WASHINGTON, DC — Four friends of PLP and a veteran PL’er developed a panel on communism for the October 6-7 Public Anthropology Conference, which PL’ers have attended before. It “brings together professional anthropologists and archaeologists, public health professionals, social justice activists, community organizers, filmmakers and educators to discuss new approaches to progressive political action.”

This year’s theme was “Does Government Matter?” Our panel explored “What Would a Communist Government Do?” We gave short talks on public health campaigns in China, the treatment of African Americans in the USSR and Soviet art and education.

We planned, discussed and researched our panel for four months. In mid-June, the veteran PL’er first brought the call for papers to two younger PL study-group participants. The latter eventually produced two possible ideas for a panel: explaining how the economic system determines what the government does; or positive advances toward social justice which communist governments have made (and could make again).

The first idea seemed easier and probably more acceptable since we’d only describe the problems with government under capitalism — also a starting point for many anarchists and Occupy activists. However, the second idea could provoke more questions and discussion, and challenge our group to become more knowledgeable about past communist movements. We decided on the latter.

Our veteran PL’er introduced our two PL study-group friends to a third, who’s active in the Occupy DC Labor Committee. These three — a student, a library worker and a teacher — led in planning the panel and writing presentations. During study groups and PLP city committee meetings, others suggested subtopics and sources. The panelists chose from these suggestions, focusing on health, racism, culture and education.

We overcame distance and work-schedule difficulties through phone-calling, e-mails and private social media to arrange planning. In late August, the panel began meeting face-to-face to share research and discuss the panel’s structure. This covered many topics as we got to know each other, especially when one panel member asked the others why they hadn’t joined PL. We discussed personal challenges — shyness, low energy, demands on our time like children and family — as well as doubts about the Party, criticisms of CHALLENGE and philosophical questions about communism.

After our first meeting, a fourth young friend (a study-group regular) joined the panel and offered his house to meet in. Inspired by his visible passion for communist ideals, the other panelists asked him to introduce the panel with an explanation of communism.

That meant that first we had to answer this question ourselves: what is communism? We also had long talks about the conference theme, “Does Government Matter?” We asked ourselves and eventually our audience: what should a government do? Whom does it serve? What should motivate it?

Our presentations drew from our personal interests and the research material we found. The health panelist focused on the Barefoot Doctors Movement and elimination of syphilis in China, because of the similarities to the anti-HIV campaigns she’s been involved in.

The racism panelist researched the positive experiences in the Soviet Union of African American writer Langston Hughes and singer-actor Paul Robeson. Her interest in culture led her to explore Soviet propaganda and art, particularly films like her favorite, “Battleship Potemkin.” This fit her anti-racist topic because Hughes traveled to the USSR to make a Soviet film about African Americans.

The third panelist researched education in the USSR: how it differed from czarist religious education; how manual work and practical skills were part of the school day; and how minorities within Russia were taught first in their native languages. This panelist knows from her own work experience and specialty that this is the best way to develop knowledge, literacy and eventually to learn other languages.

We deliberately avoided presenting China and the USSR as perfect societies, but rather to show their positive advances that aren’t mentioned in mainstream U.S. media.

The conference’s selection panel combined ours on communism with another on institutionalism. The original proposal was a debate between the two. Therefore, these two panels had to coordinate with each other and share space and time. As it turned out, our “What Would a Communist Government Do?” panelist spoke, followed by a short talk about communism and the importance of a party from our veteran PL’er. Then came an explanation of  institutionalism and a critique of communism, from the institutionalist on the second panel.

A half-hour discussion with audience members followed, which one of our panelists opened, stating we wanted to hear directly from them. The chairs were arranged in a circle so everyone could see each other. About 30 people participated, including many friends we had invited, along with presenters from other panels, academics and students.

Responses to communism were generally curious, not hostile. Many questioned whether the old communist movements of China and Russia were too authoritarian, and whether horizontal-style organization favored by Occupy would attract more people.

The institutionalist critique gave us opportunities to address misconceptions about communism, like thinking the “dictatorship of the proletariat” meant “anyone who cannot work would go hungry.” Communism means distribution based on need: people receive food, clothing, housing and health care regardless of how much they can work. The dictatorship of the proletariat means the working class will run society, not capitalist business owners.

The audience’s open response encouraged us to be more straightforward about communism. It’s clear that at least some students and academics are ready to go beyond merely detailing the evils of capitalism; they want to know the alternative, so we should be prepared for such conversations.

At least one member from our panel attended another event. But most outcomes of this panel are internal: the knowledge gained by the four panelists, confidence in speaking on these topics and comradely relationships built working with one another. Our major weakness was failure to get more friends involved who’ve been active with the Boycott Wells Fargo campaign and Occupy DC, and could have contributed and benefitted from our planning and research discussions.

While the capitalists’ election circus offers nothing of value to workers, it is an important mechanism for opposing sections of the ruling class to battle out their differences. The U.S. presidential campaign fight between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reflects in part a disagreement over the best way to expand the looming inter-imperialist conflict with nuclear-bound Iran.

The major difference pits a less expensive warfare policy of air strikes and Special Forces (Romney) versus a longer-term, mass mobilization for a full-scale ground war (Obama). At stake is nothing less than U.S. imperialism’s top-dog status over Russia, China, and other imperialist rivals.

Securing Iran’s oil and gas reserves—the second largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia’s—has been the Pentagon’s mission since the fascist Shah of Iran, the U.S.-installed puppet, was ousted by the fascist ayatollahs in 1979. It remains the top long-term priority of finance capital, the dominant wing of the U.S. ruling class. These are the bosses who bankroll the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), whose board members include Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. A recent CSIS report states:

U.S. national security planners accept the fact that the [Persian] Gulf is and will remain the location of a strategically vital share of the world’s petroleum resources. The U.S. is deeply tied to a global economy dependent on the flow of Gulf energy exports to Europe and Asia and to manufactured imports that require such oil and gas exports.

U.S. imperialism’s real power derives in large measure from Exxon’s ability, backed by the Pentagon, to dictate the terms of Middle East energy supply to 120 countries.

The Obama-Romney disagreement over Middle East strategy parallels the bosses’ differences over taxes. The wing represented by Obama sees the need to tax the rich at a much higher rate, in line with their financial contributions to World War II, while cutting unneeded military programs. Romney’s backers want to reduce taxes on the rich while maintaining and  adding to the military budget in the name of “national security.”

Obama’s Bosses Are Winning — for Now

Despite Romney’s success in the first debate, Obama’s backers, the proponents of global war, currently seem to have the upper hand. Romney champions the faction that followed the path of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush: war “on the cheap” to “fight with the army you have.” (The Rumsfeld forces temporarily won out over the faction allied with former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, who advocated the use of overwhelming force.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (a Romney ally) was all for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, but pressure from Obama forced him to back off. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu laid out his “redlines” for striking Iran’s nuke sites but pushed back his deadline well into next year. The top donor for both Romney and Netanyahu, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, raged at Obama’s time-buying alternative, charging that the president’s Iran sanctions “contain loopholes that you could drive a warhead through….They won’t stop Iran’s nuclear program” (Jewish News Service, 10/11/12). 

On Obama’s side, in a New York Times op-ed piece, “Why Netanyahu Backed Down,” Graham Allison and Shai Feldman of Harvard’s Belfer Center crowed that the Israeli leader “ended speculation that Israel might mount a unilateral attack on Iran before the American presidential election.” Netanyahu gave up the thought of acting alone because the Obama administration was “upgrading American security assistance to Israel” at a “level of support… greater than ever in Israel’s history.” The authors cited a poll in which “77 percent of Israelis now oppose a military attack on Iran that is not approved by Washington, although 71 percent would support an attack with American consent.”

U.S Rulers’ Grand Plan for Iran

The dominant finance capital group of U.S. imperialists has still grander plans for Iran. On October 10, their CSIS think tank updated its ongoing study, “Iran and the [Persian] Gulf Military Balance.” Envisioning far more than a “surgical” strike, it details “the order of battle,” the relative strengths in troops and armaments of Iran and its potential foes in an all-out regional war. CSIS examines the potential military contributions of Britain, France, Israel and the oil-rich sheikdoms of the Gulf Cooperation Council to an anti-Iran alliance led by the U.S. In various CSIS scenarios, Israel becomes but one member of a group aimed at smashing the regime in Teheran. Its 207-page report begins:

The most threatening form of U.S. and Iranian competition takes place in the military and security arena…. The growth of Iran’s capabilities for warfare in the Gulf, changing the military balance in the region, creates a growing risk that this aspect of U.S. and Iranian competition could lead to a major clash or even war in the Gulf.

This is the essence of Obama & Co.’s dressing down of Romney-Adelson-Netanyahu. CSIS also criticizes the on-the-cheap military disaster in Iraq that was engineered by Rumsfeld in 2003. Influenced by the same neo-conservatives who now advise Romney, Bush failed to commit an occupation-sized army there. His limited investment in Iraq and the ensuing sectarian strife led to the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s army, a force that the U.S. could have used to check Iran today:

Iraq is a major wild card in the competition in conventional forces. [T]he U.S. invasion of Iraq stripped away Iraq’s capability to deter and defend against Iran, and act as a regional counterbalance.

U.S. rulers had previously backed Hussein’s army in Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran, supplying him with intelligence and weapons for use against Iran’s military. In fact, before his rise to power, Saddam was a paid CIA asset who helped fight off anti-U.S. forces in Iraq’s government.

Imperialist Rivals Shape Up for World War

Foreseeing unavoidable worldwide combat, CSIS repeatedly identifies Russia and China — currently Iran’s biggest allies and arms suppliers — as future opponents of the U.S. Wary of past miscalculations, the think tank declares, “There are no rules that define Iran or the course of some future conflict — only uncertain probabilities.”

If finance capital has its way, a wider war in the Middle East will have a devastating effect on the international working class. After the slaughter of the two Gulf Wars prosecuted by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, it will kill millions more in that region. More U.S. soldiers will also be sacrificed in the name of imperialist greed. As the presidential campaign spectacle swings into its final weeks, it is clear that neither of the two ruling-class forces represents the interests of our class. Their argument is limited to how best to advance the cause of the capitalist system. Both sides are seeking maximum profit by increasing exploitation of the working class.

While the candidates debate their nonsense about “saving the middle class,” tens of millions suffer mass unemployment and underemployment. Racist police attacks on black and Latino workers and youth are rising. Women are oppressed through wage differentials and a degenerate sexist culture. Immigrant workers are super-exploited amid mass deportation. U.S. prisons and jails contain 2.4 million inmates, more than in any other country in the world, and 70 percent of them are black and Latino. Workers’ homes are being foreclosed by the millions as an economic crisis devastates the well-being of the entire U.S. working class. Meanwhile, similar policies advanced by capitalists in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America are wrecking the lives of workers there.

Turn Class War for Revolution

The capitalists’ oil-driven imperialist wars target millions of workers worldwide in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the rest of the Middle East, along with hundreds of thousands of U.S. youth who are sent to their deaths or to lifetimes of physical and psychological trauma. The class struggle against the capitalists is raging in Indonesia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and France. It is rising in the U.S., where workers in a dozen cities mounted the first multi-store strike in the history of super-exploiter Walmart.  It is up to the working class, led by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, to rise up against this hellish profit-driven carnage. We must use our position in this class struggle — in workplaces, schools, communities, campuses, churches and especially in the military — to drive the capitalists into their graves.

PLP’s goal is a society of, by and for the working class, without bosses, profits, racism, sexism and capitalist-created borders. That’s communism. Join us!

ASTORIA, QUEENS, NEW YORK, October 9 — Over 200 people rallied in a church this evening to discuss preventing the Greek neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn from opening an office in this largely Greek neighborhood. A number of people from Greece were there, including one of the former leaders of the Stella D’Oro strike in the Bronx, as well as teachers, students and labor activists.

The meeting began with a panel of six speakers, who provided a history of Golden Dawn — a group that uses Nazi symbols, celebrates Hitler’s birthday and has a record of attacking and beating immigrants and leftists. Fortunately, the latter have often defended themselves and “shown the fascists the pavement.” This is the only response thugs like the Golden Dawn respect.

Speakers also reasoned that Golden Dawn has gained some support in Greece, 7% of the electoral vote this year, because of the capitalist crisis that is also driving millions of workers there into poverty.

Golden Dawn, with origiins in Greece, pretends to be against the fascist austerity programs demanded by the Athens government and the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. However, when workers fight back with a general strike or surround Parliament in protest, Golden Dawn is nowhere to be found!

Capitalism has left the Greek economy in terrible condition: one-quarter of the population is unemployed, and half of all young workers are jobless. Real wages are plummeting, poverty is rising and the recession is growing worse. The Greek government owes European and U.S. banks tens of billions in loans, so the bailout money it receives from the European Union goes directly back to those banks. As one speaker astutely pointed out, “This is a bailout of the big banks, not the people of Greece, who are suffering!” If the government fell, the banks would lose a source of stolen profits. It is in this painful crisis that Golden Dawn is helping the Greek and international ruling classes by winning workers to blame immigrants, Jews and leftists for the problems caused by the wealthy business interests. Appealing to nationalism, Golden Dawn frames the issue as one of “defending Greek sovereignty” rather than the working class fighting to defend its interests.

Older workers remember what fascism meant to them. In World War II, the German and Italian occupation of Greece killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, some by torture and execution, others by starvation. The communist-led Resistance movement heroically fought and defeated the occupiers and their Greek collaborators. They were later supressed by the British Army. In 1947 U.S. forces, under the global anti-communist Truman Doctrine, replaced the British military. From 1967 to 1974, a right-wing military junta brutally suppressed the working class, abolishing their unions and their political parties, forbidding demonstrations and subjecting tens of thousands to torture and/or prison. In 1974 the junta was overthrown and the new government tried and imprisoned the junta leaders. 

During the 1980’s, the eventual leader of Golden Dawn, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, became friendly with some of the imprisoned former colonels from this junta and was encouraged to form a new fascist party. Today, the Greek police actively support Golden Dawn — 50% of them cast their vote for the neo-Nazis. The cops stand idly by while the racist goons attack immigrants and leftist rallies.

One of the speakers at the meeting pointed out that Hitler wrote in his book, Mein Kampf, that the left had the opportunity to crush the Nazis in Germany in the 1920s when they were small. By 1933 it was too late, and the fascists proceeded to put leftists — especially leaders of the working class — into concentration camps. We can’t make the same mistake.

Progressive Labor Party members and friends plan to be active in the committees that were formed to continue organizing against Golden Dawn. We will emphasize two things:

• Multi-racial unity: The meeting was mostly white. We need to broaden our base of support, by participating in anti-racist and pro working class struggles throughout the city. Although no one mentioned it at the meeting, NYC cops recently murdered Noel Polanco, a 22-year-old young man who worked in Astoria. Mr. Polanco was stopped in his car and unarmed when a policeman shot him without any justification. We will join community protests, spreading the idea that we need working-class solidarity to win.

• Communism: While anti-fascist protests are great, we need to remember that capitalism has always — and will always — produce fascist groups to do its bidding. In the midst of the worst economic crisis in eighty years, not to mention the billions who are always facing grinding poverty, we need to build a revolutionary communist answer to capitalism while we organize against the fascist thugs that it gives life to.

NEW YORK CITY, October 12 — Members of the End Cholera in Haiti Organization (ECHO) came out today to rally at the UN in ECHO’s first public action in NYC, building on a petition campaign. This will be a long struggle with many such actions. We joined a protest with other Haitian groups and international activists against the continued stationing of UN Minustah troops in Haiti.

We highlighted the demands of our campaign to end cholera in Haiti: universal vaccination, beginning with schoolchildren; a country-wide network of treatment centers; and most fundamentally, a modern infrastructure for clean water and sanitation.

Comrades from Progressive Labor Party were there distributing CHALLENGE and explaining how capitalism continually causes these preventable water-borne diseases. It is an example of the gross racism of the imperialist system towards workers in places like Haiti or West Africa where these epidemics are allowed to spread.

It was Minustah who brought cholera to Haiti via their troops from Nepal who carried the disease. In October 2010, human waste from their base near the Artibonite River was dumped into the river. The first case of cholera in Haiti since the 1700s occurred just downstream of that Minustah base. The strain of bacteria in the resulting epidemic was found to be the same Asian strain that the Nepalese troops carried.

The disease spread like wildfire after that, infecting 600,000 and killing over 7,400, and crossing into the Dominican Republic where hundreds  also died. Because of the continuing lack of access to clean water and decent sanitation in Haiti, the epidemic is far from over.

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that at least 100,000 more Haitians would become infected in 2012. Despite the consensus in the international health community that Minustah was guilty of introducing the epidemic to Haiti, the UN has yet to take responsibility and move decisively to stop the spread of this deadly disease. 

In many parts of the world cholera is endemic or entrenched in the population. In such areas people carry the disease and continually spread it, making it very difficult to eradicate. Some health experts fear that this is already happening in Haiti. Cholera outbreaks continue to be on the rise globally, currently affecting 3-5 million people and accounting for 100,000-120,000 deaths yearly, according to the WHO.

These statistics will only worsen with the increasing trend toward the privatization of water. In fact, access to clean water and proper sanitation is the only real way to control this disease. That is why ECHO’s most critical demand is to force the rulers to come up with the billion dollars required to build a clean water infrastructure for the people of Haiti. 

Although the area outside the UN where the rally was held was not as busy as hoped, it was most inspiring to see the enthusiasm of young ECHO members who chanted and picketed with posters and banners. One high school student of Haitian background, an ECHO leader, came forward and addressed the rally. He sharply made the point that the U.S. imperialists and the UN/Minustah troop occupation have brought only misery and death to people in Haiti. Another college student, who learned of the campaign only a week before, collected pages of signatures and expressed interest in joining the campaign steering committee.

Nearly everyone at the protest who was asked signed the ECHO petition. Several demonstrators noted that ECHO was not merely there to protest, but was attempting to build an international struggle and gave us their contact info to learn more. We work in concert with the campaign in Haiti itself, where another in a series of demonstrations is planned for October 19. 

Judging by the response to our message thus far, we are encouraged. ECHO members have already begun speaking to student, union, church, health and community groups and have plans to reach out to more. Next time we return to the UN it will be in substantially greater numbers to put forward our demands more forcefully.  PLP members working in the campaign argue that this vital effort should also be linked to building a revolutionary communist movement internationally. Joshua Horn’s book Away with All Pests tells the story of how communists in China eradicated diseases that capitalism has never been able to, such as syphilis.

For PLP fighting cholera is part of a struggle for a world which banishes the ultimate “pest,” capital itself, a world in which workers will never again be allowed to die of racist neglect.