China’s puppet North Korea’s yet unchecked attacks on U.S.-occupied South Korea make direct military conflict among rival global imperialists ever more likely. Flaunting a growing nuclear arsenal, the North’s fake “communist” dictatorial monarchy reportedly torpedoed a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors (see box). Late last month, North Korean artillery shells killed two marines and two civilians on one of the South’s militarized islands.
Obama responded to the March sinking rather meekly, calling for no more than an “international investigation.” This time around, however, Obama has sent a U.S. Navy carrier group into the Yellow Sea, which North Korea threatens to make a “sea of fire,” if U.S. vessels violate its waters.
The imperialists’ sharpening Korean impasse highlights the interplay between the actual and the potential, a key category in communist analysis. At present, hostilities remain at a relatively low level. But, given the forces the rival bosses can deploy and the peninsula’s strategic importance to them, an all-out conflagration threatened by both sides could explode at any time.

Hostile Words, Sporadic Killing Today, Korean Holocaust Tomorrow?

So far, the Washington-Seoul axis has limited itself to rhetoric and mere shows of force. And the phony “People’s” Republic of Korea, backed by the phony “People’s” Republic of China, while reportedly guilty of 50 murders, doesn’t even come close to U.S. killing rates. U.S. rulers have the blood of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Yemenis on their hands.
In the increasingly likely case of conflict in the Koreas, however, the body count could skyrocket beyond the U.S.-led Mid-East carnage. The North — per population the most militarized country on earth — has over a million active-duty soldiers. If the U.S. were so mobilized, it proportionately would have 12 million.
The outnumbered South-U.S. alliance, with fewer than 700,000 troops, including 25,000 GIs, could resort to the Pentagon’s nuclear trump card. North Korea has a handful of warheads and China a hundred or so, but the U.S. has about 10,000.  Along with A-bombs, Obama & Co. also wield the most lethal “conventional” weaponry ever devised, a good deal of it currently afloat on the USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea.
Leading U.S. Rockefeller Bloc Deems N. Korea’s ‘Demise’ Worth Workers’ Lives
The dominant Rockefeller-led imperialist faction of U.S. capitalists understands that taking out North Korea entails possible global war with China. Last month, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. rulers’ top foreign policy think-tank, issued a report entitled “Military Escalation in Korea.” Boasting “generous” bankrolling from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the study said:
“Renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula and potential U.S. and ROK [Republic of (South) Korea] military intervention into North Korea would clearly pose more serious risks to relations with China, including even the possibility of direct clash.”
But discounting the cost in workers’ lives, the CFR demands North Korea’s ultimate annihilation. Amid hollow public diplomacy and the rattling of still unbloodied U.S. sabers, “the United States can privately reiterate to the leadership in Pyongyang and Beijing that any initiation of major hostilities will inevitably bring about the demise of North Korea” — obviously as unconcerned with the mass murder of Asian workers here as in the 1945 A-Bomb racist massacre of 250,000 working-class families in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The CFR, well aware of the bloodshed Obama’s Korean war games may trigger, urges U.S. and allied top brass to prepare for Vietnam-style fighting, in addition to nuclear Armageddon: “U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command must be especially sensitive to potential U.S. and South Korean military operations that may inadvertently goad or intimidate North Korea. Joint planning to manage a range of contingencies besides full-scale war should be upgraded.”

Will U.S. Lure North Korea, China to Invade South?

CFR planners suggest a Korean “sucker-punch” strategy like the one Bush, Sr. used in Gulf War I: rather than invade the enemy’s territory, lure him into yours. In 1990, U.S. ambassador April Glaspie assured Saddam Hussein that the U.S. would not hinder Iraq’s forays into Kuwait, and then launched all-out air and ground war against Saddam’s outmanned invading forces.
“Short of unambiguous indications of the North’s preparation for full-scale offensive operations, the United States and ROK could deliberately stand down their forward-deployed forces and desist from activities that might trigger further escalation. However, rear-area defensive preparations could be initiated to hedge against the North’s failure to reciprocate.” Why on earth, except to ensnare emboldened northern invaders, would the South let down its border guard while beefing up its interior defenses?
Tensions are heightening because China can no more tolerate the prospect of a pro-U.S. reunited Korea than the U.S. can endure a pro-China one. Beijing’s bosses will not brook U.S. troops with land-based access to Korea’s border with China’s mainland, the world’s manufacturing center. However, U.S. bosses will do all they can to prevent China from robbing the U.S. Navy of control of East Asia’s sea lanes, the increasingly important focus of global trade in goods and energy.
Given all this warmongering on both sides, they undoubtedly would try to avoid destroying all those GM, Nike, Ford and other U.S. factories in an all-out war involving North and South Korea, China and the U.S. But our communist Party cannot predict what will happen there. We can only warn that sharpening competition among beleaguered capitalist nations makes open warfare possible and plausible.
One thing is certain, though. Unlike the Korean War of 1950-53, this is not an ideological struggle between the promise of workers’ power versus western capitalism. Grave political errors, including nationalism, retention of the capitalist wage system and elite party-member privilege, restored capitalism in once pro-worker China, North Korea and Russia. In 2010, both belligerents wholeheartedly support and practice the worker-destroying profit system.
Progressive Labor Party’s long-term goal is revolution that eliminates the imperialists’ profit-driven and racist war-making and establishes true working-class rule. We are attempting to plant the seeds of that future communist society in our Party’s struggles in the shops, unions, schools, churches and communities and among GIs, as recorded in  the pages of CHALLENGE, as well as in the growth of a new international communist movement spread by our Party on five continents.

Box

War in Korea A Tragedy for All Workers

The U.S. bosses’ media has largely depicted the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong as the home of helpless victims attacked by a terrorist North Korean regime. In reality half the island’s population is uniformed soldiers manning an artillery fire-base targeting North Korea.
The latest artillery exchange, the first in over 30 years, is only the latest incident in a series of escalations on the Korean peninsula that has been largely precipitated by U.S. and South Korean aggression and posturing. In November 2009, the South Korean military sunk a North Korean naval vessel. Now the U.S. and South Korea used the sinking of a South Korean warship to again ratchet up tensions on the peninsula.
The U.S. and South Korea have refused to allow independent investigators to examine the wreckage. A group of Russian scientists who were allowed to examine a few small pieces of the wreckage raised serious doubts about the official torpedo story, suggesting that the ship might have been sunk accidentally by a South Korean mine. The report set off a diplomatic firestorm between Russia and South Korea.
Currently the U.S. and South Korea are engaged in massive war-gaming in nearby waters, “games” run regularly designed to purposely antagonize the North. The latter warned that any violation of its waters during the war game would be perceived as an attack on the North. After several shells fell on its side, the North shelled Yeonpyeong.

Imperialism the Real Reason Behind Escalation

The Korean War 1950 — 53 caused 4,000,000 casualties and reduced North and South Korea to rubble. The Korean peninsula has been and is a vitally important piece in the U.S. imperial strategy that allows for quick-strike capability against China and Russia. A cooling of tensions between North and South Korea is a disaster scenario for the U.S. which needs the imminent threat of war to justify the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in a massive complex of bases and airfields all over South Korea.
China has long sought to exert direct influence over the Korean peninsula and eventually evict the U.S. forces there. It has built a puppet “government-in-exile” to be installed should the North collapse as well as building a legal claim that historically Korea is a part of China.

North Korea is Not Iraq

Trapped between two competing imperialist powers, the Korean peninsula is being pushed dangerously towards war. Escalation would be a tragedy for workers everywhere. Rather than a low-intensity conflict killing a million people over a decade of fighting, as in Iraq, such a war would be a genocidal disaster. A 1992 U.S. War Department assessment, re-affirmed in 2003, estimates that one million people would die in the first 24 hours alone in a full-scale war.
Since 1958, it has been official U.S. policy that nuclear weapons would be used in any war between North and South Korea. After the U.S. transferred its nuclear arsenal in 1999 off the Korean peninsula to nuclear submarines off the Korean coast, the South Korean Defense Minister has again asked that these weapons be deployed throughout South Korea.
The increasing tensions in Korea reflect the increasing inter-imperialist rivalries driving the world towards war.

BROOKLYN, NY, November 18 — “No matter how much you want to pretty this up, you can’t fool us; it’s racist!” shouted an angry parent towards one of several cronies the Department of Education (DoE) sent to pacify angry students, parents and teachers at a meeting of parents from two of the building’s schools.
As reported in CHALLENGE (10/28), our school campus, which now houses four schools, is slated to house a 5th one next September. This new school is in response to a mostly wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood’s desire for a school within the immediate area. The students currently attending all the schools are black, Latino and Asian working-class youth from surrounding neighborhoods.
The new school will only accept students who received the highest marks, 3s and 4s, on their eighth grade exams; require a writing sample; will not have special education students or English Language Learners; and will receive millions of dollars in start-up costs.
At a school leadership team meeting, a DoE representative said the new school will replicate a pre-existing screened high school, a highly sought-after school with a mostly white population. If this new school is as popular as the first one, it’s expected our school’s current population will be forced out to accommodate such growth and the wealthy white people will get what they’ve always wanted — black and brown students out of their neighborhood.

A Record of Racism

Racial tension between the school campus and the immediate neighborhood is nothing new. Up until this school year, a pizza shop across the street refused to serve our students,  while simultaneously serving white students from the surrounding neighborhoods and schools. Their phony excuse was that students from our campus would crowd the shop, while only one student would purchase something.
Daily at 3:00 PM, the neighborhood turns into a police state. Students are unceremoniously “ushered” to the train station by school safety cops and NYPD and told to go home.
Blogs written by neighborhood residents have labeled students “criminals,” “dangerous” and even “animals.” The schools have even been asked to stagger dismissal so as “not rattle the nerves” of the pearl-clutching residents.

A History of Struggle

These attacks have not gone unanswered. Students in our campus have walked out over the cell-phone ban, the Sean Bell murder, for immigration rights (on May 1), led budget-cut conferences and rallies and picketed outside the school yelling, “We’re students, not criminals! Metal detectors have got to go!” Over 50 students attended PLP’s May Day dinner last year.
Teachers, many of whom are CHALLENGE readers, have boycotted the racist pizzeria. They also confronted school safety cops about their treatment of students and rallied against budget cuts. These teachers correctly called them racist, given the fact that the city’s 80% black and Latino school population will be taking the brunt of these cuts.
Fight Back Now!
Disgusted by this blatantly racist attack, teachers from most of the building’s schools have been meeting together almost weekly to plan fight-backs. Thus far this has included a debate organized by a PL member and her students (where CHALLENGE was sold), two rallies outside the school’s building and a meeting organized to unite with parents.
It was at this meeting where parents directed their anger towards the DoE flunkies present over the treatment of students, charging that, “The bathrooms are disgusting, and there are roaches and mice crawling all over the place. Why is it that the building is ‘good enough’ for our children, but not for these new kids? It’s because our children are black!”
During the meeting a PL member correctly pointed out that teachers, students and parents need to unite together and fight this racist attack, not fall for the DoE’s every-school-for-themselves, divide-and-conquer strategy. Turning her back on the DoE’s mouthpieces, the PL’er called on parents to kick them out of the meeting and begin making our own fight-back plans. Applause and agreement greeted this call. The group then passed around a fight-back sign-up sheet and has been in touch ever since. A second parent meeting has been scheduled.

Student Unity is Crucial

In discussing this issue with students the following Monday, a PL teacher asked them to read and respond to the article in last issue’s CHALLENGE. Students were outraged to discover the blatant racist plans to fund a new school while neglecting the already-existing ones.
Some students’ first reaction was to threaten to beat up the new entering students. But the teacher warned students not to let the DoE’s racism segregate us even further. She reasoned that the new students were not the real enemy, that it was the DoE and all it encompasses, saying they should unite with the new students (if they come) and petition and rally for equal funding.
Even if we win this struggle, we know that ultimately only the bosses win under capitalism. Like everything else, this struggle is a contradiction: while trying to win teachers, students and parents to join this struggle, we also know that the bosses’ schools can never serve our students. Their main goal is to sift out a few students to become the next Oprahs or Obamas, while steering the remaining students to end up stuck in poverty-wage jobs, or as prison labor or to die in imperialist wars.
Our goal is to introduce parents, students and teachers to the Party around this struggle, and then to consolidate and recruit them. We will lead with CHALLENGE and fight alongside our class brothers and sisters. We have much work to do and many lessons to learn.

Boston, November 3 — The spontaneous march on October 29th against the vicious police beating of a 16-year-old black youth at Roxbury Community College (RCC) (see
CHALLENGE 11/3/10) brought together students and faculty who were committed to advance the struggle against police brutality.  Since then, a core group of activists has  organized a mass response. A student petition condemning the police attack was circulated throughout the college community, and a letter condemning the college administration’s silence was distributed among faculty and staff. A mass meeting was called for November 2 to mobilize a bigger march two days later.
Although the meeting was held on Election Day at an election site (the college), voting was completely ignored. It’s no wonder that 60% of eligible voters regularly stay away from the polls. Working-class issues like police brutality, unemployment, foreclosures and cutbacks don’t get voted on. Direct action is the only meaningful way for workers to assert our power.
Several Roxbury politicians came to the meeting.  (Roxbury is Boston’s oldest black neighborhood.) Their main role was confining the scope of the struggle by focusing on pressuring the police chief and the college administration to “apologize.”
Then 25 students, led by two politicians, went to confront RCC’s President Gomes.  Although the meeting gave him the opportunity to repair his damaged reputation for trying to distance the college from the “bad press” the incident would bring to RCC, few if any students left with any illusions about his role as junior partner of the local ruling class.

Cops: Boses’ Tool to Control Workers’ Struggle

Two days later, despite the rain, 60 people, mostly students and a few staff, faculty and politicians, gathered at the school to rally before the march to the police station.  One speaker condemned the cops who beat the teenager, but was careful not to condemn all police.  Another speaker explained that killer cops are protected by the police bureaucracy and the courts because the bosses lose control when the authority of their agents in blue is weakened. “The rulers need to keep us afraid of the police because they are the first line of defense against the working class. The cops serve and protect the bosses and preserve their unequal and unjust society.”
For days afterwards, the activist students wrestled to keep the struggle going. They thought about organizing a bigger march, bringing the petitions to the Mayor’s office, confronting the Chief of Police — anything to get the brutal cops fired.  They worried about how to maintain the current level of political activity without their academic work suffering.  
As newly-engaged activists, they were grappling with profound questions: Does winning mean getting a few cops fired, even when others will be hired to do the same “bad job”?  Does “winning” mean raising consciousness?  And if so, consciousness about what?  
Some of them came to a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group and watched a PL video about the 1992 LA rebellions after the four cops who beat Rodney King were exonerated.  The video and the discussion that followed provided a communist perspective for them to consider.  The students could see the limits of reform.  When the LA bosses couldn’t
control the working class by using the medias’ lies, elections and other methods of deception, they brought in the police and armed forces, using the full power of the state to maintain control.
Police brutality will continue to sharpen as U.S. capitalism loses ground to its rivals.   Increasingly workers who fight unemployment, home foreclosures and cutbacks will get the same fascist police treatment presently aimed at black and Latino youth and
undocumented immigrants.  
Inevitably more young people will be thrust into struggles against the police and other injustices of capitalism.  As at RCC, these struggles open the door to revolutionary thinking like nothing else can. Struggle against the bosses’ system gives us the opportunity to experience the power workers can have when we organize, as well as our lack of power relative to the bosses who control the police, the media, the politicians and the college bosses. When we fight in our own interests, we can more easily see how the bosses maintain control of society to benefit their class and why it is necessary for our class to win power.

Communist Consciousness Crucial

The instinct of the RCC activists to want to keep fighting is good,
but without communist consciousness it will either lead them to burn out or
into the arms of politicians.   Communist consciousness enables them to stay
in the struggle for the long term, despite the ups and downs of the reform
movement. Now, when the level of class struggle is relatively low, whenever there’s an opportunity for a struggle, PL’ers must pull out all the stops to advance it.
At RCC, the most important development by far to come out of this anti-police brutality struggle is for the young leaders to join PLP. This is the way we can best guarantee more struggles which can become more schools for communism.

BROOKLYN, NY, November 6 —  “While demonstrating for education for all Haitians outside the Ministry of Education in Port-Au-Prince, a teacher was killed by the Haitian militia.”  There was a gasp from the audience as the details of the assassination were described.
As the speaker made clear, even though it was a cop’s bullet that ended the life of Louis Jean Filbert on October 9, 200 years of racist imperialism are as much to blame. Haitians have never been forgiven by the rapacious capitalists of the world for freeing themselves from the yoke of slavery. As the speaker finished, it was clear that viewing the current catastrophe as simply the result of a geologic event was seriously one-sided.
This speaker and others were part of a forum called “Haitians Abandoned,” attended by 80 people, which was held in the chapel of our congregation. Communist ideas are present in this church through our social justice group, which organize activities such as the forum.
There was an air of expectancy at the beginning of the event. The forum had been collectively organized between the Haitian community and the church community. The event was a success in that there was a great response from the Haitian community. In fact, they outnumbered the church community, clearly pointing out that we have to organize better in our church.
The speakers also made the point that it is not charity the Haitian people seek, but unity with their brothers and sisters in the rest of the world. The willingness of many hundreds of honest working-class people (including many Party members) to go to Haiti should offer us a small reminder of the Spanish Civil War, when thousands of workers from around the world streamed into Spain in an attempt to beat back fascism. In Haiti, like in every “natural” disaster, the class-consciousness and solidarity of workers pokes its head through the unrelenting individualism and cynicism that capitalism heaps upon us.
After the two-hour presentation and question time, attendees shared a meal together, supplied by both the Haitian and church communities. The multi-racial unity on display in our church spoke well for the future, not only of the church, but of our class. Armed with communist ideas, a future of multi-racial unity is one that the working class can achieve.
In one conversation a church member spoke about the horror of 200 years of imperialism that had made Haiti almost the poorest nation on Earth. The visitor, with boundless positive energy  said: “A new day will come. Nobody will put up with this for much longer. “
The Haitian pate, chicken, salad, fruit and cheeses and the coffee brought conversation to an even deeper and friendlier level. We will continue to work with our Haitian brothers and sisters and within our church. There is great desire on both sides to continue the relationship and to stand together against imperialism and its racism. Coming out of the forum we will organize a CHALLENGE readers group in the church to continue this struggle.
In a moment of excitement during the forum, one of the speakers called out a Haitian expression which talked of the freeing of the people. The applause was astounding. The echoes will not be forgotten. Those in power had better tremble.