Information: Print

CHALLENGE, October 14, 2009

Information: 14 October 2009 109 hits

Challenge October 14 2009

Stella D’Oro Struggle: One Battle in Long War vs. Capitalism

NEW YORK CITY, September 25 — “Whose jobs? Our jobs! Whose factories? Our factories!” rang out today in front of the world’s largest investment bank, Goldman Sachs, in the heart of Wall Street. Over 400 supporters of the Stella D’Oro workers came from workplaces citywide — post offices, train depots, hospitals, offices, high schools and colleges. They marched from the Goldman Sachs billionaires (who back the new owner, Lance, Inc., (see below) to City Hall where billionaire Mayor Bloomberg watches Stella close while campaigning on “promises” of more jobs.

Thousands of office and other workers saw the marchers — many organized by PLP — fill several blocks on Broadway at rush hour, shouting their anger at bosses who dump workers in the street. Stella supporters in two statewide unions, NYSUT (teachers) and NYSNA (nurses), won support resolutions phoned into the rally. Another rally is set for Friday, October 2, at 3 PM, at the plant.

But the struggle at Stella D’Oro is coming to a head and needs more than another rally. Lance plans to move production to Ashland, Ohio, where it will pay much lower wages and benefits. The Stella layoffs are slated to begin around October 9. The bakers’ union is negotiating with the old boss Brynwood, who is taking a hard line on severance pay and other serious issues. Little time remains. A union meeting is set for October 3.

The workers refused Saturday overtime last week, protesting the firing of one of their leaders on trumped-up charges. They have written a letter to the Ashland Lance workers (see p. 5) explaining what happened to them and asking for support. Last week in New York the teachers’ delegate assemblies of the UFT (K-12) and the PSC (college) greeted Stella workers with a standing ovation. They can count on growing support as they step up the fight.

The chant, “Whose factories? Our factories!” reflects an understanding of both the present and the future. In the present, we know that all value — including the Stella D’Oro factory and its machinery — has been created by the labor of workers and is rightfully ours. In the communist future, workers will run the factories and all of society ourselves, for the benefit of our class. PLP fights for the day when, as communist workers, we will treat ourselves with dignity and respect, not like we’re treated today — exploited and abused and dumped on the streets when the owners can make more money elsewhere.

The unity of black, Latino and immigrant which made the strike strong represents a model of anti-racism for our class to follow.

Other pseudo-leftists in the support committee tell the workers that we’re only fighting for their jobs. PLP disagrees. Of course we’re fighting for these jobs. But as communists we tell workers that we are fighting a war, not just a battle, a war with capitalism, not just a battle with Brynwood and Lance.

Of course you don’t win a war by losing battles. WE FIGHT TO WIN! ALWAYS! PLP will fight alongside the Stella workers 100% if they make a last stand for their jobs. But we also hear many workers asking for answers to bigger questions, many who understand they must prepare and organize now to fight the next battle and the one after that.

A Stella D’Oro worker at a workers’ meeting said, “We’ve all been infected now. Who knows where we’re all going to end up. But wherever we go, we’re going to spread PLP.” Many say they’ve learned they must fight for the whole working class, as their letter to the Ashland workers shows. Some see they need to join and build PLP in order to do that. They are supporting other workers like the cafeteria workers at Hunter College and the CUNY Research Foundation workers, both having staged walkouts last week.

Together we can raise the stakes for all workers, from fighting for crumbs from the bosses’ table to fighting for communist power to build a new egalitarian workers’ society, free of racism and imperialist war. Join us!

Rulers ‘Debate’ War: Afghanistan or Pakistan? Both Are Killers

The Obama administration’s internal debate about U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan reflects one inter-imperialist conflict within another still graver one. The first involves the struggle between U.S. and Russia over neighboring Turkmenistan’s vast energy reserves. The other is nothing less than the global dogfight for capitalist supremacy among the U.S., Europe, Russia, and China, with emerging nuclear powers Pakistan, India, and Iran in supporting roles.

Meanwhile, nuclear-armed Pakistan, with bin Laden hiding out and the potential to destabilize India, is possibly a greater threat to U.S. supremacy than exists in Afghanistan.

As CHALLENGE’s last issue pointed out, the original U.S. Afghan invasion and every surge since have aimed at securing the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline route. But questions about the project’s near-term feasibility amid fears of an Islamic fundamentalist takeover in unstable Pakistan have caused a tactical split inside the dominant imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists.

One faction bets that the influx of up to 45,000 more U.S. troops that General Stanley McChrystal calls for can guarantee TAPI. Energy strategist Gal Luft is executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a top level think-tank. Its heavy-hitting advisors include assorted former admirals and generals and warmonger Ken Pollack. In 2002, Pollack — working for the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations — wrote a book titled, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.” Luft recently urged that:

“The Obama administration should actively promote...the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline....[W]hile providing the impoverished Afghan government with a steady revenue stream in the form of transit fees... TAPI would allow Turkmenistan to sell its gas to India, enriching two U.S. allies (Afghanistan and Pakistan) rather than selling the same gas to Europe, enriching a U.S. enemy (Iran).” (International Analyst Network, 9/25/09)

Begun in the late 1990s by the Clinton administration and Unocal (now Chevron), TAPI is financed from the U.S. government-dominated Asian Development Bank.

Obama’s First Afghan Surge:
Mistaken Gamble On Supposed
Russian Weakness

But one daunting task facing U.S. rulers is prying TAPI’s sole supplier, former Soviet republic Turkmenistan, from the grip of a growing Moscow-led anti-U.S. alliance. Until recently, two-thirds of Turkmen gas exports have gone to Russia. China and Iran take most of the rest. Gas-rich Russia and Iran don’t need Turkmen supplies for their own domestic needs but use them to augment their power as regional and global energy brokers. They’re trying to copy the racket the U.S. ran throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when, more than self-sufficient in oil, it used military might to wield Saudi, Iranian, Iraqi and Kuwaiti energy sources as a worldwide imperialist weapon (with junior partner Britain’s help).

In April 2009, with gas prices falling, Russia demonstrated its physical control over Turkmen energy by closing a valve on the country’s main export pipeline, causing it to explode. Obama & Co. mistakenly interpreted this act as a lasting rift between Turkmenistan and Russia and sought to exploit it with a 21,000-troop surge to buttress the TAPI pipeline. But Russia still has the upper hand.

Knuckling under completely, Turkmen president Berdymukhamedov slavishly said, “Negotiations... [with] Russia have allowed us to resolve some technical issues related to the functioning of Central Asia-Centre pipeline.” (Industry newsletter Upstream Online (9/22/09) The latter added, “Turkmenistan needs to agree with Russia soon to avoid pressure from export revenue shortages.”

Pakistan Better Near-Range Target For Long-Term U.S. War-Makers

To oppose the “subdue-Afghanistan-now” camp, another section of U.S. imperialists has anointed a “voice of reason” spokesman — Rory Stewart, new head of the Carr Center at Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Stewart was governor of a U.S.-U.K.-occupied Iraqi province in 2004. With these credentials, he testified to Congress on September 16.

Trying to sound a phony anti-war note, Stewart said Afghan tribalism essentially made the country unwinnable but strategically worth the presence of special forces assassins: “The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer – perhaps 20,000.”

But then Stewart revealed his, and his ruling-class masters’ real target: “Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations.”

In a later interview Stewart presented his now famous feline analogy, “It’s like you’re going into a room with an angry cat and a big tiger....The angry cat is Afghanistan and the big tiger is Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear bombs. Pakistan has Bin Laden. Pakistan can destabilize India.”

Whatever course Obama and his ruling-class masters takes, it will be a disaster for our class. A drive for pipeline terrain in Afghanistan will kill tens of thousand of Afghan workers and working-class GIs. Expanding the U.S.’s semi-secret war in far more populous Pakistan will murder many more and help set the stage for World War III.

The working class has no interests in this debate among the rulers — but must organize against its consequences. We can’t stop the rulers’ wars just yet. But by building a working-class party with a revolutionary communist outlook, we shall eventually be able to crush the billionaires’ profit system and its ceaseless mass slaughter.

U. of Cal.: Need Strike vs.
War-Inspired Racist Cuts

CALIFORNIA, September 24 — Thousands of students, campus workers, staff and faculty walked out and rallied across the ten campuses of the University of California (UC) system today, in a huge worker-student alliance protesting fee hikes, worker layoffs and wage-cuts. The UC system has a budget shortfall of $813 million and is furloughing faculty, raising student fees, and firing workers, staff and part-time lecturers. Student fees rose 9.3% this quarter, and a UC Regents proposal would raise fees from 30% to 50% by the next academic year. This comes after tripling of fees in the last ten years.

Many campus workers have lost their jobs and been forced onto furloughs — a cut that further slashes their poverty wages. At these rallies PLP called for a strike against a racist capitalist system that cuts education to wage expanding imperialist wars and bail out banks.

UCLA

Around 1,000 UCLA students, faculty and university workers walked out in support of the UC-wide walkout against the system’s budget cuts.

The UC regents and state politicians claim the state’s budget crisis has forced these cuts. But in fact, they reflect the priorities of a capitalist system in crisis. Federal aid, an important source of funding for the UC system, has been slashed, like in all states. The single most important reason for this reduction is the billions upon billions U.S. rulers are spending on imperialist wars for oil in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For instance, while UCLA has closed its undergraduate writing/tutoring center because of a lack of funding, the Department of Energy has exempted military research labs like UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore from cuts. In addition to war spending, California in particular has increased spending on its state prison system at a higher rate than on public education. California erected 23 new prisons while building one new UC campus.

During the rally here, most speakers representing various unions criticized the cuts but blamed the UC regents and argued for equal distribution of the cuts among students, workers and administrators. A PL student, one of just three students the union officials allowed to speak, explained the relationship between the cuts and spending on war and fascism. He concluded that politicians are part of the problem, not the solution, seeking to shift responsibility for the crisis onto workers.

The most important gain that can emerge from this struggle is showing that students and workers have power when they unite to fight back, and that a system that cannot meet their needs must be destroyed.

When the rally moved to Murphy Hall, site of the Chancellor’s office, about 60 students broke away from the main group, eluded the cops and sat in the hallway just outside the Chancellor’s office. Several led chants, such as “UC regents, we see racists!”; and, “No cuts, No war, the cuts are for the war!”

Union reps joining the students tried to quiet them, arguing a delegation was inside negotiating with administrators. Several students refused to listen and eventually the union reps broke solidarity with the students, stating they were leaving the building, and demanding that all union workers do the same. The union had agreed not to engage in civil disobedience. After about an hour, administrators agreed to organize a meeting between the Chancellor and students and workers within a week.

Student organizers met after the events to plan another meeting to continue organizing actions against the budget cuts. There is disagreement about the type of actions and objectives. Some think the struggle should focus on pointing out that the UC system has money but has simply “mismanaged” the budget. Others argue for organizing actions that empower students and workers, understanding that the long-term objective must be communist revolution. J

More Action

On another California campus, over 700 students, workers and professors mounted a noon-time rally and speak-out backing the walkout and a one-day strike called by the University Professional and Technical Employees union. “Make the Bosses Take the Losses!” and “Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers and Students Must Unite!” were two of the chants led by a large picket line that blocked the main campus plaza. Several speakers pointed to the need to defend public education and other social services, while others explained the ways the cutbacks affected them.

Speakers declared that “anti-war” Obama and the Democratic Congress, much like Bush and the Republicans, were still funding wars for oil profits and Empire in Iraq and Afghanistan and giving trillion-dollar bailouts to predatory banks and corporations. Meanwhile workers lose their jobs and homes and social programs are gutted.

The crowd cheered when another speaker exposed Obama’s supposed “shared sacrifice” as a lie and questioned the existence of a system that wages war and bails out banks while attacking education and health care for workers and students. Still another speaker received huge applause when showing that the cuts are both racist and attack all working-class students, and that now it’s clearly rich vs. poor, with the rulers reserving the universities for the elite only.

At a later afternoon rally of about 200 students, speakers outlined the racist nature of the cutbacks, pointing out that California spends more on prisons than any other state and that by 2012 prisons will outspend education. Since the 1990s, fewer and fewer black and Latina/o youths attend the UCs, but in California the incarceration rate for young Latinas/os is twice that of white youths and six times for young African-Americans.

Students responded emotionally to workers who described the hardships they face from the cutbacks, layoffs, subcontracting and poverty wages from one of country’s richest public universities.

The workers’ picket-line militancy sparked students’ and other staff members’ anger. They loudly yelled, “The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated”; and, “Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders.” Workers led in revealing the class nature of the fight on the campuses.

CHALLENGE was recognized and warmly received by many. PLP was the only group that distributed a Spanish-language leaflet to these overwhelmingly Latina/o immigrant workers. The bilingual leaflet called for a revolutionary communist movement to end imperialist wars and the fascist attacks against workers and students. Many were happy to see PLP participating and distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES at the protests on several campuses.

The day’s events’ preparations did not lack struggle and disagreements over the nature of the cutbacks and the crisis. In prior planning meetings, arguments erupted around the day’s message. Some argued for a narrower, more specific message: “save public education, a public good.” Worried about alienating themselves from others, some feared raising the issue of the economic crisis and capitalism.

Other organizers, including several PLP members and long-time CHALLENGE readers, advocated bringing the larger capitalist crisis into the day’s actions and speeches. People were open to critiques of capitalism and the crisis, but disagreements persisted over connections to the state budget crisis, the crisis in the UCs and the larger financial crisis. The discussions were heated at times, but ultimately productive.

The speeches moved a little more to the Left than initially expected by some organizers, due to the political discussions in the planning meetings and while working on different tasks for the day’s protests.

We need to fight the cuts and widening war with the growing understanding that a racist profit system which puts the needs of the oil profiteers and capitalist bankers over the health, safety and education of the working class must be destroyed. While the faculty union leaders say we should fight for the “sanctity” of public education, this is capitalist public education, with its racism, patriotism, war research, and anti-worker ideas. Education will only serve the working class when workers take power through revolution, in a communist society dedicated to meeting the needs of the international working class.

PLP Unites Workers, Wins CHALLENGE Readers, Rebuts Union Hacks

PHILADELPHIA, September 20 — At our hospital the nurses recently attempted to organize a union. This organizing drive was part of a national campaign associated with the California Nurses Association (CNA). The CNA was the moving force in winning the law improving nurse-to-patient ratios in California. This reform victory has given the CNA a great deal of prestige among nurses and they are using this prestige to organize nurses around the United States.

The drive to organize PASNAP, the local CNA union, was part of an agreement between CNA and our Tenet Healthcare bosses who promised that they would do nothing to oppose the union campaign. The Tenet bosses’ promises proved worthless.

Bosses Attack

The capitalists followed the same dirty tactics at our hospital as they did at every other hospital where the union campaigned under the agreement. First they hired several hundred young nurses just out of school and assigned anti-union nurses to orient them to the job. Then they found a reactionary nurse educator who was technically not in management to contact the American Right to Work Committee. Through this committee she brought in a union-busting consultant to run a full-fledged anti-union campaign.

Despite all of this boss treachery, after a six month campaign the union had won a significant majority of the nurses to sign pledge cards and filed with the federal government’s National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) for an election. But on the night before and during the two days of the election the bosses called the young nurses into the head nurse’s offices on all the floors and told them that they would lose their jobs if they did not vote against the union. These threats were a violation not only of the agreement with the union but also of the National Labor Relations Act. Because of this boss treachery the union lost the election by a vote of 309 to 267. The union has filed suit with the NLRB in an attempt to overturn the results and start a new organizing campaign.

Communist Response

At the beginning of the PASNAP campaign, several black workers from 1199 SEIU — the largest healthcare union in the U.S. — asked us in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to run a competing union campaign for 1199. The argument of these black workers was that all the workers at our hospital should be in the same union because we need unity to be able to fight the hospital bosses.

PLP has a long history with our hospital’s workers and some have joined PLP and distribute CHALLENGE. Keeping in mind that all unions defend capitalism, which serves the bosses, our PLP collective recognized that the primary goals were expanding our CHALLENGE networks and bringing our base closer to joining the Party.

But in response to our base, we now had to decide whether to join the campaign on the side of PASNAP or 1199. The question was raised whether communists had an obligation to remain loyal to 1199 since this is the union that the so-called “non-skilled” and most of the black workers are in. PASNAP is modeled after racist craft unions that openly advertise themselves as “professionals” that exclude so-called “non-skilled” jobs held by many black, Latino and immigrant workers. This racist elitism is offensive to the 1199 workers.

Considering the sentiments of our base and friends, we contacted 1199. We also surveyed the nurses and found a mixed reaction to 1199. But the 1199 leadership never responded with any serious organizing efforts. All 1199 did was distribute literature portraying themselves as committed servants of the people and PASNAP as a flunky union that had entered into a sweetheart deal with the Tenet bosses. PLP has a long history of struggle against the 1199 leadership and we know both CNA and 1199 are enemy organizations. When our friends in 1199 saw the pathetic response of the union leaders, they advised us to continue with PASNAP.

Anti-Racist Victory in Long-Term Struggle

PLP is now building a unity committee — composed of both nurse union organizers and-rank-and-file 1199 workers opposed to the do-nothing 1199 leaders — that would struggle against hospital bosses and any divisive tactics initiated by the capitalist labor leaders on either side. Workers in both groups read CHALLENGE. This is a victory in itself.

PLP hopes to bring these CHALLENGE readers together into PLP to fight the racist and craft divisions that the bosses and their labor lieutenants try to force on us. We must eventually win a great number of workers skilled and unskilled to a multiracial mass movement that will overthrow capitalism and replace it with an egalitarian anti-racist communist society.

B’klyn Students Defy School Bosses, Stick It to the Fascists

BROOKLYN, NY, Sept. 24 — “These kids are amazing,” a black worker repeatedly told passers-by in his neighborhood. He was referring to a militant, multi-racial group of several hundred students who gathered outside their high school to oppose a racist, anti-gay rally by right-wing nut-jobs from the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, KS. While the Westboro crazies have only managed to recruit fifty members in over thirty years and their “rallies” rarely include more than a handful of their tiny membership, they are part of a growing trend of right-wing extremism in U.S. politics and society today.

As dangerous as their message is, however, the main danger these and other openly fascist groups pose is the way they push broader masses of workers and youth into the arms of the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class. Westboro, for instance, protests the funerals of U.S. soldiers slain in Iraq, claiming the deaths are divine punishment for supposed tolerance of homosexuality in the military. This position is so extreme that many workers, wanting to oppose the right-wing sentiments, end up taking a stance that supports the war.

The racists of the “tea party” movement aren’t mainly a threat in and of themselves, as bad as they are, because they don’t have a mass base. The worst aspect of their growth is that they move masses to rally around president Obama and the ongoing project of imperialist war and growing fascism he inherited and is expanding.

At the Brooklyn high school the administration worked hard to get students to “respond” to the WBC by ignoring their impending visit. Yet students, some who are beginning to work more with the PLP, led a campaign through their school club to reject this dangerously mistaken position by mass-producing anti-racist stickers for their peers to wear the day of the protest. When the WBC showed up after school over three hundred students, many of whom knew CHALLENGE, showed up to outnumber, outlast and drown out the handful of fascists who showed up.

The slogans the students mobilized around ranged from the plainly liberal “love don’t hate” to the sharper “reject racism” and “no free speech for racists.” The students’ defiance of the advice to ignore growing fascism represents a sure step in the right political direction and a solid basis on which to further the growth of the PLP.

The day before the racist crazies came, five students from the school went with some teachers and four Stella D’Oro workers to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Delegate Assembly (DA).

The emergency DA was scheduled to “discuss” contract demands put forward by the union’s negotiating committee. However, at the Labor Day parade the Saturday before, two PL’ers challenged the UFT president to put Stella D’Oro on the agenda, and to welcome Stella workers to the DA.

At the Assembly students distributed a PLP leaflet — and several UFT’ers distributed CHALLENGE. We won the struggle to bring the Stella workers to the stage after we had to wait for a parade of politicians to waste our time. The president of the union, Mulgrew, chairing his first DA, presented himself as a working-class guy who welcomed our class brothers to the DA. He announced that everyone should go to a Wall Street area rally later that week to demand that Stella stay in the Bronx.

On the other hand, the members of the DA know who really brought the Stella workers to the DA. We know union leaders like Mulgrew are loyal to the rulers, and the lack of any pro-student demands in the UFT contract proposal only highlights which side Mulgrew is on.

Tool Workers’ Strike Solid, But Union Relies on Bosses’ NLRB

CHICAGO, Sept. 25 — Over 70 workers at SK Hand Tools in Chicago and McCook, IL went out on strike August 25, after the company cancelled their health benefits, with no notification to the workers or the union, Teamsters Local 743. This strike has captured the attention of many workers and the media, with health care “reform” being in the national spotlight. The company also proposed to cut their wages by $4.00/hour, another 20% pay cut, and cut their vacations in half. The workers voted overwhelmingly to strike, and have maintained a 24-hour picket line ever since.

These workers, many of them on the job for 20 and 30 years, produce quality tools such as Craftsman. While the company sells them at a premium price, most of the workers make only $14 to $19 an hour. The company cuts would actually put some of them BELOW the minimum wage! All of the workers we have spoken to felt they had no choice but to strike. This struggle just proves the point that capitalism does not meet the needs of the working class as even those who have skilled jobs have no real security.The ruling class can destroy our standard of living whenever they decide it’s necessary to increase their profits.

The leaders of the union have not organized the workers to completely shut down or seize the plant, as the Republic Door and Windows strikers did last winter here. A small group of managers is coming in and out daily, trying to keep up some production. Instead the union is relying on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to decide in their favor that the company’s actions amount to “unfair labor practices.”

As we pointed out in the Stella D’oro strike, relying on the bosses’ NLRB is not the way to fight the bosses. As soon as the NLRB decided in favor of the Stella workers, the Stella bosses announced they would close the plant and move it elsewhere. Only by relying on the working class, and fighting for state power can we defeat these bosses and move toward a communist society of equality.

The SK strikers have shown tremendous resolve and fight. Many of them marched in the Immigration March in Chicago on Labor Day, and then joined the AFL-CIO Labor Day Festival in Pullman. Workers of many different nationalities, colors and unions welcomed them to both events as the heroes of the day. PLP members and friends have made some visits to the picket line, bringing food, water and our communist politics to the strikers. We need to do much more of that, both to learn from the struggle of the SK workers, and to spread our ideas through CHALLENGE newspaper of communism, anti-racism and equality.

Fascist Terror: Racist LA Cops Murder 4 Black and Latino Workers in 6 Days

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 14 — LA County Sheriffs murdered Darrick Collins, 36-year-old black father of two, in the Athens section of South LA. They were supposedly looking for two robbery suspects, but shot unarmed Darrick Collins three times in the back in his own backyard at night through a wooden gate. The fatal shot hit him in the back of the neck, the other two in the back. They later said Collins and his friend were not the suspects they sought.

There have been demands for a full investigation. Collins has a very large family and larger group of friends who are all demanding justice. Students in PLP who live near the Collins family went to the home to offer support. They were invited to the funeral, where speakers told what a good father, son and friend Darrick was. Afterwards the youth took PLP leaflets to the neighbors and some of the family members. Many expressed agreement and want more action against the killer cops.

After the racist murder got a lot of publicity Sheriff Baca announced that such “officer-involved” shootings would be investigated more rapidly. This was meant to calm the angry family and friends. A pastor at the funeral who was a skillful speaker said that black people have been lynched by the Sheriffs for generations. He said they had blood on their hands. Then he called on the mourners not to be angry at the police, but to turn to religion. But clearly hundreds of mourners at Darrick Collins’ funeral are angry and want something done.

Just six days after killing Darrick Collins, the LA County Sheriffs had killed three other men in separate incidents, bringing the total number of murders by racist cops in Los Angeles this year to 13. The cops and press claim the three men were armed. Only one of them, 17-year-old Travion Richard of Long Beach, has been named.

Only a few days later, a combination of local, state and Federal police agencies brought 1,200 cops to carry out a gang sweep in northwest LA, arresting 88 people. This show of force by the LAPD, DEA and other agencies, along with the brutal murders of Darrick Collins, Travion Richard, and the other two men are part of the racist terror that goes hand in hand with cuts in services, skyrocketing racist unemployment, cuts in education and health care, and widening imperialist war.

Fascism doesn’t start full-blown but develops one small step at a time. In Los Angeles this year we’ve seen a whole series of steps that add up to a big jump in fascist conditions. PLP has been organizing against the budget cuts in the UC system and the fascist reorganization of the schools. We will continue organizing students and workers to protest these racist murders and the capitalist system that must rely more and more on racist terror and fascism both at work and in the streets. Fascism is a double-edged sword. With revolutionary leadership, anger, deep hatred of the capitalist system, and the need to get rid of it will overcome both fear and cynicism and build the movement that will lead to a communist revolution where workers’ power will put an end to the murdering fascist bosses once and for all.

El Salvador FMLN’s Capitalist ‘Reform’:
Mass Unemployment, Daily Killings, $1-a-Day ‘Wages’

El SALVADOR — “To us, the right-wing position of Funes and his FMLN government hasn’t been a surprise. CHALLENGE wrote about this possibility” said a comrade in a meeting. Another affirmed, “we should cut out all the articles from CHALLENGE about Mauricio Funes, the FMLN and it’s capitalist program of reforms applied by the Arena government (“solidarity network,” the credit card law, etc) to show workers who had illusions in change that we were right when we criticized Funes and the FMLN.”

Ramon Diaz Bach, member of the Central Civic Movement, has said that the Funes capitalist model has failed. “Continuing to insist on a failed model is dangerous for the country.” Bach lamented that despite the failure of the capitalist model, Funes is not showing signs of change. (Diario CoLatino, 08/08). Diaz Bach is a social Christian liberal, ex-director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industries of El Salvador and ex-Vice Minister of Economy (1984) during the administration of the Christian Democratic Party. Today he is a prominent member of the leadership of the FMLN, which wants liberal changes and small reforms, amidst world-wide capitalism in a severe economic crisis, because he’s afraid that the worker-peasant-student masses will seek a real communist change.

In the Funes government and the FMLN, in spite of the promises of change, criminality continues. There are daily killings all over the country. An average of 12-14 people killed every day shows the failure of the capitalist system to give the working class a secure life. The farm workers continue surviving on $1 a day. Unemployment from layoffs this year alone number 55,000 workers thrown out into the street, who join the army of hundreds of thousands who are looking for jobs that don’t exist. Additionally, family remittances from the U.S. have decreased by 10% compared to a year ago.

The illusion that things have improved is confronted with the harsh reality of more of the same. Many of our friends still say that this isn’t the Funes that they knew, who confronted power, who put government functionaries on the spot. But we shouldn’t forget that Funes was never, nor will ever be a communist. His critique and bravery were liberal-reformist. He was always a defender of capitalism, supposedly “democratic”. That was his limit.

The ferocious right wing Arenas Party, brutal in its repression, now shows itself to be so understanding that the government investigator Mitofsky says Funes has the support of more than 80% of the population. He says they are full of hope for the new government “of the left.” Now, the capitalist media even praises Funes. “If the bosses’ press, like Prensa Grafica, TCS, and others accept him, something’s wrong,” stated a worker.

The bosses’ system will not be destroyed though the voting booths. Elections maintain the capitalist system and we must fight against them. The electoral parties and opportunists want to trap the working class in elections. Our mission is to get our class out of this trap, and our most powerful weapons are to fight back against the bosses’ murderous attacks and build more groups of CHALLENGE readers and sellers.

Hundreds of workers demand their CHALLENGE newspaper. Study groups are spreading around the country and Central America. Some comrades who for years have distributed our literature are asking for more CHALLENGES. The cadre schools are being organized and prepared by experienced PLP comrades. The topic of contradiction between the bosses’ system and the workers’ system (communism) is discussed in these meetings with the seriousness that the working class demands. Our uphill battle continues its march.

Stella Strikers’ Open Letter to Ohio Workers

The Stella D’oro strikers have asked CHALLENGE to print excerpts from an open letter from Stella D’oro Workers in the Bronx to Lance Workers in Ashland, Ohio:

Dear Workers at Lance:

We work at the Stella D’Oro bakery in the Bronx in NYC. Many of us have worked for the company for as many as 30 years.

In 2006, a private equity firm, Brynwood Partners, bought Stella D’Oro to squeeze out a higher rate of profit for its investors. In 2008, Brynwood’s demanded that the assembly line workers accept a 25% wage-cut, as well as a reduction in health benefits, sick days and vacation time. Our union offered to negotiate but Brynwood said, “Take it or leave it,” and imposed the new terms.

Lance managers will tell you that we were greedy. But how could we accept a 25% wage-cut? Our rents and mortgages weren’t going to be reduced, nor were food prices, or college tuition payments for our children! It was the greed of the multi-millionaires who run Brynwood Partners that forced us to strike.

For eleven months we existed on unemployment insurance, but not a single person crossed the picket line. Then word of our struggle began reaching people throughout the city. Transit workers, teachers and professors, postal workers, students and others came to our picket line. Thousands came to plant rallies, union members throughout the state donated money to support us, and thousands of customers refused to buy Stella D’Oro products during the strike.

At the end of June, the NLRB ruled that the company had to take us back and bargain in good faith. We thought we had won. But only a few days later, Brynwood announced that it planned to close the plant in October, in a city with 10% unemployment.

You know what happened: Brynwood sold the Stella D’Oro name and plant machinery to Lance, which plans to make some of its products in Ashland. We know that unemployment is high in Ohio, as companies have moved better-paying jobs to low-wage areas. That’s what Lance is doing here! It has no intention of giving you the same wages and benefits we had won through years of struggle. It will pay you a fraction of our hourly wage, give you an inferior health plan, and provide fewer sick days and vacation time. And we bet it won’t bring all 135 jobs to Ashland, just as it didn’t rehire all the unemployed Archway workers when it took over your bakery.

We want you to know that we don’t blame you for what’s happening. We also want you to know that we’re not going down without a fight. We can’t afford to lose our jobs. There will be rallies throughout NYC demanding that Stella D’Oro stay in the Bronx.

The owners want to keep us separate, pit the Ashland and Bronx workers against each other. But every gain for labor has come when working people united and fought together for things they needed: a shorter work-week, pensions, health care, social security. In these rough times, our unity is more important than ever. We ask you to understand our position and offer whatever solidarity you can.

LETTERS

Salvador ‘Left’ Pro-Capitalist

What irony that the contingent of the fighters from El Salvador’s FMLN, which is today a political electoral party, can’t use the word “revolution” in their meetings and street actions. They are left with the populist “change,” an infamous ruse to fool and mislead the working-class masses from El Salvador to China. I was a member of the FMLN. Thanks to PLP, I’ve been rescued from the claws of capitalism.

Today I can see a party which claims to be leftist accommodate and adapt itself to a profit system where the bosses don’t care how much blood has been spilled or struggle waged, and to fall into state capitalism. During the 1980’s the Salvadoran Communist Party joined the FMLN. This organization still exists and is very well known for worshiping and praising capitalism. What real communist ideas could this party present to us? If they currently quarrel among themselves, it’s a fight over positions inside the FMLN. We shouldn’t be fooled by these sellouts.

We are internationalists. We hear Latin American leftists talk and I ask myself, “What left?” There isn’t one, and that’s why indigenous slavery continues, as well as wage slavery. These nationalist “leftist” groups have made us accommodate for centuries to the bourgeoisie when they are our enemy, those who we have to destroy. That’s why in El Salvador’s PLP we’re fighting for communism, so that the working class sees the light of a new world.

Recently, ex-fighters, refugees of the FMLN, met in Sweden with the goal of founding the Communist Party of Sweden. We communists of PLP don’t go around founding parties based on nations, because we want one world, one class without borders, without the disgrace of money, without racism or races. We don’t want a different party in each country. The nationalist parties divide the working class and that’s why there’s not enough working-class unity. We fight for the slogan “One class, one international party, one fight for communism.” PLPers continue to organize the red army.

A Red Comrade

Need More Info on LA Fight

In the last CHALLENGE (9/30), the page 3 article “Call for Teachers’ Strike vs. Fascist School Reform,” is a scathing attack on L.A. school reform, but not much of what we are doing about it. PLP has been active there for some time, with some of our most committed cadre. But this reads more like a leaflet that might have been distributed at the meeting. We, as readers, need more information about what actions they are organizing.

For example, it says that some teachers called for a strike at an area union meeting. How? Did they make a resolution? Did they give out a flier? Did it get discussed and/or voted on? What was the response of the union leaders? How did they take them on in the meeting? What was the response of other teachers? How are they working in the union to spread these ideas? How are they answering questions teachers have? How much support is there? How are they building a base for PLP?

The article closes by saying that “a trade union response is totally inadequate,” and “PLP calls...[for a] strike...based on expanding CHALLENGE networks...” Are they expanding? If so, tell us how so we can follow that example. If not, what are the obstacles? The formulation makes it sound like PLP is trying to organize a strike led by us and our base, outside the unions and other mass organizations. If so, that would be a big mistake.

Unions and other mass organizations are reform groups, even if we lead them. The same is true for strikes at Stella D’Oro and Boeing, or job actions against transit workers getting killed in Washington, DC. But if we are not in the thick of these struggles, fighting for our communist outlook and trying to lead workers in sharper more militant actions, we will just be spinning our wheels.

The fake-left Trotskyite groups are always “calling” for a General Strike, or demanding the union leaders do something. But they are not the least bit interested in making anything happen. They attack PLP for “working with the liberals” because we are active in our unions. We shouldn’t make their same mistake.

The revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin said that by fighting for the political leadership of the workers and leading class struggle, unions could become “schools for communism.” The founder of scientific communism, Karl Marx, said that workers would have to wage 50 years of class struggle in order to be fit to rule. By fighting shoulder to shoulder with workers within mass organizations, we can expand the circulation of CHALLENGE and the size and influence of PLP.

A Chicago Comrade

Criticizes Slavery Graphic

In the Sept. 30, 2009 issue of CHALLENGE, the article on the upcoming commemoration of the Harper’s Ferry raid is illustrated with a 19th-century engraving of a slave rebellion. This picture is pro-slavery propaganda. It portrays the slaves as half-naked “savages,” whereas the “civilized” slave-owners are all fully-clothed. The slaves are shown barbarically exterminating an entire family: the mother lies dying in the foreground; on the right, a slave is about to saber a girl, while on the left another is about to club a little boy to death. Both children have their hands raised in an appeal for mercy. This sort of propaganda was used to persuade white people in the South and North that they had to support the slave-owners because slavery was the only way to prevent black people from massacring everyone. I think it was a mistake to use this pro-slavery propaganda to illustrate an anti-slavery article.

A friend

Workers Unite to Battle Racist School Closings

Hundreds of black, Latino and white workers rose in unison, fists pumping, to chant “RESIGN NOW” and “NO SCHOOL CLOSINGS” at the entirely black and Latino school board of a southern city during a mass community meeting. Roused by speeches of anti-racist community activists and friends of PL, more than a thousand people, led by black workers, forced the school bosses and their hand-picked “community” advisory committee to cower in their seats.

This was the sixth in a series of meetings to let the community blow off steam regarding the proposed closings of a third of the city’s public schools, including the only high school in the historically black East Side. But school bosses underestimated the intelligence and anger of the working class. Over the course of earlier meetings, workers exposed and challenged the school board’s effort to pit neighborhood against neighborhood, Latinos against blacks, by letting the “community” pick among alternate plans, each one cutting someone else’s schools.

At an earlier meeting, a speaker exposed the fascist war machine’s goal to turn schools into jails. At every meeting, a Latina woman who had led struggles against school closings two years earlier, challenged the district’s history of divide and conquer. She pointed out that even neighborhoods not under direct attack would be harmed by overcrowding and the threat of future school closures. At the third meeting a school teacher finally labeled the board’s actions for what they were: RACISM! A gasp was heard from the hundreds at that meeting.

Activists from groups including PTAs and opponents of earlier school closings, returned repeatedly to community meetings to fight back and reject the call that working-class parents and students pick their own poison. Organizers circulated petitions, went door-to-door and spoke in churches to bring workers to protest school closings. Parents repeatedly defied commands to limit comments and to choose one of the proposals for school closings.

Following these meetings, the superintendent suggested he would delay closing high schools in the areas of the greatest protest, though many other schools will be shuttered. But there is a contradiction embedded in thinking this a victory and even in the chant “Resign Now!” Hundreds of the most militant anti-closing fighters believe that the hiring of a new superintendent or the election of “better” school board members will allow power to be shared and bring long-lasting improvement. In fact, some honest community activists served on the task force that created the school closing plans out of a desire to create a fairer district. As they worked under the direction of hired experts to frame school closings and to meet funding cuts that economic crisis and war brought, they were used to provide cover for the ruler’s exercise of state power.

Despite hating the superintendent and his plan, many do not realize that the real rulers, the capitalist class, are using the layers of elected and appointed community members of all “races” to create the illusion that real, permanent reform and improvement is possible. A new superintendent will not change the ruling class’s need to cut school funding in the face of economic crisis and war. The rulers never share power. Right now, their needs to bail out the banks and to continue oil war in the Middle East mean the rulers have to reduce education, lay people off and foreclose houses.

In numerous discussions since then, the points raised by communists and their friends hope to move the discussion from the specific reform plans proposed by the bosses to the context of system-wide crisis that spawned these reforms. These discussions are urgent because capitalism cannot be reformed — it must be destroyed and replaced with a system run for and by the working class of the entire world. As we deepen our understanding and win more friends, we can also develop plans for even more militant actions, like walk-outs in schools or occupations of school board offices, which would help us learn even more and become better fighters for revolution.

The rulers’ plans depend on racist and fascist attacks on working-class people. But the rulers sometimes underestimate the power of the working class to learn from experience and from communist leadership — even in a short reform battle that likely cannot be won. This power of the working class is also very weakly understood by the workers themselves nowadays. But participating in these battles and making friends for the lifetime battle for communist revolution strengthens our class’ understanding of its power and the ability of PL to grow and guide the working class to revolution.

LA School Compact ‘Racist attack on students...’

LOS ANGELES, September 22 — An emergency informational teachers’ union meeting here discussed a proposed “Compact” between the union, the LA Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor, the Universities and the Schools Board. If this “Compact” passes, the union leadership will be enforcing the education reform agenda of the main section of the ruling class to reorganize schools on the cheap for the bosses.

The Compact would expand so-called peer review, determine No Child Left Behind intervention, expand charter and “iDesign” schools (where the teachers partner with a corporation to compete with charters and end up unwittingly helping do the bosses’ job for them). The goal is to make the school system cheaper and more adept at teaching minimum levels of math and English with lots of patriotism so students join the military and/or work in war plants for low wages.

When a comrade roundly condemned the Compact, he was heartily applauded by the teachers. He declared: “I’m a communist, not a democrat or a socialist. Socialists can’t make up their minds. This LA Compact that our leadership has brought us is a racist attack on our students. The fact that this union’s leadership would work with the Mayor, the School Board and the Chamber of Commerce on this should tell us it’s not in our interests.

“This Compact comes in the context of capitalist crisis and widening war. It represents a fascist reorganization of public education to meet the needs of the rulers, not our students. Fascism comes through dividing the working class and attacking one section more fiercely, and through racism. Our students are mainly black and Latino. The bosses are cutting education and health budgets but not the war budget. We must fight these attacks, including those on substitute teachers, with a united strike.”

PLP showed that the whole “compact” is a fascist assault on students and teachers. Others opposed the compact for each individual attack but concluded that it could be okay if it didn’t take away from “community organizing.” Our comrade argued that during an era-defining economic crisis and two wars, collaboration between the union leadership and the bosses would attack the students, on the road to fascism. He called on teachers to oppose the social-democrat/social-fascist union leadership and build for mass actions towards a political strike against the Compact, the cuts and the war.

Reformism A Trap to Maintain Bosses’ Power

MEXICO — In recent years, many very militant movements have arisen, producing problems for the ruling class. These include the mass struggle of APPO and teachers in Oaxaca; the miners in Pasta de Conchos in the state of Coahuila; the peasants in San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico; as well as the very militant movements of the Ford workers, and the recent struggle among the taxi drivers who put the transportation bosses in check (including the local government).

All this demonstrates the immense potential of the working class. However, it also shows a lack of sufficient organization and above all the understanding that to truly liberate ourselves from the bosses’ yoke, we will have to struggle for a real communist revolution.

In these struggles we’ve fought for crumbs, even though workers made the whole cake. No sooner do we win small wage increases (reforms), they take them away by raising prices on basic products, speed-up, layoffs and even jailings and death. We need to take the means of production away from the bosses. We don’t need them because we’re the ones who produce everything. Yet the bosses live like kings without working.

If we fight under the bosses’ laws, we’ve already lost, since capitalism’s laws are designed to protect the interests of capital. When someone goes against the bosses’ interests, we’re repressed by the bosses’ police and sentenced in the bosses’ courts, accused of “terrorism,” drug trafficking or whatever other crime they can invent.

Government branches that supposedly “defend” workers’ interests — the Department of Labor, the Congress of Labor, human rights groups, etc. — are regulated by the capitalists’ government. We workers will always lose under the bosses’ laws; all our efforts get turned around.

Given the treadmill of reform, the working class needs to build a long-term struggle — participating in reform struggles but understanding that workers need to be politicized and consciously see the nature of the reform struggle, to understand how capitalism functions. We must primarily recognize that racism, nationalism, sexism and religion are ideological tools manufactured and used by the ruling class to keep dividing our class and subject us to the bosses’ interests.

Even if momentarily we win some crumbs from the bosses, as the taxi drivers here who formed a cooperative, sooner or later the bosses and their government will end up controlling the movement through their laws, or corrupting the leadership as has been the case in other movements.

It’s not that we distrust these workers, but it’s our obligation as a Party to warn about how
capitalism functions. Such analyses can prevent the capitalist system from co-opting us, from allying ourselves with one or another branch of the ruling class, which doesn’t help our class in any way.

As we participate in these class struggles, we workers must make our main priority building the Progressive Labor Party, with mass CHALLENGE networks, so that we can continue giving leadership to the international working class. Our goal is building a communist society that liberates us forever from all the misery of capitalism.

Red Eye on the News

Back Afghan pipeline, US backs you

Pythian Press, 8/29 — Through the years power in [Afghanistan and Pakistan]... has switched back and forth with our being on whichever side suited us at the moment. At different times we have supported groups including Osama bin Laden, a Saudi and our current sworn enemy....

It is suspected that our allegiance is largely to whoever is supporting an oil line from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan to a Pakistan port.

Moore: Voting will cure capitalism

NYT, 9/23 — In the end, what is to be done? After watching “Capitalism,” it beats me. Mr. Moore doesn’t have any real answers.... This isn’t the story of capitalism as conceived by Karl Marx... and it certainly isn’t the story of contemporary American capitalism, which extends across the globe and far beyond Mr. Moore’s sightlines.

Neither is it an effective call to action: Mr. Moore would like us to vote, which suggests a startling faith in the possibilities of social change in the current political system.

Cuba honors black rebel’s demise

NYT, 9/13 — A bricklayer who began working at age 11, Mr. Almeida was the only black commander among rebel leaders. He was one of the most important and decisive voices in the battle to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista....

Mr. Almeida, the Castro brothers and Ernesto Guevara, and Argentine known as Che, were among only 16 who survived the landing, in which most of the rebels were killed by government troops.

“No one here gives up!” Mr. Almeida shouted to Guevara at the time, giving the Cuban revolution one of its most lasting slogans and ensuring his place in Cuban Communist history....

He was a member of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Central Committee since its creation in 1965.

Afghan women see little liberation

LAT, 8/23 — “Liberating the women of Afghanistan” was often cited as one of the reasons to seek “regime change.” More than seven years later, however, the situation for Afghan women remains dire....

Educational gains plummet when girls hit secondary school, with just 4 percent of female students reaching 10th grade. Violence against women is endemic; women in public life are regularly threatened, and several have been assassinated.

Things got much worse recently when President Hamid Karzai officially promulgated legislation that would make the Taliban proud. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern....

The Kabul government and its backers are supposed to be different from the people they are fighting. Yet with regard to women’s rights, Afghans might conclude that there isn’t as much difference between the two as they had hoped.

What Afghan ‘win’ really means

Tribune Media Svc., 9/5 — ...Geocorporate interests control international relations....

[US] leaders... assume the mindset and agenda of those anonymous interests. In Afghanistan, this agenda includes [US] regional dominance [and] the flow of oil (the pipeline).... This is what “winning” in Afghanistan really means...

System ranks profits over health

NYT, 9/10 — ...Reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system....

There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry....

It’s more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

Russian energy clout breeds conflict

GW, 9/18 — Russia’s stranglehold over dwindling global energy resources was dramatically confirmed last week when figures showed that the country has become the world’s biggest exporter of oil, producing almost 10m barrels a day in August, according to the International Energy Agency.

Russian production toppled Saudi Arabia from the number one spot. It is already the world’s largest exporter of gas, and supplies around a third of the European Union’s consumption.

The news is likely to heighten unease... over the Kremlin’s tightening grip on energy reserves....

“The question is will Russia want to exploit its feeling of superiority and demand a seat not just at the table but at the head of the table.”

Pfizer drug sales ‘endangered lives’

GW, 9/11 — Pfizer had been charged with mispromoting medicines and paying kickbacks to doctors.

Pfizer pleaded guilty to... promoting a drug for uses that were not approved by medical regulators....

A Pfizer sales representative in Florida... blew the whistle....

“At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives. I couldn’t do that...”

Lesson of Harper’s Ferry Raid
Working-Class Violence: A Key to Revolution

In mobilizing the October 17 Harper’s Ferry march to commemorate the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid and to finish the job, two keys to revolutionary change stand out: revolutionary violence and multi-racial unity.

Revolutionary Violence

The government of a capitalist society enforces the exploitative and racist oppression of the working class by any means necessary, including violence by the cops at home and the military abroad. The capitalist state asserts a monopoly on the right to use violence, and uses it whenever workers and rebels threaten the bosses’ rule — on picket lines, in community rebellions against racism or in insurrections threatening bosses’ investments worldwide. The working class has no choice but to meet this capitalist violence with organized mass violence of its own. Failure to do so guarantees defeat.

Consider the Garrisonian abolitionists in the 1830s and ‘40s. They felt that with “moral suasion” slave-owners would eventually surrender their slaves. But “morality” will never trump the economic advantage of exploitation by elite classes, be they slaveholders or capitalists. The battle in Kansas (see CHALLENGE, 9/30) and the raid on Harper’s Ferry brought home that truth, and the ensuing Civil War demonstrated most certainly that only great violence could end the exploitation of chattel slavery.

Slavery was violence. The capture in Africa, the leg irons and imprisonment of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic on slave ships, the whip of the overseers to enforce interminable backbreaking work, and the master’s branding iron, jail cell and noose maintained slavery. The federal government guaranteed the legitimacy of this daily violence in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution and supporting laws, and used its armed might against both Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion and the 1859 Harper’s Ferry Raid.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 restated the Constitution’s provision making it illegal to aid escaped slaves but now required citizens of Northern states to actively assist their recapture whenever asked by private slave-catchers and/or federal marshals. Refusing to help could mean six months in prison or a $1,000 fine, even if the person seized had never been a slave at all! No trial by jury was allowed in such cases, since Northern juries would not generally convict someone who opposed slavery. No supposedly escaped slave could ever testify.

The 1857 Dred Scott Decision deepened this tyranny. The Supreme Court ruled that no black person, slave or free, was a U.S. citizen and had no right to bring a case to court. This essentially legalized slavery nation-wide and officially endorsed racist doctrine.

Racist Laws Still Exist

Similar practices continue today! The U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staffs checkpoints on roads leading north from Mexico (sometimes hundreds of miles above the border), randomly stopping and searching vehicles, particularly those containing people who “look Latino.” Those who cannot prove their citizenship or produce documents showing they’re legally in the country are jailed and deported. ICE has employed similar tactics in raids on factories, movie theaters and wherever Latino workers are concentrated.

Similarly, the police beat and kill African American and Latino workers with impunity across the country. No jury trial for them, just cops acting as judge, jury and executioner! Killer cops are rarely indicted and virtually never convicted. Such state terrorism is designed to keep workers docile, divided and intimidated, echoing chattel slavery.

And so our class faces a violent, mighty foe. We must not shrink from what must be done today, organizing in factories, in the military and on campuses, not merely to resist but to turn the guns around on the world’s most violent ruling class. But such violence must be based in the masses.

Consider John Brown’s trip east after the January 1859 battle in Kansas. During this journey, his band of 15 helped 11 slaves escape and confronted and defeated 60 government soldiers trying to capture them. He fought and moved about with confidence since thousands of anti-slavery activists backed him wherever he went. In fact, when the Kansas governor demanded, via telegraph, that the U.S. Marshal at Springdale “capture John Brown, dead or alive,” the marshal responded with great irony, “If I try to capture John Brown, it’ll be dead, and I’ll be the one...dead!”

Similarly, Brown boldly declared that since President Buchanan had offered $250 for his capture, Brown would give $2.50 for the safe delivery of James Buchanan’s body.

A massive, militant anti-slavery movement existed, powerful enough to markedly limit federal government action. It had grown from the thousands who escaped from slavery and from their supporters. John Brown did not march on Harper’s Ferry to create a movement, but to put that movement on the offensive, just as he’d done in Kansas.

The Progressive Labor Party has mobilized against hundreds of demonstrations and attacks by the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and Minutemen. Only the presence of hundreds of cops prevented the fascists from being torn apart by anti-racist fighters led by PLP. Similarly, it was only the power of the federal government to enforce laws that protected the slave-owners from being crushed by enslaved workers and their allies.

As the communist movement grows once again, we must prepare to defeat ruling-class violence with mass, working-class violence that sweeps away all capitalist institutions and bosses. Nothing short of this will enable us to rebuild a society based on equality, collectivity and sensible management of the planet’s resources for the needs of the working class, now and in the future.

(Next issue: The Importance of Multi-Racial Unity)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, September 30, 2009

Information: 30 September 2009 108 hits

Follow Stella D’Oro Workers’ Lead Against Rulers’ Attacks: ‘Make the Bosses Take the Losses’

Oil $$$ Put U.S. Rulers in Iraq for the Long Haul

Howard U. Students, Workers Unite vs. Job and Service Cuts

Call for Teachers’ Strike vs. Fascist School Reform

Workers in Honduras, El Salvador Unite vs. Coup Bosses’ Attacks

Paraguay: Lugo Talks ‘Left’ but Intensifies Capitalist Exploitation

Bosses’ Education Reform: Use Schools to Strengthen Profit System

LETTERS

Joblessness ‘Recruits’ Workers on Both Sides of Bosses’ War

Eyewitness to NATO Afghan Slaughter

Reject Capitalist Ideas

Sotomayor As Judge Can Only Take Rulers’ Side

Book Reviews: Global Warming: Only Communism Can Save the Planet, Not Capitalist Schemes

Obama’s Afghan War Crucial to U.S. Bosses’ Global Control

Red Eye on the News

Teenagers bumped down, jobless
A raw health deal for immigrants
For profit, cheat the low-wagers
Paul Robeson, noble anti-capitalist
In poorest areas, sick dial 911
US drove Sioux off sacred mount
Insiders dumping their own stocks

Harper’s Ferry Raid Shows: Rely on the Masses to Change the World

Follow Stella D’Oro Workers’ Lead Against Rulers’ Attacks:

‘Make the Bosses Take the Losses’

NEW YORK CITY, September 12 — Stella D’Oro bosses told its workers this week that they will be thrown on the street and that their bakery will be closed — the brand and some machinery having been sold to Lance, a non-union company. It will make the products at a bakery in Ashland, Ohio.

Stella workers, having struck for 11 months in a fiercely militant struggle against wage-cuts, descended with their supporters on the otherwise silent Labor Day parade today. Their contingent of 350 filled a city block with banners, signs, and chants of “Keep Stella in the Bronx: Fight, Fight, Fight!” and “The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated.” Cleaners from Domestic Workers United and musicians from the Rude Mechanicals group made the chanters’ rhythms dance and sparkle.

The effect on workers marching past was electric. Eyes brightened, fists went up, the booming chants echoed from scores of marchers, especially the many ranks of construction workers walking behind or riding on their heavy rigs. Imagine those rigs surrounding the Stella plant, preventing any machines being moved out!

“Keep Stella in the Bronx” struck a real chord with New York workers who identify the Bronx as a working-class borough. If they didn’t know about the Stella struggle, they do now.

PLP’s Stella supporters helped build the action from within our own unions and mass organizations, and continued the flow of CHALLENGE sales and chants like, “Kick the Bosses in the Ass: Power to the Working Class;” and “Make the Bosses Take the Losses: Keep Stella Open.” PL’ers added the chant, “Whose Factory? Our Factory!” which attacks the essence of capitalism, and the internationalist chant in Spanish, “From north to south, from east to west, we’ll win the battle, whatever the cost.”

The workers are planning a September 25 march and rally from Wall Street, site of Lance’s banker, Goldman Sachs, to City Hall. PLP members are backing the workers as they absorb this heavy blow, helping them contact the Ashland workers to explain what happened here, and planning how to fight for their jobs.

The bosses’ laws protect their ownership of the means of production, enabling them to move around assets indiscriminately without any thought about the effect on workers. None of us is safe under their rule. The Communist Manifesto described this inevitable destructive effect of capitalism back in 1848: “Everything solid melts into air.”

But workers inevitably resist being discarded like a bad batch of cookies. We’re learning from such battles that the real war is against capitalism itself, and that our international revolutionary party can create an alternative, a communist society where workers rule and share all the value we produce. But for that to happen, we must melt capitalism into the air.

These are days of hard political debate and soul-searching struggle among the Stella workers themselves. Their communist party, the PLP, is among them with practical help and unbreakable friendships, with the ideas of CHALLENGE, and with trust in the working class.

It is workers such as this dynamic international group at a small Bronx bakery who will help make PLP a mass party able to destroy the whole rotten system.

Oil $$$ Put U.S. Rulers in Iraq for the Long Haul

Most everyone has come to understand that the U.S. rulers’ invasion of Iraq was all about oil. But not even the oil barons knew just how much was up for grabs. Now it’s revealed that Barack Obama has 8.2 million reasons not to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq anytime soon. That’s how many barrels of oil companies like Exxon Mobil claim they can pump every day — if it ever becomes safe for them to operate there.

Stunning production targets emerging from Iraq’s ongoing oilfield licensing talks with major firms put it on a strategic par with oil kingpin Saudi Arabia. The rising stakes underlie the recent upsurge in Iraqi factional violence and guarantee not only a permanent U.S. military occupation but future deadly “surges” to help Exxon & Co. realize their goal. Production today stagnates around 2.3 million barrels a day (mbd).

Invading Iraq was the brainchild of U.S. Big Oil. Occupation plans took shape in a high-level joint project of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the James A. Baker Institute, imperialist think-tanks both closely linked to Exxon Mobil and J.P. Morgan Chase. Just before the 2003 invasion, the CFR-Baker cabal issued a report, “Iraq: The Day After,” promising that “U.S. and allied military forces will quickly occupy, control, and protect oil fields” in order to “achieve more significant increases — say, to 6 mbd by 2010.”

When the Bushites bungled the invasion by sending too few troops, the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists blamed renegade neo-cons like Cheney and Rumsfeld for launching a misguided “war of choice.” But U.S. imperialists cannot afford to walk away from the 8 mbd windfall that new technology makes possible.

Saudi Rulers Unreliable Allies for U.S. Rulers

Controlling 8 mbd of Iraqi crude would sharply reduce U.S. dependence on shaky Saudi Arabia as the world’s sole “swing producer,” meaning a country having enough spare capacity to adjust production in an economic or military crisis.

But Saudi royals rule a powder keg. Though they profit from the most lucrative long-term deal in capitalism’s history, serving as Exxon’s biggest oil supplier, their 30 million subjects receive nothing from this bonanza. They sympathize more with al Qaeda and Hamas than with Washington. Prince Turki al-Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence, in an op-ed piece in the NY Times (9/13/09), said it would be unwise for his country to normalize diplomatic relations with U.S. ally Israel. The prince fears that Saudi workers’ anger at Israel’s concentration-camp treatment of Palestinians may dethrone his oily dynasty.

So Exxon Mobil-led groups have bids in for 6.3 mbd, or almost four-fifths of Iraq’s potential [See Table]. Meanwhile the U.S. war machine remains ever poised to invade Saudi Arabia to prop up its ruling princes if the masses were to rebel. The Pentagon has massive bases to the north (Iraq), to the east (Bahrain and Qatar), to the west (Djibouti) and to the south (Diego Garcia).

However, Exxon & Co. shouldn’t start counting their Iraqi chickens just yet. Iraq still has no national law governing oil contracts. And no sooner had Iraq held its first oilfield auction in June, “the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government condemned it as unconstitutional.” (Energy Intelligence, 9/7/09)

More ‘Surges’ On The Agenda?

Fighting among rival Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and attacks on U.S. bases have intensified since the oil projects were revealed. The NY Times (9/13/09) suggests that U.S. troops may have to seize the streets again: “After the withdrawal of most American combat forces from Iraq’s cities on June 30, violence has remained a constant, with attackers able to plant and detonate bombs....seemingly with impunity.”

U.S. rulers and their allies are ready to worsen an already sickening equation: over one million dead Iraqis and more than 4,000 dead GIs “in exchange for” eight million daily barrels of crude.

We need a sharpening fight against U.S. imperialism — in the shops and unions, the communities and churches, among GIs, and in all mass organizations — to mount militant battles against the U.S. bosses’ deadly goals. Out of these class struggles, tying the mountainous racist and economic attacks on the working class to the need to exterminate the profit system, we can build a mass PLP that can lead a communist revolution to destroy capitalism and its endless oil wars.

Howard U. Students, Workers Unite vs. Job and Service Cuts

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 4 — Over 300 Howard University students, CHALLENGE readers and workers protested the administration’s plan to cut services and jobs, and hike tuition. Workers from SEIU Local 32BJ joined in the rally in support of the students and also demanded that the University stop its plan to contract out union jobs.

The Howard University Student Association (HUSA) raised 13 demands, including the firing of the executive leadership in the Office of Student Affairs due to their efforts to censor students; a public, transparent budget so students could see just how real the supposed deficit is; improvements in on-campus housing facilities; expansion and upgrade of the computer network; and a recycling plan to comply with the law and to reduce global warming.

Administrators refused to meet with the protestors, some of whom decided to march into the administration building to confront these bosses despite the HUSA leadership’s effort to stop them. The campus police shoved and kicked some of the students, including militant members of the Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC), to keep them out. Hard to believe that the new president’s slogan is “Students First!”

The economic crisis is hitting universities hard, and they in turn are hitting students and workers with big tuition hikes, cuts in services, layoffs, contracting out union jobs, and a more repressive atmosphere. The source of the economic crisis is the capitalist system with its single-minded focus on maximizing profit at the expense of everyone else. The universities’ role is to actually serve these capitalist interests.

During the same week that the protest occurred, Howard University announced a $2.5 million grant program from the Director of National Intelligence to develop a curriculum that will feed a pipeline of students into the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies. This effort to provide more agents for imperialism complements the existing Howard University ROTC programs. ROTC enrolls almost 200 Howard students per year by bribing them with scholarships to become the executioners of workers and students in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are waged so that U.S. corporations can continue to dominate world oil markets and pipelines and maximize their profits. Military officers and intelligence agents are hit men for U.S. imperialism!

The struggle that heated up this week must begin to join with workers and students around the world to eliminate the source of the vicious attacks they face from profit-hungry imperialists across the globe. A concrete step these students can take in this process is joining the PLP.

Call for Teachers’ Strike vs. Fascist School Reform

LOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 14 — At the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) area union meetings last week, some teachers called for a strike against the attacks on students and teachers, showing that “education reform” is fascist and part of the rulers’ moves to prepare for wider war.

On August 25, the Board of Education voted to turn over up to 200 lower-performing schools and 51 new schools to charter school operators. This is fascist reorganization of the local school system by a U.S. ruling class that is in an on-going war and an era-defining economic crisis. After years of neglect this school reorganization is a qualitative shift as the bosses attempt to create a school system that will produce technically-trained and patriotic young workers to join the military and future war production. PLP needs to work among these youth who are future workers and soldiers, key forces for revolution.

This school reorganization is also being pushed in Obama’s so called “Race to the Top,” where his education secretary Arne Duncan, has proposed a competition for $4.35 billion in federal grants to carry out “school reform.” States like California, where teachers’ unions had won laws that prohibit tying teacher evaluation and pay scales to student test data (so called “merit pay”) will be ineligible for these funds. But Duncan was in Sacramento recently to help State Senator Gloria Romero’s bid to change the law to make California eligible. And the LA Board of education just voted to enter the “Race to the Top” competition, also agreeing to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. These tests emphasize patriotism. Tying test scores to teacher evaluations is a way to enforce teaching patriotic lies and allow administrations to get rid of higher-paid older teachers while hiring younger teachers for lower wages and benefits.

In the face of the current attack, UTLA leadership is urging teachers to write local proposals to do school reform themselves. While the union pays lip service to organizing the Charter Schools, they are not even trying to organize all teachers, including charter employees, into the same bargaining unit. UTLA President Duffy, loyal servant of capitalism, calls on teachers to get involved in so-called grass roots school reorganization such as the innovation division, “i-design.” Such reorganization would be done to meet the ruling class’s needs, but would have to be approved by the school board and probably require a corporate partner. This is not grass roots; it’s doing the bosses’ patriotic work to remake the schools to better prepare students for war, to defend a system of exploitation, racism and war. Local school control means teachers working with students and parents to administer their fascist system. We can’t unite with those who oppress us, exploit us and send us off to war!

More layoffs and foreclosures are coming, so patriotic education reform will take on more importance for the bosses. A trade union response to this attack is totally inadequate. PLP calls on teachers, students and parents to organize a strike against the fascist reorganization of public schools. Organizing such a strike, based on expanding CHALLENGE networks, builds the unity of parents, teachers, and students to prepare us for the struggle to get rid of the capitalist system and build a communist society.

Workers in Honduras, El Salvador Unite vs. Coup Bosses’ Attacks

EL SALVADOR, September 13 — Recently at a meeting of teachers from El Salvador and Honduras, the latter (a member of the federation of Honduran workers) thanked the Salvadoran workers for their working-class solidarity in the face of the current crisis besetting workers in Honduras following the coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya is a millionaire member of the Honduran bourgeoisie who opposed trade deals with the U.S. and its allies, instead veering towards the Russian and Chinese imperialists through Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The teacher from Honduras told of the temporary reforms financed by Chavez (to expand his influence in the region), enabling Zelaya to raise teachers’ wages to $1,000 a month (as compared to $500 a month for a teacher in El Salvador); afternoon snacks at schools; free uniforms and notebooks, among other measures. This has put Zelaya in conflict with sections of the Honduran ruling class, who were angered by Honduras joining ALBA (Chavez’s trade alliance) and Petrocaribe (Chavez’s oil alliance).

In Honduras they barely had time to cry for Roger Vallejo Soriano, a 38-year-old teacher shot in the head last July 30th during a demonstration protesting the coup, when another teacher, Martin Florencio Rivera, 37, was stabbed 25 times and killed after having participated in a wake for Soriano. All this is part of the brutal repression carried out by the security forces of the government of Roberto Michelleti.

Soriano was a victim of the on-going attacks by the police and the army, along with rapes of women. The teacher who spoke at the meeting was sprayed with cancer-causing chemicals when she participated in the marches.

In response to a PLP comrade’s question about the lessons drawn from this brutality, workers from Honduras replied: “We definitely must organize much better against the attacks of the system; we’re certain that the international bosses, including those in El Salvador, were involved in this coup.”

Said a PLP comrade, “If the bosses are organized, why can’t the international working class be organized for our own interests.”

This story reminded us of the massacres teachers in El Salvadoran suffered in the 1970’s and 1980’s. A PL teacher who participated in these struggles and saw the army and police kill many teachers in front of their students related his experiences in the teachers’ resistance in El Salvador and invited the teachers from Honduras to organize with PLP internationally to resist the bosses’ attacks.

The teachers and the international working class must see that the return of Manuel Zelaya, another capitalist exploiter, or any other capitalist president, will not end our problems. Those who exploit and kill the workers continue in power. There’s no reason to keep electing them.

The working class must fight for power by building its international party to organize for communist revolution, not continue supporting the murderous, rotten capitalist system. We must spread our networks of our revolutionary communist newspaper CHALLENGE internationally, to organize at work, school and in the fields to fight for a just system, communism. That’s how we can avenge the deaths of our class brothers and sisters.

Paraguay: Lugo Talks ‘Left’ but Intensifies Capitalist Exploitation

PARAGUAY — One year after taking power, “Leftist” President Fernando Lugo’s promises have proven to be empty. Liberation can only come when the latifundistas (large agricultural capitalists) are expropriated, imperialists are expelled, industrial capitalists overthrown, and workers seize power through revolution with communist goals of equality and collectivity.

Since he led no revolution and workers did not take power, Lugo, like all capitalist politicians, maneuvers among the U.S. and European imperialists, the Bolivarian Bloc, and the Brazilian ruling class to try to cut deals for the Paraguayan capitalists and landowners. These deals have all deepened the exploitation and oppression of workers in Paraguay.

He has made health care free in public health centers, begun to develop limited social programs for children, and attempted to cut a better deal with Brazil over the price it pays for energy from the jointly-operated Itaipu Hydroelectric plant. But these reforms pale next to the severe exploitation workers face in Paraguay.

Soy, Sesame and Capitalist Poison

Paraguay is the 6th largest producer of soy in the world. The players in the sesame and soy game in Paraguay are the small rural farmers, Paraguayan and Brazilian Agribusiness, large landowners (Latifundistas — 2% of the population owns 70% of the land!), and major U.S. companies including Monsanto, Cargill and Syngeta.

The agrochemical and biotech companies are helping the latifundistas force peasants off their land by legal tricks and poisoning crops. How? The majority of the soy produced in Paraguay is based on Monsanto Corporation’s transgenic seeds that are genetically modified for resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. Massive spraying of glyphosate kills everything else, including small farmers’ crops. Lugo’s solution? Ban such spraying 100 yards from waterways, wetlands, roads and populated areas. But this barely touches the problem of the small farmers, and may even be reversed given the power of the latifundistas and their imperialist allies. In 2008, the soy production rate was twice what it was in 1998. The major effect of the soy planting is that it has effectively displaced thousands of rural farmers who plant subsistence crops. Activists have begun to occupy big farms and have mobilized in the streets of Asuncion to fight against the expansion of soybean plantations.

Corruption, Courts, Cops

The Paraguayan Supreme Court judges were appointed over decades by the Colorado party (the fascist party that had historic ties to Hitler) and is both corrupt and powerful. The judges refuse justice to workers. For instance, they have been deaf to the appeals and demonstrations of workers seeking justice in the Ycua Bolanos case. This involved a fire at a supermarket whose owners (Coloradoans) ordered their security guards to lock the doors, killing over 350 people. President Lugo has opposed the appointment of another Coloradoan, Lovera Canete, to the court, but has declared he will not veto the right-wing Senate’s appointment of him.

Even more shocking, however, to Lugo supporters, has been Lugo’s decision to allow fascist Sabino Augusto Montanaro to re-enter Paraguay. Montanaro fled when the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship fell in 1989 because he feared retribution due to the torture and murders he ordered of Political Military Organization (OPM) fighters, Paraguayan Communist Party members, and their allies. In fact, Montanaro was directly responsible for the assassination of the guerilla column Mcal Lopez. Lugo puts out the welcome mat for this fascist trash? Not the mark of a friend of the working class!

The Way Forward

Workers in Paraguay have a long way to go in the class struggle. Lugo misleads workers into the arms of latifundistas, capitalists, and imperialists, weakening the resistance to exploitation in the same way that Obama’s popularity is misleading many workers into supporting imperialist war in Afghanistan.

Instead of supporting these phony leftists and building false hopes that sooner or later demoralize our class, we must build a revolutionary communist movement for change based on workers’ power, rather than on wishful thinking that a charismatic leader will deliver when the state apparatus is firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Joining with PLP members around the world would be an important step in this process in Paraguay.

The Face of Poverty

• 2,156,312 Paraguayan workers (36%) live in poverty, of which 1,172,274 (19%) are living in extreme poverty. Four out of every 10 Paraguayans are poor.

• 40% of the poor receive 11% of the total resources produced in the country while 41% of the resources are concentrated among the 10% richest.

• 15 of every 100 Paraguayans survive on less then 1 U.S. Dollar a day and 30 out of 100 survive on 2$ a day.

• 78% of Paraguayans have no type of health care — 4,741,046 people

• Unemployment affects 8.7% of the population

• Underemployment affects 26.5% of the population — more than 760,000 people receive minimum wage.

• 133,000 women are illiterate and 15% are from the countryside.

Bosses’ Education Reform: Use Schools to Strengthen Profit System

Every September, parents send their children back to school in the hopes that they will learn, grow and prepare for bright futures. But the capitalists who run the public school systems have their own racist plans for our children. As the economic crisis deepens and inter-imperialist rivalry over the worlds’ resources expands, the capitalist bosses become more and more entrenched in their own problems. Desperate to bail out their crumbling financial system and to prepare for more military conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the U.S. bosses spend billions. Shamelessly they continue to steal from the working class to save themselves and their system.

The current budget crises affecting U.S. school systems is a clear statement of capitalist priorities. These cuts are strangling a school system that was already failing our class’s children. In big cities where the majority of students are black and Latino, and families are already disproportionately suffering from unemployment and low wages, the cuts will be the worst.

In Los Angeles, classes will average 42 students. In NYC the school budget has been slashed by billions. This is forcing larger class sizes and cutting anything the Dept. of Education considers non-essential: art music, foreign language, sports, and after-school programs. In Chicago, where Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan honed his skills at cutting services to black and Latino students, many reading coaches, after-school and tutoring programs were eliminated. In San Antonio, schools full of black and Latino students are being shut down.

Washington, D.C, with a nearly all-black public school system, has been in the forefront of the bosses’ reform experiments, even as students continue to suffer. There, cuts are leading to layoffs of teachers as well as less money for vouchers and charter schools. While the schools are slashed, not a dime has been cut from the billions of dollars in interest going from the education budgets to the banks.

The attacks on working-class students are driven by the current crisis of the capitalists. In the 1950’s, the U.S. had emerged victorious from World War II and was launching the Cold War. U.S. bosses had the money to build huge factories that produced steel, autos, airplanes and factory equipment. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space, the U.S. bosses drove to invest in education for the “Space Race.” Now the U.S. is a power in decline. Those higher-paying industrial jobs are almost all gone. And the school systems with working-class students, always the poorest, are being gutted.

Capitalists view our children only as fodder for the bosses’ system. To the extent the bosses do care about educating working-class youth it is to have a politically loyal, skilled workforce to exploit. Technical education and patriotism are being pushed for black and Latino students. The advocacy for technical education reflects the growing need the ruling class has for skilled workers like engineers, drill press operators, and machinists, jobs needed for war production. Developing curriculum for the schools to create a workforce prepared for war is often masked by rhetoric saying the U.S. “needs to compete” with international rivals.

President Obama’s speech to school children on September 8 urged them to “set high goals, knuckle down in their studies and persevere through failure.” (NYT 9/9/09) Many parents embrace hard work and perseverance for our children but the subtext of the speech is that if children don’t succeed in life, it must be their own fault because they did not work hard enough. This idea ignores the reality of the capitalist world. No matter how hard school children work, they will not be allowed to all become doctors or lawyers. They will not even all have jobs. Capitalism relies on a pool of unemployed workers to keep wages low. In the current crises, unemployment is even higher; teaching workers to blame themselves prevents them from blaming the true cause of unemployment — capitalism.

Capitalist schools spend much time dividing students into different groups. Tests are designed to magnify differences and assign arbitrary cut-offs, so children get sorted into different programs from gifted and advanced placement to prison-like dumping schools. Capitalist schools prepare a select few to steer towards the elite professions. The majority of students are left to fight for low-paying jobs or join the military (see letter, p. 6).

“Tough Choices, Tough Times,” the report of the rulers’ New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, proposes that capitalism’s divisions be further entrenched in the schools by forcing students into a defined path after the tenth grade, either college-bound or vocational. Obama wants school children to knuckle down in their studies and persevere through a system that is failing and that fails to offer them the future they deserve.

This latest economic crisis and the quagmire of constant war have left the rulers in a political bind. Individualism is a cornerstone of capitalism and since the anti-war and anti-racist rebellions of the 60’s the U.S. bosses have championed the politics, the art, the music and the philosophy of “me-first.” Schools collaborated with a curriculum rich in the stories of individual success and national progress as the result of individual “can-do” spirit or single-minded pursuit of individual success in the face of great odds.

The fact that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviet communists has been written out of history books. The bosses rewrote the truth of racism in the United States as the fiction of enlightened individuals struggling to champion the ideals of individual freedom. Slavery became an unfortunate “mistake” rather than the conscious policy of 250 years of racist rule codified in colonial law and the Constitution and enforced with ruthless violence that continues to define U.S. society today.

Obama tried to shift the message of individual success when he told students, “Don’t give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.” National service has been a part of the Obama campaign since the beginning and now Obama is calling on schools to teach children to serve their country and to be inspired to sacrifice for the good of the nation. But it’s not “their” country, it’s the bosses’.

Obama and the rest of the ruling class know that the schools have been failing our children for a long time. They cynically use their own failure to meet workers’ needs as a rallying cry for reforms. Many of these reforms have won the support of parents and teachers who hope that they will improve education; but none of these reforms will change the fundamental problems of a system that doesn’t care about working-class children. After years and years of education reform plans, 39% of children in the U.S. live in families earning less then the amount needed to meet their basic needs. (Center for Children in Poverty) Capitalism cannot educate the majority of children, and for the bosses it is not a principle whether students learn to accept inequality in a large school or a small one.

Reading CHALLENGE in the last few years, one can see many examples of fighting against anti-working-class attacks in the schools: from high school students protesting budget cuts and walking out against police brutality, to college students demonstrating against a pro-torture professor and developing a Freedom School when summer session is cancelled. The Progressive Labor Party is not training students to calmly accept the life capitalism has in store for them. We want students to learn real history and real skills, to learn to organize, to learn to fight back and to learn to serve our class by building the fight for communist revolution.

LETTERS

Joblessness ‘Recruits’ Workers on Both Sides of Bosses’ War

Why do soldiers from different countries join the military to fight each other? Many times it is because they cannot get a job.

The San Francisco Chronicle (2/17/09) reported that a U.S. colonel said he believes the increase of militant activity is not ideologically-based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Afghan officials “believe it’s the guys who say, ‘Hey, you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a humvee when it goes by,’ and the guy says, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that, because I’ve got to feed my family.’”

Pentagon officials say that the economic downturn and a rising unemployment rate are making the military a more attractive option. Undersecretary of State David Chu said the military does “benefit when things look less positive in civil society.” (SFC, 11/30/08)

The bosses want us to fight each other so they can be rich and control their country’s economy. We should unite with these other workers so we can fight for a better life for all of us instead of killing each other for the benefit of the rich.

Internationalism is a communist idea. It says workers of the world have more in common with each other than with the bosses that run the country they live in. The bosses teach nationalism and patriotism to convince us to ally with them, but remember, every ruling class teaches patriotism; only the communists teach internationalism.

California reader

Eyewitness to NATO Afghan Slaughter

[The following letter is from an eyewitness in Afghanistan to the events described below, which gives the lie to U.S. military reports on who was killed and how many.]

I was at a burial ceremony of our colleague cousin who died in the latest explosion. He was not a Taliban, only a villager. Most of the victims were civilians.

The bombing was in the Chardara district, 15 kilometers from Kundaz City. Some say it killed over 200, gathering to obtain fuel from hijacked tankers. Then came the NATO airstrikes. It included a few Taliban, the others are all villagers.

What are these bastards doing? Killing innocent people — is this democracy?

Today around 10:20 AM a vehicle suicide bomber exploded himself on Khanabad Road, close to Lodin village on the way to Khanabad, killing one German soldier and injuring two. The bomber was from Chardara; three members of his family died in the airstrike bombing.

A friend in Afghanistan

Reject Capitalist Ideas

In my workplace I can listen and talk to workers, many of whom are low-paid and trying to survive selling knick-knacks at traffic lights in the city of Bogota, Colombia.

For a long time, but especially since President Uribe Velez came to power, the working class has been fooled and kept busy by the media, which has blamed the misery in which we live here on only the symptoms of capitalism. It’s common to hear that it is because of pyramid schemes, the guerillas, the paramilitary, the worldwide crisis, traffic restrictions, too much rain, not enough rain, holidays, bank taxes, monopolies, landowners, bad governments and other innumerable reasons, that we live in poverty, violence and social decay.

That is why workers look for whoever can take them out of this state of misery. I tell people that the only culprit is the capitalist system itself. It is the system that produces individualism, racism, imperialist wars, sexism, and the miserable conditions workers are forced to live under, by a small minority that has the fascist state under its control.

That is why the only solution in our hands is to dump capitalism for its opposite, communism. That’s a system with no bosses, no wage slavery, a society controlled by workers united in Progressive Labor Party. This is not easy, but we should begin by rejecting practices such as consumerism and sexism, and strengthening the reading of political texts and dialectical materialism, reading, contributing to and distributing CHALLENGE — being a communist under capitalism.

CHALLENGE reader

Sotomayor As Judge Can Only Take Rulers’ Side

The recent hoopla about Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court helped the bosses reinforce an illusion they’ve worked hard at building: that the Supreme Court is “above politics” and makes rulings that protect or help people and limits bad things the government does. They constantly repeat how the Court’s rulings “ended segregated schools” (who’s kidding who!), legalized abortion and protect people from unfair police actions.

Many working people cheered her appointment because she comes from a working-class Puerto Rican family living in a Bronx, NY housing project — so she must be “one of us,” right? Wrong! No matter where she came from, she’s an Ivy League-educated judge who earned her promotion through a long history of doing the ruling class’s work in the courts. After all, that’s what the courts are for.

The rulers push the appearance of a Court with one black justice, one Latina and (now) two women as a body “representing” diverse sectors of society. But the essence is that there are two main antagonistic classes in capitalist society: workers who produce everything of value and bosses who exploit them for their private profit. There are no workers on this Court, never have been and never will be. Once Sotomayor became a judge, she joined the bosses’ side.

The Supreme Court is part of the structure of this class rule. It has two important jobs: maintaining the illusion that there’s justice for workers, and helping the ruling class police itself, sorting out differences and keeping the bosses in power. Does it matter who’s on the Supreme Court? Largely, no. The Court makes its rulings by interpreting constitutional law to meet the needs of the ruling class at a particular time.

During slavery the Court upheld it. When workers began to unionize and strike, the Court gave the bosses injunctions to stop them. When the air traffic controllers struck, the courts helped Reagan fire them all. And when the bosses needed a cover for election fraud, it turned to the Supreme Court to elect Bush. So when the bosses — especially the main liberal wing Obama represents — need to make the Court “look a little better” to workers, they appoint a Sotomayor.

In a future communist society, the “courts” will also represent its ruling class: but then it will be the working class. The “courts” will be workers who decide who has violated the rules the working class established to enforce working-class rule, and how they can be rehabilitated, if possible. The Sotomayors, Thomases, Roberts and Scalias will then be part of the garbage can of history.

Brooklyn Red

Global Warming: Only Communism Can Save the Planet, Not Capitalist Schemes

Book Reviews: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How It Can Renew America, by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Strous, and Giroux, New York, 2008); and The Green-Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, by Van Jones with Ariane Conrad (Harper One, New York, 2008).

These two books on global warming were published last year as the Obama campaign moved into high gear. Friedman is a NY Times columnist. Jones is a human rights activist who Obama appointed as Special Advisor for Green Jobs but then was forced to resign recently after being attacked by right-wing Republicans for supposedly being a “Marxist.”

Both Friedman and Jones recognize that today’s severe global warming is due to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) in industry, transportation and in the generation of electrical power. They both recognize the urgent need for a solution. But they both (incorrectly) suggest, in different ways, that the capitalist market can solve this problem, if only governments worldwide would adopt “the correct policies.”

In his book, Friedman is an unabashed apologist for U.S. imperialism. Jones, on the other hand, denounces the U.S. history of genocidal theft of Indian lands, slavery and the ongoing racist treatment of black, Latin, Asian and Native American working-class people, as well as the extreme sexist discrimination against women. Racism/sexism and global warming are the “two biggest problems” (his subtitle) facing the world.

Friedman writes as though racism and the current oil wars never happened and calls on the U.S. to regain its mythical moral leadership in the world (after Bush allegedly destroyed it) by taking the lead in decreasing GHG emissions. Jones, on the other hand, calls on the U.S. government to solve global warming by creating green jobs to build clean energy usage that will also help to abolish the inequality of income and opportunity suffered by black and Latino workers. He says neither problem can be solved without solving the other.

The two authors seem to be living in two different universes — Friedman in fantasyland while Jones is almost in the real world.

While Jones doesn’t defend the war-criminal U.S. ruling class like Friedman does, he appears clueless about the nature of capitalism. He doesn’t recognize the antagonistic relationship between the capitalist class and the working class. He doesn’t see the capitalists’ absolute need to promote racism and sexism to enhance their super-profits and to maintain their political power — control of the state. This enables them to exert their class domination over both the working class and over competing imperialists.

Though Jones advocates the full involvement of “minority” workers to pressure the government to foster use of solar panels, windmills and other forms of clean energy, he proposes that such a coalition be led by “progressive” businessmen. (!) This position is misleading pie in the sky, typical of those like Jones who toy with revolutionary ideas at one point in their lives and then reject them to pursue a career in the Democratic Party.

His central error is not understanding that capitalism, with its driving profit motive, cannot stop using fossil fuels without dismantling virtually the entire body of physical capital in the world, replacing it with new physical plant and modes of transportation employing clean energy sources. The world’s capitalist classes can never agree to do this.

The world’s imperialists are locked in life-and-death competitive rivalries with each other. No “global policy” that interferes with their battle for maximum profits can possibly be written and enforced as long as these imperialists fight with each other over control of the world’s resources and markets.

The main battle we face in the movement against global warming is defeating the misleading strategies of writers like Jones and the fantasies of liberals like Friedman. We must redouble our efforts to demonstrate that only the abolition of capitalism, classes and production for profit instead of for use can lay the foundation for a renewed planet. Only the world’s working class, led by its communist party PLP, once having seized power from the capitalists and consolidated its power through revolution, will be able to clean up the world, revolutionize production processes with safe, clean energy and save the planet.

Obama’s Afghan War Crucial to U.S. Bosses’ Global Control

The fight between the U.S. imperialists and their Russian, Chinese and Iranian rivals — for control of the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia region and the pipeline routes to take these resources to market — is leading to wider Middle Eastern wars and eventually to an inevitable global confrontation. Controlling this region is crucial to the U.S. bosses’ efforts to regain absolute control of oil-rich Middle East, which have been the basis for their dominant imperialist position since the end of World War II.

Obama chose to concentrate on the Afghanistan war in hopes the U.S. backed TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline) could be built. This pipeline, bypassing both Russia and Iran, could reverse Russian-Chinese advances in the energy-rich former Soviet republics, giving the U.S. control of this strategic region.

If successful, together with a new string of U.S. bases in the area, TAPI would put Russia and China on the defensive militarily, break Russia’s growing world energy monopoly, especially of the European Union’s energy market, and position the U.S. bosses to potentially starve China of the energy resources needed to fuel its economic and military rise.

It would also free the U.S. military machine to deal with Iran, if it hadn’t capitulated by then. Iraq could then be more easily pacified and U.S. imperialism’s dream of extending its hegemony well into the 21st century would be within reach.

As U.S. imperialists’ political, economic and military hegemony shrinks, their ability to control the outcome of world events becomes limited. An example is the recent Afghan presidential election, aimed at getting rid of Karzai, who has become an obstacle to their geopolitical goals in the area. He’s been cozying up to China and deepening his ties with the warlords of the Northern Alliance, backed by Russia, Iran and India.

Their electoral scheme failed. So far, with 99% of the votes counted, Karzai is the winner with 54% against the U.S candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s 28%. Plan B was to claim massive fraud and call for a run-off election rigged to guarantee Abdullah”s victory. But some among their ranks like Zbiegnew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, disagree with this plan. They claim it would further destabilize Afghanistan and increase the “growing risk …that the Taliban …be viewed as a resistance movement against foreign occupation… and that would be a strategic defeat.”

The U.S. ruling class is clearly at odds over this. Some are making frantic efforts to force Karzai into a unity government with his rival Abdullah Abdullah (known in Afghanistan as “Obama’s wife”). Others see no option but to accept Karzai and to configure a government run by their ambassador Eikenberry and General McCrystal. Some call for the “Afghanization” of the war while others demand Obama’s unfailing commitment to his surge. Some, with Saudi Arabia and Britain, are working for a negotiated settlement with the “good Taliban.”

Besides, some of their European allies also disagree with the plan and are reluctant to send more troops. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the elections, while demanding, with leaders from Britain and France, an international conference to force the “Afghanization” of the war so “that the international engagement can be reduced.” Brzezinski agrees, arguing it might reduce “the growing risk of the war becoming a war of foreigners against Afghans,” and the Europeans allies “might be less likely to pull out entirely…. [Leaving] the U.S. alone in the lurch.”

Whatever tactics the U.S. butchers finally decide on, pipeline TAPI may never fly. It is detrimental to the ambitions of China, Russia and Iran. A U.S.-Taliban agreement will never bring peace to Afghanistan as the warlords of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s sworn mortal enemies, will fight desperately to survive.

Even if the U.S. imperialists carve out an independent “Pashtunistan” from Afghanistan-Pakistan, as some are planning, the war is likely to widen as the area’s instability helps China and Russia further consolidate their grip on the Caspian-Central Asia region. The Iranian nuclear issue — nothing but a fig leaf to hide the vital role of Iran’s energy resources and strategic location in the fight for world domination — is rapidly forcing a showdown between the U.S., Russia, Iran and potentially Israel.

How many more millions must be murdered, maimed and displaced for the profits of the imperialists of the world? No election, peace agreement, U. N. resolution or slick-talking politician like Obama will ever put an end to this butchery. Workers, students and soldiers, getting angrier at the cutbacks and layoffs, need to see that the widening imperialist genocide, inherent in capitalist crisis, is costing $billions and murdering so many members of our class! Students need to unite with soldiers and workers who bear the heaviest burden for the capitalist war economy. Only an international communist-conscious working class under the leadership of PLP can put an end to this bosses’ inferno, with a communist revolution.

Red Eye on the News

Teenagers bumped down, jobless

NYT, 9/15 — This August, the teenage unemployment rate — that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one — was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers overall who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history.

“There are an amazing number of kids out there looking for work.”…. Explanations…mostly boil down to being at the bottom….Half of college graduates under age 25 are in jobs that do not require college degrees, the highest portion in at least 18 years….This has led to less…room for new workers at the bottom.

A raw health deal for immigrants

NYT, 9/6 — President Obama is…giving repeated assurances that [undocumented] immigrants would be excluded from any subsidized benefits under health proposals before Congress….

At the same time, [undocumented] immigrants would not be exempt from the obligations in the House bill…Most [undocumented] immigrants in the country would be required to buy health insurance or face tax penalties.

And since they would be barred from subsidies, they would have to pay for coverage at full rates, regardless of their income level.

For profit, cheat the low-wagers

NYT, 9/2 — Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago….

Researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of an average weekly earning of $339.

The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were [undocumented] immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites….One of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed.

Paul Robeson, noble anti-capitalist

NYT, 9/3 — Paul Robeson’s story is not forgotten, but is dimly remembered, particularly by the young. Born in 1898…he became the dominant college football player of his time, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was Rutgers class valedictorian and earned a law degree from Columbia University.

He almost single-handedly legitimized black spirituals and folk music as an art form and became perhaps the most famous concert singer as well as a reknowned actor….

He became a pioneering and uncompromising human rights advocate. He spoke out against segregation decades before the civil rights movement began, and was a fierce opponent of colonialism when that was barely an issue.

He also became an enthusiastic, unflagging admirer of the Soviet Union, something he never renounced or backed away from, even in the face of Stalin’s [critics]. He embraced socialism, not capitalism, as the future. He was blacklisted, had his passport revoked, and, in many ways, was written out of history books….

“I’ve sat in on classes where people are talking about the 30’s and about civil rights and about Martin Luther King, and there’s this gap, as if this man never existed. He’s one of the giants of the movement, and no one knows.”

In poorest areas, sick dial 911

NYT 9/4 – Among the hidden costs of the health care crisis is the burden that fire departments across the country are facing as firefighters much like emergency room doctors, are increasingly serving as primary care providers.

About 80 percent of the calls handled by Engine Company 10 are medical emergencies because firehouse serves one of the city’s poorest areas, where few residents have health insurance, doctors’ checkups are rare, and medical problems are left to fester until someone dials 911….Those calls involved heart attacks, diabetic sores, epileptic seizures and people complaining of shortness of breath.

US drove Sioux off sacred mount

NYT, 9/2 – I have to admit: Mount Rushmore bothers me. It was bad enough that white men drove the Sioux from hills they still hold sacred; did they have to carve faces all over them too? It’s easy to feel affection for Mount Rushmore’s strange grandeur, but only if you forget where it is and how it got there.

Insiders dumping their own stocks

NYT, 9/8 – Better-then-expected corporate earnings in recent months have been the result of companies saving money through job cuts rather than raising revenue through sales growth. It is worthy of note that directors in the US have taken advantage of the rally on Wall Street to offload shares in their firms.

Obama message getting blurry

Jimmy Fallon (TV) – The President is going to deliver his speech to the nation’s schoolchildren next Tuesday. It will be about how if you study hard, you can become the most popular person in the world for eight months, then suddenly, not so much.

Harper’s Ferry Raid Shows: Rely on the Masses to Change the World

On October 17, 2009, PLP’ers are joining many others at Harper’s Ferry to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Harper’s Ferry raid which sparked the Civil War that ended chattel slavery in the U.S. Join us!

Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Osborne Anderson, John Brown, Harriet Tubman — these bold leaders of the anti-slavery struggle understood that the millions of enslaved Africans and millions more of the workers and small farmers oppressed by the slave oligarchy would, under the right conditions, rise up against slavery. They acted on this confidence in the masses and shook the world, from Charleston, S.C. and Southampton, Virginia, to bleeding Kansas and Harper’s Ferry. We should emulate this boldness in our struggles today, for the oppressed of the world will also, under the right conditions and communist leadership, rise up to destroy their exploiters.

Racist ideology intensified in the run-up to the Civil War as the rulers tried to ideologically undermine the anti-slavery cause. Blacks were portrayed by Southern slaveowners as an “inferior breed,” “happy” with slavery, and unfit because of their “inferiority” for a life of freedom alongside whites. Racists in the North repeated the picture of blacks as servile, shuffling, meek, cowardly and dancing in blissful ignorance.

These lies continue today in various forms and are applied to every ethnic group of workers to keep people divided and demoralized. Left out of today’s picture is the eleven-month Stella O’Doro strike in NY, the sit-down strike at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, the massive outpouring of opposition to the racist attacks on the Jena 6, black students who fought back against oppression in Louisiana, and hundreds more actions, large and small, around the world.

Anti-slavery rebels knew, contrary to the racist images, that enslaved and free blacks and anti-slavery whites planned and carried out ingenious and daring escapes from slavery with courage and fortitude in the face of whippings, jailing and death. Thousands of slaves escaped to the Dismal Swamp in Virginia, to the Florida swamps, and to the mountains of Jamaica to form egalitarian maroon societies in defiance of the slave system, defending their communities by any means necessary. Slaveowners and their racist apologists claimed that these fighters were the “lunatic fringe,” but John Brown and other anti-slavery activists knew better.

The slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 terrified slaveowners because it demonstrated that every enslaved person was a potential “assassin” of his “beloved” master. Brown and other activists eagerly studied the formation of armies of thousands of the enslaved on the island of Santo Domingo and their success in annihilating their French masters in establishing a black Republic of Haiti in the 1790s.

These experiences led to two profound, if simple, conclusions: people fight back against oppression and their struggle causes change. These conclusions are often poorly understood. Today, many workers say, “Nobody where I work wants to do anything” or “You can’t fight City Hall.” or “You can’t win.” Or “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” But PLP knows better, and acts on the historical knowledge contained in those two simple conclusions.

While the anti-slavery movement grew apace, the European revolutionaries Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were sharpening the working-class fight against wage slavery. Based on their participation in the revolutionary movement and their study of history they developed the philosophy of dialectical materialism. This philosophy, outlined in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, proven true over the years, explains that class struggle is the motive force of history. Periods of seeming passivity among the oppressed, however prolonged, are replaced by blazing struggle, like the explosion of a seemingly dormant volcano. Systems of class exploitation, although they seem at times, permanent, and even “natural,” end. We are no longer cultivating crops and building pyramids in the Nile Valley. Slavery is ended. Feudalism has ended. Capitalism will also end.

Most people do not yet realize this, just as most people in 1859 did not yet realize that slavery was on the verge of extinction. The enslavement of Africans and the system built on this edifice had existed for over 200 years and appeared permanent, like capitalism today. But, with the growth of the PLP and a communist revolution in the face of imperialist war and the continuing crises of capitalism, communism will replace capitalism and all forms of class society.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, September 16th, 2009

Information: 16 September 2009 118 hits

France: Auto Parts Workers Seize Plant, Fight for Jobs

VILLEMUR-SUR-TARN, FRANCE, August 27 — Eleven weeks after holding two bosses hostage for 26 hours, 283 Molex workers occupied the auto parts factory owned by the U.S.-based multi-national for 38 days, fighting to keep their plant open and save their jobs. This was part of a 10-month struggle against the French government and the U.S. company which exploits 32,000 workers in 45 factories in 17 countries. The workers are reacting to the bosses’ attempts to shift the burden of the world capitalist crisis onto their backs.

French media portraying Molex as a “rogue employer” and the Sarkozy government as “unpatriotic” create two dangerous illusions: that there are “good employers” and that a “patriotic” government would protect the workers. But both Molex and the Sarkozy government are typical products of capitalism.

“In the past ten months, we’ve gone through every state of mind,” Alain, a 30-year maintenance worker told a newspaper interviewer. “We’ve had our hearts in our boots, and then we began to hope again when the courts voided the first layoff plan in April, and again when they ordered the factory to reopen in early August. And when...management ignored the courts, our morale plunged even lower than before.”

Today, negotiations with the government-appointed mediator are stalled because Molex will only sell the factory to a purchaser that doesn’t compete in their market. But the government mediator “is just a media show,” declared Alain.

In 2000, SNECMA, then a French government-owned aeronautics company, raided the family-owned factory in southwestern France, bought and restructured it and then sold it to Molex in 2004. Nationalized companies remain capitalist companies.

In 2008, Molex stated that “during fiscal 2005, we decided to close certain operations in the American and European regions in order to reduce operating costs.” That year, workers in Detroit, New England, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Slovakia got the axe.

“In 2006, eight executives began photographing our machines and noting...our working techniques,” said José, a 30-year veteran worker.

In 2007, Molex announced plans “to move production between facilities, reducing staff levels...”

Before closing the Villemur factory, Molex equipped its Lincoln, Nebraska factory with copies of the molds and tools used in Villemur, built up a stock of parts in the Netherlands, and informed its customers, the French auto companies PSA and Renault, of its plans. “They had us working overtime all summer to build up stocks,” said Michelle, a 23-year veteran.

On Oct. 23, 2008, Molex announced it would close the Villemur factory as “unprofitable,” although the factory netted 1.2 million euros in profits (US$1.6 million) that year. On Christmas, the workers guarded the factory to prevent Molex from stripping it of machines and stock during the holidays.

In January, 2009 Molex said the world financial crisis was forcing it to close the Villemur factory. It was when the Villemur workers discovered — on April 20 — that the Lincoln factory was making the same interconnects, that they held two bosses prisoner. One month later, workers’ actions prodded the courts into suspending the layoff plan.

In May, the Syndex accounting firm reported that the Villemur factory was economically viable. French Secretary of State Luc Chatel had promised that if this were true, “the government would...facilitate the purchase of the factory [by a “white knight”] in order to maintain interconnect production in France.” But the government did nothing, so on June 10 the workers demonstrated in Paris, and then, starting July 7, occupied the factory in a 38-day strike.

When Molex broke off negotiations with a possible “white knight” purchaser, the workers egged the Molex director of development. Two days later, four of us workers “were summoned to court,” said shop steward Guy Pavan. “The judicial system works fast against the workers.”

“When you respect the law,” said a worker, José, “you get screwed. When you stay calm, you get screwed. And when they’ve got your nose in the shit, you’re still supposed to keep your trap shut,” he concluded.

On August 6, the workers ended the strike, but Molex closed the factory “for security reasons.” Defying an August 11 court order to reopen the factory, Molex has used security guards and guard dogs to keep it shut. They can do this because the company has friends in government. Christine Lagarde, French Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment, was Molex’s judicial advisor in 2004, when she was a director of the Chicago law firm Baker & McKenzie.

Today, these Molex workers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If Molex prevails, the factory will be shuttered. If Molex is forced to sell to a “white knight,” some workers will be laid off while others will continue to work to enrich its capitalist owner.

Communist leadership is needed here and everywhere to provide the revolutionary alternative to capitalism, a society where workers own the factories and share the goods they produce.

[Messages of support and contributions can be sent to: Association Solidarité des Molex, 5 rue St Louis, 31340 Villemur-sur-Tarn, France.]

Obama Echos Kennedy ‘Legacy’: War, Racism, Police State

Barack Obama hopes he can serve the dominant, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists as well as Ted Kennedy, whom he just eulogized as a national hero. The Kennedy Klan — John, Robert and Ted — helped mislead millions of workers into supporting profit-driven attacks on our own class, including genocidal wars. The Kennedys personify the lie that voting for liberal politicians is the answer to the miseries capitalism inflicts on workers, trying to divert them from militant struggle and a revolutionary outlook.

Liberals, like the Vietnam War-boosting Kennedys — now inflicting Obama’s murderous imperialist oil wars on masses of people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — pay lip service to workers’ aspirations. They toss out a few crumbs that provide cover for the rulers’ anti-working class atrocities.

Kennedy-Obama Health Scam = Wartime Consolidation

Kennedy’s and Obama’s “Universal Heath Care” is currently the most pressing fraud on the liberal agenda. In humanitarian sheep’s clothing, health reform, in fact, represents a major cost-cutting move to shore up corporate profits. First, it gives the pharmaceutical billionaires and the HMO insurance gougers more profits from mandated health insurance for millions of “new customers” from the non-insured. Second, it attempts to relieve large corporations of billions in healthcare costs by lowering benefits in plans already contracted for, enhancing their competitive position relative to foreign rivals. This would free up capital for wider wars, and concentrate control of a huge sector of the economy into government hands.

Obama would continue Kennedy’s legacy but try to replicate Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal run-up to World War II. It would consolidate banks and industrial giants into fewer and fewer capitalist hands — including government control, in effect nationalizing outfits like GM which can produce for war — and “solve” the bosses’ economic crisis as Roosevelt did through arms production and drafting millions into some form of military service.

Obama and his successors need to mobilize the U.S. economically and militarily as the rulers square off for conflict with China, Russia or Europe, or any alliance thereof.

The liberals’ ability to deceive makes them particularly dangerous to our class. Only a liberal like Ted Kennedy could support the 1964 Tonkin Resolution (which used a fraudulent naval incident to escalate the Vietnam invasion JFK had expanded) and then later masquerade as “anti-war.” By 1968, the U.S. was clearly losing, in a war that would eventually kill three million Vietnamese and 58,000 GIs. Yet Kennedy began showing up at peace rallies!

Only a liberal like Kennedy could champion successively “higher” minimum wages that were actually lower than previous rates because of inflation and call himself “the workers’ friend.”

PLP Fought Kennedy Liberals’ Building of Racism as ‘Integration’

Only liberals like Kennedy could organize racism in the name of school desegregation. They pulled this off in Boston in the 1974-75 busing crisis. Kennedy protégé Judge Arthur Garrity and liberal Mayor Kevin White ordered black children to schools in overwhelmingly white South Boston and Charlestown, where Navy shipyard closings had laid off thousands of mainly white, better-paid workers. The liberals wanted to divert these workers’ anger away from the rulers.

To ensure liberal leadership of a racist response, White had appointed James Kelly — leader of a rock-throwing, anti-busing racist gang deceptively called the South Boston Information Center — to an influential graft-ridden city post which dispensed the few jobs reemerging at the former Navy piers. This whole set-up virtually guaranteed a racist outbreak.

Kennedy often spoke in favor of the Garrity-White scheme, which in fact paved the way for budget cuts and furthered deterioration and segregation of Boston’s schools. This eventually led to the emergence of the Nazi group ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) which violently attacked black workers and students. Our Party, on the other hand, in our Boston Summer Project of 1975, attacked the Kennedy liberals and open racists alike, exposing their ties (see box).

More recently, Kennedy perpetuated liberal deception:

• After voting against the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq he voted for every war-funding bill ever since. His only objection was that the initial U.S. force was too small and needed more allies.

• Demanding immigration “reform,” Kennedy insisted on 13,000 more fascist inspectors and a shift from enforcement at borders over to worksites, leading to racist raids on immigrant workers. This enabled capitalists, using the threat of deportation, to increase exploitation at the actual point of production.

• Touting his (and John McCain’s) bill, Kennedy said, “employers will have generous access to the legal workers they need,” establishing a “guest worker” program that gives the bosses just enough exploited, low-wage workers to guarantee greater profits.

• Kennedy also co-sponsored the Dream Act whose promise of citizenship hides behind its real aim: a “national service” that puts millions of Latino youth who cannot afford college into the U.S. war machine.

• “Community policing,” another Kennedy pet project, has a friendly name but actually copies Nazi Germany’s networks of neighborhood informers. It uses black ministers and “community leaders” to terrorize black youth with the threat of jail, one minister declaring that “some kids need to go to jail... for their own sake.” (Harvard Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2000)

Kennedy’s character faults deserve mention only in that they highlight the gross inequalities of a class society and the decadence of the rulers and their privileged lackeys. His serial infidelity, substance abuse and arrogance — persistent family traits — hit a trifecta at Chappaquiddick in 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne, a young Kennedy staffer, drowned when a notoriously tipsy Kennedy drove his car off a bridge while “giving her a lift to the ferry.” For the crime, he won sympathy and re-election to the Senate. Workers do serious prison time for far less.

Add to that the cover-up by Kennedy and his cohorts of a family member’s rape of a woman on a Florida junket, a crime from which he was acquitted.

Obama, apparently more disciplined, currently leads the liberals’ bait-and-switch. His “anti-war,” “I’ll-fix-the-economy” platform gained him workers’ votes and the White House. Today Obama presides over one endless war in Iraq and another in Afghanistan that threatens to engulf nuclear Pakistan.

Meanwhile, worsening racist job and service cuts help fund the widening war effort, corporate profits and bankers’ bonuses. Obama’s pro-capitalist program, including his continuation of Kennedy’s crusade for wartime fascism through the afore-mentioned Dream Act, nationalization, and government control of healthcare in the name of “reform,” impels a working-class fight-back even more intense and broader than PLP’s Boston ’75.

As with the Kennedys and Roosevelt, Democratic officials vigorously spread Obama’s ideas through unions, on campuses, in churches and communities. Only by building a mass, revolutionary, communist PLP, drawing from participation in militant class struggles in these arenas, can we ultimately challenge the liberals’ deadly deceit and build a movement to destroy the capitalist hell these billionaires represent.

Union Hacks Screw Transit Workers Despite Rank-&-File Defiance:

Before...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The ruling-class media has created a divisive, lynch-mob mentality against 900 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station agents and train operators in ATU Local 1555 who stood up against a plan to blatantly rob them and other subway workers of $100 million over the course of a 4-year contract.

Newspapers called workers spoiled and lazy, while radio talk-show hosts called for workers to be fired and replaced. BART spokesman Linton Johnson suggested that passengers harass and confront workers who rejected by a 2-1 margin a 4-year wage freeze and take-aways of three holidays, work rules, medical and pension benefits. The last BART strike in 1997 lasted six days and caused devastating traffic jams costing the capitalists millions in lost production and profits.

Feeding the fascist frenzy were the union traitors who openly cried about the “grim economy” and tried to convince their members that “everyone must sacrifice” and take this junk. Linda Isler, the president of the mechanics, janitors, and clerks union, SEIU 1021, proudly claimed that a 4-year wage freeze wasn’t a wage-cut. The SEIU never taught her about inflation! The SEIU accepted it 3-1. ATU 1555 leaders shackled workers’ hopes for a lousy 1% wage increase at the end of the contract to BART’s sales tax revenue, ridership totals and pension contributions.

Yet where was the vilification over the $100 million payout to Citibank trader Ed Hall after working-class taxpayers bailed out Citibank to the tune of $45 Billion? Apparently the life of one parasitic financier from a bank that helped ruin the lives of tens of thousands of working-class homeowners is more important than the future of over 3,000 transit workers. These transit workers actually provide a valuable service which is more than can be said for a “trader.” Such a rotten profit system must be eliminated!

The ATU and SEIU leaders are worse than dead. They are in solidarity with capitalism and complicit in the impoverishment of the working class. They cannot and will not fight for our interests. They don’t understand the long-run tendency of the rate of profit to fall and exploitation of workers to increase. They try to limit workers’ opposition only to the rotten BART managers instead of showing how capitalist crisis and their needs for war are the main causes of BART’s budget woes. Some of the opposition just wanted a two-year contract in the hopes capitalism will rebound.

We must carry on this fight ourselves with CHALLENGE, class struggle, and base-building. Bus drivers of ATU 192 (AC Transit) were building solidarity among workers by passing a motion not to work any scab overtime if their brothers and sisters at ATU 1555 went on strike. Their contract is up next July. Members of PLP passed out several hundred leaflets and sold CHALLENGES at the rejection vote. We called for no concessions to capitalist crisis and war budgets and for more workers to become communists. Our class must fight the media’s divisive attacks with communist class consciousness.

After the vote the BART board voted to impose an even worse contract on the workers and the ATU was forced to call for a strike — initially planned for the next morning. They changed their mind and delayed the strike call two days.

While the bus drivers and CHALLENGE sellers intensified their efforts over the weekend, BART bosses, Democratic party politicians, and union leaders united to thwart the strike. This time they came up with another tentative agreement that restored the three lost holidays and tied the pipe-dream of a measly raise to the savings of a union-sponsored plan to increase the time to qualify for retiree medical benefits from 5 to 15 years. This plan continues the union strategy of dividing the membership and making new workers pay for capitalist crisis.

We are planning more activities’ leading up to the contract vote. We are struggling with our co-workers to help us spread our analysis through distributing CHALLENGE and taking more leadership in the fight-back. Class struggle sharpens contradictions and we must engage it, develop it, and strengthen it through collective actions.

...and After

Members of ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1555 were angry and fired up as they walked into the union hall where voting on the latest tentative agreement took place. For several weeks, they had sustained vicious attacks by the Bay Area ruling class’s media. Management’s latest contract offer was a rehash of the same contract workers rejected by a 2-1 margin on August 10 (see article above). The strategy of management and their henchmen, the ATU Local 1555 leadership, to wear workers down with scathing attacks and litanies of “shared sacrifice,” won the day on August 26.

The victory, however, showed that workers’ support of the union’s leadership is limited, as the contract was approved by less than 50% (albeit 75% of those who voted) of the union membership. In any case, the role of the union hacks became quite clear. Instead of organizing workers to fight back, they threw the workers under the train by encouraging them to vote in new BART board members at the next election, saying this was the best they could do given the current economic climate. They spewed the empty promise of “we’ll get them next time.”

This latest attack on the working class of the Bay Area won’t be the last. One by one, under leadership of the hacks, unions are bowing to the demands of capital. One worker declared, “The union movement is dead!” At the first contract vote on August 10, a young black BART worker put it best. “You (all) are disgusting! You’ve sold us out!” as he called out the union misleaders. “You say you’re for us, while you sit there idling as we’re losing station agents. If one walks, we all walk, that’s what you should be organizing.” He went on to say that the union needed a PR person to go up against “these vicious dogs,” showing that some workers still have illusions in mistakenly thinking that union officials rather than masses of workers can win our fights.

Teachers at West Contra Costa Unified have been asked to “sacrifice” their medical benefits resulting in a cost of $900/month to insure their family. UTR (United Teachers of Richmond) members have authorized a strike, but once again, the union’s leadership has been passive at best. Instead of organizing teachers to build a strong strike, they’re giving management time to solicit scabs and prepare for the eventual strike. The unions push the electoral system, “sacrifice,” and wishful thinking as answers to the ongoing attacks.

PLP members wrote two leaflets and went to talk with BART station agents and operators. Several recognized one of our young teachers commenting, “Hey, you’re that teacher and you’re going on strike, aren’t you? We’ve got to stick together.” Our flyers called on ATU members to vote no and to join us in building a communist movement. The flyers sought to build class consciousness and empower workers with the analysis that we must fight back as a class.

Building solidarity with other transit workers is crucial and the Party members also helped organize a No Overtime (NOT) Pledge amongst AC Transit [bus] Drivers. Through our involvement, our politics influence these struggles. The president of another ATU local kicked out one of her own members for distributing our flyers at the union hall; saying he had no business “interfering with their [ATU Local 1555’s] business.” We later discovered that our flyer was faxed to all the station agents by one of their own!

We had successful discussions with various workers and distributed a modest number of CHALLENGES. These activities have reinvigorated several young Party members and a weekly
CHALLENGE sale is being organized. A young teacher brought a few students (Summer Project attendees) to distribute our flyers. There are signs of growth and development in Party members that bodes well for working-class people in the Bay Area.

This struggle is an example of what the working class is facing nationally and internationally. The current economic crisis will see another nine million families lose their homes by year’s end with racist, predatory lending practices leading to black and Latino workers bearing the brunt of these attacks, while banks rake in record profits. With the national debt forecast to reach 20 trillion in 10 years, capitalists will resort to wars to defend their imperial empire in Afghanistan and elsewhere, trying to avoid the bankruptcy of their system.

Workers must rely only on our class and not on politicians, elections or union sellouts. Only when we organize as a class and fight as a class can we accomplish any real change, a change that must ultimately be the creation of a communist world. Our involvement in this struggle has shown us that the opportunity for spreading communist politics and building our Party is out there. CHALLENGE is the best working-class PR there is and we will continue the struggle as the battle shifts from transit workers, to teachers, and eventually all workers in the Bay Area.

South Africa: Workers, Soldiers Challenge ANC Rulers

In South Africa (SA), the misery of the working class has taken a violent turn. During July and August, the working class there held militant demonstrations against the profit system run by the capitalist African National Congress (ANC) government. Soldiers, municipal and chemical workers, miners and workers in the townships participated. As one worker stated, “The ANC turned their backs on us.”

The workers were demanding pay increases and basic services — housing, electricity and water. To maintain their fascist law and order against the workers’ anger, the ANC ordered out the police who used rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas. (The Mail Guardian, a SA daily newspaper.)

As the capitalist crisis hits worldwide, the profit system is becoming more unstable daily. The working class in SA is facing huge cut-backs in their daily living standards. Over 40% of the working class lives below the poverty level. (The Economist, 7/25) One in four is now jobless while the cost of food and fuel have skyrocketed. In the shanty towns around the big cities, people are cold and hungry. Millions of workers live in leaky shacks without electricity or running water.

The reformist ANC and its allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the SA Communist Party have no solutions for the working class. All represent the bosses’ profit system.

So now we see that the abolition of the apartheid system in 1994 did not free black workers from capitalist exploitation. That system was a totally divisive capitalist-run society in which a politically dominant white minority ruled to maintain the intensely exploitative profit system. Millions of workers worldwide supported the struggle against apartheid. Thousands of black workers were jailed and many were killed. Thus, the end of apartheid gave birth to a black SA leadership.

The ANC represents local and international bosses. The SA economy is important to the capitalist world because it is particularly rich in mineral resources and is one of the world’s leading raw material exporters. This includes gold, diamonds, platinum, chromium, manganese, uranium, iron ore and coal.

During the 1960s’ U.S. civil rights movement, rebellious black workers rocked every major city. However, this did not end racism and super-exploitation of black workers. The movement eliminated some forms of legal segregation, but clearly did not end racism or segregation. The idea that racism could be defeated without overthrowing the capitalist system ended up giving rise to black bosses and politicians.

Today, these politicians are performing a tremendously valuable service for the capitalist class. They divert black, Latin and white workers into the polling booths instead of fighting back.

The Progressive Labor Party led many militant demonstrations on university campuses and at work-places against the apartheid system and segregation. But PLP also put forward the abolition of capitalism and fought for workers’ power and communism.

Today, the world is entering another historic period of economic crisis, war and fascism, all stemming from the internal insoluble contradictions of capitalism. Therefore, building the PLP-led international communist movement is essential for workers’ power.

PL’s Ideas Inspire GIs’ Exposé of Brass’s Corruption

Recently, a company commander in the Middle East held a meeting to tell everyone how good a job they’re doing. This has become such a repetitive occurrence that the words coming out of his mouth seem like a memorized speech. You can feel the tension as everyone gathers around him.

The issues on everyone’s mind are not about the good job everyone is doing; they’re about the long hours that soldiers have to work and about the petty rules the leadership has enforced for the entire company. The silence is noteworthy because everyone takes a look at each other, and everyone knows exactly what is going on.

At this midpoint of the deployment, morale is at its all time low. After all, who can ever make sense of an 18-hour-work-day? Or justify such babysitting rules as evening curfews? Who is able to agree with the multiple article 15’s/counseling statements for crimes like talking back, faking illnesses, and missing a doctor’s appointment? Or who can make sense of growing Afghani civilian deaths, or a million Iraqi deaths, or thousands of U.S. GI deaths so that U.S. bosses can control the region’s oil, oil pipelines, and profits?

The hypocrisy of the commander’s praise was clear to everyone. At this little meeting, the smirk on one soldier’s face, the readjusting of body positions, and the quiet coughs and comments capture the mood a hundred times better than the commander’s useless speech.

A month later soldiers decided to write a leaflet exposing the corrupt and incompetent leadership of this company. The leaflet was posted everywhere on the base. It denounced the leadership for not caring about its soldiers. It pointed out that the leadership took measures simply to make sure they looked good; the shinier the brass, the better the chance of promotion. These deployments are career-makers for officers seeking promotions. And the culture of this Army breeds leaders who take advantage of their power; these leaders work soldiers into the ground just to make themselves look good. This is the culture of capitalism, especially capitalism in crisis pushing soldiers more and more. Ask any maintenance soldier in our unit, and that soldier will express how mechanics are worked like mules.

When this leaflet was discovered, the first sergeant was taken into custody by the military police. No one knows why; perhaps for his protection. The entire company was called for formation, where the remaining leadership lashed out in fear. This may not be common across the board, but it was something to behold on this day. As one soldier said, it was “great to see how angry they got.” The officers were scared!

Rank-and-file soldiers, who had received political literature that is still discussed, created the leaflet. Many agreed with the literature that was distributed to them before they deployed. In fact, many in the unit became close friends in discussing this literature. This literature led to some soldiers sharing CHALLENGE and conversations about anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and communist politics with many friends. Since the leaflet there have been many political discussions. The response of the leadership was retaliation. But that was fine with us. After all, this is the Army. If they give us a hard time, you bet it’s worth giving them worse.

In the midst of enormous lay-offs that have sky rocketed unemployment, this rebellious atmosphere is needed everywhere. Racist capitalism haunts us all, and we must organize and fight it all together, to destroy it with communist revolution. More soldiers can join this fight.

Red Soldier

Health Reform Band-aids Will Never Cure Racist Capitalism

The bosses control the media and the “debate” that workers are exposed to on a given topic. In health care, the media outlets have chosen their sides: either favoring “nationalized” health care or supporting private insurance companies. CHALLENGE (9/2) exposed these plans as a move toward fascist control through “nationalization” and business-as-usual exploitation by the insurance and drug companies.

Both options are deadly for workers. PLP offers a third option: fight the racist practices of the for-profit capitalist health system now, while building a movement that will deliver free and accessible health care for all workers — denied by the bosses — once the working class unites to destroy capitalism and create a communist society.

The media and Obama show their hypocrisy, pretending to favor better health for everyone, while continuing the bloodshed in Iraq and expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing and maiming more U.S. GI’s and Afghan and Pakistani workers. At Fort Campbell, Kentucky eleven soldiers have committed suicide already this year, prompting the brass to shut down the base for three days in May so every soldier could receive “suicide prevention counseling.”

More than 20% of the soldiers who make it back to the U.S. suffer from some form of psychological damage (Washington Post, 5/24). This attack on workers’ health will only increase as the wars intensify and additional casualties enter a Veterans Affairs medical system already overburdened with too many lives ruined by the capitalists’ drive for oil profits.

The bosses’ media is also silent about another aspect of this “debate”: access to health care is such a critical issue because capitalism creates horrific levels of disease and disability for workers worldwide. Due to pollution, the lack of clean water, global warming and racist unemployment, workers are unnecessarily dying by the millions. Actually the best way to improve our health is to destroy the system that creates these healthcare nightmares in the first place.

Malnutrition directly kills six million children per year and makes millions more susceptible to respiratory infection, malaria and other life-threatening diseases. A 1996 World Health Organization study reported that unsanitary conditions created due to the lack of clean water account for more than five million deaths per year, while three BILLION more suffer from diarrhea and intestinal diseases. These deaths, mainly black, Latino and Asian workers, are murders! For the sake of profit, bosses starve us, pollute our waters and poison our skies.

The massive unemployment resulting from the financial crisis will generate its own epidemic of bad health for workers. Overall, 6.7 million jobs have disappeared in the U.S since December 2007, although that number could easily be doubled considering the millions uncounted by government figures. According to the International Labor Organization, 51 million jobs could disappear worldwide this year alone.

A Congressional study in 1971 reported that for every 1.4% rise in unemployment, 30,590 workers died in the next five years from strokes, heart disease, kidney and liver ailments and suicide. (In January, 2009, the British medical journal Lancet, published a study showing that as many as one million working-age men died in capitalist Russia between 1989 and 2002 due to the implosion of the old communist movement and capitalist privatization throughout the economy. (Unemployment increased 56% over that period.) The stress of job loss significantly increases the incidence of diseases like high blood pressure and heart disease (NY Times, 5/9), along with depression and anxiety.

Access to health care is clearly an important issue for the world’s workers, but even with “national health” systems, the ruling class will never give us the health care we need. “National health” is synonymous with “government health” and the politicians’ constant kow-towing to healthcare industry bosses shows that the government is not a neutral mediator in the battle between workers and bosses. Capitalist governments are always subservient to their capitalist masters, a lesson workers shouldn’t forget when hearing about ‘town-hall meetings.” These meetings are orchestrated spectacles designed to build a movement that rails against “socialized” medicine in attempts to win workers to fascism. (Its standard-bearer is Sean Hannity, whose recent show entitled “Universal Nightmares” promoted the terror of universal health care.)

However, capitalist government health care is not the answer workers need. In Britain, the National Health Service denied the use of a drug to treat breast cancer because it was “too expensive.” Cancer researchers there also recently reported that as many as 15,000 people past 75 have died prematurely due to slow diagnosis and treatment.

Racist disparities in health care are also just as prevalent in countries with national health care as they are in the U.S. Throughout the European Union (where national health care is common) access to doctors is severely limited for undocumented immigrants. In 2007, Medicins du Monde (Doctors of the World) reported that so-called “universal coverage” denied treatment by a health care professional to 10% of undocumented immigrants. In general, immigrants don’t receive proper health care because of a “lack of knowledge about where to go for treatment, treatment cost, administrative problems, fear of being reported to the authorities and of discrimination, and linguistic and cultural barriers.” (European survey on undocumented migrants’ access to health care, MdM 2007).

No matter what the bosses or their politician-puppets say, and no matter what the proposed healthcare system, they will never voluntarily free workers from the system that creates poor health in the first place, a system that only needs us to be healthy enough to produce profit and to fight their imperialist wars. And they will never free us from a system where millions die needlessly because their deaths are deemed “too expensive” to prevent. Liberation is up to workers, armed with communist consciousness and led by the only party that fights to destroy the real disease: capitalism. Joining PLP and building this movement is the best way to ensure that workers get the health care we deserve.

Bosses’ Labor Day Can’t Displace Workers’ May Day:
Stella D’Oro Struggle, Not Labor Fakers, Is Model to Follow

NEW YORK CITY, September 1 — In a feeble response to workers’ anger at the bosses’ financial crisis, this city’s Central Labor Council (CLC) has this year labeled the hollow ritual of their patriotic Labor Day Parade a “march” for healthcare reform and union rights (meaning Obama’s healthcare bill and the Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA). The parade, led by Grand Sellout Lillian Roberts, is also “supposed” to honor the eleven-month strike of the Stella D’Oro workers, now fighting to keep their jobs as the bakery threatens to shut down and move. But following the militant lead of the Stella D’Oro bakers does not mean parading behind the CLC fakers, nor supporting the bosses’ attempt to eke out just enough medical care to keep us able to churn out their profits and fight their wars — while making us pay for it.

The Stella workers’ unity across racial and gender lines, their solid rank-and-file organization and determination to fight on, their resistance to scabs and cops (“scabs in blue”) and ability to win other workers’ support are indeed models to follow. But their union relied on a legal strategy to win the strike. They did achieve a victory in the labor courts — but then what?

The bosses’ laws are geared to protect the capitalists’ right to do what they want with their property. So they can run away looking for lower-wage workers, or just close down and dump workers in the street. Now Stella workers are up against the essence of capitalism, the bosses’ ownership of the means of production.

PLP calls on all workers to back the Stella D’Oro bakers all the way, with all the strength of our class.

Unknown to many, the U.S. Labor Day holiday originated in Canada, but its original significance was turned on its head by U.S. bosses and their union flunkies. In Canada, workers launched it in the 1870s as part of the fight for the 9-hour day. A U.S. labor “leader” attended it in Toronto in 1882 and brought it back to the U.S. on September 5, 1882.

When the International Workingmen’s Association, led by Karl Marx, saluted the U.S. working-class’s May 1, 1886 general strike in Chicago for the 8-hour day by establishing May 1st as an international workers’ day, marches were held worldwide, including in the U.S.

Then May Day in the U.S. in1894 erupted in street battles between workers and cops, so two months later the bosses, fearing a militant workers’ movement, had the U.S. Congress establish Labor Day as a federal holiday on the first Monday in September that same year as an “answer” to May Day.

The first half of the 20th century saw militant May Days, most led by communists, drawing tens of millions around the world. In 1947, the U.S. Communist Party (CP) organized 250,000 to march in New York City. But soon the CP sold out its principles and abandoned May Day. However, in 1971, PLP picked up the banners of May Day and has organized marches every year since.

Meanwhile, the bosses’ Labor Day became a holiday completely bereft of any working-class content, mainly “saluting” the corrupt labor misleaders, servants of the bosses. Despite these fakers, and their counterparts internationally, May Day remains the true celebration of working-class solidarity and anti-racist unity, pointing towards a future of workers’ power when the bosses’ Labor Day will be tossed into the ashcan of history.

LETTERS

PLP and Religion, Deep in the Heart of Texas

When I first began working with PLP several months ago, I wondered how religious people would respond to fighting racism with the understanding that the cause of racism lies with capitalism. I am a volunteer in a religious organization, and from my experiences over the past year, I see that a positive response is possible. My work, coupled with that of PLP, has brought me to a better understanding of economic, political, and social forces, and prepared me to better communicate with ALL workers.

I relocated to Texas temporarily for a year as a volunteer with a religious organization whose mission is social justice. Essentially, the organization aims at engaging the injustices of the world in order to free people from oppression of all kinds. This is similar to what PLP tries to do, but with a religious spin. The program has me living in community with five others, and each of us works with different populations of workers.

My housemates and I come from relatively different social classes and levels of Christian upbringing from all across the United States, so our home is one of ideological struggle. I’ve learned to overcome my passivity and engage in a different level of struggle that has promoted growth in all of us.

For example, one housemate is a Catholic-convert from a conservative, Protestant background and has asked me about why I believe capitalism is the cause of society’s problems and about my understanding of communism. I have engaged her in ways that are sensitive to her religious outlook and world experiences. She admitted that she had been going through the same questioning of God and society that I have, and agreed with a lot of what I had to say. I was nervous at first, but I realized that we were not so completely different after all. At least now she’s a little more open to the idea of communism. It’s a start.

For many, religious faith is about helping those in need and living in harmony with one another. For the Party, this is communism. However, religious people aren’t quite ready to blame capitalism entirely for the world’s problems, nor to promote communism. In their eyes, violence is never a solution. They are not willing to acknowledge that sometimes violence is necessary, as can be seen throughout history, like ending slavery. The tension between pacifism and violence divides many religious people from Party members, especially my housemates.

I have struggled with many people. From this, despite what at first appeared to be many setbacks, we have developed a new consciousness of the causes of injustice in society. Let us not fear struggle with the religious-oriented. Only by engaging those who are seemingly different can we learn that we are truly alike. All workers unite in the fight against capitalism and for the promotion of communism!

Texas comrade

Planting the Idea of ‘Money Not Needed’

Two neighbors on my block organized a “3rd Annual Plant Swap.” The invitation read: ‘If your garden is full, bring some plants for others to share... if you’re new to gardening, it is a good time to start! Annuals, perennials, veggies and garden accessories/decorations are welcome. If you play a musical instrument bring it and join in.’

Over 100 people came, mostly from the neighborhood, bringing plants, pots, tools and books to swap with other gardeners. Some people brought hundreds of plants. Volunteers labeled the plants — Sun, Part-sun, Shade, Veggies — and then put them on tables. Many people commented when they first arrived, “What a good idea,” “Awesome,” and “Wow! Look at all this activity, how wonderful.”

Some people wanted to buy plants and couldn’t believe there was no money involved. The Swap is a popular event; neighbors bringing good cheer, cooperation, and a sense of gardening each according to need. Guitars, flutes and an oboe played together adding to the ambiance of the event.

No one spoke of communism, but everyone acted with a sense of cooperation, without money being involved. Thousands of plants were swapped. At the end, the remaining plants were gathered on a small table. The next day people came by who could not make the Plant Swap and took them. The organizers were very pleased that people shared their plants and equipment in a cooperative environment, demonstrating that human consciousness has so much more to offer than the crass materialism that inundates present U.S. capitalist culture.

Red Gardener

LA Summer Project Wins 8 Youth to PLP

As young members of PLP we were delighted to be part of L.A.’s Summer Project. We learned about communism and that in order to build a society based on need, we need to abolish race, racism, and sexism. This can only be done through a communist revolution. The Summer Project focused on the working class. We were involved in morning and afternoon sales, distributing CHALLENGE to workers and students. As a result of the Project and our activities with PLP in fighting budget cuts, eight of us joined the Party.

Since the Summer Project, we hold a Study Action group for new members of PLP. We are studying “Road to Revolution 4, A Communist Manifesto.” We’ve learned the meaning of exploitation. We concluded that exploitation means the bosses profit from the workers not getting fully paid for products they make. In order for capitalism to survive, the bosses must exploit all workers and must super-exploit some. Capitalism created racism and the whole concept of “race.” There can’t be a capitalist society without it. The bosses try to justify racist super-exploitation by saying that some people are “naturally” superior to others.

We also discussed religion and how it only serves the interests of the rulers, to confuse workers so that conditions stay as they are. We discussed how religion tells people that things are the way they are and shouldn’t be changed because god made it that way. We also read that we must develop our own Red Army and fight to win power.

The purpose of this Study Action Group is to discuss the importance of communism and to help each other become better communists. As future leaders of this revolution, we should learn about what we’re fighting for and how to lead the fight for revolution, and learn from more experienced comrades. We will decide the actions to take, which can take place at schools, factories, neighborhoods, communities and in the military.

New youth members of PLP

Haiti: Mass Demonstrations for Minimum Wage Hike

Thousands of workers and students demonstrated at the Haitian parliament this month, demanding that a law for a 200 gourde (about $5 U.S.) daily minimum wage be implemented. After parliament originally passed this law, President Rene Préval refused to publish and enforce it.

As of August 16, at least 12 demonstrators have been “detained.” The Haitian militant group ASID calls these detentions “illegal, immoral, and arbitrary.” Many are demanding their release. Supporters abroad should picket Haitian consulates demanding a 200-gourde minimum wage, and demanding the release of those arrested. Friends of PLP in Haïti are continuing to help organize these demonstrations.

In the global fight for world labor markets, the U.S. is trying to keep some control in Latin America while the European Union and China are taking an increasing share for themselves. The UN has appointed former U.S. president Bill Clinton as Special Envoy to Haïti. Clinton, working for the rich capitalists in the U.S., will be bringing some rich investors to Haiti in October. Préval only wants to raise the minimum wage, currently at 75 gourdes (about $2 U.S.) per day, to 125 gourdes (about $3.50). His thinking: the lower the wage, the greater the profit for his capitalist masters, Haïtian and foreign.

CHALLENGE reader in Haiti

[Editor’s comment: Workers in Haiti, and around the world, can’t settle for a reformed minimum wage. At any wage, workers are exploited for the bosses’ maximum profit. Capitalism in its entirety has to be fought and smashed to free workers from this wage slavery. Only by fighting for communist revolution with PLP can this happen.]

Freedom School: Students Fight to Learn, Learn to Fight

Our California Freedom School is for students at our college who wanted to learn despite the 2009 budget cuts. We took matters into our own hands when our summer session was cancelled. We students and teachers volunteered to teach each other, to advance our knowledge of politics, philosophy and other social matters. We are learning to be more effective fighters against racism, budget cuts and capitalism.

Our Freedom School was patterned after those of the 1960’s civil-rights movement in which over 40 classes were held in churches and homes across the South. They served African-American students who were restricted to a segregated schooling system. These schools were in direct opposition to racist laws and unjust treatment of black workers who vowed to educate themselves.

With the help of some teachers, we too organized non-credit classes, hoping that material learned during summer break would provide a stronger foundation for the upcoming fall semester. At first the college administration opposed our Freedom School. They said it violated school policies; students would not be allowed on campus during the summer; and legal action would be taken. We were ready to move Freedom School to a church, but the team pressed on and eventually the administration agreed that we could stay on campus.

Classes began twice a week, run by the students themselves. They covered topics from creative writing, the Afghan war, budget cuts and math, to capitalism and Marxism, making classes ideal for detailed and in-depth discussions. “It kinda got my mind to start working,” one student reflected. “As a group, our critical thinking unfolded,” added another.

The topics frequently related to the working class and the oppression we face. The classes ranged from five to twenty-five students who all expressed themselves on micro and macro social policies. About fifty people took part altogether, including some PLP Summer Project volunteers who brought CHALLENGE and the PLP Dialectics pamphlets to class.

One session explained the capitalist crisis and how it was behind the budget cuts. We also read part of the Communist Manifesto. “We take apart capitalism, communism, socialism and what we think is right and wrong to the point of what works,” as a student put it. At a later session, a student led a discussion about contradiction and change, sharing what she had learned in a PLP Summer Project study group.

We each brought food when we could and everyone shared. Under communism, all workers would share surplus and shortage alike, instead of an elite group getting more than it needs.

A discussion on “Man’s Place in Nature” led to the question: Can people fix the problems that people have created, like racism and war? “As long as we’re in this capitalist system, we should try to fix it,” was one point of view. “Capitalism can’t end racism or exploitation, we need a revolution,” was another.

Just like Freedom Schools in the South, ours thrived and flourished. Freedom Summer School was so successful that we now hope to continue it as Freedom After-School throughout the fall semester. We plan to be more responsible about communicating with everybody regularly, letting others know whether or not we’re coming and showing up on time. More of us plan to step up and help lead discussions. We’ll pair off with someone more experienced to prepare for them.

Some Freedom School students are getting more involved with different campus groups. We will bring our new understanding into the continuing fight against more budget cuts that are sure to come. Several students are thinking seriously about joining PLP and more are reading and distributing CHALLENGE. We are more confident about our ability to understand and to lead. And we’ve all made some great new friends! Even though we lost the fight to keep the college summer session, these are victories that cannot ever be taken away from us.

Freedom Schoolers

‘District 9’ Attacks Racist Apartheid But Offers No Solution

Sometimes in order to get a story about the horrors of racism and capitalism through the gauntlet of financiers and studio execs in Hollywood you have to add... ALIENS. In the movie District 9 an alien ship stops above Johannesburg, South Africa with nearly a million alien inhabitants in a state of starvation inside. Feeling pressure from the international community the South African government relocates the aliens to a camp on the edge of the city, District 9. The film takes place twenty years after the ship’s arrival. The film’s location in South Africa is no accident as it is meant to conjure images of the Apartheid system that ruled there for nearly fifty years.

District 9, like the areas most black South Africans’ lived in under apartheid, is a fenced-in slum with densely-packed shacks housing almost two million aliens living in a constant state of poverty and starvation. The aliens are blamed for the conditions of the slum they are forced to live in despite the fact that the conditions were created by denying them food and other resources. The local population, fully indoctrinated with this racism,
vigorously calls for the aliens to be removed to camps outside of the city.

The film is shot in a documentary-style fashion using commentary from people’s reactions to living in the city as the story unfurls. The comments about the aliens in the film are from real life interviews the director conducted with people from Johannesburg about the influx of immigrants mainly from Zimbabwe and Nigeria into the city.

The fighting between the humans and aliens reached the point where the government decides to relocate the aliens outside the city, District 10. They contracted out the removal of the aliens to a private enterprise called Multi-National United (MNU) that uses private and government security forces to control the aliens.

While most of the MNU and security forces are white it is interesting to see black members of the population in the crowd call for the alien deportations. Showing the negative results of life without communist politics, these black residents call for the removal of aliens to concentration camps not unlike those they were subjected to two decades prior under apartheid.

The class and race dimensions of the movie are made clear very early as the aliens’ “stupidity” is explained by academics and journalists who state that they must be the workers of the civilization since they are so loathsome. The workers at MNU regularly refer to the aliens as “prawns” which is the racist term devised for them. The aliens are given slave names like Christopher Johnson, names that with their vocal capabilities they can’t even pronounce; they are branded and rigorously catalogued.

The film’s human protagonist is the weak- minded Wikus who works in the alien and human affairs department of MNU. While engaging in a brutal forced eviction campaign in District 9 he meets an alien Christopher Johnson who questions the legality of the evictions, Wikus raids his house and exposes himself to alien technology that begins slowly turning him into a “prawn.” Representing the capitalist class as the human Wikus, his primary characteristics are cowardice and duplicity. He repeatedly makes his situation, and that of the aliens around him, worse by abandoning them in cowardly attempts to save himself. Only as he begins to fully change into an alien can he summon the courage to help the aliens in their fight against MNU.

MNU, who regularly brutalize the alien inhabitants and raid their homes looking for weapons, know of the Nigerians, gangsters living in the slums, and their illegal activities, but allow them to exist as another method of terrorizing and controlling the population. Just like in the real world, gangsters only exist because of the racism and violence of capitalism and they flourish with the tacit consent of the capitalist class.

The contrast between the Nigerians and MNU in the film is interesting. The gangsters’ belief in witchcraft and their leader’s desire to consume alien flesh elicit an instant, strong response from the audience. “Who are these monsters?” one wonders. Yet when MNU agents engage in the regular policy of
dispatching alien babies with flame throwers (joking that they pop like popcorn), dissect mass numbers of aliens for medical experiments (in a crazed attempt to locate the source of their “power, á la the Nazis), or regularly gun down aliens in the street for fun it elicits a different response since they do it while wearing business suits or crisp white uniforms. The film plays on how we have been taught to abhor the violence of petty gangsters while ignoring state-sanctioned genocide caused by the capitalist class.

By the end of the film you are ready to cheer as alien weaponry turns MNU agents and gangsters into clouds of red dust and goo. The film’s strong imagery leaves one feeling both disturbed and unsure about the future. There is no quick, easy victory. The film ends in a state of uncertainty and while the lesson is clear that demonization of the “other” caused by capitalist racism leads to genocidal violence, how do we escape this grim reality? There is one lesson that no Hollywood film is allowed to teach. If we want to end racism and the capitalist violence it excuses, then workers have to smash the whole system through communist revolution.

Red Eye

Credit check can cost you a job

NYT, 8/7 — ...credit checks are now fast, cheap and used for all manner of work....

But... shunning those with poor credit may be unfair and trap the unemployed... in a financial death spiral: the worse their debts, the harder it is to get a job to pay them off.

“How do you get out from under it?”.... You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”

Others say that the credit check can be used to provide cover for discriminatory practices.

Marx, Engels ‘outlast the ages’

NYT, 8/19 — ...the horrors he saw.... in Manchester led [Engels] to write “The Condition of the Working Class in England”....

Engels’s writing caught the attention of Marx.... They would remain friends for the next four decades, as they together wrote “The Communist Manifesto”... and fanned the flames of international communism....

And it is surely true, as Mr. Hunt puts it, that Engels’s larger critique of capitalism — and his hope for a more dignified kind of humanity — “resonates down the ages.”

Nigeria drained by foreign oil co’s

NYT, 8/11 — For years, fighters demanding a greater share of the region’s wealth have been sabotaging [Nigeria’s] oil industry, one of the United States’ biggest suppliers, with brazen attacks on pipelines, oil depots and kidnappings of industry workers....

“The fundamental issues of equity and democratization... are driving the activity... There are no serious or effective proposals under way to deal with this....”

...80 percent of oil money goes to 1 percent of the Nigerian population.

Meanwhile the Delta remains destitute... with... pervasive “social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor,” according to the United Nations....

The combination of wealthy foreign oil companies, entrenched poverty and ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare has produced a state of semi-conflict for much of the decade.

US plotted to overthrow Allende

NYT, 8/17 — President Richard M. Nixon discussed with Brazil’s president a cooperative effort to overthrow the government of Salvador Allende of Chile, according to recently declassified documents... The United States and Brazil [were] trying to root out leftists in Latin America during the cold war....

Mr. Nixon saw Brazil’s military government as a critical partner in the region....

The 1971 memo showed that the two leaders also discussed intervention in Cuba.

Afghanistan legalizes Shia sexism

GW, 8/26 — Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation....

The new... legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. “It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her....”

Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains [his] repressive measures.

Bill Clinton should have sat it out

NYT, 8/22 — American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released after nearly five months in North Korean custody....

But... human rights activists... are accusing them of needlessly endangering the very people they tried to cover: North Korean refugees and the activists who help them....

Notes and videotapes the journalists gathered in China before their ill-fated venture to the border fell into the hands of the authorities....

A South Korean pastor said the police raided his home in China on March 19, four days after the journalists visited and filmed a secret site where he looked after children of North Korean refugee women.... his five secret homes for refugees were shut down....

“The reporters visited our place with a noble cause,” he added. “I did my best to help them. But I wonder how they could be so careless in handling their tapes and notebooks.... many others would be hurt because of them.”

Plenty of excuses for new wars!

NYT, 8/9 — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say....

Intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand and American... relief or military response.

Cuban docs’ jump to US ‘unfair!’

NYT, 8/11 — To the Editor: Re: “Once Doctors in Cuba, Starting Over in U.S.” (Aug 4): I read with growing anger your account of Cuban doctors who flee their country and become doctors or highly trained nurses in Florida.

The fact that men and women educated at government expense in one of the poorest countries in the works are now using that education to benefit people in the richest country in the world seems grossly unfair, if not outrageous.

Useless? If it sells, it’s in GDP!

NYT, 8/17 — To the editor: ...our calculation of gross domestic product... includes [any] activity of a purely financial nature.

When loans are made to construct factories, buy equipment or even to build or buy homes, this is a productive transaction. But when these loans are “commoditized” and resold again and again, it is impossible to believe that any notion of “productivity” can be attached to all these subsequent transactions. Yet they are included in the GDP [along with other junk].

John Brown’s Raid: Guns Against Slavery

On Saturday, October 17, PLP is joining with thousands commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry to celebrate this watershed event in the history of the modern working class. Its lessons — the need for militancy, boldness, multi-racial unity and fearlessness in confronting a powerful but ultimately weak ruling class — are just as important today as we face increasing global imperialist war and racist exploitation.

John Brown led a multi-racial group of five black men, including two ex-slaves, and 16 white men in seizing the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) on October 16, 1859. They planned to take the thousands of muskets stored there into the Appalachian Mountains and begin raids on slave plantations. They would train freed slaves who wished to join the guerrilla army and help make further raids. This process, plus slave rebellions it would encourage, would continue until slavery was smashed.

Two-Day Battle

John Brown’s band made tactical errors and was trapped in the arsenal. After a two-day gun battle, the survivors were captured by U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee, who shortly thereafter became the Confederacy’s military leader.

Harriet Tubman — escaped slave and famous as “General” Tubman of the Underground Railroad, organizer of over a dozen trips to the South to aid other slaves in escaping — had helped prepare for the raid. She planned to participate with a contingent of allies, but illness delayed her departure for Virginia. Meanwhile, fearing discovery, John Brown had started the raid two weeks earlier than planned.

Brown and other captured survivors were tried for murder, treason against the state of Virginia and inciting slave rebellions. They were convicted and hanged. Virginia’s slave-owners were so afraid of abolitionist attempts to rescue Brown that they guarded the execution with 1,500 state militiamen, federal troops and Virginia Military Institute cadets.

While jailed awaiting death, Brown predicted that his hanging would do more to free the slaves than his original plan. In a note he handed to a guard on the day of his execution, Brown wrote that his only error had been to underestimate the amount of violence necessary to destroy slavery.

Great Violence Needed to End Slavery

Many bourgeois historians claim John Brown’s intense hatred of racism and his actions against slavery “prove” he was insane, particularly since he was white and not enslaved. Yet most historians agree with Brown’s own evaluation of the need for great violence to end slavery. They also concede that the raid on Harper’s Ferry and the following trial and execution swung the abolitionist movement onto the path of destroying slavery by force rather than with “moral persuasion” and piecemeal reforms and escapes. The raid also encouraged a new wave of slave rebelliousness.

Long before 1859, Brown had been advocating violence to destroy slavery. In a struggle in the Kansas territory between advocates of slavery and “free labor,” Brown and his sons led numerous armed struggles against pro-slavery terrorists. On May 24, Brown and his followers made a night raid on the homes of some particularly vicious ones, capturing and killing five with broadswords.

Kansas ultimately entered the Union as a free state due in no small measure to the boldness of anti-slavery militias like that of Brown’s. Among abolitionists and wider circles of northern working people, John Brown became a symbol of hatred of racism and slavery in defiance of the slave-owners.

Less than two years after John Brown’s raid, the Civil War erupted. By 1865, about 1,300,000 Union troops marched through the South to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” About 200,000 of these troops were black men, many of them escaped slaves or slaves freed by the advancing Union army. These black and many white troops opposed slavery and racism. They were an armed expression of multi-racial unity.

History was made by millions of ordinary people fighting back. Hundreds of supporters directly aided the preparation for the raid; thousands more did so indirectly. When saying “John Brown” or “Harriet Tubman,” we’re not extolling some “superhero” contrived by capitalist press agents to reduce us to a passive audience applauding their splendid speeches or exploits. Revolutionary leaders (whose words, actions and thoughts best summarize those of countless others) encourage our strengths, so that we can consciously participate in understanding and changing the world.

The Inspiration of John Brown

John Brown is with us every time we help one co-worker shake off the mental and physical chains of capitalist enslavement by daring to join with others to fight the enemy. We celebrate this 150th anniversary to help lead our class closer to revolution by learning from John Brown and from the millions to whom he gave leadership.

Brown was a Christian, not a Marxist, and did not attack the capitalist system along with slavery. We now realize that racism cannot finally be destroyed without destroying capitalism. In fact, capitalism grew on the basis of continued racist oppression after the Civil War and continues to be the foundation of modern capitalism worldwide. But we study John Brown to learn from his strengths: multi-racial unity, boldness in seizing the offensive, reliance on the masses to embrace violence to destroy a ruling class.

We in PLP are preparing for another civil war, this time a class war to destroy wage slavery and with it, all oppression. History — the story of working-class struggle — produces the material from which our ideas on how to make a revolution emerge. Join us on October 17, 2009! We must finish the job begun by our anti-slavery ancestors!

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, September 2, 2009

Information: 02 September 2009 109 hits

No Reform Can Fix Capitalist Healthcare

Health Battle Shows Narrow Capitalist Self-interest Persists

Philly Hospital Workers March Against Speed-up

a href="#Airport Bosses’ Sweatshop Conditions Murder Immigrant Worker">"irport Bosses’ Sweatshop Conditions Murder Immigrant Worker

a href="#Fight ‘Choice’ of Wage-cuts or Layoffs at Cal State">Fi"ht ‘Choice’ of Wage-cuts or Layoffs at Cal State

a href="#Imperialists’ Battle over Honduras Kills Workers">"mperialists’ Battle over Honduras Kills Workers

Guadeloupe, Martinique: Bosses Reneg on ‘Promises’ that Ended Strikes

a href="#S. Korea : Auto Workers Seized Plant, Repelled Cops’ Attack">". Korea : Auto Workers Seized Plant, Repelled Cops’ Attack

Wage-cut, Wage-freeze: GE Practices Obama’s ‘Shared Sacrifice’

Clinton Visit to India: Red Revolution Needed to Stop Global Warming

Letters

a href="#‘No plea bargain when you know you’re right...’">‘No "lea bargain when you know you’re right...’

a href="#‘Throw a (red) stone in the water and the ripples spread’">‘T"row a (red) stone in the water and the ripples spread’

Rank-and-File Militance Scores vs. Exploiting Bosses

a href="#L.A. Summer Project Spreads PL’s Politics to Industrial Workers and GI’s">L.". Summer Project Spreads PL’s Politics to Industrial Workers and GI’s ‘Hungry for more action...’

Project Developed Young Leaders

a href="#‘Broadened my horizons about all workers’ struggles...’">‘Bro"dened my horizons about all workers’ struggles...’

a href="#‘A productive week...’">‘A"productive week...’

a href="#[Excerpts from a speech given at PLP’s LA Summer Project]">"xcerpts from a speech given at PLP’s LA Summer Project

Imperialist Rivalries Spurred 1969 Moon Landing

Red Eye

Fired? Your wage won’t recover
Working-class tradition: help out
Profit system rules banks’ actions
Obama = Bush on immigrant raids
System rewards those who rob us
And they’re still at it….
Sex discrimination can mean death
US-China clash exploding in Africa
US gets airbase, winks at tyrant
Drugs prey on no-hope workers

a href="#‘The Ugly Truth’: Sexism Knows No Boundaries Under Capitalism">‘T"e Ugly Truth’: Sexism Knows No Boundaries Under Capitalism

No Reform Can Fix Capitalist Healthcare

U.S. bosses and their politician-servants are arguing over how best to dole out health care to the working class. One side of this battle, mainly Republicans and the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats, wants to protect the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies at all costs. The other side, mainly liberal Democrats, sees the current health-care situation as a threat to U.S. bosses’ ability to maintain their position against imperialist rivals. As far as the working class is concerned, the likenesses between these sides are more important than their differences.

Neither faction has offered the real solution for all workers: Free and readily accessible health care, as was the situation after the revolutions in the Soviet Union and China. Clinics were widespread and masses of health-care workers were sent into rural areas to serve peasants and farmers.

PLP believes this history shows that workers in power can provide a healthy environment, just as we’ve learned from what happened when these revolutions were reversed and capitalism restored. In the former Soviet republics, workers’ life expectancy, which dramatically increased in the 30 years after the revolution, has decreased since the late 1960s. In China, schistosomiasis, a disease caused by a parasitic worm that ravaged rural areas, was widely controlled due to planned social action initiated after the revolution; it has reemerged.

The results of socialism were a return to capitalism and renewed attacks on the health of the working class. This is why PLP advocates fighting directly for communism and for a society where all aspects of workers’ health will be primary.

Improving workers’ health is not on the top of the agenda for the ruling class, but the faction that now controls the White House and Congress is focused on maintaining U.S. dominance in the world and therefore has two main goals for health-care reform: 1) force the U.S. working class to accept across-the-board low-quality health care as a fact of life; and 2) discipline the sections of the ruling class which are only interested in short-term profits and threaten to undermine the U.S.’s ability to oppose its rivals. Both of these goals represent a move towards greater fascist control.

Here are the bosses’ plans and a communist analysis:

Require everyone to have health insurance or else pay a penalty.

This requirement is a direct attack on workers who, because of falling wages, find it more and more difficult to divvy up what they have between food, rent/mortgages, heat, clothing, etc. This racist attack will especially affect black and Latin workers who generally suffer from lower wages and higher rates of unemployment.

Require small businesses to provide insurance that meets "minimum standards."

These "minimum standards" will attempt to ensure a working class that is only healthy enough to exploit for profit and fight in their oil wars. This means that health care will be rationed and health care for workers who are not "productive" (in the capitalist sense, meaning they don’t produce profits), namely the elderly and seriously ill, will be limited.

Expand Medicaid to cover the uninsured who can’t afford to buy their own health insurance.

Medicaid fails to provide decent health care now and would have to be expanded just to adequately cover those who aReady use its services. The financial crisis has swelled the number of unemployed (and thus added to the nearly 50 million uninsured), with black and Latin workers disproportionately affected, meaning more and more workers will come to rely on Medicaid. Their ability to force us to accept these racist conditions is a measure of their ability to prepare us for future attacks.

Tighter regulation of health insurance companies.

This attempt to increase regulation reflects the split in the ruling class discussed above and indicates that Obama & Co. are attempting to discipline those capitalists who care only about their short-term profit-making. It remains to be seen whether health-insurance bosses will submit to this disciplining, but the working class has no stake in the outcome of this battle, because no matter which group of capitalists are running the show, our health will always take a back seat to profits. Of course it’s gratifying to see CEOs get "punished" in public, but it will not mean that Obama and the Democrats actually care about our health.

Taxing generous insurance plans.

As a legacy of the militant union reforms of the 1930s and ‘40s, there is a section of the working class which has decent health care insurance, primarily industrial and government workers. Not content with helping to wipe out many of these benefits that went along with unionized auto industry jobs, Obama has called for a tax on the remaining decent health care plans.

This plan to tax those few workers who have somehow managed to retain decent health benefits reveals the essence of the entire reform effort: The heavy taxes on the premium plans will drive them out of existence (for workers) and help to create a single, low-quality level of health care for the working class, one that allows for greater government control and discipline, e.g., fascism.

Getting behind either of the factions is a mistake for the working class. Neither side has our interests at heart, a fact clearly indicated when we consider that there has been no mention of a particular super-exploited section of the working class that has a key role to play in this debate: healthcare workers. Mainly women and often immigrants, these workers suffer racist double-exploitation. Their working conditions are awful, especially for home-health providers (who get paid very low wages and have to buy their own gas to get to their patients) and nursing-home attendants (low wages, long hours, too many patients). Improving the health of the working class should begin with improving the health of those who take care of the rest of us.

When we are told of the deaths of workers from disease we often hear "Our mother died of tuberculosis," or "My sister died from AIDS," or "My son died from cholera." These things, the tuberculosis or cholera bacteria or HIV, are only the specific reason for an individual’s demise. The essential point is that capitalism creates the conditions in which these particular pathogens actually kill people. Clean water and adequate sewage treatment, which is the biggest healthcare improvement that’s available, is denied to hundreds of millions of workers in poorer countries (and millions in imperialism’s heartland).

Whatever it is that makes us sick, from treatable infections to imperialist war, from racist police brutality to stress from having to work two jobs (or from being unemployed), it is capitalism that is the real disease. Fortunately there is a cure: communist revolution and a workers’ society.?J

Fascist Economy Rules the Roost for U.S. Big Bosses

In contrast with the rapid and vast restructurings in the auto and banking industries, health care "reform" is proving a much harder task for Obama and the dominant, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists he serves. The hallmark of fascism, tightened, centralized economic control — which, like an expanded military, U.S. rulers need to compete in a sharpening global rivaRy — is developing unevenly.

In effect, the government runs GM and Chrysler, and banks and brokers have dwindled to a dominant handful. But individual capitalists have yet to display the sense of "sacrifice" Obama demanded at his inauguration, "giving our all to a difficult task."

Reforming — especially nationalizing — health care would benefit the U.S. capitalist class as a whole in various ways. It could relieve the major expense of workers’ health care — which, for instance, cost GM $3 billion annually — thereby boosting companies’ profits. By reducing such costs, it could free up capital for rebuilding infrastructure and the rulers’ war machine, as well as make them more competitive with rivals in Europe, Japan and Canada where health care is aReady nationalized. It also could make people more directly dependent on the government and consequently loyal to it.

Health Battle Shows Narrow Capitalist Self-interest Persists

Reluctant, self-interested capitalists are turning Obama’s health roadshow "town meetings" into bad days on Jerry Springer. New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize winner and leading proponent of economic fascism Paul Krugman lamented: "Angry protesters...have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform." (NYT, 8/6) "Well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs," Krugman continued. "Key organizers include...a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights...run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain." Such hospitals, and their doctors, will lose big if Obama succeeds in eliminating current fee-for-service — which enables them to charge what the traffic will bear — and replaces it with government-mandated salaries and test charges.

Health insurers, HMO’s — fearing marginalization if a federal plan takes hold — also oppose Obama, who’s trying to carry out U.S. capitalism’s larger, long-term interests. Drug makers, however, love him, for the same reason: profits (not patriotism). Their lobbying group PhRMA has authorized a $150-million advertising budget to back Obama’s plan. Pharmaceuticals "stand to gain millions of new customers from the expansion of healthcare coverage." (NYT, 9/9/09)

Obama’s consolidation/nationalization effort has succeeded most in auto, where short-term profit has vanished. This has slashed the DuPont’s financial power, whose Wilmington Trust is the largest creditor — meaning loser — in GM’s bankruptcy.

At GM, Obama installed ExxonMobil director Edward Whitaker as chairman. This oil giant is the largest beneficiary of U.S. imperialism’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This may even have engineered the demise of the 95-year-old influence of the DuPont family, which sometimes has been at odds with U.S. imperialists’ broader agenda. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, DuPont president Ellen Kullman quit GM’s board in December, just after Obama’s election.

Greedy Execs Ignore War Agenda for Quick Cash

Many bank executives, like health industry bosses, mainly see the current crisis as an opportunity to get even richer. Frank Rich, another NY Times’ U.S. imperialist pundit, noted, "Nine...bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009." (8/9) He includes Goldman and JP Morgan. The same day’s Times editorialized for government regulation of bankers’ compensation.

CEOs and others who won’t submit to the leading rulers’ greater needs invite the full force of state power upon them. Convicted Enron bosses rot, or have died, in jail. The ever-unfolding Madoff case and last month’s round-up of crooked politicians and rabbis in New Jersey and Brooklyn help the rulers test just how much public sentiment they can stir up against wayward servants of their own class. This includes the potential to spread anti-Semitism in case it’s needed against Goldman for grabbing billions in bonuses.

But in-fighting among the bosses is no mere sideshow for workers. Capitalists’ disciplining of one another punishes the working class in far greater numbers. For every Bernie Madoff or Enron or WorldCom telecommunications exec, tens of thousands of workers lost jobs and pensions. This is especially true for black and Latino workers who, due to racist discrimination, have been thrown on the scrap heap in disproportionate numbers.

U.S. rulers are counting on Obama to impose the wartime economic discipline they require. Viewing his proposed reforms as "progress" would be a serious political mistake. Our Party’s task is to spread the only viable alternative — for workers — to Obama’s "town meeting" message. In short, we must eliminate the profit system which creates all kinds of exploiters of the working class — whether those driving for short-term immediate profits or their long-range imperialist opponents, primarily concerned with saving their system. Destroying capitalism with a communist revolution will take a lifetime of effort.

Auto and Banks Rapidly Consolidate

In further consolidation, the bosses backing Obama have anointed just two firms, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, as the U.S.’s flagship financiers. Goldman’s close Washington ties have earned it the nickname "Government Sachs." And, trying not to be too obvious, once word hit the papers, JP Morgan called off an unprecedented July board meeting in Washington that was to have included Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff.

Behind the scenes, Mellon’s Bank of New York (BNY) and Boston’s State Street, both trustees of Obama’s bailout funds, have become, with JP Morgan, undisputed custodians of U.S. capital. BNY manages $19.5 trillion, JP Morgan $13.5 trillion and State Street $11.3 trillion. Beleaguered Citigroup today comes in a distant and dwindling fourth at $1.8 trillion.

And don’t underestimate former titan, now relatively small Brown Brothers Harriman. This old-money "wealth advisor’s" partners, having bankrolled House banking czar Barney Frank, pull important levers in Washington.

Philly Hospital Workers March Against Speed-up

PHILADELPHIA, PA, August 4 — A group of hospital workers recently marched on the nursing administration to protest the bosses making one worker do the work of two different job classifications.

The workers’ march was provoked by the bosses persuading a nursing assistant to do the job of a nursing clerk. Because this worker wasn’t an actual nursing clerk, the bosses had her enter nursing notes into the computer using an RN’s name. Not only is this a speed-up and a contract violation, but it is also illegal. Even the RN was afraid that she would be in trouble if the wrong notes were entered. A second union member resisted when the bosses tried to force her to do the same thing. She contacted a union delegate who organized a meeting for the clerical workers that led to the march.

While this increased activity can temporarily improve morale, it also highlights some important questions: Where is this activity leading us? Will the unions we’re in (or the unions we want to join) convince us that we have no choice but to accept more layoffs and cutbacks "because of the economy". Will the workers’ inevitable anger and militancy be watered down into paper grievances, drawn-out legal fights in the bosses’ courts, and voting for the "lesser-evil" bosses’ politicians?

Or will workers refuse to accept that the working class must pay for the bosses’ economic crisis? "Union ideas" alone don’t show workers that we must defy every aspect of the capitalist class system. Heck, "union ideas" these days mean concession after concession without any fight
whatsoever!

The rich bonuses paid to the bosses in the auto industry and Goldman-Sachs show that "belt-tightening" only applies to the working class. Despite the U.S. bosses’ efforts to downplay class differences, the working class has nothing in common with the bosses. Our interests can only be served by PLP’s ideas of overthrowing capitalism with communist revolution.

Strikes must be built, scabs must be stopped, injunctions and the cops who enforce them must be defied, and international multi-racial unity must develop. Past union movements have pursued these goals and won significant reform victories, but now so many of those victories have been taken back. The attack on the auto workers’ pensions alone undermines the pension of every other worker. That’s why all of our fights must have the ultimate goal of communist revolution. Communist ideas give us the understanding to see how even a defeat of one reform fight or another can be a victory if it advances the revolutionary movement.

The current struggle of one Philadelphia union shows the damage when there are no communist ideas to challenge the bosses. After working under their previous contract for the last 18 months, union workers at Acme food markets just overwhelmingly approved a contract recommended by their union leadership, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776. Although Acme leads this area in sales, their competitors are gaining and Acme’s response is to attack their higher-paid union workers. Acme currently paid "250 percent higher than the average competitor in the Northeast region" for health benefits according to Acme’s President Judith A. Spires.

The new contract accepted by the Acme workers has major concessions. The bosses will reduce the percentage of full-time workers from 23% to 18%. This hurts younger workers by reducing the number of available better-paying jobs. The new contract also allows Acme to lease areas in their stores, opening up the door to replacing higher-paid jobs like union butchers with lower-paid workers brought in by sub-contractors.

Why did the Acme workers accept these cutbacks? Without communist ideas the workers were limited to the "leadership" of their union
officials and the bosses. For example, one worker told a reporter, "There’s no strike, which is very good, because no one wins at that," This is the same idea preached by Acme’s President. "We have to tighten our belts and stop the bleeding," Spires said "Nobody wants a strike. Nobody wins in a strike." No wonder the ACME workers conceded without a fight.

We don’t have to be stuck in a system basically playing by the bosses’ rules and fighting the same fights over and over again. Capitalism’s history shows it can only bring workers crises, misery, racism, sexism and war. Communist revolution and building PLP are the only tickets off this bloody merry-go-round.

a name="Airport Bosses’ Sweatshop Conditions Murder Immigrant Worker">">"irport Bosses’ Sweatshop Conditions Murder Immigrant Worker

QUEENS, NY, August 1 — Bosses at LaGuardia Airport here are guilty of the murder two weeks ago of a subcontractor worker, Yendi Medina. By creating exhausting working conditions, they caused a deadly accident. Yendi, a 22-year old Dominican immigrant worker, leaves behind a two-year old daughter and a grieving family.

On July 29th around 5 am, Yendi was waiting to clean an airplane parked away from the terminal. After a long night on the graveyard shift she sat down next to the plane on a bag of pillows she was carrying. An aircraft mechanic, himself working a ten-hour night shift, accidentally ran over Yendi with his company pick-up truck. The airlines prefer to have most of their cleaning and repairs done at night since then planes do not have to be taken out of service during the day and they can reap more profits.

This accident reflects the nature of capitalism, that in its quest for maximum profits bosses constantly endanger workers and do not value our lives. Of course, the bosses and their representatives do their best to try to convince us this is not the case. After Yendi’s death, local bosses quickly told workers that it was a "tragedy" and no one was to blame. They spoke out of both sides of their mouth however, scolding the workers for not exercising enough caution when we drive and walk around on the airport ramp. They allowed some workers to attend the funeral but would not stop calling their cell phones telling them to return to work.

These are the same bosses who, a day before the death, yelled at the workers for complaining about mandatory overtime. These are the same bosses who give them a hard time if a plane is delayed, and encourage them to rush. Under capitalism bosses can never hide their number one motive — profit — for long. Communism will fight not only to meet workers needs at home, but also on the job.

Ironically, the company and subcontractor bosses who now are shedding crocodile tears have said nothing about the racist, sexist conditions they forced upon Yendi before she died. Yendi earned $7.15 an hour with no benefits. Most of the subcontractor workers are immigrants and women and perform some of the dirtiest work at the airport (like removing the waste from airplane bathrooms). On top of all this, the subcontractor bosses saw fit to fire one of Yendi’s coworkers two days after her death. They claimed that the worker was "driving in an unsafe manner." They saw her as an excellent scapegoat.

The only reasonable response to these attacks is to fight back. When a worker was suspended for refusing to work mandatory overtime, other workers rallied to his cause and the bosses allowed him back to work. The bosses know that without workers, the planes, the trains, the machines and the whole society would grind to a halt.

Unfortunately, as long as we live under capitalism each small victory will only be temporary. We can win a worker his job back only to see another killed. The bosses ensure that no worker’s life or livelihood is safe under capitalism. This is why Progressive Labor Party fights for communism. We have a world to win!

a name="Fight ‘Choice’ of Wage-cuts or Layoffs at Cal State"></">Fi"ht ‘Choice’ of Wage-cuts or Layoffs at Cal State

LOS ANGELES, August 5 — "Banks got bailed out, we got SOLD OUT" chanted the crowd throughout their Cal State University (CSU) campus to students passing by. Despite the small summer attendance due to decreasing class offerings and increasing fees and unemployment, a good turnout fought back against the worsening conditions students and faculty are experiencing across the CSU system, the State’s educational system and in the economic crisis in general.

Students received CHALLENGE and leaflets calling on students, faculty and workers to strike against these attacks and to join the long-term fight to eliminate the racist capitalist system which attacks the working class, wages imperialist war and bails out the banks. This campus demonstration followed the Board of Trustees’ meeting where it voted for a fee hike for students, raising the total increase by 32% in one year! (See CHALLENGE, 8/12).)

As community college faculty in Los Angeles were forced to choose between layoffs or furlough days, CSU faculty face the same "choice" — 24 furlough days a year or layoffs. Many faculty, and even students, albeit from good intentions, see the furloughs as a lesser evil of this "choice," but in reality furloughs put the bosses’ crisis on the backs of working-class faculty, staff and students. It amounts to a 10% wage-cut.

Through conversations with students, as well as various working-class people during PLP’s recent Summer Project, it’s clear that this crisis is an all-out attack on the working class, regardless of occupation, while hitting black and Latino workers and youth the hardest. In the schools, professors, teachers, staff and K-graduate students are all affected by the budget cuts in apparently different but essentially similar ways. As these attacks on the working class sharpen, we must participate in these struggles in order to fight for the only solution to this crisis: communist revolution.

a name="Imperialists’ Battle over Honduras Kills Workers">">"mperialists’ Battle over Honduras Kills Workers

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS, August 10 — At this writing, the struggle of the Honduran people against the military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya is in its 43rd day. There have been uninterrupted occupations of bridges, highways and buildings, work stoppages and massive mobilizations. On August 7, marches began from the country’s interior, slated to converge in Tegucigalpa and the country’s second largest city on August 12. This massive show of force is in support of highway blockages and a scheduled general strike that could paralyze the country and bring to a head the struggle to reinstate Zelaya.

Beatings, arrests, woundings and killings have occurred. Nevertheless, this great capacity for struggle and sacrifice by the country’s oppressed masses will in no way advance their real class interests. The only possible liberation for the Honduran working class lies in an armed insurrection that fights for communism. But without a revolutionary communist party to lead them, the workers in Honduras and throughout the world will be pawns in the hands of the imperialists’ rivaRy for maximum profits and world domination.

Presently, Honduras is in the eye of the storm of this rivaRy for the control of Latin America. Zelaya’s mortal sin against U.S. imperialism was getting too close to Hugo Chavez and his Cuba-Bolivia-Nicaragua populist bloc. This bloc — together with the rising regional power of Brazil and its MERCOSUR bloc, plus the European, Russian and Chinese imperialists — is challenging the almost two-century-old U.S. hegemony of the continent.

Zelaya and the Honduran capitalists who back him — like the South American capitalists led by Chavez and Brazil — are striving for a bigger share of what’s produced from their workers’ exploitation by allying with the U.S. bosses’ rivals. These rivals, on their part, need to pry this region from the U.S. imperialists’ grip as each tries to enlarge their control of the world’s resources and profits.

Zelaya and his backers, just like U.S. rulers and their lackeys, claim they are "fighting for democracy." But this is just a scheme to win workers and others to fight for their capitalists’ interests. "Democracy," whether imposed with bayonets or legalized by elections, is the capitalists’ dictatorship over our class.

Our liberation lies in forging a communist revolution to impose our working-class dictatorship to smash all the world’s capitalists and guarantee they never rise again. From this we will build a communist society that will eliminate the wage system, money and all capitalist evils. We will produce to satisfy the needs of our class internationally, not to make a handful of parasites richer.

Honduras reveals a weakness of U.S. imperialism. Gone are the days when the U.S. can impose their will unilaterally in Latin America. Whatever the outcome of the Honduran crisis, the struggle for the control of the region will intensify.

Honduras shows that U.S. rulers can only use the military option to regain absolute control of the hemisphere. It also shows that the workers’ only option is to organize for a communist revolution. Zelaya, a capitalist whose family murdered many leftist organizers during the 1980s, will never help workers build such a movement. And any so-called working-class leader who supports him or fights for "democracy" is either knowingly or unknowingly a traitor to our class. Joining and building the internationalist Progressive Labor Party and the fight for communism are the only paths to working-class liberation.

Guadeloupe, Martinique:

Bosses Reneg on ‘Promises’ that Ended Strikes

(what else is new?)

POINTE-A-PITRE, GUADELOUPE, August 4 — Five months after the 44-day general strike against capitalist profiteering, the situation remains tense on this Caribbean island, a French overseas territory.

One of the islanders’ main grievances has been the profiteering by SARA, the oil company owned by Total, Esso and Chevron-Texaco. But on July 22, barely one month after taking office, Marie-Luce Penchard, the new Secretary of State for Overseas Territories, announced the government will allow a hike in gas prices later this month.

This came although the Ollier/Taubira commission — set up under the March 4 protocol that ended the general strike — has not reported yet. Since the announcement, repeated rumors of impending gas-price increases have caused runs on gas stations, jangling people’s nerves and filling the station owners’ cash registers.

Both the LKP collective (an umbrella organization of unions, political parties and cultural associations which led the general strike) and the UGTG trade union are calling on the government — in accordance with the March 4 protocol — to force SARA to reimburse over three million euros that it wrongly received from local government, instead of allowing the company to grab even more.

A measure of the tension here was the cops’ violent reaction when the slam poet Vasko shouted an insult at French president Sarkozy during his June 26 visit to nearby Martinique, which had also been shut by the general strike. Vasko was immediately slapped twice on the face, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and charged with insulting a public official.

There also may be a teachers’ strike when school begins on September 2, demanding more teacher positions as promised in the March 4 protocol.

But now the bosses’ government is going back on its promises that ended the strike — and end to SARA profiteering and more teacher jobs. This bears out what CHALLENGE reported during the general strike: the bosses try to take away benefits that workers win during their struggles, which is why communist revolution is the only way to obtain real, permanent change.

a name="S. Korea : Auto Workers Seized Plant, Repelled Cops’ Attack">">". Korea : Auto Workers Seized Plant, Repelled Cops’ Attack

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, August 7 — Hundreds of workers occupied the Ssangyong Motor Company for over two months, resisting layoffs. After two raids by the police, which the workers resisted by firing nuts and bolts from slingshots, 500 of 900 workers remained in the plant. They occupied the paint shop where thousands of gallons of flammable paint are stored. The workers initially rejected the company’s offer to reduce the number of layoffs and said in a statement that rather than being divided they would "die together." (NYT, 8/5/09) The next day the union negotiated a settlement that further reduced the layoffs and pressured the workers to end the occupation. The struggle continues.

Wage-cut, Wage-freeze:

GE Practices Obama’s ‘Shared Sacrifice’

GE is following a classic capitalist method of squeezing profits out of workers: pitting one group against another to lower wages and conditions for all. GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt has told the company’s unions that "production costs must be competitive to keep factories from closing and moving to Mexico or China" (NY Times, 8/7) — where GE has been moving all along. Its Schenectady, NY, work-force is now 6,000, down from a high of 40,000.

Now, in exchange for building a new plant in Schenectady and expanding one in Louisville, the IUE/CWA union has swallowed a 2-year wage-freeze and a two-tier wage system that cuts newly-hired workers’ wages $10 an hour. For that, GE has "promised" not to move operations for two years. Immelt whines about "America’s sagging manufacturing base," saying that the U.S. has "lost its competitive edge in many areas, falling behind other countries." When he says "U.S." he means U.S. bosses.

GE’s billionaire CEO says that by expanding domestic manufacturing, the company is "putting its money where its mouth is." Translation: GE is "putting workers’ money (stolen from them) into GE’s profits."

Immelt wants to mask the class contradiction between workers and bosses behind what Immelt says is "more alignment of management and labor." He wants bosses and workers "on the same side" — with the bosses on top and workers at the bottom. This is Obama’s "shared sacrifice" with a vengeance: a $10-an-hour wage-cut, a wage-freeze and a (bosses’) "promise" to stay put in this juicy situation for two years.

They need workers’ help in producing more goods for less wages to enable U.S. capitalists to compete with rivals worldwide, and guarantee they can ensure production for their imperialist wars.

Rather than helping GE to "put its money where its mouth is," workers need to put the bosses where they belong — six feet under.

Clinton Visit to India:

Red Revolution Needed to Stop Global Warming

Global warming, caused by capitalism’s mad rush for profits and devil-may-care attitude about the future, has aReady produced alarming weather events — increasingly violent hurricanes like Katrina, and hurricanes in the North Atlantic, where they had never been recorded. It has produced more severe droughts and flooding and the potential for a rise in sea level that will chase tens of millions from their homes in cities near coasts. So what do we make of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India (July 18-20), where she failed utterly in pressuring India’s leadership to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming?

Clinton’s approach to India was a study in the imperialist rivaRy that dominates global politics. Rather than accommodate her, India’s Environmental Minister Kamesh criticized the U.S. for generating a century’s worth of greenhouse gases (GHGs) without let-up and then preaching to the developing nations that they should stop emitting GHGs.

The capitalist ruling classes of both India and China — the two most populous nations in the world, containing over one-third of the world’s working class — know that the U.S. call for capping GHG emissions is mainly an attempt to slow their growth and prevent them from challenging the U.S. economically. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund aReady predict that the Chinese economy will surpass that of the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years. This is what Clinton is trying to stop, not global warming!

U.S. bosses want a new international treaty on global warming at the December intergovernmental conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (the sequel to Kyoto). But developing nations are fighting against mandatory caps placed on their GHG emissions because it would hinder their economic growth, so Copenhagen is likely to fail due to the maneuverings of competitive capitalist interests. This neglect of the future of the working class and our planet illustrates why smashing capitalism is necessary to stop global warming.

Recently, the U.S. ruling class switched gears in its position on global warming. Previously, it had encouraged media denials that global warming was a problem or that it was caused by GHG emissions. The media and government were obedient to the short-term interests of giant energy companies like Exxon-Mobil. Now the rulers are pretending that they are about to tackle the problem and decrease U.S. emissions. The Obama presidential campaign began this shift in earnest.

But the world’s working class should not be fooled. Obama remains loyal to the profit interests of the energy companies. The U.S. capitalists are merely adopting a strategy to attack and isolate their Chinese and Indian rivals. The actual changes proposed by Obama and reflected in the Waxman-Markey bill (recently passed in the House of Representatives and being debated in the Senate) are too trivial to begin to make any difference in the rising concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere. The 17% reduction in U.S. GHG emissions by 2020 proposed in the legislation won’t even touch the problem.

Obama & Co. have no intentions of doing anything to harm the global strategic position of the U.S. ruling class. No capitalist government, no matter how worker-friendly it pretends to be, will ever do so. That’s why the world’s working class can only end the emissions of GHGs and prevent the devastating consequences of global warming by taking matters into its own hands.

We must throw the capitalists off the stage of history around the world through communist revolution, and organize a communist society in which both the short-term and long-term needs of workers (including the ecological health of our planet) will be the only considerations in determining how and what to produce.J

What Else Was Clinton Up to in India?

Clinton’s visit to India wasn’t just about global warming. Loyal to her capitalist masters, she also played the saleswoman for the big bosses. She pushed for a contract for U.S. corporations to build two nuclear power plants, and for a deal for India to buy $10 billion worth of fighter jets from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Indian bosses liked this part of her visit. It’s all about the money!

Letters

a name="‘No plea bargain when you know you’re right...’"></a>"No plea bargain when you know you’re right...’

I am writing this to all workers that have been wrongfully fired or arrested, on or off the job. You must not give in and take a plea when taken to court. The system is designed to make every innocent person into a criminal.

My personal experience with this follows. I worked at LaGuardia Airport in New York for nine years as a skycap for Delta and Northwest airlines, under two different contractors doing the same job. On November 7th, 2008, I was on the job when I was suddenly grabbed from behind, knocked to the floor, cuffed and taken to jail by two men in plain clothes. I was charged with resisting arrest, hustling and trespassing.

I was fired from my job wrongfully. When I went to court I was offered a guilty plea with a sentence of community service and a $100 fine. But I refused to give in and returned to court at least six times, each time refusing pleas and telling them I was innocent, so acquit me or take me to trial. They knew they would lose, so eventually they dropped all the charges.

I want to say thanks to all the people from PLP who stood by me from the beginning to the end. They all rallied around me and I am so grateful to all of them.

So what I am saying is never take a plea bargain when you know you are right. You will be called a criminal. Never give up. Thank you.

Red-Leaning Sky Cap

[Editors note: The bosses’ courts regularly trap black workers with plea bargains as a way of avoiding the work of a trial. As we saw with this trial and others, the police and courts are willing to work hand-in-hand to frame workers and serve the bosses’ interests.]

a name="‘Throw a (red) stone in the water and the ripples spread’"></">‘T"row a (red) stone in the water and the ripples spread’

A group of teachers at my inner-city high school were sitting around at the end of term. We were marking the state final exams. An older teacher asked me if I was planning to retire. "Probably," I said.

She said, "Maybe this will change your mind," and related the following story: "I was in your Assistant Principal’s office one day — you know, the one who gave you all that trouble in February."

"Oh yes," I said. "She gave me an unsatisfactory rating in November of 2008."

"Well," the teacher said, "A whole group of students came in and confronted her. They told her ‘Don’t mess around with Mr. _________. If you do there’ll be trouble.’ Your Assistant Principal said nothing, but she blinked. She stopped coming into your class during the last period on Friday to bother you, didn’t she?"

It was true; the Assistant Principal had bothered me last term, but not this term. I had wondered why it had stopped. In fact, she gave me a satisfactory rating for this past term and for the whole year. "Wow," I said. "And the students didn’t tell me anything."
We never know how many ripples spread when we throw a stone in the water and when we struggle over ideas with our students and other people we know. What we do really does count.

A Red Teacher

Rank-and-File Militance Scores vs. Exploiting Bosses

On July 18, an annual march on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn, N.Y. ended the program called "Wake Up Bushwick" in which, for three years, a workers’ project has carried out a campaign by an area community organization and a union.

We won some victories against businesses whose bosses exploit the workers, not paying overtime, decent wages nor basic benefits.

The march ended at the Associated Supermarket where the workers celebrated their biggest victory. The owners were forced to pay more than $1 million to 40 workers who endured this mistreatment during their whole time working at this market. This settlement also includes packers who were never paid a wage, working for a lousy tip.

It was a militant march, chanting, "See this fist — Workers to Power!"; "The workers, united, will never be defeated!"; and "Workers’ struggles have no borders!" These slogans symbolized that only the unity of the working class will make us strong and that we workers have no "nationality" to defend nor borders that divide us.

Our community organization was also demonstrating in support of workers at the Bergament store, whose boss has gotten away with exploiting and mistreating his workers. In this protest, our organization’s youth gave the event a very special flavor, inspiring the crowd with their chants and speeches. It showed that in the hands of progressive youth our future will be bright.

These were small victories but they show that the unity and strength of rank-and-file workers in the committee can be schools for communism that will eventually destroy this system of wage slavery and exploitation. In this area we have a network of about 50 CHALLENGE readers from which a group of eight friends are studying the Party’s ideas by discussing the paper’s editorials.

A Brooklyn Worker

a name="L.A. Summer Project Spreads PL’s Politics to Industrial Workers and GI’s"></">L.". Summer Project Spreads PL’s Politics to Industrial Workers and GI’s

‘Hungry for more action...’

I just started getting involved with activism and the PLP earlier this summer, and my perspective has quickly changed from that of a nihilist sickened by the world around him to a motivated communist revolutionary. The PLP and the simple fact that there are a substantial amount of compassionate people that aren’t just living for their own selfish desires has given me new hope, and a better outlook on life. My Summer Project experience was fantastic, and I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything. My eyes have been opened and my devotion to the struggle has been reinforced. I found an instant camaraderie with people from around the world because we were all focused on one cause: a classless society free of money and superficiality, a society based on compassion and need, and most of all equality for all. Sharing stories with all the workers I met has been a very satisfying experience and leaves me hungry for more action.

A Developing Red

Project Developed Young Leaders

As always, I think the key to our Summer Projects is the development of our young leaders, and this certainly is happening in LA. After several days of distributing literature, several groups got together for a study group on dialectical materialism. Three young comrades did an excellent job in preparing and leading the discussion. Everyone participated, and there was some sharp, but friendly debate, which clarified some aspects of what we were discussing: contradiction. It was really exciting to see the clear understanding and sharp analytical thinking and the continuing development of our young comrades.

One exchange was particularly helpful. A Party comrade could not get a friend to voice a question, so the comrade read the question from her friend’s notes. It turned out that the same question was on many other people’s minds. This started a sharp exchange involving quite a few people, which led to a clearer understanding of dialectics.

Project Volunteer

a name="‘Broadened my horizons about all workers’ struggles...’"></a>"Broadened my horizons about all workers’ struggles...’

I didn’t know what to expect coming to the Summer Project. It was my first one and with no expectations. I was told that it would be a communist boot camp. I found that the working class is more than just NYC. I was very New York-centric and coming to this project has broadened my horizons about the struggle of all workers. The problems that affect workers in New York are much the same as the problems that affect workers here in L.A.

My favorite experience so far has been being at the rally/demonstration in Disneyland. The workers there were very passionate and angry that they have not received their fair share or better said, what they have earned. The moment that sticks out in my mind was when a worker banged his drum and began a chant that went like this: "Do you hear us Mickey?, Do you hear us Pluto?, Do you hear us Donald?" Well do you hear us bosses…you better because we are coming.

From New York to Mannywood

a name="‘A productive week...’"></">‘A"productive week...’

Having now spent three days with the Los Angeles Summer Project, I can happily say that it has been a productive week. As a neophyte in the Party, I had few expectations for the Project, save that it would be a collection of communists actively working towards a classless society. My favorite event thus far has been an evening forum on dialectical materialism, in which Party members clarified the definition of the term, and actively challenged one another regarding processes and conflicts that exist along the pathways towards communism.

In addition to great discussion, we have conducted some paper sales in the garment district and at a local high school in Los Angeles. Though we have distributed countless papers and flyers, I question how effective our efforts have been without constant reinforcement at these locales. With greater organization and communication between Party members, we may be able to capitalize upon existing strongholds with more structured events like rallies, forums, and debates.

A New PL’er

When the Summer Project volunteers visited GI’s, we noted the importance of winning people in the military to communist ideas. Without this, there can be no revolution. The following are some comments from volunteers who visited a town near a military base to talk to GI’s:

I wish we’d stayed longer. Our best conversation was with an Arab-American GI from Detroit. Both his parents lost their jobs when Chrysler folded. He totally understood the capitalist crisis. When he took CHALLENGE I suggested he send it to his parents after he read it.

Both Marines I spoke to were accepting and genuinely interested in our leaflet, newspaper and ideas. One GI kept looking at the leaflet’s map of Afghanistan and the oil pipelines. Something clicked. He said, "But they didn’t tell us this. They told us it was to stop terrorism." When his friend said, "Put that down. It’s communist," he apologized to us for his friend’s attitude and pocketed the leaflet. Bringing our ideas to these GI’s is why I’m a communist.

The Marines wanted to hear our communist analysis, even those who at first disagreed. Many know they are being kept in the dark about the true motives of U.S. imperialism.

One group distributed about 20 CHALLENGES plus leaflets and CHALLENGE EXTRA’s. One 25-year-old GI eagerly took our literature, agreeing it was a war for oil and oil pipelines and said older Marines like him knew this. He worried about the younger ones who were "gung ho" because they didn’t understand the real situation and said we should talk to them. We agreed but also suggested he should talk to them as well. He hadn’t considered the potential power rank-and-filers in the military have, but liked the idea and wanted to know more about past historical experiences.

I was very hesitant about going to this town near a military base but was pleasantly surprised that people didn’t beat us up or get defensive. In talking to people I found one-to-one personal conversations were best.

I had my doubts but this was the best sale I ever had. Many were aware, wanted the paper and quite kind. It was a worthwhile experience.

A GI told us, "The brass tells us everything is good. If they told us what was really going on, we wouldn’t fight." Another said, "I know it’s all politics. It’s the system." When we said the system had to go, he took CHALLENGE, saying he would read it.

One GI said he knows the war isn’t about terrorism, although that’s what they feed them in boot camp. He said it was about oil and was open to talking about revolution.

We had a good time. The map we passed out helped show the oil pipelines the U.S. bosses want in Afghanistan. Many of the GI’s thought we had a reasonable point of view, including about organizing for revolution.

a name="[Excerpts from a speech given at PLP’s LA Summer Project]">">"Excerpts from a speech given at PLP’s LA Summer Project]

At a meeting, a boss of a factory-construction company told teachers about the need for more engineers for competition. He said, "Imagine a map of the world and on it the cost of engineers: $1 for an engineer here in the U.S.; in Britain, 90¢; Germany, $1.10. But in India it’s 5¢ and in China it’s 2¢. How can ‘we’ compete? It used to be that we had the best engineers and the best technology, but they are catching up!" He said some jobs could be outsourced but, "What about those jobs that we can’t outsource, those jobs that need citizenship?" He [meant]… production for imperialist, racist war.

Racism, Sexism, Nationalism

The bosses need racism and sexism to super-exploit sections of the working class and to justify brutality and oppression. More workers are unemployed; incarceration rates and police brutality are increasing. Even before the current crisis, young urban black workers suffered unemployment of 50%; it was 36% for Latino workers. The situation is much worse now.

Unemployment and poverty are brutally racist; black workers usually are the last hired and the first fired. The bosses also need racism for their wars. They try to hide it under a humanitarian face. Spreading democracy, freedom and justice are code words for more imperialist oppression. They push racist ideas on soldiers to try to dehumanize fellow working-class brothers and sisters so they might commit acts of murder or torture for the bosses’ interests in oil, resources and strategic locations.

Our War Is A Class War

We must do everything we can to defeat our enemy. The Party…[knows] the strategic importance of organizing in the military and in war-production factories. A communist base in basic industry and the bosses’ military can organize workers to destroy capitalism and run society directly in the interest of the working class.

If you are passionate about the Party, know what the Party needs, if you are finishing high school and able-bodied, consider joining the military or going to a trade school to become a machinist, a welder or an electrician. Teachers and the whole Party need to get behind this effort.

Soon international capitalist competition will push for all-out imperialist war and we must prepare our Party. The current depression shows the crisis of overproduction will force the working class into the war-production factories and into the military. We must…organize to win the fight by building a base for communist revolution, with a strategy that will mean victory for the working class.

Imperialist Rivalries Spurred 1969 Moon Landing

July marks the 40th anniversary of the 1969 U.S. moon landing. President Obama celebrated the anniversary with the Apollo 11 crew by asserting that the U.S. would remain committed to space exploration and that his education reform is crucial to the work of NASA. Obama failed to mention that both NASA and the education system have served as vital gears in the bloody U.S. war machine for the past 50 years.

Obama’s call for education reform comes at a time when the dominant role the U.S. has played in the world since World War II is being threatened by the growth of imperialist rivals in China, Russia and Europe. Following the lead of educational reforms outlined by Bill Gates, Exxon and Lockheed Martin, a heavy emphasis on math and science in high school is seen as a way to keep the U.S. from falling further behind the curve of its technologically-advanced rivals.

In 1962 when John F. Kennedy declared that "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," the U.S. ruling class was much more certain of its place in the world than it is today. Anti-communism, and post-WWII prosperity for some, allowed U.S. rulers to bolster support for themselves against supposed communist threats abroad. Like Obama, JFK summoned the tools of the state — through the expansion of military programs and the reworking of the education system — in order to strengthen U.S. imperialist ambitions.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. ruling class in response created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). By promoting "space race" hype, the NASA program encouraged workers in the U.S. to root for "team America." In 1969 U.S. astronauts planted a U.S. flag on the moon that was meant to be a symbol of their global power, but by this time the U.S. was hated around the world.

The Tet Offensive had turned the tide of the Vietnam War and rebellions of U.S. GIs were increasingly common. Unable to rely on its own soldiers, the U.S. became heavily dependent on carpet bombings, bringing the Vietnam War into its bloodiest phase. The bosses cover up this history to keep workers in the dark about capitalism’s bloody past and to spread patriotism so workers will support the bosses’ war plans.

The same year NASA was created, U.S. rulers created the Advanced Research Project Agency (now DARPA) to meet the research and development needs of the U.S. military. Over the next 50 years DARPA developed weapons ranging from the M-16 rifle which aided in the murder of countless Vietnamese during the Vietnam war to the Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator drones currently being used to kill and maim workers along the Pakistan border. DARPA initiatives paved the way for increasing technology-driven warfare and the eventual militarization of space.

The same year NASA and DARPA came into existence, Congress created the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). Aimed at creating a generation of tech-savvy workers able to compete with Soviet rivals, the NDEA included support for loans to college students, and the improvement of science and mathematics in schools. Hoping to win students to U.S. nationalism, students had to pledge anti-communism in order to receive college loans. Students involved in anti-war activities were punished and denied loan money.

The U.S. defeat in Vietnam signaled the beginning of the end for U.S. global dominance. In 1979, the loss of Iran as a Mid-East watchdog coupled with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan intensified the worries of U.S. rulers about their ability to control vital resources in the region. The rise of competing imperialist powers in Europe and Asia has only escalated tensions in the Mid-East. Obama has picked up the torch of imperialism where Kennedy, Carter and Clinton left off, deepening imperialist war in Afghanistan and carrying it over into Pakistan.

The appearance of Obama’s foreign policy may differ from his predecessors, but the essence remains the same: war and destruction of rivals are the only sure ways an imperialist power can stay on top. Obama & Co. understand the vital role the education system plays in their ability to wage war. It is no accident that Obama chose as his education czar Arne Duncan, who as CEO of Chicago public schools handed over control of four public high schools to the U.S. military.

While education reform is expected to produce a new crop of workers able to make the next generation of technologically-advanced weapons, the Obama administration realizes that this type of weaponry alone cannot win wars. U.S. rulers have adopted a boots-on-the-ground approach, recently deploying tens of thousands to Afghanistan and calling for thousands more. They are paving the way for future recruits though the creation of various national service programs and through standardized testing regimes that push students out of high school and into the military.

As workers’ cynicism and lack of patriotism persist along with the economic crisis, the bosses have amplified their call for sacrifice. The bosses aim to disarm workers by teaching patriotism and lies about the history of the working class. We must bring the message of revolution to the classrooms and workplaces and organize students and workers to fight against imperialist war under the banners of the Progressive Labor Party.

Red Eye

Fired? Your wage won’t recover

NYT, 8/4 — ….it can take years for a worker’s earnings to bounce back after a layoff, and… it can take even longer for a layoff during a recession. Economists, in fact, say income losses for workers who are let go in a recession can persist for as long as two decades, a depressing prognosis for the several million people who have lost their jobs in the current recession.

Working-class tradition: help out

NYT, 7/12, Barbara Ehrenreich — As in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the [recession’s] most reliable first responders are not government agencies, but family and friends....

There is a tradition among the American working class of mutual aid, no questions asked. My father, a former miner, advised me as a child that if I ever needed money to "go to a poor man…."

When I worked at low-wage jobs in the 1990s, I was amazed by the generosity of my co-workers…. Such informal networks — and random acts of kindness — put the official welfare state, with its relentless suspicions and grudging outlays, to shame.

But there are limits to the generosity of relatives and friends…. The poor simply run out of resources.

Profit system rules banks’ actions

NYT, 8/1 — So why isn’t it happening? Why aren’t we seeing kinder, gentler banks trying to repay their debt to society? When I spoke to bankers this week, they sounded aggrieved at all the anger directed their way, and they claimed they were doing the best they could. And from their perspective, they are.

But their perspective is that of anyone running a business: their priority is to maximize profit…. That’s what capitalists do…. Maximizing profits means, for instance, jacking up credit card interest rates… and foreclosing when that makes more economic sense than modifying a loan. To ask them to put aside the profit motive, even temporarily, for the good of the country — it’s not even in their frame of reference.

Obama = Bush on immigrant raids

NYT, 8/4 — After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an "illegal"-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by [President Bush].

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters.

System rewards those who rob us

NYT, 8/3 — Crashing the economy and fleecing the taxpayer aren’t Wall Street’s only sins…. Financial-industry high-fliers made fortunes through activities that were worthless if not destructive from a social point of view.

And they’re still at it….

Unfortunately… the Obama administration… still seems to operate on the principle that what’s good for Wall Street is good for America.

Neither the administration, nor our political system in general, is ready to face up to the fact that we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer.

Sex discrimination can mean death

NYT, 7/30 — These dramas play out constantly in poor countries. One woman dies a minute from complications of pregnancy or childbirth somewhere in the world, and 20 times as many suffer childbirth injuries.

There’s no mystery about how to save these lives. Some impoverished countries, such as Sri Lanka, have succeeded stunningly well at saving mothers simply because they have tried. But foreign aid donors like the United States have never shown much interest in maternal mortality, and impoverished women are typically the most voiceless, neglected people in their own countries — so they die at astonishing rates….

One of the most lethal forms of sex discrimination is this systematic inattention to reproductive health care, from family planning to childbirth — so long as those who die are impoverished, voiceless women.

US-China clash exploding in Africa

NYT, 7/19 — Chinese business interests in Africa have grown dramatically in recent years…. Bilateral trade between the regions quintupled, to $55 billion, from 2000 to 2006, and that the figure is expected to reach $100 billion by 2010….

The authors contend that China’s ambitions in Africa are grandly geopolitical…. "I’m going to be honest with you, China is using Africa to get where the United States is now, and surpass it…."

Many African leaders are enamored of the Chinese mix of authoritarianism and capitalism in business affairs, an emphasis on efficiency and a lack of preaching about human rights….

It is not hard to join the authors in predicting that this joining of Chinese and African interests will likely succeed to the chagrin of the rest of the business world.

US gets airbase, winks at tyrant

NYT, 7/23 — …The Obama administration has [ranked] pragmatic concerns over human rights in dealings with autocratic leaders…. Politicians and independent journalists have been arrested, prosecuted, attacked and even killed over the last year as the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbeck Bakiyev, has consolidated control….

The United States has remained largely silent in response to this wave of violence, apparently wary of jeopardizing the status of its sprawling air base, on the outskirts of the capital, which supports the mission in Afghanistan.

Drugs prey on no-hope workers

NYT, 7/30 — For more than five years Mr. Eche has been a slave to paco, a smokable [sic] drug made from bits of cocaine residue mixed with industrial solvents and kerosene or rat poison. Labeled "the scourge of the poor" by politicians, the drug has become the greatest social challenge facing shantytowns like [Argentina’s] Oculta….

"Every time he comes out of treatment it is worse because he has nothing, no work. There is nothing for him to do…."

Paco averages only 10 percent cocaine, with the rest being highly toxic substances, [a] judge said. "Doctors we have consulted say nerve cells and brain cells start dying soon after consumption begins," he said….

Oculta’s residents are starving for jobs with decent salaries to help break the cycle of hopelessness that is creating whole families of paco addicts.

a name="‘The Ugly Truth’: Sexism Knows No Boundaries Under Capitalism"></" />"The Ugly Truth’: Sexism Knows No Boundaries Under Capitalism

The new movie The Ugly Truth starring
Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler (of the horrifically racist, fascist movie 300) is a rehashing of an old romantic comedy stand-by, the uptight career woman looking for love who falls for her smooth-talking, womanizing male co-star. Written by three women (proving sexism knows no boundaries under capitalism) the tired, rehashed plot reaches new levels of crass sexism. The movie is hyperbole at its worst, insulting the audience by force-feeding them wholly unbelievable and insulting caricatures of what "real" men and women are supposed to be.

Heigl plays a morning news producer who drives men away because of her demanding nature, while Butler’s character is a cable-access TV personality whose show is based on telling women "the ugly truth" about men, that they’re all shallow, sex fiends incapable of love and uninterested in any sort of relationship with a woman other than physical.

The movie is rated R for the unnecessary and copious amount of vulgarity that replaces any attempt at witty dialogue or character development. The Ugly Truth boils down to the lesson that women should be subservient to men in all ways: by making less money, wearing skimpy clothing, laughing at unfunny jokes and, most importantly, leaving their brains and hearts at home (and that men should look for and only find satisfaction in such women).

Like Sex and the City, The Women or Bride Wars, this movie wants us to believe that happiness really lies in vacuous consumerism and oversexualization. In the end the main characters end up together, but this union doesn’t come about because of some profound lesson learned about the importance of respect for each other, but rather Heigl’s willingness to be the objectified woman Butler’s character wants.

I went to see this movie only a few days after it opened and so watched it in a packed theater. The mix of people was fairly evenly distributed between men and women and their reactions were quite interesting.

There were few laughs from anyone (this may have been due in part to the movie’s hackneyed script) but there was a general air of disgust. More than one couple walked out of the film and of those who stayed many seemed uncomfortable or insulted. The man sitting next to me kept groaning and shaking his head. It seemed that no one was satisfied with this movie’s portrayal of men and women or the nature of their relationships, and why should they be?

The ruling class is constantly shoving sexist crap down our throats, utilizing all media at their disposal, but in recent years the level of filth the working class has been asked to ingest has worsened. Recent action movies like 300 and Watchmen fetishize sex and violence, but romantic comedies like The Ugly Truth are doing their part as we "laugh" along to women being treated like mindless sex objects and men being portrayed as soulless perverts.

Sexism is critical for keeping the bosses’ profits up and the working class divided. As the bosses’ economic crisis deepens they will have to rely even more heavily on sexism to keep their system running. Movies like The Ugly Truth show the degenerate nature of the U.S. capitalist class and its culture here in the waning days of the empire. The battle lines are clear: for the bosses there is sexism, racism and fascism; for the workers there can only be communist revolution!

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, July 29, 2009

Information: 29 August 2009 104 hits

a href="#11-month Stella D’Oro Strike Ends:">"1-month Stella D’Oro Strike Ends: Battle Against Bosses Continues

a href="#Obama’s Trip Fizzles, U.S. Rulers’ Rivals Gain">Oba"a’s Trip Fizzles, U.S. Rulers’ Rivals Gain

S. Africa: 70,000 Strike, Battle Cops

Stella Strike Proves Workers Have No Future Under Capitalism

a href="#PLP Action In Haitian Consulate Hits Regime’s Fascist Crackdown">"LP Action In Haitian Consulate Hits Regime’s Fascist Crackdown

a href="#Boeing Workers Must Smash Boss-Gov’t-Union ‘No-Strike’ Gang-up">Boei"g Workers Must Smash Boss-Gov’t-Union ‘No-Strike’ Gang-up

a href="#Union Hacks: ‘Roll over, play dead’; Workers Need to ‘Roll over them!’">Union "acks: ‘Roll over, play dead’; Workers Need to ‘Roll over them!’

MTA Workers Should Strike Against a War Contract

U.S.-Inspired Honduras Coup: Another Inter-Imperialist Battleground

Workers Sit in to Stand Up vs. Parking Meter Robbery

a href="#Workers’ Power Is the Rx:">"orkers’ Power Is the Rx: Healthcare ‘Reform’ A Capitalist Shell Game

LETTERS

a href="#Mexico: Paradise for Bosses, Hell for Workers""Mexico: Paradise for Bosses, Hell for Workers

a href="#‘Reading CHALLENGE, I view the world differently…’">‘Rea"ing CHALLENGE, I view the world differently…’

a href="#Mexico’s Elections: One Big Anti-Working Class Attack">"exico’s Elections: One Big Anti-Working Class Attack

What You Do Really DOES Count!

a href="#Students, Profs Fight Capitalism’s Campus Cuts">"tudents, Profs Fight Capitalism’s Campus Cuts

a href="#‘Fog of War’ Pretty Clear: McNamara Murdered Millions">‘F"g of War’ Pretty Clear: McNamara Murdered Millions

Red Eye

Stress and suicide rife in U.S. Army
N. Korea nukes already restrain U.S.
N. Korea nukes already restrain U.S.
Facing court with no interpreter
Insurance co.’s steal health money
For bankers, recession is over

PLP Project Develops Young Leaders, Worker-Soldier-Student Alliance

a href="#Worker to PL’er: ‘You guys were always there…’">Worker"to PL’er: ‘You guys were always there…’

a href="#Worker to PL’er: ‘You guys were always there…’">Projec" Unites PL’ers with Stella D’Oro Strikers

a name="11-month Stella D’Oro Strike Ends:">">"1-month Stella D’Oro Strike Ends:

Battle Against Bosses Continues

BRONX, NY, July 13 — After an 11-month struggle, the Stella D’Oro strikers won a decision from a state National Labor Relations (NLRB) judge that temporarily restored their jobs under the old contract with back pay to May 9. The scene at the plant gate was typified by the “Sweet Victory” hand-lettered sign held up for passing workers, who blared their horns in congratulation. Workers hugged and cried and laughed as it sank in that the slow drag of the strike had led to a result.

When the strikers returned to work “happy for battle,” supporters cheered and called out their varied, multi-
national names as they passed through the gate and gave a victory sign. Many waved CHALLENGE in the air. One veteran comrade told the workers near him, “There’ll be a million small victories and defeats between this and state power, and we should learn from them all.”

They were united, persevered and prevailed, a beacon for all workers. “Now we’ll support the next group that goes on strike,” said one worker. “Fight on!” cheered the supporters. Despite all, the working class will never die.

Under the joy there is also great bitterness. “I don’t get too excited. Those criminals won’t stop here,” said one woman packer. The Brynwood bosses are appealing the decision. They’re also cruelly saying they’ll close the plant and move in October.

Attack and Counter-attack

The strike has been an endless series of attacks and counter-attacks. The bosses attacked with concession demands to bust the union; the workers countered by striking. The bosses attacked with police harassment and scabs; the workers countered by expanding strike support. The workers won the first legal decision; the boss countered by appealing it. The workers won a court-ordered return to work; the boss countered by saying they’ll close the shop. Many workers understand that the struggle is not over, that it’s just moving to another stage. “What’s the next step?” they ask.

Back at work they had to clean up after the scabs. The place was filthy, broken toilets, broken machines. The sanitation crew went through the plant until it shone. One proud cleaner was outraged at the dust and grime on the loading dock he used to keep spotless. It is a food plant, after all. Mechanics fixed the machines. The operators threw out the first run of cookies below their standards. Machines that used to make 24 pallets of cookies daily could only do five, and the workers weren’t hurrying.

Then the line began to run properly on one machine, and a manager said it was the first time since the strike, as though this was a mystery. The operator explained that it’s not only training one worker that counts, it’s the long experience of a skilled team working together.

In No Mood for Concessions

Feeling their power, workers are in no mood for concessions, something the bosses’ flunky professors like the New York Times’s Joshua Freeman say is inevitable; they feel a raw anger at the managers. One woman leader couldn’t talk to them at all. An older woman was exhausted after standing all day at the packing table, back to wage slavery.

Some workers think the company is bluffing about closing the plant to win big concessions, but they recognize that capitalist property laws mean this could be their end as Stella workers, just as some lost their jobs at other runaway plants like Farberware. When managers talked of restoring the “best” scabs to fill missing numbers, a shop steward thundered, “Scabs working alongside us? That means war!” They dropped that bright idea.

It’s becoming clearer to the workers that they’re in a long class war in which the past eleven months are just one battle. While some commented about the court decision saying, “I knew we would get justice,” others, especially those close to PLP, realize that the capitalist class owns not only the factory but the state apparatus: the courts, the laws, the politicians and most union officials. The local judge’s decision still must be upheld by the full NLRB in Washington, hardly something for workers to depend on.

To defend ourselves, workers must pursue the more important political struggle. The courts invariably support the capitalist class because for 400 years the bosses have shaped laws and courts in their own interests. “Right — it’s their laws; the owners make the laws,” one packer agreed.

There’s no lasting working-class justice to be found there. But they keep us running from court to court to encourage belief in the court system. It’s like the electoral shell game, where we’re supposed to run from one politician to another, one party to another, while government policy continues to serve the capitalist class. A legal strategy is only good if it’s to buttress the main political strategy, strengthening class unity and the hard, militant fight of workers’ direct action. But Local 50 union leaders are now visibly slowing down that main aspect of the struggle.

The bakers’ union leadership is not the worst around. (Just compare them to the UAW sellouts who “crafted” a 50% wage cut for new workers!) They pushed sincerely for the strike, did not sell it out, and welcomed support, including from communists. But sincere or not, they’re stuck in the usual union belief that you must play by capitalism’s rules, which ultimately hold the workers back because they, too, have been filled with the same ideology.

Rank and File Built the Strike

All along the local’s leaders made the legal strategy the main thing, even as they approved the rallies and boycott. But the punishing months dragged on, and the Local and international did not vigorously build support, even from other area union locals. Counseling “patience,” they viewed other workers’ support as secondary. They left it to the rank and file and their supporters.

But this impelled the workers to build the strike themselves; they proved as skilled at that as they are at baking. But the union — all the unions — did not support this effort. The court decision, therefore, leaves the workers less strong than with a communist-led working class building more mass political support. The workers’ eloquent testimony in court didn’t hurt, but the main achievement is the progress made in building strike solidarity — still the basis for more class unity, a strong challenge to Brynwood’s runaway shop, and (as workers join the Party) the strategic leap ahead to fighting the whole system.

So what’s the next step? The union’s new go-slow attitude is wrong — they have vetoed another rally until late August and want to feature politicians. Many workers recognize the union’s weaknesses, but feel they must go along with the leadership for the sake of unity. Yet they also see the need to continue strengthening their own leadership and organization as it emerged during the strike.

The best way to do that is building PLP in the plant. A dozen get CHALLENGE regularly and are spreading it around. They said the whole plant was buzzing last Friday about the small rally by some young PLP’ers that afternoon. “Don’t these folks ever give up? Don’t they ever take a break?”

They love the interest of the young communists in their struggle, the spirit of chants like, “Stella workers lead the way, Make the Brynwood bosses pay” and “Kick the bosses in the ass, Power to the working class.” One worker drinking coffee across the street after his shift could no longer stand there, grabbed a sign and joined them. Some of the most militant and thoughtful strikers are thinking seriously about joining the PLP.

Communist Ideas Strengthen Workers

The key force remains the workers themselves. Can they step it up one more notch? PLP will help 100%. Our strike role has been to serve the whole working class, to serve these workers by bringing other workers to join and support and learn from them, to spread their spirit and news of their strike to our international readership with story after story in
CHALLENGE.

We also rely on the workers. We try to strengthen them materially and politically with the ideas the communist movement has learned the hard way over a century and a half. We bring them the Party as their weapon, tested for 45 years: take it, use it, join it, build it, for this fight — to the max and to the end — but also for the fight after this and the one after that. Make the PLP your own, it’s for you and your children.

When your children go to school and to CUNY, communist teachers and professors will teach them the truth about capitalism. Here’s the Party of the working class that will never “go slow,” that does not believe in playing by the bosses’ rules.

As Stella workers bring the art and craft of their strike into active membership and leadership in PLP, we will see a sweet victory indeed. And if the plant closes? The workers pick themselves up and go on, to life under the dictatorship of capital, but with the red flag and CHALLENGE in our lives that can transcend that system.

Our day will come, and the Stella D’Oro strikers of 2008-09 will have played their part. As the recession bites deeper and deeper and October looms, there’s a new mood on the shop floor.

a name="Obama’s Trip Fizzles, U.S. Rulers’ Rivals Gain"></a"Obama’s Trip Fizzles, U.S. Rulers’ Rivals Gain

On balance, Obama’s Russia-Italy-Africa trip proved a diplomatic setback for U.S. imperialism:

• In Moscow, Russia’s Putin bluntly opposed Obama over areas of longer-term strategic conflict;

• In Italy, at the G-8 meeting of eight leading economic powers, Russia’s and China’s influence pushed Iran sanctions off the table;

• Obama didn’t even succeed in raising global warming as a U.S.-led international cause, with China and its allies specifically opposing U.S. attempts to stifle their burgeoning economies through fuel regulations;

• During a Vatican stop-off, former Hitler-youth Pope Benedict reminded Obama that he and his institution still mainly represent a strong anti-U.S. wing of European bosses;

• Anti-U.S. instability in sub-Saharan Africa shaped Obama’s subsequent overnight in Ghana, the only nation his Pentagon handlers deemed safe enough for him to visit.

Meanwhile, in the Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan killing fields, decisive success continues to elude Obama and the capitalists he serves, while the death toll mounts. At the bargaining table, it’s the rise of rivals China and Russia and their allies that weakens U.S. rulers’ supremacy. In the war zones, it’s the current inability of the U.S. — population 306,000,000 — to field much more than 200,000 troops. These two worsening problems will ultimately drive U.S. bosses to a single, drastic solution. As the 20th Century mass slaughters show, global war involving full militarization of industry and society is the last hope of threatened imperialists.

Ultimately, Global War Only Way Out for U.S. Bosses

Obama & Co. face a tough time building a consensus among factions of U.S. capitalists who can’t even agree on the tax hikes and health care reform the bigger bosses require to ease the economic crisis. Public sentiment on the Iraq and Afghan wars ranges from organized pockets of both resistance and support to far more general apathy. Keeping or finding a job and saving homes from foreclosure have become the chief concerns of millions of U.S. workers, as sharpening worldwide competition heightens the rulers’ war needs. Obama’s sketchy summit scorecard makes imposing wartime discipline on U.S. imperialists and taking steps towards restoring the draft all the more urgent.

Obama in Moscow: Wins a Little, Loses a Lot

Before Obama’s visit, Russia had agreed to allow U.S. forces to use its airspace for their Afghan campaign. And Russian-dominated Kyrgyzstan re-opened its Manas air base to the U.S. But, at the Moscow meeting, Putin said “No” to Obama’s request for Russian sanctions on Iran, to U.S. missiles in Poland and to NATO membership for ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine.

Stratfor, a ruling-class supported think-tank that provides often-reliable policy analysis to U.S. business, media, and academia, summed up the proceedings: “The geopolitical divide between the United States and Russia is as deep as ever, even if some of the sharper edges have been rounded. Ultimately, little progress was made in finding ways to bridge the two countries’ divergent interests. And the burning issues — particularly Poland and Iran — continue to burn.” (Stratfor, 7/7/09)

Obama Takes it Out on Africa

Obama, touted as the “son of Africa,” gave a racist, lying, blame-the-victim speech, essentially calling most of Africa dysfunctional, and thus by implication worthy of occupation by a “superior power.” He told Africans, “The legacy of colonialism was not an excuse for failing to build prosperous, democratic societies.”(NY Times, 7/11/09) And, “‘poorer countries have an obligation’ to reform themselves.” (NYT)

What hypocrisy! Centuries of enslavement, economic domination and invasions by Western powers — still occurring through troop deployments and the draining of the continent’s resources by the likes of Big Oil — and the crippling of home-grown agriculture leading to famines by European demands for profitable single-crop exports, all combined to exploit Africa’s workers and farmers unmercifully. Now Obama has the nerve to blame Africans for the hell the colonialists created and continue!

Obama and U.S. rulers really seek in Africa not democracy but access to the continent’s strategic resources and supply routes, which would be critical in a world war. They’re trying to combat China’s capitalists who have blanketed the continent with huge investments, building projects to gobble up oil reserves and vital minerals. This inter-imperialist rivalry can only lead to war.

Dismal Diplomatically and on the Battlefield

The absence of millions of deployable troops underlies the U.S. Iraq fiasco. Iraq remains fruitless for the Exxon Mobil cabal that planned the invasion dreaming of six to eight million barrels of crude per day. Iraq’s recent auction of oil projects, for which neither it nor its U.S. puppet-masters can provide security, went bust. Exxon, Chevron, Shell & Co. walked out. And anti-U.S. Iraqi insurgents greeted Obama’s promised “withdrawal” (actually a retreat from cities to megabases) with terror bombings that have killed 123 civilians since July 5.

Ground Wars Need Ground Troops — and a Draft

In Afghanistan, Obama’s new emphasis on ground war will mean nothing without real numbers of ground troops. The Pentagon’s surge will put fewer than 100,000 total soldiers into a country of over 35,000,000. A half-million U.S. troops failed to subdue similarly-sized Vietnam. Despite an earnest desire for land war, futile air strikes will continue.

The same goes for Obama’s extension of the fighting into Pakistan. A new U.S.-backed air offensive by Pakistan into its Taliban-dominated Waziristan region is “unlikely to destroy the enemy...and will leave in place Taliban warlords whom the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan regard as a significant cross-border threat,” warned the Dallas Morning News (7/12/09), citing Javed Husain, a retired Pakistani general. He said, “If it’s not going to be a ground forces operation, then the foot soldiers of the Taliban will remain....It’s a ridiculous thought that air power can win it.”

Obama and his banker-bosses are taking significant steps that will aid mobilization. Nationalizing General Motors, for example, sends a powerful message to all industrialists: Further takeovers “in the national interest” are coming. Obama & Co. are working quietly but deliberately to restore the draft. On June 23, Michelle Obama and Maria Kennedy Shriver launched a “new” initiative called “United We Serve,” encouraging young people to “public service.” There’s nothing new about it. A 2003 Brookings Institution report of the same name, written by Bill Clinton among others, and couched in patriotic jargon, boiled down to a plea for mandatory national — including military — service.

The rulers’ present relative weakness does not necessarily help our class. In fact, the more endangered that capitalists are, the more harshly they attack workers. But we can use the bosses’ assaults to organize militant, class-conscious fight-back, turning the class struggles into schools for communism, which can win workers, soldiers and youth to join and build PLP. This can sow the seeds of communist revolution, the only solution for the working class to the hell of capitalism.

S. Africa: 70,000 Strike, Battle Cops

SOUTH AFRICA, July 8 — In the largest strike since 1992, over 70,000 construction workers from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) walked out demanding a 13% pay increase. Employers — represented by the Federation of Civil Engineers Contractors — are offering only 10.4%, while reaping huge profits from a $3 billion investment in the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament. Strikers have militantly battled the cops in the streets.

The strike has stopped work on five of the ten stadiums being used for the tournament. It has also halted work on the railroad linking Pretoria and Johannesburg. “We are building the -stadiums but we don’t have the money to buy a ticket,” declared Owen Vele, an assistant surveyor, who said he was paid Rand2,200 ($268, £167, 193 euros) for a 50-hour week.

The strike follows a string of smaller work stoppages, including wildcat actions in the health and emergency services. Strike action is also expected by teachers and other public-sector workers before wage re-negotiations are due to start in several weeks.

Stella Strike Proves Workers Have No Future Under Capitalism

Dear Stella D’Oro workers:

Your brave action, unbreakable unity and steadfast determination have been an inspiration to workers far and near in this time of capitalist economic crisis. Over eleven months of this struggle, news of your heroism has spread slowly but surely across the city, the region and even the nation. Through some newspapers, but especially through CHALLENGE, your story has spread across the globe.

Despite a long court battle and police harassment on the picket line the Brynwood Partners have been unable to break your union or your strike. So now they want to close the Bronx bakery.

Your sharp struggle has softened but not defeated the Brynwood bosses’ attacks. Only communist revolution can do that. Even the most determined and militant reform struggle can only bring incomplete gains for workers.

Hartmax, a maker of men’s suits backed by bailed-out Wells Fargo bank, moved to close its operations in Illinois and fire its 4,000 SEIU employees. The Hartmax workers, inspired by workers who had occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, threatened to occupy their plant if it was closed.

Hartmax relented and instead of closing its plants sold the operations to another investor who kept them open. The new owners will surely demand concessions from workers in order to keep the plants open. Even when workers fight hard for a victory today, the capitalist system leaves bosses in power to attack us tomorrow.

Our fights against the bosses hold value not mainly in terms of reforms we win or lose but in lessons we learn. Learning to defeat racism and sexism with working-class unity is a lesson we can build a new world on. When we see the bosses take away gains in the blink of an eye that workers have fought over many years to achieve we understand that in the long run we have to take this bosses’ power away from them once and for all.

We have seen that bosses fear militant struggle most of all because in these actions we are feeling our way toward the workers’ power that will be our salvation. When we see that governments and politicians will never serve workers, we learn that we need a new government, one that will put the needs of workers first. This is communism. These are communist lessons.

These lessons are not yours alone, workers of Stella D’Oro. Your valiant stand has helped workers and youth far and near to learn that we have no future under capitalism. This monumental achievement is yours to claim. You will never be forgotten for as long as workers and youth in the Progressive Labor Party continue to struggle for a decent life, free from exploitation on the job and imperialist war overseas. Thank you.

Yours in the fight,

Progressive Labor Party

a name="PLP Action In Haitian Consulate Hits Regime’s Fascist Crackdown">">"LP Action In Haitian Consulate Hits Regime’s Fascist Crackdown

NEW YORK, July 9 — International working-class solidarity was on display as a group of PLP’ers occupied the main office of the Haitian Consulate. They demanded immediate release of political prisoners detained in the Rene Preval regime’s fascist crackdown on workers and students in Haiti who are fighting for an increase in the minimum wage. Our Haitian class brothers and sisters nodded their heads in approval as we chanted “same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite” and were glad to receive the latest issue of CHALLENGE. Every opportunity we have to emphasize and reinforce the bond we share with workers in struggle around the world is a great opportunity and privilege for us. In this period of sharpening economic crisis it is crucial that we spotlight militant responses to the bosses’ attacks on workers as examples to be followed, wherever our class is fighting back.

a name="Boeing Workers Must Smash Boss-Gov’t-Union ‘No-Strike’ Gang-up"></a>"oeing Workers Must Smash Boss-Gov’t-Union ‘No-Strike’ Gang-up

PUGET SOUND, WA., July 13 — “The supervisor asked us what we thought at the crew meeting,” an older black Boeing CHALLENGE reader told a group of young Summer Project volunteers, referring to the “no-strike deal” being pushed by the government and the company. “We got up and walked out!” His friend thought this was great. Another Boeing comrade asked how we could turn crew-meeting walkouts like this into rolling thunder (hammering) and marches through the plants. This year’s Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) Summer Project came just in time to spread revolutionary communist politics and fight-back — our answer to this fascist attack — to key plants throughout the Seattle area.

The government has stepped in to force this no-strike deal down our throats. Last Tuesday, the senior Democrat on the Congressional military committee, Rep. Norm Dicks, backed Boeing’s demand. “The whole thing comes down to, can they get a long-term agreement with the union, with a no-strike clause. That’s ultimately what has to happen here [to keep jobs in Washington State, not South Carolina].” The Democratic governor and the rest of the Congressional delegation beat the same drum.

At a bare minimum most workers have asked what’s there to talk about. Just say no!

Not so the union! By last Thursday, the union could no longer hide behind secrecy, partly because our Summer Project volunteers were at every key plant with our communist leaflets and signs, exposing the set- up and calling for fight-back (see p. 8). “We’re open to talking…[and] are working to improve our relationship with Boeing,” said district union president and fascist collaborator-in-the-making Wroblewski.

We’re All Auto!

For months now, PLP has predicted something like this “no-strike” regime was in the works. CHALLENGE and the CHALLENGE EXTRA pointed to Auto and the racist decimation in Detroit as the harbinger of fascist reorganization of industry.

The union countered that we’re not auto. “Autoworkers got ‘fat and lazy’ when they were on top,” asserted one union official. “Imagine getting all that pay when you’re laid off. We never did that. Nothing gets produced if the company can’t make some profit. We only struck because the company was unreasonably greedy.”

Our job is not to save the company, but to fight for the working class. These union mis-leaders are traitors to our class!

As last week proved, “We’re all auto!” Another Boeing worker told LA H.S. and Community College students how a 54-year-old relative lost his auto subcontractor job and was forced to move in with his mother. A friend of his had been shot dead when he ran for president of a key UAW local some years back. He was clear: the sharpening worldwide crisis of overproduction was leading to wider war, eventually world war, and coming to Puget Sound.

Breaking The Law

Every worker was furious and maybe even a little taken off guard by the rapid developments. It became clear through our daily dinner discussions between workers and volunteers and meetings in the plants that the idea to limit our struggle to the confines of the bosses’ laws was crippling our fight-back.

“As much as I want to, you can’t have rolling thunder, marches or wildcats because that’s illegal,” said one honest worker. “Look,” commented another friend, “that’s how we started these things around contract time. It was all illegal when the Party helped organize the first marches in ’95. In fact, they’re still illegal! The company and the union just allow them now because they can control them.”

We have to be prepared to break the bosses’ laws, now more than ever, as striking itself is being made illegal in industry after industry.

Smashing The State

Inevitably, this leads to debating the nature of the government. Most of the 26,000 IAM members at Boeing “instinctively” know any extralegal fight against this key war industry, particularly in this period, will bring down the armed might of the ruling-class State apparatus. It’s not surprising then that even some of our closest friends “hope against hope” that they can find an “easier” path.

“Whether Republican or Democrat, they all turn against the working class when they get in office,” said another reader and seller at yet another dinner with volunteers. “Maybe, we would stand a chance if we outlawed lobbyists and corporate campaign contributions, while limiting individual contributions to a $1,000.”

But the very politicians that our union spent millions getting elected are the ones demanding we submit to this “no-strike regime.” “Do you really believe the bosses would ever let the government represent anything but their interests?” asked another Boeing worker. “It’s the bosses’ State; they built it to force their will on us. It must be smashed and replaced with communist workers’ power.”

We don’t have to be victims of the bosses’ crisis. “We’re all Auto” is more than a catchy phrase. Industrial workers can up the ante like no other section of the working class. With essential anti-racist alliances with subcontractor workers, students and soldiers, we can defeat the armed might of the bosses with communist revolution. This may not be the easiest path, but it is becoming increasingly clear that building for revolution is the key to our survival. This year’s Summer Project helped blaze that path.

a name="Union Hacks: ‘Roll over, play dead’; Workers Need to ‘Roll over them!’"></a>Un"on Hacks: ‘Roll over, play dead’; Workers Need to ‘Roll over them!’

LOS ANGELES, June 13 — Some Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) workers are talking about striking since our contract already expired and the union leaders aren’t telling us about negotiations.

When PL’ers took CHALLENGE and the CHALLENGE Extra to transit workers, they grabbed them. One gave us $10. Others took more for themselves and for other workers and also gave money. Many agreed workers are being forced to pay for the bosses’ crisis. Our taxes, wages, working conditions, benefits and pensions are all being used to bail out the banks and pay for wider Middle-East wars.

When union leaders said workers shouldn’t expect any gains and should just feel lucky to have a job, workers became even angrier. We must fight back. Otherwise the attacks will get worse. Look what happened to auto workers. The UAW leaders told them to accept “labor peace” in exchange for job security. They got mass layoffs and even more attacks! But in this crisis, the real victory will be the growth of the revolutionary communist movement to eliminate the bosses and their system.

a name="MTA Workers Should Strike Against a War Contract ""MTA Workers Should Strike Against a War Contract

World capitalism, and particularly U.S. capitalism, are facing their worst economic crisis in 80 years. Most analysts believe it hasn’t hit bottom yet; some believe it will grow into a full-fledged depression worse than the 1930s.

Faced with this gloomy future, our “fearless” union leaders whine that “Management says it has no money and unfortunately they are telling the truth…and the MTA budget for the next year calls for no wage increase.” These “leaders” have no fighting plan. They tell us to roll over and play dead, hoping MTA will take pity on us and “preserve your wage guarantee and health and pension packages.” But they also say, “MTA thinks it has us over a barrel.” So what will stop MTA from rolling over us?

MTA bosses and our union mis-leaders are parroting the U.S. bosses’ cries that there’s no money. But they found trillions to bail out their banks. They’ve spent over $4 trillion on their murderous, racist oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are finding billions more to expand them to Pakistan. But there’s no money for us!

For them, we’re expendable, like the auto workers they laid off or Iraqi-Afghani-Pakistani men, women and children they’re slaughtering with million-dollar missiles. For the U.S. and MTA bosses and union sellouts we’re nothing but machines to be worked and discarded when no longer useful.

But we’re part of the working class that produces and transports all the world’s goods and people. The capitalist class sells the products of our labor and gives us in wages and benefits a fraction of what they get for them. They keep the rest as profits. To maintain their profits, they cut back our wages, benefits, lay us off, close their factories and move them to low-wage areas.

That’s why workers must fight for communism: a society without bosses and money, where the products of our labor will be distributed according to need and where everyone will contribute to society according to their commitment. That’s why rolling over and playing dead is not an alternative, no matter how difficult the situation.

The only time we lose is when we don’t fight for our class interests. No matter what the odds, if we and more workers become more confident in our class and more committed to destroying capitalism, then we have won. Eventually the victory will be ours.

The ruling capitalist class, although apparently all-powerful, depends for its economic empire on the industrial working class and for its military might on the children of the working class. Its very survival is based on oppressing our class. They rule by force and by pushing their poisonous capitalist ideology on us. Our struggle is to replace it with communist ideology. When the working class, soldiers and students embrace communist ideology and unite against the bosses, capitalism will be history. Dare to struggle, dare to win!

U.S.-Inspired Honduras Coup: Another Inter-Imperialist Battleground

The Honduran military coup is the opening salvo of U.S. imperialism’s renewed efforts to more aggressively try to stem its imperialist rivals’ expansion in its “backyard.” Honduras, where the two generals leading the coup were trained by the U.S. military at its School of the Americas, in Ft. Benning, GA, is the testing ground of Obama’s “new policy” toward Latin America. If successful, the U.S. bosses hope to apply it to topple anti-U.S. regimes throughout the region.

But, as the continuous mass demonstrations in Honduras supporting the deposed president and the pro-U.S. forces military response shows, this process won’t be peaceful. Furthermore, as the populist appeal of the anti-U.S. forces led by Hugo Chavez spreads and the European-Brazil-led bloc grows stronger, so will the need of these camps to arm themselves in preparation for wider inter-imperialist conflicts. This year Latin American regimes will spend about $50 billion on arms, almost double what they spent five years ago, this in a region where more than 200 million people live on less than $2 a day and 98 million sleep on the streets.

This dire poverty has proven fertile grounds for local capitalist politicians like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to build populist anti-U.S. movements allied with U.S. imperialist rivals in hopes of getting a bigger share of their workers’ exploitation. The U.S. bosses’ response to this threat has been to increase their efforts to build pro-U.S. mass movements, including $50 million annually to “democracy promotion” in Honduras, and triple their military aid to Latin America. Stephen Johnson, Assistant Defense Secretary for the Western Hemisphere under Bush, explaining the need to arm their Latin American allies to the teeth, said: “Right now funds for security assistance are slim and what programs we can offer are limited by complicated sanctions. That leaves a vacuum for powers like China and Russia to fill.” (Reuters, May 21, 2007).

Despite U.S. efforts, the Russian, Chinese and European imperialists continue to make big inroads in the Americas. This is especially true in South America, where Russia and China are the main supporters of Hugo Chavez’s bloc. And where the European Union, as the biggest investors in the sub-continent, support Brazil’s rise as the dominant regional power vying to displace the U.S. While Russian and Chinese arms flow to the Venezuelan bloc, Brazil is acquiring European weapons.

Not everything is “peace and love” among the anti-U.S. forces. The European imperialists are threatened by Russian and Chinese growing influence in South America. The Germans — the biggest foreign investors in Brazil — are particularly alarmed by Chinese economic inroads there. They and some Brazilian bosses despise Hugo Chavez’s populist rhetoric. Brazil has the biggest wealth disparity in the world. They know that crumbs thrown to the impoverished masses á la Hugo Chavez will come at the expense of some of their profits, and those of the local ruling classes.

Just because the U.S. and the European-Brazil led bloc have a common anti-Chavez position does not make them friends either. The contradictions between all these imperialists and regional bosses will sharpen even further as the worldwide economic crisis deepens. So will the anger of the working class whose needs can’t be met by free market capitalism or state capitalism (Chavez’s “Socialism of the 21st Century” or the Socialism that the old communist movement fought for).

Central and South American workers need to organize the internationalist Progressive Labor Party and fight for communism, shown by history to be the only viable solution for the working class.

Workers Sit in to Stand Up vs. Parking Meter Robbery

As the sun rose above AutoZone, it seemed that nothing could be more beautiful. After a week of around-the-clock protesting against the installation of parking meters in the economically depressed neighborhood of South Chicago, community organizers, residents, and PLP members stood in awe of the magnificent sight. As the group sat in stunned silence, it seemed there couldn’t be a more perfect moment —
until a CTA bus driver passed through, tearing the silence with his blaring horn and punching his fist in the air. Protesters cheered, with a new appreciation of the beauty of the working class that has been supporting the sit-in with food, drink, cheers, and by joining us for several hours at a time.

Commercial Ave. is home to small “mom and pop” businesses, a church, and several social service organizations and community centers. Meters would make it impossible for many unemployed, immigrant, and poor residents to wait the hours-long lines for groceries from the food pantry or assistance with light and gas bills. This is all likely part of the city’s plan to rid “undesirables” from the area surrounding the potential
Olympic site.

Community organizers have held rallies outside the Alderman’s office and during the South Chamber of Commerce meeting. When the Executive Director of the Chamber moved the meeting to avoid protesters, the rally was moved, and people took the streets, marching to the new location. People hanging out of second floor apartment windows chanted “Fight back!” with the marchers.

Overnight, workers bring carne asada, hot dogs, and tamales to cook on the grill. Passers-by join the demonstrators for food and discussion about the importance of organizing the community to fight against the attacks on the working class. Leaders of the sit-in recognize that the cry of the people may be falling on deaf ears and it’s very likely the meters will be installed soon. Still, they smile as youth walk past at 1:00 am chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!!”

Demonstrations such as these have tremendous potential to build class-consciousness, develop new friendships, and strengthen the bonds with our friends. It is critical for PL members to engage in such struggles. Without our outlook that in each small battle we are building strength to wage the larger war against the bosses, our working-class brothers and sisters might become discouraged, and lose the will to fight altogether. We must remind them what we are fighting for. We must show them communism is alive and well in the workers who bring us dinner, asking for nothing in exchange; in the workers who sit with us for hours in the sun or rain; in the children who shout the loudest “Commercial Avenue not for sale!”

In an era when poverty, unemployment, and apathy often seem unbearable, such struggles also help encourage PL’ers. In the fight against capitalism time will pass, and we will see the bosses turn their wrath on the working class time and again, often more and more viciously. We will see workers’ victories rolled back and taken away. Throughout it all, however, the tremendous spirit of the working class is never broken. In many ways they already live the line. They show their readiness to fight. The working class’ true enemy is capitalism; we must fight to win the war for communism. Every struggle, every time — FIGHT BACK!

a name="Workers’ Power Is the Rx:">">"orkers’ Power Is the Rx:

Healthcare ‘Reform’ A Capitalist Shell Game

WASHINGTON, DC, June 25 — Today thousands of union workers from CWA, AFSCME, and SEIU joined health care professionals in a rally protesting the U.S.’s obscene health care system. Several PLP’ers were there to greet them with hundreds of leaflets and over 100 copies of CHALLENGE. Many workers were excited by its reports about the Stella d’Oro strike. But the strategy of today’s rally was just the opposite of the militant action shown by that strike.

Rally speakers included union sellouts like President Gerry McEntee and liberal politicians like U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Arlen Specter. They generally urged support for Obama’s health reform plan. In fact, Health Care for America Now, the “labor-community” coalition that organized the event, is part of Obama’s plan to create networks that rally mass support for his legislative initiatives. But none of the health plans being debated in Congress will meet the workers’ needs because of the growing political, economic and military crises facing the U.S. imperialists.

The bosses are scrambling to compete internationally by vigorously cutting the wages and benefits of workers. In the auto industry, benefits and wages have been slashed, workers laid off and bankruptcy laws used to enforce this attack. Maintaining the capitalist economy requires not just the trillions of dollar in bailouts but attacks on workers’ standard of living as well.

But why not cut administrative costs, profits of insurers and pharmaceutical companies and cover the 50 million uninsured with this money, as Democratic Party rhetoric suggests? The proposed “public plan” (or even a “single-payer plan”) could not guarantee “quality, affordable health care for all.” The bosses’ must channel money to retool their industries, fight wars, develop innovative technology and beat out their competitors. Such is capitalism!

Any funding for reform will come mainly from the working class. The legislative debate shows that funds for reform won’t come from the rich or from shifting dollars from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the bosses will tax health care benefits, cut income tax deductions, raise co-pays and “shared costs,” and tax soda and alcohol — all ways of taking even more money from workers. Capitalists can also hold down costs by cutting benefits within health plans. The worse the economic situation gets, the fewer the benefits. Massachusetts is already doing this, and more health plans will follow.

Why do the bosses even bother with health reform rhetoric? To keep us loyal to their rotten system and confused by moving money around while actually slashing benefits! More stringent cuts will certainly follow in coming years because of expanding wars and sharpening economic competition and crisis. Supporters of health care reform need to follow the lead of Stella d’Oro strikers and build a militant movement. Workers, students and professionals must fight to seize power through revolution, not be duped by the bosses’ shell game. With political power, we workers can build a needs-oriented health care system, without profit, racial disparities, and big marketing budgets. All the more reason to break with the capitalist politicians and join the revolutionary PLP!

LETTERS

a name="Mexico: Paradise for Bosses, Hell for Workers""Mexico: Paradise for Bosses, Hell for Workers

Mexico’s federal government has rescued big businessmen financially when they steal from each other, and has exempted them from constitutional obligations such as payment of social welfare fees, and from ensuring a dignified retirement for millions of workers at retirement age.

Enormous petroleum reserves have been exhausted primarily by selling it cheaply to the U.S., petroleum that imperialism has used primarily to support its wars, killing workers every day.

In recent years, neoliberal governments along with big capitalists have looted the country, endangering workers’ survival. In recent months 697,000 jobs have been lost while a day’s wages are a miserable $51.90 pesos (US$4), an average of US$120 a month. If Mexico’s workers were unable to migrate to the U.S., massive rebellions would have erupted in Mexico long ago.

Meanwhile, the government has allotted huge incomes to the upper echelons of the bureaucracy. Supreme Court judges are paid $700,000 pesos (US$53,846) a month, supposedly to make them immune to corruption. But in practice they exonerate governors and senators, like Puebla’s governor or Zacatecas’ current senator, even when their crimes are obvious.

Electoral functionaries increased their already high salaries by 50%. Federal deputies divided up (stole) $173,000,000 pesos, left over from the 2007 budget, making themselves white-collar criminals.

Governmental bureaucrats and the political parties — who say they represent the workers — actually oppress the workers, especially those who have struck to defend their rights, like the workers in Cananea fighting to improve safety at the workplace and like the miners of Pasta de Conchos in danger of being buried alive.

This is the reality for working-class lives under this rapacious and murderous capitalist system where exploitation and misery continue to be a daily occurrence.

We must destroy this system by organizing the working class for communist revolution. In turn, we’ll build a new society where exploitation, racism and nationalism don’t exist, a society that guarantees a dignified life for workers, as a result of having served society their whole working life. Let’s fight for communism!

Industrial Comrade from Mexico

a name="‘Reading CHALLENGE, I view the world differently…’"></a>"Reading CHALLENGE, I view the world differently…’

The first thing I noticed about CHALLENGE was the fist. That symbolism made me want to read it. Then I liked the tone — it antagonizes you to think. “Revolutionary communism” automatically made me start asking questions. I knew about revolution, but I had only heard negative things about communism. Now I wondered: What is communism, and how does it relate to revolutionary action? Its ideals are common work, common sharing, and community. I looked at communism different from that point on.

Then I started thinking about how can I use these tools and bring it back to the students at school. Our struggles are all different, but I have come to realize that these battles all derive from the same source.

I have been reading CHALLENGE for about nine months, and view the world differently now. I’m able to distribute the paper to five or ten friends each issue.

So where do we go from here? The more I listen, I read, and participate in the struggle I appreciate that all the answers aren’t there yet. Finally, I am involved in something where I am not being told what to do or how to think. I actually get to help create the kind of society I have always believed humankind deserves, or was intended to be. No racism, sexism, ageism period! No wages, foreclosures, or class/caste systems that devalue the role you play in society. I am awakened to the ways in which capitalism has destroyed families, students, workers, and so much more. We must unite and fight, live for what’s right and end the usury that destroys a fruitful life.

An Awakened Reader

a name="Mexico’s Elections: One Big Anti-Working Class Attack">">"exico’s Elections: One Big Anti-Working Class Attack

The July 5th elections for municipal presidents and local and federal deputies, occurred amid claims of change, employment, better quality of life, eradication of poverty and meeting people’s needs. These claims and actions of the so-called representatives of the people are filled with lies and hypocrisy.

National and foreign bosses and their politicians are preparing for the 2012 presidential elections, using these 2009 elections for an electoral map — numbers of voters who will vote in 2012 — and for measuring their political force by regions.

The PRI, New Alliance, and Verde Ecologista (Green ecologists) prepare for an alliance. The New Alliance, with the sellout Elba Esther Gordillo, proposes the same old tactics of mobilizing the teachers and rigging the votes for their party. The Verde Ecologista proposes the death penalty for kidnappers, killers and terrorists. They’re trying to win over workers while the killings, robberies, kidnappings and social conflict grow with the crisis.

The PRI with its “preservation of institutionality” contains overlapping contradictions between the political elite modifying the constitution according to their interests and the PAN with its “war on drug trafficking.” They’re displaying their deadly weapons to maintain fascist military power, backed by U.S. bosses.

The parties of the supposed “left” are also preparing their scenarios for the 2012 contest. The Party of Labor, Convergencia and PRD are in a fierce struggle with the parties of the extreme right, trying to “modernize” the left. They propose riches be generated for and by Mexico’s people, endangering the situation even more by promoting intense nationalism in our class.

Meanwhile, a supposedly “leftist” sector proposed a “blank” vote, enabling people to vote for no one. They say this would be the best option to show that society needs real changes. Their examples of the “modernization of the left” are Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, supposed “left-wing” regimes who can maintain their economies while going toe-to-toe with the U.S. yet kneeling to European or Asian bosses — supposedly “beneficial.” But submitting to these imperialists is the same as submitting to U.S. imperialists.

No electoral party promotes working-class power, which abolishes a system that enables a minority to live off the sacrifices of the vast majority. We need a change, but NOT the reformist one advocated by supposed “left” or right-wing parties. Progressive Labor Party proposes a revolutionary change, not the bosses’ electoral fraud. We want to destroy the capitalist system and all the bosses. That’s real change. We fight for communism. Join PLP.

Red Youth

What You Do Really DOES Count!

On Day 2 of the Summer Project we were handing out papers near a Boeing factory. I went to get coffee and set CHALLENGES down on the counter. One black worker stood pretending he was looking at the menu, but he kept making eye contact so I asked him, “You wouldn’t happen to work at Boeing?” “Yes I do,” he said. I told him how students from LA like me had been reading all year about the crisis they had going on at Boeing, and the battles, and that a few of us had mobilized to come and find ways to support the workers. One way was to pass out papers and help them organize. Our first step was to come down to the plants and meet some workers, pass out the literature and get a better feel for what was going on.

Meanwhile other Boeing workers popped up from different corners of the restaurant and surrounded us. I told them we heard about the no-strike deal from a fellow worker but the union was too quiet about the issue. I said some people were mobilizing right now and the paper was a way to start the process. I asked them if they’d be interested in taking the paper and and one guy gave me a dollar. Then they asked me if they could have ten or fifteen more to put inside the plant and so I gave them a stack and two guys stuck them under their shirts. They said they would pass the papers out inside and talk more about what’s going on.

Sometimes you don’t really understand what you’re doing until a moment like that happens, and then you know that we’re really making a difference.

Summer Project Volunteer

a name="Students, Profs Fight Capitalism’s Campus Cuts">">"tudents, Profs Fight Capitalism’s Campus Cuts

LOS ANGELES, July 9 — “The state will be required to cut down on education and healthcare to keep capitalism going. The state is not neutral. It is a tool in class society to keep the ruling class in power. We need to fight for communism.” That is what a comrade said in reference to the Board of Trustee’s decision to cut the winter session here in a Southern California Community College. This led to a two-hour discussion between three friends involved in the fight against the budget cuts that ended at midnight.

For the past two months hundreds of students and faculty have been fighting the budget cuts on our campus. Student-workers and part-time professors are getting laid off, sections are being cut, teachers are being laid off and the winter session has been slashed. Students have been hard at work trying to get informed about all the cuts that are going to be happening in the following semester. They have been communicating with concerned professors, attending Board of Trustees meetings, and researching on their own. The campus doesn’t inform the students about the sessions being cut or the potential layoffs of faculty. The administration is intimidated by the students’ and professors’ organizing against the cut-backs and other attacks. In fact the
administration held a budget-cuts rally and only invited students who would not challenge them and specifically did not
invite any other students.

Last week at a Board of Trustees meeting, over 125 students, teachers and workers protested their decision to cut programs students need. The crowd was very militant, and rallied outside the meeting. When they started to allow the audience inside the boardroom, students held up posters stating that there shouldn’t be any cuts. Throughout the meeting students caused disruptions and attacked the board members. One of the Board members cried, “I do everything to help the students,” but we know that under capitalism it doesn’t matter what she wants, she serves the needs of the ruling class and attacks the working class. This aroused other students to stand up and interrupt the board members to tell the truth about who is hurt by the cuts. This isn’t the first meeting students have attended, but this is the most militant one this campus has had since the crisis started.

When the decision came to cut programs, the winter session was the first to go. Cutting supplies was last. Some students joked that the school will be cutting toilet paper. Attending the board meeting showed the reality that the government doesn’t really help or support the working class, but instead attacks us. It made it clear that the Board of Trustees can’t and won’t help the students or teachers during times of crisis.

We will need a mass group of people to make a change on our campus and around the world. We must work with students on these issues to win them to our revolutionary ideas. That’s why it’s good that some of these students will be active in the PLP Summer Project. Some of them are reading CHALLENGE and we plan to expand this number so that more students can see that they’re part of the international fight against the capitalist system.

a name="‘Fog of War’ Pretty Clear: McNamara Murdered Millions"></">‘F"g of War’ Pretty Clear: McNamara Murdered Millions

Michael Jackson… Farrah Fawcett... the bosses’ media flooded us with news of their deaths. Yet many workers probably didn’t notice the death of an enemy of the international working class whose life reveals the horrible reality behind the lies of hope and change promised by liberal politicians like Barack Obama.

As Secretary of Defense under Presidents John Kennedy (JFK) and Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), McNamara is probably most infamous for his pivotal role in the imperialist Vietnam War, launched by U.S. capitalists to protect their strategic interests in Southeast Asia, particularly against Russia and China. Three million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed.

Early on McNamara oversaw operation “Rolling Thunder,” the carpet bombing of North Vietnam that hurled nearly triple the number of bombs dropped on Europe in all of World War II (WWII). McNamara played such a pivotal role in conducting the war that at times it was called “McNamara’s War.” He was rightly hated by many, including many veterans from the war. Nonetheless, many understood that McNamara and the military were serving the larger interests of U.S. capital.

Harvard-trained, McNamara was a “Whiz Kid,” famous for his analytic abilities and his goals of “maximum efficiency.” At that time, “We were the best and the brightest,” he reminisced. (“Fog of War,” 2004) Tellingly, McNamara recalls that while at Harvard “society was on the verge.” He was referring to the Great Depression and often communist-led mass fights for unionization and against unemployment and evictions. He acknowledges that the liberal rhetoric and policies of then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) helped save U.S. capitalism. FDR was another liberal politician whose deceptive appeal Obama and his handlers hope to copy.

During WWII, the U.S. military sought Harvard’s help to become more effective. This became McNamara’s first experience as a mass murderer for U.S. bosses. He worked under General Curtis LeMay to maximize the efficiency of B-29 bombing over Japan.

This produced the firebombing of Tokyo that, according to McNamara himself in the documentary “Fog of War,” killed 100,000 Japanese civilians in one night! To fully understand the scale of destruction he helped plan, McNamara says that Tokyo’s size then equaled New York City’s. Now picture that destruction in NYC. Many more Japanese cities were similarly firebombed.

When asked by the interviewer in the “Fog of War” if he was aware of his responsibility in these mass civilian deaths, McNamara recalls General Lemay saying, “If we lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right….We were behaving as war criminals.”

After the war McNamara quickly became a darling of the rulers’ liberal wing. Ford hired him to make it profitable and he became the first company president who wasn’t a Ford family member. Soon afterwards JFK named him Defense Secretary. McNamara quickly entered JFK’s inner circle. Today Obama fashions himself as an heir to the FDR/JFK legacy.

The bosses’ media encourages popular nostalgia about JFK’s Presidency, a supposed “Camelot” or fairy-tale place of “idealism” and “service.” Obama and his ruling-class masters echo these same themes to win support particularly among youth, students and workers. Beneath the Kennedy/Obama liberal rhetoric is the lie that workers and bosses are on the same side and that an “enlightened capitalism” can consider workers’ interests. But the reality of these politics is continued capitalist exploitation, racism, anti-communism and murderous imperialist war that McNamara symbolizes.

Today many rightly despise Cheney and Rumsfeld for their roles in overseeing the Iraq oil wars under the Bushes. But as PLP says, “It’s not just Bush, it’s capitalism.” Many hope that a liberal Obama foreign policy will somehow be “less” imperialist. But when capitalists compete for the exploitation of the world’s resources and workers, war is inevitable.

To those who view Obama and the liberal rulers behind him as “good guys,” especially following Bush, McNamara’s life proves that the international working class has no friends among any capitalist rulers, liberal or otherwise. Obama will continue McNamara’s murderous imperialist legacy in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Communist revolution remains the urgent task for the working class. The idea that workers might find solace and compassion with “lesser-evil” liberal bosses and politicians repeatedly and inevitably leads to the mass murder of workers worldwide.

Red Eye

Stress and suicide rife in U.S. Army

NYT 6/7 — Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, …predicted the toll this year will top the record of 2008 when the Army suffered 133 suicides. That was twice the number in 2004, before the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns turned into a slog of repeated tours…. He conceded there may be no study establishing an “overwhelming” connection between combat stress and suicide, “but I just can’t believe that it is not very much related.”

Troops in the field already know this the hard way. About one in five returning home privately admit to post-traumatic stress disorders, but only half seek treatment. Soldiers fear their careers will be compromised if they reach out for help.

N. Korea nukes already restrain U.S.

Pythian Press 6/14 — “Iran and North Korea appear to be seeking small nuclear arsenals in order to deter potential adversaries from launching an attack upon them — by threatening them with unacceptable damage in retaliation,” says Daley….”It is really quite a remarkable development,” says Daley….In contrast to all the debate….about whether the United States and/or Israel ought to launch a preemptive strike on Iran — no one seems to be proposing any kind of military strike on North Korea. Why not? Because of the mere possibility that North Korea could impose unacceptable damage upon us in reply.”

No Safety Net for the Desperate

NYT 7/5 — Government “safety net” programs like Social Security and food stamps have pulled growing numbers of Americans out of poverty since the mid-1990’s. But even before the current recession, these programs were providing less help to the most desperately poor, mainly non-working families with children…. The overhaul of cash welfare since 1996, aimed at pushing single mothers into jobs, ‘makes sense when unemployment is 5 percent.”

“But if you are out of work, the welfare system in a time of recession doesn’t have anything to offer.”

Facing court with no interpreter

NYT 7/4 — When Maythe Ramirez went to Superior Court in Contra Costa, Calif., for a child custody hearing in 2006, she wanted to tell the judge that her husband beat her and should not be allowed broad visitation rights. The court did not provide an interpreter for her however….

The court system can be a bewildering place for anyone, but it can terrifying for those who do not understand English…. But while interpreters are commonly offered in criminal cases, many states do not require the services in all civil cases….

In family law cases, which deal with issues like divorce, child custody and abuse, the lack of language help “can mean the difference between justice and injustice,”

Insurance co.’s steal health money

NYT 6/25 — Congressional investigators said Wednesday that two-thirds of the nation’s health insurance industry used a faulty database that overcharged patients for seeing doctors outside their insurance network, costing them billions of dollars in inflated bills.…

”The result of this practice is that American consumers have paid billions of dollars for health care services that their insurance companies should have paid,”

For bankers, recession is over

GW 7/3 — Bankers are again looking forward to bumper payouts, eight months after the sector faced meltdown. After weeks of firing staff, there’s a hiring frenzy in investment banks. Business is booming, partly as a result of the chaos caused by the bankers. Bond markets are hectic as a result of governments’ need to finance deficits, and economic ills have created (profitable) volatility in foreign exchange markets. Even guranteed bonuses have made a comeback.

PLP Project Develops Young Leaders, Worker-Soldier-Student Alliance

SEATTLE, July 13 — “This project was great because we got such instant response to our leaflets,” concluded a young East Coast volunteer. We distributed about 1,200 CHALLENGES and over 2,000 Extras and flyers at Boeing plants in the early morning as workers drove in. Then we talked to workers and returned to update our flyers daily, reflecting what we learned from the visits.

Our banner, “NO-STRIKE DEAL? NO WAY! FIGHT BACK!” was a big hit. Workers slowed down, stopped, requested CHALLENGE, honked their horns, called supportively out the windows, and raised their fists in solidarity! Their positive response to our multi-racial, age-integrated groups gave us energy to keep getting up, selling CHALLENGE and enhancing student-worker alliances.

We distributed a special flyer along with CHALLENGES for 220 soldiers at nearby Ft. Lewis. The day before we discussed the fallacy of the “good war” in Afghanistan, where many of these soldiers are being sent. We included a map of the proposed oil and natural gas pipelines the U.S bosses want to build through that country.

Soldiers are not solely victims of, or killers for, U.S. imperialism, but potentially a key force for revolution. Indeed, without winning these working-class soldiers there can be no revolution. Four gave us contact information to continue receiving our communist literature.

Training to take leadership, this group of mostly college and high school students from across the U.S. came together here for the 2009 Summer Project at Boeing. Combating the capitalist training endured in school, they met and ate with workers, participated in study groups and sold CHALLENGE.

Under capitalism, schools teach self-interest and individualism, but this Project proved we can live and struggle collectively in the interests of our class — in this case by creating relationships with industrial workers. This develops collectivity as we forge a strong worker-student alliance.

Boeing workers told us the company has just bought a non-union factory in South Carolina to induce workers to compete with each other for jobs, and that the IAM union may sign a “no-strike” clause “to keep jobs in Puget Sound” (see page 4). Many workers no longer believe the union is working for them. Despite the leadership’s assurances that plenty of backlog work exists to keep Boeing workers busy in this area, workers notice they have less and less work.

Workers feel they’re being used like tools that can be easily removed when the bosses don’t need them. In meeting us, workers realized they’re not alone in questioning the bosses’ and unions’ actions, and even the system altogether. These conversations also taught us how the industrial struggle unfolds. We also saw workers moving to the left from our discussion about the limits of reform.

PLP veterans led a study group about the history of PL’s industrial work, and then passed the torch to younger participants to discuss dialectical materialism (the study of understanding and analyzing how to change the world), racism, sexism and communist work in the military. Many first-time participants were involved in the Project. Their frankness about their experiences in the Project, in their lives and through their questions about PLP consistently sharpened the debate. They also benefitted from hearing that others face similar struggles in their own lives. Several described their uneasiness advancing communist ideas although not understanding them completely. These first-time participants confronted this by leading briefings and study groups.

After the activities, first-time Project participants led discussions and posed questions about why we are focusing on Boeing workers. We discovered that about 50% of Boeing’s production is military, connecting it to current imperialist wars, but also dramatizing aerospace workers’ revolutionary potential. Winning Boeing workers to revolution will enable them to construct military equipment in winning the class war.

Leading political discussions has increased the confidence of the newest participants to share PL’s ideas with their friends. Our CHALLENGE distribution improved every day as we engaged workers and developed our class-consciousness together. The young leaders who matured in the Seattle Summer Project will be great assets in their home cities as they take on more leadership in the working-class struggle for communist revolution.

a name="Worker to PL’er: ‘You guys were always there…’"></a>Wo"ker to PL’er: ‘You guys were always there…’

Project Unites PL’ers with Stella D’Oro Strikers

BRONX, NY, July 11 — “We are hard workers. Most of us have been working in this place for 20 or 30 years. When we went on strike we approached it the same way. We went to the picket line like we go to work; 24/7, seven days a week. That’s how we won.” This quote from a Stella D’Oro worker summed up the feelings of the eight strikers at a closing forum of the Stella D’Oro Summer Project. The Stella workers enthusiastically spoke about the battle — how they kept up morale during the long strike, how they fought sexism and built unity between men and women, and fought nationalism and racism and came to see themselves as a family.

A man who had been in the plant many years talked about how they kept together, “Before, I would go in the plant every day and mainly think about whatever problems came up at work, but during the strike I began to see the human side of the people I work with.” When asked about whether or not there was anti-communism in the strike in reaction to the presence of PLP, one worker said, “You were with us in the cold, in the rain, in the snow, you brought us pizza and coffee. You guys were always there. What can you say to that?”

The day before the project began, PLP students and teachers and a Stella D’Oro striker held a meeting to make plans to spread communist ideas during the Project. Plans were made to go to shift changes and discuss the CHALLENGE article, “Winning Means Destroying the Profit System: Stella D’Oro Strikers Fight for All Workers” (see front page, 7/15/09).

With copies of CHALLENGE and an invitation to the project’s evening events, we greeted the workers as they went in for their shifts. During the shift changes we reached over 60 workers each day and contacted over 30 workers by phone, in addition to distributing over 1,000 CHALLENGES.

The first evening event was a showing of the communist-made film, “Salt of the Earth,” about the struggle of Mexican-American mineworkers in New Mexico against their brutal bosses. A Stella D’Oro worker compared his experiences to those of the miners. He asked for a copy of the movie, planning to organize more Stella workers to see it.

The next night, a PL comrade gave a talk on the Flint Sit-down Strike of 1936-1937. Hearing how workers can take over the bosses’ factories and organize against attacks from the National Guard and police showed the power of the working class to organize life inside the plant, while battling the bosses trying to get them out.

This group of Stella workers, from all over the globe including North Africa, Europe and Latin America, showed tremendous fortitude, strength and optimism about the necessity of the working-class’ fight. It was clear that this struggle is not over.

The final forum, which concluded with the singing of the Internationale, raised the question of what is next for the Stella workers, and what is next for all workers and students as we face budget cuts, layoffs, evictions and increased attacks. We will continue to visit the plant, fight alongside the Stella D’Oro workers, and struggle to fight for a society led by the working class — communism!

Page 718 of 770