“Liberals” and “conservatives” both tell us that the U.S. Constitution is there to protect the working class and middle class from oppression. As Jerry Fresia’s Toward an American Revolution — Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions shows, nothing could be further from the truth. In a word, the Constitution was intended to be and always has been an instrument of the capitalist class to protect its wealth from former slaves and the rest of the working class. It ensures power over the propertyless. Initially it protected the slaveowners from the northern bankers and manufacturers. The book is now almost a quarter century old, but is still very relevant and an easy read.
Today, there are numerous executive orders and laws, that pretend to protect us from terrorism. They permit increased wiretapping and electronic surveillance. They allow anyone the government chooses to be held in extended arbitrary detention without trial. They carry out military tribunals with no rights of appeal, and many other forms of governmental oppression.
Constitution’s Purpose: Protect Profits
But workers cannot appeal to the Constitution for protection from these orders and laws, since, as Fresia shows, they are all completely consistent with it. He shows that the very intentions of the men who wrote the Constitution were to protect owners of profit-making property from the working class.
Furthermore the Constitution was sneaked through by the slavocracy over the anticipated objections of certain state legislatures whose populations, fresh from a war of liberation against the British aristocracy in 1787, were up in arms over the even greater oppression that they faced at the hands of domestic property owners.
The first 10 amendments of the Constitution adopted in 1791, the Bill of Rights, is often touted as a guarantee of freedom from oppression by the government. The Bill of Rights, however, does not even address the right of participation in government, only protection from it, and only for capitalists at that. And there is nothing that protects us from our bosses. This “afterthought” to the Constitution took four years of arguments in Congress before it was even passed. Lincoln’s famous claim that this is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” was then, and continues to be, a bald-faced lie.
Fresia gives detailed proof that supports Marx’s and Lenin’s demonstration that all states (governments) serve only the interests of the class that rules. Meanwhile they drown the interests of the oppressed and exploited (literally, in the case of New Orleans Hurricane Katrina). For example, the authors of the Constitution, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison (first, third, and fourth U.S. presidents), owned vast amounts of property, including hundreds of enslaved Africans. He shows how they designed the Constitution to protect themselves from rebellion by those workers who slave to generate the profits — whether through chattel or wage slavery.
Racism: Bosses’ Insurance Policy vs. Rebellion
Each U.S. President, including Obama, belongs to a long and dishonorable line of accumulators of wealth who display total contempt for workers — most particularly, black and Latino workers — generated by a fear of losing this profit-making property. Murderous racism is no accident. It was and is designed as an insurance policy against united rebellion by the oppressed and exploited.
In order for the ruling capitalist class to avoid having to resort to armed force on a daily basis to maintain this oppression, as they have done on many occasions in the past, they inserted a deceptive Preamble to the Constitution, that all U.S. school children are forced to memorize. It starts with “We the people,” a term that lacks class consciousness and links workers to their oppressors.
Fresia brings it all up to date with the secret operations of the CIA and private mercenaries who assassinate, train in torture techniques, and otherwise blaze a trail throughout the world to secure profits for U.S. corporations. He shows how the Constitution encourages and protects the rights of these secret operators to carry out this world-wide terrorism, and protects the rights of the government to wage war for oil and gas in the Middle East and kill millions in the process.
Pacifism: An Achilles’ Heel for Protest Movement
He also shows, significantly, how the non-violent and peace-directed approach of most modern protest movements prevents effective opposition to the ruling class.
In summary, the book helps destroy the illusion that somehow things have gone drastically wrong in the last 200 or so years. The fact is that things have been drastically wrong for the great majority of us right from the start. The major weakness in the book is that Fresia never addresses the fact that the only solution to this problem is a revolution of the working class for an egalitarian communist system all over the world. But for the alert reader this conclusion is all but inescapable. PLP is organizing just such a movement of workers worldwide. Join the fight!
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Students Defy Racist Principal Forman Defend Communists
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- 25 May 2012 75 hits
BROOKLYN, NY, May 9 — “Fight back, fight back!” Hundreds of Clara Barton H.S. students poured out onto the streets today to protest harassment and show support for two teachers, both PLP members, who received an unsatisfactory (U) rating last June. The rally had a broad base of support and was endorsed by local union delegates as well as union caucuses, including SOTU (State of the Union). Hundreds of students and many staff members wore stickers with messages of support all around the school.
When students came out of the building, a group of retired teachers were there to greet them with signs. The students grabbed flyers as they left the school. Many still wore the stickers and chanted “Schools Not Jails” as they exited.
The administration tried to prevent the rally. The front exits were closed and students were forced to exit through the back entrances. Their efforts backfired when these students joined hundreds of others and marched around to the front of the school and then to the train station.
At the train station the rally regrouped as students led chants and gave speeches, along with staff members. One teacher, a friend of PLP, explained why it is so important to “think outside the box” and that this is the reason why the administration fears PLP. Many people from the community came forward to speak to us and show their solidarity. When local cops tried to end the rally, student leaders stayed strong and started to chant “The cops, the courts, the KuKluxKlan, all are part of the bosses’ plan!” and “Know your rights!”
These two teachers were rated unsatisfactory by the racist Principal Forman for going to a union rally and march in Washington, DC, with students and parents. That rally was organized by a host of unions and attended by thousands of students, teachers and parents nationwide. However, racist Forman, along with the assistant principal of security, has tried to implement a policy that all teachers and students need administration’s approval for any after-school or weekend activities! He and the Department of Education (DoE) think they have more say-so over the students than their parents! How’s that for fascism! The DOE flunkies take control of the students from their parents!
Simultaneously, they have made the school feel like a jail with harsh suspension policies, school uniforms and interrogations of students who take CHALLENGE or leaflets from PLP members. We have consistently pointed out that while students in more elite schools are encouraged to travel and “see the world,” students in our school face rules, regulations and limits when they try to do the same. We explained that this is a racist attack on our students, who are mainly black and Latino. While we are challenging these U ratings in the courts, our main fight is always in the streets!
The day of the rally, the administration acted as if they thought the revolution was about to start. They showed their contempt for the phony rights of free speech and the right to assemble and demonstrate. They called for an early dismissal, canceling all after-school classes and activities. They lied to staff and students about what was going on. One administrator said something about practicing a different exit tactic. The DoE also cancelled classes in the school next door, and dismissed the nearby elementary school early.
This rally exposed the truth that the administration and the DoE are not about education; they are about keeping staff, but especially students ignorant, passive and obedient. Sounds like they want willing soldiers for their expanding wars.
This rally is part of a long fight for a better world — a communist world. As the rulers prepare for more and bigger wars to dominate the world, we must also prepare for more battles against racism and sexism and for communism. This was about more than just defending two communist teachers.
During this rally many students stepped forward showing bold leadership and initiative. Some wanted to fight for communism; some were just angry and fed up with the administration’s harassment. Some have been organizing and fighting back for some time; some stepped forward for the first time. We all have to step forward and toughen up. Join the Progressive Labor Party!
CHICAGO, May 20 — Thousands entered the streets here today to protest the meeting of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). NATO was formed after World War II to contain and undermine the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. The western bosses feared that the example of the communist-led USSR, which had just defeated the German Nazis, the world’s most powerful military, would inspire workers worldwide to fight for a workers’ state.
NATO has rained terror on workers from Kosovo to Afghanistan to Libya and all points in between. This is the military wing of the U.S.-ruling class, to protect the financial interest of western bosses. One needn’t be a communist to know that NATO bosses use extreme racism to justify their imperialist wars and the super-exploitation of black, Latino, immigrant, and Muslim workers. One does need to be a communist to understand that the way to defeat this genocide is not through reform battles or siding with “lesser-evil” capitalist politicians. The working class must fight for, and take, state power through communist revolution.
Today we saw all manner of well-meaning people misdirected by liberal reformist leadership. They prevented us from getting no closer than half a mile from the conference. A red beacon of light in this conglomerate of mis-leadership was about 20 PL’ers. We distributed 500 CHALLENGEs, led revolutionary chants and made militant communist speeches, explaining the true nature of capitalism and the communist solution for its horrors heaped on the working class. Many workers approached us after each speech, telling us how much they liked what we said. Many interested workers gave us their contact information, which we will pursue.
As communists we know that our struggle is long and hard. But, when we experience the working class’s eagerness for change and the receptiveness of those same workers to our ideas, they can be won to join PLP. We know then there will come a day when this ruling class will be overthrown and a communist world will be born.
The upcoming presidential election campaign between the U.S. capitalists’ twin stooges, Barack Obama and Mitt Romeny, marks a critical period for the candidates’ imperialist handlers. Facing large rivals (China, Russia) and smaller ones (Iran, North Korea, al Qaeda), the bosses’ solution requires ever-widening wars led by the U.S. in the Middle East and Asia, especially over energy resources. To wage them, they need to win millions of workers to back the U.S. rulers’ policies, now personified by Obama.
It’s a difficult proposition for the bosses, since these policies are directly opposed to workers’ class interests. Romney’s election could make it even more difficult, since he’s a more transparent enemy of workers and youth.
The trillion-dollar funding for war requires savage cuts in wages, pensions, healthcare, schools and other social services. As a result, Obama’s ruling-class publicists must lie to workers about his intent to end wars, while reassuring U.S. capitalists of his resolve to expand them.
On May 20, the New York Times, U.S. imperialism’s leading popular mouthpiece, informed readers of Obama’s “peaceful” Afghan intentions. In 2009, he “had reluctantly (our emphasis, ed.) decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops.” The Times then elaborated on Obama’s fake anti-militarism: “A year later, when the president...began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely....And when Mr. Obama joins the leaders of other NATO nations in Chicago...he will announce what he has already told the leaders in private: All combat operations led by American forces will cease in summer 2013.”
Just a month earlier, however, the Times headlined a fawning op-ed article, “Warrior in Chief.” It boasted that the “president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.” Obama’s use of deadly force — in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia — stood to his everlasting credit, the Times said.
Bosses’ Think Tanks Pave Way For War Policies
These seemingly contradictory articles, excerpted from books aimed at pushing Obama’s re-election, flow from the same imperialist sector of U.S. capitalism. Peter Bergen, who wrote the Obama-as-warrior piece, directs the New America Foundation (NAF) and is the author of the forthcoming book Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad (the city in Pakistan where Bin Laden was killed).
The Obama-as-pacifist piece was by David Sanger, a top Times Washington correspondent and the author of the soon-to-be-published Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. He belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which — like the NAF — is bankrolled by the dominant Rockefeller wing of U.S. bosses. A large number of Obama’s foreign policy advisers hail from these two think tanks.
Political and economic reality gives the lie to Obama’s Afghan peace charade. The U.S. needs to dominate the vast Turkmenistan gas supplies that flow through Afghanistan, shaky ally Pakistan, and hesitant ally India. This was a primary motive for the U.S. rulers’ invasion of Afghanistan, but it continues to elude Obama & Co. As the Times editorialized on the eve of Obama’s NATO summit, Afghanistan’s Kandahar and Helmand Provinces are still a base for the Taliban and “remain heavily contested” (5/19/12).
So don’t expect U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan anytime soon. In fact, Obama signed a pact with the corrupt Afghan regime to provide enough military force and finances to fight the Taliban until 2024. But all is not well between the U.S. bosses and their junior partners in Kabul, who now want the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan India (TAPI) pipeline all for themselves. Meanwhile, the U.S. invaders’ racism has provoked rank-and-file Afghan soldiers to kill their NATO mentors in a wave of escalating attacks. Neither Sanger nor Bergen mention this development.
Paid Mercenaries Fill In For Troop-Short Army
Even if most uniformed GIs leave Afghanistan someday, what will most likely follow is a bloody, Iraq-style occupation by Pentagon-paid U.S. contractors and mercenaries. These hired guns, brought in to supplement a troop-short U.S. Army, are already guarding Exxon Mobil’s oil wells. They’re being entrusted with the prize that has led a quartet of U.S. presidents to promote mass murder in and around Iraq: George H.W. Bush, with the first Gulf War; Bill Clinton’s murderous bombings and sanctions; George W. Bush’s reinvasion and racist occupation; Obama’s continued slaughter. Meanwhile, a deadly civil war seethes in the beleaguered country.
Imperialist tool Sanger, boosting Obama’s Afghan “pacifism,” suggests a bigger-fish-to-fry scenario for world war. According to a press release for Confront and Conceal, “Sanger describes how Obama’s early idealism about fighting ‘a war of necessity’ in Afghanistan quickly turned to fatigue and frustration...and how an effort to re-establish American power in the Pacific set the stage for a new era of tensions with the world’s great rising power, China.”
These plans for past, present and future U.S. imperialist wars have killed millions of workers and youth in the Middle East and South Asia, and will inevitably kill millions more. They have sent tens of thousands of U.S. GIs to their graves or to lives damaged by war wounds, physical and mental.
Obama’s Warmongering A Racist Body Blow to U.S. Workers
To pay for the U.S. war machine, Obama’s policies — which a President Mitt Romney would no doubt follow — are heaping misery on the U.S. working class. Social services have been slashed, and Social Security may follow. Wages have been halved at General Motors under Obama’s bailout plan, swelling the company’s profits. Criminal bankers reap bonuses while tens of millions endure joblessness. Undocumented workers are terrorized under threat of deportation. All of these crimes against the working class stem from the rulers’ need for its military machine to dominate its imperialist rivals.
The repercussions of the capitalists’ crisis falls most heavily on black, Latino and immigrant workers. They suffer twice as much unemployment, far lower wages, and even more pathetic social services. Daycare has been wiped out for millions of minimum-wage workers. A rotting educational system is failing millions of youth. These racist cutbacks create hundreds of billions in super-profits for U.S. bosses to maintain their decadent capitalist system.
It is the task of communists in the Progressive Labor Party, in every country and organization where we are present, to win masses to understand how the profit system is the source of all our class’s problems. They are needed to join and build PLP as the one force that can destroy this exploitative system and usher in a communist world. Then workers’ power will run society to serve the needs of the international working class, which produces everything of value.
Join PLP and emancipate our class!
BROOKLYN, May 1 — At noon today, a handful of students exited Brooklyn Technical High School and gathered at a local café. Although their numbers were smaller than they’d hoped, the students decided to go through with their planned course of action. Lined up in two rows, they began marching and chanting around the school. Soon other students from the school joined them. A march of 15 grew into a march of 50.
Chants were led by a few young people who have been in or around Progressive Labor Party. Instead of limiting the protest to racist cutbacks on education, the chants tied together a number of ills that students face under capitalism.
There was outrage against recent acts of police brutality, particularly last month’s murder of Tamon Robinson, a popular employee at a local café.
In addition, the students marched in solidarity with workers all around the city, the country and the world. Chants of “Whose day? Our Day! What day? May Day!” and “Racist Cops Mean, We Got to Fight Back!” rang throughout the block.
Although the march was somewhat small, the participants’ enthusiasm was unmatched. For over two hours, the Tech students yelled at the top of their lungs. Many displayed a newfound passion for protest and broke out in spontaneous chants when a moment of silence fell over the march. For many participants, this was their first rally. They were clearly glad to be part of it.
Their enthusiasm only ballooned after the Tech group made contact with other students from Paul Robeson High School in Fort Greene. A contingent of Robeson and Tech students continued to chant and cheer at the base of the steps at Fort Greene Park, drawing attention from neighborhood workers and residents. At one point a car drove by and the driver violently honked in support of the march.
Later, the students gathered at a larger rally at the Sailor’s Monument at the top of Ft. Greene. More than 120 students heard speeches and poems and to participate in teach-ins with progressive teachers.
