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Mexico Summer Project: Lesson in Collective Class Action
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- 19 September 2012 73 hits
MEXICO CITY — Amid an intense period of economic and political transition here, 40 comrades from all over Mexico and the U.S. participated in PLP’s two-week Summer Project. It was spread out over multiple regions, with work around industrial factories, community organizations and more.
In one location, 12 PL’ers and friends, more than half of whom were younger than 21, discussed the world situation and our role as communists in our day-to-day struggles. Many were struggling to understand and apply a dialectical (scientific) analysis to the recent Mexican presidential election.
Many here were well aware of the rampant electoral fraud. One worker shared how PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) and Peña Nieto — its “conservative” candidate, and eventual victor — bought votes through “gift cards” for a chain of grocery stores.
When the “liberal” candidate Lopez Obrador and his PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) found out and tried to expose it, entire grocery stores were completely bought out by the next day!
Democracy for Imperialists
This sort of blatant cheating is typical of politicians and their ruling-class backers; this is more than just business as usual. We explained the relationship between elections and imperialism. The U.S. imperialists want to control the flow of oil to China, which has interests in Latin America’s oil resources.
Elections in Mexico are important for the U.S. imperialists, not for workers. China’s foot in Latin America is a threat to the U.S. The PRI has a long history of alliance with the U.S. ruling class, while the PRD might have made new alliances with the likes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has connections to Chinese imperialists.
The rivalry between the PRI and the PRD is not a fight of who can best represent workers, but whether profits are made either by different international profit interests, or by national ones like the world’s richest capitalist, Mexico’s Carlos Slim.
Out of a desire to fight against this electoral sham, a student movement against Peña Nieto called “I am 132” — the number of students who published a video of their protest before it went viral — was born. Comparable to PLP’s work within the Occupy movements in the U.S., it is a mass reform movement where people genuinely want change.
Even though these movements shed light on corrupt electoral politics, they will not achieve fundamental change until they fight to destroy capitalism. We should work with these militant youths who are willing to fight for the change they envision. That is how we build for communist revolution — by building a mass international workers’ party, PLP, through class struggle.
Growing Fascist Conditions
There is fascistic militarization here that workers face every day. Why? The imperialists are preparing for war. In an industrialized area, the community felt no one cared about them. We heard stories about their hardship in getting representation and making their community habitable. For an area that builds bricks, the workers had houses made of the cheapest materials.
Police occupy the streets with huge rifles on their backs at all times. The workers are being conditioned to live under constant fear.
Still, many were enthusiastic about communism and had important political questions. We visited a carpenter and discussed sexism; role of religion; the building of relationships to organize the community; elections and the world situation. We raised the need for PLP to organize our class and prepare for revolution. He came to a PLP study group that night.
We also had a good discussion with a union organizer whose father felt sold out by the leaders of past communist movements in Mexico. The organizer defended the PLP’s analysis of past movements, directly confronting his father’s pessimism, by arguing that we must learn from both the errors and the gains.
He then offered his home for the night, rather than brave the monstrous puddles that plagued the roads that the government refuses to keep up.
All in all, this week was full of inspiring work and great potential. We learned a great deal from workers. In our evaluation, we discussed how we can’t think of ourselves as having all the answers, and that we can learn so much from the workers we visit.
Oaxaca
As part of the Summer Project here, we focused on exposing the union as ruling-class collaborators and on fighting against sexist policies in the union. Through our work with teachers, we saw the importance of building within movements in order to fight for communism.
One workshop was “The History of Unions.” Local and international PL’ers discussed with teachers the connections between unions and capitalism. Unions are unable to solve the problems of the working class. Union leadership represents the capitalists and their interests.
Union Leaders Divide Workers
Teachers expressed anger and frustration over union leaders’ betrayal. If one questions the union leaders, the union no longer supports them. One teacher stated, “The union should be supportive in regards to workers’ rights, yet we’re fighting against them and the government.”
Teachers noted that following the 2006 teacher strike and uprisings, unions created divisions between substitute and permanent teachers. This helped to push cynicism among those who feel “they have more to lose” and pessimism among the super-exploited non-tenured teachers.
Many non-tenured teachers want the permanent teachers to join the fight, since employment and benefits are never guaranteed in the face of austerity measures and under capitalism.
Sexist Unions Require Pregnancy Tests
The union is good — at attacking women workers! Female teachers must provide proof of their pregnancy status. If found pregnant, they will be denied employment. Unions form divisions between men and women workers.
This issue led PL’ers to hold a study group on sexism. Forty participated, including some female teachers from the convention. Questions were raised on defining sexism, its effect on workers, how capitalism breeds, and profits from, gender roles.
We all acknowledged the importance of women as leaders in the movement and the importance of working together equally in everything that we do. We will organize a campaign against the sexist pregnancy tests!
Like all PLP struggles, the fight-backs in Oaxaca are for the long haul. The solidarity we have as workers worldwide will allow us to destroy capitalism and build a world in the interests of workers. Hundreds of teachers in Oaxaca sent their support to striking teachers in Chicago and communities fighting police brutality in New York City.
In this Summer Project, we witnessed how capitalism doesn’t work anywhere, and it demonstrated the importance of building one international party.
As one friend of PLP put it, “Since working with PLP I discovered I am not alone in the working-class struggle. This Summer Project gave me the empowerment to envision a better world. I witnessed how we as a class can work collectively. I now envision building for a communist revolution, enabling our class to destroy capitalism to build a world in the working class’s interests.”
We must transform working-class anger here into a fight for communism — a way of life allowing workers to receive according to need and contribute the labor necessary to produce it.
Little by little, these small gains like our Summer Projects can turn into the communist revolution that is long overdue here and worldwide.
BROOKLYN, September 15 — At the three-month mark of the murder of young Shantel Davis by kkkop Philip Atkins, the family and anti-racist supporters held a procession of twelve continuously-honking vehicles around Flatbush, a mainly black working-class neighborhood.
Young people stood in car sunroofs, hung out of car windows chanting, raising fists, and waving signs against police murder and brutality.
The community raised their fists in solidarity; drivers honked and some even joined our protest. We stopped in front of the murderous 67th Precinct, blocking traffic and honking.
There is great potential in transforming these militant demonstrations and participants into fighters for a communist future.
BALTIMORE, MD, September 11 — “Stop Bill Gates and the billionaire Gestapo! Support the strike by teachers in Chicago!” This was one of the many chants that rang out as teachers and students rallied outside a public high school here.
Rally participants were constantly re-energized by the enthusiastic honking of drivers in many of the trucks and cars that passed by, showing solidarity with striking educators in Chicago.
Some participants at the rally liked it so much that they wanted to organize another one at their own school, or have one every day in the same location, or plan a similar strike-support rally outside the Baltimore school headquarters. Working-class solidarity became truly infectious!
PL’ers here have plans to attend these rallies and to present participants communist ideas and how educational genocide — embodied in Race-to-the-Bottom — is rooted in capitalism, a system that needs to be defeated by revolution and replaced with communism.
Then education will truly be run by and for the working class, not serve the parasitic needs of billionaires like Bill Gates who think the current nine percent of the gross national product that’s spent on education is too much.
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NEW YORK CITY, September 10 — “Chicago Teachers Got It Right, Strike, Strike, Strike!”
“New York City, Chicago, Wisconsin, We Will Fight and We Will Win!”
“Listen Up, CTU, New York City Stands With You!”
These chants echoed loudly when more than 400 teachers and labor supporters rallied in Union Square in support of the Chicago Teachers Union strike. Speakers promised to build support in their schools and workplaces. Led by a banner (see picture) saying “Solidarity With Chicago Teachers Union Local 1,” we then marched to the NYC offices of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that was created and led by billionaire hedge fund managers. It has attacked Chicago teachers and their union for daring to resist their corporate reform program.
There’s no better reason why the working class needs an international party than the current struggle in Bangladesh where textile workers — 80 percent women — are waging a militant fight against the full force of the Bangladeshi government, local factory owners and international clothing retailers.
The workers make $35 a month, working 12- to 16-hour days, six days a week — barely a dollar a day. European and U.S. companies like Wal-Mart, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour, Tommy Hilfiger and American Eagle have flocked to Bangladesh to take advantage of the world’s lowest-paid and poorest workers.
Even Pakistani bosses, who pay workers $50/month, are relocating their factories there. “Labor costs in Bangladesh are cheaper and the workers tend to be more efficient,” said a former textile minister. Electricity costs are lower and, unlike Pakistan, fewer work-days are lost to electricity outages, increasing profits as much as 30 percent. Although China remains number one in global apparel exports (with Bangladesh now second), a recent BBC program reported Chinese manufacturers increasingly moving to Bangladesh. One Chinese textile boss declared that “her” workers, at $500/month, were costing too much; Bangladesh would swell her profits.
Class War
But these bosses and global brands, forever pursuing cheap labor, are discovering that workers will not take all this lying down. They are fighting back.
Bangladeshi textile workers are demanding wage increases and better, safer working conditions, sparking militant strikes and street protests. In July, a half-million Bangladeshi workers shut down all 350 factories in an industrial zone in Dhaka, the capital. The uprising, sparked by the torture and assassination of Aminul Islam, a well-known union organizer, badly hurt business owners and their international retail clients
Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of H&M, Sweden’s vast clothing retailer — needing to stabilize the situation and fearful of even more violent upheavals — urged Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to increase the minimum wage. He offered to pay more for his garments, 25 percent of which come from Bangladesh.
Hasina’s government, clearly siding with the country’s 5,000 garment bosses who are major political donors, has resisted raising the minimum wage and addressing labor-rights issues. The powerful president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, said it was “factory owners who were being victimized in some conspiracy,” and “there was no logic for increasing the wages of the workers.”
Two-thirds of Parliament members belong to the country’s three biggest business associations. Thirty factory bosses hold 10% of Parliamentary seats. They’re buying newspapers and TV stations whose news often emphasizes the disruptions caused by protests, not the appalling conditions for workers.
Rulers’ All-out Armed Attacks
The government has used the full power of the state against the militancy of women workers in Bangladesh to intimidate them and crack down on protests. The battle lines are clearly drawn and the government is pulling no punches.
Ranking officers from the military, the police and intelligence agencies command specially created agencies to monitor garment workers and collect intelligence on activists. The Riot Police charge into demonstrators, beating them with clubs. They fire rubber bullets, turn on powerful water cannons and use tear gas to disperse protestors.
The Rapid Action Battalion, a new paramilitary force, carries out vigilante attacks known as “crossfire” killings, and intimidates workers while patrolling factory floors. Before Aminul Islam was found tortured and murdered in April, he reported being threatened by the Rapid Action Battalion.
His assassination, which is still “under investigation,” has spawned an international campaign by labor activists demanding justice in his case and a process in which workers, government and local and international textile bosses can negotiate wages and working conditions.
Even Hillary Clinton, visiting Dhaka in May — the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State in nine years — has called for a “fair wage.” The Obama administration’s concern over labor rebellion underscores Bangladesh’s geo-political importance as a regional ally in southern Asia and a U.S. foreign policy “pivot” to the Asia Pacific. Clinton’s visit is expected to lead to joint military exercises and exchanges involving counterterrorism and security.
U.S. companies like energy giants Chevron and ConocoPhillips, have huge investments in Bangladesh. Chevron supplies half the country’s natural gas, while ConocoPhillips has recently signed agreements to explore for gas and oil reserves in the Bay of Bengal.
‘Fair Wage’ Impossible Under Capitalism
Given that U.S. and British banks and international lending agencies hold the purse strings, the Bangladeshi government, under pressure to stabilize the country, may well offer what they would call a “fair wage” to the textile workers.
What would that mean? Would these bosses be prepared to pay enough so the women — many of whom are their families’ sole breadwinners — rise out of abject poverty, work 8-hour days, get holiday pay, health care and schooling for their children? Expecting bosses to give up their profits and negotiate even this kind of increase is fanciful. Presenting it as a solution, as the labor activists are doing, is misleading these workers about capitalism’s true nature. Under this system, production is solely for the bosses’ profit, not to benefit workers, whose exploitation is the source of those profits.
Any loss capitalists may take paying more to one set of workers will be passed on to other workers. H&M will pay its workers in Europe and the U.S. less, and raise the price of its goods — or surf the world for a cheaper labor force as the Pakistani bosses have done. Sixty thousand workers in Pakistan have lost their jobs since textile manufacturers moved to Bangladesh and neither they nor the Pakistani government plan to compensate workers for job losses.
PLP declares that for workers to be free in one place workers need to be free everywhere. And that means fighting for a communist society where production is based on the needs of the working class. Workers in Bangladesh need to turn their fight for an illusory “fair” wage into a fight for communism, joining PLP to build an international working-class party: one class, one party, one fight.
Marikana, South Africa, September 19 — Strikes by thousands of miners have spread across the northern mining areas. They’re reacting to the August 16 police massacre at the Lonmin platinum mine and supporting the 3,000 miners who wildcatted on August 8. The striking rock drillers have now won an increase from $500/month to $1385/month.
However, the walkout still includes 15,000 gold miners, six other Anglo-American platinum mines, the world’s top producer, and chrome miners. There have also been protests at Eskon Holdings, producers of 90 percent of the country’s energy.
On September 12, 3,000 miners marched to the original mine at Marikana. Their strike has cost the bosses a half billion dollars in lost output (Chicago Tribune, 9/17).
The sellout National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) signed an agreement with Lonmin, which is meaningless since the strikers rejected the paltry 16 percent “increase” and are holding out for their original demand: a doubling and tripling of wages to $1,500 a month (Reuters, 9/17). The NUM is allied with the governing African National Congress (ANC) which the striking minors quit to join the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.
Cops raided a striking miners’ hostel, seizing spears, machetes and other weapons and arrested 38. The cops later dispersed protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas. When the cops dragged off a pro-miners speaker expelled by the ANC, miners pelted them with stones.
The Wall Street Journal reported (9/13) that the military was put on alert because they feared soldiers who had struck in 2009 for higher wages may support the miners. The Journal also reported (9/17) that 800 miners had suffered deaths last year.
This massive miners’ rebellion has exposed the fact that racist apartheid still rules South Africa, under a capitalism enforced by a tiny black elite allied with the white-owned corporations. The law the ANC government used to indict the strikers was passed under the old apartheid system. And the massacre mirrored all the brutalities of the past Nazi regime.
The miners have set a striking example for the international working class, of the need to take up arms to fight the capitalist ruling classes’ state apparatus arrayed against them. What is needed is communist leadership to turn this class war into a war for communist revolution. This is what the Progressive Labor Party is fighting for around the world.
