Despite its recent absence from the news, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has been moving from bad to worse. After more than two months of befuddling and dodging, the Japanese government finally  admitted the Fukushima plant suffered meltdowns in three of its reactors, releasing more than double its previous estimate of radiation since the March earthquake. (Moreover, government objection to independent testing around the site means these estimates are unconfirmed and probably understate the real amount — (London Telegraph, 6/10).

On June 4, robots entering Reactor 1 reported the highest levels of radiation since the crisis began: 40,000 tons of irradiated water remains in the plant’s lower levels that might or might not be sealed and an unknown amount has leaked into the ocean and surrounding area. (USA Today, 6/4) And questions remain regarding how much radiation has entered the nearby Tokyo water supply. (NY Times, 3/23) Now the Japanese government has admitted that melted fuel might have broken through the containment vessels in Reactors 1-3 which, if true, represents a significant escalation of the disaster. (Bloomberg News, 6/6)

Hundreds of workers in Japan have accepted virtual death sentences by entering the plant to try to contain the meltdown, and 270 retirees and older workers have volunteered to go to Fukushima to help with the containment. One stated, “I will be dead before the cancer gets me.” (Reuters, 6/6) These workers’ sacrifice represents the finest qualities of the working class.

The capitalist class has performed in its usual cowardly way, pushing workers into the plant while hiding safely in Tokyo trying to cover up the scope of the disaster. In a particularly crass move, the Tepco top brass (operators of Fukushima) has to cut workers’ wages 25% to pay for the disaster. (Bloomberg, 4/26) Futhermore, the government refused to expand the evacuation zone “to avoid compensation payments to still more evacuees.” (NYT, 8/9). Under capitalism, workers pay for disasters with both their wages and their lives.

Nuclear Power A Continuing Disaster under Capitalism

The Fukushima disaster cannot be overstated. The meltdown is currently rated as a level 7 nuclear disaster (the highest possible rating), matching the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, which, by some estimates, may have caused one million deaths. (ENS, 4/26) This is significant since the Chernobyl disaster occurred in a less populated area and was contained far more quickly than the currently unfolding Fukushima disaster.

But nuclear plants don’t have to melt down to become deadly. A 2004 U.S. study found Strontium-90 — a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission — in baby teeth. The concentrations of children with this radioactive byproduct were extremely high in communities located within 40 miles of nuclear power plants. (USA Today, 1/2/04) Furthermore, U.S. nuclear power plants have not received thorough and regular inspections, leading companies to continue operating them despite serious problems in safety equipment, in order to maintain high profits. (USA Today, 11/6/03; Democracy Now, 3/27/09; 3/14/11)

Nuclear Power: A Cover for War

The bosses love nuclear power for a variety of reasons. The heavy subsidizing of the nuclear industry (true in all countries) represents huge profits for private firms. Current promised nuclear subsidies in the U.S. represent the transfer of $36 billion from the working class (who pays almost all taxes) to private industry. (MSNBC, 2/16/10)

But the real reason for the growing emphasis on nuclear power is war. The increasing imperialist competition and war for control of energy-producing regions, most notably Central Asia and the Middle East, has led to increasing domestic development of nuclear power in imperialist countries. U.S., Japanese and European capitalists have all placed a heavy emphasis on developing nuclear power to offset their growing dependence on foreign sources of oil and natural gas.

Furthermore, ruling-class support of nuclear power provides a convenient cover for the ongoing development of nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants are required to produce the various fuel components for nuclear weapons. As capitalists increase their commitment to imperialist war — while public support for these wars wavers — nuclear weapons are seen as important “force multipliers” on the battlefield. A recent report has confirmed that the various nuclear powers, rather than reducing their arsenals, are in fact updating and improving their nuclear weapons systems. (Agency France Press, 6/6)

Nuclear power has been sold to the working class under the lie that it is environmentally “sound,” but the promise of the atom in the hands of capitalists remains today, as it did in 1945: war, death and terror. As a Party we should show our respect and admiration for the brave workers currently battling the Fukushima disaster by building a movement that can crush the murderous capitalist system that created the disaster in the first place.

Capitalism arose gradually hundreds of years ago, mainly through competition among various trades and businesses. They grew into giants that continue to devour their smaller rivals. As corporations try to beat each other to market to sell their products, some inevitably outdo others, leaving the losers with products they can’t sell. But to maintain profits as much as possible, the smaller rivals cut their costs by laying off workers. Even those able to sell their products continually replace some workers with machinery and then speed up the rest.

Capitalists call this process “productivity” and claim that, despite the inevitable layoffs, it is good for both workers and capitalists. After all, they say, this represents progress.

So the underlying cause of unemployment is instability in profits caused by competition among capitalists, combined with their control over employment. Competition is built into the system. Capitalists cannot do away with it, even if they wanted to.

Competition is so commonplace that we rarely notice its harmfulness. We’re taught competition is “natural in human society.” We’re even trained to enjoy competition through such things as sports and contests. We’re taught to focus on winners, rarely being reminded that for every winner there are losers, unless we’re among those losers. This process of competition produces losers, psychologically and often monetarily.

Competition inevitably harms some, and often most, whether participants or fans. It fosters individualistic concentration on one’s own welfare, whether real or imagined, and works to destroy class solidarity. Therefore, competition is not good for workers and certainly isn’t “natural.”

A fundamental aspect of capitalism is its use of racism: both to set up competition between white workers and black, Latino, Asian and others, dividing our class and reaping super-profits for the bosses, as well as dragging down conditions for all workers.

Capitalists must maximize profits and expand their business in order to survive. But as winners eat up losers and grow, eventually monopoly results, and competition in that line of business ends — until foreign capitalists move in. For example, Japanese auto manufacturers began to crowd out GM, Ford and Chrysler in the 1970s. Capitalist competition inherently has a tendency to abolish itself, although prolonged through international rivalry.

Each nation’s capitalist class is forced to grab resources, cheap labor and markets. Often this grab requires war; the capitalists become imperialists. Inter-imperialist rivalry is now the cause of every war on the planet, whether local or a world war.

While imperialists invent excuses to fight, in order to gain the loyalty of “their” workers — such as “weapons of mass destruction”; “humanitarian reasons”; “we were attacked”; and scores of other pretexts — the real reason is always international economic competition, To induce “their” workers to fight for them, imperialist governments are forced to lie — the bigger the lie, the more likely workers may believe it — impelling the illusion that, “if it were untrue, no government could get away with it.”

Inter-imperialist rivalry is why the U.S. ruling class, through its government, is sending working-class men and women (usually not their own sons and daughters) to kill other workers, and to risk death themselves, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s why U.S. rulers fought in Korea, Vietnam and in the first Gulf War. That’s why World Wars I and II developed, first among European and Asian bosses and later involving the U.S., and killed tens of millions of workers and others. Competition, with its inevitable outgrowths, is truly a death sentence for millions.

Additionally capitalist competition causes the waste of natural resources and continual pollution of air and water. Pollution heats the atmosphere with oil, coal, and natural gas-derived global warming and the melting of glaciers that provide water to drink, wash in, and to grow food.

The resulting rise in sea level will eventually force billions to move inland and create dislocations that will have unimaginable consequences for the working class (see the article “Global Warming Driven by the Profit System – Only Communism Can Create a Better Sustainable World,” in the Winter 2010 issue of “The Communist” magazine, also available on the PLP website).

Communism the Answer

The opposite of competition is cooperation. Only cooperation can produce winners with no losers. Only the complete absence of competition can produce general well-being. Why should we settle for a system that always produces losers? Particularly when losing under capitalism often spells death. Capitalism is like a gigantic gladiator sport, in which only some who enter the ring will leave it alive, and even the survivors suffer varying degrees of misery.

Communism will produce cooperation without losers. Sporting events can be for exercise and fun without keeping score. Economic winners under capitalism are always capitalists, while the losers are workers. We must destroy this death-dealing system and replaced it with communism.

Communism is run by the world’s working class under the leadership of its communist party for the benefit of our entire class worldwide. Work will then allow us to contribute to the welfare of our class, not just ourselves and our families. We will be able to distribute our needs without money. We will produce only what we need, instead of billions of unnecessary products whose only purpose is capitalist profits. We will eliminate waste of resources and pollution that sickens and kills millions.

Then we will eliminate wars — wars caused by competition between capitalists, that kill millions of workers while capitalists sit home counting their profits. For our long-term future, capitalism-caused climate change will then be brought under control, though it has already started on a course that will be increasingly difficult to reverse. Global warming already causes, and threatens to accelerate, violent weather events that kill hundreds of thousands, though such deaths will become preventable even in the face of such events.

Join and build the PLP to hasten the day that this noble goal is reached around the world. We and our children and grandchildren deserve no less.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, July 18 — Health workers, teachers, and students from the U.S. joined with our counterparts in a show of international solidarity in the class struggle. The first week of the Summer Project included organizing a health clinic and a freedom school. By relying on friends and comrades we were able to see 150 patients from two tent camps.

More than one million are forced to live in tents because the January 2010 earthquake either destroyed their homes or made them structurally unsound. The people in camps have been waiting on the government for help while trying to survive in these “temporary” facilities for the last year and a half.

The goals of the health clinic included trying to provide clinical health services and building awareness of public health issues like cholera, asthma, high blood pressure, and diabetes. We provided information and had discussions on how many of these diseases are related to social class, and ones’ ability to access clean water, enough food, and medical care. Many complained of gastrointestinal ailments that may have been due to a lack of food; also vaginal infections which may have been attributed to frequent douching, which changes the pH of the vagina.

In the clinic’s waiting area, people said that they were disgusted with the government’s inaction, and the UN troops which occupy Haiti. We were told that the troops spend most of the time on the beaches, and raping women. We used this opportunity to have political discussions on the struggle against our common enemy, the capitalist ruling class.

Haiti is a vivid example of capitalism’s use of racism to exploit workers. It has kept black workers there in virtual slavery for centuries and now has failed to alleviate the suffering from the earthquake that tore the country apart. This has produced super-profits for imperialist bosses.

One of the highlights of the week was when we joined workers on their picket line. About 800 workers had been laid off from the mayor’s office, but were never paid what they were owed. They sued and won in court, but under capitalism, the courts are just another branch of the government, working for the interests of the ruling class.

The workers have still not been paid after four years of struggle. We chanted in French/Kreyòl, “Workers Should Be Paid,” and “Justice for Workers.” We heard drivers’ horns blow in support of the picketers from the busy street. International solidarity was the order of the day.

The freedom school was attended by many students eager to exchange ideas that spanned broad social issues. The classrooms were overflowing with students enthusiastically discussing what is taught in the schools and what ideas are important to the working class, as well as the unity of teachers and students, and an analysis of capitalism and imperialism. Ninety percent of the schools in Haiti are private, so many have no opportunity for an education. People hunger for more education.

The friends we have made in Haiti signifies many new opportunities for building PLP. The future is bright!

CHICAGO, July 18 — “Brizard, you can’t hide, education cuts cause genocide!” rang through the streets of downtown Chicago on July 6. (Brizard is Chicago’s new schools CEO.) Students and teachers marched against Chicago Public Schools (CPS) bosses and the banks that steal millions from the education system.

The march was the closing event of an all-day National Conference to Fight Back for Public Education, organized by various “progressive” caucuses and union leaders.

PLP Exposes Fascist Assault on Public Schools

PL’ers participated on different levels. They advanced the Party’s politics, charging that the assault on public education is part of the bosses’ plan to step up fascist attacks and prepare our class for larger imperialist wars.

Many conference participants called for an “end to corporate greed” and to have the bosses pay “their fair share.” But workers have no “fair share” when it comes to their exploitation by the bosses who grab as much of the value produced by the working class as they can.

The Party exposed the fact that the cuts in education and health care were racist — falling most heavily on black and Latino workers and students — a product of capitalism, not just “bad capitalists.” Students from Farragut H.S., who are close to the Party, really brought this point to the fore as they led the chant, “How do you spell RACIST?!... CPS!”

Marchers Free Student
From KKKop Attack

These students, guided by the leadership of PLP, were finally given the vehicle to express their anger and frustration at the system. They were so good at it that a kkkop pulled one of them from the march for chanting “FIGHT BACK!”in his ear.

Immediately the marchers chanted “Let him go!” and he was quickly released. Even after the harassment, the student was not intimidated and led the marchers to chant, “They say cut back, WE SAY FIGHT BACK!”

This march was the final event of a week-long Summer Project here, followed by a PLP-hosted “reflection dinner.” Two students and one youth worker from Farragut spoke at the dinner about their experiences. The students thanked the Party for the “love and support” during the march, one saying he was happy not to be in jail.

The youth worker told a PL’er who he works with that he “felt at home.” He went to the New York Summer Project the following week and, after months of struggle, has now joined the Party. Five students now want to be in a PL study group.

We didn’t get the banks to stop robbing the working class, but we recruited a new comrade and brought more people closer to the Party. Building PLP and the movement for communist revolution is how we measure success within our activity in mass organizations.

The bosses can always take away reforms, but the might of the working class led by PLP fighting for a communist society is the only way to gain the life our class deserves. The more we recruit to our revolutionary army, the more we can defend our class from the bosses’ attacks now and prepare ourselves to take the offensive in the future.