Escalating conflict between the beleaguered U.S. and resurgent Russian empires led President Barack Obama to cancel a planned September summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin. The “emerging differences” (as Obama calls them) behind the snub run far deeper than Putin’s granting asylum to National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden. It’s all about the unceasing fight for profits under capitalism.
Hostile blocs of capitalists, represented by Obama and Putin, are more and more at odds in their inter-imperialist competition for the world’s resources, markets, and labor. Those bosses who control global energy supplies gain political and economic advantages over their rivals. Each major power needs armed force — including nuclear weapons — to enforce its domination. It’s no surprise, then, that oil, gas, and missiles top the list of grievances between Obama and Putin. At the same time, both the U.S. and Russia are tailoring their tactics toward building coalitions for a wider confrontation down the road, one that may involve emerging superpower China.
The cost of this competition bears heavily on the world’s working class. As the imperialist rivals prepare for war, their austerity policies devastate the living standards of the international working class. Several billion workers now live on less than two dollars a day. There is mass unemployment in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, South America, China, the U.S., and elsewhere. Millions have been laid off during world capitalism’s latest economic crisis. Hazardous working conditions kill thousands in the fire-prone factories of Bangladesh. Miners are openly murdered by Nelson Mandela’s political heirs in South Africa. Millions more are suffering and dying from lack of healthcare.
Above and beyond these capitalist horrors, imperialist confrontations kill tens of millions in wars over resources in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in Obama’s terror drone attacks over Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Rulers’ Racism Runs Wild
Finally, there is the racism built against Arab and Muslim workers by the U.S. rulers’ closing of their embassies in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. This trumped-up panic move demonizes these workers as enemies who can be killed with impunity. Racism is wielded as well by the U.S. rulers’ cops as they murder black and Latino youth across the country. And by the prosecutors and judges who incarcerate millions in prisons on frame-ups or petty, non-violent violations of the bosses’ laws.
These horrors will end only when this capitalist hell is destroyed by a communist revolution. Only by building a mass, revolutionary Progressive Labor Party can the world eliminate the bosses and their profit system. Only then can we create a society run by and for workers, one without wars, racism, sexism, unemployment and poverty.
Syria, the Bosses’ Latest Battlefront
The U.S. dispute with Russia has killed more than 100,000 workers in Syria over the last two years. Russia maintains a naval base there, backs the anti-U.S. Assad regime, and fosters its alliance with potential nuclear power Iran. Obama’s Russian-Syrian problem centers on the need for continued flow of Middle East oil under Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and other allied brands. A Russian-assisted Assad victory will strengthen Iran’s anti-U.S. rulers, who are threatening to shut off U.S. and British firms’ oil exports through the critical Strait of Hormuz. On the other hand, Obama has been reluctant to support anti-Assad Islamists after al Qaeda forces gained dominance within their camp. The success of this opposition could imperil the slave-state monarchy of Saudi Arabia, Exxon Mobil’s biggest partner.
A less publicized U.S.-Russian battle is raging for supremacy in the crucial European gas arena. New production technology, known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” has for the first time made U.S. gas a globally significant commodity.
Fracking extracts natural gas from wells far below the earth’s surface by shooting water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressure into shale deposits that contain oil and gas, bringing them cheaply to the surface. It also contaminates ground water and drinking water, forces gases and chemicals to the surface, and has been known to sicken animals and people and cause cancer. But geostrategic and profit considerations have quickly overcome the environmental opposition.
Fracking the Working Class
The racist U.S. ruling class, which murdered millions of Native Americans in the 19th century, has renewed its genocide by fracking on reservations in North Dakota and other Western states. Residents are forced to boil drinking water while they suffer from air pollution caused by huge fires that erupt as natural gas burns off over the prairies.
Two years ago, the rulers’ New York Times published a series called “Drilling Down” on the evils of fracking. Its headlines warned of “toxic materials,” “tainted water,” and “polluted air.” By 2012, however, the Times did an about-face with articles headlined “Revisiting the Facts on Fracking,” and “Rethinking Opposition to Fracking.” The U.S. ruling class has closed ranks to break Moscow’s energy stranglehold on Germany and other European Union countries, which have had to rely on Russian gas.
Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. imperialists’ leading think tank (which counts Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Citicorp, and JP Morgan among its “founders) told Congress on April 23:
U.S. LNG [liquefied natural gas] exports would also help Europe maintain leverage vis-à-vis Russia — even if, as appears likely, little U.S. natural gas is actually shipped to Europe. In the wake of the U.S. shale gas boom, Middle Eastern and North African suppliers have turned to Europe to sell their surplus natural gas, creating intense competition in the European market and increasingly forcing Russia to sell its natural gas on transparent, market-based terms rather than through opaque, politically charged contracts. Even the possibility of significant U.S. natural gas exports will help sustain pressure on Russia to sell natural gas on these [cheaper] market-based European terms.
Flaunting the Nuclear Threat
While Washington and Moscow wield their energy resources as a means of control, they are clashing over the nuclear weapons that protect their respective empires. “In October, Putin let it be known that he would not renew America’s Cooperative Threat Reduction [CTR] program, which has safeguarded nuclear stockpiles in former Soviet countries since the 1990s” (Boston Globe, 8/11/13). In 1992, a severely weakened Russia had agreed to CTR, under which the U.S. oversaw the dismantling of warheads in Russia’s traditional stronghold, Eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union. But today Putin calls the nuclear shots there, and Russia is flaunting its nuclear threat in these former Soviet republics and satellites. Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008 to suppress its opening to the West, is making similar noises today — and getting a harsh response from its old master. As Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanshvili wrote in the Wall Street Journal on August 5:
Georgia is already a key byway for Caspian energy.... [W]ith four key oil pipelines running through Georgia, our government has declared its intent to join the [European Union-run] Energy Community. We intend to make the country an example of a stable democracy and a reliable partner for Europe and the U.S., as well.... Georgia has already moved closer to NATO [the U.S-controlled North Atlantic Treaty Organization].
The next day, Moscow went literally ballistic. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared on Georgian television to declare:
We do not welcome Georgia’s membership in NATO, to put it mildly....Russia is a very large country with a huge nuclear arsenal.... If there’s a state which is a member of another military-political alliance whose nuclear missiles are aimed at targets located on the Russian territory, we cannot welcome this....you [Georgia] would become a member of a big military political alliance which...is a potential enemy if certain situations arise.
Medvedev is referring to a potential world war. Like U.S. rulers, the Putin regime has two priorities: bolstering its territorial sphere of influence (including Georgia and the rest of Eastern Europe), and cementing grand alliances. This summer saw large-scale military and naval exercises between Russia and China.
Significantly, it was the Atlantic Council think tank that plastered Medvedev’s menacing speech on the front page of its website (8/7/13). The Council, funded both by U.S. capitalist “philanthropies” and the Pentagon, is at the front of the line in applauding NATO’s expansion. More aggressively, it pounds the drums for the formation of a U.S.-led axis to confront its imperialist rivals. In his last act as Atlantic Council boss, before he became Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel published a report outlining a pro-U.S. “dream team” of strategically located allies: India, Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey. All four could potentially mobilize massive armies to help fight the enemies of U.S. capitalism.
Capitalism, No — Revolution, Yes!
In the wake of the Obama-Putin flare-up, U.S. politicians and pundits are debating whether the mid-century Cold War between Russia and the U.S. is back. In fact, much worse lies in store for our class. But as always, the working class is fighting back, from rebellions in South Africa to garment strikes in Bangladesh, from anti-austerity demonstrations in southern Europe to street protests against police murders of black youth in New York City.
But we must go beyond protests and demonstrations. Workers must turn the capitalists’ attacks against us into class war. Led by the Progressive Labor Party, we can overthrow them with communist revolution. Join us and help lead our class along that road.
- Information
PL’ers Spark Anti-Racist Protest Against Trayvon Verdict
- Information
- 15 August 2013 58 hits
FORT WORTH, TX August 1 — Following the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict, we have increased the anti-racist fight back in our area. While anti-racist demonstrations around the country erupted in the days following the verdict, the response in our area was almost non-existent.
To get the ball rolling, several PL’ ers descended upon a local mall armed with leaflets condemning the racist killing of Trayvon Martin and blaming the capitalist profit system for letting Zimmerman go. The leaflet linked the racist killing to those of black and Latino youth by police around the county. We also pointed out how capitalism profits from this racist terror through the mass unemployment and a low-wage workforce that mass incarceration and police attacks help perpetuate. Our leaflet was well-received, especially by many black and Latino students.
Over the next few days we took our leaflets, signs and bullhorn to busy street corners around town. We received a wonderful response from the community. Our multiracial crew handed out hundreds of leaflets to passersby and held signs promoting multiracial unity in order to fight back against the bosses’ racist terror.
The city’s “official” black leadership eventually got wind of our actions and began organizing a rally to put forward pacifism and voting as the only acceptable responses to the daily racist outrages. By the weekend, church leaders and the Democratic Party had organized a “peaceful” prayer vigil downtown. Hundreds of black workers attended and each one received our leaflet.
During a speech by the representative for the Democratic Party, a black worker interrupted and demanded that the community be allowed to speak. He boldly pointed out that only “official” leaders were cleared to speak and that the community was being shut out. Church leaders led the crowd in a series of prayers, subduing some of the anti-racist anger.
The final message was for workers to go vote and then to go home. But as soon as the vigil ended, PL and our friends in the crowd started a chant, “What do we want, justice! When do we want it, now!” and “Trayvon Martin Means We’ve Got to Fight Back!” Hundreds in the crowd joined in. The anti-racist message shook the streets and showed the potential and desire for more militant fightback.
After an intense, week-long series of anti-racist actions, we had distributed over 2,000 leaflets and met several new anti-racist fighters. And while the city’s “official” misleaders have told people to pray and go home, we have been creating more opportunities to bring people out and spread the message of anti-racist fightback.
We recently went with a group who participated in the Trayvon events to go see Fruitvale Station — a movie that depicts racist profiling and a day in the life of Oscar Grant before Bay Area police murdered him (see review, page 7.) We met for coffee afterward and continued the discussion about Trayvon. It ranged from fighting back against racist cutbacks on our jobs to organizing against racist police terror by making a banner with images of all the black and Latino youth killed recently by police and vigilantes. We also made plans for future anti-racist movie nights.
These past few weeks have shown that armed with PL’s line on fighting racism, small changes can quickly lead to bigger ones. Racist terror is how most black and Latino workers experience capitalism on a day-to-day basis, and many want the opportunity to participate in anti-racist struggle. By creating opportunities in our area, we helped put hundreds of people in motion against racism. We will continue to create opportunities for anti-racist struggle and to put forward PL’s politics in the mass movement.
- Information
Racist Rulers Trash Justice, Ramarley Spurs Fightback
- Information
- 15 August 2013 58 hits
Just back from the August 10 protest in the working-class Bronx, NY against the system’s refusal of justice for Ramarley Graham. On only 12 hours notice, 200 of us gathered in response to Frank Graham’s call to rally for his son once again, in front of the Bronx District Attorney’s office. The demand, the theme, was “justice”: but the reality is the exact opposite. The chants were all familiar and strong, peoples’ whole bitter lives pouring into their voices. “They say get back, We say fight back!” In Ramarley’s name, in the names of all our fallen.
On procedural grounds, a judge threw out the first case against the cop Richard Haste who murdered the unarmed Ramarley in his own bathroom in front of his grandmother, but, ever “impartial,” left it open for a re-indictment from another grand jury. Last night the grand jury declined to do that. “They say get back.” The Graham family now wants to demand a federal investigation. “We say fight back.”
My heart bleeds for them in this moment when, Frank says, “everything is dark,” but the feds investigating NYPD death squads in the Bronx is a farce! The U.S. government is the king of racist death squads all over the world, from Vietnam to Congo to El Salvador to Iraq, just to name four places in my lifetime that have seen their Ramarleys shot down in their own homes by U.S. government thugs. “We say fight back.” How, then? An image comes to mind from Ismaël Ferroukhi’s film Free Men, of the women and men Algerian communist workers in Paris who fought the Nazi occupation alongside their French sisters and brothers only to see colonial France turn the guns on them back in Algeria.
We will always fight back. But it will have to be in a way that takes account of the cruel predicament of our Algerian communist predecessors, and of the Grahams today. Fighting back is always necessary but no one fight, it seems, is ever sufficient. Think of how, even with state power won and kept at terrible cost, the first communist revolutions had such a hard time transforming the rotten world they were left with.
No one struggle, not even revolution, is ever enough. Every thing always seems dark when that truth hits home. It’s the dialectical truth that nothing is at rest at last, nothing is final, nothing is secure, everything changes; we must keep moving and stay with the pace. “Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”
But if we toughen up, somehow the fight goes on harder and smarter the next time. A handful of people from my union were there, as we have been throughout this long year, because Ramarley Graham should have lived to be our student. A sobering day, being this close to official state murder of a young black Bronx high-schooler. “NYPD, KKK, How many kids will you kill today?” The black sign in back said simply “Richard Haste, you can’t hide”: everyone there knew how that chant, introduced by PLP, goes on: “We charge you with genocide.”
A long history of genocide, in this racist city, this racist country, this racist continent, this planet of racist slums, and lengthening as we speak. But always with those who say no. Who will have the last word? What will that word be? For now, it’s “No!” The Graham family has been inspiring speakers of that saving word.
It will be “No!” until our last breath, until we can speak that other word, for all our fallen sons and daughters. Freedom.
New York teacher
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, August 1 — In June, students at the State University of Haiti (UEH) waged a struggle against the university administration to prevent a fee increase for entry to UEH (see CHALLENGE, (07/17/13). This increase, which aimed to limit the entry of workers’ children to UEH, had been proposed by a reactionary leader close to the government and its ruling class.
For three weeks, students from several faculties (campuses) here organized a series of student general assemblies, militant marches, sit-ins and demonstrations.
Following the initial demonstrations, the Rector and a few reactionary teachers took the offensive, calling for the arrest of student leaders, accusing them of criminal activity — (breaking windows of the administration building and spray-painting government cars). They used the bosses’ press to divert us from the real question: their attack against the interests of students and their parents. These bosses have even announced their intention to break their word about rescinding the fee increases.
This student struggle achieved some success, expecting only a doubling of the registration fee to 1,000 gourdes (about U.S. $25) instead of tripling. And the bosses are in a total state of disarray: every day they take to the media to announce a different point of view and decision. They’re not even on the same page regarding the totality of student demands beyond the fee increase.
The students have not lost everything, but neither did they win. Why? The reduction of the increase stemmed from their ability to mobilize. But because they did not continue to organize students to press for all of their demands and to make alliances with workers, they’re at a standstill. And PL’ers have not yet made a protracted struggle to win an understanding of the role of the university under capitalism — which aims to recruit and train youth to be the agents and allies of the capitalist state, and the need for an egalitarian communist revolution.
However, the struggle continues, both on the reform level and ideologically among students. PLP is committed to this and is ready and able to give better communist leadership on campus and beyond.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, August 4 — July 28 was the date of the first U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1915. Today the current fascist government and its ruling-class masters chose it for a celebration. a “festival of flowers.” This is how they commemorate almost a century of imperialist-led crimes against the masses in Haiti.
For almost 19 years, from 1915 to 1934, the U.S. bosses waged a relentless fight against the peasants, workers and students of Haiti. They killed many rank-and-filers during their bloody occupation, and murdered their leadership as well. One was Charlemagne Peralte, an organizer of the rural group called the Cacos, which had fought for many decades against the abuses of the local landowners, and then turned their fightback against the U.S. invaders.
Today, it is MINUSTAH, the United Nations-led imperialist force, which has been repressing, exploiting, raping and murdering the peasantry, working class and youth of Haiti since its arrival in June 2004. It is fronting for the major imperialists who want to control Haiti — the U.S., Canada and France.
Thousands of peasants and workers have died from cholera, imported by these imperialist forces. As of early August, over 1,000 days after its introduction into Haiti, 671,702 have become ill and 8,251 have died. [http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/haiti-cholera-counter]). The U.N. has yet to even apologize, or take steps to remedy its crimes.
Several working-class social groups organized a demonstration on July 26 in the Carrefour suburb here to continue the fight against these crimes of capitalism.
PLP took part in this event, distributing leaflets linking cholera to racism and other problems created by the capitalist system, and carrying signs advocating the need to destroy it. These were well-received by the rank-and-file. In fact, the demonstration and these slogans were used as teaching tools a few days later during some classes preparing high-school graduates to take the competitive exams for entry into the State University of Haiti.
However, the carnival-like atmosphere of the demonstration and the limited organization in the working class changed the character of this protest. Yet it did show the potential of the working class and its allies to respond positively to revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary party.
There is real room for PLP’s growth in Haiti and around the world as the bosses show their utter contempt for workers through their unrelenting attacks on our class.
