James Cameron’s new movie Avatar is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time. In many ways, the content of the movie is secondary. In a capitalist society it is perfectly acceptable for someone to spend $500 million making a movie that will bring in many billions of dollars, while billions of workers suffer every day. The content of the movie is important, however. The movie clearly takes place in an advanced imperialist society. A precious natural resource called unobtanium has been discovered on Pandora where the Na’vi live and the U.S. Marines attack the Na’vi for the profit of a U.S. company. Replace the Na’vi with Iraqi and Afghan workers and unobtanium with oil and the movie would be about contemporary U.S. imperialism.

Avatar has many aspects that PLP members and friends can use to further the discussion: The film depicts soldiers who turn the guns around and fight against their commanders. Importantly, however, this is not a mass, military-wide movement. Only two soldiers rebel and they make no effort to recruit other soldiers to their principled fight.  One of these two soldiers is a powerful Latina character and there is an anti-sexist message. The main female Na’vi character is a warrior who fights side-by-side with her male partner.

Toward the climax of the movie the army attacks the natives with their full force, an attack that is provoked by the unification of multiple Na’vi tribes. On screen and in real life, the unity of workers is what scares the bosses more than anything. The movie also demonstrates the futility of pacifism. The military is relentless and brutal and only by actively fighting back do the Na’vi have any hope for victory.

The movie is draped in a mysticism that gives the movie an overall pro-religious feel. There is a “Great Spirit” that connects all of the living things on Pandora. In the end, the inhabitants of Pandora rely on this Spirit to overcome the imperialist army. In other words, it is religion, not the collective might of the Na’vi that make the difference. Religion, however, is a pacifying not a liberating force for the working class. Only a militant working class, organized around communist dialectical principles, can guarantee it’s own freedom. 

CALIFORNIA — The fight against racist budget cuts is heating up in schools and colleges.  Students are growing angrier and more committed to standing up to police attacks. They are open to see that its not just bad management. Capitalism and its inevitable imperialist wars are to blame. Many are questioning a system that cuts education, health care and jobs for wider imperialist war and bailing out banks.

Union leaders and some students are trying to divert mass anger into an electoral campaign to reform the California budget process.  The liberal Vasconcellos project draws student activists to ally with “legislative, business and community leaders.”  In contrast, PLP’ers in mass organizations are building a worker-student-soldier alliance for class struggle and revolution:  “Strike against a system that can’t meet our needs and has to be destroyed!”

The call for mass action on Thursday, March 4, is spreading across the U.S.  “Save education!”  But only the Progressive Labor Party is asking the critical questions: Not only education “for whom?” but also education “for what?”

Education Conforms to
Bosses’ Needs

Public education in California has shifted rapidly to meet the bosses’ changing military and economic needs.  In the 1930s, teachers were sent to Civilian Conservation Corps camps to organize evening high schools.  Adult education grew to include 10% of California adults, providing a safety valve in an era of mass unemployment.  

During World War II, nearly a million California workers were trained for jobs in war industry.  In the 1950s, K-12 education was reorganized with a vocational- technical emphasis to serve the bosses’ need for workers with new skills.  During the economic slump of the early 1990s, K-12 shifted to college-prep, leaving “career-technical education” mainly to the community colleges.  

We are now seeing another seismic shift as the bosses prepare for World War III.  Today, as U.S. imperialism is in decline, the bosses are pushing education for the next war. But this system of mis-education, even if well-funded, can never serve the needs of the working class. 

‘Master Plan’ For Education Serves The Capitalist Masters

The California Master Plan for Higher Education (1960) responded directly to sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after Sputnik (the first satellite, launched into space by the Soviet Union in 1957).  The “first-tier” University of California was expanded mainly for war research.  For example, atom-bomb scientist Herbert York was called from Livermore Laboratory into President Eisenhower’s new Science Advisory Committee in 1957, and then to the Pentagon.  Three years later he became the first chancellor of the new UC-Irvine campus, building it up with new federal funds from NASA and DARPA (Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency).

The California State University system became “tier two,” training teachers and social workers as well as cops and others whom the bosses are fighting to win to keep the rapidly-expanding working-class in California under their control.  However, angry students in the California State University (CSU) system now facing huge cuts are fighting back. More are eager to talk about the link between the cuts, imperialist war, capitalism and communist revolution.

The “third-tier” junior colleges “guaranteed” access to higher education for everyone in what was then a 90% white population, promoting the cold-war ideology of capitalist “freedom” and “opportunity.”  New colleges (including LA Southwest and West LA Colleges) opened after the Watts rebellion, with increasing numbers of black and Latino workers filling jobs in California’s growing economy. Yet the system remained racist to the core.  “It was a sorting system for human capital management in an open society,” according to CSU Northridge provost Harold Hellenbrand. The current racist cuts are heavily affecting the schools that the majority of black and Latino students attend.

Imperialism And Ideology in
Higher Education

Today’s budget crisis — an aspect of the general crisis of capitalism — allows the capitalist class to reshape education to meet its needs as it prepares for intensified global competition and, increasingly, wider war.   Colleges starved for funds are rushing to qualify for new federal funds that are specifically directed toward workforce development. Most students will increasingly be pushed into job-training programs tailored for the employers, including some in defense aerospace. PLP has the opportunity to reach out to students in these programs with the revolutionary fight to end racist exploitation.

We shouldn’t be nostalgic for “liberal arts” programs, which serve mainly to push the bosses’ ideology. Education under capitalism teaches some useful skills and a lot of illusions! Working-class
students are made to feel that if they don’t succeed they have only themselves to blame, while the system is stacked against them. Many struggle valiantly to maintain full-time status (needed to qualify for financial aid) while working 30, 40, or more hours a week to support themselves and often their families. But more students are joining with PLP to fight against these attacks, and to join the lifelong struggle to get rid of the system based on racism, exploitation and war.

As we fight the current round of devastating budget cuts our job isn’t to “restore the luster” of capitalist education (LA Times, 12/28/09) but to fight for communist revolution that will, for the first time, let us create the educational system we need.

There is very little that is “natural” about the disaster taking place in Haiti. Like Katrina, the Tsunami and a hundred other “natural” disasters it’s imperialism – especially U. S. imperialism – that has set up Haiti’s working class for the terrible death and destruction from this earthquake.

Under capitalism PROFITS COME FIRST, and the working class that makes those profits for the bosses comes last. Building luxury tourist hotels is profitable for the bosses so they do it. Housing for poor workers is not profitable, so in Haiti hundreds of thousands of people live in shantytowns. Racist building practices have led to tens of thousands of deaths in Haiti. In a similar 7.0 earthquake in the San Francisco area in 1989 “only” 63 people died.

U. S. and European capitalists have caused this disaster in Haiti. They propped up murderous Duvalier dictators. When the Haitian workers rebelled they installed the corrupt Aristide and his successors. These bosses are only interested in cheap labor and profits from Haiti. In 1993 Disney chairman Michael Eisner made $203 million while workers sewing Mickey Mouse pajamas made 12 cents an hour. Add to this over 50% unemployment, lousy housing, and terrible health care and what you have is not a “natural” disaster but racist, capitalist and imperialist exploitation.

Right now our brothers and sisters in Haiti need our help. They need money, relief supplies, rescue and medical people. While fighting for the immediate needs of Haitian workers, we all need to build a worldwide movement that rids us of this racist, capitalist system and builds a communist world. At every workplace we must fight for working class solidarity that links our struggles here to the struggles of workers around the globe.

The U. S. Government is having trouble distributing water, but 4,700 troops arrived very quickly. They want to “control” the distribution. Meanwhile Christian right leader Pat Robertson and New York Times columnist David Brooks are already spreading vicious, racist lies. Robertson says the Haitians made a pact with the devil when they won their freedom from the French. Brooks says Haiti has a “progress-resistant culture.” The New York Times gladly prints this racist garbage. How many more “natural” disasters will it take before we see that capitalism must be buried by the working class with a communist revolution where workers run the world and racism and exploitation are banned?

Actually, contrary to the lies of Robertson, Brooks and others, Haiti has a history of rising up against oppression and inspiring the oppressed worldwide with the possibility of a better future. Our brothers and sisters in Haiti have suffered under capitalist brutality since the Spanish colonialists invaded 500 years ago, massacred the people and brought 700,000 others in chains as slaves to harvest sugar cane and coffee. After a slave revolt in 1791 defeated the colonialists, the Republic of Haiti was formed, ending chattel slavery. But the new republic copied French capitalism. As the new republic did business with the world’s bosses, they opened up the country for exploitation at the expense of Haiti’s workers. Wanting bigger profits, U. S. imperialism seized the Haitian banking system and sent in the Marines. They controlled Haiti from 1915 to 1934. After leaving the U. S. Government guaranteed continued profits by propping up vicious dictators and corrupt puppets willing to cooperate with their U. S. imperialist masters.

Now, as we strive to help our brothers and sisters, it is past time to build a communist movement that will smash capitalism once and for all.