In one of the U.S. ruling class’s biggest swindles in history on the backs of the working class, the rulers have plundered Social Security (SS) surpluses of $2.5 TRILLION and used the swag to finance every U.S. imperialist war from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Now they want to plunder it still more.

A recent NY Times front-page article (3/24) reported that for the first time in decades the annual money being paid out in Social Security (SS) checks will exceed the amount coming in from current SS payroll taxes. It said that continuation of this trend will cause the SS Trust Fund to go broke, on “a long, slow march to insolvency.”

Already Alan Greenspan, “architect of the plan to rescue” SS 27 years ago, is saying, “When the level of the trust fund gets to zero, you have to cut benefits.” (NYT, 3/24) Actually it was Greenspan’s“rescue plan” that helped steal the $2.5 trillion from SS’s surplus.

But this is not an “SS crisis.” Rather it’s a crisis of capitalism in which the rulers try to “solve” it at the workers’ expense, both on the battlefield where working-class troops bear the brunt of the fighting and dying — while killing masses of other workers — and at home as the rulers steal from the workers to fund the killing abroad.

Johnson’s Scam to Bail Out the Vietnam War’s Budget Deficit

This huge robbery of workers’ taxes began in 1968 when the U.S. imperialist invasion of Vietnam was in high gear. The Johnson administration’s war expenditures were spinning the Federal budget into bottomless debt. Until then all SS payroll taxes were set aside by law into the SS Trust Fund, separate from the general government treasury, to pay benefits to future retirees.

By then the Trust Fund was running a surplus — its income from workers’ payroll taxes was exceeding the amount paid out to retirees. So the Johnson gang figured out a shrewd trick to “balance the budget”: “fold” the SS surplus into what would now be called the Unified Federal Budget. Never mind that it was “illegal” to spend Trust Fund monies for purposes other than Social Security. “By law, Social Security is excluded” from the budget; “in practice, it is included.” (“The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process”; Allen Schick, Brookings Institution, 1995) When it benefits the bosses, they always break their own laws.

This sleight-of-hand enabled Johnson to mask any deficit in federal spending generated by the enormous expenses of the Vietnam War. In “exchange” for stealing the SS surplus, the government would essentially give the Trust Fund paper “I-O-U’s,” notes equal to what it “loaned” from the Fund (plus interest). These notes became the “assets” of the Fund and laid the basis for what is now a $2.5 TRILLION debt owed to SS (NYT, 3/24). How it spiraled to that astronomical amount is still another story of the rich swindling the working class.

Greenspan-Reagan Plan to ‘Save’ the Baby Boomers’ Pensions Depletes Them Instead

By the early 1980s, with the Reagan administration’s military budget running wild, the federal deficit was skyrocketing. The Unified Federal Budget meant that any SS surplus — now part of this “Unified” Budget — could be used to pay for general operating expenses,  “everything from jet fighters to thumb tacks” (NY Times, 1/21/1990). So Reagan’s Greenspan Commission came up with the “solution” to save the Baby Boomer’s future pensions: jack up workers’ SS taxes.

The SS surplus began climbing sharply, recently running at $200 billion per year. “Since 1983, American workers have been paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits….So what has happened to [those trillions]? The payments have all been spent.” (NYT, 2/20/2004)

But, “If the proceeds of that tax [hike] were simply revenues for the [“Unified”] federal budget,…then the tax was nothing more than a way to increase the share of the burden borne by working people.” (“Social Security’s Future,” NY Times, 1/31/1995)

And what is now $2.5 trillion stolen from the SS surpluses has been helping to pay for the “general operating expense” of every U.S. imperialist invasion since — from Grenada to Panama to Somalia to Yugoslavia to Gulf War I to Iraq to Haiti to  Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Clinton Budget ‘Surplus’ A Mirage

These SS surpluses turned Clinton’s federal budget deficit into a ballyhooed “surplus” of $70 billion. As the NY Times then editorialized (11/9/1998), “the Government’s current budget surplus is a mirage. Last year’s budget surplus — about which both the President and the Republicans crowed incessantly — was due to a big surplus in Social Security. The rest of the budget showed a deficit of almost $30 billion.”

This highway robbery falls even more heavily on black and Latino workers. Because of centuries of inherited racist discrimination, their net worth (accumulated assets) was reported recently at one-tenth of the rest of the U.S. population. Therefore, they’re even more heavily dependent on Social Security pensions to survive any retirement years.

And with all the racist attacks on undocumented immigrants as “stealing from the economy,” the fact is that they pay SS taxes but get exactly zero SS pensions. They contribute hugely to a “Unified Federal Budget” which is then used to raid, jail and deport them while trying to cajole their youth into the military to fight and die in U.S. imperialist wars.

Actually, it was a communist-led, fiercely militant working-class movement that won Social Security for our class during the Great Depression. But it made the fatal error of not tying this fight to the one for revolution, enabling the ruling class to use its state power to whittle away and reverse hard-won gains. Today, as U.S. rulers, led by Obama, wage war abroad and destroy livelihoods at home, it’s clear they’re our class’s main enemy.

The past and coming Social Security swindle is nothing new for U.S. rulers. The bosses rob us every day of our lives, exploiting us at work while laying us off for long periods of unemployment. There’s only one way to end these horrors: building the PLP to a point where we can lead a workers’ revolution for communism, a society run by the working class that, once and for all, would smash capitalism’s exploitation, poverty, racism and wars for profit. J

War-bent Rulers’ Retirement ‘Reform’: Work Till You Die

Obama’s Afghan surge, costing $1 million per soldier per year, is gearing up for a major battle in Kandahar. Meanwhile, Social Security (SS) is starting to take in less than it pays out (see adjoining article). But according to the rulers’ Peterson Institute, “Ironically this is a good thing for America. [!] These types of problems are never dealt with politically unless the president and Congress have to. Now they do.”

This Institute boasts board members Standard Oil heir David Rockefeller, British Petroleum boss Tony Hayward, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, GM chairman and Exxon Mobil director Ed Whitacre, and Saudi billionaire Hutham Olayan.

These direct beneficiaries of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seek anti-worker “comprehensive Social Security reform, including gradual increases in the retirement age and an alteration [downward] of the benefits formula” (Peterson director C. Fred Bergsten in “Foreign Affairs,” November/December 2009). In essence, the cash-starved war-makers want workers either to die before they can collect from SS or to collect far less than they put in.

Obama Healthcare May Fall Short of Rulers’ War Needs

The rulers hope Obama’s new health plan will free up funds for their war machine but fear it won’t. Max Boot, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. rulers’ leading foreign policy think-tank, is worried “about the impact of ObamaCare on….’our’ global power. The United States currently spends… [for] ’defense’ $661 billion in fiscal year 2009….But that’s a pittance compared to what we spend on…Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid….almost 35% of the budget, compared with 17% for ‘defense.’” (Wall Street Journal, 3/25/10). Boot complains that this outlay saps U.S. rulers’ power to kill enemies. 

He warns his ruling-class masters that before they can wage the larger regional and global wars they need, they must first slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “[I]f we are looking at major threats to our global standing, we should not look at China, Iran or Russia. We have met the enemy and he is us — specifically, our ‘insatiable’ demand for entitlement spending.” Look out Social Security!



YERUCHAM, ISRAEL, March 25 — Late last year, workers at the Ackerstein factory — one of Israel’s largest construction material manufacturers — in this southern town decided to stand up and fight their boss’s terror by establishing a democratic and independent union. Their struggle culminated in a strike and occupation of the factory, demanding union recognition and a union contract. Yerucham is located in Israel’s “deep south,” where most residents are low-wage Jewish workers, as well as super-exploited Bedouins. Their multi-racial unity carried the day.

The spark igniting this conflict was management’s firing of some of the most veteran skilled workers, to increase profits. Their fellow workers felt this was totally unjust, especially since this group of workers was highly committed to the job and to their friends in the factory. This occurred amid the impoverishment and unemployment prevailing here, especially among veteran workers.

Fifteen years ago, Ackerstein workers tried to unionize as part of the state-run, phony pro-employers Histadrut union federation. But local Histadrut officials gave the organizers’ names to the bosses who then threatened to fire them if they continued to build the union. Even though Histadrut didn’t unionize the workers, they charged them membership dues.

The management forced the workers to sign an illegal contract, pledging them to avoid future unionizing attempts. The bosses blacklisted workers who led the unionizing.

The threats and terror didn’t change the ugly horrors inside the factory. The management even attempted to create a fake mask of Wallmart-style patronizing “family harmonious relations of production” between the bosses and the workers.

Beside the low wages, workplace insecurity, lack of collective bargaining and pensions, there is a critical problem of unhealthy exposure to dust and toxic chemicals which can cause cancer and respiratory diseases. The bosses refuse to recognize the dangerous health risks, denying appropriate protection for the workers.

Then the bosses forced the workers to sign another draconian and illegal contract, stating that if they became ill because of the factory’s health risks, they would not file claims against the company because they “were aware of the job’s risks.”

Due to the management threats and terror, workers began unionizing secretly.  Now, almost all the workers joined. The workers also decided democratically to affiliate their union to the new, more democratic “Workers’ Power” federation.

Ackerstein refused to recognize the union. Initially, they tried to fire the union’s leading members. This failed because of the workers’ solidarity. They then went on a short strike. Soon afterwards, management tried another divide-and-conquer tactic, but workers’ unity defeated that.

Throughout this period, the local union and the Workers’ Power federation offered to start negotiating a contract, but the boss refused to bargain.

The bosses then brought in scabs. They also began removing the machines, threatening to move the assembly lines to Eastern Europe, or even to close the entire factory.

Those threats failed to break the workers’ spirit. It only increased their motivation and militancy in defense of their union. They answered the bosses’ brutality by occupying the factory. Soon the boss changed his attitude and seemed more willing to negotiate. The solidarity from unions in neighboring factories in the industrial zone and from the working-class community of Yerucham also helped the workers to stand together in their struggle.

The successful strike forced the local court of labor affairs to recognize the union’s legitimacy and demanded management start negotiating. But management is now collaborating with Histadrut to unionize the company’s other facilities into its fake sellout unions. They intend to isolate the southern factory’s workers from the rest of the company’s work-force and install the pro-state, pro-boss Histadrut as the “official” union.

This struggle has shown how powerful the workers can be when they refuse to back down when faced with the capitalist’s attempts at coercion. But even though this was a local victory for the workers, in the long run even a strong union can’t change the ugly face of capitalism, a system based on the exploitation of workers by the ruling class. In order to guarantee the working class a decent life, occupying a factory and scaring the boss for a few hours unfortunately is not enough. We need to smash the bosses and their system once and for all, and win state power under the banner of revolutionary communism! 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, MARCH 16 — As we gathered to mourn a fallen comrade in Haiti, Janil Louis-Juste, the famous cry of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) “Wobbly” rebel Joe Hill, before the bosses executed him in 1915, came to mind. “Don’t mourn; organize!” Janil was a leader of students and faculty at the State University of Haiti in their militant 2009 campaign against cuts and in support of the Haitian workers’ struggle for a livable minimum wage.

Janil’s death was a political assassination, probably on the orders of the UN “peacekeeping” mission, MINUSTAH. He was shot by two professional killers not far from his campus on January 12, just two hours before the earthquake struck. His OCHAN, or memorial service, March 12 in the courtyard of his ruined university was strong and beautiful.

We were summoned to attention by the solemn bass drone of the LAMBI, the conch-shell trumpet used by Haitian revolutionaries in 1791 to call the slaves to revolt. A ceremonial wood fire blazed under repeated libations of rum, candles flickered in a block of lava, and poetry, music, theatre and an amazing river of words flowed powerfully for over four hours.

In this blaze of speech, mourners became organizers. Some PLP comrades and friends had been invited to speak in a gesture of international solidarity. One of us, a professor who knew Janil, paid him a personal tribute as a fighting philosopher and internationalist. Another, a Stella D’oro striker (see CHALLENGE, 9/09-7/10) from the Caribbean, recalled a revolutionary friend from his student days also shot down by the police, and called for international class unity of all workers and students to fight back against repression.

A veteran Party leader ended by saying that when the conch-shell sounded for international communist revolution, we in PLP would be there to fight alongside our sisters and brothers in Haiti. A teacher in the audience told us afterwards that these words made him want to get out of his seat and march in the streets. (Students did hit the streets immediately after the assassination, some escaping death in collapsing buildings as a result.)

Of the speeches by students, peasants, organized and unorganized workers, intellectuals and artists, more than one echoed our communist sentiments. A student MC quoted Janil: “The struggle... knows no borders.” His widow read a political essay, saying that as he had taught her the art of political writing this was her best tribute.

Janil’s death was joined to the “many thousands gone” of the old U.S. slave song, our casualties and our heroes. The heroes of the working class, “who as workers have no country,” as Marx wrote, come from all times and places and “races” and nations. The defiance with which revolutionaries greet the capitalist state that kills us broke through in call-and-response chants like: ”Camarade Janil: Présent!” and “Liberty or Death!” (the slogan of Dessalines, the Haitian slave general who defeated a Napoleonic army in 1803).

A kind of revolutionary mass education took shape at the ceremony, following Janil’s critique of bourgeois education: “Education is a trap where capital makes its pile.” One of our speakers got the most applause for saying the state university served the state, not the working class, and only a communist revolution could create real workers’ schools. Some discussed opening up “freedom schools” run by workers in place of schools closed by the earthquake.

As many said, the truest tribute is to carry on the struggle. And in the succeeding days we did so, in intense meetings with our sisters and brothers regrouping to organize in terrible circumstances. They asked us to help by putting pressure on the Haitian and U.S. governments and bosses to stop killing and jailing and firing students, faculty and workers who fight back. We agreed to raise resolutions in our unions and other organizations against this repression and to get the imperialist troops (both U.S. and UN) out of Haiti.

All PLP members and friends should bring such resolutions to their groups. They also need, rather than money or medicines and food, material political aid to help organize, such as video projectors and cameras, printers and laptops they can share, students and workers together. When you collect for this, think that you are defying Janil’s killers, proving right one speaker’s cry: “You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill the revolution!” 

PHILADELPHIA, March 29 — Communists in PLP want a world where our children are collectively nurtured regardless of the color of their skin. Racism is not human nature, but is a creation of capitalism. Racism allows the bosses to make billions in extra profits by paying lower wages to black and Latino workers, dragging down the wages of all workers. Communist revolution will get rid of the capitalist profit system that must use racism.

If that sounds like a far-fetched dream then surely the Nazi-like attacks on black working-class children in Philadelphia can show us how much that “dream” is needed.

Racist banking and real estate policies have caused housing in segregated black working-class areas to degrade until they look like a war zone. Those areas are stripped of food markets, movie theaters and safe and clean playgrounds. Black children in those areas are sent to the worst schools and then the police beat up and arrest those children when they venture out to the city areas supposedly designated for tourists and commerce.

Sounds like South African apartheid, but it’s right here in Philadelphia!

There have been four instances here since December of young black students gathering to meet their friends and see what’s going on. They use their phones and the internet to pass the word about possible happenings, then arrive and mill around looking for something fun or exciting.  The gatherings are called  flash mobs because word is quickly spread through Twitter or Facebook or mass texting. This way things are announced very quickly, in a “flash.”

There have been a few minor outbreaks of violence as the throngs congregated, but nothing to warrant calling out battalions of cops and helicopters.  However, in a city oppressed by financial collapse, foreclosures, stock gyrations and tax declines, the bosses who rule the city are worried that these gatherings of young black students will “scare” away the suburban middle class and harm city tourism.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, the main voice of the local ruling class, warned, “Visitors from the
suburbs will surely think twice before coming into Philadelphia for dinner, to shop, spend the
night in a hotel, visit a museum, or attend a live show. The same goes for tourists from other
states making travel plans this spring or summer. Not to mention organizations planning
conventions.” (Philadelphia Inquirer 3/23/10)

On March 24th, Philadelphia’s black mayor, Michael Nutter, held a press conference flanked by 36 uniformed cops plus his Police Commissioner!   His intended message to Philadelphia’s ruling class: “Don’t be alarmed.  Our tourism income is safe from rampaging black children!”  Twenty- eight of the arrested children were charged this week with felony riot and were thrown in jail.

The mother of one jailed youth was herself arrested for protesting her son’s jail sentence. “Lock me up,” Theresa Guyton demanded. ‘That’s my baby,’ she yelled …The defendant’s attorney told the judge that the family has been in and out of homeless shelters and that the teen often has to care for his younger siblings. ‘That’s the problem. That’s why you are here,’ the judge said to the weeping teen. ‘Your mother thinks of you as the man of the house…’” (Philadelphia Daily News 3/24/10)

Does this sound like racist scapegoating?  It should!  That judge and the capitalist system he represents are the REAL problem. The capitalists are the real mobsters destroying things!

Capitalism has left Philadelphia with few jobs and high unemployment (officially 10.6%). Slashed state and federal assistance has led to crumbling schools and infrastructure, declining population, severe poverty and nightly murders in the streets. The bosses’ response is to blame young black people who have few alternatives to the spontaneous get-togethers.

Decades ago the struggles against U.S. and South African racism involved and inspired millions. But because those fights did not have the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism for a classless society, racism continues to be murderous. We must respond to this racist attack on black working-class youth on our jobs, in our unions, communities, churches and schools. But this time our fight must have the goal of eliminating racism by overthrowing capitalism with communist revolution.