CALIFORNIA, January 17 — This last weekend forty students and workers went to central California to a communist school on Political Economy. Five high school students came from one city, traveling six hours there and six hours back just to study with us. We discussed what creates value, how the wage system works, and what creates capitalism’s crises. Here are some things that the high school students had to say about the school:

“My experience was fun. I learned about why certain jobs get a certain amount of money, but I don’t understand why they don’t take money from the rich people. Instead they take it from the people that can barely get by with the money they do have.”

“My experience today was quite interesting. I learned many new things as well. I learned how the system works more in depth, and where the value of certain things comes from. Everything was explained very well, which is a good thing because it gives me a better understanding of what’s going on. I heard many personal stories that involved the system and how they do things to profit off of their employees. Ultimately, the experience was very beneficial towards my understanding of political economy.”

“My experience was amazing. I learned the difference between socialism, capitalism, and communism. It was nice. I don’t understand why the government takes more taxes from us and less from the rich.”

“Something I learned from the cadre school is that the people that work for the fast-food places just throw away the leftovers and sometimes pour bleach on them so that no one can eat it. I was interested to know if it was the bosses’ fault, or if the bosses were just okay with the employees doing that. I learned that the bosses tell the employees that they have to do that because they are selling food, not giving it away. That’s the way capitalism works; it starves people.”

Participants all agreed that the bosses pay the workers a low wage and steal most of the value they produce in order to continue maximizing profit to compete against other bosses. Many linked the exploitation of workers’ labor by the bosses during the housing and dot.com crises to the continued enslavement of workers through tricks and the treachery of below-prime loans and stock market speculations.

Most people at the school agreed that crises will continue under capitalism and that the only alternative is communist revolution that will end both exploitation and money/wages. Only through communism can the working class organize and work for better conditions based on its own needs. This was the third communist school of a series planned on the West Coast, one each month. The next communist school will be in southern California, on democratic centralism. 

“Medical conditions like this just happen and that’s God’s plan. My sister had Lupus and she just died two days ago. It happened so fast. I dreamed about her last night. Why did God take her? That’s not for me to know…It’s a spiritual thing,” said a patient as she lay in bed.

Because of diabetes she had both legs amputated below the knees, and she suffered from hypertension and HIV. But in the housing project where she lives, her story is not unique. Recently another child died of cardiac arrest following a severe asthma attack, the third in a month for one Emergency Medical Service (EMS) crew. There’s nothing spiritual about heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, HIV and asthma murdering black workers and youth. It’s called racism and it’s the plague of capitalism.

On January 14, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) released its “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” (MMWR), focusing on racial disparities in U.S. health care. Among the findings:

   • Babies born to black women are up to three times as likely to die in infancy;

   • High blood pressure is twice as common among blacks as whites;

   • Blacks die of strokes and heart disease much more commonly than whites, and die younger;

   • Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, whether gay or straight, all have higher rates of new infection with the AIDS virus than whites, and the situation is worsening.

In 2007, the CDC reported that between 1979 and 2004, “Diabetes death rates for black youths were consistently higher than those for white youths. Additionally, whereas diabetes mortality did not change substantially for white youths during 1994-2004, death rates for black youths increased significantly.”

The U.S. Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality website reports that among pre-school children hospitalized for asthma, only 7% of black and 2% of Latino children are prescribed routine medications to prevent future asthma-related hospitalizations, compared with 21% of white children. The inequality in access to asthma medication is racist murder, considering that a routine asthma attack untreated with prescribed medication ends in death.

The increased deaths from diabetes and asthma are the racist results of mass poverty. The bosses tell us we need to make “better choices.” Michelle Obama exercises with poor kids and billionaire mayor Bloomberg wants to ban soda purchases from food stamps. Meanwhile, they offer mass racist unemployment, police terror, cutbacks and war. If they are so concerned, then we should have free medical clinics and decent supermarkets with fresh fruits and vegetables in every housing project and school. We’re not killing our children — they are!

The situation for workers in NY State grows even more desperate. The NY Post reported (1/22) that Governor Cuomo’s billion-dollar Medicaid cuts will force 10-12 more hospitals to close. Stephen Berger, a Cuomo advisor overseeing the cuts, cynically asked, “How many [hospitals] are really necessary?” Two paragraphs later the article reports: “Many of the hospitals teetering on the brink of financial collapse are located in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.”

PLP public health care workers are fighting for life. Our PL club is developing ties with, and spreading CHALLENGE to health care workers and those we serve, building anti-racist unity against murderous cutbacks and layoffs. Communist leadership is the antidote to the racist poison killing our children and destroying our jobs. In the course of this struggle we can build a Party organization in our community, at the nearby community clinic and hospital. The day the Post article appeared, hospital workers photocopied, posted and distributed 200 copies throughout the hospital’s Emergency Department, held informal meetings and made contacts to expand the fight-back.

As one veteran paramedic put it after reading the Post article: “This is war. Every worker in this city should respond to this attack by going for broke and shutting it down, so not a single thing moves. Nurses, bus drivers, teachers, everything. Everyone united. That’s how it used to be done and that’s how it should be done.”

Workers in the community and the hospital have been beaten and abused in every way by some aspect of this system. We are forced to sit and watch as our children are killed before our eyes by treatable diseases like asthma. In New York City, Port au-Prince or Gaza, building PLP means choosing life. 

Mass uprisings are destabilizing Egypt, an essential ally of war-making U.S. imperialists. Capitalism itself, however, the root cause of imperialist war and of the rebelling workers' miseries, remains unthreatened. Unfortunately, the protesters aim solely at ousting dictator Mubarak. Lacking class consciousness, they do not seek to overthrow the profit system. Most follow either secular nationalist or Islamist politicians. Thus, even if Mubarak is ousted, workers in Egypt will continue to suffer under a new regime of exploiters. Nevertheless, our revolutionary communist Party can learn much from the courageous, though misguided, struggles in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere.

The uncertainty over whether Islamist or pro-U.S. bosses will rule Egypt has Obama & Co. worried sick. In 2006, open elections (which the protesters demand) gave anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Hamas control of the Palestinian Authority.

Today U.S. rulers fear that Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidates might win in Egypt. MB leader and al Qaeda supporter Mohammed Akef told CBS News (5/22/08), “MB would send fighters to fight the occupation in Iraq and Palestine.” Mohamed Atta, reported ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, received anti-U.S. indoctrination as a member of MB in Egypt.

 U.S. War Machine Armed Dictator Mubarak

 Egypt holds vast significance in the sharpening rivalry among waning and rising imperialist powers. Martin Indyk, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and Clinton’s ambassador to Israel, spoke of “huge potential consequences for U.S. strategic interests in a vital region.” (NY Times, 1/30) The Times explained:

“The United States could not have sustained the wars it fought in Iraq without logistical support from Egypt’s government. Oil for Europe comes through the Suez Canal. Egypt is the largest and most militarily powerful Arab country....Mr. Sadat’s peace deal in 1979 with Mr. Begin made it next to impossible for other Arab states to contemplate going to war with Israel.”

Next to Israel, Egypt is Washington’s second biggest recipient of military aid. Reuters reported (1/29) that Mubarak has been receiving an average of $2 billion annually from the U.S., “much of it military.” Obama asked Congress for a similar amount for 2011, including 1,200 Abrams tanks and 20 advanced F-16 jet fighters for 2013 delivery to add to the 240 already sent.

 Imperialist IMF Impoverished Workers in Egypt

Egypt’s poverty, unemployment, and unaffordable food stem directly from U.S. imperialism. In 1991, Bush, Sr., purchased Mubarak’s support for Iraq War I by having the U.S.-run International Monetary Fund (IMF) forgive Egypt’s debt. The price was IMF control of Egypt’s economy. Mass unemployment in Egypt results directly from IMF demands that Egypt privatize industry that had been widely nationalized in its pro-Soviet 1950s-1960s era. IMF-imposed constraints on interest and subsidies jacked the cost of necessities through the roof.

 U.S. Empire’s Saudi Grand Prize Next Domino?

But U.S. ruling-class mouthpieces like the Times hesitate to mention the far larger geostrategic stake just across the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia. U.S. rulers’ worst, unspeakable nightmare envisions Arab anti-government unrest spreading to the oil-rich cornerstone of their empire. Saudi Arabia is Exxon Mobil’s biggest oil supplier and Exxon Mobil is the kingdom’s biggest buyer.

U.S. global supremacy depends on this relationship, which helps enable it to dictate the conditions of the supply of capitalism’s lifeblood to most of the rest of the world, including (for now) China. The Saudi-based, Exxon-led chokehold, of course, involves other U.S. and allied oil giants and requires continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, which may have crude reserves as great as its Saudi neighbor. So, in gross understatement, the Associated Press reported (1/30) “Obama phoned the [Saudi] king in Morocco....both leaders were not happy with the chaotic situation.”

Just how U.S. rivals Iran, China and Russia will capitalize on the chaos remains to be seen. Keeping their Saudi contingency plans close to the vest, U.S. military planners openly fixate on wiping out Iran. The influential, Rockefeller-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in a January 2011 report, dreams of massive U.S. nuclear retaliation against “high-value population centers” like Teheran. The CSIS’s justification is that Iran’s developing A-bombs could “inflict 2,000,000 to 8,000,000” deaths in a 21-day period.

Despite bad politics on all sides, lessons for revolutionaries emerge from Egypt and environs. One dispels the growing myth that electronic social media have become the only way to organize. The rulers, in fact, own and run them. Actually, workers in Cairo had forged sufficient personal, non-electronic networks to be able to organize days after Mubarak pulled the plug on the Internet and mobile phones.

Another crucial point is that ill-armed workers can successfully face down the fascist police apparatus. Put simply, there are far more of us than there are of them. And soldiers, on the other hand, are mainly poor, working-class youth, rather than pro-government die-hards. The fact that some have already sided with the masses points up the crucial necessity for communists to advance revolutionary politics within the army to move soldiers against the bosses.

We are not witnessing, as fake leftists proclaim, the “liberation” of Egypt's workers. That will take painstaking class-based organization for communist revolution against capitalists of all kinds, religious, nationalist and imperialist.

 U.S. War-Makers Build ‘Opposition’ Groups to Maintain Control

While U.S. imperialists may control the leadership of fascist countries such as Egypt’s, the working class is often anti-U.S. Therefore, U.S. bosses — knowing their support of Mubarak-type dictators is on shaky ground over the long term — try to build alternative movements under their control.

The NY Post reported that, “In a December 2008 cable obtained by the Wikileaks website [U.S. ambassador to Egypt Margaret] Scoby….cited talks with an unnamed activist leader of an opposition group called ‘April 6’…which wants the Mubarak regime replaced….April has 70,000 members…and is now at the forefront of Egypt protests….

“Despite strong U.S. ties with Mubarak, there’s evidence U.S. officials quietly supported…activists seeking to remove him….

“In 2008, the State Department co-sponsored a youth activist conference that helped organizations use social media to spread opposition across the globe — and helped one of April 6’s leaders attend without the knowledge of Egypt’s secret police.

“The April 6 leader was among the delegates from around the world at the Alliance of Youth Movements gathered at Columbia Law School….At the three-day confab, participants swapped best practices for taking their activism ‘to the streets’ and guidance on ‘planning events, marches and protests.’

“There was also a panel devoted to ‘Egypt’s pro-democracy youth movement’ and how to advance them with social media.”

Protesting before the hearingBROOKLYN, NY, January 11 — “They say cut back, we say fight back!” “Separate is never equal!” These were just two of the many chants that over 300 militant students, teachers and parents shouted while picketing outside the John Jay HS campus.

It preceded a public hearing on the racist Department of Education’s (DoE) proposal to four millions of dollars into installing a new, “selective school” within our building, catering to the mostly-white, middle-class Park Slope neighborhood. These are millions that could have been used all along to improve the four existing schools in the building. The “selective school” will segregate incoming white students from the current black and Latino school population

Our chants grew louder and our numbers mounted in a block-long picket line, joined by workers from a nearby hospital. Drivers honked their support. Students and teachers from many other city schools answered the call to protest the racism and continuing re-segregation of public schools. PL’ers have played a leading role in this struggle to win everyone to understand the DoE actions as a racist attack on the predominately black and Latino student population in the building.

The Phony ‘Proposal’

Over the last two weeks the entire school community has been organizing for this day when the DoE is legally obligated to carry out the farce it calls “public hearings.” But when it first sent its cronies to inform everyone about its proposal to install the new school in the building, that very night the  DoE had already hand-picked the principal to head up this new school. She e-mailed her current school staff that she was leaving them to lead this new Millennium Brooklyn. Some “proposal”!

After learning about the DoE treachery, we took the limited time available to organize people in the school building to see that even though a decision seems to have been made, we must still stand up and fight racism. Everyone agreed and sprang into action to get the entire school building, the surrounding community and everyone else we know to attend the rally and meeting.

The school building was abuzz. Teachers planned lessons around racism and segregation; debaters wrote speeches and announced it at their tournaments. One problem was that some students were taking a state exam that very day while the other students would not be attending school.

Overcoming All Obstacles

That obstacle was overcome collectively: by teachers hosting pizza and sign-making parties for the students taking the test; by the after-school program hosting a volleyball game between alumni and the current volleyball team, drawing many students back to school. Throughout the day students, teachers and school staff were united in preparations for the evening activities.

Another victory was won when the year-long tension between the after-school staff and teachers slowly eroded as we all united in the interest of fighting racism alongside the students we both care for daily.

As the volleyball game ended, a Party teacher invited everyone to come to the rally and hearing. Everyone grabbed signs they had made and others took ones they liked as they left the gym. Most of the students had never attended a rally and were excited to be picketing, chanting against budget cuts, racism and segregation and to unite with their teachers and parents. We then marched into the hearing chanting and carrying signs as students and teachers signed up to speak.

‘How do we spell racist? D-O-E!’

As this occurred PL’ers began leading the chant, “How do we spell racist? D-O-E!” Parents’, students’ and teachers’ speeches outlined how the DoE has neglected the mainly black and Latino high school for years. While most focused on the current four schools, others described the DoE’s history of racism at the building’s original John Jay HS. One panel member attempted to reprimand the audience for chanting and then booing the panel as the hearing began. This same flunky stated his position as a member of a community education board in the district. This drew further boos because undoubtedly this group has been a tool of the DoE’s segregation plans.

Amid the crowd’s anger, a PL’er declared that the situation facing the school cannot be solved under capitalism; that no politician or Board of Education can solve the problems of failing schools; and that the system was inherently flawed because the future it “offered” students worldwide was unemployment and imperialist wars. The PL’er then read the last paragraph of the article in the previous issue of CHALLENGE and stated that only communism can solve these problems. He invited everyone to get a copy of the paper, which was widely distributed throughout the protest and hearing.

Then a councilman tried to answer the PL’er, saying, “ I’m not trying to defend capitalism, I only speak honestly about what I feel.” He attempted to buy off the crowd by adding to the DoE “proposal” all the demands the students and teachers made about bringing in the new school.

After that the DoE’s District 15’s use of racism to divide the working class was on full display. They brought in parents of autistic children who the new school would potentially serve to argue for the DoE’s racist plans. Parent after parent used their children to justify the racist “proposal.” However, one speaker said the blame should fall squarely on the backs of the DoE for driving a wedge between two needed groups, the black and Latino students it has neglected for years and the special ed students who lack other school options.  

Other teachers and community residents exposed the DoE by pointing out that all neighborhood parents can send their children to the schools already in the building, asserting that the DoE is obligated to provide the schools with more aid to help meet student needs.

The struggle is continuing. Teachers and students have already been attacked for confronting racism. As CHALLENGE goes to press, our forces are gearing up for the January 19 hearing where the DoE makes its decisions about this “proposal” and many others city-wide.

Class Struggle Still in Session

PL’ers and friends will be there to bring the message that capitalist education and the whole system is failing students, parents and teachers worldwide. Amid this class struggle, teachers and students have been receiving a lesson no capitalist classroom can teach.

The DoE racist attack against the teachers and students who are leading the struggle has sharpened in one school in the John Jay building. The Assistant Principal and the heavy-handed principal called one teacher into their office, saying they didn’t like the “tone” of the rally, to try to intimidate the teacher to stop organizing with students. This principal has hauled students into her office to interrogate them ever since the community has begun fighting the segregation. But the students have only responded to this principal with a stronger will to fight.

The students who’ve been leading the way have already come one step further, having joined a PL study group. PL’ers who are fighting alongside these workers and youth are using this struggle as a school to build communist ideas and raise class-consciousness. We have laid the groundwork for over five years with the people involved to see communism as the alternative to this current rotten system.

The class struggle is still in session! (More next issue.)