military recruiting stations. The potential for McCain, Kerry, Dean, et al. to do so, remains to be seen. One thing is certain: no red, white and blue version of the Hitler Youth can meet the needs of U.S. workers and youth.
The bosses can never succeed in fooling or winning over everyone. Exposing the hideous truth behind the mask of "service and sacrifice" and honing our taste for struggle can, over time, help expand these opportunities. All of that requires multiplying the circulation of CHALLENGE, organizing among the mases of workers, soldiers and youth (particularly among those who join the new "service" groups) to counter the fascist patriotic ideology of the bosses. A mass communist PLP is the only way to fight to end the horrors of a system based on endless wars for profits of a few bosses, mass racist/fascist terror, mayhem and extreme poverty for billions worldwide. Join and build the PLP!
After Blackout, Liberal Calls For Centralized Control
Blaming the states and individual utility companies for the recent blackout, New Mexico’s Democratic governor Bill Richardson and former Clinton Energy Secretary said the federal government should dictate U.S. energy policy. He wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times (8/16), "[F]ederal and state governments need to set aside their differences and work together. Over the last decade...the tension between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state regulators has increased substantially.... States must recognize that the regulatory commission has an important role to play in ensuring the well-being of the grid and all electricity consumers."
The Northeast Blackout cost U.S rulers dearly. They can’t afford the closing of 50 North American auto plants or the shutoff of 750,000 barrels per day in oil refining capacity or the multi-billion-dollar losses in commerce they suffered last week. The Feds gave Enron a death sentence for its role in California’s outages in 2001, among its other sins. State boards and local utility companies may yet pay for the Blackout of 2003. In the 1930s, the Nazis ruthlessly punished wayward businesses and centralized control of German industry in preparation for world war. What Richardson proposes is in fact part of a fascist, war-time mobilization of a key U.S. industrial sector.
Calif. Recall Chaos Hinders War Drive
An important political struggle is raging behind California’s recall election circus. At stake is state power and the way the rulers will wield it in this period of intensifying fascism and war. As it attempts to mobilize the nation for ever deadlier wars, the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. capitalists needs tighter control over society. For them, it is crucial that California’s internal politics not hinder their imperialist agenda. Since California produces one-seventh of the U.S.’s gross domestic product, much of it in war-related high-tech and aerospace industries, this is also a fight for control over this state’s economy.
But forces outside the Establishment are using the recall mechanism against California’s Democratic Gov. Gray Davis for their own ends. Darrell Issa, an independent electronics tycoon and now a Republican congressman, bankrolled the recall petition. Issa represents upstart capitalists who focus on their own short-term profits rather than on the long-term needs of U.S. imperialism. In Congress, for example, Issa is working to require that components for rebuilding Iraq’s communications system come exclusively from U.S. companies, including his. Liberal U.S. rulers, meanwhile, desperately needing allied troops for the Iraqi occupation, are willing to toss bits of the reconstruction bonanza to foreign firms.
This more powerful group of U.S. capitalists opposes the recall effort. Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first Secretary of State, heads a blue-ribbon team that seeks to block the recall, or, failing that, to elect a liberal. The group also includes California AFL-CIO chief Art Pulaski. Christopher is senior partner at O’Melveny & Myers, a law firm that counts such imperialist heavyweights as Exxon Mobil, JP Morgan Chase, and Lockheed Martin as its top clients. Christopher has also served as vice-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Rockefeller-led policy factory that has been hounding George Bush to send more troops to Iraq and crack down on homeland security. Clinton himself has rallied to Davis’s side and Democratic Governors are contributing to his campaign.
Taxes, California’s $38 billion deficit, and Davis’s handling of Enron’s hijacking of the state’s electricity in 2001 are the immediate issues here. (Davis also reneged on a previous campaign promise to pass a law granting drivers’ licenses. Now he’s promising it once again.) But a deeper concern is the shape of government itself. Like most smaller capitalists, Issa & Co. favor local rule. In a campaign statement, Issa complained, "Our federal government has grown dangerously large and powerful. It consumes an alarming portion of the national income, and has thrown the net of federal control over nearly every aspect of our lives....It is time to send power back to the people by returning the federal government to its constitutional boundaries and leaving it up to the people — acting through their state and local governments — to decide what level of government action or inaction best suits their needs."
But for over 40 years the main rulers have been contemplating consolidation. In 1960, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund issued a 465-page blueprint for U.S. society titled "Prospect for America." It questioned, "whether the present geographical boundaries between the states are anachronistic" and "whether the federal government needs more centralized power than it now has."
We can’t foretell who will win the recall/election scheduled for October 7. But it’s interesting how Establishment financier Warren Buffett seemed to torpedo Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lead in the polls recently. Buffet became Arnold’s economic adviser and immediately called for higher property taxes, a move that terminated the candidate’s credibility among the Republican right. It is certain, however, that this fight, which stretches far beyond California, will not end with the vote. It is also clear that neither the new "States’ Rightists" nor the liberal imperialists are friends of the working class.
a name="Under Capitalism ‘Workers have as much security as a pig at a barbeque’"></">Un"er Capitalism ‘Workers have as much security as a pig at a barbeque’
Hundreds applauded at our last factory meeting as our co-workers condemned layoffs and management’s greed. But the plant manager warned, "You don’t have an entitlement to a job."
We were furious. We average at least 25 years on the job — junior employees have all been laid off. Nonetheless, we knew he spoke the truth. How did it happen that after 25 years producing profits for the company, we can be dumped at a moment’s notice?
Under capitalism, workers have as much security as a pig at a barbeque. Even so, these are particularly dangerous times. The coals are red hot and the bosses are ready to serve us for dinner.
Endless Barrels of Red Ink
The U.S. ruling-class plan to dominate the world through control of oil requires a bigger war budget. In January, the administration upped the Pentagon’s budget 25%, and that didn’t include the $70 billion cost of the Iraq war, nor the $4 billion/month for the occupation. Adding insult to injury, the Pentagon colluded with Boeing to hide the cost of a new fleet of aerial tankers. They set up an Enron-like "virtual company" to own the tankers so the $17 billion expenditure wouldn’t appear on anybody’s books. (Los Angeles Times, 5/24) Of course, we workers will foot the bill. Who knows what else the Pentagon is hiding?
Adding these costs to the Defense Department’s "official" budget of $396 billion this fiscal year plus monies for homeland "security" produces a total approaching $561 billion, a 75% increase this year alone!
Half-a-trillion dollar war budgets are a political fact-of-life. No matter what the short-term economic outlook, these exploding war budgets will require escalating attacks on the working class, particularly among those in basic war industries. The Pentagon’s Defense Science Board called for incentives to cut costs (i.e., jobs) and consolidate production facilities (i.e., sell and/or destroy whole plants). "We [must] incentivize [sic] defense companies to go after cost and restructure their operations," said Boeing chair Philip Odeen, (Aerospace Daily, 2/3/01) "Competitive outsourcing could be the answer." A $100 billion here, a $100 billion there — pretty soon, you’re talking real money.
Beware Of Bosses Bearing Gifts
The bosses are attacking health care, pensions, wages and jobs to sustain their imperialist empire. More importantly, they want to destroy our class-consciousness.
When workers challenged the plant manager’s call for more productivity, he warned, "If you, like me, want to see your pension, we have to make the company succeed. We have to bring down costs." According to this capitalist logic, we should sacrifice the worker next to us on the offhand chance the company will let us live out our lives in something other than dire poverty.
If we accept this logic, today’s stark reality means the bosses will continue beating up our class. Our union has accepted this path, supporting the company’s demand for cuts in workers comp. and unemployment benefits, in the hope of getting a few jobs on the proposed 7E7 aircraft. (see Challenge, 7/9)
Reform politics in a system desperate to maintain imperialist dominance always implies attacking other workers.
On the other hand, this stark reality opens up opportunities for the revolutionary-minded. Many will see that the only sensible solution is to develop revolutionary, communist consciousness amid every struggle. Nothing less will serve our class brothers and sisters!
Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Drives Up Cost of Military Superiority
U.S. military expenditures will continue to escalate due, in part, to challenges from imperialist competitors. Russia is now the biggest arms exporter. China continues to modernize its armed forces. France’s Defense Minister Alloit-Marie insists: "European industrialists must unite to resist [U.S. military superiority]." (La Monde, 6/14)
The $200 billion spent on super-secret spy satellite programs over the last four decades illustrates the enormous cost of maintaining military superiority. Despite this huge outlay, the U.S. government’s spy satellite infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life. Costly failures over the last two years have made the system particularly vulnerable. (U.S. News and World Report, 8/11) Boeing is considering abandoning the rocket business altogether, leaving Lockheed-Martin the sole U.S. company capable of launching spy satellite replacements. Meanwhile, China and Russia are developing increasingly sophisticated and inexpensive launch capabilities.
The European Union (EU) is building its own, more advanced satellite system, despite concerted attempts by the U.S. to sabotage it. In addition, the EU plans to roll the quasi-independent European Space Agency into the EU government apparatus, making military systems the agency’s top priority. (Flight International, 7/8)
"Staying ahead of the Joneses" has become an increasingly expensive affair.
Preparing European Public Opinion for War (against the U.S.?)
Over half of Europeans believe the U.S. is a danger to world peace, according to a recent poll among 16,000 people in the European Union (EU), both current and future members.
Most believe the White House’s "war on terror" is illegitimate and want the EU to strengthen its own defense and security measures, without relying on the U.S. Tens of millions of Europeans protested the U.S. war against Iraq; this poll reflects that mass feeling.
In France and Germany, EU powerhouses, youth from 15 to 25 fear the U.S. imperialists’ "preventive war" policies will lead to another world war. Over 70% of Europeans believe the U.S. is a negative force in the struggle against poverty and for the environment. Most Europeans also don’t trust NATO. The end result of this poll is that most Europeans want the EU to strengthen its military power to counter the U.S.
Since the implosion of the old Soviet Union, the imperialist alliance of Europe and the U.S. has deteriorated and is now shattering because of the war in Iraq. So the European imperialists are turning the "peace" movement into a pro-war movement against the U.S.
Peace and capitalism don’t mix. The only way to fight all imperialist warmakers from Washington to Paris to Berlin is to fight the cause of war: capitalism.
a name="Hi-tech Bubble Burst: ‘My only dream is to get a job’"></">Hi"tech Bubble Burst: ‘My only dream is to get a job’
The hi-tech "American Dream" of the 1990s has turned into a 21st century nightmare for tens of thousands of workers whose salaries were relatively high. Here’s a sample of how the "upwardly mobile" have gone way downhill:
• In early 2001 Craig Heier, 43, an engineer, was a telecommunications consultant at $150,000 a year, dreaming of early retirement. His wife, Karen, said, "We felt the sky was the limit. We though we’d be set for years." Now, after two layoffs, and job-hunting since last February, Heier laughs about retiring early. "My only dream right now," he says, "is to get a job."
• At age 25, Alex Valich was a senior art director at Bikini.com, making $90,000 a year. In late 2000 the company crashed, Valich was laid off, and by the following summer he landed a job as manager of a skateboard park at $27,000 a year.
• James Richter of Cumming, Ga., was making $94,000 a year at Nortel Networks. But his upward trend crashed, he was laid off and after six months of job-hunting got hired at barely half his previous salary and says he’s "back to pre-college financially," saying, "Even though I’ve lost ground, I know people out there who have no ground at all any more." (All quotes from the Wall Street Journal, 8/13))
These are just a few of the thousands of high-paying hi-tech jobs that disappeared when the stock bubble burst and along with it, the salary bubble. This group of "skilled, well-educated" and only recently highly sought after workers are part of the "downwardly mobile" who have found they’re worth a lot less now. They may never again reach their "pre-bubble" levels.
Of course, their plight is nothing compared to the bulk of the 2.7 million workers whose jobs have disappeared since the recession began in March 2001. This recession is supposed to be "officially" over, but it’s the first "recovery" since World War II in which jobs continue to fall 20 months into the "rebound." The previous record was 13.
According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (8/15), labor market conditions are the worst in almost 20 years. Non-farm payrolls have been dropping at a rate of 50,000 jobs a month since the "recovery" began. But, he says, "Just to keep up with population growth, the U.S. needs to add about 110,000 jobs per month." This means the unemployed are increasing at a rate of 160,000 a month. If that’s "recovery," what would a recession mean?
While the ruling class spends billions on war after war, and hands over even more billions to the richest 1% via tax cuts and war/occupation contracts, nearly 20 million unemployed are being killed by capitalism’s built-in recession/depressions. A Congressional study of "the cost in human suffering of people being out of work," (New York Times, 10/31/76) concluded that when unemployment rose just 1.4% in 1970, it led directly to the deaths of over 30,000 workers in the following five years from stress-related ailments, suicide and homicide.
Dr. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins Univ. testified before that Congressional Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the U.S. can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers’ deaths.
So if a 1.4% rise in the unemployment rate equals 30,000 deaths, imagine the resulting deaths over the following five years after the unemployment rate climbs to the 15% it is now — that’s the TRUE rate when adding in the millions not counted by the government who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs, who work part time because they can’t find full-time jobs, who are part of the two million in prison and who are on welfare because there are no jobs.
Now part of the "aristocracy of labor" has joined those blue collar workers whose standard of living has been downsized for the sake of profits for a few bosses. Capitalism needs mass unemployment and downsizing workers to survive. But workers don’t need bosses. Our aim must be to unite the over-one hundred million still working with the 20 million unemployed to fight for a society where production serves the needs of all workers. That’s called communism.
Jailing The Unemployment Problem
According to a study by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, there were 5.6 million adults who were either in prison or had served some time in federal and state prisons at the end of 2001. That’s 2.7% of the 210 million adult population. Two-thirds of these prisoners were convicted of non-violent crimes, mostly drug-related, who would not be sentenced to prison in most industrialized countries. A huge number are unskilled and would probably add to the jobless figures were they not in jail. "The growing number of ex-prisoners means more people have difficulty finding jobs because they have felony convictions." (New York Post, 8/18)
UMass Bosses and Cops Hold Ph.D in Racism
DORCHESTER, Mass. — "Can I get a few more of those?" "Great to see you doing this!" Black workers eagerly took our PLP leaflet, bought CHALLENGE, and welcomed our multi-racial contingent at their neighborhood courthouse as we protested the racist arrest of Tony Van der Meer, a black UMass-Boston professor of Africana studies. The professor was tackled, arrested and shackled by police after a face-off with a military recruiter, who told him and a student they "should be shot in the head [for their views]." At the time, they were promoting a two-minute moment of silence in remembrance of the assassination of Martin Luther King.
This arrest reflects the increasing racist, patriotic culture of U.S. imperialism and its main racist arms: the police and the military. To expand and maintain its profit empire, the U.S. ruling class is transforming — both economically and ideologically — the schools, factories, laws and society. Since 9/11, fascism is intensifying, spreading racist terror against Muslim, black and Latin workers. The Patriot Act extends police powers to spy and intimidate, helping the bosses further crush worker and student dissent.
Universities have always played a key role defending the ruling class and capitalism, which generates racism and imperialism. U.S. rulers use universities for military research, to train military officers and, most importantly, as recruiting grounds for soldiers. To win students to support war and racism, professors are urged to teach pro-American, pro-war, anti-working class ideas and policies. Since 9/11, professors like Van Der Meer, who oppose all this, are under attack. University police such as the UMass campus cops have been working with the FBI to investigate Middle Eastern professors. Furthermore, colleges must cooperate with the military to be eligible for federal funds.
Professors, students, and staff on every campus should unite against all aspects of universities’ support of U.S. imperialism. The ruling class is trying to prevent development of an anti-imperialist, worker/student movement. They need students and young workers to fight and die in their wars for profit. We must not let our campuses be havens for war-makers!
We have raised this idea in meetings of Van der Meer’s defense committee.
In organizing for his pre-trial hearing, some friends wanted to present his situation as an attack on free speech. They doubted workers could understand a more complex political analysis. But when building for the rally on the streets of Dorchester, they found the opposite was true. While not every worker agreed with us completely, none were confused by the explanation about rising racist police terror, developing fascism and imperialist war. These mostly black workers were open to struggle and ready to fight back.
Our rally preparation paid off. Of nearly 60 attending, PLP members and their growing base had a large multi-racial presence. One comrade gave a well-received speech linking the war in Iraq to the war on our campuses. Our chants increased the rally’s militancy and our literature challenged fellow protestors and observers politically.
The charges against the professor remain. He faces up to five years in prison.
We’ll continue our work in the defense committee and fight to bring a sharp political analysis of this struggle to the workers of Dorchester and the students and workers at UMass-Boston. What if thousands of workers came to his November trial? We are raising the importance of building a multi-racial, worker-student movement against military recruitment at UMass-Boston.
We must rely on the power of our class, the working class to end capitalism with communist revolution. It’s the only way to train ourselves to run society in our interest, and wipe out racism, war and police terror forever.
a name="LA Summer Project Unites Students, Workers, GI’s">">"A Summer Project Unites Students, Workers, GI’s
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 — This year’s Summer Project was very successful in helping PLP’s youth understand the importance of revolutionary communist theory and practice. By bringing communist ideas to the working class, we learned that we need theory to guide our political action. We went out to garment, transit and hospital workers with CHALLENGE, discussing unemployment, health care and the war in Iraq, as well as exchanging ideas about the war with GI’s.
Our weekly study group discussed PLP’s Road to Revolution III, to analyze the strengths of the past communist movement and the weakness of not having enough confidence in the working class’s ability to learn revolutionary communist ideas. We also discussed the need to build a mass communist party to lead workers, students and soldiers in the struggle against fascism and imperialism, and for communism.
In our regular CHALLENGE distributions among workers, our discussions revealed how angry and frustrated the working class is right now and why our Party can and needs to grow. Some transit workers, whose contract expires soon, responded to our leaflet and CHALLENGE with a clenched fist in support.
We also visited GI’s to discuss the war in Iraq. At first we encountered some hostility, but as we continued our exchange of experiences with them, it became clear we agreed more than we disagreed. Once when we approached a group of soldiers, one of them reacted irritably, telling us he thought the war in Iraq was a good thing and that he was happy to be part of it. But when he finished, the entire group around him said they disagreed with him and were open to talking with us. At another location, many GI’s eagerly took literature. One soldier said he had missed the birth of his child because he was deployed for a year in the first Gulf War. He was also angry about the cuts in veterans’ benefits.
We are also teaching ESL classes to immigrant workers who want to learn English. This has been one of the Project’s best experiences. Discussing revolutionary politics while seriously teaching English is helping us build a strong and necessary alliance between students and workers. We also participated in a rally organized by unions and churches for "immigrnt rights," where one of the speakers was liberal police chief Bratton, With racist "friends" like this, who needs enemies?
We organized a forum on fascism, studying how it develops from capitalism and how to fight it, concluding that fascism reflects capitalism in crisis. Therefore, uniting with certain sections of the ruling class that seem "less evil," such as the Democrats, is a mistake — they are part of the same capitalist ruling class that needs fascism to control workers. We decided we need to be in a united front at all times with angry workers, students and soldiers.
As the end of the summer project approaches, we must take advantage of the momentum we’ve gained and make long-term plans to continue this political work in our high schools, universities and workplaces. In this period, with war in Iraq, the development of fascism and cutbacks in vital public services, meeting this challenge is an urgent necessity.
LA Transit Worker-Rider Unity Can Fight Contract Cuts, Fare Hike
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 — The growing capitalist crisis and needs of the U.S. imperialist war machine is affecting all U.S. workers. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is attacking transit workers’ health insurance while planning fare increases for riders. The transit bosses want service attendants making $12-$15 an hour to pay $160 a month for health insurance. "A" mechanics would pay the same although they make nearly $24 an hour. The ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) leaders offered membership payments of $80 monthly (up from $6). The company rejected this. In the last contract, they attacked our pension plan. Currently there’s a 60-day no-strike injunction, expiring Oct. 12 — making a full year without a contract.
The bosses also want workers who must use buses to get to work, to pay higher fares, raising monthly passes by $10 for workers who earn the minimum wage! The union leaders want transit workers to ignore, or even support, this attack on workers and students who use mass transit.
MTA bosses claim if we accept these cuts now then "we won’t have to deal with it year after year." The union leadership agrees. The president wrote, "We have to take the hit," and "When the stock market comes back, as it always does, things will be better."
But these are pro-capitalist bed-time stories. The history of capitalism is one of slumps, crashes and enormously expensive imperialist wars launched to prolong the life of their system. These crises always come at the expense of everything the working class has fought for. Yet many workers remain passive because they don’t think our class can make revolutionary change.
Recently a group of workers had a long discussion about these problems. One asked, "Do you think a small group of us can do it?" This skilled worker was simultaneously expressing both his doubts and hopes. Using CHALLENGE to bring our revolutionary politics to more workers will show him and all of us how a small group can grow and affect the thoughts and actions of many more workers who have similar doubts and hopes.
a name="Union Leaders Pose As ‘Fighters’"></">Un"on Leaders Pose As ‘Fighters’
The union president is calling on shop stewards to organize the membership for a strike, starting with informational picket lines during rush hours. The union leaders have a plan, but it’s not in our interest and it doesn’t include fighting fare hikes. We should be reaching out to bus riders and inviting them to the picket lines. It doesn’t include the service attendants earning $12 to $15 an hour who are being attacked twice as hard by increased medical costs.
The union leaders want to win mechanics to a narrow, self-interest view. This follows the union urging mechanics to cross the drivers’ picket lines during their 2000 strike (many mechanics joined the lines).
We have an opportunity to fight for unity between riders and ALL transit workers, and show that workers have the potential to fight for communism and run society in our own interests. We can mobilize workers to "test the limits" politically, fighting to unite workers and to wipe out this capitalist system based on profits for the few at the expense of workers, from LA to Iraq!
a name="Bumpy ‘Rides’ for Immigrant Workers"></">Bu"py ‘Rides’ for Immigrant Workers
CHICAGO, IL, Aug. 9 — Today about 2,000 workers rallied to support the Congress Hotel workers’ strike and build the Immigrants Freedom Ride organized by the AFL-CIO to demand legalization or amnesty for undocumented immigrant workers. From Sept. 27 to Oct. 4 it will bring participants together in one national campaign. Other demands include drivers’ licenses for undocumented workers as well as a fight for the Dream Act, which would give students who graduate from high school with good grades, residency papers for at least six years so they can go to college. The union hacks are using this movement to elect Democrats next year. Also, "legalized" undocumented workers are fertile ground for unionizing, but the union honchos want to use this to win them to pro-boss patriotism.
At the rally we heard speeches from many community organizations, mostly about how bad Bush has been to immigrants, which is true. But they failed to mention that the Clinton era had the most deportations, when the pretext of terrorism didn’t exist.
The AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party want us to believe that the problem is Bush, that if we vote Democrat things will be better. They want to hide the fact that the problem is the capitalist system, of which they’re an integral part. They want us to forget that Democratic presidents started the Vietnam and Yugoslavia-Kosovo wars.
Being part of the Freedom Ride gives us an opportunity to meet many workers and students who want to make a difference in the struggle to unite immigrant and citizen workers. Many of them understand that fighting for immigrant workers is a fight for all workers. We need to point out that anti-racist multi-racial unity is crucial. Where Latino immigrants make up a quarter of the workforce, the bosses use this to pay ALL workers $2,400 less per year. (Wall Street Journal, 8/19) Racism hurts the entire working class.
Even if we win our demands, workers will still get the raw end of the deal. With Patriots Act I and II, we’re guaranteed a future of terrorism against workers and students, especially immigrant workers. Workers have nothing in common with the bosses. We have everything in common with workers worldwide. The only way to guarantee the interests of the international working class is to smash all borders with communist revolution. We must immerse ourselves in this and other mass movements to create class consciousness and strengthen our ties to the working class so eventually millions of people will join PLP to destroy capitalism and its imperialist wars.
Maynard Jackson Ensured His Place By Betraying His Base
Maynard Jackson, Jr., Atlanta’s first black mayor, died this summer. I knew him and his family personally from 1952 to 1996. He graduated Morehouse College in 1956, and became a lawyer partly for the AFSCME city workers union in Atlanta. He was a part of a group of young Turks, black and white, who were inspired by the Civil Rights Movement.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Jackson decided to run for U.S. Senate against one of the country’s most powerful racists, Herman Talmadge. I became one of his speechwriters. Even though Jackson received only 15% of the vote, he won in Atlanta. Then in 1973 he became the city’s first black mayor, with the support of thousands of newly-registered black workers, organized by AFSCME and other grass roots supporters, financial backing from black professionals in the New South’s middle class, and some of Atlanta’s "Big Mules" (the big bourgeoisie).
But the Big Mules had billion-dollar plans for Atlanta: cutting social services to balance the city’s budget; expansion of Atlanta to some of its closest suburbs; reconstruction of the existing airport into a major international hub; a major building program to reconstruct downtown Atlanta; and improving public transportation between the city’s economic core and its all-white suburbs.
During Jackson’s first year in office, AFSCME set out to negotiate a contract with their former attorney. The union had contributed big money and manpower to his campaign. Jackson would have to choose between the predominantly black sanitation workers, looking to recoup long-delayed pay hikes, and the Big Mules’ plans to cut social services.
Jackson played the race card to turn public opinion against the workers and eventually smash their strike. He went on TV with Martin Luther King, Sr., and blamed the strike on the "white man" who controlled the union. This decision to use black nationalism to attack black workers exposed Jackson as a dedicated follower of capitalist dictatorship.
Under his administration, the Atlanta school board decided to trade school-busing desegregation for "separate-but-equal" funding. He disguised this by having the famous anti-Jim Crow black liberal and former president of Morehouse College, Dr. B. E. Mays, Jr., preside over the process.
Jackson’s reign witnessed the rise in black unemployment and the elimination of black neighborhoods for urban renewal and gentrification, including the destruction of the last black community near downtown. Billions of dollars were sucked from social services to pay for grandiose building projects in downtown Atlanta.
In the early 1980’s, Jackson covered up the racist nature of the Atlanta child murders. First he denied there was a serial killer targeting young black men and a few young black women. Many Atlanta residents, black and white, feared these were Klan killings, not simply some serial killer. There was also talk that white cops might also be involved, since racist police brutality continued under Jackson’s administration.
As the murders continued, the potential for a black rebellion was imminent, particularly after a suspicious explosion at a community center. A mother of one of the victims led the opposition to his handling of the situation. To enable residents to let off steam, Jackson’s agents endorsed a major demonstration against the murders organized by Atlanta University Center students, but all of us had to swear not to criticize the Jackson administration or mobilize the black working-class community for the march, since it might cause "trouble." Also, we could not march in the areas of the killings. The PLP-led International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) participated in this march. Eventually, the cops arrested and convicted a black man for the killings, based on dubious circumstantial evidence.
As the result of all this treachery, Jackson eventually became the most important black Democrat in the South, the first black director of the Democratic Party’s Voter Institute, a major leader in the Democratic National Committee and the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.
There’s a kind of tragedy in the way some in the class of ’56 chose the capitalist road and became the oppressors we once hated. But such is the nature of liberalism. The best intentions will eventually turn into their opposite because they support the profit system. The bosses will never do anything, no matter how "just," which threatens their class dictatorship. The only real solution is communist revolution. And so I feel anguish at the memory of our old friendship and anger at Jackson’s betrayal of the working class he was supposed to "serve."
While Iraq Erupts, Taliban (and drugs) Are Back in Afghanistan
The Bush administration, which swore to crush Al Qaeda, seems to have forgotten about that aspect of its "war on terror." The hunt for Saddam Hussein (or rather for the vast Iraqi oil fields) took precedent. As Time Magazine reported (8/4), "Bush hadn’t mentioned Osama bin Laden’s name in months, but he said recently that the U.S. was ‘slowly but surely dismantling bin Laden’s terrorist operation.’ As the hunt for Saddam Hussein intensifies, some U.S. officials are suggesting that the focus on the former leader of Iraq has come at the cost of eliminating the eccentric Saudi millionaire behind the 9/11 attacks…. Last fall, as the U.S. began planning the invasion of Iraq, Washington shifted many of its highly classified special-forces units and officers who had been hunting bin Laden in Afghanistan, moving them to Iraq, where they performed covert operations before the war began. By December many of the 800 special-forces personnel who had been chasing Al Qaeda for a year were quietly brought back home, given a few weeks rest and then shipped out to Iraq."
Meanwhile, Al Qaeda (AQ) seems to have expanded its operations. Many of its holy warriors are now in Iraq, attacking U.S. and British soldiers. Groups linked to AQ are growing in Indonesia. And in Afghanistan itself, the U.S. puppet government of Karzai seems to control only the presidential palace in Kabul, heavily protected by CIA-hired mercenaries. Now NATO has replaced Germany as commander of the "peacekeeping" forces, basically operating in Kabul. Warlords control the rest of the country, most of them loyal to their pockets, some loyal to Iran and most waiting to see which way the wind is blowing. And it seems to be shifting towards the Taliban, which according to Stratfor.com (8/7): "…has now regained control of most of Zabul province in southern Afghanistan. This marks the first time that Taliban fighters — in concert with Al Qaeda forces — have retaken a province since being ousted from power by the U.S. military in Nov. 2001. It also underscores the stalemate between the U.S.-backed Afghan forces and the Taliban."
Zabul is of strategic and military importance because it cuts off U.S. forces stationed to the south in Kandahar from the bulk of U.S. and NATO forces located to the north towards Kabul. It also helps the Taliban to gain control of other provinces.
The U.S. might counter-attack, but the growing resistance movement in Iraq is tying up U.S. forces that could be used in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan (whose Intelligence Service is still influential with the Taliban, which it created in the early 1990s) will probably increasingly support the anti-U.S. forces to counter India which, along with Russia, is arming the 80,000-strong forces of Dostum, Afghanistan’s Interior Minister, head of the former Northern Alliance and no friend of President Karzai.
The "war on terror" is going as badly as the "war on drugs." The Wall Street Journal (8/11) reported that the Russian general in charge of fighting drugs is blaming the U.S. for the growing heroin and opium trade in Russia and Europe. Most of it comes from areas controlled by pro-U.S. Afghan warlords. "Gen. Viktor Cherkessov said…that drug production in Afghanistan has increased ‘catastrophically’….Over the past year, the U.S. hasn’t curtailed production — a situation about which Russian officials…express outrage."
So "Top Guns" Bush and Rumsfeld have basically exposed the U.S. as a "stuporpower," although a dangerous one. They will kill tens of thousands of workers and youth worldwide — including young GIs used as cannon fodder — in the U.S. bosses’ drive for world domination. A system based on endless wars for profits must be destroyed, not by reactionary "holy warriors" (many of them trained by the CIA and their now-distant allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), but by revolutionary war to create a new society without any bosses: communism.
a name="Mid-East: Bush Snatches Defeat From Jaws of ‘Victory’"></">Mi"-East: Bush Snatches Defeat From Jaws of ‘Victory’
George "Bring ‘em on" Bush and his Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz gang promised that the fall of Saddam Hussein would be a big blow to terrorism and "stabilize" the entire Middle East. Since Bush’s aircraft carrier show on May 1st declared the war "over," what hath Dubya wrought?
Resistance is growing daily in Iraq. Bush & Co. has turned the country into an expanding haven for al Qaeda-type terrorists, exactly what they said they were invading Iraq to eliminate.
The UN’s Baghdad headquarters was just bombed and its chief killed, along with 16 others.
Riots are spreading in the north and south protesting lack of electricity and water.
Oil pipelines are being blown up.
GI’s are dying daily; pretty soon more will have been killed "after" the war than during it. "Put 148,000 troops in 120-degree heat...with their water rationed, 6,000 miles from home, where they can be ambushed at any moment. Then cut their pay…. Oct. 1…soldiers will lose $75 a month…and their dependents will lose $150 in ‘family separation allowances’ [which] discourages enlistments and re-enlistments and fuels the ‘bring them home’ movement some military families have started." (Palm Beach Post, 8/19) For what? As private Mary Yahne wrote Seattle KIRO Channel 7 TV, "There is no real reason for us to be out here!!!! We’re protecting the oil is all." (8/14)
Meanwhile, the highly-touted Bush/Blair Middle East "road map to peace" is full of potholes with daily clashes and bombings in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.
Now, Stratfor.com’s intelligence analysis service says (8/7) that the Taliban is on the move in Afghanistan, having "regained control of most of Zabul province."(See adjoining article).
Finally, Stratfor reports (8/17) that in Saudi Arabia, world’s largest producer of oil, "the Saudi monarchy is rapidly crumbling" and when the ailing King Fahd dies, "his death will lead to internal chaos." Stratfor says that this decline — unemployment is at 40% — is accompanied by the rise in strength of bin Laden’s al Qaeda forces which has growing support inside the country and is "consolidating its ability to operate in the kingdom."
While Stratfor declines to predict the fall of the Saudi regime, it says, "Its decay is a sign of increasing turmoil in the Middle East and within the Muslim world in general. The collapse of the House of Saud will aggravate instability in the Middle East exponentially. The U.S., besides trying to deal with…al Qaeda, Iraq, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will have to address not only the problem of oil supply but also Saudi Arabia’s political instability."
It doesn’t seem as if Bush will be landing on any aircraft carriers in the near future.
A-Bomb Holocaust Shows U.S. Rulers Champs At WMD
Amid all the reports about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), one should remember that the only rulers to ever use nuclear WMD were those of the U.S. In dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the U.S. ruling class murdered a quarter-million Japanese civilians in a matter of seconds, injured hundreds of thousands more, and left future generations with everlasting genetic effects.
The rationale for this genocidal attack ordered by liberal Democratic President Harry Truman was to end the war without having to invade Japan and thereby "avoid one million casualties." Over the years that has been exposed as a falsehood topping even Hitler’s Big Lies. (In fact, Stanford historian Barton Bernstein found that declassified military planning documents produced a worst-case invasion scenario of 46,000 deaths.) As will be shown below, (1) the Japanese fascists had already been defeated and were suing for peace prior to that August attack; (2) it was absolutely unnecessary militarily to drop the Bomb (much less two); and (3) rather than ending World War II, that atomic holocaust was actually the U.S. bosses’ opening shot of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
Now along comes New York Times liberal columnist Nicholas Kristoff quoting Japanese sources as claiming that that country’s military was so committed to "fighting to the last man" that it was only the use of the Bomb that enabled Japan’s "peace faction" to force a surrender without a land invasion of that island country. So Kristoff concludes that "the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that…the alternatives were worse." Were they?
By 1945, Japan’s entire industrial and military machine had ground to a halt. That spring, its oil lifeline had been severed. On March 9, 1945, "100,000 to 200,000 men, women and children died…when the U.S. 20th Air Force doused Tokyo with jellied gasoline; all told, in the months before Hiroshima, bombs killed up to 500,000 in Japanese cities and left 13 million homeless." (U.S. News & World Report, 7/13/95) U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay complained that there was nothing left to bomb in Japan except "garbage can targets." Japan could no longer defend itself.
In early 1945, U.S. rulers knew Japan was trying to surrender. The chief historian of the U.S. Regulatory Commission, Samuel Walker, wrote that "the consensus was that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan….Alternatives to the bomb existed and…Truman and his advisers knew it."
On May 5, 1945, the U.S. intercepted and decoded a cable from the German ambassador in Japan, sent to Berlin, stating: "Since the situation is…hopeless, large sections of Japan’s armed forces would [favor] an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard." (NY Times, 8/11/93, p. 9)
A 1946 report by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, after examining the intelligence information available to the White House in 1945, concluded that, "certainly prior to 31 December 1945…Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped…and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Truman’s own diary — released in 1979 — indicated he knew from decoded Japanese cables they were about to surrender unconditionally, requesting only that the monarchy be retained. Truman referred to the intercepted intelligence as the cable from the "Jap Emperor asking for peace." He wrote on July 17, 1945, that he believed the Soviets — as promised by Stalin at the May Potsdam Conference — would "be in the war by August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about." (It was a week earlier.)
Even General Dwight Eisenhower, later to succeed Truman as President, told Secy. of War Stimson at the time that, "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary….whose employment…[was] no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
But the Truman Administration didn’t want Japan to surrender before the Bomb could be used. On June 6, 1945, Stimson told Truman he was "fearful" that before the A-Bomb was dropped, Japan would have been so "bombed out" by the U.S. Air Force that the Bomb "would not have a fair background to show its strength." "Show its strength" to whom? Certainly not to Japan, already defeated and frantically trying to surrender.
The object of this "show of strength" becomes clear when learning that U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes told the atomic scientist Leo Szilard that the bomb’s biggest "benefit" was not its effect on Japan but rather "rattling the bomb might make Russia more manageable."
U.S. rulers murdered over a quarter million Japanese civilians and tortured endless future generations with genetic defects solely as a warning to the Soviet Union, which didn’t have the Bomb at that time. The dropping of the A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than being the last act of World War II, was actually the first act in launching the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
Certainly it is the U.S. ruling class that is the master of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
LETTERS
a name="Verizon Worker: ‘I Can Hear You Now’"></">Ve"izon Worker: ‘I Can Hear You Now’
I’m a Verizon employee and bought a CHALLENGE newspaper from one of your members while working in front of her house. I really liked it and thought you had the right idea about how the bosses make their profits from our sweat.
My company doesn’t want to pay for our health care nor guarantee our job security. They want to work us 16 hours a day when they need us and then be free to lay us off when they don’t. My union doesn’t want to strike to force the company to guarantee us our jobs and health care. The union is more afraid of the company than the company is afraid of us. We’re caught in the middle between the company bosses and the union bosses.
Your newspaper was very good and made me feel that maybe there is a chance for us some day. Here is some money for a subscription. I will read it every time. Thank you for taking our side.
A Verizon worker
Black Out the Bosses
The Blackout of 2003 affecting 50 million people is my fourth major blackout in NYC (1965, 1977 and 1996, the latter affecting Upper Manhattan only). This time I was lucky enough to be home. While watching CNN’s comments on Dubya’s "gung-ho" speech to some Marines in San Diego, boasting about capturing a leader of an Indonesian group linked to Al Qaeda, suddenly the TV flickered and then went blank. I checked the fuses in my apartment when I heard a lot of noise from people in the street. "Terrorism" was the NYPD’s first reaction as they put heavily-armed units into action. "Blame Canada" was the second reaction, but it turned out to be capitalist greed and inefficiency as usual.
Nothing worked, not even the cellular or electrically-powered cordless phones. I finally found an old-fashioned one, enabling one of my daughters to reach me. She was returning from the beach, stuck in a train far from home. She had to sleep at a friend’s house. Without subway service to get home, two friends of my other daughter had to sleep over in my house.
Most people throughout the affected areas tried to help one another. This was the communist side of people, even if it meant making personal sacrifices, contrary to the greed of the utility bosses whose only concern is their immediate profits. The politicians, as usual, concentrated on covering their behinds by blaming someone else while lying through their teeth.
A few hours after the blackout began, NYC Mayor Bloomberg announced the subways would be running the next day and everything would be fine on Friday. But the subways didn’t operate until Saturday and thousands didn’t get electricity for 30 hours.
We must take advantage of the masses’ cooperative spirit to build our movement, emphasizing that the bosses’ "me-first" individualism is a loser. This is important, to counter the liberals running the main wing of U.S. capitalism who also understand the masses’ collective nature and want to use it to build a "serve-the-nation" fascist mentality. Black out capitalism with communist power!
A survivor of still another blackout
Discussing Communist Ideas In The Classroom
This past spring I showed the new 27-minute PL May Day video (also on DVD) in four of my high school classes. It includes interviews, many of them with young people, and marchers expressing their feelings about communism, police brutality, racism, imperialism and revolution.
Afterwards students were enthusiastically bursting with opinions, questions, agreements and disagreements. It was exciting! Among all my teaching years, this classroom experience was one of the best, particularly because I think effective classroom work is not so much being a "teacher," but more so a "choreographer of learning." We should be engaging students to collectively help lead the learning process. In that sense, the May Day video was excellent, sparking vigorous debate.
To minimize a legal attack by the school administration, and until fascism becomes more full-blown, one should know that court decisions have created four criteria when dealing with controversial ideas in the classroom: 1) The content must be at the maturity level of the students; 2) The ideas must be relevant to the curriculum; 3) Both sides of the controversial issue must be included; and, 4) The teaching materials cannot be obscene.
On students’ maturity level: a 1976 court case — Wilson v. Chancellor — decided a teacher was well within his [so-called] First Amendment rights to have invited a communist, among other political speakers, to a political science class at the high school level. The court said the school board could not justify the banning of a communist speaker "by contending that political subjects are inappropriate in a high school curriculum. Political subjects are frequently discussed at…schools throughout the country…"
On relevance: communist ideas are often highly appropriate, even in relation to the curricula established by capitalism. The major work of literature I was mandated to teach this past spring was published in the early 1950s, during the McCarthy period. The novel’s theme was focused on attacking communism. There’s really no way to understand the novel without some understanding of communism.
On presenting both sides of a controversial issue: I looked up Joseph McCarthy on the internet and found an abridged version of one of his anti-communist harangues which could fit on the front and back of one sheet. We read that and then watched the May Day video. Then we discussed and debated everything.
The video is not obscene, so that makes point four irrelevant.
The other main court decisions establishing the four points regarding the teaching of controversial ideas are: Keyishian v. Board of Regents, Albaum v. Carey, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Keefe v. Geanakos, Sterzing v. Fort Bend Independent School District, Thomas v. Board of Education, Bertot v. School District No. 1, Sindermann v. Perry, and Ramsey v. Hopkins.
Our youth need to understand as much as possible about communism, just as young folks in the past needed to know everything they could about how to successfully fight and defeat slavery. We should do everything we can to ensure that we don’t become disseminators of the enemy’s ideology or, simply participate passively in the nefarious function of capitalist schools, which mainly lays the basis for re-creating the same inequality and exploitative class structure in the next generation.
I strongly encourage all teachers to show and discuss the May Day video in their classes during the upcoming school year. Dare to struggle. Dare to win!
Red Teacher
Hotels Clean Up From Immigrant Labor
This will not be news to you or your readers but my travel experience recently is just another example of the vicious exploitation of workers. I stayed at a "major brand" hotel in Harrisburg, Pa., and saw the use of immigrant labor from poor countries as chambermaids, porters, waiters, barkeeps, etc.
Over three days on my floor with perhaps 100 rooms, only two "maids" were allotted to clean, remake and spread linen on the beds, and toilet-clean the rooms. Upon returning to the hotel from sightseeing each day at 5:00 P.M., these two workers would still be struggling to finish the burdensome cleaning. There are lots of details: bathtub, basin, fresh towels, making beds, replacing amenities (coffee, tea, etc.). This hotel chain is saving money by using only two employees on each floor. I tried to ask one if she was unionized but she was too frightened to talk.
So this is the bottom line our capitalist hotel chain follows: maximize the share-holders’ profits (my nightly room rent was $138, and "discounted" at that) by over-working poor captive-labor immigrants who have no alternative to working for these vicious slave-drivers. If I were running that hotel, the floor-load would have probably been 25 workers.
I wrote my feelings to this hotel chain. In the future, I will boycott all hotels, staying only in private B&B’s or guest houses. I hope all other sympathetic comrades will also boycott major hotel chains since they follow the same "slave-driver" principles.
NKS
Working Class Needs Communist Power
The blackout of ’03 reveals that the most powerful imperialist country, with the greatest wealth, industry and military power in the world, cannot provide the basic necessities of life to its workers. As millions fought to survive, many in dark subway tunnels, trapped in elevators and high-rise buildings, the stock exchange conducted business as usual, with plenty of power, along with protection from cops toting machine guns.
Over the last 20 years, many have pointed to the critical need for more power generators to meet ever-rising demand but the electric utilities, like all capitalist corporations, answer only to the need for more profits. When denied rate increases, instead of building more generators they milked profits by cutting back on preventive maintenance and safety and getting their boss-controlled government to de-regulate and privatize their systems. This "allowed managers to…chase higher returns in businesses other than providing power…. [including] some…overseas operations." (NY Daily News, 8/16) All this resulted in the further neglect of their systems.
The utilities are locked together in a grid to share power when demand is higher in some areas. But for years demand has exceeded the capacity almost everywhere. The system is currently a disaster waiting to happen again and again. Whenever laws were passed preventing utility bosses’ rate-gouging, they countered by letting their systems rot, knowing full well that their government will hike taxes and electric rates to pay for the building of new equipment, as will likely occur now.
So the blackout of ’03 becomes another investment bonanza for the utilities at workers’ expense and suffering. The bosses hold political, electrical and all other power and use it to reap huge profits, regardless of the cost to workers’ lives. Workers everywhere must use this latest outrage against our class to step up the fight not only for electric power but for communist power which will serve all our needs and end the rotten profit system.
Retired comrade
Broken Worker? Get Another!
CHALLENGE has reported on unsafe conditions in many factories around the world. Here, too, the bosses treat us as nothing more than tools to use up and get rid of. They don’t make working conditions safer for us. They expect us to perform hazardous job duties without proper equipment. If we refuse, they say: "If you don’t want to do it, there’s the gate."
Our union is not helping us fight for better working conditions either. The president is clearly in office to advance himself alone, not us workers.
Recently we had a coal-leak fire that went from the 5th to the 8th floors. A union steward told us to put the fire out at the source with wet towels! (Spraying it with the fire hose would have atomized the pulverized coal and exploded.) Instead of dropping load on the generating units in dangerous situations such as these so we can fight fires and deal with emergencies more safely, management aims to keep the unit on line at all costs, even if it cost workers’ lives.
We stress to people that these are not "our" jobs, that the bosses use us in their jobs at their convenience, giving no thought to us or our families. The moment we’re no longer valuable to them they’ll try to dump us. If we get injured, their attitude is: "Broke one? Get another."
Now the bosses are trying to privatize our pension like Enron did to its employees. We can’t trust the bosses or their misleaders in the union. They’re the ones feeding off our labor and sweat. Our situation here in particular and in the world generally will only improve when we organize to destroy capitalism.
A Shop Comrade
- Cops Protect Racist System
March Against Epidemic Of Jersey Police Terror - Phony Liberia `Liberation' Aids Liberals' War Aims
- Government Fake Figures Hide Millions of Unemployed
- Protestors Slam Racist Cop Murder
- Court Rulings Will Not End Racist Police Brutality
- Mexico: Tire Workers Refuse To Let Bosses,
Union Hacks Roll Over Them - Steel Bosses Consolidate; Union Leaders Collaborate;
Workers' Fight Must Escalate - PLP Summer Project Youth
Unite With Exploited Workers - Texas Students Expose Racist E.O. Wilson's
Pro-Boss `Theories' - California `Recall' Circus Is Diversion From Real Fight-Back
- Pentagon Hides 8,000-Plus GI Casualty Figures
- Gangs in El Salvador Mimic
Big Criminal Bosses - Haiti Proves U.S. Intervention Never `Liberated' Anybody
- Powell vs. Neo-Cons: Warlords' Dogfight
- U.S. Rulers' Wars for Oil: Next Stop, Tehran?
- Gimme a break
- LETTERS
- RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Cops Protect Racist System
March Against Epidemic Of Jersey Police Terror
NEWARK, NJ, Aug. 2 -- Almost 100 people held a militant rally and march to Police Headquarters today protesting the murder of Michael Newkirk by Newark cops, and the epidemic of police terror sweeping New Jersey and working-class areas nationwide. The rally was called by the People's Organization for Progress (POP), an anti-police brutality group based here. PLP participated and our members distributed CHALLENGE at the rally and to spectators.
The police claim they got a call about a "quality-of-life" crime, a "disturbance in progress" at a neighborhood barbecue. Their "Neighborhood Enforcement Stabilization Task Force" and "Auto Theft Task Force" responded, and a few minutes later Michael was shot once in the head by killer cop Thomas Ruane. The cops claim Michael had a gun. Two eyewitnesses said Michael had a bottle in his hand and "tripped on a curb as he was following their orders to lie down." (Newark Star Ledger, 8/1). Now the cops are trying to justify the murder by labeling the barbecue as an out-of-control gang activity.
The police use of the terms "quality of life" and "neighborhood enforcement stabilization" is not accidental. Both concepts have been popularized among urban police departments by George Kelling, professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice in Newark. Kelling's book, "Fixing Broken Windows," is the main source for the spate of "community policing" programs being implemented nationally. Kelling sees young black and Latin males who hang out on the streets as "predators" and "barbarians" who threaten social order. Kelling also publicly defended New York cops who shot Amadou Diallo 41 times. This fascist ideology is used to control the working class and to cover up the true causes of crime and poverty, rooted in the capitalist system. If Kelling and his ruling class allies can win workers to community policing and to the idea that crime and poverty stem from individual choice, perpetrated by "barbarians" on urban street corners, our class will continue to be divided and our potential for revolution limited.
POP has a long history of protesting police murder and racist brutality. Many of its members are dedicated fighters. However, at police headquarters, POP's leadership demanded the establishment of a Civilian Complaint Review Board, and the keeping of municipal records of police brutality. POP also invited the mayors of Newark, Irvington, East Orange, and Orange to attend their next meeting and explain what they are doing to keep their cops under control.
Class rule by the capitalists means that ultimately they must hold power at the point of a gun to enforce wage slavery, private property and racist inequality. The cops' job is to serve this ruling-class agenda. Amid growing fascism and U.S. imperialist wars to control the world, the cops' terrorism becomes even more important to the rulers and is therefore more open. Police terror must be racist because black and Latin workers, those most open to breaking their chains through revolutionary means, must be controlled and terrorized.
Given this reality, all the review boards or black and Latin cops and politicians in the world cannot stop racist police terror. Only a communist revolution will work. The rulers who stand behind the ideas of Kelling and his cohorts will never go quietly. Those who know that the profit system cannot be reformed, and still advocate reforming the police as a "solution," are perpetuating the police terror they say they oppose. PLP calls on all workers and students to organize for communist revolution while we are fighting every single instance of police terror the rulers throw at us.
Phony Liberia `Liberation' Aids Liberals' War Aims
Secretary of State Colin Powell, the New York Times and other voices of the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. capital are urging a reluctant George Bush to land Marines in Liberia to help stop the civil war there. Powell & Co. are desperately seeking to regain some shred of the credibility for the U.S that it lost by invading Iraq under blatantly false pretenses. In Liberia, where Time magazine (7/28) reported "the rare sight of foreigners waving U.S. flags rather than burning them," the main U.S. rulers think they can appear as benevolent saviors. Joseph Siegle, of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations wrote (CFR website, 7/31), "A key theme of President Bush's recent trip to Africa was that there is a compassionate side to U.S. foreign policy. The failure of the United States to take decisive leadership in Liberia provokes cynicism of this claim." Powell insists, "The humanitarian situation is getting worse, and so we are anxious to move quickly" (Reuters, 7/30).
A New York Times editorial (8/2) laid out a desired scenario: "All the elements of a desperately needed American intervention in Liberia are moving into place....West African soldiers could take up positions in Liberia on Monday. The first two of three warships carrying 2,300 American troops arrive offshore this weekend. The only thing missing is an order from President Bush for those troops to go ashore and join the West Africans in trying to impose a cease-fire and stop the killing. While he hesitates, Liberians die." Bush balks because U.S. forces are stretched thin by the guerrilla war in Iraq and deployments in over 100 other countries.
Liberal U.S. rulers hope that images of poor, black Liberians welcoming their Marine liberators will beam across the world. But this isn't missionary work. Maintaining U.S. supremacy is the chief motive behind U.S. action in Liberia. By appearing as the good guys, for once, the main U.S. rulers think they can win allies for future imperialist wars against their many and far-flung enemies. The CFR's Siegle writes, "U.S. moral leadership is indispensable to combat a host of transnational threats for which we need the enthusiastic cooperation of many global partners."
IT'S STILL OIL....
And, as in Iraq, the need to control the world's oil supplies is leading Washington to intervene in Liberia. Siegle tells part of the story. "We also have economic interests in this region. Nigeria supplies 7% of U.S. oil -- a level that is expected to double in the next 10 years. The longer this conflict embroils West Africa and diverts Nigerian troops and resources, the less Nigerians will be able to deal with their own many problems, not least of which is an increasingly militant Islamic population in the north."
This Exxon Mobil apologist fails to mention that the bulk of Persian Gulf oil shipped to Europe and North America and every drop of Nigerian and Angolan crude headed to those markets passes within shooting range of Liberia. It's no accident that the three nations with the largest global oil companies, the U.S., Britain and France, now have military forces respectively in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, where tankers must skirt the western bulge of Africa. As far back as 1980, U.S. Navy strategists identified the region as an oil shipping "chokepoint" that had to be defended from U.S. rivals at all costs.
AND RUBBER, TOO
In addition, Liberia produces key raw materials. The recent bloodshed there has disrupted shipments from the vast Firestone rubber plantation, Africa's largest. Although now owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Company, most of its production goes to the U.S., including the military. The plantation is Bridgestone-Firestone's preferred source of rubber. The company has had to turn to supplies from other parts of the world to keep its plants running. Liberia also mines diamonds, gold, iron ore, nickel, manganese, palladium, platinum and uranium. These minerals are essential in the making of high-tech weapons.
Nobody should fall for the liberals' fake humanitarianism. Their goal in Liberia, and everywhere, is imperialist domination. The only intervention that can end this tyranny is communist revolution. That's the goal of our Party.
Government Fake Figures Hide Millions of Unemployed
The U.S. Labor Department's unemployment statistics are "as credible as the fortune you get in those Chinese cookies," says New York Post business writer John Crudele (7/29). Even before the government announced that joblessness had "fallen" from 6.4% in June to 6.2% in July, Crudele predicted that, "You can count on one thing: The data will be misleading." The reasons?
* "The government missed a whopping 440,000 jobs that were lost last year."
* Without its "adjustment" of the unemployment rate downward last January, the June 6.4% rate should have been 6.6%.
* While the Labor Dept. had reported a June loss of 30,000 jobs, it now revised it to 72,000. (New York Times, 8/2) Why then should we believe its currently-announced July figure of only 44,000?
* "Recently it [the Labor Dept.] lowered the number of people it canvassed in chronically underemployed inner cities," (NY Post, 7/29), which would skew the true jobless figures still further.
In an attempt to play with the numbers, "The government recently started seasonally adjusting its employment figures each and every month," says Crudele. "Washington may as well let the numbers be picked by a Lotto machine." As the Times reports (8/2), "The rate fell, to 6.2% [in July] from 6.4% in June, only because the number of people looking for jobs declined faster than the number of people holding them. People have been withdrawing from the labor market in greater numbers because of their poor prospects."
As Crudele reports, "The less widely watched...unemployment rate" that includes discouraged workers not counted as unemployed was 10.6% in June. Using that rate, the truer jobless figure would be 15.6 million. And that doesn't include the prison population of 2.1 million (highest ever) of which at least two-thirds are jailed for non-violent drug-possession "crimes" and shouldn't even be in prison. Nor does it include several million still on welfare who would be looking for jobs if they existed. So the real jobless figure probably exceeds 20 million.
Of these totals, the unemployment rate for black and Latino workers is twice that of white workers because of racism -- last hired, first fired. From this the bosses make at least a quarter of a trillion dollars in super-profits, the difference in family income of the two groups.
With manufacturing employment shrinking for the 39th consecutive month, the Employment Policy Institute called it "the greatest contraction in private sector employment since the Great Depression." Since the alleged "end" of the recession in 2001, "private sector employment has fallen 2.5 million."
And the figures get worse. In a report entitled, "The Disposable Worker; Living in a Job Loss Economy," the Rutgers University Center for Workforce Development says, "Nearly one-fifth of American workers were laid off from their jobs [at one time or another] over the last three years." That's nearly 30 million workers experiencing unemployment (and, again, does not include those in prison or on welfare). The report concludes that workers' "confidence in the American economy and political leadership is at its lowest level since the [Rutgers] `Work Trend' series began."
In fact, jobless figures would be still higher if it weren't for the tremendous increase in military spending, but that doesn't increase overall income for the working class. If anything, it simply increases the federal deficit which puts greater pressure on social services and leads to still more layoffs of government workers -- not to mention its use as a killer of innocent Iraqi and Afghani workers, and U.S. GI's.
So this is the "future" offered to workers by murderous U.S. rulers: a lifetime of job insecurity, mass racist unemployment, declining wages and imperialist wars -- enough reason to join with PLP to bury this hellish, exploitative system.
Protestors Slam Racist Cop Murder
JERSEY CITY, NJ, July 28 -- "It doesn't matter whether you're black, white or Latin, no one deserves police brutality." said Luisa Ives, surrounded by more than 200 protestors in front of the Hudson County courthouse. The group had marched the previous Friday, blocking a major ramp leading to the Lincoln Tunnel in Weehawken.
Luisa's son Jose Ives, Jr., a high school honor student, was brutally beaten and then died of injuries sustained from Weehawken cop Alejandro Jaramillo.
On July 16, Jose Ives' two brothers were approached by Jaramillo, who was off duty. The boys had accidentally set off a car alarm. They ran back to talk to their bother Jose who was in a Chinese restaurant. Jose walked his brothers home when they were once again approached by Jaramillo, this time wielding a broomstick. According to witnesses the cop punched Jose, jumped on top of him and pummeled his head into the ground several times. The cop then left the scene, leaving the 17-year-old on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.
Jose was taken to the hospital where he remained in a coma for eight days until he died on July 24.
The cop later lied, accusing Jose of attacking him and then tried pressing charges against him! The Hudson County coroner's autopsy proved otherwise. Jose had sustained multiple injuries to his head contradicting Jaramillo's story that he tried to defend himself and that Jose fell to the ground once. Since Jose's death, Jaramillo has been charged with murder and official misconduct.
Family, friends and fellow workers are outraged by this murder, which has led to three large marches and demonstrations. Frank, a family friend, said "the police are always attacking us because we are Latin. The first time I came here from the Dominican Republic, someone robbed me and I went to the police and the cops punched and attacked me!"
Another family friend told the Jersey Journal, "The murder charge doesn't appease anyone. The maximum he can get is 10 years in jail, and if he's good he'll get out in three years. But we won't get Jose back. We're angry and we want justice, and for me that would mean death by injection."
Several liberal misleaders are rallying the protestors to ensure the cop gets jail time. But we should be wary of these misleaders, like New York City liberal businessman, Fernando Mateo. "We are not against police officers, most of them do a good job," he said. "But we are against police officers who do wrong."(Jersey Journal, 07/26). New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy actually visited the family the same night as the demonstration, promising to get to the facts of this "tragedy." Many of these liberal leaders argue that more black and Latin cops are required to stop police brutality. But the fact that Jaramillo is a young Latin cop proves that it doesn't matter what color cop you are.
Cops protect and serve the rulers' interest and their private property. They continually harass and brutalize young black and Latin males in working-class neighborhoods. In this era of the "War on Terror," they need to terrorize the most exploited sections of the working class and pacify them to blunt their anger at the racist capitalist system. These same workers are among the soldiers taking bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan for U.S. profits and world domination.
Liberal misleaders should not divert us from the root cause of police brutality by telling us it's just a few "bad apples," or that justice can be found in the courtroom. Only by fighting for an end to this bloody imperialist system of capitalism can we end racist police terror.
Court Rulings Will Not End Racist Police Brutality
LOS ANGELES, AUG. 4 -- It's been over a year since Donovan Jackson was brutally beaten at an Inglewood gas station and a tape of the beating was shown on national television. The racist cops Morse and Darvish have never been punished. Darvish was acquitted of filing a false police report about the incident. Morse, who beat Jackson and who was charged with assault, drew a hung jury last week.
The trial was a travesty. The prosecution never called any witnesses who had actually seen the beating. They took no testimony from the man who shot the video or from the 20 witnesses observed in the video. The D.A. said he will petition for another trial for Morse on September 22. He also commended the community for keeping the peace!
The day of the verdict there was a rally at the Inglewood City Hall, the culmination of a year-long pacification campaign. The Increase the Peace Foundation has organized a coalition of businesses, community groups, churches and others to promote Inglewood businesses and "justice through the legal system," and calm Inglewood residents.
The rally had a huge police presence. One organizer said the cops were there because "you never know what `those people' will do." They blame the victims for getting angry while covering up the real cause of police brutality, the racist capitalist system. But many residents of Inglewood and Los Angeles are furious about the verdict. A PLP leaflet about the beating and trial was distributed, along with CHALLENGE, and received a very enthusiastic response throughout LA.
The increase in police terror is one of many signs of growing U.S. fascism. Chief Bratton is calling for more cops on the streets and for community policing, where community "leaders" help the police. This was very effective in New York, intensifying police brutality. Homeland Security is also promoting the militarization of the country with the PATRIOT Act and the TIPS program.
Police presence and violence are increasing also to contain opposition to rising unemployment, especially among young black and Latino workers. The rulers want to keep workers in line and prevent rebellions like the recent one in Benton Harbor, Michigan. They must try to win workers to "turn the other cheek" and accept police repression.
The racist cops are ruling-class tools. Under capitalism they're rarely punished; at most they're given a slap on the wrist for their brutality and terror because the rulers use them to enforce racist cutbacks, layoffs and the war economy.
To end racist police brutality we must eliminate the system that needs and breeds it -- and that means smashing capitalism with communist revolution. Justice will come through a system run by workers for our own benefit instead of for the profits of an elite few.
Mexico: Tire Workers Refuse To Let Bosses,
Union Hacks Roll Over Them
JALISCO, México, July 28 -- Workers at the Euskadi Tire factory, owned by the German-based Continental Tire Company, have been fighting a plant closing for 18 months. Their struggle offers important lessons to workers everywhere, particularly in auto and related industries.
Firstly, capitalism can never serve the needs of the international working class. Recent CHALLENGES has reported how auto and steel workers from eastern Germany to South Africa to Detroit/Indiana, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Mexico are losing their jobs and pensions due to capitalism's worldwide crisis. Such a system must be smashed, replaced by a communist society where production serves workers' needs, not the profits of a few bosses.
In 10 years under NAFTA, over 6,000 workers -- half the workforce -- in Mexico's tire industry have lost their jobs. Uniroyal and Goodyear Oxo closed their plants. Globalization has made imports from Asia cheaper for the local market since workers in China, Indonesia, etc., are paid even less than here. This has created a glut (overproduction) locally.
On December 15, 2001, Euskadi-Continental boss Paul Korder told union president Jesus Torres Nuño that the plant would be closed in two days! Euskadi was very productive: more than 1,000 workers built 11,000 tires daily. But since Continental took over in 1998 and spent millions in modernizing, the bosses have been trying to force the union to accept a "flexible" contract: breaking all work rules.
Continental's workers in Potosi are also fighting back. They dumped the pro-boss union leaders and struck on July 4. Tire bosses are demanding "flexible" work rules, a wage freeze, eliminating Sundays as a legal day off, slicing vacation pay in half and more. They claim they can "survive" only by cutting labor expenses that amount to 30% of a tire's costs. The unions say, "...the bosses are the ones promoting oversupply and the high cost of production." (La Jornada, 7/27)
Tire industry workers were relatively better paid than other industrial workers in Mexico, but the work is so dangerous that their "life expectancy is 48 years." (La Jornada)
Workers are increasingly recognizing that all the union federations here serve the bosses. The "independent" VW union basically agreed to the bosses' demands for wage and job cuts. But Euskadi workers have rejected the bosses' demands and the threats of the CTM (Labor Federation) "Tire Coalition," and the Goodyear Oxo union hack's call to sign a sellout deal. They overcame all kinds of legal delays and declared a strike on Jan. 22, 2002, even though the plant was already closed. The Labor Ministry accepted the strike, but called it "inappropriate." Euskadi workers have received much support from other unions here and in Germany. The company has tried and failed twice to break the strike by taking out machines and tires.
There are still 642 workers on strike. Many have been forced to leave Jalisco to find work because the bosses here refuse to hire anyone from Euskadi. Some have emigrated to the U.S.
Workers worldwide should support these militant and committed workers. We in PLP must redouble our efforts to win these workers to join our Party, to turn their inspiring struggle into a school for communism. We must build a mass international PLP and defeat capitalism with its endless wars and economic and political crises.
Steel Bosses Consolidate; Union Leaders Collaborate;
Workers' Fight Must Escalate
International Steel Group (ISG) is the corporation that swallowed up the LTV, ACME and Bethlehem steel companies. In December 2001, LTV shut its doors, throwing 9,000 workers on the street. More than 70,000 retirees were set to lose their pensions and health care. The union "went into action," mobilizing thousands of steelworkers to demand tariffs while the LTV bosses absconded with multi-million dollar bonuses.
Along came Wilbur Ross, a billionaire financier who specializes in buying up bankrupt companies. He bought LTV for pennies, for the cost of the slabs lying on the ground. Ross welcomed the union with open arms and is now a hero in the eyes of the Steelworkers International union leadership.
Less than 3,000 ISG workers are left from LTV. Now there are three workers on a furnace floor instead of six. Some workers work six 12-hour days. If a worker misses three days a year, including sickness, he's subject to discipline. Foremen are working in all areas, taking union jobs. If somebody calls in sick or goes on vacation, crews must work shorthanded.
On the other hand, wages have not been reduced and until recently, ISG has been paying out profit-sharing checks to workers. ISG workers have health insurance, a new, slightly improved pension plan and a false sense of relief that they are back to work. We are doing twice the work with one-third the people, dramatically reducing labor costs and getting a much smaller portion of the value we produce.
This is the consolidation of the U.S. steel industry and it has not helped workers' morale. Bethlehem, LTV, Acme, Republic and National Steel have all disappeared as the big banks and capitalists concentrate control over the industry. Where there were once seven major steel mills, now there are two or three. Thirty-six companies have gone bankrupt.
The tens of thousands of retirees whose pensions have been cut in half and who have no health insurance have been devastated. Many workers and retirees feel, "There's nothing we can do." Many workers just a few years from retirement are angry, but more hesitant about acting.
The obstacles are formidable, but there are opportunities to advance. ISG workers have participated in actions against the imperialist war in Iraq and demonstrations against the KKK. We are struggling to maintain and advance our modest base for CHALLENGE inside and outside the mills, in the midst of this massive industry upheaval.
One of the biggest obstacles is the union's desire to be a partner in this consolidation. They support steel tariffs and right-wing patriotic garbage like "Stand Up for Steel," to win workers to march behind the bosses' flag. This doesn't save jobs and sets the stage for trade wars and shooting wars. In the face of massive cuts in pensions and health care benefits, they tell workers to "Vote Democrat." While millions are destroyed, the union leaders are reduced to saving jobs for a few.
The world's steel bosses are in a life and death struggle over cheap labor, markets and resources. Asian and Latin American bosses already pay starvation wages, and the U.S. and European bosses are in a race to see who can cut labor costs the most. This is their short-term plan for profits, but also their strategic plan for building their imperialist war machines.
This plan includes workers following the union leaders, fighting for a few pennies, and entrusting our futures to the empty promises of the bosses. Our task is to build a mass movement against these attacks, to fight back on every front and win steelworkers to build a mass PLP that will break the cycle of unemployment, war and racism with communist revolution. This is a long-term struggle that must be waged every day.
PLP Summer Project Youth
Unite With Exploited Workers
BROOKLYN, NY, August 1 -- On a rainy July afternoon youth participating in the PLP Summer Project traveled to lower Manhattan to support a workers' demonstration at the Park Avenue Country Club Restaurant. These workers began a fight-back against the denial of overtime pay and back wages, as well as a fellow worker's firing.
Firmly believing in working-class unity, we introduced ourselves to these workers, but initially limited our communist politics to the distribution of CHALLENGE and initiating more internationalist chants. But on our second visit, we presented our revolutionary analysis, based on our study-groups about surplus value, unemployment and capitalist crises.
Two comrades spoke in English and Spanish about the importance of a worker-student alliance. They explained how under capitalism the value they produce will be stolen by the bosses and that only communism can satisfy workers' needs. The workers were open to our ideas, took CHALLENGE, joined our chants and cheered our speeches. They invited us back to the following day's picket line.
This experience showed that the struggles of the working class, not the bosses' educational system, are the best schools for communist youth. We'll be returning to the picket line to learn even more from and with our working-class brothers and sisters. The project is a great experience in seeing first-hand how workers DO fight back against capitalist exploitation.
Texas Students Expose Racist E.O. Wilson's
Pro-Boss `Theories'
LUBBOCK, TEXAS -- Hundreds of leaflets handed out by Students For Social Justice (SSJ) greeted racist scientist E. O. Wilson when he addressed the closing session of the American Society of Mammalogists' convention at Texas Tech University here. Wilson, the Harvard professor who claims that racism and religious hatred are universal traits of genetically-evolved human nature, was first discredited in the 1970s when his book, "Sociobiology," claimed that minorities were genetically inferior to whites. He and his pro-capitalist ideas were met by a mass movement, including PLP-led anti-racist students and intellectuals. On one campus, black students poured water on his head during a speech. Wilson retreated then, but in the last 20 years his theory, sociobiology, has become part of many fields, from sociology to political science to economics.
Before his arrival, anti-racist Texas Tech students quickly held a meeting to discuss his new book, "Consilience," and to prepare to "greet" him. We discussed his role as a spokesman for ruling-class honchos like Stephen Rockefeller and the CEO of American Express in trying to force sociobiology into college curriculums nationwide. This fascist ideology is designed to convince U.S. workers and students to support the U.S. rulers' wars for oil and continued world domination. It says that the cultures of people in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere are "naturally violent," but that more highly-evolved culture -- that of the U.S. capitalist class -- can "stabilize" these violent areas.
SSJ members who had organized demonstrations against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, wrote a leaflet pointing out that Wilson's pseudo-scientific arguments that tribal war and ethnic cleansing are expressions of "natural human religion and tribalism" justifies U.S. imperialist war efforts as "humanitarian" intervention.
Many students organized by SSJ walked into the pre-speech reception honoring Wilson and handed out hundreds of leaflets. During his actual speech, many more in the audience received the leaflets and passed them from person to person as the cops searched for the leafleters.
Wilson's speech said almost nothing. He showed slides describing the extinction of animal species and the rain forests, never mentioning that capitalist greed and the profit system causes these problems.
Wilson's public speeches may be tame right now, while he poses as an "environmentalist," but his ideas are building support for U.S. fascism. He should be chased off campuses everywhere.
California `Recall' Circus Is Diversion From Real Fight-Back
"Is California governable?" The British magazine, The Economist, asked that question recently. A financial crisis rolled into a budget crisis rolled into a political crisis has seen Wall Street drop the state's credit rating while some politicians have organized a section of voters to demand a recall of Governor Gray Davis.
Democratic Party leaders charge that right-wing Republicans are trying to usurp the popular vote and unseat the newly re-elected Governor. The Republicans claim they're exercising their rights, organizing an electoral movement to remove a do-nothing Governor who, given a $38-billion budget deficit, scores record lows in opinion polls.
So the Republicans are exercising "democracy" while the Democrats are defending it. What a farce! California has more people in prison than any other state (even Texas). In the 1980's, voters rejected a bond issue to build more jails. The Democrat and Republican politicians built more anyway. So much for democracy!
In 1977 the courts, responding to years of organizing by parents in low-income Baldwin Park and throughout the state, ordered an equitable funding for all school districts. They claimed to be ending a pattern in which Beverly Hills received $1,200 per student while nearby Baldwin Park got $600. State politicians reacted immediately with the well-funded, well-publicized tax "revolt" called Proposition 13. It passed in 1978 and decimated the public school system. California, which ranked 8th in per capita income, found itself ranking 46th (out of 50 states) in school spending. While Republicans launched Proposition 13, Democrats have never seriously tried to overturn it. This is the democracy of capitalism, democracy for the few and the rich.
The Democrats' description of Davis' election as a "popular" vote is far from reality. Only about 30% of the electorate actually voted. Davis got about 18% of the total eligible to vote -- hardly a popular mandate.
While no Governor has ever sunk so low so quickly in public opinion polls, the same poll awarded the gutter prize to the California Legislature as a whole, ranking it even lower than Davis. If "popularity" really were the determining factor, the whole Legislature would be recalled.
This is the most telling point. Today, the whole political machinery is more divorced from the masses than ever, both in a narrow formal sense of Democrats and Republicans, as well as the broader sense of unions and other groups. This crisis opens a window of opportunity for communist organizing. We must seize it by opposing the moves to drag workers into the dead end of the electoral arena.
Whether Davis is in or out, Delano's second State Prison will be opened while UC's new university at Merced will remain closed. The war in Iraq will continue, with more deaths for Exxon Mobil oil profits. This political machinery is defending and building fascism. The whole political crisis enables us to attack the idea that secretly dropping a private opinion about one or another capitalist candidate into a sealed box (voting capitalist style) means something.
Real political activity links the need for mass movements -- against murderous cuts in health care; or the fascist rates of incarceration; or the racist low-funding of public schools; or the murderous imperialist war for oil -- to winning people to see the need for communist revolution, to replace capitalists' power with workers' power. Ultimately, this is the alternative that will become the most popular with workers and youth!u
Pentagon Hides 8,000-Plus GI Casualty Figures
U.S. casualties in Iraq far exceed the number reported to the public here, with more than double the deaths and over 8,000 wounded, according to the British Guardian newspaper and National Public Radio.
U.S. combat deaths as of Aug. 5 were 166, 19 more than the first Gulf War. But the total death toll, including accidents and suicides, is 248. "Wounded soldiers continue to be flown back to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at a relentless rate. The Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington was so overwhelmed by the influx that it had taken over beds normally reserved for cancer patients, a CBS report said." (Guardian, 8/5)
Although the Pentagon figure for wounded in action is 827, Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, in charge of the airlift of wounded into Andrews, told National Public Radio that, "Over 4,000 have stayed here... and that number doubles when you count the people that...we send to other places." He said 90% of the injuries were directly war-related.
While a Gallup poll reported 25% in the U.S. want the troops home now and another 33% want a withdrawal if the casualties mount (Guardian, 8/5), what would the reaction be of the 63% that Gallup reported as believing the war was worth it if they knew these true figures, largely unreported in the U.S. media?
Gangs in El Salvador Mimic
Big Criminal Bosses
EL SALVADOR, Aug. 4 -- Last July 23, the Salvadoran President, Francisco Flores, declared "war" on the gangs through a fascist plan called "strong hand." According to Flores, this will end the murders, drug-dealing and gang take-over of neighborhoods.
A propaganda-inspired deployment of hundreds from the National Civil Police and the army arrested more than 300 alleged gang members. Several days later, half were released for lack of evidence of any crime. Only 12 of the 300 are being formally charged with a crime. The "Strong Hand" plan pushes laws making gang membership a crime warranting imprisonment. And Flores is threatening to use the law of "exceptional state," which could suspend constitutional rights in strikes, protests or rebellions.
The Salvadoran ruling class faces two big problems. First, they're confronting a huge economic crisis caused by worldwide overproduction, especially of coffee, creating massive poverty and unemployment. The hospitals and health care services have been bankrupt for years, giving rise to many diseases, especially affecting children and the elderly. Pneumonia, generally curable with proper antibiotics (which are not available), has killed hundreds here this year. In this crisis, the system is kept afloat only by the $2 billion a year sent from Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.
Secondly, the Presidential campaign started today. The election is slated for next March. Some bosses are worried that if the FMLN (the former guerrilla movement) wins the election, much of their profits could go to European banks, not those in the U.S. This reflects differences within the local ruling class and also among rival imperialists.
The bosses and their government are using the gang problem as a pretext to twist and divert workers' discontent with the profound crisis caused by capitalism. The workers shouldn't fall into the trap of blaming our problems on the gang-bangers. The latter just copy the big bosses who use them to rob and kill workers. Then when they're no longer needed, they're thrown on the garbage heap.
The real murderers, exploiters and source of starvation are the bosses and their system. Flores is a descendent of the ruling class, which during the decades of the 70's and 80's brutally murdered 150,000 workers. Handal, the FMLN candidate, will not end the capitalist crisis but will wind up like Lula in Brazil, administering it and giving a left cover to capitalist exploitation. Our goal must be to end this brutal capitalist system by building PLP and fighting for working class power through communism.
Haiti Proves U.S. Intervention Never `Liberated' Anybody
The myth that U.S. military intervention can free anyone from oppression and misery has been shattered many times. Iraq is only the latest example. Now the liberal wing of U.S. capitalism and its allies among so-called moderate Democrats and Republicans and the Black Congressional Caucus are misleading many honest people into believing that "humanitarian" intervention is needed in Liberia.
Yet when Clinton was President, the same group pushed the same line about "freeing" Haiti and "building democracy" there. Just as in Liberia, Haitians desperately wanted to eliminate the repressive Tonton Macoute regime. They wanted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest and friend of Clinton and Sen. Christopher Dodd, to "save them." When Aristide was overthrown by a coup, tens of thousands of Haitian workers in NYC, Miami, Boston and Washington, D.C. rallied to demand Aristide's return.
CHALLENGE said then it was a dangerous illusion to believe Aristide and a U.S. imperialist intervention would bring anything good to the Haitian masses. After all, the Duvalier regime and the fascist rulers that followed it had been installed in power by the U.S. Today, things have gone from bad to worse. Corruption is rampant, while Aristide and his former supporters are fighting over power.
Anne M. Bauer, of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports that four of the seven million people in Haiti face starvation; 23% of children under 5 suffer chronic malnutrition. Only 110,000 of the 4 million people who can work have some kind of job in the formal economy, 35,000 in the government.
On top of the rulers' corruption and political infighting paralyzing the economy, a four-year-long drought has depressed agriculture. And when it does rain, terrible floods result, particularly in the northeast. Water and sanitation systems are almost non-existent.
FAO is calling on other countries and relief organizations to help 600,000 Hatians prepare for the coming harvest season with financial aid for seeds and livestock. But that would be a mere drop in the bucket and it is doubtful that even that aid would ever get into the hands of the masses -- in Haiti, as in many other countries, those who manage the distribution of international aid usually put it all up for sale on the open market. In any event, the imperialist powers would prefer to use that money for warmaking.
The workers and peasants of Haiti need real regime change: from capitalism and imperialism to communism -- a society without Tontons Macoute, Aristides or any other imperialists and capitalists.
Powell vs. Neo-Cons: Warlords' Dogfight
George Bush's July 30 press conference showed exactly why there have been so few of them. Despite the generally tame questions by the White House press corps, Bush evaded most of them. Even the New York Times, whose criticisms of Bush tend to be mild, criticized his "vague and sometimes nearly incoherent answers...The president and his advisors...still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question." (Editorial, 7/31).
The Bushites' many lies to justify seizing the Iraqi oil fields (world's second largest) are really nothing new. U.S. Presidents have long lied to justify war. In 1964, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson fabricated a North Vietnam "attack" on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin as the pretext to escalate the war in Vietnam. So why are the liberal media making a big deal about the Weapons of Mass Destructions and other lies by the Bush gang?
It's basically a dogfight among warmakers and fascists. The liberal bosses are angry that the Neo-Cons behind Dubya are messing things up, from Iraq to Homeland Security to Liberia. Jim Lobe, writing in the Asian Times (ATimes.com, 8/4) puts it this way:
"From Qalqiya on the West Bank to Karbala in Iraq to North Korea, contending forces within both the administration of President George W Bush and his Republican Party are duking it out for control, and the White House seems more and more unable to impose discipline.
"While the neo-conservatives and right-wing hawks in the offices of Vice-President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who led the drive to war in Iraq, have been put on the defensive as the costs in blood and treasure of the post-war occupation mount, they have by no means retreated from the battle.
"And while Secretary of State Colin Powell has worked quietly to extend his power, particularly over the Israeli-Palestinian roadmap and dialogue with Pyongyang, right-wing elements in Congress appear determined to thwart him, even if the Pentagon's voice on the two issues has been somewhat diminished.
"To succeed, Powell needs a strong ally within the White House, and, as noted by the Financial Times last week, the newly perceived weakness of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her staff is making it very difficult for the secretary to gain traction there.
"Instead, Powell is relying increasingly on his friends in Congress, particularly Democrats and moderate Republicans -- such as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, and Senator Chuck Hagel -- to both press his positions and to keep the Pentagon on its heels, a task they performed admirably in a remarkably confrontational hearing on Iraq that featured a defensive, if defiant, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz."
Workers and youth must be clear: neither side in this dogfight is our ally. They both want war and fascism to maintain U.S. rulers as the world's dominant imperialists. Mass unemployment, poverty, racist/fascist terror and endless wars are the horrors all these bosses have in store for us. There's a better future but we must fight for it, a future where workers produce for their needs, not for the profits of a few warmakers. That's PLP's goal. Join us.
U.S. Rulers' Wars for Oil: Next Stop, Tehran?
All the same elements of the war in Iraq are in play for the Bushites' plan for Iran: threats from weapons of mass destruction, "liberating" people from dictatorial rule, and controlling vast oil reserves that otherwise might be grabbed by competing imperialists. The Bush team is preparing for war. One group wants to wait until after the November 2004 elections; the other wants to create a crisis soon to obscure the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, given the problems they're having in Iraq, and the fact that Iran is a tougher nut to crack, can U.S. imperialism handle both simultaneously?
The Bushites have had some success building support among other ruling classes. European rulers agree with the U.S. that no one except them should have nuclear weapons. That's why they all love the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which says that nuclear weapons are allowed only for the main imperialists (U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France).
The Iranian clerics have been both bolder and clumsier than Saddam. They loudly proclaim they're building long-range missiles and a nuclear power plant, plus all the components needed for a nuclear bomb. But they still claim they're not constructing a bomb, even after being caught lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about hiding bomb-related activities. For instance, they've admitted making uranium metal, which has no known use except for a bomb, and they're refusing to allow more inspections. The IAEA, a UN agency headed by the Egyptian Mohamed El-Baradei, was at odds with the U.S. over Iraq but is leading the charge on Iran. This gives the U.S. credibility. The Europeans hide their imperialist agenda behind "upholding international law" and the UN.
At the June IAEA meeting, there was a tough report about Iran's non-compliance with the NPT. At the September meeting, they'll probably issue an ultimatum to Iran, with questions that would require Iranian rulers to admit they've been lying. Convinced that the U.S. is determined to provoke a confrontation, Iranian rulers want to push ahead as fast as possible with their nuclear program. Within another two years, they can have a bomb and deter the U.S., although it might take them until 2010 to attach a bomb to their missiles. The ruling Iranian clerics see how Saddam, who had no bomb, was overthrown, while North Korean rulers, who do have one, are treated with kid gloves. The lesson: the best way to deter a U.S. invasion is with nukes.
As U.S. rulers slowly build to a confrontation with Iran, this time they may have the cloak of UN and international support. The Chinese are sitting on their hands, and even the Russians, who are building Iran's nuclear power plant, are refusing to ship the fuel for the plant until the conflict with the IAEA is resolved.
A month ago, the U.S. successfully pressured Japanese oil companies to withhold a multi-billion-dollar investment to develop the Iranian Azadegan oil field -- one of the world's largest -- on the pretext that the nuclear dispute with the IAEA be resolved first.
What U.S. bosses want most from Iran is the opportunity to exploit its 90-billion-barrel oil reserves, 9% of the world total. The real U.S. complaint about Iran's hard-line mullahs is the latter's invitation in European, Japanese and Russian oil companies. U.S. rulers have forbidden U.S. firms from investing in, or trading with, Iran, to pressure the mullahs into allowing the U.S. to call the shots rather than having to compete with the French oil giant TotalFinaElf.
The main element holding back the Bushites is their fear that the U.S. working class is getting sick of war. Iran would make three in four years, after Afghanistan and Iraq. So currently the main thrust is covert operations to destroy the nuclear facilities and destabilize the mullahs' rule, not large-scale invasion.
The Bushites think they can get away with a war on Iran because Iranian workers hate the fascist mullahs who rule that country. The mullahs fear the workers will not defend their regime which is another reason they want a nuclear bomb. A recent Iranian government public opinion poll found 45% of the people wanted a change in the political system, even if it required a foreign invasion. Recently, the hardliners had to pull out all stops twice to break up demonstrations against their rule. On July 9, the anniversary of the 1999 nation-wide mass demonstrations against the mullahs, the latter shut the cell phone system, rounded up thousands of people as a preventive measure, and filled the streets with fascist thugs carrying chains to threaten demonstrators.
The Bush gang wants to cynically take advantage of Iranian workers' hatred for the mullahs, claiming they want to "liberate" them from fascist rule. In fact, the Bush agenda is to restore power to the old monarchy, using Los Angeles-based satellite TV stations to push Reza Pahlavi, the son of the old Shah. They want Iran to be ruled by a U.S.-sponsored fascist, rather than by the fascist mullahs.
Yes, Iran -- like the U.S. -- needs a regime change. Both countries are ruled by vicious dictatorships of the rich. Both need communist revolutions to bring workers to power.
Gimme a break
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Supermarket cashiers in Argentina are being forced to wear diapers to keep them from taking toilet breaks at work, a union says. (NY Daily News, 8/3)
LETTERS
State Capitalism,
Privatization Both Dead End For Workers
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe is a faithful lap dog of U.S. imperialism and a sworn enemy of the working class. He militarized the telecommunication company Telecom and then privatized it, leaving 13,000 workers jobless. He said privatization was necessary because the government couldn't afford it anymore. But the real culprit is the worldwide crisis of capitalism and the bosses' greed to seize this company.
He also "reformed" the ISS (Social Security system), again eliminating jobs under the guise of "improving services." But the government has wasted many millions of dollars at the ISS. Now private companies see big bucks in privatizing health care. Uribe also privatized the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol and overturned gains oil workers won through bloody struggles against both the company and the paramilitary death squads.
The private sector has also attacked workers with fascist ferocity. Companies owned by conglomerates like the Santodomingo Group, the Antioqueño Syndicate and the Ardilla Lulle group have attacked unions and hard-won gains.
Workers are angry and are fighting back, occupying work places, organizing strikes and marches. But these struggles are being sabotaged by the patriotic and nationalist politics of union leaders, who say workers must "defend their companies" against foreign bosses who want to privatize them.
We in PLP have participated in many of these protests and struggles to bring our politics to these workplaces. We distributed a leaflet entitled, "Workers Don't Need Privatization Nor State Capitalism, Workers Need Communism." It called on workers to fight against all forms of capitalism,saying there are no "lesser evil" bosses. We called for communism as the only solution to a society based on profits for a few and war, mass terror and unemployment for millions. The workers' only flag is red, the flag of PLP. Join us.
Red Worker
Once a Nazi,
Always a Nazi
CHALLENGE (7/23) reported on the struggles of DaimlerBenz and VW workers in Germany and Mexico. These two companies were key parts of Hitler's war machine and made billions from the use of slave labor during World War II. On July 17, a documentary was shown at the Madre de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo University) in Buenos Aires, Argentina that demonstrated, once a Nazi always a Nazi.
The film, made by Gaby Weber, a German journalist living in South America, is titled "There Are No Miracles." It exposes Mercedes Benz -- today merged with Chrysler as DaimlerChrysler -- as a partner-in-crime with the ruthless military dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the late 1970s. The Mercedes plant was a center of political struggle. Militant workers who opposed the union sellouts were accused of sabotage. The company and the union worked with the military death squads.
The film reports recent trial testimony of the plant managers and union leaders José Rodríguez and Ruben Lavallen, a known torturer, abductor of minors and head of Mercedes Benz security since 1978, exposing company complicity with the dictatorship.
The plant production manager testified that after the military coup, production dropped 30%. The judge asked if he thought the militant workers were involved in the sabotage. The boss said he could never prove it, but the workers could. He added that after 15 workers were kidnapped and murdered by military death squads, the problem disappeared. "The sabotage did not stop by miracle," he said. Over 30,000 workers and youth were killed in the 1970s during the "dirty war" carried out by the military rulers.
A Nazi is a Nazi forever.
A Reader
Health Care A
Demopublican
Shell Game
I'm a retired San Francisco bus driver (MUNI) and a regular reader of your pro-working class paper. The lack of health care insurance for workers and the big bosses' attempts to cut back what little we have is a very important issue, worthy of your members' active interest.
On July 14, about 20 people from several Bay Area reform groups, including Health Care for All, Neighbor to Neighbor, Gray Panthers and Senior Action Network, demonstrated at U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, demanding an end to Medicare privatization, a real prescription benefit for seniors and the disabled, and a unified program of universal health care. Speeches emphasized how Congress's phony prescription benefit was really a cover to increase healthcare privatization and thereby reduce government healthcare spending for seniors and the disabled.
Participants and spectators got an amusing look at "democracy in action" when trying to deliver a letter demanding Feinstein filibuster pending prescription-privatization legislation. All Market Street entrances to the giant McKesson building were sealed. Security guards told us Feinstein's office had instructed them not to let in even a single person.
Although the Senator's office was a public place, they said it was inside private property, and therefore "inaccessible." What a metaphor for the whole political process, and privatization in particular! McKesson is one of the nation's biggest profiteers from prescription drugs sales.
Finally, Feinstein's office phoned Security and said three of us could meet with a staff member. Our message, besides opposition to Medicare restructuring, was that we would be back.
Readers should follow this issue and join the fight for health care for all. We workers created this system's wealth. At least we should get free national health insurance. The bosses deliberately confuse this issue, using the old liberal-conservative shell game, with the liberals saying "this is the best deal we can get," but "we're `forced' to give in to conservative views." We would appreciate your detailed analysis of this issue.
Incidentally, back in the 1970s Feinstein clawed her way to the top of the local political garbage heap by sponsoring a ballot proposition taking away bus drivers' medical benefits. Her husband, stock wheeler-dealer Richard Blum, is cashing in on Iraqi misery along with Bechtel Corp.
A Loyal Reader
VW: Communists Needed
Hardly had the VW workers in eastern Germany returned to work with nothing but promises (CHALLENGE, 7/23), then VW workers in Mexico were hit with mass layoffs. Within several weeks of those layoffs, VW announced 4,000 more -- 16% of its labor force -- in its two Brazil plants. Meanwhile, VW announced plans to build two new plants in China. Upon completion, VW will build more cars in China than in Germany!
With plants in Africa, South America, North America, Asia and Europe, VW bosses control the jobs of tens of thousands of Asian, black, Latin and white auto workers.
It's a fact that under capitalism workers will always compete against each other for jobs. It's also a fact that the harder we compete, the weaker our class becomes.
It's only when the fight for jobs is led by the fight for communism can workers unite. As jobs become scarcer and the crisis deepens, as the possibility of winning concessions becomes more limited, the fight for jobs will intensify, and the temptation to give in to regional or national demands will grow. Our job -- raising class consciousness, unity and workers' power -- will be more difficult but more urgent. Class struggle can help recruit to PLP. Otherwise cynicism and nationalism will spread from the lack of immediate or lasting gains. The fight for communism and workers' internationalism is here and now. Revolution is a long-term struggle, but the need for communist organizers is immediate.
A Red Worker
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)
Rebellions brewing in US?
Across the nation, state and local leaders have been forced to slash more than $100 billion in spending, laying off thousands of employees, cutting off health insurance for roughly one million people and lowering America's standard of living....
People across America will pay the price for Washington's indifference in lower-quality schools, fewer chances to go to college...and diminished medical care....
I came to measure the impact of the fiscal crisis in this little farm town of Yamhill, Oregon....
"This woman was saying to me, People should be on the streets with pitchforks, saying: `Revolt! Revolt!'" said Ms. Stern, the county commissioner. "There's a groundswell starting. I can feel this energy coming." (NYT, 7/19)
US needed 9/11 for Iraq war
Members of the joint panel said the committee's findings showed that the hijackings might have been thwarted....
The intelligence community repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda had both the capability and the intention to threaten the lives of thousands of Americans and that it wanted to strike within the United States....Policy-makers from the Clinton and Bush administrations have testified that the intelligence community warned them of the danger Al Qaeda posed and the urgency of the threat....
One newly-disclosed intelligence document from December 1998...said: Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals had successfully evaded checkpoints in dry run at NY airports....
In April 2001, the community obtained information from a source with terrorist connections who speculated that bin Laden was interested in commercial pilots as potential terrorists. The source warned that the United States should not focus only on embassy bombings, that the terrorists sought "spectacular and traumatic" attacks and that the first World Trade Center bombing would be the type of attack that would be appealing....
Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began using 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. (NYT, 7/25)
US wars: black workers say no
African-Americans have historically been skeptical of military intervention by their country in the affairs of others....Asked whether the United States should try to change a dictatorship to democracy or stay out....82 percent of African-American respondents wanted America to mind its own business, as opposed to 58 percent of all others....
The Iraq war proved especially divisive...with 72 percent of whites saying Washington was right to attack Iraq, compared with 41 percent of blacks, according to a June poll....African-Americans were similarly skeptical during the first Persian Gulf War and the battle for Kosovo....
Even when it comes to Liberia there is disagreement....
Suspicion about the intentions of the American government is another motivator. For some African-Americans, distrust of the Pentagon is palpable. Blacks, they say, end up fighting other men's wars. "We have a long history of serving as cannon fodder for interests that are not our own," said Mark Fancher, chairman of international affairs at the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
Mr. Fancher invoked the Buffalo soldiers, black troops sent to fight Indians and Mexicans in the conquest of the West, and African-Americans lost in Vietnam, a "liberation struggle" he said falsely billed as a fight against Communism.
On Liberia, Mr. Fancher said, his group is unyielding. "There is no situation where it would be appropriate to send in troops," he said. "It is exclusively an African problem."
The perception that American concern toward Africa is based on its natural resources or geopolitical jockeying is widespread." (NYT, 8/3)
US abandons `living wage'
At least one-third of our economy's full-time[rs] -- nearly 50 million workers -- do not earn a living wage! (Liberal Opinion Week, 7/28)
Cultural revolution led him
Sheng's.... "Song and Dance of Tears" was the hit of the past season at the New York Philharmonic....
His arrival in New York in 1982, aged 26, may have signified a turning point in his life, but it had nothing like the impact of the cultural revolution.... "Mao invented the concept of `re-education' by peasants. Everyone was forced into the fields, unless you had a talent in the performing arts...."
Sheng auditioned for a provincial folk ensemble from the Tibetan border and was accepted. "If not for the cultural revolution, I wouldn't be a musician today. Looking back, I benefited greatly. First, I started to be interested in folk music. It's very rich and mostly unwritten. Also, I developed the habit of teaching myself....
[In] 2000, Sheng returned to China to tape the dying embers of the folk tradition he had embraced in those outlying provinces as a teenager -- a tradition he says is fast disappearing. (Financial Times, 7/20)
Bombs show early US war plan
American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war....
The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaigns against the Baghdad government....
606 bombs had been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan, General Moseley said....
Air war commanders were required to obtain the approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld if any planned air strike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and all of them were approved. (NYT, 7/20)
Uraniumgate: Squabble Among U.S. Warmakers
Capitalism Breeds Mass Racist Unemployment
- 1967 Mass Rebellion in Detroit Forced the Creation of Tens of Thousands of Jobs
- a href="#Jobless Economic ‘Recovery’">Jo"less Economic ‘Recovery’
United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship
Fighting Racist Police Terror and Imperialist War
CSU Trustees Are No Allies in Fight Against Budget Cuts
The Struggles Of A Retired Steelworker
From UK to South Africa: A Tale of Two Layoffs
a href="#South Africa’s ANC-led Government Defends Iscor against Steel Strikers">"outh Africa’s ANC-led Government Defends Iscor against Steel Strikers
LIBERIA: Youth Used to Kill and Die for Mineral Profits
Verizon: Billions in Profits, Cutbacks for Workers
a href="#‘Counter-Terrorism’ Cops — All A Part Of The Bosses’ Plan">‘Count"r-Terrorism’ Cops — All A Part Of The Bosses’ Plan
Bonus Marchers: The Bosses Used the U.S. Army to Attack Veterans
Soldiers from U.S., DR and PR Used as Cannon Fodder
LETTERS
a href="#Politics Is Primary In ‘Curing’ Aids">Po"itics Is Primary In ‘Curing’ Aids
a href="#Not In Our Lifetime? Don’t Bet On It!">"ot In Our Lifetime? Don’t Bet On It!
Raising Red Ideas at Church Conference
a href="#‘We should Be Outraged by Each...Attack’">‘W" should Be Outraged by Each...Attack’
Uraniumgate: Squabble Among U.S. Warmakers
Workers Should Take No Side
The assassination of the Hussein brothers came at a convenient time for Bush (and his lapdog Tony Blair). But, even so, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class is turning George Bush’s Iraqi uranium lie into a full-blown scandal. They may use it to launch a Watergate-style purge of the neo-conservative "Go It Alone" gang that dominates Bush’s White House. The New York Times and Washington Post are leading the charge with a constant barrage of exposes. On July 15, the Times devoted an editorial, two op-ed articles, a news story, and a news analysis piece to "Uraniumgate."
Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said there are "grounds to impeach Bush." (Reuters, 7/17/03) And on July 16, Republicans narrowly beat back a Democratic push led by Jon Corzine and Teddy Kennedy for a Senate investigation into Bush’s "misrepresentations." At the very least, the Democrats hope Bush’s false weapons claims will provide them with plenty of ammunition in the 2004 elections.
Just as Watergate wasn’t about a burglary, the current intelligence scandal isn’t about a lie. All the media outlets and ruling class politicians knew about this story when they supported the call for war. CIA Chief Tenet had pulled the same story from a Bush speech three months earlier! While they disagreed about how to go to war, the ruling class was united on seizing Iraq and supporting the concept of "pre-emptive" war.
The main wing of the ruling class is really attacking Bush (especially Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith) because in their view, he didn’t send enough troops to Iraq or kill enough Iraqis. Now the U.S. is bogged down in a guerrilla war. His tax cuts contribute to a $455 billion deficit that could cut into the military budget. He didn’t win any major allies, other than Britain, to the Iraq invasion, and has done little, except to break a longshoremen’s strike, supposedly to protect U.S. seaports from terrorism.
The liberals are charging that Bush squandered an opportunity to militarize the U.S., especially the youth, after Sept. 11. William Galston, a domestic policy aide in the Clinton White House complains, "In the immediate wake of 9/11, the administration’s failure to call for any real sacrifice from citizens fortified my belief that the terrorist attack would be the functional equivalent of Pearl Harbor without World War II, intensifying insecurity without altering civic behavior." (United We Serve, see below) He cites a November 2002 survey showing that most college students "would seek alternatives if called upon to join the military." This is a far cry from the 1999 Hart-Rudman Commission which predicted, "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers...If the stakes rise in such a fashion...the American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so...."
The rulers fear that Bush fumbled the ball when they desperately need cannon fodder for their far-flung imperialist ventures. U.S. rulers face a troop shortfall in the hundreds of thousands as they face enemies arrayed along "a seamless battlefield, stretching from Morocco to Mindanao [in the Philippines] and from the Caucasus to central Africa" (Stratfor, 7/9/03). With recruitment stagnant, the Pentagon is forced to prolong deployments in Iraq indefinitely, and many U.S. troops grow angrier by the day.
Millions of troops will be needed down the road for a conflict with China or some coalition of Russia and Europe. Consequently, the liberals are opening a debate on compulsory national service. While they attack Bush for his lies, they push the bigger lie that killing and dying for U.S. imperialism are forms of humanitarian service.
Attacking Bush is all too easy. The hard part is exposing the liberals who will cynically try to turn the mass hatred for the Bush gang into mass support for imperialist wars and fascist terror. The political struggle to expose the liberals and the monstrous system they serve must be waged in our unions, churches and other mass organizations. Building a mass PLP and the long-term struggle to eliminate capitalism is the only way to truly serve the people.
Fight Racism, Fight for Communism:
Capitalism Breeds Mass Racist Unemployment
In June, hundreds of black workers and youth fought the police for three days in Benton Harbor, MI. The rebellion was sparked when racist cop Wes KKKoza killed 27-year old Terrance Shurn in a high-speed chase. But looming over the racist police terror is a 25 percent unemployment rate in a city of 12,000 black people.
Nationally, the unemployment rate for black workers is rising twice as fast as that of whites, and faster than at any time since the mid-1970’s. Low-wage workers and women forced from welfare to low wage jobs in the 1990’s have largely kept their jobs. Factory workers in higher paying jobs have been hit the hardest.
Since the recession began in March 2001, about 2.6 million jobs have been destroyed in the last 28 months. Nearly 90 percent were in manufacturing. The recession may be over, but racist unemployment is booming.
This is the longest string of monthly job losses after the start of a recession since the Great Depression, and most of these jobs have been permanently lost. "This is not like the cyclical downturns in the old days, when you got furloughed for a few weeks and then recalled," said Jared Bernstein, of the Economic Policy Institute. "These jobs are gone, and that represents a potentially significant slide in living standards." (NYT 7/14)
Autoliv, a Swedish seat belt maker, is closing a plant in Indianapolis and laying off 350 workers. Over 75 percent are black. Many are young workers without high school diplomas, who were hired in the late 1990’s when the unemployment rate in Indianapolis was only 2 percent.
They were making $12 to $13 an hour. "These young men started families, dug in, took apartments, purchased vehicles...now they are being returned to their old environment," said Michael Barnes, director of an A.F.L.-C.I.O. training program that helps laid-off workers in Indiana search for new jobs. (NYT 7/14).
Black industrial workers, once concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast, are now spread across the country as companies moved to low-wage towns and cities. Now many companies are moving work overseas in search of even cheaper labor, and according to the National Association of Manufacturers, every state has lost manufacturing jobs over the last three years.Tens of thousands of textile workers in the South are also losing their jobs as the bosses seek to super-exploit cheap Asian labor. Instead of waging a real fight against the bosses moving their jobs to areas of cheaper labor, theAFL-CIO just waved the flag saying "Buy American,"a code phrase for blaming workers overseas and leaving the bosses off the hook.
Over 1,000 jobs were lost in the last two years as mills closed in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.; another 1,000 in mill closings in Columbus, GA.; 1,500 lost in the closing of a sweatshirt factory in Martinsville, VA. These are mostly black workers earning $11 an hour plus benefits, more than they will make on their next jobs.
In 2000, there were 2 million black workers in factory jobs, or 10.1 percent of the total of 20 million U.S. factory workers. Since March 2001, 300,000 black workers, or 15 percent, have lost their factory jobs. Racist unemployment also hit other sections of the working class. White workers lost 1.7 million jobs, or 10 percent of their total.
1967 Mass Rebellion in Detroit Forced the Creation of Tens of Thousands of Jobs
On a steamy night in July 1967, Detroit police raided an illegal after-hours club. What followed was one of the most dramatic armed rebellions of U.S. workers in our time. Within 24 hours, the Detroit police were out of ammunition and pinned down in their precincts. The Michigan National Guard was called in and was also quickly defeated by the armed uprising. Finally, President Lyndon Johnson diverted troops that were on their way to Vietnam and sent them to occupy Detroit. Thousands were arrested and dozens were killed. Many of the rebels were Vietnam vets. They had returned from the war to find racist unemployment, poverty and police terror, and decided to use their military skills against the rulers.
The Detroit Rebellion showed the key role the black workers and youth play in the class struggle in the U.S. It led to the hiring of 100,000 black workers by GM, Ford and Chrysler, where 20 years of court cases had failed. In contrast, liberal Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm offered a measly 250 six-week minimum wage summer jobs for Benton Harbor. The defeat of the old communist movement made it easier for the bosses to inflict unprecedented poverty and misery on the workers of the world. As the clouds of war gather, these crises will deepen.
Racist unemployment will end when the working class, led by a mass PLP, overthrows the bosses. PLP’s strategy for revolution rests on building a mass base for communism in the factories, armed forces, schools and communities. Within this process, black workers, soldiers and youth are the key force for revolution. In the factories and mills, and within the pro-capitalist unions, fighting racist layoffs and plant closings can lead to a much broader readership for CHALLENGE and more workers joining PLP. Maybe Benton Harbor is a sign that a storm is brewing. Let the lightening flash and the thunder roll.
a name="Jobless Economic ‘Recovery’"></">Jo"less Economic ‘Recovery’
On July 10 the U.S. Department of Labor reported 439,000 workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 5, an increase of 5,000 from the week before. Any number over 400,000 indicates a decline in overall employment and new jobless claims have exceeded 400,000 for 21 weeks in a row.
The number receiving benefits jumped by 87,000 in one week to over 3.8 million, the highest level in 20 years. The official unemployment rate is 6.4 percent, but only three percent, are receiving unemployment benefits. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the teenage unemployment rate is at 63 percent, its highest level in 55 years.
PLP Welcomed On Pavone St.
"Hey, do you know where Pavone Street is?"
"You’re on it. And you know it’s the most dangerous street in Benton Harbor, right?"
But as comrades walked down the street, visiting door to door (some with contacts that we already met), we knew that this was not the case. Workers in Benton Harbor had received us days after the rebellion, and once again they were open to our communist ideas. The rebellion occurred a few weeks ago after Terrance Shurn was killed at the hands of police.
As Jesse Jackson and other liberals have passed through town, workers have seen no change. There is still massive unemployment and on every street you can find vacant lots. In conversations we pointed out that liberals couldn’t fix the problems because they don’t try to change the system that exploits all workers. People we talked to know the brutal realities of capitalism because they live with them everyday and recognize that it isn’t just "one bad cop" but a whole rotten system.
As we walked up and down blocks in the community where much of the rioting had occurred we met lots of good people. Workers greeted us and were open to conversation. One man, who was a good friend of Shurn’s, talked about how most young black men in Benton Harbor have been in jail at some time or another and that they can’t find jobs. But he wasn’t depressed; he was angry and had a lot to say. Talking with this young worker and others showed that people here want our revolutionary ideas and can give leadership to our movement. We now have dozens of potential new friends we hope to talk to in the coming weeks.
United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship
The Brookings Institution has published an important new book called United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship. It includes essays by leading liberal politicians and academics including Bill Clinton, who endorses senator John McCain’s focus on "making short-term service, both civilian and military, a rite of passage for young Americans."
The book reprints New York Congressman Charles Rangel’s piece "Bring Back the Draft" Many articles recommend a choice between military and civilian service. Charles Moskos, a Rockefeller Humanities fellow and member of the Democratic Leadership Council that brought Clinton to power, sees civilian service bolstering homeland fascism. Young people could "guard nuclear plants, patrol the nation’s borders, or serve as customs agents." Or they could turn informers for the cops. Says Moskos, "The new service program would expand crime-prevention and neighborhood watch programs." As for restoring the draft Moskos says, "Privileged young Americans should serve in the armed forces. Their participation would not only provide a fine example of leadership but might also increase the public’s willingness to accept wartime casualties."
Fighting Racist Police Terror and Imperialist War
NEW YORK CITY — On May 16, NYC cops stormed Alberta Spruill’s Harlem apartment with a stun gun and a grenade. Saying they were looking for drug dealers, police handcuffed the city worker who collapsed and died on the way to the hospital. Several days later, cops killed Ousmane Zongo, an unarmed immigrant from Burkina Faso, Africa, in a raid in a warehouse in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. Zongo had nothing to do with the people the cops were looking for. In April 2002, New Jersey police asphyxiated Dominican factory worker, Santiago Villanueva, claiming he was on drugs. Villanueva, who lived in Upper Manhattan, was actually having an epileptic seizure (See CHALLENGE, 7/23).
PLP members are active in a grassroots group that is organizing in Harlem and Upper Manhattan and has become involved in all three police brutality cases. Members of the group participated in a rally of over 500 people, surrounded by an equal number of cops, outside City Hall on June 21. We also participated in a rally with other groups, at a pre-trial hearing of the four cops who killed Villanueva.
In May the group wrote a resolution condemning the murders of Spruill and Zongo. There was a lively debate about whether the killings were occurring in the fascist climate of Homeland Security. PL members said that our resolution should state, "Whereas these murders follow a long line of racist police murders this is the kind of terror that the Patriot Act will make pervasive. We deplore the growing atmosphere of fear, intimidation and terror which has been especially directed towards immigrants since 9/11 and now threatens us all."
A member of the grassroots group read the resolution at a church service for Spruill and others distributed it at the vigil. We distributed more than 400 copies at a neighborhood meeting and the June 21 protest. Now we’re involved in three defense committees that are fighting for criminal charges against the cops and to expose more cases of racist police brutality.
The coalition was formed to seek causes of "terrorism," to oppose U.S. "foreign policy" and the war in Afghanistan following 9/11 and later to organize against the US invasion of Iraq. We sponsored two well-attended conferences in 2001 and 2002. We plan another conference in 2003, focusing on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, growing imperialist rivalry in West Africa and the "globalization" of the U.S. military.
The cost of the Iraq war and occupation, now at $4 billion a month, is projected to be upwards of $200 billion. The "proposed U.S. defense budget through 2008 would rise to $460 billion a year, up from the $265 billion spent on defense in 1996, when the current military buildup began." (Washington Post 7/13) We have consistently tied the economic costs of U.S. imperialism to increasing hardships for the working class, both in the U.S. and internationally. Now the group is getting active around racist police brutality, attacks on immigrants, gentrification and housing costs, job loss and budget cuts.
As we get more active and get to know more people, we are increasing the readership of CHALLENGE hand-to-hand, through networks and by leaving CHALLENGE in public areas in the community. We have two study groups that discuss CHALLENGE, pamphlets about imperialism and political economy and videos. Contradictions abound.
"We have to accept the reality that we’re living under this system and have to make it better." "I don’t agree with your vision of communism." "People won’t understand." "I agree that capitalism is bad and that communism offers possibilities." "Let’s do reform now and revolution later." "Wouldn’t it be better if Bush were out?" "What about greed and human nature?" "I see your point, but I have to ask questions. These discussions are provoking me to think. I go to sleep thinking about a wageless system."
As the struggle continues in the mass organizations and in the PL-led study groups, we’re all learning how to maintain friendship and unity in the class struggle. PL members must be clear and convincing while welcoming our friends’ questions and disagreements. These struggles moves the process towards communist consciousness forward for all of us, giving us more confidence in each other, the working class and its allies and the Party.
NEA Convention
NEW ORLEANS, LA — Ten thousand teachers attended the annual Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA). PLP teachers and students, as convention delegates and talking to delegates outside, distributed 500 CHALLENGES and 3,000 leaflets, increased CHALLENGE subscriptions and made several good contacts.
The NEA leadership labeled this meeting, "The United States of Education—Great Public Schools for Every Child." The reality is the opposite. Racist cutbacks in schools and social services are aspects of growing fascism caused by the crisis of overproduction, a war budget, tax cuts for the rich, and interest payments to banks. In his keynote address, NEA President Weaver acknowledged this reality, detailing all the attacks on public schools. He urged teachers to get "riled up" and "flood Congress with e-mails!"
PLP posed an alternative strategy and engaged teachers in struggle about the nature of the crisis and the best way to fight in the interests of our students. We raised a New Business Item to encourage debate about the most effective way to fight racist cutbacks in school funding. We called for strikes and other mass actions in unity with other workers instead of endorsing candidates and lobbying legislators. We explained that politicians of both parties support the war in Iraq, which is paid for by racist attacks on social services and schools, hitting black and Latin students first and hardest.
This was raised in every state delegation, as well as the Peace and Justice and Hispanic Caucuses, and on the floor of the convention. We got a lot of objections from people who blame President Bush for the war and the cutbacks, and just want to get rid of him. We put out a leaflet and a button that explained "It’s Not Just BUSH: It’s Capitalism!" We explained that the "lesser evil" Democrats support the war and that the NEA has become part of the Democratic Party machine. Instead of relying on the working class, teachers are mobilized to elect and lobby politicians, begging for crumbs.
Before the floor debate, representatives from Nevada and Texas said that their delegations would support our motion if we didn’t describe the cutbacks as "racist." We refused. Some of our friends also suggested that we soften the language. These were the best discussions we had about the nature of racism as super-exploitation of black and Latin workers, the racist character of poverty, unemployment, the army and the prisons. We struggled over the need to fight racism to build a united working class. We explained how racism is used to justify the cuts against all of us. To destroy capitalism, we must smash racism and make a communist revolution. This principled struggle goes hand-in-hand with winning workers away from reliance on capitalist politicians and onto the working class.
While we lost the vote to keep the word "racist" in our motion, we all learned a lot about the importance of putting the struggle against racism front and center. Students who came to the convention helped write and distribute a leaflet to the delegates about this principled struggle.
Lots of teachers are frustrated with the union’s strategy of relying on politicians, and want more class struggle. The motion, without the word ‘"racist," came very close to passing — in fact some delegates told us they thought it did pass. An alternate proposal — to "Get Out the Vote" in 2004 — had its budget cut from $3.5 million to writing an article in the NEA newspaper.
The discussion about who to rely on and the struggle over the importance of fighting racism is part of the ongoing struggle with our base. We came as delegates to this convention with friends from our local schools, unions and regional assemblies who know us as fighters against racism, imperialist war and capitalism. Throughout the year, we have participated with them in struggles against the war in Iraq, the fascist Patriot Act, racism, and cutbacks. In this assembly, we were able to build on that work and raise the struggle to a higher level. Our friends spoke to the motion, wore our buttons, and helped in many other aspects of the parliamentary and political struggle. This is part of the long-term struggle to build a base for PLP among workers and youth and fight for working class power.
CSU Trustees Are No Allies in Fight Against Budget Cuts
LONG BEACH, CA, July 16 — "They say cutback, we say FIGHTBACK!" Students and teachers chanted this outside the recent California Board of Trustees meeting. The Trustees are appointed by the governor to represent capitalist interests in the California State University (CSU) system. The CSU is the largest university system in the country, serving nearly half a million mostly working class and minority students.
The Trustees voted to increase our tuition by 30% on top of the 10% increase last semester. The chancellor’s office also said there would be another increase next year. That means that by next spring, our tuition will increase by at least 50%. One protester said, "It doesn’t take a PhD. economist to understand that this will lead to a catastrophic dropout rate."
The state of California (fifth largest economy in the world) faces a budget deficit of $38 billion caused by declining profits, taxes skewed to make workers pay the lion’s share, and cuts in Federal allotments in order to pay for war. The ruling class is trying to decrease the deficit on the backs on the workers. They have already cut health care and K-12 education along with many other social services. Now they are proposing a $200 million cut in higher education. The chancellor says, "To manage cuts of this size we will have to raise fees, layoff employees, and cap enrollment." On top of the tuition increase, the chancellor’s office is recommending layoffs of 3,000-5,000 jobs (11% of the workforce).
The NY Times recently revealed that the U.S. is paying $4 billion a month for the occupation of Iraq. It’s clear that every bomb that fell on Iraq fell on the U.S. working class as well. PLP members and friends made the connection between the war and the budget cuts at the protest demonstration in speeches, flyers and most importantly CHALLENGE distribution.
It was no surprise that the Trustees voted for the tuition increase even after they heard the impassioned public comments from students and teachers opposing the increase and even after all 23 CSU student governments voted to oppose it. Capitalism is an impersonal system that always puts profits for the few over the needs of the many. The Trustees voting to increase our fees represent nothing more than their class interest. The leadership of the California Faculty Association (a large professional union) argues that all they are asking for is a "seat at the table" to make decisions with the Trustees. However, it’s clear to many students and teachers that the Trustees are on the other side — they will never be our friends.
Students and teachers plan to go to classes, student organizations and unions to propose a strike against these cuts. There is opportunity for action. There is also opportunity for greater understanding that capitalism is a system based on racism, war, and profits and the solution is the growth of the revolutionary communist PLP. JOIN US!
Steel Bosses Throw Retirees Overboard To Stay Afloat
According to the WALL STREET JOURNAL (5/12), more than 200,000 retired steelworkers and dependents, at roughly a dozen steel companies, will be stripped of their health-care benefits as their former employers reorganize or liquidate in bankruptcy.
About 40,000 LTV retirees and dependents have been left without health insurance, even though LTV was purchased by International Steel Group (ISG) for $1.5 billion and is now making profits. ISG assumed nearly all of LTV’s liabilities, except retirees’ health insurance. The stolen benefits of retirees are paying for the jobs of current and future workers. A similar situation awaits the retirees of Bethlehem, National and other steel companies that are being "consolidated" into their leaner, stronger competitors.
This same fate might soon visit retirees in auto, the airlines and other industries that are looking for ways out. This year US Airways will spend $12 million on health benefits for current workers, but more than $55 million for retirees, dependents and surviving spouses. At Ford Motor Co., the figures are $600 million for current workers and $1.9 billion for retirees and their families.
At the integrated mills that manufacture steel from raw materials, there are 600,000 retirees and dependents compared to 80,000 to 90,000 current workers and their dependents. When Bethlehem was sold to ISG earlier this year, it had 95,000 retirees, 13 for every active worker. At LTV, the ratio was seven retirees for every active worker.
The estimated lifetime tab for U.S. steel retirees is $14 billion. More than 30 unionized steelmakers have filed for bankruptcy-court protection since 1998. Bethlehem, once the third-largest U.S. steelmaker, filed in October 2001. LTV, once the fourth-largest, filed in December 2000.
In the 1960’s, the U.S. steel industry was still one of the lowest-cost producers and made about 35% of all the steel in the world. Bethlehem and U.S. Steel owned raw-materials, railroads and ships that could transport steel cheaply and quickly. In 1960, imported steel represented about 4.5% of the U.S. market.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, low-cost imports exposed the inefficiencies and outmoded technology of U.S. producers. By the early 1970s, imports had jumped to 18% of the U.S. market. LTV went through two bankruptcies, seven years apart. Over 350,000 steelworkers lost their jobs.
Steelworkers around the world are caught in fierce international competition and a world-wide steel glut. On July 11, the World Trade Organization ruled that the U.S. illegally imposed import tariffs on steel products. The WTO panel heard complaints by the European Union, Japan, South Korea, China, Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand and Brazil, and concluded that the U.S. did not have grounds to impose the tariffs. The Bush administration will appeal the decision and there will likely be a final ruling by the end of the year. According to Arancha Gonzalez, the European Union’s (EU) spokesperson on trade issues, if the appeal fails, American imports will face sanctions worth up to $2.2 billion almost immediately. (NY Times 7/11)
Tariffs and benefit cuts today are leading to missiles and thousands of ground troops later. This is the essence of imperialism. Nationalist campaigns like "Stand Up for Steel" only help the bosses get the workers in line. Communist revolution requires the mass participation of industrial workers across all borders. We’re working on it.
The Struggles Of A Retired Steelworker
Chuck Kurilko labored at LTV Corp. for 37 years. He retired in November 2001, with a blood clot, high cholesterol, diabetes, infected lungs and congestive heart failure. After earning $65,000 a year, his pension was $2,450 a month and he paid $115 a month for health-care coverage, which covered 100% of their medical costs and cost him $10 to $20 for prescriptions. His congestive heart failure qualified him for disability pay, which kicked in eight months after he retired.
A month later LTV liquidated. The company wanted to end health coverage for retirees, but the union negotiated some coverage, but at a higher price. In January his health-insurance premium jumped 61% to $185.
In February, LTV was sold to ISG, which didn’t assume health-care coverage for retirees. His only option was to pay much of the insurance premium under COBRA, a federal law that enables former workers to temporarily extend their insurance at their own expense. The monthly premium skyrocketed to $1,305.19. That same month, his pension was cut 38% to $1,529.41 a month, after the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., took over LTV’s pension plan. In January 2003, LTV’s contributions to their health insurance ended and monthly payments jumped to more than $2,800.
When he discusses money, his eyes water. "When I think of all the years of sacrificing. Betcha in my whole life, I may have missed 10 days of work in 30 years...I’m sick of it all. I’m scared to death." (Wall Street Journal 5/12)
From UK to South Africa: A Tale of Two Layoffs
On April 30, Sir Brian Moffat and Roger Moore both lost their jobs at Corus, the troubled British steel giant that eliminated 1,150 jobs. Both have spent much of their working lives at the former British Steel.
Sir Brian, Corus chairman for four years, made £600,000 in salary and pension last year and retired with an annual pension estimated at £300,000. CEO Tony Pedder departed with a £550,000 golden handshake and a pension of £2.3m.
Roger is 54 and may never work again. He was laid off from Corus’s Stocksbridge plant after 17 years’ service, where he was a £24,000-a-year grinder. He will receive a lump sum payment of about £18,000 and doesn’t know what his pension will be. Corus has eliminated 12,000 jobs since 1999, including 10,000 in the UK, before these current 1,150 job cuts. Another 2,200 jobs are in jeopardy.
a name="South Africa’s ANC-led Government Defends Iscor against Steel Strikers">">"outh Africa’s ANC-led Government Defends Iscor against Steel Strikers
Steel maker Iscor (ISC) has obtained a court order preventing the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) from engaging in unlawful protest activities. The order, granted by South Africa’s Labour Court, which is run by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, followed a flair-up of violence between striking steel workers and scabs during a shift change at various Iscor plants.
NUMSA is demanding 5,000 RAND back pay per worker to cushion the effects of the restructuring processes that have taken place in the past seven years and a pay raise for all skills grades.
Iscor bosses claim the strikers are engaging in acts of violence and intimidation against strikebreakers, damaging property and vehicles and setting up blockades to restrict access to the plants. The court order prevents the strikers from obstructing access to the plants, intimidating scabs and sub-contractors and from damaging property. The order also requires the union "to take all reasonable steps to persuade their members not to engage in unlawful activities associated with the strike."
LIBERIA: Youth Used to Kill and Die for Mineral Profits
The 13-year Liberian civil war continues with fierce attacks in Monrovia, the capital city, between rebel forces that want to depose the government of Charles Taylor, who came to power in 1997 after six years of a violent civil war. Both Taylor and his enemies in the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) have nothing to offer to the masses. LURD is led by Sekou Conneth who gets his money from Liberian exiles in the U.S.
Many Liberians want the U.S. to send the Marines to help put an end to the bloodshed. The Bush administration is divided over whether to send thousands of Marines there, particularly since the U.S. military is stretched too thin already and will need thousands of more troops in Iraq.
The wars in Liberia as well as other civil wars in Africa are being waged over the control of minerals like diamonds, gold, cobalt and coltan (needed to build space ships and cellular phones). In Liberia, the different factions also finance themselves by selling diamonds to traders in the international market.
But, while Liberia is not that strategically important for world imperialism, Western Africa is. It has plenty of oil. Countries like Nigeria and Angola now supply the U.S. with as much oil as Mexico and Venezuela. Although the oil from Western African is not as plentiful or as cheap to extract as that of the Middle East, it is of relatively high quality and of easy coastal access.
Workers and youth are paying with their blood so the local bosses and imperialists can get rich and powerful. The different warring factions in Liberia and other African countries use teenagers and children as cannon fodder in their struggles. It is time to put an end to this hell of war, AIDS, famine and mass poverty. It is time to organize a mass revolutionary movement and fight for a society without bosses — communism.
Verizon: Billions in Profits, Cutbacks for Workers
NEW YORK, July 17 — Verizon — the largest U.S. telecommunications giant and the second most profitable — is on a collision course with 75,000 workers in the Communications Workers of America (CWA) as contracts expire August 2nd . The company, demanding that workers pay a much greater share of their health benefits and retirement plans, is seeking to subcontract work and lay off any worker hired within the past eight years, while transferring others out of the region. Verizon laid off 2,400 workers last winter.
Verizon, the product of a merger between the old Bell Atlantic and the Southwest-based GTE, claims the concessions are "collateral damage," needed to compete in the turmoil of the telecom world. They must reverse their steady decline in providing local telephone service as the use of cell phones explodes and as more people turn to cable providers for Internet access. "Cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging — none of that was as prevalent as it is now. It is a different industry and we have to manage it differently," said company spokesman John Bonomo.
"They want a strike, there’s no doubt in my mind," said CWA Local 1101 president Al Luzzi. "It is an opportunity for them to move thousands of jobs outside the state. They throw a switch and calls are shifted to Texas and other right-to-work states. It took us 40 years to build up our contract to provide a fair wage for our members and some protection against layoffs. They want that back."
There was a two-week strike three years ago, and in 1989 there was a violent, four-month strike. The company, then known as NYNEX, imported scabs to take over union jobs. Patriotic all-class unity existed for a brief period after 9/11, when Lower Manhattan had to be rewired by union workers after the collapse of the World Trade Center. But those feelings have evaporated. Verizon recorded $67.6 billion in revenues last year, the highest in the industry. It took in $4.1 billion in profit, while paying company Chairman Charles Lee $15.6 million, and CEO Ivan Seidenberg $9.5 million, plus stock options. The company’s top local executive is Paul Crotty, who was a high-level official for mayors Koch and Giuliani, and who is currently up for a federal judgeship. But even super profits are not enough for the bosses. The capitalist drive to maximize profits is constant. The CWA wants to unionize the non-union Verizon Wireless workers, and recently won union representation for 17,000 Cingular Wireless workers. They want the company to live up to the "neutrality" agreement it made in 2000, allowing a "card-check," where the union would be recognized once a majority of workers signed cards. Maybe the CWA leadership will be willing to trade lower wages and benefits for more members, like the UAW appears ready to do (CHALLENGE 7/24).
The working class is paying for the $45 billion a year occupation of Iraq with more poverty, unemployment, and war. Many workers are reaching the boiling point. Maybe at Verizon the pot will boil over, setting the stage for 280,000 autoworkers in the fall. We welcome the opportunity to build the revolutionary communist movement from the sharpening class war.
a name="‘Counter-Terrorism’ Cops — All A Part Of The Bosses’ Plan"></a>‘C"unter-Terrorism’ Cops — All A Part Of The Bosses’ Plan
The growth of fascism requires the expansion of a coordinated and committed national police force. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is one aspect of this. Recent events show that U.S. bosses are serious about building an open political police force, whose job it is to terrorize the working class and crush dissent.
According to the Oakland Tribune (5/18), "[d]ays before firing wooden slugs at anti-war protesters, Oakland police were warned of potential violence at the Port of Oakland by California’s anti-terrorism intelligence center." A spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) said hard evidence of violent intent was not needed before a "warning" was issued. Mike Van Winkle of CATIC stated: "You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act."
CATIC is "staffed with personnel from the FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, and other federal, state, and local agencies" and was set up after Democrat Governor Gray Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer made it the "centerpiece" of their re-election campaigns. It is funded to the tune of $6.7 million by the state of California.
CATIC’s "Group Analysis Unit" (GAU) collected information, including e-mails and web site postings by leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and anti-war friends. On April 2, the GAU issued a bulletin to Oakland cops and others: "National Day of Action includes Northern California Targets." The previous day, Derwin Longmire, an Oakland Police Department intelligence unit supervisor sent a bulletin to Oakland police commanders, warning them of violence by "[a]narchists in black masks." One of the cops who received that bulletin, captain Rod Yee, gave the order for the Oakland Police to open fire on April 7. ILWU members were among the wounded.
The rulers are bringing out their big guns to build these fascist cop combos. George "Killer" Kelling, the architect of "community policing" and chairman of the Police Institute, has launched a "Counter-terrorism Information Sharing Consortium" (CTISC). It is being run out of the Rutgers Center for Law and Justice in Newark, where Kelling is a professor. The Manhattan Institute, a major NYC think tank behind the Giuliani administration, also backed the formation of the CTISC. It involves over 24 cop organizations all along the Boston-Washington northeast corridor.
The FBI has set up 66 "Joint Terrorism Task Forces," merging local cops with the feds. Peter Harvey, the New Jersey Attorney General newly appointed by Democratic Governor McGreevey said the state must develop a "seamless web of communication" between federal, state, and local cops. New Jersey’s new computerized counter-terrorism information system will be hooked up with 550 local cop agencies.
So far, CTISC’s biggest accomplishment was arresting people for taking pictures of landmarks, bridges and large government buildings, including one New Jersey lawyer trying to photograph his car near the Newark FBI building. But the rulers will launch more violent assaults, including attacks on groups like the ILWU that do not threaten the capitalist system. Fascism exposes even more the horrors of capitalism. Fighting fascism, under communist leadership inside the unions, churches, community groups, schools and on campuses, can lead to a larger PLP. A mass communist-led movement would put Killer Kelling and all of his cop terror operations permanently out of business.
A future article will discuss Kelling’s history, the racist nature of community policing and why the ruling class finds these ideas so useful.
Bonus Marchers: The Bosses Used the U.S. Army to Attack Veterans
During the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, tens of thousands of World War I veterans demanded a promised "bonus" of $50 to $100. In 1923, Congress agreed to pay this bonus — in 1945. But the vets were starving. Once hailed as "heroes," they now suffered evictions, unemployment, and hunger and "lived" in Hoovervilles, shacks made from scrap wood and tarpaper.
In April, 1932 the Communist leaders of the Workers Ex-Servicemen’s League, Pete Cacchione, James Ford and Emanuel Levin, appeared before a Congressional committee and demanded immediate payment. The committee scorned them, so the Communist Party called for a veterans’ march on Washington.
Within days, hundreds, then thousands began their trek to the Capital. In broken down cars and trucks, on foot, hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, they came, from as far away as Alaska, as stowaways from Hawaii, from Little Rock, Arkansas and Peru, Indiana and Dubuque, Iowa, as well as the big cities. Several thousand took over the switching yards in Cleveland, stopping all freight traffic until a train was made up for them to Washington. Two hundred wounded on the battlefields of France, many on crutches, came from the National Soldiers Home in Johnson City, Tenn.
The press screamed. The Washington, DC police chief wired governors, mayors, sheriffs and city police chiefs to turn them back, but it was like trying to turn back the tide. When the first contingent of 200 vets, with women and children, left Portland, Ore., they were warned that Communists had called the march. "We don’t give a damn who called it," they declared. "We want our money."
By June 15, almost 25,000 had arrived in Washington to demand their "bonuses" now. Black and white, men and women, they carried bitter signs, "Heroes in 1917 — Bums in 1932," and "We Fought for Democracy — Where Is It?" Black veterans carried signs against racism.
They occupied one abandoned building, built a small village of huts and put down stakes in the Anacostia Flats. They lived in caves and holes in the ground, in shacks and beneath the open sky. Police Chief Glassford said the rich "looked upon the occupation of the nation’s capital as a revolutionary action." The National Economy League, financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Marshall Field, and the head of Standard Oil, opposed paying the bonuses. Congress went home on July 17, without taking action.
On July 28, the bonus marchers refused Glassford’s order to leave the occupied building and the cops advanced with guns drawn. The unarmed vets fought back, and two were killed. President Hoover then ordered U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, assisted by Colonel (and future President) Dwight Eisenhower and Major George S. Patton, to clear the vets out. The New York Times reported:
"Down Pennsylvania Avenue…the regulars came, the cavalry leading the way, and after them the tanks, the machine-gunners and the infantry…."
With 200 armed troops in front of the bonus "fort," the "mounted men charged. They rode downstreet, clearing the path with their sabers, striking those within reach...Amidst scenes reminiscent of the mopping up of a town in the World War, Federal troops…drove the army of bonus seekers from the shanty village." A tear gas bomb killed an 11-week-old baby and a soldier stabbed a 7-year-old boy trying to save his pet rabbit.
At Anacostia Flats, the veterans threw up barricades of mattresses, chairs, boxes and tables. "The battle was swift and savage. The cavalry charged, sabers swinging…the infantry moved in with gas masks and gas bombs. Soon the…city of the veterans was ashes, the soldiers putting the huts…to the torch." ("Labor’s Untold Story" by Boyer and Morais, p. 271) Men, women and children staggered through neighboring streets, blinded by gas, pursued by the troops. MacArthur insisted the "mob" was driven by "the essence of revolution."
From World I to World War II, from Vietnam to 800 GI wives chasing a Colonel from a meeting and demanding their men come home from Iraq (See CHALLENGE 7/23), working class soldiers and their families have rebelled against the imperialist war makers. When PLP has a mass base in the armed forces, soldiers and sailors will in fact be driven by "the essence of revolution," and they will finish the job.
Soldiers from U.S., DR and PR Used as Cannon Fodder
On July 16, the U.S. government held a citizenship ceremony in Washington Heights, Manhattan, for Riayan Tejeda, a Dominican-born Marine killed on April 11 as the U.S. invaded Baghdad. Another Dominican-born soldier, Sgt. Harold Puello Coronado, who was in the Army for 17 years, was killed in mid-July when Iraqi guerrillas attacked a convoy he was leading. The last time he spoke with his wife in Pennsylvania, was in April when he was sent to Iraq. She said he admitted being afraid but that "duty" called. He left behind a widow and three sons. Spanish TV in the U.S. showed his crying aunt and relatives in San Cristóbal, the town near the capital of Dominican Republic where he was born.
President Hipólito Mejia of Dominican Republic (DR) is planning to send a 300-strong contingent of military and police personnel to Iraq in September. They will be part of the 1,200 troops from El Salvador, Honduras, etc. and led by the Spanish Army contingent also being sent there. This is part of Bush’s "Coalition of the Willing" that supported the Iraq war. Because of local protests, the Indian government was forced to cancel its plan to send 15,000 troops to help the U.S. and UK forces in Iraq.
Growing anger over the continued deaths and casualties in Iraq is putting pressure on Bush’s lackeys, like President Mejia, to think twice about serving their masters. Mejia and the others hope that sending troops will bring aid from Washington. The economy of the DR is a disaster, worsened by the Enron-type billionaire bankers of Baninter. These bankers kept two sets of books, which turned them into billionaires with their fleet of private jets and helicopters, and bribing off generals and politicians including the current and previous Presidents.
Workers in the DR are fed up and there have been militant protests against the government and the IMF, which is imposing more misery on the people. To try to mislead the masses’ anger, the government uses racist patriotism saying that Haiti is becoming a threat to the country (hundreds of thousands of Haitians are super-exploited in the DR). Of course, when it comes to serving U.S. imperialism, the government conveniently forgets about this patriotism.
U.S. bosses believe in "globalization" when it serves their interests and saves their asses, as in Iraq. But workers and soldiers from Upper Manhattan to Santo Domingo pay the price with their lives. Those who survive will be discarded when they are no longer useful to the bosses. Already, the U.S. government is severely cutting back medical benefits for veterans. And when they return to civilian life, they will only find a capitalist world full of racism, mass unemployment and misery. While soldiers and their families demand, "Send Us Home," we can build PLP in and out of the armed forces and forge the revolutionary workers-soldiers unity to smash the imperialist war makers.
Soldiers from Puerto Rico have been used as cannon fodder by U.S. imperialism since it became a colony after the 1898 Spanish-American war. Iraq is no exception. On July 16, 28-year old Ramón Reyes Torres, of the 432nd Airborne of the U.S. Army Reserve based in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, became the 148 GI, and the eighth from Puerto Rico, to be killed in action in Iraq. Three other members of 432nd were injured by the guerrilla attack against their convoy.
Like many other families of GIs stationed in Iraq, the relatives of these soldiers are demanding they come home. "The Puerto Rican government is under pressure from relatives of the local units stationed for months in Iraq and Afghanistan to be sent home." (El Diario-La Prensa, NYC, 7/17).
Ferdinand Mercado, Secretary of State of Puerto Rico, responded: "We know their petition…but the loved ones of the soldiers also must understand that their relatives have chosen to participate in these events to defend democracy [read: the oil profits of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Halliburton, etc.]."
But it isn’t true that GIs are in Iraq by choice. Many are in the military because of the "poverty draft" (lack of civilian jobs or to try to get training to get a better job in a future civilian life). More and more GIs want to go home. The situation has reached the point where General John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. occupation forces, has threatened to punish soldiers who keep complaining to reporters about going home. He might order soldiers to stay in Iraq even longer, and more will be sent as the low intensity war heats up.
Soldiers from Puerto Rico have died in higher number in proportion to other army units from the mainland. Some 4,000 local reservists and National Guards were mobilized from Puerto Rico for the Iraq war. This does not include those of Puerto Rican descent in the regular Army, other branches of the service or who live in the mainland.
"Where there is oppression there is rebellion," was a popular slogan during the mass struggles in Puerto Rico and all over the world during the Vietnam War. Better yet, let’s make these rebellions into mass revolutionary struggles to end imperialist wars and the profit system.
LETTERS
a name="Politics Is Primary In ‘Curing’ Aids"></">Po"itics Is Primary In ‘Curing’ Aids
I have no quarrel with the author of "AIDS Article Got It Wrong" (CHALLENGE, 6/25). The HIV virus exists. But there’s a big difference between the HIV deniers and persons who like myself, desire a communist approach to disease. Well-balanced nutrition, safe water and doing away with homelessness, drugs and the devastation of imperialist wars are primary to a healthy life. Prevention is equally important. The disagreement lies in the stressing of a more political, social approach to controlling the spread of AIDS.
Joshua Horn’s book, Away With All Pests, deals with communist medical practices in revolutionary China. The attack on syphilis began with eliminating prostitution and elevating the status of women. People afflicted with the latent phase of syphilis were found by relying on education with posters, theatre in market places and meetings to win the confidence of the peasants — all prior to mass treatment with penicillin.
The campaign against snail disease, infecting 80% of the peasant population in some areas, stressed prevention and interrupting the life cycle of the blood fluke because the drug therapy is very toxic and must be given over a prolonged course. Millions of peasants were educated and mobilized to scour the rice paddies, canals and waterways inundated by the fluke larvae. Using both political and medical approaches, China was able to bring schistosomiasis under near complete control.
Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute thinks these variables cause AIDS: the HIV virus immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, and neural, renal and gastro-intestinal dysfunction. Combined, they influence a compromised immune system. Primary in Africa would be unsafe water and malnutrition. In the U.S. it’s bad nutrition, a stressful lifestyle, unprotected sex, poverty, lack of prevention and IV drug use. When the author of "Wrong" admits that AIDS is primarily killing the poor and is in that sense a disease of poverty, he fails to mention the co-factors destroying the immune system that pave the way to spread HIV.
The drugs combating HIV’s "life cycle" and preventing AIDS are also highly toxic. AZT, the main drug used for the AIDS syndrome, causes bone marrow depletion and anemia. The powerful sulfonamide antibiotics used to prevent AIDS infections like pneumonia, cause bone marrow destruction and kill off digestive flora because they are designed for only weeks, but are prescribed for years.
"Most conventional health professionals view medicines as biochemical magic bullets which are expected to provide instant results. This approach has been very successful in certain areas, such as in the treatment of acute illness, but it has been shown to have major limitations when it comes to treating chronic or degenerative disease."(You Don’t Have to Die, by Leon Chariton and James Strohecker)
I never meant to suggest that African doctors can’t tell the difference between HIV-implicated illness and AIDS, diagnosed as persistent cough, diarrhea, etc. The U.S. medical system admits 11 different AIDS diagnoses WITHOUT laboratory evidence of HIV! Kaposi’s sarcoma in a patient under 60, herpes simplex of more than a month’s duration, and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia are only three. (Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, p. 1273) Increasingly, AIDS patients are not dying of diseases that are common to the AIDS infections, but are succumbing to Hepatitis C, from IV drug use.
Capitalism causes death from the HIV virus. The profit system’s persistent war on the working class makes our immune system more vulnerable to HIV, TB or any virus or bacteria. Bush’s $15 billion AIDS "program" for Africa is designed to enrich the drug companies while providing inroads to reap oil profits. Roche has recently manufactured the new drug Fusion for persons resistant to current treatments. It’s available at $19,000/year! We should fight for cheap anti-virals while pointing out that the best solution is prevention, provided by mass nutrition, potable water, safe sex and a healthy life style. This is possible for the majority only when capitalism is smashed.
Red Nurse
a name="Not In Our Lifetime? Don’t Bet On It!">">"ot In Our Lifetime? Don’t Bet On It!
Despite their vast military superiority, 50% of all U.S. combat forces are currently tied down in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, by a combination of local nationalists, warlords and Muslim fundamentalists. More than two months after Top Gun declared victory, Iraq and even Afghanistan, are not yet pacified. Urban fighting has rendered U.S. imperialism’s ability to "Shock and Awe" and reign death from 30,000 feet useless. Rumsfeld & Co., by praising their "amazing" military victory, are counting their chickens before they hatch. This raises some interesting possibilities.
If they can’t secure Kabul or Tikrit, what could they do against a communist-led working class armed insurrection in Mexico City, New York or Los Angeles? Mexico City has over 20 million people, industrial workers and youth, about 20% of the total population of Mexico. What if the PLP were able to take control of the city? How many U.S. troops would be needed to take it back? And what if the invasion of Mexico was met by armed insurrections from San Salvador to Los Angeles, from Chicago to NYC? How many troops would the bosses need then? And what affect would these uprisings have on the morale of the troops? With PLP developing a mass base in the armed forces, entire units could mutiny and join the rebels.
Of course, it’s possible the bosses would try to level a major city under the control of the working class, but that too would come at a big political price. You get the picture. The main strength of U.S. imperialism is not its vast war machine or billions of dollars. Their main strength comes from the lack of a world communist movement. Politics is primary.
CHALLENGE is correct for stressing the long term nature of the struggle. We cannot say it enough. On the long road to revolution, building a mass international PLP is everything. That is what will make the above scenario possible. One big political motivation for me is to see how the bosses can be taken. Their empire, while formidable, is built on sand. They are, as Mao said, paper tigers. We’ve got them surrounded.
A Reader
Driving Towards Revolution
I work for a contractor for large construction companies. I ride to work with a couple of other workers. The ride has turned into a communist school. One of them doesn’t know how to read. I give CHALLENGE to the worker who knows how to read and ask him to read out loud so the other can understand. When he finishes reading, I say, "O.K., if there’s something you don’t understand, ask me so I can explain about the Party." Now these two co-workers defend the Party’s line.
I invited all my co-workers to the Party’s May Day march and to my surprise, 11 of them came. That’s why we should never underestimate the working class.
One morning we came to work like every other day. One of my co-workers was unloading the truck while I was inspecting the work we had to do for the day. All of a sudden, I heard some yelling and I ran to see what happened.
The foreman, a very big white guy, wanted to hit one of my co-workers, while he yelled insults at him. The foreman was new and he brought his own rules that we didn’t know about. He was furious because after my co-worker had unloaded the truck, he had started to wash it. My co-worker, who didn’t understand anything the foreman was yelling at him, yelled back at him to leave. This made the foreman, who didn’t speak Spanish, madder.
When I saw how mad the foreman was, I immediately intervened to defend my co-worker telling the foreman in English, "Don’t even think about touching him because you’ll have to deal with all of us." Another worker yelled at the worker who was using the hose to wash the truck, "Wet him, wet him!"
At this point all the workers got down from the scaffolding with their trowels in their hands. One had his level. When the foreman saw this, he got scared and said to me, "I don’t want to do anything to him," and he went to get the owner of the building. When he returned with the owner, the tension started again, because the foreman started to yell at the worker who had told the other worker to wet him.
We prepared to return to the attack. We picked up our tools again to defend ourselves and one of the workers told the owner, "If you don’t leave now, we’re going to throw you into the street, " and like two dogs with their tails between their legs, they went back to the office and closed the door.
There were workers from other companies in the area and they came to see what was happening. When we told them what happened, they all congratulated us for what we did, because they too had been the objects of insults and yelling by the foremen and owners.
The owner of the company that I work for called and told us that he didn’t want us there and sent us home. But before going, we talked with the workers of the other companies and we told them that we have to unite as workers, no matter what our color, whether we are white, black, or Latin, the bosses attack all of us.
Some black and white workers work there. Before we left the job, they came over to us and gave us their hands, congratulating us. Now whenever they see me they call me "brother!"
The next day the boss sent us again to the same building. We got to work at the same time as usual and it was a big surprise when we saw the owner, accompanied by the foreman. He told us, "Forget about everything that happened and you all will have priority on this job."
I feel proud to belong to PLP and serve the working class.
Red Construction Worker
Union Works To Divide Workers
It is pay day and I notice that a fellow employee gets an extra check. I wonder what this is all about. It was for thousands of dollars. I asked around and found out that Local 200, the pharmacists union at John Stroger Hospital (formerly Cook County Hospital) had gotten a settlement about overtime. Only a handful of employees got this extra check including officers of the Local. Nobody had told the membership that the Local’s lawyers had taken the issue to arbitration.
Sometimes when a member needs legal advice or help about an on the job issue, the Local says that it is spending too much money on lawyers. There was a female employee that was being sexually harassed by a union officer. The union only gave her perfunctory assistance. There was a member who was falsely accused of using the hospital’s fax machine and lost his job. He had to hire his own attorney to get his job back. Why do these corrupt no-good people always come out on top? When the Local was under communist leadership, everything was transparent and honest. Now I am scared.
A Reader
ANC Leads Workers To Poverty
The articles in CHALLENGE (7/23) about the mass struggles in South Africa and its betrayals were very informative. One article offers some good criticisms of Nelson Mandela and the now ruling party African National Congress (ANC). The other article, about water privatization and the misery and death it causes, also did a good job of exposing the role of the ANC. However, it failed to expose the leader of the ANC itself — Nelson Mandela. As Mandela celebrates his 85th birthday with guests ranging from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Bill and Hillary Clinton to Oprah Winfrey and Robert DeNiro, it is important to have a sober assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his role. Mandela’s accomplishment was to compromise with capitalism — to leave intact the system of class exploitation and to allow the continued racist oppression of the black masses. Because many people still idolize Mandela it is important to expose him. To fail to do so thwarts the political development of our class.
In that regard, the article said that the struggle of workers, students, and oppressed masses to overthrow apartheid was "co-opted by black rulers." This analysis overlooks the fundamental weakness in the movement and its ideology. The struggle was led by ANC, a nationalist liberal bourgeoisie organization, which included the Communist Party linked to the former Soviet Union, which had become revisionist. If it had been led by real communists, it would have fought capitalism along with apartheid for the cause of seizing state power by the workers and building communism. So as any nationalist movement, the movement against apartheid ended at the dead-end of capitalism. This is an internal weakness in the movement. To term it "co-option" keeps us from learning the political lessons of that failure. Bourgeois ideas led the ANC to do what the nationalist movements did in El Salvador, Nicaragua and other places — betray the working class.
Internationalist Reader
Raising Red Ideas at Church Conference
I want to describe the political work I did recently at a major church conference. Self-critically, I did not take this gathering very seriously, even though I have been involved in the church since 1992 and have a solid base within the local church.
About 5,000 people participated — predominantly white professors, lawyers, civil servants, professional religious lay people, ministers, school administrators, retirees, etc. With comrades from the host city, we sold or distributed 21 CHALLENGES and 450 leaflets. One titled, "Smash Racism, Fascism, and Imperialism with Communist Revolution; Join the Progressive Labor Party," went like Belgian waffles. I also participated in a broader effort to win members of this church to support a proposal for our next convention, opposing imperialism. From the floor in some of the sessions or through literature distribution, we raised many aspects or all of the Party’s line.
This was a very modest effort when compared to the liberal heavy hitters who dominated the sessions: Howard Zinn (an old professor of mine), Julian Bond (a former student), Tom Hayden (a sellout from the SDS days — we gave him a copy of CHALLENGE to jerk his chain), Robert Reich (an architect of Welfare Reform), Robert Coles (who argues that rich kids are oppressed), Jonathan Kozol (who sees the problems but not the real solution) and a variety of others. Without a revolutionary communist outlook, these "critics" of U.S. imperialism become a misleading force, at best.
At the same time, thousands of folks there were, as we say in the Bible, "hungering and thirsting" after righteousness (a communist understanding of our true condition as wage slaves in a corrupt and murderous system). With better planning we could have gotten out even more literature and attended the whole convention instead of part of it. There will be future opportunities to fight these ideological battles. Revolution in our lifetime — or the next.
Red Rev
a name="‘We should Be Outraged by Each...Attack’"></" />"We should Be Outraged by Each...Attack’
BOSTON, July 9 — "No I won’t face the administration. They only want to teach us to accept our death rather than fight for our education." Thus, began one PLP student’s impassioned speech at a UMass-Boston (University of Massachusetts) community meeting to discuss the budget cuts. Her bold tone brought applause and respect from students who are now organizing a militant response to the current attacks on our working class university where 30% of the students are black, Latin or Asian.
In the past three years, the budget has been cut by one-third. UMass has attempted to stay afloat, of course, on the backs of workers, students and professors: lay-offs, speed-ups, cuts in student services, tuition and fee hikes.
We should be outraged by each one of these attacks! Workers and students should not accept these budget cuts. Passivity will allow the bosses to cut even more services particularly to pay for the endless imperialist wars the U.S. rulers need for their world domination. We should also understand the role of universities: to help the ruling class maintain control of us.
At the meeting, the administration sat in the front of the room, controlled the microphones, and encouraged workers from different departments to squabble over the details of how money is to be saved. Meanwhile, the union endorsed their own set of cuts! The only "solution" offered by the administration and union leaders was to vote the Republican governor out of office, even though a Democratic legislature increased the cuts to UMass-Boston he had proposed earlier!
We in PLP have to be bolder in these struggles. We have to put forward our communist politics clearly and distribute CHALLENGE and our leaflets. An improvement has been that we now have weekly CHALLENGE sales and leaflet distribution at UMass. We are making a lot of friends, and we are holding a dinner discussion on how to fight budget cuts with them next week. The goal of the discussion is to win a number of our friends to come out with us and hold a big CHALLENGE sale on campus, at the train station, and through the surrounding working-class neighborhoods. We want to help workers and students understand why these cuts are happening and how we can organize to fight back.
The misleaders always whine, "What can we do? The economy is bad…we have to accept the cuts."
What can we do? Organize workers and students to shut down public education with a general strike: this would be one battle in the longer fight to destroy the rotten system of capitalism and replace it with communism.
