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Editorial ... Argentina: Imperialist rivalry means workers’ misery
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- 16 February 2024 657 hits
In late January, in another sign of the international crisis of capitalism, masses of workers handed U.S.-friendly Argentinian President Javier Milei a humiliating defeat. More than 1.5 million workers joined a national strike against Milei’s “omnibus” austerity reform bill, a vicious attack on the working class. After four days of militant fightback in the streets, Milei’s administration was forced to withdraw the bill (Truthout, 2/7).
As Argentina continues to whiplash between rightwing and fake-left misleaders, the third largest economy in Latin America is a vivid illustration of how voting and reforms will never bring workers the world we need. Only a revolutionary mass communist party—Progressive Labor Party—will finally put an end to the terrors of capitalism.
Capitalism=unending misery for workers
Under the dictatorship of Juan Peron after World War Two, Argentina welcomed hundreds of Nazis to build a fascist movement in Argentina. Peron also put in a wave of reforms, including pensions and subsidized electricity, to pacify revolutionary activity and set up the working class for decades of future misery.
In the worldwide capitalist crisis of the 1990s, Argentina was hit hard and never recovered. The richest 10 percent in Argentina now control 60 percent of the wealth (Buenos Aires Times, 1/28), and the country’s poverty rate exceeds 40 percent (BBC, 1/29)—including more than eight million children. In 2023, inflation soared to 211 percent, its highest rate in 32 years, leaving workers with pesos that are next to worthless (NBC News, 1/11/24).
Over the past twenty years, conditions in Argentina’s notorious favelas have gotten even worse for workers who have nowhere else to live. Many search through landfills to find scrap to build flimsy houses—or even food to bring back and cook (BBC, 6/26/22). That’s capitalism in a nutshell, a system where workers are forced to search through garbage for their next meal. Under communism, we will ensure all workers have adequate housing and healthy food available, according to their need.
China gaining in U.S. “backyard”
U.S. dominance in Latin America faced little competition until the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced a series of widely unpopular austerity cutbacks. That left an opening for China, which has made loans totaling $138 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean (Wilson Center, 9/23). From 2005 to 2019, around 40 percent of Chinese investment in South America went into Argentina (Council of Foreign Relations, 2/5)—making it no surprise when Argentina joined China’s international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, in 2022. The struggle between U.S. and Chinese imperialism is forcing smaller capitalist bosses to choose a side.
Under Milei, Argentina has shifted its policy away from China and back toward the United States. Milei recently cancelled Argentina’s planned entry into BRICS, the China-led alliance with Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa (AP, 12/29/23). He went so far as to call Chinese leaders “thieves” and “murderers” and has pushed for doing more business with “the U.S., Israel and other countries that defend freedom” (Financial Times, 2/6).
Rising facism in Argentina
Not so long ago, U.S. imperialism had unchecked control over most of the world. Today, however, their influence is degrading with every deal another country signs with China. While the U.S. and China battle it out for world supremacy, smaller countries are being pulled into the rising tide of fascism, and Argentina is no exception. As Milei and his group of “free market” capitalists struggle to build closer ties with the U.S. and wean the country off dependence on Chinese imperialism, they must try to smash worker fightback as well as disagreements within their own class.
After Milei took office on December 10, he eliminated half of the government’s 18 ministries and promised to cut subsidies and privatize state-owned companies. For “moving “quickly and decisively” to “restore macroeconomic stability,” the IMF rewarded the new administration by agreeing to resume payouts (The Economist, 1/14). Since then, however, the Donald Trump admirer has encountered significant obstacles in implementing his big initiatives.
On December 27, Milei submitted the omnibus bill that would allow him to rule by decree for two years--and encountered stiff resistance from Argentina’s Congress (Reuters, 2/6). He’s been forced to back off from his campaign promise to scrap Argentina’s peso and replace it with the U.S. dollar. While Milei has rejected China’s offer to finance Argentina’s $43 billion debt to the IMF, and is pushing instead to pay off the debt by terrorizing workers through austerity cuts (Financial Times, 11/11/24), his pivot to the U.S. may not be so easy to achieve. Argentina still has contracts with China for lithium mining and soybean sales (Reuters, 12/7/23). Many of the country’s bosses see China as an economic lifeline. They know they desperately need to avoid another credit default (Atlantic Council, 11/3).
To rebuild Argentina’s ties to the U.S. in such a volatile period, Milei has no choice but to intensify his attacks on the working class. His omnibus bill would force workers to opt into boss-controlled unions and imprison protest organizers for six years. The president is also pushing for mass layoffs, massive privatization, and huge cuts to government services and subsidies (The Economist, 1/14). For Milei and the capitalist bosses he represents, fascism is not an option—it’s a necessity.
As Chinese imperialism grows stronger, some workers may find comfort in China’s challenge to U.S. dominance. But we must be clear: All capitalist bosses stand for mass exploitation, for rising fascism, and for building toward the next world war.
Workers must build revolutionary leadership
While we applaud the bold protesters in Argentina, workers cannot rely on short-term reforms. Even if the current fightback delays or dilutes the bosses’ next round of attacks, liberal misleaders will leave the working class unprepared to face even sharper attacks down the line. Nothing short of building a communist movement, led by Progressive Labor Party, will serve workers’ long-term interests.
Capitalism inevitably breeds inter-imperialist rivalry. In Argentina, neither Chinese nor U.,S. imperialism will bring anything but fascism and disaster for the working class. We must build a revolutionary communist movement that destroys capitalism once and for all.
Washington DC, February 10—
“Teachers draw the line, No genocide in Palestine” rang out at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) headquarters as over 50 teachers and supporters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza. We marched past the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the U.S.-based mouthpiece of Zionism, condemning their fascist support for the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians. After two miles of marching, we arrived at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA) for a final rally. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teachers and others spoke with marchers and distributed over 30 CHALLENGEs and 70 anti-imperialist communist leaflets to bring a revolutionary message to the assembled workers. We challenged the reformist slogan of “No endorsement for Biden without a cease-fire.” Only armed struggle and revolutionary communism to crush capitalism can bring liberation to Palestine/Israel, not a U.S. election. The U.S. capitalist empire backs Israeli fascism 100 percent to guarantee U.S. control of oil, pipelines, and sea routes and to sustain a military presence in the Middle East. This will not change, no matter who is president.
Educators give lessons in anti-fascism
PLP teachers and supporters insist that opponents of fascism and genocide in the Middle East must also fight fascist attacks in the U.S. by defending embattled anti-Zionist teachers and students throughout the U.S. The school bosses in the D.C. area attacked teachers in Montgomery County (CHALLENGE, 1/17) and Anne Arundel County with suspensions, “investigations” and hearings while lawsuits and protests continue in response. Organizing among teachers and supporters in an ad hoc group, “Solidarity Not Silence,” we shared petitions and information about upcoming protests at the Board of Education. The bold PLP banner proclaimed “Anti-Fascism is not Anti-Semitism” and “Workers of the World Unite.” Our flier stated clearly, “U.S. Imperialism Drives Fascist Attacks on Teachers and Students.” Unions must openly proclaim support for the teachers and call for strikes and walkouts, if necessary.
The local Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), a chapter of the NEA, has not called for a ceasefire and is dragging its feet on even allowing a resolution to be presented. At the last meeting, PLP members were able to raise the issue during open mic and have been scheduled to present the resolution next month. But this will not be easy, as Zionists in the Maryland community have already proved their willingness to use repressive means to shut down anti-Zionist teachers.
Fighting Zionism in the classroom
At another level of struggle, we have learned that the school bosses are determined to block the history of Palestine and the role of U.S. imperialism. They go along with Zionist tirades accusing all opponents of Israel’s military actions of antisemitism. They betray educators and block factual instruction. Just as U.S. history instruction lied about slavery and Jim Crow, so the current “history” of Israel and Palestine being offered in classrooms omits the history of the Nakba and the forcible displacement of over a million Palestinians. Approved teaching materials in Anne Arundel County state that “Gaza is a hard place to live. About half of the Gazans don't have jobs, electricity goes out frequently and the tap water is polluted. Palestinians in Gaza cannot leave the territory without permission. This makes it extremely difficult to leave the country to work, study, or visit family.” Who is doing this to the Palestinians? The man on the moon? No! The “approved” article is silent on the fact that Israel controls all the supplies entering Palestine (such as water and electricity) and that it is Israel that makes it difficult for workers in Palestine to travel or live a normal life. Moreover, no material from the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or any other major human rights group, let alone alternative media such as Al-Jazeera or Middle East Eye, is allowed in classroom assignments and discussions. So much for “balance!”
As the battle continues, teachers need to form a stronger group in the union to resist these attacks, learn more about the history of the Palestinian struggle by reading CHALLENGE and recent entries in the multiracialunity.org blog, and demand that suspended teachers be returned to the classroom immediately. Through this process, more teachers can become part of the revolutionary movement for communism and put imperialism (from Queen Victoria to Genocide Joe) in a museum where it belongs
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Power to the youth protesting a genocidal system
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- 16 February 2024 619 hits
CHICAGO, January 30—“Same enemy, same fight — Students of Chicago unite!” It was with this chant and many others that hundreds of multiracial, multigender public high school students led a bold walkout and sit-in today at City Hall in protest of the ongoing genocide against workers and children in Gaza. Their efforts were the result of a brilliant organizing effort across more than ten schools in different neighborhoods.
The inspiring action occurred just the day before the Chicago City Council was set to vote on whether to officially endorse a ceasefire resolution. But as history and current experience show, the capitalist politicians’ timid calls for an end to the slaughter will do little to nothing to stop the current genocide or the inevitable next one that grows out like a cancer from their blood-soaked profit system.
To transform these exploding imperialist bloodbaths into class war and our collective liberation, we need an international communist revolution and nothing less. Those of us in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salute these students for their urgency, antiracism, and internationalism, and invite them to join the revolutionary movement to crush the parasitic exploiters and their system once and for all.
Youth protest genocidal capitalism
As the clock struck midday, the students at the specific schools poured out of the buildings. At one of the schools on the city’s southwest side, the daughter of a PLP member helped to lead her peers in marching and chants around the campus. She also gave leadership to the planning efforts with other student leaders from different schools before today’s action.
In the majority working-class neighborhood where the school is located, neighbors and those driving past vocalized their support. The students proudly waved signs with messages like “End the Genocide” and “The occupation has to go!” They used bullhorns to give speeches that connected the state-sponsored racist attacks against Black and Brown youth in Chicago from forces like the KKKops to the U.S. imperialist-backed Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) currently murdering Arab workers and youth.
Later in the afternoon, the bulk of the students walking out converged in the city’s downtown at City Hall. After marching around the block and shutting down busy intersections, they forced their way into the government building despite a heavy kkkop presence and took over the entire first floor. Most of the students eagerly took copies of CHALLENGE newspaper and shared their sharp insights into the nature of the system.
The same young organizer leading the walkout at her school continued while at City Hall, pushing the chants to have a more anti-capitalist tone, including “Democrats, Republicans, all the same – Genocide is the name of the game!” and “From Palestine to Mexico, these border walls have got to go!”
She also gave one of the more militant speeches during the sit-in:
“Today we are here to stand for the Palestinian people and demand an end to the genocide and the system that causes it, and that is capitalism. Local government and especially our city council has failed to support Palestinians and instead, they are supporting this racist government to continue the mass genocide. How many more kids need to die? How many more need to fear for their lives? The answer should be zero but there are over 27,000 Palestinian people who have died over land and capitalism.
This doesn’t just affect Palestine; it affects the world. The working class is suffering because the ruling class controls the government and therefore the military is killing our people. The government is supposed to uplift our lives but they’re serving their bosses and killing our people! They’re killing our people to put money into their pockets. They’re benefitting from this mass genocide. We need to use our voice as youth to begin this revolution and breakthrough capitalism! People are suffering, people are dying – Innocent people, innocent children! We demand a ceasefire!”
Reject liberal misleaders, fight for communism
Our collective ability to end exploitation and profit wars is ultimately a question of armed class struggle and state power. The liberals and so-called “progressive” politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson use radical-sounding language to pretend like they’re on our side while they are managers of the very same profit system responsible for so much racism, nationalism, misery, and war. They are the class enemies who will tell these working-class youth to ultimately get in line to fight and die for the imperialist war machine in the next world war. That’s why we in PLP identify liberals as the main danger to our class!
As communists in the international PLP, we want to arm our youth and the working masses with the ideas and weapons that will violently seize power away from the capitalists and build a society based on our collective needs and development. A gigantic goal, but ultimately the only future worth fighting for!
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NJ Students lead! ‘From Palestine to Mexico, the war machine has got to go’
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- 16 February 2024 456 hits
New Jersey, February 14—Students throughout New Jersey coordinated a student walk out in protest of the genocide in Gaza. From West Orange to Teaneck, workers and students are exposing a hub of racist Zionists and the true intentions of City Council members—to squelch anti-imperialist, antiracist rebellion and realize their dreams of Mayoral and Senator elections. Progressive Labor Party members were in attendance at these walkouts, with signs and CHALLENGE in hand to encourage our collective revolutionary potential.
In Teaneck, one PL’er held up a sign that read, “THE PRIORITIES OF US IMPERIALISM: 27,947 KILLED IN GAZA IS ACCEPTABLE! A 20 PERCENT DROP IN RED SEA TRAFFIC IS NOT.”
Many workers and students at the march complimented the sign. When they did, the comrade would say, “If you like my sign, you’ll also like this paper” and hand them a CHALLENGE. A former Teaneck High School student said, "Yes,I'll take one—I am a communist!" And she proceeded to use the front cover as her sign while marching.
In West Orange, students chanted as they marched from the school grounds “ FROM PALESTINE TO MEXICO, THE WAR MACHINE HAS GOT TO GO!” Another PLer was able to share a chant with the students, “BIDEN BIDEN COME NOVEMBER, ALL THE VOTERS WILL REMEMBER.” Self critically, it would be stronger to alter this chant to say WORKERS instead of VOTERS but this was an opportunity to open up a conversation with students about Biden being a liberal President and sanctioning aid to Israel despite their mass murdering and bomb dropping. “I’m not going to vote for Biden in November.” One 17 year old Black student shared to the crowd. Another Indian student commented, “Biden is okay funding Israel because he doesn’t want to be at war with the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Stunned, I told him yes, many of my friends would and I say that Israel is an acting watchdog for the U.S. in the Middle East.
We were able to share CHALLENGE and exchange contact information with this student and his older sister, who is a student at Rutgers. More work in exposing these students to a third option — building under the banner of PLP with revolutionary communism is being planned through an upcoming forum. With capitalism, there will always be a path to imperialist wars including World War 3, Biden and ALL the International Bosses will pull out all genocidal stops to gain power or to hold onto power.
NEW YORK CITY, February 12—In Washington, the stumbling, bumbling racist politicians of the DemoPublican bosses' parties argue about how much to cut benefits for workers, how much to spend on a military budget to try to hold onto their empire, how to attack immigrants fleeing intolerable conditions in their country of birth and how to end the federal Medicare health plan as it has been run for the last sixty years. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) says don’t be fooled by the bosses' system and their ideas. We fight against the bosses’ plans and for a new egalitarian society run by workers to meet the needs of workers, that’s communism!
Capitalism puts profits above worker’s health
Here in New York City, workers are not passive in the face of the bosses and union honchos’ plans. For the last three years, retired New York City municipal workers have been fighting against a plan agreed to by the city government and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC),an umbrella group of over 100 unions that have collective bargaining rights for current city workers) that force retirees out of traditional Medicare health coverage and into a so-called Medicare “Advantage” plan run by one of the health insurance corporate giants. Retirees have fought this plan because it would narrow our ability to use some doctors and medical facilities, impose preauthorization requirements that have been shown to deny or delay needed medical procedures and tests that cost more money. New copays would hit lower-income retired workers (who are disproportionately Black, Latin, and women retirees) the hardest, making this plan a racist and sexist one. The reality of healthcare in the U.S. is that more and more working folks are forced to make the unthinkable choice between paying for housing, food, healthcare, or prescription medicine. Amid this struggle, PLP members have pointed out that under capitalism, the healthcare system is always designed to make profits for the healthcare bosses, not to guarantee the best health outcomes for the working class. That’s why PLP builds for a communist revolution.
The fightback is spreading
For the last two years, the Medicare grassroots retiree organization has pursued a legal challenge that stopped the NYC Medicare (dis)advantage plan in its tracks. Now retirees have been placing ads in various print and online media outlets signed by 4,000 retired union leaders, staff, members, and organizers. The ads attempt to show that this fight is directed against fat cat MLC leaders who act as agents of the bosses rather than leaders of the fight for workers.
Now this struggle is spreading as retired NYC transit workers from TWU Local 100 have begun a similar fight against their boss, the NYC Transit Authority. In addition, government workers in the state of Delaware have stopped a Medicare (dis)Advantage plan there and workers in Illinois, Vermont and Washington State are joining the struggle. PLP members have said that the attack on retirees will sooner rather than later lead to healthcare cuts on current NYC government workers. Now, the MLC is currently in backroom negotiations which we predict will restrict healthcare options and impose additional costs for 350,00 current workers.
Fighting back and not passively listening to bosses’ politicians or pro boss union hacks is a good thing. However, as long as capitalist bosses are in control, every victory we win is temporary. That’s why workers need to join the PLP and fight for communist revolution!
