The city of Jakarta, Indonesia, is one of the largest of the growing number of megaslums around the world. In Jakarta 28 million people live in tightly-packed slum housing consisting of unstable tenements and improvised shelters. Forty percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day and average wages are only $113 per month in a city where apartment rents hover around $500 per month (Reuters, 3/12/12). 

Workers in Indonesia now have a new hardship to worry about. Of the estimated 400,000 commuters riding Jakarta’s dilapidated public trains during peak hours, many are forced to hop the trains and ride on the roof. This practice, called “train surfing” in Jakarta, is a necessity in a city where wages are too low to cover rising train fares. 

The Indonesian government, eager to collect these fares, has long fought train surfing by greasing the roofs of train cars and hanging large concrete balls over the tracks to knock riders off. Now they are embarking on a plan to lower the power lines of the trains to electrocute those that risk a ride to work. This murderous plan is being implemented alongside a 40%  fare hike, guaranteeing that millions of workers will be forced to risk their lives to work in Indonesia’s sweatshop economy (BBC, 7/27/12). 

But Indonesia did not have to be a growing megaslum where workers get poorer every year while millionaires are minted at the rate of 16 a day on the backs of the working class (a figure lauded by capitalists; it indicates the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the growing poverty of the many). Between 1945 and 1965, a coalition nationalist government, pushed along by a massive “communist” party, experimented with some aspects of social democracy that saw rising wages, increased literacy and improved health rates, alongside the development of the public infrastructure. 

The Indonesian “Communist” Party (PKI) was once the largest in the capitalist world with a membership of 3 million in 1965. But they made the mistake of thinking that they could ally themselves with “good” capitalists and peacefully evolve into a socialist state without violently taking state power. This delusion would prove fatal when General Suharto, backed by the U.S. CIA, began a murderous campaign against the PKI in 1965. 

Between 1965 and 1968, when Suharto officially took power over the country, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million communists and communist sympathizers were systematically murdered by death squads. At the time the New York Times praised the massacre as a “gleam of light in Asia,” a “savage transition” that would not have been possible without U.S. aid and the American invasion of Vietnam (NYT, 6/19/66). 

The Suharto regime, always the obedient vassal of the U.S., went about turning Indonesia into a third world slum that would be fit for exploitation by Western corporations seeking the lowest wages in the world. Public programs were gutted or eliminated, the urban infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate and labor organizations were viciously liquidated. Now trains, not renovated since the 1950s, regularly derail; boats and ferries sink; airplanes disappear from radar; shacks are buried in mudslides or destroyed by floods; and the Jakarta slums swell as the city grows (from 1.5 million in 1950 to over 28 million today). 

Indonesia is praised by many capitalist economists as a model economy, showing the economic development promised by free markets. Indeed their tiny capitalist class is seeing an unparalleled growth in their personal wealth. Yet for the millions of Indonesian workers, capitalism is a killer.

Journalist Andre Vltchek described the conditions of the Jakarta slums, “One turn off from the main streets and the real Jakarta exposes its wounds: filthy narrow alleys, channels clogged with garbage, makeshift stores selling unhygienic food, children running barefoot; thousands of big and small mosques, but not one decent playground for children. Garbage accumulates at every corner and polluted air penetrates throat and eyes. Little girls are offering themselves for a pittance, while boys are sniffing glue from plastic bags.” (Japan Focus, 2/5/08)  

This is the victory of capitalism in Indonesia. The bosses have everything, while the workers hope that they don’t get electrocuted on their way to work. The lessons from the destruction of the PKI for communists everywhere were hard-learned. There are no “good capitalists” and there can never be any allegiance between the working class and the capitalist class. The struggle between the working class and the capitalist class is a life-and-death struggle. The fight for communism is not a national struggle as the PKI thought, but an international struggle against the exploitation of capitalism everywhere.

CHICAGO, September 18 — The strike of 26,000 rank-and-file teachers who broke the bosses’ law in fighting to defend their students was suspended today after a vote of 800 delegates in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), pending a membership-wide vote over the next several weeks.

This was a strike for the students and their parents. The teachers’ fight is one which opposes the school bosses racist oppression of the students. The teachers are fighting for better learning conditions for students and better working conditions for themselves. Many were open to Progressive Labor Party’s ideas and leadership shown by over 2,000 CHALLENGES and tens of thousands of fliers were distributed, and several teachers’ agreed to work more closely and learn more about the PLP.

The strike demonstrated that workers, united can defy the bosses’ laws. When teachers strike they openly defy the state’s plan to indoctrinate the next generation of workers in the classroom. 

The teachers struck against racism. More than 80 percent of Chicago students are black and Latino and the school bosses run a system founded on racist discrimination that drives students into low-wage jobs, mass unemployment or the military, to kill our sister and brother workers in imperialist wars.

During the strike, the rank and file picketed every one of the system’s 585 schools, every day. Daily rallies of tens of thousands of people, including parents, students, and workers from other unions backed the strikers. Members who had formerly been inactive learned what it means to fight back against the boss. Others stepped forward into leadership roles. A strike changes people!

Smash the Bosses’ Dictatorship

This is only one battle in a long class war of workers against bosses that can be won only when the rulers’ state apparatus is smashed by a communist revolution led a by PLP. 

The bosses are pushing their agenda to indoctrinate working class students and blaming teachers for capitalist failures. The leaders of the national unions are helping them; while the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten reluctantly came out in support of the strike. The fact is the trade unions as a whole, including the AFT and the National Education Association are partners with the bosses in opening the door to “reforms”. This will break seniority by re-writing tenure and starting the process to make teacher evaluation dependent on phony test scores. 

The strike has already inspired millions of workers and youth and set an example of what kind of fight-back is possible. The experience of defying the bosses’ laws must be extended to a strike against their closing of even one school.

With the national elections just weeks away, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel reminds us that we live under a class dictatorship and that the state apparatus (the government) serves the ruling class of billionaires, bankers and school reformers no matter which party is in the White House. The bosses and their politicians may disagree on how to save the U.S. empire but they are united on keeping their class in power and terrorizing workers and youth into accepting a future of racist terror, poverty and war. And part of the bosses’’ purpose in cutting back school budgets is to use these resources to fight their continuing imperialist oil wars.

The legal system that attacked this strike is the same court system and ruling class government that has:

• Enacted laws in Illinois, backed by both parties and signed by a Democratic Party governor forcing teachers to have a super majority (70 percent) to call a strike but CTU members smashed that barrier with a 90 percent vote;

• Passed another law that if a teachers’ strike “presents a clear and present danger,” the Mayor and school bosses can use the courts to force them back to work;

• Created the world’s largest prison population, over 2.4 million, 70% black and Latino;

• Deported over 400,000 immigrants last year alone, with tens of thousands more sitting in immigration jails, separated from family and friends;

   • Foreclosed the homes of millions of workers and their families since the economic crash of 2008;

This ruling-class dictatorship must be smashed and replaced by dictatorship of the workers, in which millions of workers and youth will serve the needs of the international working class. 

The strike helped expose the Democratic Party and its revolving door between the White House and Chicago’s City Hall. This includes Emanuel, Obama’s former Chief-of Staff (who was replaced by William Daley) and now head of Obama’s political fund-raising committee; Arne Duncan, national education Czar and former Chicago school boss; and Obama himself, former Illinois Senator. 

Part of this bosses’ dictatorship is the use of their election circus in which both political parties are used to divert workers from looking to revolt against the ruling class that exploit us. By continuing the fight, the teachers will continue to get the support of parents, students and workers from all industries, in Chicago and beyond. PLP can expose the bosses’ class dictatorship, point workers in another direction, off the treadmill of endless reform and onto the road to revolution, a vital lesson that educators can learn on and off the picket lines!

I continue to participate in my first strike as a worker and as a teacher. I have gone to show solidarity to other workers’ struggles in the past, but now I am in the midst of my own. The first day there was a sense of the unknown felt by others at my school.  People were posted in different locations around the building in five different groups.  Some were well acquainted while others had only seen each other in passing.  

As we spend more time on the picket line, we as a staff have grown closer. With the staff being split into two buildings, the time to bond is extremely limited, especially with the extended day. We have begun to exchange our feelings about everything on the line. Veteran teachers have shared some of their experiences from being in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) with new teachers.  

The first day CHALLENGE was distributed, teachers showed interest. They liked the leaflet that accompanied it as well. Little by little, we have begun to have conversations about what CPS schools are like for children from working-class neighborhoods. We have spoken about how capitalism and racism affects what children bring into the classroom that impact not only their academic performance but their life altogether.  

We all agreed that we needed more nurses, social workers, psychologists, and overall support to assist our students in being successful in the world that surrounds them.  It was also mentioned time and time again how these school closings were aimed at the children of the working-class. This angers me in particular because I take it as the Board of Education seeing our students as disposable objects that shouldn’t be taken into consideration.  

This reveals how the Board is trying to separate teachers from the environment in which he/she teaches  and how it directly affects a student’s performance. There is no mention of this when the talk is raised of teacher’s evaluations, which are based on students’ test scores.  

Comrades from Chicago and New York City have come out to show support at my school.  They are participating in these conversations as well as explaining that the only way to change all of this is to fight for communism. 

Many of my school’s staff were really open to these discussions. I thought that perhaps they would hear the word communism and dismiss everything. But it has been the opposite.  People have been reading the leaflets brought by comrades and discussing how it is time for a change. It was easier to point out the false hopes the Democratic Party gives to workers when Romney showed support for what Mayor Rahm Emmanuel was doing.

I remember asking one colleague if she still was going to vote for Obama.  She said yes.  I asked her what was the difference between the Democrats and Republicans if Rahm Emmanuel was behaving like a Republican.  She stood quiet and said, “That’s a really good point…”  

Ever since Romney’s support for Rahm came out, the line between a Democrat and Republican has been blurred. I see this as a great opportunity to continue these conversations about what is wrong with the public school system that only a communist revolution can change.  

This is only the beginning of our struggle. That is why it’s critical for those in the Chicago area to make the effort to win teachers to PLP. The potential is too great for us not to act on it. This strike has set a foundation for the workers of the world to unite.

Red Teacher

Protests and attacks across the Muslim world are undermining the gains made by U.S. imperialism from its bloody role in the Arab Spring. U.S. rulers were behind some of those reform movements, especially in Egypt (see CHALLENGE  2/16/11 and 3/2/11). Their goal was to channel mass grievances into U.S.-style “democracies” and sustain the reign of capitalism. But the Arab Spring didn’t begin to alleviate the exploitation of the working class. It did nothing to lift the region’s poverty-level wages or to reduce its huge numbers of unemployed.

So now U.S. bosses are reaping the unintended consequences of the Arab Spring. For the region’s workers and youth, the most recent flash point is a racist film made in the U.S. that defames Islam. But the underlying cause of the ongoing unrest is the chronic poverty that is integral to the profit system — and which the working class thought its new rulers would ameliorate. These workers have lived all their lives under horrific conditions imposed by fascist, U.S.-backed regimes responsible for numerous racist abuse and genocide from Abu Ghraib to drones. It’s only logical that the U.S. rulers, represented by their local embassies and consulates, become a leading target for the anger now erupting in more than 20 countries. 

Obama’s NATO invasion killed at least 30,000 workers in Libya, along with dictator Muammar Qaddafi. It rid the land of Chinese and Russian energy companies. But on September 11, al Qaeda and Salafist fundamentalists — among the forces armed by the Pentagon against Qaddafi — killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya. They linked their action to the anti-Islam film: more unintended consequences.

But an even larger problem faces U.S. bosses in the Middle Eastern heart of their oil-based global empire: the nuclear ambitions of regional power Iran, an ally of China and Russia. Iran’s potential control of vast energy supplies is fueling a debate at the highest levels of U.S. war planning (see map on page 7).

Team Romney: Iran War Now

The proposals under discussion by policy-makers for President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney boil down to: (a) bombing Iran’s nuclear plants; (b) having Israel bomb them; (c) bombing them together; (d) building over time toward a full-scale invasion and; (e) allowing Iran to become the planet’s weakest nuclear power, well behind the U.S., Britain, France, China, India and Pakistan — not to mention Israel itself, which reportedly possesses about 250 nuclear bombs.

All of these options would ravage the world’s working class. They would kill tens of thousands of workers and possibly trigger a larger — even worldwide — war. In that event, millions of working-class soldiers would be forced into mortal combat on behalf of the imperialists’ quest for oil and mineral resources.

Romney seems to like the first three options. The $100 million showered on his campaign by pro-Israel fanatic Sheldon Adelson stands to promote Israeli rulers’ aims. Team Romney gurus include Dan Senor and Dov Zakheim, both of whom champion the air raids on Iran that are favored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They are neo-conservatives of the type that led George W. Bush to invade Iraq “on the cheap”: that is, by deploying existing forces in a “shock-and-awe” grab at relatively easy targets. This failed strategy, which was also pushed by Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s Defense Secretary, backfired into a war now into its ninth year and counting.

‘Peaceful’ Sanctions = All-Out War

Obama, meanwhile, is backed by U.S. capitalists who see a need for long-term military mobilization against their formidable imperialist rivals. As a result, the incumbent president is weighing a more gradual run-up to an all-out land war in Iran. On September 14, in an editorial headlined “No Rush to War,” the New York Times urged Obama to ignore Netanyahu’s pressure to set a “red line” in the sand, a stage of nuclear development in Iran that would trigger a U.S. air strike.

The Times cited a report by the Iran Project, a group that includes mainstream ruling-class front men Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two ex-national security advisers. The report estimated that a U.S. attack “could set back Iran’s nuclear program four years at most.” The Times’ conclusion: “The best strategy is for Israel to work with the United States and other major powers to tighten sanctions while pursuing negotiations.”

Mass Iran Invasion vs. World War III

But the Iran Project is hardly a pacifist organization. Bankrolled by the imperialist Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an organ of finance capital, its report assessed the troop strength needed to take out Iran once and for all. In light of U.S. rulers’ need to counter the growing might of China’s bosses, it cautioned against spreading U.S. forces too thin:

Even in order to fulfill the stated objective of ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear bomb, the U.S. would need to conduct a significantly expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years. If the U.S. decided to seek a more ambitious objec-tive, such as regime change in Iran or undermining Iran’s influence in the region, then an even greater commitment of force would be required to occupy all or part of the country. Given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimate that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the U.S. has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

Alternatively, some top advisors to U.S. rulers are suggesting that they say sit back and let Iran make a bomb or two. Iran’s oil barons, the ruling ayatollahs, could then become sitting ducks for thousands of Pentagon warheads. The U.S. would be better able to orchestrate world opinion into backing a war against “aggressor” Iran organizing an anti-China alliance.

John Mearsheimer, representing the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, proposed that “a nuclear-armed Iran ….would have hardly any offensive capability at all.” At the same time, he added, the United States could “extend its nuclear umbrella” to protect Saudi Arabia, which contains t`he world’s largest oil reserves (PBS, 7/9/12).

Mearsheimer looks beyond today’s arms standoff to the prospect of marshaling millions for global conflict under the U.S. and allied flags: 

The United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. Most of China’s neighbors — including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam — will join with the United States to contain China’s power (Current History, April 2006).

Evil, Yes! Lesser, No!

The international working class has no stake in this dogfight among the world’s imperialists. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party can give leadership to workers by exposing the bosses’ murderous schemes and advancing class war against the capitalists. Given the election circus in the U.S., much the same as in any other country, workers must avoid the trap of supporting one boss’s servant or another, Democrat or Republican. Capitalist elections are used by the ruling class to suck workers into believing the “lesser-evil” lie that Obama can represent our interests better than Romney.

A vote for either one of these bosses’ agents is a vote for continued mass unemployment, poverty, racism, and sexism, along with the slaughter of workers in imperialist wars. These are the necessary byproducts of the profit system, to which all politicians are wedded. It is up to PLP’ers and those we influence to win thousands and then millions in the international working class to the goal of destroying this hellish system and replacing it with communism. Only then will the world’s workers reap all the value that our labor — and only our labor — produces.