1. RULING CLASS,
   NOT VOTERS, CALL SHOTS IN ELECTION
   1. YES, VIRGINIA (AND TEXAS AND OHIO), THERE IS A RULING CLASS
   2. RULING CLASS'S TOP
      THINK-TANKS DICTATE POLICY
2. Organizing CHALLENGE Clubs in Spain
3. International Women's Day Signals That:
   Women Need Communism to End Special Oppression
4. The day women burned the veil of oppression . . .
5. PLP Students Lead Action vs. Racist NYC Budget Cuts
   1. No Love on Valentine's Day
6. Industrial Workers Find Their Party: PLP
7. Puerto Rico: Striking Teachers Defy Gov't Ban
8. Anti-Racists Unite, Teach Racist Educators A Lesson
   1. THE REAL STORY
9. Oaxaca's Mass Struggle Leads To PLP Growth
10. China's Capitalist Road Won't Help Workers in Cuba
11. Energy Resources The Prize in U.S.-Russia Clash Over Kosovo
12. Pakistani Bosses' Election Won't Solve Workers' Problems
13. LETTERS
    1. Building PLP on a School Trip
    2. Social Esteem Comes With
       Class Content
    3. Small School Movement
       A Hoax
    4. Are Communists Against
       Workers with Religious Ideas?
14. `Small Schools': Rulers' Education for Fascism, War
15. Top Five Big Business Contributors to the Leading Candidates
    1. Barack Obama:
    2. Hillary Clinton:
    3. John McCain:
16. REDEYE
    1. Trailer poison still hits N. Orleans
    2. Mideast: Oil wealth, food riots
    3. Prez candidates
       accommodate rich
    4. Contractors' sex crimes get by
    5. Dems help widen Bush snooping
    6. For other crises US had tough line
17. Rivalry With China Behind Bush's Africa Trip
18. WHEELS FALLING OFF AXLE WORKERS
19. `The Great Debaters'
    The Fight vs. Racist Repression in the Jim Crow South

---

RULING CLASS,
NOT VOTERS, CALL SHOTS IN ELECTION

Like all elections, Obama's, Clinton's and McCain's three-ring circus helps capitalists disguise the class nature of their dictatorship. The illusion is that voters, mainly workers, get to choose the nation's leaders. In reality, a ruling class -- led by powerful financiers -- hand-picks, bankrolls and directs each of the candidates.

Sometimes, as with Clinton and Dole in 1996, the race reflects major divisions over policy between factions of U.S. capitalists, usually the main wing which advocates long-range imperialist investment abroad vs. the isolationists who oppose costly foreign profit wars, wanting to concentrate on immediate domestic profits. But this year, the front-runners all promote the main, imperialist wing's agenda for a domestic police state and ever-expanding war. Campaign 2008 boils down to which candidate can most effectively mobilize the nation for the imperialists' needs. In Texas recently, Obama and Clinton debated their relative fitness to be commander-in-chief.

The war-making billionaires have high hopes for Obama and Clinton. Both are luring more black and Latino, female and young workers to express patriotic loyalty to the rulers, more so this year to gain support for wider war. Both want health plans that maintain drug and insurance profits, racist plans which will fall most heavily on lower-income black and Latino families who can least afford to pay anything into such schemes. Both advocate "national service" -- mandatory drafting of all youth for two years, many of whom (especially black and Latino youth) will serve that time in the military. Both will make workers will pay heavily for the rulers' domestic and global aims. But both promise to impose wartime economic discipline on reluctant capitalists, eliminating tax cuts on the rich in order to rein in the excesses of the corporations and CEOs in the drive to pay for the racist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, if the imperialists fail to sell the Democrats' plans for war taxes and regulation, they can fall back on Nazi goose-stepping militarist McCain. All three candidates get their main funding from the sector of U.S. finance capital that has the greatest interest in broadening the U.S. war machine's field of operation. [See page 7.] Taking no chances, imperialist Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs backs all three contenders.

YES, VIRGINIA (AND TEXAS AND OHIO), THERE IS A RULING CLASS

The New York Times (2/10) proclaimed that the 2008 campaign proves that a king-making elite does not exist: "This season's primaries have made the idea of a political establishment, whether Republican or Democratic, hard to take seriously." Even harder to take seriously is the Times' denial, given the candidates' backers and advisers:

* Zbigniew Brzezinski headlines Obama's cast of counselors. Brzezinski has served as director of the elite, banker-backed Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. He helped Carter frame his infamous 1979 Doctrine, which vowed permanent occupation of Mid-East oilfields.

* Clinton's handlers, mainly war criminals from husband Bill's days, including Madeleine Albright and William Perry, have formed their own think-tank, the Center for a New American Security. Clinton's CNAS has now joined with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to study U.S. military readiness for challenges from Iran, Pakistan, China and beyond. Hillary's "peacenik" supporters at Carnegie take "generous financial support" from the A-list of U.S. imperialism: BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, the Rockefellers, Shell and the Pentagon.

* One-time "maverick" McCain now has Establishment CFR pundit Max Boot in his corner pushing for a U.S. Foreign Legion. Boot joins McCain advisors Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft (Bush, Sr.'s National Security Advisor) and Colin Powell.C

RULING CLASS'S TOP
THINK-TANKS DICTATE POLICY

The dominant faction of U.S. imperialists is determined to control the policy of whoever wins in November. The CFR and the Brookings Institution "are undertaking an ambitious initiative to develop a nonpartisan blueprint for the next U.S. president, one which can be used as the foundation for the new administration's Middle-East policy." (CFR website) The CFR team has representation from all three camps: Sandy Berger (Clinton), Brzezinski (Obama), and Scowcroft (McCain). Not coincidentally, all three candidates have -- in the CFR's Foreign Affairs journal -- pledged to vastly enlarge the U.S. Army. It is these think-tank policy-makers, bankers and heads of the largest corporations who form the ruling class that runs the country, no matter who sits in the White House.

As popular interest in the elections heightens, it is crucial to expose the candidates' class allegiance. They all defend a racist profit system that systematically and brutally exploits workers, often through war, and is long overdue for extinction. But the working class cannot just vote away its tormentors. Capitalism's destruction can only be achieved through the long-term, painstaking building of a revolutionary communist party -- PLP -- that will ultimately put an armed working class in power.

Organizing CHALLENGE Clubs in Spain

An Irish youth described a police attack on a PLP meeting as reported in a previous CHALLENGE: "When we were leaving at 6:30 AM and opened the door, cops were there to spray pepper gas in our faces. They tried to force their way in and arrest us but we stopped them. One young woman was in a state of shock; the rest were vomiting due to the gas. When some youths who stayed and then prepared to leave later, they were surprised by the police who yelled at, insulted and ridiculed them for throwing up due to the pepper spray."

Shortly afterwards I met with the collective and began preparing a leaflet describing the police treatment of youth and the working class worldwide. "This has made us stronger," declared this Irish youth, emboldening him to confront capitalism's whole fascist movement.

Now we're working in some neighborhood social workshops enabling residents to take classes near their homes. The workshops include classes in French, English, Italian and martial arts as well as a project to form a musical band, all to benefit the community. These workshops offer the opportunity to spread the Party's ideas to more people and put them on the long road to destroy capitalism and establish communist workers' power.

Many of our friends read CHALLENGE and some share it on the internet. Others ask for copies to place at art displays for passers-by to read. The "Okupa" movement in this city is big. Many youth organize to occupy abandoned sites and create workshops in art, music and other activities the community needs. While these youth feel impelled to do something for society, they lack a political line that explains why we must fight this system. As a communist PLP'er, this motivates me to participate in these groups and advance our ideas on the destruction of capitalism.

The Party is organizing clubs to study CHALLENGE and recruit these youth to PLP. We're bent on continuing to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat worldwide.

A PLP'er Immigrant in Spain

International Women's Day Signals That:
Women Need Communism to End Special Oppression

March 8 is International Women's Day, symbolized by the 1908 New York City march of 15,000 women demanding better pay and shorter hours. In 1910 the Socialist Second International held the first International Women's Conference and established International Women's Day. It has since celebrated many women's struggles -- including the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the women's march to the municipal Duma (council) in Czarist Russia in early 1917, which helped spark the Bolshevik Revolution.

Internationally, workers will commemorate this month and day to honor the struggle against the special oppression of women and the capitalist system that promotes it, although the bosses and their media will use it to pay lip-service to women's struggles. We must recognize that this special oppression is an integral and necessary part of capitalism, which must be fought every day, not just on International Women's Day or during Women's History month.

Exploitation of women hasn't always existed nor have conditions become better; it has simply changed in form. In primitive communal society men and women's labor was valued equally. In early class society, women were primarily unpaid domestic workers. As capitalism's needs shifted during industrialization, super-exploitation of women in factories began. The ruling class uses the special oppression of women -- like racism and nationalism -- as a tool to oppress the entire working class. When women's wages are driven down, it helps lower wages for all workers.

Historically, the bosses cut costs, including wages and on workplace safety, to increase profits. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City saw 148 mostly Eastern European and Italian women immigrant workers die, trapped in the building because the doors were bolted shut. In the U.S., this event, as well as many other uprisings, achieved higher wages and better working conditions for some workers, but these reforms can be, and are, reversed, especially during capitalism's economic crises.

Entering World Wars I and II, inter-imperialist rivalry among the major capitalist nations was sharpening. To fight these wars, the bosses of these countries had to mobilize men to go to war and women to replace them in the factories, especially in war production. As the U.S. entered World War II, the ruling class used images like Rosie the Riveter and other mass propaganda to mobilize women to move into war production factories, with the slogan, "We Can Do It!," to "empower" women to contribute to the war effort. When male workers returned after these wars, the bosses ousted women from the factories and sent them home to the unpaid domestic labor of maintaining a family.

Today, women are super-exploited globally, attacked by the U.S. racist destruction of welfare (especially black and Latino women); paid $2 a day in China's vast manufacturing economy; in Mexico's maquiladoras; subjected to mass rapes in the Congo's wars for diamonds and resources; victims of extreme anti-woman bias of Islamic and Christian fundamentalists; and murdered, raped and forced into prostitution in the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq.

Women already make up more than half of the super-exploited sub-contracted manufacturing jobs in the U.S., while remaining the principal childcare givers. Women are still paid less than men for similar work, to help lower all workers' wages. A recent Time magazine cover displayed the newer, modern version of Rosie the Riveter, pushing for U.S. national service (a back-door draft). This could potentially mobilize millions of U.S. youth for fascism and world war.

The U.S. presidential election has been touted as an "advance" for women because Hillary Clinton is a candidate. But she is just another millionaire agent of the bosses. All leaders of capitalist governments -- men or women, black or white -- enforce the bosses' profit system and subjugation of workers.

The special oppression of women divides the working class, and dehumanizes women. Economic exploitation makes women a commodity, leading to degrading them as sexual objects and prostitutes, victims of physical violence, rape and enslavement worldwide. We must ensure more woman -- especially as soldiers and workers -- take the lead in the effort to destroy the system that created and maintains the special oppression of women, racism and its exploitation of all workers. Only by black, Latin, Asian and white men and women workers uniting can the entire working class end the oppression of capitalism. Communism is the only system that values women as workers and allows all workers to reach their full potential. JOIN US!

(Next issue will deal with more on cultural oppression of women.)

The day women burned the veil of oppression . . .

The revolutions in Russia and China brought unprecedented changes in the status of women workers. Following working-class seizure of state power, many sexist traditions and practices were immediately outlawed.

*Thousands of women in the Soviet Union burnt the foul, hot, heavy horsehair veils that symbolized their possession by their husbands

*In China, Vietnam, and Soviet Asia, practices such as foot-binding, child and contractual marriage, polygamy, wife-beating and veiling were immediately made illegal.

*In all socialist countries, abortion was legalized and free, and prostitution was eliminated.

*In the USSR, daycare centers were established at workplaces so that women could, if they so chose, breastfeed and care for their children during the workday.

Unfortunately, these societies kept too many of capitalist practices, like the wage system, and therefore failed to secure the liberation of women and of the entire working class. PLP is learning from the strengths and also of the weaknesses of our predecessors; we fight directly for communism and the true liberation of all workers.

PLP Students Lead Action vs. Racist NYC Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, February 14 -- A multi-racial group of over 500 parents, teachers and students rallied on the steps of City Hall today, protesting the recent racist budget cuts. On January 30, a $180 million cut had been announced and it was carried out the very next day.

The idea for the protest grew out of a teachers union Delegate Assembly on February 6 when PLP members called for the immediate organization of a protest rally for February 14 at Department of Education (DOE) headquarters. They called for teacher unity with parents and students and for the union to use the press, radio and leafleting subway stations to bring out as many people as possible.

The union leadership attacked the call, saying the 14th was "too soon" to bring anyone out. (This from a union with over 100,000 members!) They said, "We can't `hide' behind our students." Clearly the union leaders feared thousands of angry workers and students on the streets. Instead they called for a "coalition rally" for March 19, six weeks after the cuts were made.

But PLP students and teachers showed what could be done NOW. At several schools, PLP'ers immediately called for meetings to plan a student-parent-teacher fight-back. They proposed a rally on Valentine's Day at DOE offices.

The students wrote a flyer advertising the rally and e-mailed it to other student governments city-wide; posted copies around schools; made announcements over school loudspeakers; explained the impact of the cuts in the classrooms. The news of the rally quickly spread to other schools and they took up the organizing as well, encouraging students to join the fight-back.

No Love on Valentine's Day

At the rally some student speeches emphasized the need to build a movement to smash capitalism, that we must not rely on lying politicians. Some of the latter said they would "help" the students, asserting that the students and parents need Democratic politicians "to save them."

One young woman speaker said if politicians really cared, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg would pay the school "deficit" out of his $11 billion fortune because he CAN. Instead we have Democratic candidate Obama wanting 92,000 more troops in the military while NYS Senator Hillary Clinton allows $504 million to be cut from the school budget. Some "help"! The speaker concluded that we need a revolution to end this racist system. Condemning the budget cuts as racist, students also linked them to the widening war and to a growing police state.

Liberals in the crowd told the cops that the students "weren't a part of the demonstration" and wanted them to leave. The cops, eager to end the event, tried to negotiate but we told the crowd what was going on and they all began chanting, "Let them speak!"

The final speaker described the growing repression against workers fighting the attacks of the system. While Bloomberg rolled out the red carpet a week before for the NY Giants, he will never do that for angry parents and students on the steps of City Hall. Fight for communism!

Industrial Workers Find Their Party: PLP

"When I was a child growing up in Mexico a question occurred to me: Why do some people have more than they need while others have nothing. I always felt this was very unjust; and since my parents had no answer I spent most of my youth with this question in my mind. So when I first read CHALLENGE and met the Party I understood that I was not the only crazy person that wondered about these things." This is how an industrial worker described his first impression of CHALLENGE at a recent dinner for industrial workers. He was then asked if he considered himself a member of the Progressive Labor Party and immediately replied "Yes, yes!"

In all, two industrial workers joined the Party at the dinner, showing us, as one comrade put it, that workers know that the racism, imperialist war and capitalism are hell for us, but what is missing is the solution: communist ideas and our Party.

Communist ideas were front and center: a comrade opened the dinner with a talk about the importance of CHALLENGE in building for revolution and in the need to have confidence in workers' openness to communism. He called on everyone to renew their commitment to getting CHALLENGE to as many workers as possible through our networks of family, friends, and co-workers. These networks will form the basis for battles in the streets, factories, barracks, and eventually the taking of state power by the working class.

After dinner a comrade suggested we play a game called three questions. Each person answered three questions and then chose the next person to answer, and so on until everyone had a turn. The questions were: how were they introduced to the Party/CHALLENGE, what their first impressions were, and how their impressions have changed. Workers gave suggestions on how to improve CHALLENGE, how we might utilize and distribute the paper under fascist conditions, and asked for advice on how to distribute it to more workers. We struggled with each other to commit to translating and writing more. Through this discussion, which ran late into the night, we all got to know each other a little better and realized what another comrade summed up at the end: "it seems we all came to be here tonight through our friendships with other workers. That is how the Party has grown and will continue to grow. Our task then is to build more friendships and turn all our friendships and relationships into vehicles for building our CHALLENGE networks and the Party."

It was a great evening overall. We consolidated our growing industrial base, raised close to $200, and sold all our tickets for the upcoming May Day Dinner. Best of all the Progressive Labor Party now has two more industrial workers fighting for communism.

Puerto Rico: Striking Teachers Defy Gov't Ban

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, Feb. 25 -- Teachers are waging a very important struggle for teachers, workers and students, here and in the U.S. They are fighting the governor and education authorities, the cops who have attacked their picket lines and AFT and SEIU hacks who have tried to raid their union. The 42,000-strong FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico) -- the island's biggest union -- went on strike on Feb. 21 against the union-busting Law 45 (a combination of the federal Taft-Hartley and New York State Taylor Law) which bans public workers from striking. The teachers are also fighting for better working and teaching conditions and against the plans to privatize about 1,000 schools, turning them into charter schools. The average annual wage of teachers here (most of them women) is $19,500, lower than any in the U.S.

The school bosses and cops have tried to push scabs to break the strikes. On the first day of the strike, riot cops viciously attacked striking teachers. On Mon., Feb. 25, cops escorting scabs attacked striking teachers at the Republic of Colombia school in Río Piedras. But in spite of the barrage of attacks facing the striking teachers, their struggle has mass support. Most of the 500,000 students are staying away from schools even though the government is urging them to attend classes. On Sun. Feb. 17, a few days before the strike, chanting "La huelga en educación será la mejor lección (The strike in education will be the best of all lessons) and "lucha sí, entrega no" (Fight back, no sellout), some 25,000 teachers and other workers and youth marched in San Juan in support of the teachers. There were huge contingents of workers from the UTIER (electrical utility union) and UIA (water workers unon), who are also negotiating new contracts.

But while these workers are fighting mad, the sellouts of the AFT (AFL-CIO) and the SEIU's Change to Win Federation are behaving like colonial masters, trying to stab the teachers in the back. Both are conniving with the local government to decertify the FMPR. There are rumors that Dennis Rivera, former head of NYC's 1199 and now a top honcho in the international SEIU and the NYS Democratic Party, has offered governor Vila a huge contribution to his re-election campaign (the governor is facing charges of campaign irregularities in his previous election) in exchange for decertification.

Workers shouldn't have any faith in these hacks and in any electoral parties, including the pro-independence liberal PIP, which is offering its legal aid to the strikers. All these politicians serve capitalism.

PLP teachers are internationalist and always support our militant brothers and sisters fighting back anywhere against the same enemies we all face (education authorities, cops and union hacks). The striking teachers in Puerto Rico are an example we should all follow, fighting back in a period where teachers and workers all over face major attacks from the bosses trying to make us pay for the their economic crisis and imperialist war. Our slogan should be: teachers, students and workers of the world, unite!

Anti-Racists Unite, Teach Racist Educators A Lesson

NEWARK, NJ, February 2 -- "You can see Jim Crow alive and well in debate," said one coach in the New York Urban Debate League (NYUDL) after a tournament here.

The head of the Jersey Urban Debate League (JUDL) ejected a Bronx high school from the tournament, accusing three black students of "trying to steal a pack of paper." This incident has sparked outrage and action amongst the debaters and communities involved. PLP members can explain to fellow workers and youth that the only way to destroy racism is fighting for communist revolution worldwide.

THE REAL STORY

A school safety officer and another woman -- a teacher or administrator -- accused three black student debaters in the girls' bathroom of trying to steal a pack of paper (which was in a nearby janitor's closet). The debaters denied this.

The accusing woman dismissed their claims and got the JUDL head to interrogate them. Frustrated and angry, the students refused to speak to him so he removed them from the tournament.

The entire team of nine made a quick collective decision to leave together to protest this racist attack. The debate coach dispatched an e-mail detailing these events, and many coaches, including PLP members, responded with encouragement, support and most importantly suggestions for action, including writing the JUDL head and the woman and possibly addressing it to the entire JUDL. Other coaches detailed how their students also experienced racism at other mostly-white tournaments, ranging from whispers to dirty looks to openly racist comments and accusations.

Urban Debate was founded as "anti-racist" leagues that would include black and Latino youth in an "advanced," nearly all-white, academic activity. But just as U.S. bosses use black history month and Barack Obama's presidential candidacy to mislead workers into believing conditions are improving for black workers, this incident -- like the Jena 6 case ---shows how capitalist schools give students repeated lessons in tolerating racism as youth in order to accept racism as adults.

The black CEO of NYUDL, tried to ward off protest letters, saying "removal was not an unreasonable decision," arguing that the debaters' silence implies their guilt -- not anger at actual racism -- and stating that the incident wasn't racist! Coaches responded to him with more suggestions for action, although a coaches' letter has not yet been drafted.

PLP members -- rather than preparing youth to accept racism -- are organizing the working class to build a classless communist world that will abolish the false concept of "race" through struggles against the bosses' racism.

Inside the Bronx school, staff, students and parents were furious. Parents are drafting a petition asking the JUDL head and the other woman to travel to the Bronx and personally apologize to the students and their families. A student petition will be circulated amongst their classmates, and the school staff is working on a separate petition, all asking for a formal apology and condemning the acts as racist.

Amidst increasing attacks on students through racist budget cuts, this struggle has mobilized dozens of students, parents and teachers to take action and can involve hundreds more. PLP is helping spread the struggle within the schools, explaining that the problem isn't just one "bad administrator"; it's capitalism's racist education system.

Schools spread the lie that "anyone can succeed." Meanwhile, they help ensure that working-class students -- especially black, Latino, and immigrant students -- accept "their place" as future docile cheap labor, prisoners or cannon fodder in imperialist wars. PLP aims to teach working-class youth that their future lies in joining the international multi-racial fight for a communist world without bosses and their racist agents.

Oaxaca's Mass Struggle Leads To PLP Growth

OAXACA, MEXICO, Feb. 15 -- Today, 70 thousand teachers of Section 22 of the SNTE carried out a one day strike and mass marches to protest against the state government and Governor Ulises Ruiz. Teachers demanded that the jailed political prisoners be freed (teachers, students and workers arrested during the teachers strike of 2006), better working conditions, and that the schools taken over by the state and given to Section 59 (supporters of the fascist governor) be returned.

The fight between Oaxaca's working class and the government began when the teacher's union demanding a better contract had confrontations with the police in which several of its members where beaten and another killed. This event unleashed years of Oaxaca's workers' pent up anger at the government that has done nothing to improve the massive poverty, racism against indigenous people, and unemployment in the area, and has instead used the police to savagely oppress students and workers who demand better conditions. A coalition of different community based and student organizations, as well as, the teachers' union and political parties formed APPO (Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca) to lead a struggle which took over major roads, schools, government buildings, and radio stations in Oaxaca. The struggle climaxed in the fall of last year when students and workers bravely fought several battles against the Mexican government's federal police over control of Oaxaca. Eventually, the Mexican government prevailed over the APPO led forces taking Oaxaca back and imprisoning leaders of the struggle.

Now, a little over a year later workers and students who participated in this struggle continue to fight. Teachers are fighting to change Sec. 22's leadership whom they blame for having sold out during last year's struggle. Many workers and students also blame APPO leaders for too closely allying themselves with mainstream political parties like Lopez Obrador's PRD. More importantly, teachers, workers and students are talking about the movement's strengths and weaknesses. What went wrong? Why did it fail?

Overall, the struggle in Oaxaca has elevated the political consciousness of workers and students. Members of PLP have participated in these struggles and in these discussions inside the teachers' union and on university campuses.

Recently, at a neighborhood committee led by teachers, a group of PLP'ers gave a political economy presentation explaining how the capitalist system is responsible for the exploitation and oppression of workers. They also pointed out that the movement was limited primarily by the reformist politics put forth by its leadership. One teacher agreed and stated that fundamental and permanent change would only come as a result of a revolution; but to take on the Mexican government we need communist ideas and, to defeat it, armed struggle for workers' power. The PLP'ers introduced CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and argued that the most difficult part of the struggle is the one over ideas and developing a political understanding that enables workers to build a movement with a long term and revolutionary communist outlook. The discussion concluded with the committee agreeing to organize a study group based on CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and other PLP literature.

As a result of PLPer's participation in this movement, the Party has grown and strengthened. Many students and workers in Oaxaca know about PLP and respect its principled stance on the need for revolutionary communism. Now, as workers and students reflect on the lessons learned from the struggle, they are more open and willing to learn about PLP and its politics.

China's Capitalist Road Won't Help Workers in Cuba

Fidel's resignation as Cuba's chief of state was no surprise. Since he fell ill in the summer of 2006, his brother Raúl has been in control. Bush, McCain, Obama, Hillary and the usual suspects have issued the usual hypocritical statements about the need for "democracy" and "human rights" in Cuba, playing to Florida's powerful Cuban right-wing exile leadership. But none of this can hide the fact that the U.S. base in Guantánamo, Cuba, has become a synonym for torture and violations of human rights. (Of course, capitalism's "democracy" means various sections of the ruling class control all political parties and give the working class the "choice" of which bosses' agents will exploit them, lead them to war, abolish social services, push racism and cut wages and jobs.)

Despite all the anti-communist rhetoric by the U.S. bosses and their media, the reality is that the top Cuban leadership is already making changes that are more openly capitalist. Cuban rulers are following the Chinese or Vietnamese "road," where the old party bureaucracy remains in political control but encourages more and more capitalist investments. Even when Fidel was in full control, there were many more imperialist investments in Cuba's tourist and energy industries from Europe, Canada and Asia.

There even are many U.S. politicians and capitalists who want to end the embargo on Cuba -- which has been a total failure -- and allow U.S. companies to invest there, particularly in newly-discovered oil deposits off Cuba's coast. Even with all that, it's doubtful that the right-wing Cuban exiles and U.S. imperialism will again control Cuba as occurred before the 1959 revolution.

Already, the Cuban government is allowing open discussions of problems facing their economy and political life. Recently a CNN video showed young students demanding of Raúl Alarcón, a top leader, more access to foreign traveling and the internet. Even though Cuba doesn't suffer the extreme poverty prevalent in the rest of Latin America, there's still a lot of inequality between those who have access to foreign currencies and those who don't.

For Cuban workers and youth, these changes from the top might offer a few consumer crumbs, but they won't bring freedom from capitalist exploitation. Capitalism worldwide is a system in crisis, which only offers imperialist wars, mass unemployment and fascist/racist terror. A new communist movement is needed, learning from the errors and achievements of the revolution here and worldwide. That is the only road to real freedom for workers and youth.

Energy Resources The Prize in U.S.-Russia Clash Over Kosovo

Kosovo's "independence" from Serbia was imposed by the U.S., European Union and NATO, with a puppet government led by the head of one of Europe's biggest criminal gangs, the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army). This is sharpening the struggle for world supremacy, especially between the U.S. and Russia, over the control of Eurasia's vast energy reserves. An "independent" Kosovo will make U.S. military bases permanent in the area to protect future Washington-backed pipelines and maintain its military encirclement of Russia, setting the stage for future wars. Its precedent can also be used by both the U.S. and Russian imperialists, the former to create destabilizing secessionist movements in Russia and China, the latter in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Kosovo's independence is the continuation of Clinton's 1999 merciless bombing and the subsequent total dissolution of Yugoslavia, intended to separate Russia from the Balkans, encircle it with U.S. and NATO military bases and safeguard the Macedonian pipeline routes delivering Eurasian oil and gas to the EU to break their energy dependence on Russia.

The military goals were largely achieved, but eliminating Russia's influence in the region has proven more difficult. For example, at the first Balkan region energy summit (held 6/2007 by the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania), the guest of honor was Putin.

Breaking Russia's stranglehold on European energy has been even harder. Last year, U.S. imperialists suffered serious set backs when Putin signed energy deals with the former Soviet Central Asian republics. A U.S. expert wrote, "Western energy policies in Eurasia collapsed in May 2007... Cumulatively, the May agreements signify a strategic defeat of the decade-old US policy to open direct access to Central Asia's oil and gas reserves. By the same token they have nipped in the bud the European Union's belated attempts since 2006 to institute such a policy."(latimes.com)

Putin followed this by striking deals with some of the former Soviet Eastern European countries to build new pipelines and massive underground gas deposits and hubs to increase delivery to the EU, bypassing the Ukraine and Belarus, both politically problematic transit spots. These deals and others with Turkey, Greece, Austria, Italy, Germany and Serbia have tremendously increased the EU dependence on Russia. In fact, the EU division over Kosovo's declaration does not reflect a strategic one. Instead, Italy, Greece, Austria, Germany and others are more willing to compromise with Russia.

Given this, the U.S. bosses must fight to control the energy resources of Eurasia. This struggle is also more pressing because of the crumbling of their post-WW II strategy for world domination: controlling the strategic oil reserves of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Venezuela. They lost Iran, Venezuela is slipping out of their grip, Saudi Arabia is becoming more independent (it refused Bush's request for increased oil production to avert a U.S. recession) and the whole Middle East is increasingly volatile.

But, the possibility of passing a long-awaited Iraqi law, handing over Iraq's oil to the U.S. and allies, has renewed U.S. bosses' hopes. They think Iraq will soon be pacified enough to pump 6 million barrels a day in four years and many more shortly thereafter. A pacified Iraq would be the perfect bridge to transport the trillions of dollars of Eurasian energy to the EU and other parts of the world. Thus, they hope that Russia's backbone would be broken, China and the industrial world would again be energy dependent on the U.S., and Iran and Venezuela would have to capitulate. However, this might eventually make a China-Russia-Iran alliance against the U.S. a reality.

Camp Bondsteel, the huge U.S. Kosovo military base is strategically located 15 miles from the path of the U.S.-planned Macedonia pipeline. The projected Russian pipeline will pass through Serbia. Whether or not the U.S. rulers' dream of a pacified Iraq comes true, the struggle over control of Eurasia's energy and the EU's markets will only intensify. The Russians will never give up their centuries-old dominions without a tremendous fight, and the U.S. won't relinquish world hegemony peacefully. Wider wars and eventually WW III will decide this dogfight.

Workers in Kosovo, Serbia and elsewhere are expendable pawns in the imperialists' chess game for world domination. The burning of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade by right-wing Serbs is but another example of our class' anger being used to further the imperialists' goals. Independence, like democracy, is a boss-created myth serving their class, not ours. We must forge our working-class international unity under the leadership of one worldwide mass PLP to smash all the capitalist-imperialists, their borders, patriotism and racist divisions with communist revolution.

Pakistani Bosses' Election Won't Solve Workers' Problems

Those Pakistanis who did vote in the country's recent national assembly elections registered their disgust with current president and military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, soundly rejecting his ruling party, (the Pakistani Muslim League, PML-Q). An even greater disbelief in the ability of elections to solve the problems faced by Pakistan's working class was mirrored in the great majority who didn't vote. In a country where workers struggle with double-digit inflation and face daily shortages of basic necessities like wheat flour and sugar, barely 20 million -- of a possible 100 million+ eligible voters -- went to the polls.

The entire electoral system is thoroughly corrupt, a condition endemic to capitalism. Although winners included the Pakistani People's Party (PPP), led by Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto, and ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, the low vote could easily reflect a protest against the big spending of the candidates. They criss-crossed the country in private jets, helicopters, bullet-proof 4-wheelers, protected by heavily-armed private security guards and poured money into extravagant TV and print ads. This campaign blitz cost 200 billion rupees, according to the Times of India. (1,000 rupees roughly equals $16.)

For many months Pakistani army officers have been moving away from Musharraf as their front-man. His overly-obvious bowing to U.S. orders, plus personal power-grabbing, made it more difficult for the army to control the Pakistani masses. The appearance of a "fair" election was necessary to downgrade the increasingly unpopular general. But "choosing" between the same small group of elites who, using elections, coups or assassinations, have bounced in and out of power for the past 40 years, reflects the "choices" under capitalism where all parties represent the ruling class.

It was also the most expensive election in the country's history, completely controlled by those who financed the campaigns, with money mostly coming from wealthy industrialists, stock brokers and real estate businessmen whose "investments" will require pay-offs. This means the same old corrupt government, run on contracts, kickbacks and patronage.

No party won an outright majority. Power-sharing deals involve U.S.-backed dictator Musharraf, who retains the presidency illegally; PPP leader, Asif Ali Zardari, unable to assume office because of his criminal past, having served eight years in prison on embezzlement charges; and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistani Muslim League-N, also barred from office because of past convictions for hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder.

These two parties engineered a coalition government that excludes Musharraf, who remains president, for now. Meanwhile, the lawyers, journalists, NGO's, human rights activists and students of the "Democracy Movement" are pressuring the coalition for a place in the new government.

One young activist lawyer was skeptical of the movement's call for "democracy" -- as if the state was neutral, above class interests, instead of being an instrument for the ruling class to exploit the working class. Doubtful of producing any lasting changes through a capitalist government, he said, "Nevertheless we're in this movement, fighting the anti-working class labor laws. As capitalists fight with each other, and show their many weaknesses, we have an opportunity to build a mass party for revolutionary change."

But the U.S. is the main player pulling the strings in Pakistani politics. Shortly after the elections, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad summoned the PPP's Asif Ali Zardari to the U.S. embassy. The PPP now says the new government won't seek Musharraf's immediate impeachment. The U.S. indicates it will continue working with Musharraf.

Pakistan, a center of competition among world powers, occupies a position of great geo-strategic importance, bordered by Iran, Afghanistan, China, India and the Arabian Sea. It is crucial to strengthening the U.S. hold on the Middle East. Already the U.S. has four army bases in Pakistan, and launches Predator missile attacks on insurgents from a secret base in Pakistan.

Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, says, "We will look back 10 years from now and say that Af/Pak was even more important to our national security than Iraq." Both Obama and Clinton favor expanding the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The search for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden will be used to justify keeping the U.S in the area for a long time. U.S, Pakistani and Afghan workers and youth will be dragged into fighting more wars. Therefore, the most important task is to build a revolutionary party to lead the working class out of the endless horrors of capitalism. This is PLP's aim in Pakistan and worldwide. Fight for Communism.J

LETTERS

Building PLP on a School Trip

Recently, five PLP members participated in a school class trip though the states of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Tabasco. But even if its appearance was just a trip as part of our studies, in essence we unmasked the lies pushed by the bosses about poverty, people left behind, racism and the application of so-called alternative energy. We also exposed how land rich in natural recourses is being expropriated in Chiapas with its high level of biodiversity.

We also saw the level of militarization in Oaxaca and Chiapas, with the military inspection at each highway toll booth. This militarization is occurring across Mexico. Soon soldiers from the Mexican army will join U.S. Army GIs as U.S. rulers spread their military worldwide battling its rivals under the guise of the "war against terror," which will lead to World War III. All this helps us pose questions to our fellow students after hearing official speeches of the research institutions behind the trip.

One night we brought two students to a local comrade's house, where we described the origins of PLP and its fight against the capitalist ideas that destroyed the old world communist movement.

The local comrade helped our friends see the clarity of the Party's political line as well as reasserting it for us. We all asked our new friends to join PLP.

Their responses surprised us. One asked us why we didn't tell him clearly about our ideas from the beginning, since he agreed with what we said and to continue working with us. The other student said he'd like to know more about PLP before deciding.

The need to build a mass party of millions of workers and students impels us to take advantage of every opportunity to wage this kind of ideological struggle. We returned from the trip more conscious and dedicated to the revolutionary line of the Party. Join the PLP to build for communism revolution!

Red Students, Mexico

Social Esteem Comes With
Class Content

The book review in CHALLENGE (2/27) about the Paul Gomberg book makes good points about how the Party can develop self-esteem by enabling workers to contribute to building communist society after a communist revolution which should be, and is being used by the Party now to inject class content into our organizing. Gomberg says, "Why would someone work harder for no extra money or material gain," and answers that social esteem from commitment to society replaces money. But that argument needs to explain how capitalists manipulate self-esteem to recruit workers and needs to propose some pre-revolutionary Party strategy to counter the bosses' bourgeois ideology.

The bosses convince some workers they are superior to the masses of exploited labor by giving them titles like foreman or superintendent at low pay. And if these workers can drive their subordinates to accept increased workloads that result in less jobs and benefits, they are promoted to more esteemed titles like department manager, assistant director, etc. with little or no increase in compensation.

The bosses' military uses recruiting slogans like "a few good men" to promote self-esteem and patriotism among disadvantaged youth with little hope of a job, education or medical care. The racist, sexist training they receive conditions them to commit inhuman crimes against "evil" people and still feel important because they believe they are helping fight terrorism and protecting "democracy."

The sports industry bosses and media make billions by injecting animosity into games that become like patriotic wars where winners are gods and losers deserve the thumbs-down of the Roman Coliseum. Millions of fanatic sports fans, dehumanized by meaningless jobs get vicarious esteem through the games which condition them to support their government's imperialist "team" at sporting events through chants of "USA!, USA!"

Gomberg states correctly that, "Esteem takes the place of money" and requires communist revolution. But until we reach that goal, we must learn how to seriously evaluate and challenge the bosses' interpretation of self-esteem.

Red Spartacus

Small School Movement
A Hoax

After reading the article on creeping fascism through smaller schools [CHALLENGE, 2/27] I'm unconvinced. As a veteran NYC high school teacher (22 years) and a member and supporter of PLP for some 35 years, here are my thoughts.

The small-school model and movement is primarily a hoax. The real issue is the class oppression and rotten living conditions that working-class students (especially black and Latino) must endure. The size of the school does nothing to alleviate those problems.

Secondarily, the number of students in the classroom in most of the small schools is not being reduced. In my school, with maybe 1,000 students, our classroom size is 31 to 34. If these small schools were also reducing class size, there might be some "improvement." However, class-size reduction is not exclusive or unique to small schools.  Large schools could also have reduced class size. But then the bosses would have to spend billions on adding new classrooms. They prefer not to!

The attack on teachers that has been a big part of "No Child Left Behind" is real. The bosses blame the teachers for the failure to educate our youth. However, this same attack applies to big, comprehensive schools. Whether the bosses build big schools or tiny schools, they mis-educate and prepare our youth for imperialist war. And when teachers follow the bosses' ideas -- work longer, tow the line, etc. -- it's not because of small schools but rather a lack of class-consciousness, racism and everything else the bosses use to keep teachers from uniting with students and parents. The size of the school is irrelevant. 

Old Red Teacher

Are Communists Against
Workers with Religious Ideas?

I had conversations about religion, communism and the working class with two airport workers, both CHALLENGE readers. One friend is an Ethiopian immigrant and is very religious. I asked her, "Why are you preparing for life after death when you should be preparing for life before death?" I explained that as workers, "We must fight for a better world now."

I told her that one of the first things the slave-masters told the slaves upon their arrival here in chains was to "pray and get their reward in heaven." I explained that this was to influence them not to revolt.

My other friend, a black flight attendant, asked me, "You really are a communist?" I said, "Yes, of course." She said that she had read something about religion in the PL pamphlet "Jailbreak!" "Are communists against religion? she asked.

I told her that communists are not against workers who are religious. We oppose how the oppressors, the bosses, use religion to convince workers to suffer all types of rotten racist, anti-worker conditions, that the bosses use religion to teach workers not to fight back.

I described historical examples of how religion had been used against the international working class. During the U.S. abolitionist movement, the pacifist wing wanted to use education alone to persuade the Southern slave-owners that slavery was evil, while the militant wing -- led by John Brown and Harriet Tubman -- felt the slave bosses could only be defeated by mass violence, since slavery itself was a violent institution.

Then, during World War II, the Nazis used some Jewish sellouts (the Judenrat) to betray the masses in the concentration camps, making religious appeals to convince them not to fight back. Eventually the Stalin-led Soviet Red Army defeated the Nazis.

I said communists don't persecute workers who are religious. In Czarist Russia, the Black Hundreds (the KKK of Russia's day) persecuted Jews and Muslims. The Bolshevik Revolution stopped this racism.

After a PLP-led communist revolution, workers who are religious won't be persecuted as the bosses did in Northern Ireland with Irish Catholic workers or in the former Yugoslavia with Muslims. The Party won't tolerate such racist behavior. The PLP is open to workers even if they are religious because capitalism hurts all workers. The only solution is communist revolution.

Airport Red

CHALLENGE COMMENT: We agree that a communist society would not persecute people with religious ideas, as the major religions have done, killing people in the name of their religion -- the Crusades, the Inquisition -- as well as Islamic and Christian fundamentalists who attack anyone who doesn't believe in their religion. We think religion should be dealt with in the context of class struggle and ideological struggle. We work with many people with religious beliefs and some are PLP members. However, we also advance a materialist world outlook which, as Lenin said, "necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog." So we will struggle for a materialist view of the world. Karl Marx argued that religious faith was primarily an effect, not a cause, of a much more general oppression of capitalism. Focusing on religion can obscure the wider picture, diverting energy away from real social struggle. We envision a society without religion because capitalism and all class societies ---- the cause of the problems which workers look to religion to alleviate -- will have been wiped out.

`Small Schools': Rulers' Education for Fascism, War

(The previous article -- 2/27 -- maintained that the move to small schools enables the rulers to increase fascistic control in a sort of "creeping" fascism.)

NEW YORK CITY -- Although the separate identity and sharing of resources in these small schools may not seem fascistic, the subtle effect is that the working class is falling victim to these changes without connecting them to the ruling class's need to increasingly control our lives. Indoctrinating students in schools seems like a natural way for the ruling class to prepare them for its future imperialist wars.

The rulers' need to control by force all aspects of society is, for them, a necessary part of capitalism in crisis. The small schools help control not only the teachers and administrators but also to "creep" fascism into students at a very young age and win youth over to the bosses' ideology.

The fact that over 70% of this city's school population is black and Latino gives a racist character to this manipulation of the education system, and drags conditions down for ALL students. The rulers figure the large black and Latino student body is grist for their low-wage economy to grind out super-profits for the bosses, and drives jobless youth -- the "fruit" of this inferior education -- to enlist in the bosses' military to fight and die in imperialist wars.

The small schools deepen the divisions the ruling class pushes on the working class. Not only does the working-class student suffer racism, nationalism and sexism, but the small school intensifies capitalist individualism under the guise of "school identity." In one high school divided into smaller schools, the new schools insisted on "branding" -- identifying each school in the building so visitors would know each school's location. But this branding also separates the students and punishes those who were not present in the area of "their" school. Many students often faced disciplinary action because they traveled to their next class down the "wrong" staircase or hallway.

In one school that was "phasing out" of the building, students had classes in two separate areas, divided by one or more of the small schools. This caused them to arrive late to class because they had to walk around the small schools to avoid "trespassing" down their hallways. Often siblings would attend different small schools in the same building, causing problems when one sister tried to visit another attending a separate school in the building.

The administrators claimed the separation of the student bodies helped students focus on their studies. But in reality the rulers' need for more control over the students in particular is the real reason behind this identity branding. The tightening of student movement is a form of preparing youth for future fascistic control.

The administrators in these small schools further push capitalist individualism by either having a dress code or a uniform students must wear while in school. Some schools have T-shirts and sweatshirts with the school logos on them to further link a student to a particular school. While there have always been school uniforms and dress codes, this new "branding" facilitates administrator's control of the student body.

Many of these small schools are housed three or four to a building. Within the one building students must fight for resources that once served one school but now must accommodate three or four. Contrary to popular belief, small schools do not mean smaller class size. Most of the small schools face the same over-crowding as their larger counterparts. In addition, four separate schools have to share one gymnasium, making it difficult to schedule classes from four different schools in one gym.

Not only are students being short-changed in gym class, but they must share cafeterias, auditoriums and other areas of the building. At one small Brooklyn school, students were given gym classes without a certified gym teacher. Swimming classes were led by a teacher without lifeguard training, which is supposedly mandated by State Department of Education regulations. Worse, it's life threatening for students as well.

Students are also being trapped into "theme" schools, although many "themes" are not real. Theater schools have no theater programs; law schools have no legal programs, etc. This indoctrinates youth into a lock-step way of thinking. And 12- and 13-year-olds are choosing -- or being placed in -- these schools without being allowed transfers (except for hardship or safety reasons). That's fascistic.

Overall, this small-school movement is just another way the ruling class uses the education system -- as they've done in the large schools -- to herd students in the direction of supporting the bosses' aims: a low-wage police state at home and as cannon fodder for imperialist war abroad.

(Next: The union's role in this movement.)

Top Five Big Business Contributors to the Leading Candidates

Barack Obama:

* Goldman Sachs (Wall Street's top power broker, whose "alumni" include U.S. Treasury-Secy. Henry Paulson, Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin, British Petroleum CEO Peter Sutherland, and Jon Corzine, New Jersey's Governor)
* UBS (world's largest wealth manager, largely owned by Saudi royal family)
* J.P. Morgan Chase ("Rockefeller's bank," closely tied to Exxon Mobil)

* Exelon (nuclear power company; ultra-imperialist Cabot family has big stake)
* Kirkland & Ellis (BP's U.S. law firm)

Hillary Clinton:

* Goldman Sachs
* Citigroup (U.S.'s and world's biggest bank; Saudi prince main shareholder)
* Morgan Stanley (Wall Street bank, deeply invested in Middle East)

* DLA Piper (world's biggest law firm, with offices throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S.)
* J.P. Morgan Chase

John McCain:

* Citigroup
* Bank Rome (lobbyists for Shell Oil and Chiquita Banana)
* Greenberg Traurig (law firm representing Alcoa worldwide)
* Merrill Lynch (U.S. richest investment firm whose biggest holdings are war beneficiaries GE and Exxon Mobil)
* Goldman Sachs

(Source: Center for Responsive Politics)

REDEYE

Trailer poison still hits N. Orleans

...Many trailers contain unsafe levels of formaldehyde, an industrial chemical classified as a probable carcinogen.

About 38,000 families are still living in the trailers and mobile homes, federal officials said Thursday at a news briefing, including more than 7,000 in trailer parks that FEMA had already vowed to close by May, before hurricane season begins again...

The agency has no...program to help families that have incurred medical bills because of formaldehyde exposure... (NYT, 2/15)

Mideast: Oil wealth, food riots

In Yemen, prices for bread and other foods have nearly doubled in the past four months, setting off a string of demonstrations and riots in which at least a dozen people were killed. In Morocco, 34 people were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for participating in riots over food prices, the Moroccan state news service reported. Even tightly controlled Jordan has had nonviolent demonstrations and strikes.

The fact that the inflation is coinciding with new oil wealth has fed perceptions of corruption and economic injustice.

...The inflation of the past few months has taken a toll on all but the rich.(NYT, 2/25)

Prez candidates
accommodate rich

...Both candidates appear to be looking for ways to avoid taking positions that would...expose them to a business backlash.

Before leaving Ohio, Mr. Obama met with workers at a titanium plant near Youngstown...

"Revolutions in communications and technology have made it easier for companies to send jobs wherever labor is cheapest, and that's something that cannot be reversed," Mr. Obama said. "So I'm not going to stand here and say that we can stop every job from going overseas. I don't believe that we can - or should stop free trade." (NYT, 2/19)

Contractors' sex crimes get by

Ms. Kineston is among a number of American women who have reported that they were sexually assaulted by co-workers while working as contractors in Iraq but now find themselves in legal limbo, unable to seek justice or even significant compensation.

Many of the same legal and logistical obstacles that have impeded other types of investigations involving contractors in Iraq, like shootings involving security guards for Blackwater Worldwide, have made it difficult...to pursue charges related to sexual offenses. (NYT, 2/13)

Dems help widen Bush snooping

WASHINGTON - After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government's spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in Presdient Bush's program of eavesdropping without warrants.

... Some Democrats and many liberal advocacy groups saw the outcome as another example of the Democrats'... cold feet. (NYT, 2/13)

For other crises US had tough line

As the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by almost a third last month while the White House and Congress scrambled to concoct a $150 billion-plus fiscal stimulus package to loosen up the credit crunch, economic policy makers in developing countries couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

Could this be the same United States that backed the International Monetary Fund's get-tough strategy during the emerging-market crises in the 1990s - pushing countries from Asia to Latin America to slash government spending and raise interest rates to recover investors' confidence and regain access to lending from abroad?

"This creates a lot of resentment on the other end of the world..."

Millions of jobs were lost.

Of course, these countries didn't have a choice if they wanted help from the I.M.F. (NYT, 2/23)

Rivalry With China Behind Bush's Africa Trip

(This part of the series on Africa will review Bush's current trip to that continent -- the first was in 2003 -- which took him to Tanzania, Rwanda, Liberia, Ghana and Benin.)

Bush's trip was supposed to highlight U.S. "aid" to fight AIDS, Malaria and poverty in Africa. This "aid," like all imperialist aid, mainly helps pharmaceutical corporations and other businesses making big bucks from selling drugs and helps local bosses who profit from the misery of Africa's super-exploited masses. But that's only a sideline. Bush's main purpose is fighting China's growing influence on that continent.

In 2007, oil represented over 90% of SubSahara Africa's exports to the U.S. Today, 10% of all U.S. oil products imports come from Africa, mainly from the Gulf of Guinea region. By 2015, it's expected to grow to 25%. That's what's behind the formation of AFRICOM, the Pentagon's newest command center, which now operates from U.S. bases in Germany but which the U.S. wants to transfer to Africa itself.

Presently, the U.S. only has a base in Djibouti, in a former French colonial outpost. Bush's Ghana speech denied that the U.S. is aiming to build military bases in Africa, trying to placate key countries (Nigeria, Algeria, and South Africa) which object to U.S. troops on that continent. Only Liberia -- just recovering from a bloody civil war over diamonds -- has offered itself for U.S. bases, which is why Bush included it in his visit. Liberia was founded in 1847 by freed U.S. slaves, but for a long time was basically a colony of the Firestone Tire company.

Bush also labeled as "bull" the charge that the U.S. was competing with China in Africa. (Reuters, 2/20) But that's exactly the reason behind his trip. China has become a key player in Africa, investing billions, particularly in the oil-rich Sudan.

China's support for the Sudanese government is the reason for the "Free Darfur" campaign in the U.S., including liberal entertainment stars like George Clooney, Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg. (Bush repeatedly blamed the Sudanese government for the massacres there, while ignoring the 5.4 millions slaughtered in the Congo since the 1990s as well as massacres in Ethiopia and other pro-U.S.-ruled countries).

Imperialism and capitalism have meant endless bloody wars in Africa, like the recent one in Chad where Exxon, Chevron and PetroChina operate while the French Army keeps the bloody Déby regime in power (see CHALLENGE, 2/27). No "aid" from any imperialists will liberate Africa's masses. The only long-range solution is for workers, students and peasants to unite, breaking with all tribal and national divisions and building a revolutionary communist movement. Communists must concentrate on the huge proletariat of South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, which can lead the way. That's what PLP fights for.

WHEELS FALLING OFF AXLE WORKERS

DETROIT, MI, Feb. 27 -- Over 3,600 workers struck four plants of the auto parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings in a fight against a pattern of wage-cutting contracts accepted by the UAW throughout the auto industry. Hourly wages would nosedive from $27 to $14 for workers who haven't had an increase in eight years.

`The Great Debaters'
The Fight vs. Racist Repression in the Jim Crow South

"The Great Debaters" is a stirring saga of struggle against racism and exploitation in the Jim Crow South. It is based on the true story of the debating team of the small, historically black, Wiley College coached by professor Melvin Tolson, a member of the Communist Party and an off-campus organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU).

The movie is about the lives of the four future debaters and their coach and is shown through a complex shifting of scenes. This technique helps acquaint the audience with the social and economic conditions of rural Northeast Texas in the 1930s. The college is an oasis in an area teeming with virulent racism, the poverty and desperation of the Great Depression, and the beginnings of a serious resistance.

Tolson (Denzel Washington) immediately establishes himself with his students as a rebel who looks to the Harlem Renaissance for artistic and intellectual guidance. He seeks out sharp and resilient students for the debate team. The exchange between Tolson and the students in tryouts raises political issues of the time, including relief (welfare) and war profiteering. The students chosen for the team, including 14-year-old James Farmer, Jr., are seriously tested mentally and physically by their coach. Tolson takes an authoritarian approach to learning, which he justifies by insisting that he is helping his students retain and develop their minds in the face of societal oppressors who mean to seize them.

The debate team is successful, and in the process, learns a lot about reality. In a debate with one all-white college team, held off campus because of Jim Crow laws, the topic is whether black students should be admitted to college, and the debaters are forced to listen to their opponents argue that society is not yet "ready" for them. In a car on the way to another debate, they witness a brutal lynching by the Ku Klux Klan and barely escape with their lives when the mob turns on them.

The movie reflects the politics of the old CPUSA. Tolson, attacked for his communism and off-campus activities, says his politics are his own business. He tells Farmer's father that he is trying to keep his students as far away from politics as he can. This attempt to insulate the students fails of its own accord. In fact, whenever the debaters get too caught up in their personal good or bad times, real life seems to intervene. James Farmer, Jr. accidentally discovers Tolson covertly traveling to a local meeting of the STFU, which he is leading. As black and white farm-workers discuss uniting to fight the starvation conditions, scores of vigilantes led by the local sheriff bust into the meeting and burn down the barn it was held in, beating the farm workers as they run away. Later, the Texas Rangers and sheriff barge into the college to arrest Tolson.

On balance, the movie promotes the idea that a small number of the oppressed can escape from their conditions through education. Although the movie entertains the idea of revolution, it ultimately comes down firmly on the side of reform. The final debate against Harvard College (in real life Wiley debated and beat U.S.C.) actually promotes the civil disobedience tactics of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. James Farmer, Jr., exposed to the militant reform politics of the CPUSA in his youth, later founded and led the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Unlike the militant Deacons of Defense of that era, CORE insisted on a pacifist response to the violent attacks of the KKK.

Despite its significant weaknesses, "The Great Debaters" is an excellent movie to watch and discuss with a group of students, young people, friends or co-workers. Its serious treatment of important history and multi-racial struggle against oppression is a refreshing contrast to the prominence of on-screen trash which demeans and dehumanizes working people, particularly black and immigrant workers.

 

Financial Crisis Puts Schools On Bosses’ Chopping Block

Obama Checks Out While Chicago Workers Die

Racist Budget Cuts Murder Black And Latin Women

a href="#Imperialists’ Wars Worsen Rulers’ Financial Woes">Im"erialists’ Wars Worsen Rulers’ Financial Woes

Rivals Took Advantage of A U.S. Weakened by the Vietnam War

Democrat Carter Began U.S. Build-Up For Mid-East Wars

• Clinton, Obama, McCain: All War Hawks

Industrial Workers Strike Back In The South

a href="#Students, Farmworkers, Vets Get PLP Exposé of Hillary’s War Plans">S"udents, Farmworkers, Vets Get PLP Exposé of Hillary’s War Plans

Airline Bosses Attack So Workers Shut Terminal

a href="#‘Small Schools’ Ploy Part of Bosses’ ‘Creeping’ Fascism">‘Small S"hools’ Ploy Part of Bosses’ ‘Creeping’ Fascism

Electoral-Circus Stirs Intense Debate in Church

Oil, Uranium Sparking Imperialist War Over Chad

Control of Oil Routes, Military Bases Spurs U.S. Destabilization of Pakistan

LETTERS

Ideological Struggle In Our Own Families

Mexico: Patience and Political Struggle with Students

a href="#Obama’s Real Program Angers Teenagers">"bama’s Real Program Angers Teenagers

PL College Forum Links Anti-Racism To Anti-War Movement

Jobless: 7.65 Million Or 20 Million?

Shades of Hitler: Anti-Immigration Pogroms Rising

REDEYE

• Working-class savings near zero
• Loan racket uses class, race, sex
• $ystem produces excess meat

Red Immigrant Underground Whipped Nazis in WWII

Book Review: Shared Work By All Will Free All Workers

---

Financial Crisis Puts

Schools On Bosses’ Chopping Block

When we think schools, we think children, and when we think children our minds turn to the future. CHALLENGE readers know Progressive Labor Party’s view of the rulers’ plans for our class and our children: more fascism and more imperialist war.

Within this context we must examine the budget-cut attack launched against New York City’s schoolchildren. These cuts are racist, plain and simple, following the already existing fundamentally racist patterns in the city’s failing schools. Immediate cuts include "extras" — after-school, summer school and tutoring programs. It is precisely black and Latino youth — comprising 72% of the student population — who are most in need of such "extra" services. Their "future" is expendable.

These cuts are universal and across the board: $504 million over the next two fiscal years (NY Times, 2/1) — the worst in NYC in the last dozen years. Perhaps due to New York’s position as the capital of U.S. finance capital, this city may not have been reduced to Detroit’s school system, the most massively slashed in the country. But the sub-prime mortgage crisis combined with the economic downturn and the hundreds of billions poured into military expenditures put the Big Apple on the chopping block.

However, a broad-based movement opposing these cuts can emerge in the coming period. Several PLP’ers made a call at the last Delegate Assembly for a February 14th demonstration against the cuts. Despite local union leader Randi Weingarten doing all she could to torpedo it, networks and mass organizations across the system have taken up that call. This could be an important first response to "Kleingarten’s" cuts (Chancellor Klein + union president Weingarten).

PLP members will be active in any movements opposing these cuts. Where no movement exists, communists must spark one, within which we can advance our revolutionary ideas front and center.

These movements hold many dangers. The present status quo has been a school system filled with racist patterns of underachievement and widespread indoctrination, especially of anti-communism. The main political content of public education is the myth that "we all get a chance to make it in America" and "if you don’t make it, you only have yourself to blame." This message is central to the ruling class’s use of public education.

The bosses need teachers and schools to produce future soldiers, future workers and — when that fails — future prisoners. But above all else, the rulers need passive ones in their pursuit of fascism at home and imperialist war abroad. The passivity engendered by this "blame-the-victim" mentality is even more important to the ruling class than the shallow patriotic platitudes history courses push on youngsters, many of whom tune out, and rightly so.

Communists must raise this general critique of education among the broad masses through our literature and among our close friends in long-term political struggle. This necessitates a discussion of communism as the only solution.

Phony leftists and reformists will come out of the woodwork and attempt to lead mobilized masses of students, teachers and parents into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party, swallowing up an anti-budget-cut movement into Barack Obama’s contribution to the rulers’ politics — mobilizing a new generation of (mainly young) folks to "believe in America" once again. They want millions in motion for "justice" while marching behind Democratic war-makers like Hillary Clinton. Throw in a terrorist "emergency" and we have a mass base for fascism. This is the grave danger we face.

Yet the opportunities are even greater. The bosses need budget cuts in their current crisis. Tens of thousands can be introduced to our communist ideas in liberal-led movements against these cuts. Amid a passive period, the simple act of organizing a contingent of students, parents and/or teachers to attend a rally can be an important political step forward, but only if communists, fighting side-by-side with these masses, seize the opportunity to make communist politics primary. We can expose the misleaders and train new communist leaders.

Confronting police goons and administration apologists, we can expose the naked force and racist neglect that saturates the schools and the capitalist system itself. We can point out the need for revolution when we show how the bosses will grant reforms when forced to, but take them away as long as they hold state power.

Yet the masses will only draw these conclusions if communists are active. As the communist leader Lenin asserted, communist ideas come to the working class from the outside. PLP dares to follow this road today. There is much work to do and a world to win. Join us!

Obama Checks Out While Chicago Workers Die

CHICAGO, IL February 8 — "My patients are dying! My patients are dying because of your racist cutbacks," declared a Latino health care worker who treats TB patients. "You’re a murderer and I charge you with genocide!" was her "greeting" to fascist Dr. Robert Simon, interim health chief of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services (CCBHS). She stormed out as he, a guest of SEIU Local 20, began to speak at their Town Hall meeting.

Simon said, "I’m not a politician," but another worker shouted from the floor, "You’re a racist murderer." Simon, who once said, "To me, society wastes enormous energy, money and resources on [the homeless]," announced that the County health system was "on the verge of collapse if any further cuts are made." He was supporting SEIU’s push for a tax increase.

The commissioners who approved over $100 million in racist cutbacks during last year’s budget crisis sat on SEIU’s stage then and now. With Simon wielding the knife, they closed half of the 26 neighborhood clinics and laid off 1,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers.

Meanwhile, as Barack Obama tours the country with hypocritical calls for "change" and "healthcare for all," he has done nothing against the racist cutbacks that are killing patients and closing public hospitals in his own neighborhood.

More cuts are threatened for March 1. County Finance chief John Daley said he was proposing 13% cuts ($108 million), closing Provident and Oak Forest hospitals, all remaining clinics and a center that treats one-third of the area’s HIV patients. Only Stroger Hospital and the Cermak clinic that treats County Jail inmates will remain.

A young worker yelled, "Are you saying we have to raise taxes on the poorest people, our patients, in order to give them health care?" "That’s right," Daley replied.

Over 1.2 million people are uninsured in Cook County. Our patients are 85% black and Latino. No one knows how many patients have died, but last year’s cuts cost almost 2,000 jobs. Stroger patients aren’t getting discharge medications and the pharmacy is down to one shift.

Less than 100 people attended the meeting, with only a few from Stroger, even though it’s nearby. Most workers couldn’t come because cutbacks have generated outrageous workloads. Many who could weren’t interested because they have no respect for the union leadership and the local politicians it serves.

PLP members at Stroger organized some workers to confront the racist budget-cutters face-to-face. The bosses and union leaders got a small taste of the workers’ and patients’ hatred for them. Most important, we and our co-workers distributed hundreds of leaflets at work, showing how racist terror and cutbacks are financing the two-BILLION-dollar-a-week war in Iraq.

While we can’t stop the current slaughter in Iraq or Chicago with reforms, by fighting back we can expand the base for CHALLENGE, strengthen our ties to workers and patients and build a fighting PLP that will eventually lead the working class from fascist terror and war to communist revolution.

Charity Hospital in New Orleans and King Hospital in Los Angeles are CLOSED! Grady Hospital in Atlanta is in critical condition. The CCBHS is already more than half closed, and Bush’s Medicare and Medicaid cuts will mean another $60 million cut on July 1! We’re in a fight for our lives. Build PLP and a mass May Day!

Racist Budget Cuts Murder Black And Latin Women

Because of budget cuts and staff reductions, almost 1,000 women with abnormal Pap smears, unusual bleeding, pelvic masses and other symptoms are waiting months to see gynecologists in the Cook County health system. The longer they’re forced to wait, the greater the risk of severe pain, cancers and life-threatening emergencies. A May 2007 report from the Chicago Foundation for Women reports more than 450,000 women in this area are uninsured, and many depend on county hospitals and clinics. The vast majority are black and Latino.

A young West Side black woman had a Pap smear performed at a clinic last April; learned in June it was positive, suggesting possible cervical cancer; and has been unable to get an appointment at Stroger Hospital for follow-up tests and evaluation. Another patient had a positive Pap smear in September and just got word she could see a Stroger gynecologist in April.

Last year, half of the community and urgent-care clinics were closed, leading to even longer waits, patients being harassed by bill-collection agencies and rumored threats of immigration raids. As a result, there were 100,000 fewer patient visits last year than in 2006, when there were 101 doctors, nurses and physician’s assistants providing basic medical services at the clinics. Today there are only 44 medical providers working longer hours, to serve hundreds of thousands of patients.

a name="Imperialists’ Wars Worsen Rulers’ Financial Woes"></">Im"erialists’ Wars Worsen Rulers’ Financial Woes

Imperialist war takes a serious toll on the domestic economy. In fact, as U.S. imperialism enters a period of "persistent" and escalating conflict a chief task of the next president will be forcing economic sacrifices from workers (as usual) but also from capitalists.

Bad "subprime" loans based on the bursting housing bubble only partly explain the current U.S. economic crisis (see CHALLENGE, 2/13). True, the unfolding mortgage fiasco drastically curtails lending and spending. But even while a handful of corporations like Haliburton grab enormous profits, the skyrocketing costs of U.S. rulers’ ever-widening wars act as a brake on profits. Government bonds to pay for the war machine — production for destruction — draw investors away from investing in production for consumption since the government bonds are more secure. That makes it harder for consumer-goods capitalists to find money to invest in their industries, out of which they reap profits from their workers’ labor. Thus, it limits their ability to increase, or even maintain, profits.

The New York Times (2/4/08) reported that the Pentagon’s proposed 2009 budget of $515.4 billion "when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II....Yet those demands for money do not even include the price of refocusing the military’s attention beyond the current wars to prepare for other challenges." Nor does it include the $200+ billion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not a penny of this colossal waste finances productive investment. The rulers’ war spending only destroys. U.S. bosses, meanwhile, seek to make workers pay for both recession and war through massive cuts in jobs, wages, health, education and other vital services.

Rivals Took Advantage of A U.S. Weakened by the Vietnam War

While U.S. capitalists were devoting 9% of gross domestic product (GDP) to genocide in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, their Asian and European rivals were modernizing factories and consolidating financial structures, putting the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage. U.S. bosses lost global dominance in auto, electronics and other key sectors and began a permanent, one-way trend of mass destruction of manufacturing jobs. German and Japanese banks became the world’s largest.

Trade and war-related budget deficits ballooned. This, combined with pressure in the early 1970s from French banks that demanded payment in gold rather than paper money (which was losing its value because of war-caused inflation), officially ended the dollar’s "good-as-gold" status. The U.S. had to abandon gold payments because of insufficient stockpiles, so French capitalists and others demanded even more paper money payments to compensate for devalued dollars. This further weakened U.S. economic prestige.

"Stagflation" (negligible growth combined with inflation) took hold. Working families’ incomes, which had more than doubled between 1946 and 1973, now grew less than one percent per year against inflation. Today, the income of a young man in his thirties is 12% below what it was for a worker at that same age 30 years ago, working two weeks more annually and "putting in 350 more hours per year than the average European." (Robt. Reich, Financial Times, 1/29)

Democrat Carter Began U.S. Build-Up For Mid-East Wars

The military component in today’s money crunch stems directly from the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Emboldened by the 1975 fall of Saigon, foreign rivals started assailing the cornerstone of U.S. imperialism’s economic empire, its Middle East oil racket. When Islamists (who later befriended Russia and China) seized Iran in 1979, Democrat Jimmy Carter threatened war against any nation with designs on United States’ "vital interests." Having lost both a major source of crude and a military ally in Iran, Carter vowed that the U.S. would deploy its own armed forces in the region.

Carter launched the Rapid Deployment Force which soon expanded into the Pentagon’s Central Command that has now invaded Iraq twice at enormous expense. The U.S. effort to oust the Soviets from strategic Afghanistan in the 1980s has backfired into an open-ended, cash-burning war against the U.S.’s former Taliban allies and their al Qaeda protégés. Even with only 55,000 troops in Iraq by 2013, U.S. rulers admit they will have thrown away $3.5 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2017. ("War at Any Price?" a Congressional Democrats’ report, November 2007)

For the foreseeable future, U.S. rulers’ need to control the Mid-East will saddle them with costly, protracted, Iraq-style wars of occupation. The Army’s newly-revised operations manual "describes the United States as facing an era of ‘persistent conflict’ in which the American military will often operate among civilians in countries where local institutions are fragile and efforts to win over a wary population are vital." (NY Times, 2/8/08) The report on the manual is filled with phrases such as "long, grueling struggles"; "blueprint to operate over the next 10 or 15 years"; "how to prepare for future conflicts."

Eyeing a laundry list of potential hot spots, the liberal Brookings Institution calls for vast expansion of U.S. armed forces. "Even greater increases in the size of the ground forces [than the 65,000 added soldiers and Marines already approved] may be prudent. Highly plausible scenarios involving Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other large countries (such as Indonesia, Congo, and Nigeria) illustrate the need to provide the next President with the capacity to muster large new forces without delay" (Brookings, Independent Ideas for Our Next President).

Growing threats to U.S. rulers from China and Russia, however, stand to push Pentagon expenditures way beyond their current 4% of GDP levels. During the budget debate, phony "anti-war" Congressman John Murtha declared, "We [need]… a military that can deploy to stop China or Russia or any other country that challenges us. I want to be prepared in case there’s a confrontation about energy." (Reuters, 2/5/08) Such a clash would eat up trillions.

Clinton, Obama, McCain: All War Hawks

Make no mistake. Clinton and Obama aren’t calling for higher taxes on the rich to pay for social programs. Both promise to expand U.S. ground forces, Obama by 92,000 troops. Staunch defenders of the profit system, Clinton and Obama are every bit as militaristic as war-hawk McCain. Voting for any one of them will only select the next warmaker. While we have focused on the dollars wiped out by the war machine that all the candidates serve, the cost in workers’ lives has been horrific and will intensify.

Capitalism, which ceaselessly creates economic panics and imperialist wars, will always squeeze and destroy workers’ lives. Don’t vote. Join and build the Progressive Labor Party to achieve the long-term goal of communist revolution, the only answer to the horrors of the profit system.J

Industrial Workers Strike Back In The South

On February 1, about 2,500 members of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2069 struck the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin, Virginia, after failing to reach a new contract. Workers had voted by a 95% margin to walk out. The plant builds all Volvo trucks sold in North America.

Volvo is seeking wage and benefit concessions, and trying to roll back many health and safety protections in the current contract. Layoffs have reduced the workforce by 300 while the strike has put another 650-job cut on hold. A Volvo spokesman told the Roanoke Times, "We’re considering…keep[ing] the plant running as close to full production as soon as possible," but gave no strike-breaking details.

This battle reflects a reaction to a 20-year movement of U.S. auto production to the South, impelled by a massive investment of European and Asian auto billionaires in the highly profitable U.S. market. Historically intense racism, going back to slavery, has created a huge low-wage region in the South. No wonder that, while Ford, GM and Chrysler plants close in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, Mercedes, Hyundai and Toyota plants are opening in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Since 2000, 15,000 parts-supplier plants have opened in Southern states, according to the UAW National Organizing Department.

This example of the inter-imperialist rivalry rages from China to the U.S. as the world’s auto bosses fight for markets, resources and cheap labor. Imperialism inevitably leads to war, and as this rivalry sharpens, wars are spreading globally. Only communist revolution can end imperialism and its wars for good.

As industry increasingly heads south to exploit cheaper, unorganized labor, attacks will intensify and sharpening class battles will be waged by the region’s industrial workers. Just recently six workers were killed and many injured in a sugar factory explosion in Georgia.

Another fight involves the jobs of the Freightliner Five — Glenna Swinford, Franklin Torrence, Robert Whiteside, Allen Bradley and David Crisco, members of UAW Local 3520 — who were fired at the Freightliner truck plant in Cleveland, North Carolina on April 3, 2007. They had led a strike of 3,000 workers. Four were members of the Voluntary Organizing Committee (VOC) that organized the plant in 2003, the country’s largest manufacturer of the big Class 8 heavy trucks. They’re asking for, and getting support from workers worldwide.

The five were on the 11-member union bargaining committee fired by Freightliner. Six got their jobs back, but had to sign agreements requiring them to be "model employees." The other five were not offered their jobs on any terms.

In 2002, Freightliner and its parent company DaimlerChrysler, cut wages an average of $1.15/hr and imposed healthcare cutbacks. Between 2003 and 2006, over 6,000 workers joined the UAW at Freightliner plants in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. Robert Whiteside, a black worker, was elected shop chair, the union leader on the shop floor. He also headed the Local’s bargaining committee.

The bosses refused to meet with him. Daimler and Freightliner demanded give-backs, despite Daimler’s truck group record $2.6 billion profit in 2006. The bosses broke off negotiations, announced layoffs and voided the union contract and healthcare coverage. The workers followed the bargaining committee’s lead and walked out.

The strike was quickly called off by the Local President, claiming it had not been sanctioned by the UAW International. Workers rejected a tentative agreement that excluded the health and safety gains sought by the bargaining committee. But soon afterwards a similar contract was ratified in a vote held on company property, from which the five fired workers were banned.

The Freightliner Five continue to fight for their jobs. Their unemployment benefits are exhausted and they need help to support their families and to continue the fight.

This fight resembles the struggle of the Charleston 5, members of the International Longshoreman’s Association Local 1422 in Charleston, S.C., who were fired and arrested after police attacked their picket line several years ago. Next month marks the one-year anniversary of the strike of over 7,000 shipbuilders in Pascagoula, MS, against Northrop-Grumman, a major war contractor.

Slowly but surely, the red flag of communist revolution is being planted in the South by the PLP. With patience and a long-term outlook, by building ties based on struggle and spreading CHALLENGE, industrial workers will lead the way in building a mass PLP.

For more information about the Freightliner Five, including how to make donations, go to http://justice4five.com.

a name="Students, Farmworkers, Vets Get PLP Exposé of Hillary’s War Plans"><">S"udents, Farmworkers, Vets Get PLP Exposé of Hillary’s War Plans

Ten thousand people lined up around our college campuses to try to hear Hillary Clinton speak at a campaign rally. While they stood in a long single file line we were there with CHALLENGE and a leaflet exposing Clinton’s support for war and exposing the DREAM Act as a preparation for war. The flier quoted her website: "The DREAM Act would also strengthen our nation’s military readiness, allowing these well-qualified young men and women to serve their country with honor." A teacher-comrade explained as she handed out the leaflet: "I know the rulers’ plans for my students — war." Nearly everyone took our literature from her including both the flier and CHALLENGE. We also explained that it wasn’t just about Clinton, but that all the candidates, Clinton, Obama, and McCain, support wider war in the Middle East and war with China in the future. We tried to show that no matter the candidate, it is the system of capitalism that causes and requires war.

At the rally Clinton pushed race and racism as she played up the support she received from the United Farm Workers (UFW) and attacked Barack Obama. She tried to use the UFW to lie that she supports working-class struggles, invoking the name of another union sell-out: Cesar Chavez (he attacked militancy and undocumented workers as the head of the UFW). We made sure to talk with the farmworkers and give them CHALLENGE/DESAFIO as they left. We also had a good conversation with some Iraq war veterans who were there to protest against Clinton and the continued war in Iraq. One vet agreed that it was imperialism that caused war and that we would have to completely change the economic system. He got a CHALLENGE and we got contact information as well.

One important lesson we learned is that appearances can be deceiving. Many seemingly die-hard Clinton supporters or Democrats were just looking for a change and were interested when we argued that change could not come about through elections. We saw that people with Clinton or Obama buttons liked the idea that only communist revolution could create change. This showed many of us the importance of talking to people about our line of communist revolution no matter their T-shirt or button.

Airline Bosses Attack So Workers Shut Terminal

NEW YORK, NY –– Airport workers recently stopped work in response to bosses’ attacks. An understaffed crew of ramp workers, who direct plane movement and load luggage, was given a third flight, above the usual two, within two hours, without any break time. The workers decided to show the bosses who really had the power to move the planes. When the third flight approached the gate before the second had even been finished, one worker called on another to stop the third plane.

"If they’re going to give us this many flights, somebody is gonna have to wait," he told his coworkers.

The second worker signaled to hold the plane in the middle of the taxiway. Soon another plane began to push out, causing a gridlock. The ramp workers brought terminal operations to a halt and demonstrated the power workers acting collectively can seize.

Because of their strategic importance to the domestic economy and the movement of troops for imperialist wars, the airline can’t afford to allow many such angry actions. The airline bosses strategically use racism, sexism and ageism to pay employees less and keep them from fighting back more often.

Workers have different pay scales depending on their job category. Ramp workers start at $10/hour and only reach $18/hour after an exhausting 10-year wage progression. This system is designed to promote high turnover so that the bosses can continually hire new employees at the lowest wage possible. More than half the ramp workers have been on the job for less than 5 years. The seniority system promotes racism and ageism by forcing the younger, mostly black and Latino, workers into undesirable late shifts. The bosses use "part-time," 30-hour-a-week workers for the last shift so that they will not have to pay time-and-a-half if workers stay late due to delays. Most workers on the late shift have another job and must put in 12- and 14-hour days to survive.

For cabin service workers, mainly women, conditions are even worse: $8.50/hour, with no progression and no benefits. The airlines get away with this theft by using a sub-contractor. Bus drivers make slightly better pay but still get screwed by being overworked with no time-and-a-half pay even for 18-hour days to cover for sick coworkers when the airline bosses refuse to increase hiring.

The latest attacks spurred one worker to say to a PLP member that "this is why we need to strike, so they’ll respect us." As long as capitalism exists, workers will never get the wealth they produce. Even if all airport workers obtained better wages, they would still pale in comparison to the thousands in profit generated for the bosses with each flight.

Resistance like this teaches workers valuable lessons about their place in the system: the bosses need workers to produce anything, but the workers don’t need bosses. When workers grasp this idea it is a victory on the road to a new world. For workers to win more than reforms that the bosses will reverse, they need more than anger and spontaneity; they need the communist analysis found in CHALLENGE. More readers of CHALLENGE and more members of PL could take even more meaningful action at this airport. Workers united with soldiers and students under the banner of the communist PLP can smash capitalism to establish a society for all workers.

a name="‘Small Schools’ Ploy Part of Bosses’ ‘Creeping’ Fascism"></a>‘Sma"l Schools’ Ploy Part of Bosses’ ‘Creeping’ Fascism

NEW YORK CITY — In discussions with friends, I’ve often mentioned that the working class is living under growing fascist conditions, but some disagree. They ask, "Are storm troopers kicking down the door to your house? If not, then we don’t have fascism."

But the ruling class doesn’t want to control the working class by kicking down doors all the time (although sometimes it does. see Shades of Hitler, p.7). Some control is more subtle, slowly adding more and more fascist conditions over time so we’re deep in the middle of it before we know what hit us. For communists, it’s important to fight such trends.

Throughout the country there is a rush toward replacing larger schools with smaller ones. Among my friends with whom I work in our school I’ve raised the idea that this move is really "creeping" fascism. In New York City, the Chancellor has mandated the closing of large comprehensive high schools to be replaced by smaller ones, as is happening in my school.

They tell us the large schools are "not meeting students’ educational needs." Although our school was improving somewhat, the bosses say it "wasn’t improving fast enough."

The attack has a distinctly racist character since the majority of the school closings are in predominately black and Latino working-class neighborhoods. Currently the bosses feel they don’t have enough support or soldiers for their wars and think that one way to change this is to win these youth in the schools, and in the classroom, to patriotic support of their imperialist adventures.

I told my colleagues the rulers are closing the large schools to maintain more control, especially in the classroom. The students are their main targets.

Fascism in Schools Has Many Forms

This strategy is fascist for several reasons. These small schools have fewer students (although the same large class size) and so needed staff is also smaller, which is much easier to watch and control than a larger one.

Few veteran teachers are hired at the small schools. Mostly younger, newer teachers staff them. The latter aren’t tenured and usually are on probation, blunting their ability to fight-back against attacks on students and staff. A "55/25" proposal — allowing a teacher with 25 years of service to retire at 55 without penalty — is being dangled before more experienced teachers.

Small-school principals have greater power over the staff. At one Brooklyn school a principal rated 10 of 40 teachers "unsatisfactory." At another school, union meetings are practically forbidden. When some staff did call one, they were ordered into the principal’s office to explain their action. The administration more easily knows everything occurring at these schools, making organizing more difficult.

The greatest fascist danger at these schools is the change in the relationship between the working class and the ruling class. Communists believe that the class interests of teachers, students and parents are opposed to the administration’s (bosses’) interests. These small schools spread a "we" philosophy, the "we" uniting the staff and administration. If one doesn’t follow the principal’s goal for student achievement, that teacher is ostracized from the rest of the staff.

For example, many teachers in these small schools work hours on their own time, without being paid overtime. If teachers refuse, they’re labeled "slackers." Teachers go along with this anti-working-class thinking unwittingly, furthering fascism’s talons in the backs of the workers.

The majority of these small schools are housed — up to three or four — in a structure that used to contain one large school. The building is carved up into different sections to fit each school, often leading to a fight for space. Students who happen to wander down the "wrong" hallway may be considered "trespassers," subjecting them to disciplinary action.

The fight over space forces students to share the little existing space. Gymnasiums and cafeterias that once served one school must now accommodate up to four schools. This not only pits staff members against each other, but also student against student.

School Closing Is Attack on Working Class

The news that our school was closing devastated most of my colleagues. Many have been there 20 years or more. For some, this was the only school at which they’ve taught. The immediate response was depression, then anger (usually toward the principal or other administrators) and then fear — from not knowing where they’ll teach next year, not knowing what will happen next.

Many might not recognize this as growing fascism, but this is how it "creeps" into our lives, with workers concentrating on where to go next rather than on organizing. As workers "adjust" and get used to this level of attack by the bosses, it only enables the rulers to go further. This move to smaller schools is an attack on the working class, not "just another change in the schools."

As we fight it, we must win teachers, students and parents not only to see it as growing fascism, but also to understand why the rulers are resorting to such attacks — the better to control us and win the youth, in preparation for unending wars against imperialist rivals. Ultimately, only communist revolution can defeat fascism because its source: capitalism.J Red Teacher

(Series continues next issue)

Electoral-Circus Stirs Intense Debate in Church

My church youth group has talked a lot about the elections lately. These young adults used to be reluctant to talk about politics, but now there is lots of enthusiasm, especially among the first-time voters. Several waited for hours to see Clinton and reported happily that they had seen CHALLENGE sellers there, too. Many are enthralled by Obama.

This is the savvy "YouTube generation," but their reasons were incredibly superficial: "I just like him" or "She won the debate." Nobody seemed to know the candidates’ positions, other than "she’s for health care, he’s for change," or whether they differ on anything substantial. One older adult was the most enthusiastic, saying that "Obama is inspiring a whole generation of youth to get involved in the electoral process." About half of the young people just listened, and one said later that she "wasn’t really into the elections."

Another adult, known as a radical, was pressed to say who she really wanted to be president. She replied, "We’re on an out-of-control runaway train with no brakes, headed toward a cliff, and you are asking who I want to drive it. I think we should all get off the train, as quickly as we can!" Several young CHALLENGE readers said, "yeah, but communism didn’t work." But they agreed to invite a student comrade to talk with the group later.

One of the sharper exchanges came when someone offered to bet on the return of a military draft within the first term of any Democratic administration. "Why do you think Obama would do that?" someone asked. "Because the main message of his campaign is to get young people to feel that ‘we’re all in this together, part of a liberal multi-racial, anti-sexist America’ and the logical conclusion is ‘everybody should do National Service’ which would turn into a draft" she said. Most looked unhappy with this idea, but nobody argued against it.

In an anti-racism class at the church on election night, almost everyone self-identified as a Democrat and seemed to agree when the minister said whichever Democrat won would be wonderful. But nobody actually claimed that the Democrats would improve things. Instead they talked about how a black or female president would be a "symbol" of change for the better. Several were excited that Internet developments have "democratized American politics." On the other hand, several people pointed out that the constant media talk about the "black vote" and "Latin vote" and the "female vote" builds even more racism.

I was a little surprised when some CHALLENGE readers shared the general hopefulness about the elections, because these good friends are open to the ideas that capitalism can’t be reformed and that we can’t end racism without ending capitalism. But their idea of having a "long-term perspective" is that incremental "gains" made through electoral politics will lead eventually to revolutionary developments.

Now a long-term perspective depends on understanding that small changes can create conditions for a revolution. But what kind of changes? Not winning small reforms but winning people - by ones and twos and in larger groups – little by little, closer to the communist movement PLP is building.

Most of my friends don’t yet fully agree that it’s meaningless to talk about "democracy" when we live under a capitalist dictatorship. And we need to talk more about what real mass participation will be like under a revolutionary dictatorship of the working class.

These conversations have led to a new regular CHALLENGE reader, with plans to show the paper to four more people. Being deeply involved in this church has created wonderful opportunities for sharp, friendly, long-term political struggle over racism, the bosses’ electoral circus and for communism.

Oil, Uranium Sparking Imperialist War Over Chad

Chad is the latest tinderbox to explode in Africa, and the world. Just in recent weeks, bloody conflict has erupted in "stable" Kenya, more war in Congo and continuous armed clashes in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region, among others. These fights have something in common: they’re caused by imperialism and local capitalists who have intensifies all the contradictions in the region, while the working masses pay with their lives.

After the Chad government and four rebel groups signed a cease-fire last October, fighting broke out again in early February. Rebel forces attacked N’Dajema, Chad’s capital, trying to oust strongman Idriss Deby. Chad is one of Africa’s poorest countries, but only for the people, not for its rulers and the imperialist corporations raking in big bucks here.

In 2003, after completion of a $3.7 billion pipeline linking its oilfields to Atlantic coast terminals, landlocked Chad became an oil exporter.

The Doba pipeline — operated by Exxon Mobil with partners Chevron and Malaysia’s state-run Petronas — pumps 160,000 barrels a day through Cameroon to the Gulf of Guinea.

Last September, Chad’s national oil refiner signed a joint venture deal with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), parent of PetroChina and China’s largest oil and gas producer. PetroChina says it has discovered at least 100 million tons of oil at a new project in Chad. (Reuters Factbox, 2/3)

Despite the oil revenues, there’s been no real improvement in most Chadians’ standard of living. Chad remains one of the world’s poorest countries, ranked 171 out of 177 in the UN development index, which uses criteria such as average income, life expectancy and literacy.

The rebels, which include some former high-ranking members of the Deby government, have support from Sudan, which sees Deby as backing anti-Sudanese government forces in Darfur. There are actually 300,000 refugees from Sudan and the Central African Republic living in UN camps in Chad. Thousands of Chadian refugees are fleeing the latest fighting.

France is still a leading trading partner of Chad, a former French colony. President Sarkozy claims he’s trying to break with old French policies of using military force to prop up corrupt regimes in Africa’s former French colonies, choosing diplomacy instead. But the military option is still open. France’s 1,500 troops lead the biggest European Union "peacekeeping" force that’s ever been here, as part of MINURCAT (UN Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad), supposedly to protect refugees from these two neighboring countries in the Chad camps. Small COS (French commando) groups are also operating in the border of Sudan and Central Africa, spying on rebel groups fighting the Chad government. And then Chad’s western neighbor Niger is France’s main source of uranium to fuel its nuclear reactors on which France is totally dependent to produce its electricity.

Thus, the fighting in Chad is becoming another regional war, involving Sudan and the Central African Republic, French and European troops, Exxon, Chevron, Malaysia’s Petronas and China’s CNPC (the main oil company in Sudan). Even Libya’s ruler, Col. Khaddafi, now a darling of Paris, is allowing French military planes operating in Chad to refuel in Libya airfields (Le Canard Enchaine, 2/6). The rivalry among the various imperialists and their oil companies to control the energy supplies of Africa and the world is intensifying the conflict.

All this is a recipe for endless imperialist wars, mass poverty and massacres. Indeed, for Africa’s toiling masses the choice is increasingly between imperialist-capitalist barbarism or uniting to smash these bloodsucking exploiters. It won’t be easy to break the many barriers the imperialists and local rulers use to divide the continent’s workers and peasants, and build a revolutionary communist movement, but it is the only viable solution to this hell.

Control of Oil Routes, Military Bases Spurs U.S. Destabilization of Pakistan

"The Pakistani working class widely believes that the country’s military and ISI (its secret service) is supporting terrorist groups. They see how freely terrorists move about the country with heavy equipment, even rocket launchers," said a community organizer. "Suicide bombers usually attack in crowded working-class neighborhoods. The police and army don’t protect the people living there, they only protect the rich and government officials."

According to a January 15 NY Times report, a former Pakistani official acknowledged that dozens of ISI officers support the jihadis even as others in the ISI and army fight them.

The chaos and terrorism may very well be leading to a U.S.-driven destabilization and break-up of the country, accompanied by U.S. militarization, as happened in Yugoslavia. A 2005 report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan.

U.S. rulers can hardly support Pakistani president Musharref given his lack of support in the country. With his imposition of a state of emergency and the assassination of U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto — which precipitated the current crisis — his government has lost even the fig-leaf of a "democratic" state, which could speed the break-up process.

Evidence points to the U.S. destabilizing the country, taking advantage of its history — a Muslim nation carved out artificially by British imperialism. For the Pakistani working class, "Balkanization" means more exploitation and repression and more deaths.

The U.S. is fomenting social, ethnic and religious strife. In Balochistan (one of the country’s four provinces), the U.S. and Britain have been covertly supporting the BLA — the Balochistan Liberation Army — which closely resembles the Kosovo Liberation Army in Yugoslavia. The split-up of — and U.S. military intervention in — Yugoslavia, enabled the U.S. to build one of the world’s largest military bases there.

Militarization of Balochistan to control its potential wealth from other imperialists is critical. Balochistan is strategically important, bordering on the Arabian Sea near the Straits of Hormuz through which passes 30% of the world’s oil. The province also has untapped oil and gas, while pipelines are slated to pass through it from Iran to India. U.S.-backed terrorists are already scaring off Chinese capitalists and workers. Engineers building a deep seaport at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea have returned to China. The U.S. military is already using the area for commando forays into Iran.

The U.S. also has several military bases in Pakistan; controls the country’s airspace; and is carrying out bombings from the Afghan side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Those attacks, plus Pakistani Army helicopter gunship bombings, suicide bombers and fighting between Islamic radicals and soldiers all have killed thousdands of civilians. Meanwhile, since 2003 the U.S. military has more than doubled its troop strength in Afghanistan, from 9,000 to 22,500.

Another part of the U.S. "Balkanization" plan is to send U.S. troops into Pakistan. Washington is pressuring the Pakistani government — in the name of the "war on terrorism" — to allow U.S. Special Forces to pursue the Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan – a move, incidentally, backed publicly by presidential aspirant Barack Obama. So far Pakistan’s army has agreed to a small number of Special Forces to work alongside the 100,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed in the border regions. A deal is underway for the U.S. to train 60,000 additional Pakistani soldiers in the "war on terror."

"Don’t underestimate the Pakistani masses," declared the community organizer. "The Pakistani army, 60% from the Punjab ethnic group and 40% Pathan, has lost more soldiers since 2001 than the U.S. has lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Already some soldiers are refusing to fight. In both ethnic groups soldiers see that they are killing other working-class families and may very well come to understand they must turn the guns on their own commanders and on the imperialists.

There are Pakistani workers who agree with PLP that nationalism is not the solution. That is only a fight for a different boss — a Balochistani boss will replace a Punjabi or a Pathan. Workers have no borders. "The answer to "Balkanization," concluded the community organizer, "is for all workers in all the provinces as well as those in neighboring India, Iran and Nepal to build one single party that takes them successfully on the road to communist revolution."

LETTERS

Ideological Struggle In Our Own Families

Recently, a reporter on TV talked about workers in Haiti who are forced by poverty to eat cookies made from mud and sugar. He said that Haiti is very poor and that we don’t have to go as far as Africa to see such horrendous conditions.

I talked with some family members who heard the reporter; one said that we have to pray for god to help these workers resolve their situation; another person said that we should eat less to feel their pain; another said that this was their problem and that we shouldn’t give too much importance to the situation, adding that we can’t change things and things will always be like this. At this moment it was hard to carry out the ideological struggle since people were starting to get mad and from experience, I knew a conversation now would be unproductive.

I waited until later and then spoke to my brother about it, saying that none of these statements were correct, explaining the world situation, wars for oil profits, racism, exploitation, the situation with immigrants, and the U.S. debt, which is forcing many people into the streets even in the U.S. itself. He started to ask me about society’s problems and the origin of the bosses’ wealth, asking how we could get rid of all that. I replied that only a revolution can get rid of all the bosses and worldwide poverty, a revolution that must be communist. I’ve given him three editions of CHALLENGE and we’ve discussed some articles.

I understand that all this is a process, and that it’s not only in the classroom that we can carry out the ideological struggle and win more people to join the Party. We can find revolutionary potential in our own families. For communist revolution, let’s unite workers and their families of the world!

Red Sister in Mexico

Mexico: Patience and Political Struggle with Students

In our university when we question our friends’ concept of reality the ideological struggle begins to intensify. Some choose to change the subject in order to keep things friendly. But, others become more interested and continue to question the status quo more deeply. The minute the conversation becomes more political, the most important thing for us is how to bring these people closer to the Party.

Sometimes, the obstacles set up by capitalism make us feel disappointed, thinking that our friends won’t ever join the Party. We have made the mistake of not making a plan to recruit the people close to us. This happened with a couple, who regularly gets CHALLENGE-DESAFIO but the woman ended joining another group while her boyfriend remained on the margin of our political work.

We’re growing modestly; three new friends are attending study groups and we are talking to our friends about the Party and inviting many more to our study group. We understand that it’s a long-term struggle, which requires patience and urgency, ideological struggle and organization. Even though we’re youth, we know that for revolution there’s no age. Youth of the world, let’s join the revolutionary struggle for communism!

Red Students, Mexico

a name="Obama’s Real Program Angers Teenagers">">"bama’s Real Program Angers Teenagers

A high school student told us about his discussions in a Government class focusing on the election. Over time, we have talked about how capitalism works for profit, not to make things better for everyone, who really rules by controlling the government, and U.S. competition with other capitalists causing attacks on workers domestically and wars around the world for control of oil.

This student said that listening to Obama’s speeches "I hear a lot of vague things about health care and hope, no specific plans or reforms. Most people at my school see Obama as the anti-Bush…this amazing orator who promises great things and an end to the war…he has something in common with us…he’s black…I’ve noticed that my friends don’t have an alternative to looking just at the individuals, not at the system."

He took a copy of Foreign Affairs to his Government class in which a featured article described Obama’s foreign policy: redeployment to "protect American facilities and personnel, . .refocus on Afghanistan and Pakistan… so that we are confronting terrorists. . . revitalize the military, 92,000 expansion. . . I will not take the military option off the table." (July/August ’07)

The student told us that when Obama’s supporters looked at the article, "they got pissed off…felt he let them down…Some were just surprised when they read the specifics."

The teacher had taken students to hear Obama but had not read the article or promoted discussion of this information in the class! He did tell the class that he would be happy to sponsor a young Democrats or young Republicans club on campus. At this, our friend told us "my friend and I joked to ourselves, why don’t we have a "young revolutionaries club?"

This is certainly a jumping off place for the observation that the ruling elite needs elections to limit thinking on what "ending the war" means. Or questions: Why do the rulers need Obama to give young people who want change some hope in the existing system? What is the likelihood that Obama will fundamentally change the system? Whether they vote or not, a clearer understanding of class rule is one step towards considering armed revolution as a needed alternative for making change. Youth who are joking around about a young revolutionaries club are already looking beyond elections!

Red Transit Worker

PL College Forum Links Anti-Racism To Anti-War Movement

New York, NY, Feb. 5 — Recently, some 30 professors, teachers and students attended a PLP forum on racism. In preparation each person was asked to read a packet of articles reprinted from CHALLENGE on the Jena 6 case and the PL History series about the 1975 struggle against the racist ROAR organization in Boston.

The first speaker gave an extensive explanation of the Party’s position that the concept of "race" and racist ideology were created by the capitalist system to divide the working class and maintain power. It was also pointed out that profits capitalists gain from super-exploiting black and Latin workers are essential for survival of their system.

The next presenter led us in discussion about the bosses’ need to win workers to racism in order to get workers to fight in their endless imperialist wars. The student presenter explained that when soldiers enter the U.S. military they are bombarded with racist ideas: "Those people are different from us. They have no respect for human life. They are inferior." Without this racist brainwashing, workers would balk at orders to massacre non-combatants and torture prisoners.

One of our friends remarked that if racism had a brother it would be nationalism. He said that racism, nationalism and religion were all divisive and that our task was to unite the international working class.

A lively discussion followed about many of the manifestations of racism in education and on the campuses. Not only must we confront military and CIA recruiters when they come to campus, but we must investigate and expose how the university is involved with research that helps the military and promotes racism.

In addition we must increase our efforts to bring the anti-racist struggle into the anti-war movement. Campus anti-war committees should discuss racist issues such as the Jena 6. In our unions we must address racism as well as opposing the war.

After the discussion we saw a documentary film "Another Brother" which deals with the racism faced by black soldiers in Vietnam and upon their return home. Our next planned forum is entitled "For a World Without Borders: A Communist Perspective on Immigration."

This electoral year, more HS and college youth are being won to vote. Because of the dangerous illusion that Obama and to a lesser extent Hillary represent "change," it is important to demonstrate more openly our revolutionary alternative to these politicians. Their only "change" will be to expand the current wars and make us pay more for the capitalist economic meltdown. Being involved in mass organizations, using CHALLENGE and having frequent party-building events are necessary to make our Party grow.

Jobless: 7.65 Million Or 20 Million?

While the U.S. government announced a 17,000 job-loss for January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also said the unemployment rate has actually declined to 4.9% based on 7.65 million jobless. What fraud! The government’s definition of an unemployed worker is one who has looked for a job in the last four weeks. This, of course, does not include:

• 4.8 million working part-time who want full-time jobs;

• 5.0 million who haven’t sought employment in the last four weeks or longer, including "discouraged" workers, those who’ve stopped looking for non-existent jobs (above figures from NY Times, 2/2/08);

• 1.6 million in prison (of the total 2.4 million) for non-violent crimes, mostly on drug possession charges — who are not imprisoned in rehabilitation-oriented Western Europe — and being among the least skilled would probably add to the jobless figures.

Add those to the government unemployment figure and the total becomes 19 million, or approximately 2½ times the reported 7.65 million! This still does not include unemployed youth who seek "jobs" as part of the 1.4 million in the military, nor several million still on welfare who would want to work if child-care were available. (Welfare recipients forced into Workfare in New York City replaced 20,000 unionized workers on the municipal workforce, according to a March 2001 report from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.)

So the number of U.S. workers denied full-time civilian jobs has certainly passed 20 million. Because of racist discrimination, the jobless percentage for black workers (9.2%) is more than double that of whites (4.4%). But even those figures are under-estimates since that 9.2% figure excludes the greater percentage of black workers trapped into prison and onto welfare.

There never has been full employment under capitalism, nor can there be. As bosses compete against each other for maximum profits, especially globally, their first cost-cutting measure is laying off workers, constantly searching for the lowest wage-rates. Now, especially during economic crisis, mass layoffs are the order of the day, as the bosses try to shift the burden of that crisis onto the backs of the working class.

But basing profits on non-productive sources only worsens the crisis. Schemes like subprime mortgage fiascos and hedge funds do not produce new value; only manufacturing workers can do that, and U.S. manufacturing is constantly declining. The trillions in credit and trade debts, and the borrowing to pay the $1.7 trillion cost of their imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will deepen the economic crisis still further.

So no matter who becomes the next President, Hillary, Obama or McCain, the bosses will need more of a fascist police state, to make workers pay even more for their wars and crisis and to try to stop any working-class rebellions against this squeeze on their jobs and wages. And this is why workers need a system that is free of all bosses and profits and the stealing of the value we workers produce — a system in which all this value is shared according to need — and need a party, PLP, which fights for that system: communism.J

Shades of Hitler: Anti-Immigration Pogroms Rising

ARIZONA, Feb. 12 — The Giants-Patriots championship game was one of the most exciting Super Bowls in recent history. In the U.S, almost 100 million watched it on TV. But there’s another side to this game, almost ignored by everyone. It had a touch of the racism at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when in the middle of another sporting event attracting millions, Hitler put forward his racist "master race" garbage. But the black runner Jesse Owens upset Hitler’s applecart by winning four track events.

Somewhat similarly, while millions were enjoying the Super Bowl in Arizona, the same state’s politicians who were hosting the championship game were — along with their cops — in the forefront of pogroms against immigrants occurring nationwide. The NY Times (2/12) reports about the situation in Arizona: "The signs of flight among Latino immigrants here are multiple: Families moving out of apartment complexes, schools reporting enrollment drops, business owners complaining about fewer clients."

The Sherrif’s Department runs ads asking people to report on undocumented immigrants. Local politicians are behaving like the Minutemen. "It’s like a panic here," said Ms. León, a daycare worker. "This is all having an effect on the community, mostly emotional."

But Arizona is not alone with these pogroms. Last week, there were protests in Danbury, Conn., because local cops can now legally behave like immigration agents. On February 7, ICE (Immigration cops) raided a plant near Salt Lake City, Utah, arresting 50 workers. Virtually simultaneously, ICE raided Micro Solutions Enterprises, a Van Nuys, California plant making parts for copier machines, and arrested 120 workers.

The ICE cops arrested over 7,000 immigrant workers last year just raiding workplaces, and they plan to arrest even more this year. It’s no coincidence that these fascist-like raids are occurring amid an economy meltdown and rising unemployment. The bosses, their politicians and cops want workers to blame other workers (undocumented immigrants) for the problems caused by capitalism itself.

Undocumented immigrants didn’t run scams like subprime mortgages, stealing billions from working-class families, and are not in charge of the endless wars spurring this capitalist meltdown. Workers who fall for these racist pogroms scapegoat undocumented immigrants are cutting their own throats. These Gestapo-type raids will also be used against any workers fighting cutbacks, layoffs, plant closings, etc.

We in PLP believe that a divided working class is the best weapon the bosses have to make ALL workers pay for their crisis and wars. Now more than ever, our slogan must be, "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite.

REDEYE

Working-class savings near zero

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top one percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent. In 2004, 1 out of every 6 households had zero or negative net worth…. That’s before the mortgage crisis hit. (MinutemanMedia.org, 2/16)

Biofuels profitable, but not green

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded. (NYT, 2/8)

Troops to be used against rallies

…At every year’s end a media research group at Sonoma State University compiles a list of the most important and least reported stories – you know, the sutff that affects your life….

Not surprisingly, much of what made the new top-25 least reported stories per significance in 2007 had to do with the "war on terror." Basically, those three words mean, "Whatever constraints you placed on your government, they’re off."

Story…No. 2 is about the Defense Authorization Act.... It lets the president station troops "anywhere in the United States and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to ‘suppress public disorder.’"

You ask, what amounts to "public disorder," triggering this de facto form of martial law? Don’t bother…. In any case, you won’t be consulted. (NYT, 1/17)

Loan racket uses class, race, sex

Testifying about how she targeted her sub-prime products a former loan officer confessed: "If someone appeared uneducated, inarticulate, was a minoritiy or was particularly old or young, I would try to include all the [additional costs] CitiFinancial offered…."

"We believe this represents the greatest loss of wealth for people of colour in modern US history," the report concludes.

…Among black and Latina women the discrimination was even more amplified….

Black women earning double the area median income were nearly five times more likely to receive sub-prime mortgages than white men with similar incomes. Latinas were four times more likely. (GW, 2/8)

$ystem produces excess meat

Meat production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases –– more than transportation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms… if America were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan –– a Camry, say –– to the ultra-efficient Prius….

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens….About two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption… (NYT, 1/27)

Red Immigrant Underground Whipped Nazis in WWII

Throughout the history of capitalism, immigrants around the world have played an important part of the fight against the ruling class. One great example is the Communist-led Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main d’Oevre Immigree (FTP-MOI) a group of about 100 fighters from all over Europe who carried out practically all acts of armed resistance against the Nazis in the Paris region between March and November 1943. In one of their most noted actions they killed the SS General Julius von Ritter, one of the main organizers of the Service d travail obligatoire (STO) (forced labor). After this, twenty-three of the group were arrested, tortured, and murdered. The Nazis distributed a famous poster calling them a criminal army rather than an army of liberators – they were responsible for 56 armed actions against the Nazis, 150 Nazis dead, and 600 wounded. This attempt to build anti-Communism backfired on the Nazis; the poster was defaced and flowers placed below it.

The group fought the Germans as part of the French Communist Party’s (PCF) pre-war organization for immigrant workers, Main d’Oeuvre Immigrée. Their actions at the beginning of the occupation consisted of carrying out sabotage against factories working for the Germans, and aiding in the return of immigrant Communists to their occupied homelands to join the Resistance. By summer 1941 (and the invasion of the Soviet Union), armed struggle became the order of the day. The FTP-MOI was at the heart of it in Paris. Arson at factories producing for the Germans; derailing of trains; attacks on German soldiers, all were carried out by these anti-fascists. Bomb factories were set up, false papers were manufactured; clandestine presses operated in Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Armenian and Romanian.

The Parisian branch of the FTP-MOI Iearned a reputation for daring through such large-scale actions as the attempt to kill von Schaumburg, commander of German troops in Paris, and the successful execution of SS General Ritter. An idea of the extent of their activities can be gathered from just one day’s activities, those of September 8, 1943 (only weeks before the group’s capture): Derailing of a train on the Paris-Reims line; the execution of two Nazi police in Argenteuil; two Nazi soldiers killed at the Porte d’Ivry; a sergeant killed on the rue de la Harpe; two other Nazis shot at an undisclosed location.

But by the summer of 1943 the group was in trouble. The Nazis and their French auxiliaries were hot on their trail. The PCF removed most of the non-immigrant resistance, the FTP, from Paris, but left the FTP-MOI behind. There is some question about why the FTP-MOI was left in Paris while other groups were removed. Some historians have suggested that the PCF knowingly abandoned these fighters to be captured by the Nazis. Another analysis is that the PCF had political reasons to keep them in Paris. It was becoming clear that the Allies would eventually win the war and they needed their most effective fighters in Paris. The FTP-MOI had proven through action that they were a politically and militarily reliable force. As proof, in the last months before their capture, they carried out 40 actions in Paris and its surrounding region.

This great historical example of armed struggle against fascism should give us optimism for our current struggles against the ruling class. Even during one of the darkest periods for communists and the working class, these heroic fighters created an internationalist militia that helped to bring down the Nazis and their "Thousand Year Reich." Although they were small, communist dedication and politics gave this meager band a great advantage. Thus, the example of the FTP-MOI should always remind us that when the international working class is organized under the banner of PLP, no force mustered by the ruling class will be able to defeat us.

Shared Work By All Will Free All Workers

Book Review: How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, by Paul Gomberg, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2007.

The book "How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice" makes a major contribution to the fight against racism and to the Marxist theory of working-class revolution. In it Paul Gomberg, an active member of PLP for 35 years, argues two main points. The first is that in order for all workers to have an equal opportunity to do thought-provoking complex work, everyone must also do some routine work. The second point is that a meaningful definition of justice and equality lies not simply in equal distribution of goods and services (distributive justice), but rather in equal opportunity to contribute to the collective good of humanity (contributive justice).

People need food, shelter, and love. Another need that is rarely discussed is self-esteem and esteem from others (which actually depend upon each other). As long as routine and complex labor are performed by different groups of people, people who do routine work will necessarily suffer — from boredom, wear and tear on bodies, and, most important, lack of esteem from themselves and others. One requirement for a just and egalitarian society is that this work be shared by all. Then no one suffers from lack of esteem from restriction to routine labor, and opportunities to do interesting labor can also be done by all.

Capitalism forces specific groups of workers to do routine work, often using racism.White male workers who find themselves having to do routine labor also suffer a lack of esteem, but a greater proportion of the Black, Latino and women workers are forced into routine jobs. The ruling class favors false theories that undervalued workers are innately incapable of more complex work. However, there is nothing innate about it — capitalist schools both create and reinforce this outcome. Racism intensifies the suffering by disproportionately consigning particular groups to this hell.

Unfortunately, as Gomberg argues, even if there were no racism or sexism under this system, some workers would still end up in this hell of devalued social contribution. Only by ending competition and opening up unlimited opportunities, can all workers develop complex skills and engage in complex labor, by having everyone do the necessary routine work.

We are taught that some workers simply don’t have what it takes to become a doctor or teacher or engineer or physicist. Given the current society in which the search for maximum profit limits the opportunities for most workers to develop those skills, there is no way of proving this. Indeed there is much evidence that esteem from teachers encourages self-esteem in students, which, in turn, encourages them to learn and develop. Positive feedback produces success, while negative feedback produces failure. The schools are designed to provide positive feedback for a chosen few and negative feedback for most, to mirror the capitalist division of labor.

Gomberg discusses why people work, and proposes the communist ideal that each person should work based upon their commitment to society and receive based upon their needs. He then anticipates the question, why would someone work harder for no extra monetary or material gain? He answers that social esteem can be valued far more highly than material gain, and refers to anthropological studies of societies in which this is true. Esteem takes the place of money, with the essential difference that esteem comes in unlimited supply.

As long as capitalist division of labor is permitted to exist racism will thrive. Under capitalism, no amount of struggle by the working class can permanently defeat divisions off which the bosses profit. Only in a society that completely transforms the division of labor — so that all share the routine work and all have unlimited opportunity to develop complex skills — can we end racism and all class oppression. This is the kind of society that PLP fights for and that requires armed working-class revolution. It’s called communism.

1. Obama's `Change':
   Be All You Can Be For U.S. Imperialism
   1. The Danger of Elections
   2. Militant Struggle, Not Elections, Led to Change
2. Red GI Challenges War At Platoon Meeting
3. Rulers' Subprime Fiasco Slams Workers, Spurs Fascist Solution
   1. RULERS `GIVE' WORKERS $1,200 TO SPEND, THEN DEMANDS MOST OF OUR PAY FOR WAR
   2. MAIN CLINTON FACTION WANTS POLICE STATE FOR BOSSES, TOO
4. Clinton, Obama Advisors: All War, All the Time
5. Big Bosses Back Barack
6. Black Students Lead Action Vs. Racist Minuteman Honcho
7. Multi-racial Protestors Drive off Border Watch KKK
8. Defend Anti-Racists Who Disrupted Fascist Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes
9. Exposing Bosses' Politicians Builds Support For PLP
10. From El Salvador's Horrors PLP Politics Shaped a Young PL'er
11. French Labor Hacks Put One-Day Limit on Million Strikers
12. Gazans Break Out of Their Prison
    But Nationalism Foils Mid-Eastern Workers
13. Africa, Part II
    Imperialists' Profits Behind 5.4 Million Congo Deaths
14. LETTERS LETTERS
    1. Paraguayan Friends of PLP Disrupt Rulers' Political Rally
    2. Howard Students Fight Campus Militarization
    3. Soviet Reversal Wasn't All Stalin's Fault
    4. Angry Tenants Unite to Fight Slumlord
15. Striking Writers Undercut By Scabbing, Bosses' Culture
16. Puerto Rico Teachers Defy Strike Ban
17. Good Riddance to an Anti-Communist Mass Murderer
18. REDEYE REDEYE
    1. Stimulus for poor? Dems say no
    2. Class war behind `tribal' wars
    3. Marxist students active in Iran
    4. Food prices up; world-wide riots
    5. Disasters built into capitalism
19. Economic Collapse Burying Workers; Will Spark Wider Wars
20. The Demon Is Capitalism
    1. Spiral to Hell
    2. Workers Create All Value

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Obama's `Change':
Be All You Can Be For U.S. Imperialism

This year the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, Black History Month and Barack Obama's presidential run are combining to create a lethal brew for U.S. workers. Every year on King's birthday we hear how racial harmony is just around the corner if we workers can only be true to his pacifist legacy. Black History Month, while highlighting great contributions made by black writers, scientists and artists (although notably excluding working-class heroes), also builds the illusion that capitalism provides unlimited opportunities for black workers.

These events combined push the lie that racism is declining in the U.S. However, the media blitz can't hide the fact that racism is alive and well in the U.S. and worldwide.

Now Barack Obama's bid is pushing two big lies: (1) simply voting for a politician or law can reform capitalism; and (2) the working class, especially black workers, will be better off with a black President.

Yet the reality is that even in the Democratic primaries themselves "race" and racism have emerged front and center, with Clinton and Obama trading barbs about it and appealing to black and white constituencies. And anti-immigrant racism plays a major role in the Republican primaries as well.

The bosses use racism to divide the working class and extract even more profit from our labor. By nearly every measure -- employment, incarceration rates, healthcare, education, poverty levels, wages, the Katrina horror, racist police murders and frame-ups like the Jena Six and anti-immigrant raids -- black and Latino workers are victims of a brutal racist system. According to 2006 U.S. Census statistics, the poverty rate for blacks was 24.3% compared to 3.5% for whites. (The federal poverty rate is set at a level -- $20,650 for a family of four -- that is horrendously low. This means that tens of thousands of families are living in poverty conditions, even if they aren't counted as such by the government.) The U.S. prison population (the highest in the world) contains 2.4 million people, 70% black and Latino, with millions more on probation, parole or awaiting trial, much of it due to racism.

The fact is, capitalism cannot exist without racism. The concepts of "race" and racism were developed as an ideology just as capitalist economies began to dominate world markets. Then, as now, it was used both to divide and weaken the working class, and to justify paying lower wages to black and Latino workers.

Under capitalism, workers must compete for jobs. On average, according to the Census Bureau, black workers are paid about 70cents in wages for every dollar paid to white workers. (For Latino workers it's about 60cents.) Bosses use this differential to threaten white workers not to ask for higher pay or be replaced by lower-paid black and Latino workers. White workers are thus forced to accept lower wages based on the racist exploitation of black and Latin labor. This historical analysis has led PLP to consistently make the fight against racism central to the struggle against capitalist oppression. As Karl Marx said, "The labor in white skin can never be free so long as the labor in black skin is branded."

The Danger of Elections

Along with the usual lies about how capitalism can be reformed to eliminate racism, the presence of the first legitimate black contender for president, Barack Obama, makes this a particularly dangerous year for workers. Since his break-out speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Obama has become another face of the liberal wing of the ruling class, along with Hillary Clinton (see editorial page 2). This Rockefeller-led faction pushes a "friendlier" capitalism, where the war in Iraq would be fought with more allies, Guantanamo Bay would be reformed or closed, and "civil liberties" would be protected ("liberties" which are revoked whenever the ruling class feels threatened). Even if these changes are made, however, it will not lead to a system that satisfies the needs of workers. In reality, the liberals are attempting to use these ideas to build even greater patriotic loyalty to their imperialist aims worldwide.

Obama neatly fits another part of the liberals' strategy. He talks about "change" and "hope" and other wonderful-sounding ideas. And as the higher (though limited) voter turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrate, his ideas (along with the other candidates') are inspiring many more people to get involved in capitalist politics. Yet Obama has clear ties to the ruling class and has proven that he will place the goals of the U.S. imperialists over the needs of the working class (see box below for his links to the bosses):

* He voted billions more for the war in Iraq and has threatened military action against Iran;

* He supports expanding the murderous war in Afghanistan;

* He voted for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, to make it even more dangerous for super-exploited Mexican workers trying to enter the U.S.

(CHALLENGE has leveled these criticisms at Hillary Clinton, who is just as much an enemy of the working class as Obama. (See editorial page 2) Workers will not benefit from an Obama presidency any more than from Clinton or McCain or any of the others.

Militant Struggle, Not Elections, Led to Change

In fact, workers have never won real social, political and economic changes through voting. The so-called "examples" of voting bringing reforms ignores the intensive militant, violent struggles that preceded the vote. The anti-slavery Thirteenth Amendment passed only after years of fight-back by abolitionists, more than 400 slave revolts and a Civil War in which 600,000 soldiers, mostly workers, died. The 40-hour work-week and labor reform followed a decade of sit-down strikes, often pitting armed workers, led by communist organizers, against the army, cops, National Guard and other bosses' agents. Even the Voting Rights Act resulted from years of bloody struggle against the KKK and Jim Crow racism. History clearly shows that the bosses only make concessions to the working class when forced to do so by mass, militant action.

But the bosses use their state power to reverse these reforms. And current economic conditions show this is especially true during times of intense inter-imperialist rivalry. As U.S. rulers struggle to solidify control of Iraqi oil and contain their imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia, workers increasingly feel the squeeze. For more and more workers, the 40-hour work-week is a distant memory. The Labor Department recently reported that in 2007 inflation was 4.1% while real wages dropped 0.9%, making necessities such as food, energy and healthcare more expensive. Due to racist discrimination, all this disproportionately affects black and Latino workers.

Capitalism is a system with laws that cannot be changed by electing a black or woman president or through reforms. These laws dictate that racism will always be used to extract super-profits from the labor of workers and that any reforms the working class does win will eventually be taken back. Only revolutionary communist change will emancipate the working class from capitalist wage slavery which is the basis of racism. Only with communism will all aspects of society meet the needs of the working class, while the profit-driven bosses are destroyed. Progressive Labor Party constantly and consistently works toward this goal.

Red GI Challenges War At Platoon Meeting

I'm currently in a unit with soldiers who openly express resentment towards unfair demotions, long work days, and an upcoming deployment to Iraq. For many soldiers this will be a second trip to the Middle East. This means that for a second time we will see how unproductive and vicious the occupation is. These conditions offer fertile ground for communist politics to spread, so my political conversations have recently reached a new level of importance. Although my conversations range from complaining about our working conditions to imperialism, I haven't yet shown CHALLENGE to anyone in my current unit. But this is about to change because of one specific incident I want to share with CHALLENGE readers.

Recently my unit has been merged with other units to "strengthen" deployable status, a very common occurrence with military units. This means that new relationships are created among soldiers. Leaders, therefore, are quick at attempting to build a "teamwork" atmosphere. So our platoon sergeant had everyone gather in a room to introduce themselves to each other. When it was my turn, I decided to announce something, which I knew many would agree with. After giving a brief introduction, I told everyone that I "wholeheartedly disagreed with this war." I said that "even though we wear this uniform, it doesn't mean we can't openly disagree with the government."

But the courage to say this out loud didn't occur spontaneously. It came about through the collective base building of our Party. I knew that at least three soldiers would agree with me because of political conversations with them. It turned out that more agreed as well. Plus, a leaflet was distributed outside my base calling soldiers to be more critical and to create an alliance between workers, soldiers, and students. When I spoke about the leaflet to one specific soldier, who is also in my platoon he let me know that he agreed with what was essentially part of our Party's line.

What is to be done? While the ruling class uses soldiers and the military as their tool to gain imperial hegemony, it's time for us to use CHALLENGE as our tool to win more soldiers to PLP. Clearly the next step is to show our newspaper to more friends. From this, more intense conversations will emerge. The ruling class will wage its wars in the Middle East; therefore. workers, along with soldiers and students should wage our ideological struggle with the working class. I find myself in a stronger political position in our unit. Reading in CHALLENGE about other soldiers' struggles in the military inspires me to move forward. In any case, political base-building is the foundation that will pave the way to our success in reaching our ultimate goal, and our newspaper will aid me in building for a communist revolution.

Red Soldier

Rulers' Subprime Fiasco Slams Workers, Spurs Fascist Solution

The subprime mortgage fiasco has highlighted a huge problem for the U.S. ruling class, even as it comes down like a sledgehammer on the working class. Since January 1, in the firestorm roaring through stock markets worldwide, capitalists have destroyed $5 trillion worth of value created by workers' labor power. As the subprime cancer spreads, workers in the U.S., where it began, face mass foreclosures, layoffs and wage and service cuts, with black and Latino workers hardest hit because of racist discrimination.

U.S. rulers, on the other hand, while trying to make workers at home pay for the crisis, have fears going far beyond the domestic lending and spending crunch. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the rulers' leading think-tank, worries about "the geopolitical and geoeconomic effects a U.S. downturn might bring, particularly at a time that finds other powers [ruling classes -- Ed.] on the rise, the price of vital commodities spiking and U.S. prestige in question." (CFR website, 1/18/08) The threatened recession makes U.S. imperialism and its war machine all the more desperate for cash.

"War at Any Price?" -- a report released by Congressional Democrats in November -- shows that Iraq and Afghanistan will have cost $1.6 trillion by the end of 2008. It says that even with a drawdown to 55,000 troops in Iraq by 2013 (indicating a long-term occupation) the price tag will reach $3.5 trillion by 2017.

The rulers' huge problem stems from the fact that they have nowhere near prepared the U.S. for all-out imperialist war. During World War II, the Roosevelt-led capitalist class mounted such an all-out mobilization by: (1) drafting 14 million youth into the armed forces (in a population barely one-third of the present 300 million); (2) instituted rationing of gas and food (each family had to present coupons at the store to buy meat -- limited to 4 oz. per person daily -- sugar, butter, etc.; (3) decreed a government-imposed wage freeze and price controls; and (4) banned all strikes. Not one new car, washing machine or radio was manufactured in the U.S. for four years -- all the factories were producing tanks, bombers and weapons of war. Tax rates topped out at 94%! (It's 35% now.)

Compare this to Bush's "war on terror." His advice: "go shopping; don't let the terrorists win."

U.S. rulers approached the war against Nazi Germany and fascist Japan with total reality. While the Democrats decry the Iraq-Afghanistan price tags mentioned above, they don't mention the fantastic sums a Middle-East re-invasion or war with China would require.

To prepare for World War III and endless imperialist wars against rising rivals in the European Union, China and Russia, U.S. rulers must exercise all-out control not only over the working class -- fascism -- but also over those members of their own class who guard their own short-term profits at the expense of the long-range survival of their system as a whole, as they did in World War II.

While Obama's camp has been slow in divulging its fiscal program, it can't be far removed from Hillary Clinton's who claims to have the solution. She intends to use the state apparatus to force reluctant capitalists to give up some of their profits to meet the main bosses' war needs -- the "sacrifice" of "treasure" called for in her husband's Hart-Rudman Commission reports. Clinton told the New York Times (1/21/08) she would immediately raise the top income tax rate from 35% to 39.6%.

She also seeks to slash exorbitant executive pay, which would steer more profit to the ruling-class billionaires and banks that own companies. Hillary decries "professional corporate managers who are not the creators of the corporation." She'll protect billionaires like George Soros, the Rockefellers, Warren Buffet and others, who see the need to discipline their class to save their system's top-dog status. Bill Clinton robbed the poor -- by dismantling Welfare -- to finance the Pentagon. Hillary would continue that crime, and the racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers, intensifying Workfare to lower wage levels of all workers.

RULERS `GIVE' WORKERS $1,200 TO SPEND, THEN DEMANDS MOST OF OUR PAY FOR WAR

Given actual military expenditures, proposed bipartisan "economic stimulus" packages, topping out at $1,200 per household, come off as a cheap election-year bribe, with each side trying to take credit for a paltry payoff. In reality, the rulers' oil wars are robbing workers blind, while they slaughter working-class youth by the hundreds of thousands. The Democrats' report cited above admits, with anti-Bush dismay, that from 2002 to 2008, "The total economic cost of the war in Iraq [and Afghanistan] to a family of four is a shocking...$20,900.".... The future impact on a family of four skyrockets to...$46,400 for Iraq and Afghanistan when all potential costs from 2002 to 2017 are included."

MAIN CLINTON FACTION WANTS POLICE STATE FOR BOSSES, TOO

Clinton plans to clean up the subprime mess with a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on subprime mortgage rates. Her purpose is more political than economic. She wants to impose police-state control over finance and industry. She's following Franklin Roosevelt's severe disciplining of U.S. capitalists in the run-up to World War II. Clinton promises "the toughest regulatory scrutiny of any president in a generation."

It was financial deregulation, prompted by inter-imperialist rivalry in the 1980s and 1990s, which set the stage for the subprime debacle. At that time U.S. banks needed to consolidate and grow in order to compete with giant European and Japanese counterparts. Citibank led the charge against regulation and in 1999 succeeded in shattering the main regulatory obstacle to bank expansion, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had kept commercial and investment banks separate. Today Citi is perhaps the world's biggest bank but holds yet untotaled billions of worthless subprime debt.

Capitalism by its very nature must create economic boom-and-bust cycles as well as imperialist wars in its insatiable competition for maximum profits. In the current era, it must impose fascism on the working class as well as discipline its own class to be able to preserve its system. Clinton, Obama and the rest of the candidates are dedicated to promoting and defending this bosses' dictatorship over the working class. Supporting any one of them would be a serious mistake. Rather we should join and build the Progressive Labor Party, which has the long-term goal of communist revolution, enabling the working class to collectively decide how to apportion, according to need, the social value it alone collectively produces.

Clinton, Obama Advisors: All War, All the Time

With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama falling all over each other posing as "anti-war" candidates, take a look at their pro-war advisors.

Clinton has:

* Madeleine Albright, Bill's Secretary of State, the main force behind her husband's Iraq sanctions that the UN says killed up to one million Iraqi civilians (half of them children). When asked about those sanction-caused child deaths, Albright told "60 Minutes,": "We think the price was worth it."

* General Wesley Clark, architect of the bombing of Serbia, who publicly stated the U.S. would bomb civilian targets regardless of "collateral damage" -- civilian casualties.

* Richard Holbrooke, a Jimmy Carter aide, oversaw weapons shipment to dictator Suharto's Indonesian military (see page 7) during the latter's invasion and massacre of 200,000 people in East Timor.

Obama has:

* Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor, who boasted responsibility for the $3 billion CIA creation of the Afghan jihadist movement in 1979 which produced Osama bin Laden. When asked about its "negative consequences," he replied, "What's a few riled-up Muslims?"

* Anthony Lake, a Bill Clinton aide who played a key role in the U.S. invasion of Haiti.

* Sarah Sewall, author of the introduction to Bush's General Petraeus's Army Counterinsurgency Manual which U.S. troops use worldwide in imperialist oil wars.

Such is the motley crew that will spread wider wars no matter who's elected president. They're all defenders of U.S. imperialism.

Big Bosses Back Barack

Barack Obama portrays himself as a servant of the working class, but his ties to the biggest capitalists are clear. Among Obama's top contributors are :

[[section]] Wall Street financial houses, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan-Chase, and Citigroup, the world's largest bank, all of whom undoubtedly liked his Senate vote against capping credit-card interest rates at 30% ;

[[section]] Exelon Corporation, the nation's leading nuclear-power-plant operator and Obama's fourth largest patron, have donated $74,350 to his campaigns.

[[section]] A leading corporate law firm, Skadden Arps -- which defends major financial firms against consumer class-action suits -- is one of Obama's leading career patrons;

[[section]] Rich Tarplin, a lobbyist for Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, is one of his biggest individual donors.

Black Students Lead Action Vs. Racist Minuteman Honcho

SOUTHWEST -- Chris Simcox, founder of the racist anti-immigrant Minuteman Civil Defense Corps recently returned to a university in the Southwest.  He previously visited the campus in April (see CHALLENGE, May 9), and was shut down by a multi-racial coalition of about 700 students and workers led by friends of PLP members.  It was the largest demonstration in campus history. 

This semester, the same conservative student group brought Simcox to campus again. Because of the success of the last protest, the police attempted to crack down on any further show of multi-racial protest. This time, instead of five cops, there were 15. The event was held inside an auditorium rather than outside in the "free speech" zone. Also, to get inside the auditorium, you had to show a valid photo ID and write your name on a sign-up sheet. Although it seemed problematic to get in, many students wanted to do some sort of protesting to counteract and hopefully shut down his racist speech.

In order to stop this event, we needed a plan. So, before the protest started at 2:00, we passed out 500 flyers that showed the ties between the Minutemen and white supremacist groups and called for all students and workers to unite to shut Simcox down. A group of about 30 black students were outraged to hear that Simcox was at their campus again. One student said, "I remember him from last semester, isn't he that racist guy who got booed off stage?" Another stated his anger toward Simcox because he is "no better than the Klan." They all seemed to be right-on with forcing him to leave their campus.

We then planned for everyone to meet near the entrance of the auditorium early and all but two people were going to go inside to shout Simcox down. When it got to be 2:00, the whole group of black students got out their ID's and walked together towards the booth where they had to give their information. The doors suddenly closed and the cops denied them access. The cops explained that they were ordered not to let anyone inside the auditorium past 2:00. It was 2:02. The group of students was even more outraged...especially after witnessing the cops granting access to a white person at 2:04! My friend and I talked with them about options to act against the blatant racist actions of the school and police. One student suggested, "We should have an old-fashion sit-in." My comrade and I explained how silent or peaceful protests would not show the school that we are not going to tolerate them allowing a racist to speak on our campus. So we all picked up posters and started chanting, "Minutemen, Nazis, KKK...Racists, Fascists, Go Away!"

Inside, about 15 anti-racists sat together and when Simcox came out to speak, they all stood up and started chanting for him to go home. After a few minutes, they were forced to leave by the cops. When they walked out of the auditorium, they were greeted by dozens of black students chanting "Hitler rose, Hitler fell, racist Minutemen, Go to Hell!" The police made several attempts to shut us all up by taking away our posters and trying to separate us, but we remained together and stole our posters back. We demonstrated collectively and when the cops tried to tell us that we were not in a "free speech zone" we just chanted louder.

After Simcox left, we were able to speak with all the students who had protested. We got their phone numbers and invited them to a student meeting in which we were going to talk about what happened and relate it to the capitalist system as a whole.

The fact that so many black students showed up to oppose Chris Simcox was an important step in breaking the ideology that claims the Minutemen only affect the Hispanic community. We want to replace this idea with and understanding of how racism against one "race" hurts all workers. Our experience showed us the possibilities of working together in opposition to ruling-class ideology. It solidified for us the reality of needing to attack racism as one class: the working class against the ruling class.

Multi-racial Protestors Drive off Border Watch KKK

Chanting "Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!" ("The workers' fight has no borders!"), a multi-racial group of workers, documented and undocumented, sent the racist vigilante U.S. Border Watch packing.

The Border Watch, like many such anti-immigrant groups, has recently been expanding its "operations." They're notorious for harassing day laborers waiting for work at pick-up sites.

Just two days prior to the event, our PLP club heard of the Border Watch's plan for an anti-immigrant demonstration in our city. We quickly called friends and supporters and together wrote a leaflet exposing racist anti-immigration policies, from France to the U.S., urging all workers to stand united against racism and the capitalist bosses who profit from it.

The day of the event (and prior to our arrival), many fearful migrant workers went into hiding as the Border Watch thugs bullied their way around. However, our arrival on the street emboldened many day laborers, who then joined our anti-racist ranks.

Because the Border Watch Klan was just across the street, one day laborer, unsure of whose side we were on, approached us to ask if we were with the Border Watch or not. I explained we were opposing them and stood united with the workers.

At first he could not believe that students and workers would stand with them against the Border Watch Klan, but he soon joined in our anti-racist chants.

We quickly outnumbered the Border Watch, who feared our counter-attack. Together the crowd chanted, "Obreros, unidos, jamas seran vencidos!" ("Workers, united, will never be defeated!") and drove the Border Watch racists down the street, away from the day-labor site.

As our numbers grew, it became clear that the racist capitalist system favored the Border Watch thugs when a row of police cars barricaded the workers on one side of the street, protecting the Border Watch Klan from harm's way.

As the demonstration wore on, misleaders from LULAC (a Latino political action group) and organizers of the Cesar Chávez March Committee appeared to try to steer our anti-racist militancy into a display of liberal patriotic nationalism. This can be just as dangerous as the nationalism of groups like the Border Watch. The bosses employ both ideologies in order to win workers on both sides to fight and die for U.S. imperialism at home and abroad.

By the close of the demonstration, many workers were won over to PL's militant anti-racism. They were eager to meet with us afterward to plan future actions. We made many new contacts and will continue to struggle with other workers as we fight against the racist capitalist system. Only communist revolution will free workers from racism and nationalism.

Defend Anti-Racists Who Disrupted Fascist Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes

MORRISTOWN, N.J., January 28 -- Two anti-racist protestors who were arrested last July for militantly disrupting a fascist anti-immigrant rally will be put on trial February 13 here on charges of "disorderly conduct" and "defiant trespass." A conviction in this frame-up could lead to jail time.

On July 28, 2007 in this town with a growing immigrant population, several hundred anti-racist protestors gathered to oppose the latest in a series of fascist groups rallying and spreading their racist, anti-immigrant venom. Billed as an "anti-illegal-immigrant rally," and including groups with names such as the "ProAmerica Society" and "You Don't Speak for Me," the anti-immigrant racists were welcomed to the steps of City Hall with open arms and the use of the city's electricity for their sound system by Donald Cresitello, the Democratic mayor of Morristown. KKKresitello had recently made national news by applying to have his police force deputized as immigration cops, over the objection of most people who live in Morristown and even of the town's police chief.

The prosecutor is pressing to bring the two brave anti-racist fighters to trial. It is critical that as many people as possible attend the trial to show the defendants that we support their courage and to show Morristown officials and anti-immigrant fascists throughout the U.S. that we will not be intimidated and that we will confront them wherever they dare raise their murderous heads.

While anti-immigrant groups claim to only want enforcement of immigration laws, they are truly the new face of the Ku Klux Klan. Since that day in Morristown, immigrants all over the U.S. have been the victims of laws enacted to criminalize the act of hiring or renting apartments to undocumented immigrants. There are growing numbers of physical attacks on those perceived to be immigrants by racists such as those who came to Morristown.

These gutter fascists are only one side of the coin. Terroristic raids by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration police have also spread. Some of the most vicious immigration raids have been conducted in Morristown itself, including one in which the ICE cops questioned a 5-year-old child about the whereabouts of her uncle, while holding a gun to her mother's chest. And in Mount Kisco, NY, a town cop has been charged in the murder of Rene Perez, an immigrant town resident. An audio tape was recently released on which Mount Kisco cops can be heard mocking the death of Mr. Perez to the lyrics of an old song "Walk Away Renee."

The Republican presidential candidates are now trying to outdo each other in who can be the most disgustingly anti-immigrant in their proposals. Any act or policy of one candidate that can be described as "pro-immigrant" is immediately pounced on by all the others. The Democrats are slicker. They are clearer about the ruling class' need to enlist many young immigrants into the military. The DREAM Act and proposed "legalization" programs are schemes to win immigrants to patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice for the rulers in imperialist oil wars.

One group of protestors in Morristown that day last summer decided to show its opposition by gathering and praying in a church parking lot on the other side of town. But most anti-racists knew that protesting from a distance would do nothing to stop these virulent anti-immigrant racists. PLP led a spirited group of protestors who knew that only by confronting these groups directly and refusing to allow them to spew their hatred unchallenged can we hope to bring a stop to their racist movement. Come to Morristown on Feb. 13 and support the anti-racists facing these phony charges!

Exposing Bosses' Politicians Builds Support For PLP

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, January 26 -- During a regular CHALLENGE sale we encountered the student government on our campus urging students to register to vote as a way to stop the tuition increases we're facing. We were distributing a leaflet exposing Clinton, Obama and the whole lie that voting would end the war and the cutbacks, leading to good conversations about the elections. We also explained to some that the tuition increases were caused by the loss of tax money resulting from the capitalist crisis and the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During that sale, a professor invited us to her class where an Obama campaign organizer was speaking. Because of previous discussions in the class, it became clearer to many as he spoke that electoral politics would not produce the social change many students sought. A more fundamental change from the system that is inherently racist, exploitative and imperialist was needed.

When students asked how to end segregation and racism, even the organizer couldn't explain how electing Obama would help stop school segregation or racism generally. Clearly Obama and electoral politics are incapable of solving the problems the working class faces every day -- racism, lack of healthcare and widening wars.

Even the speaker emphasized that change would come from grassroots organizing, that there was little Obama himself could solve alone. When a student said change would stem from us, the working class, the organizer had no reply. He couldn't challenge the power of the working class, which the Clintons and Obamas try to manipulate on behalf of the ruling class.

Afterwards, we had useful conversations with a few students; some expressed interest in communist politics and a fresh perspective instead of the failing reformist politics presented by the speaker and politicians. One student wanted to join a study group and subscribe to CHALLENGE. Another student invited us to an event later that day where he wanted us to explain our ideas about alternatives to voting. We were welcomed at the event, given time to speak and we invited everyone to read our paper. About 20 CHALLENGES were gladly accepted. We exchanged phone numbers with several students we knew from previous classes who are interested in discussing politics and to plan activities against the cuts.

Between the class and the evening film and discussion, we sold over 30 CHALLENGES and distributed 50 PLP leaflets. We realized how important it is to expose the deceitful electoral campaigns, be they for Obama, Clinton, McCain or Ron Paul.

From El Salvador's Horrors PLP Politics Shaped a Young PL'er

EL SALVADOR -- In 1980 I was among a group of people from El Salvador who went into exile in Honduras. I traveled in my grandmother's arms, while my father and a sister stayed in El Salvador.

The "orejas" (snitches that spy for the police and army) murdered my mother and one of my brothers. When I was in Colomoncagua, Honduras, I remember Honduran soldiers massacring people in the camp where we lived. When the soldiers came, the people went out to yell at them. Once all of us children were locked in a house for safety, while the adults confronted the soldiers with machetes, sticks and rocks.

In 1990, when we returned to El Salvador, I was 11. The war was still on; before that I had never heard the sound and terror of bullets and mortars in full battle. One day around 4 A.M., I awoke to the sounds of shooting; during the night the soldiers had broken into our encampment in Morazán. For two days we heard the sounds of guns and mortars. Someone said that all the people had to go to the mountains.

By that time, the fascist army had murdered three brothers and my mother. My father was still alive along with myself and another brother; he joined the ranks of the guerillas with many of the youth from the encampment. Many who I knew died.

One night we saw a helicopter shooting and launching lights with flares. My father said, "I wonder if my son is there." Until then, I still didn't know the reason for the war.

After the 1992 peace accords, I always talked to veteran guerillas, asking them the reason for the war. After those 12 years of armed conflict, I was still only 13. These veterans taught me the history and I came to identify myself with the left.

I firmly believed that revolutionary politics meant power was won through elections. Given what I had been taught, I became a reformer in the FMLN, which capitalism turned into an electoral party. Many veterans and commanders have become capitalists or small bosses. Nevertheless, I thought that was moving the revolution forward.

Then a long-time friend began reading CHALLENGE to me. He spoke about the PLP, gave me the paper and invited me to a meeting in his house. Others there talked to me about the international situation.

When the question of ideology arose, I described my electoral party (the FMLN) thinking that was the course to follow. After several meetings, I was thrilled with the PLP, and was invited to meet with international comrades to discuss the Party's work. Most important to me was how we analyzed reality. Meeting PLP has meant learning about a true revolution.

While the FMLN held sway in my infancy, now in the PLP I consider myself the fruit of those who spilled their blood defending me during my childhood and made it possible for me to fight for communist revolution through the international Progressive Labor Party.

A Young PLP member

French Labor Hacks Put One-Day Limit on Million Strikers

PARIS, Jan. 25 -- Amid capitalism's world economic meltdown, some one million public sector workers struck for one day yesterday across France while many strikers were among the 400,000 who joined protest marches in Paris and other cities nationwide. Private sector workers from General Motors, Airbus and Bugatti were among the marchers.

But yesterday's strike was smaller than the one on November 20. While half the school teachers and 20% of the postal workers walked out, the strike was less successful elsewhere, in particular in rail transport.

Public workers' demands included a 1,500-euro ($2,200) per month minimum wage, a 300-euro ($450) per month wage-hike for all public workers and higher retirement pensions and welfare and unemployment benefits.

Among healthcare workers, five emergency healthcare unions today called for emergency room workers to continue their month-old strike following the "total failure" of negotiations with the health ministry. Demands include shorter hours, higher pay for night work and compensation for the stress their jobs entail.

In November, nearly two million workers struck and 700,000 demonstrated, creating the real possibility of building a strike movement linking all public and private sector workers with workers of African and Arab origin. But the union misleaders frittered away the opportunity by limiting the strike to a single day. After two months of calm, it became more difficult to re-launch the movement.

Due to the weakness of yesterday's strike, budget minister Eric Woerth was able to merely promise "announcing" a wage measure on Feb. 18, adding that the government would establish "a mechanism to guarantee individual purchasing power" -- i.e., merit pay to pit workers against each other.

Still, there was more public support for yesterday's walkout than for November's. Polls showed 77% of public sector workers and 51% of private sector workers felt the strike was justified. The bosses' massive attacks that will surely come to force workers to pay even more for the world's economic crisis demand a break with all pro-capitalist forms of leadership.

Workers need communist leadership to unite all our struggles in a movement aiming to destroy capitalism, the source of all workers' problems. For example, the struggle against the deportation of undocumented immigrants is one the labor movement needs to take on board.

In December, over 100 undocumented workers in three detention camps began a hunger strike to protest conditions in the camps and to demand their liberation. On January 19, the European Day Against the Confinement of Foreigners, 12,000 demonstrated nationwide, with 3,000 at the biggest protest, in Paris.

But as one trade unionist remarked after the Lyons demonstration, "The composition of the demonstration does reveal the fact that this movement's mobilization is not anchored in trade unions'...practice." That is, the major unions never advance the class analysis that undocumented and "legal" workers are members of the same working class. Consequently, these unions now have a hard time overcoming the bosses' racist and nationalist propaganda, making it harder to mobilize in defense of immigrant workers' rights.

Workers could take their cue from the young rebels who militantly fought the rulers' cops in protesting the latter's racist attacks on Arab and African youth. Multi-racial unity of the unions and these rebels could strike a real blow against the ruling class's attacks on both groups.

Gazans Break Out of Their Prison
But Nationalism Foils Mid-Eastern Workers

On January 23, Palestinians in Gaza blew up a section of the wall that separates them from Egypt and poured out of their prison -- created by Israeli rulers -- to buy desperately needed goods in Egypt. The flood of people seeking food, medicine and fuel was there for all the world to see, and neither Israel nor Egypt has dared to rush in to stop it.

After 38 years of occupation and settlements, Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip in September 2005, claiming to have ended its occupation and any responsibility for the 1.4 million Palestinian residents. In reality, Israeli rulers turned Gaza into a giant concentration camp, controlling all passage of goods and people, money, access to the sea and air space.

Before the "disengagement," 65% of Gazans lived in poverty and 35% were unemployed. Since then conditions have deteriorated markedly, with the cutoff of all trade and severe limitations on the import of fuel, medicine and other necessities. Sanitation, housing, public health and all public services are now at a disastrous level.

Palestinians' anger at Israel and the corrupt Palestinian Fatah party allowed the electoral victory of Hamas, an Islamic nationalist party, and its takeover of Gaza in 2006. Israel used this event and the abduction of an Israeli soldier as the excuse to launch a constant air bombardment of Gaza, killing over 400 Palestinians, militants and civilians alike. Gazans have fired homemade rockets into Israel border towns, killing less than 20 Israelis. However the Western capitalist press and politicians have branded "Palestinian terrorism" as the reason a "peaceful solution" cannot be reached.

However, the real reason there's no solution is that since 1948 Israel has seized more than 80% of Palestinian land, expelling 750,000 Arabs from their homes and subjecting them to 60 years of brutal occupation. Israel has been able to maintain this oppression only because of massive U.S. military aid, more than sent to any other country. This helps the U.S. control the flow of oil, and its profits, in the Persian Gulf area, using the powerful Israeli military to deal with any rival bosses who might threaten Exxon-Mobil's empire.

Within Israel the status quo is justified by bitter anti-Arab racism which is drilled into all its citizens, who seem not to have learned the lesson of the holocaust about racism's evil and murderous nature.

Unfortunately currently there is no leadership in Israel or Palestine which champions the unity of Palestinian and Jewish workers and students and recognizes the need to oppose both imperialism and nationalism. Neither secular nor religious nationalism will deliver either Jewish or Palestinian workers and youth from the grip of leaders who use them to benefit one or another group of power- and wealth-seeking ruling classes. In the recent past such multi-racial groups have existed, some with the help of our Party. We must strive to rebuild the fight for multi-racial unity and communism in this region.

Africa, Part II
Imperialists' Profits Behind 5.4 Million Congo Deaths

"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation." (Karl Marx: "Capital," Volume One, Chapter 31; Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist)

For over a century and a half the Congo has been ravaged by this bloody accumulation of capital. Belgium's King Leopold became one of the world's richest men by turning the Congo into his private fiefdom, murdering 10-15 million. The imperialists and local capitalists who took over after Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960 have continued this genocide. Now a "peace deal" was signed to settle the fighting in the eastern Congo which has created 400,000 new refugees. (See CHALLENGE, 1/30) But since the causes of the conflict have not really changed, little can be expected from this latest truce.

According to the International Rescue Committee's (IRC) latest report, (Reuters, 1/22), 5.4 millions people have been killed in the Congo since the war began in the region in 1998, causing more deaths than any other conflict since World War II. "Congo's loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado perishing within a decade," stated IRC president George Rupp.

The shootings between the warring factions have not been the main cause of these deaths. Malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition, aggravated by the war, were the Congo's top killers, said the survey. "Most of the deaths are due to easily treatable and preventable diseases through the collapse of health systems and the disruption of livelihoods," said IRC director of global health programs Richard Brennan, one of the survey's authors. Congo has the lowest spending on health care of any country in the world, averaging just $15 per person annually.

The latest fighting before the January 22 truce came after Congo President Kabila met Condoleezza Rice in Ethiopia in September 2007. Rice also secured the support of the rulers of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. In November, Kabila was flown to Washington in the private plane of an Israeli mining magnate with interests in the Congo, to meet Bush. Then, with U.N. support, Kabila sent a large military force to fight rebel general Nkunda. But it was a disaster. The Congolese army was routed, forcing the government and its militia allies to reach a truce with the rebel forces.

The current fighting is labeled a "tribal conflict" between Tutsis and Hutus (continuing the one that led to the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s), but capitalist and imperialist thirst for profits are the real causes. General Nkunda is backed by Tutsi bosses and the Rwandan government who seek to control the mineral wealth of the Eastern Congo.

U.S., Canadian and European companies have monopolized the exploitation of diamonds, cobalt, gold, coltan and other mineral wealth in the region. They use local militias and bosses as subcontractors who impose slave-like conditions on those working in the mines. But now, China, India, Spain and even Russia are entering the operation, which is why the U.S. and European bosses want to ensure their lackeys are in control.

Huge oil deposits have been discovered in Lake Alberta, on the border between the Congo and Uganda. British Heritage Oil is now involved (its CEO has links to British military companies like Executive Outcomes and Sandline). Chinese and Spanish oil companies are now interested in exploring for oil there.

Besides Washington and Europe, Kabila is also being courted by China, which is giving his government $8 billion for infrastructure projects and mining operations. This will lead to Chinese companies' control of several important copper and cobalt mines.

(Future articles: how imperialist and local bosses reap huge profits from gold and other resources while African workers starve and die.)

LETTERS LETTERS

Paraguayan Friends of PLP Disrupt Rulers' Political Rally

Friends of PLP involved in the Party of the Movement Towards Socialism (P-MAS) boldly challenged a rogues' gallery of corrupt politicians, including outgoing Colorado Party (the right-wing ruling party) Governor Antonio Quiñonez of the Cordillera Department and his partner in crime, President Nicanor Frutos. When Nicanor appeared on-stage, 15 bold activists interrupted his fascist speech with chants of "Out with Nicanor!"

Predictably, the police attacked the youth, and Nicanor nervously resumed his speech, but the point had been made: No more passivity in the face of fascism and corruption!

Quiñonez, a target at this rally, owns the bus company that pollutes nearby streams in which workers' families bathe and wash their clothes and dishes. Until recently Quiñonez was the owner of the Cordillera Department's famously corrupt local lottery. He has used thugs to threaten the Contraloria Ciudadana anti-corruption group and also transferred a prosecutor who threatened his corrupt dealings to the Chaco Desert! (Sounds like Bush and friends?) But, as in the USA, the liberals will misdirect our struggle for liberation if we do not decisively advance the goal of communist revolution to our working-class friends.

In 2007, at a similar protest, the Contraloria Ciudadana and the Liberal Party organized a modest counter-inaugural protest rally against Nicanor and Quiñonez. The bosses had sharp-shooters atop buildings, and police beat back and chased the small reformist crowd chanting, "Nicanor, You Liar!"

Based on this past experience, police repression should have been expected this time and greater numbers should have been mobilized to counter police brutality. Our friends could have mobilized many more than 15 militants and the tactical battle might have had a different outcome. The action would have been better politically with more revolutionary chants like, "Out with Capitalism!" or "Smash Capitalism!" Such politics would clarify who the enemy is: not just the Colorado Party but the system of capitalism. A comrade here has said, "The elections, and voting for Lugo [a non-revolutionary, liberal politician] are only a means of getting to where we want to be." But elections will not solve the problems of the working class. Voting only justifies the system, and says in effect: "Capitalism can change itself; all we have to do is vote." A revolutionary organization cannot justify the capitalist system it hopes to destroy. This is a complete contradiction!

Only by building a base in the working class and the community, amongst farmers, workers and students can we truly put forward the revolutionary ideas that will free all workers from enslavement.

A truly revolutionary organization places its trust in the working class and never minces words or hides behind reformist slogans. Wearing a Che Guevara shirt and mentioning imperialism or revolution a couple of times don't make an organization or its politics revolutionary. We must study dialectical materialism, trust the working class and put our learned understanding into action.

Hugo Chavez, P-MAS's idol, only wants to reform capitalism. This is impossible. There is no "Bolivarian" nationalist/populist or electoral way to change a system that today is even more rotten to the core than ever. Its international economic meltdown is dragging the world's workers into endless imperialist wars, mass poverty and death.

Red Guarani

Howard Students Fight Campus Militarization

Howard University students in the Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC) are mounting a struggle against the University's ties to U.S. imperialism. They're particularly aiming at ROTC, whose colonel is aggressively trying to strengthen its role on campus, putting up new permanent signage and forcing its way into the Social Sciences Division of the College of Arts and Sciences. (Some "science"!).

PEAC is also questioning the Howard University/Army High Performance Computing Research Center on campus, concerned that the University's president serves on the National Security Agency's Advisory Board.

PEAC's first issued a flyer around the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday comparing King's 1967 Riverside Church speech against the war in Vietnam to the University's opposite approach of essentially supporting the Iraq war through its concrete ties to U.S. imperialism.

These initiatives grew out of PEAC's investigation of the U.S. Armed Forces' new Africa Command. Students concluded that the goal of this new military structure was to better safeguard U.S. imperialist interests in Africa, from Sudan to Nigeria to South Africa to Kenya; it had nothing to do with assisting African victims of civil war, AIDS or poverty.

This initiative should be linked to, and hopefully inspire, similar struggles on campuses nationwide.

Red Observer

Soviet Reversal Wasn't All Stalin's Fault

The letter from Ancient Red (CHALLENGE, Jan. 30) discussed the rise of the "red bourgeoisie" in the USSR after the revolution and how this contributed to the eventual reversal of the gains made through the revolution. While the comrade is correct that the inequality in wages (and wages themselves, really) was a tragic ideological and material concession to capitalism, it is incorrect to place the blame solely on Stalin.

There is some evidence that Stalin was very unhappy with the development of privileged status for party leaders. Joseph Davies, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the 30's described him as "clean-living" and "modest." Marshall Zhukov said that, "He never tolerated any luxury in clothing, furniture, or his life in general." Finally, as early as 1928 Stalin himself complained that, "...As these leaders [of the Party] rise they get further away from the masses, and the masses begin to look up at them from below and do not venture to criticize them... [This] cannot but give rise to a certain danger of the leaders losing contact with the masses and the masses getting out of touch with the leaders." Part of our battle against anti-Stalinist ideology (beyond refuting the bald-faced lies) is explaining that what happened in the Soviet Union was the result of incorrect theory and collective errors, not because Stalin was a bad person. Stalin certainly deserves blame; he was the leader of the Party and he could have more vehemently opposed the development of privilege. But to blame him solely is incorrect.

JP

Angry Tenants Unite to Fight Slumlord

(The following letter was received from a friend of PLP and describes the anger that many workers feel towards conditions they suffer from profit-driven landlords.)

I thought your readers might be interested in a struggle we've been having with our slumlord. After many years of dealing with him individually, my fellow tenants consciously decided to unite and rise up.

For many years we've struggled by ourselves with uninhabitable housing conditions and a landlord whose only concern was to collect our hard-earned money. Recently I learned that based on our sweat and silence over the years he has bought three houses. While we tenants struggle to live amid a state of disrepair, thanks to our rent payments he can rest on three beds of his choice.

About two months ago, another tenant and I began discussing the mutual obstacles we shared and the problems we face independently. Then we decided to stop talking and take matters into our own hands. The two of us formed a tenants committee and considered how to rally other tenants to our mutual cause. We began with our best viable asset -- our mouth.

We reached out to other tenants about how our shared burdens gave us a common ground to change our conditions. We planned a tenants meeting to discuss our strategy for attaining our goals. We've spread the message that the only way we can beat the landlord is through a determined unity.

We sent the landlord a letter and a signed affidavit with our demands for repairs. We've also taken steps to begin housing-court proceedings. As a combined force, we have a real opportunity to change the status quo.

To the landlord we're nothing but illiterate, uneducated, ill-informed and too divided to do this. To him we're the human sheet rock that sustains his bank account. However, he's forgotten how profitable joint dialogue can be.

At the very least, when two individuals discuss their mutual concerns, they begin to realize the bonds that exist between them. Looking around, one can see others facing a common enemy. United and strengthened by our mutual rage, we're not only fortified to challenge management but to destroy the mechanism behind the curtain.

Mad As Hell Worker

Striking Writers Undercut By Scabbing, Bosses' Culture

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29--The strike by film and TV writers which began on Nov.5 is being pressured more and more to reach a deal favorable to the mega corporations that own the mass media. The West Coast leadership of the WGA (Writers Guild) agreed not to picket the Grammy Awards Show. It also entered into "informal" talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), while announcing it was dropping demands for jurisdiction over animation and reality shows.

The deal last week by Directors Guild (DGA) and the studios and networks -- which doesn't challenge the right of the media bosses to monopolize the profits from the internet and and other new media sent a strong message to the WGA to reach a similar sellout deal. This might also force the Screen Actors Guild to follow that pattern when their contract expires in the summer.

The WGA strike reflects the current dismal situation faced by many people who consider themselves part of the "middle class." The WGA members, who in general write horrible mindless stuff used by the media bosses to indoctrinate workers and youth with racist, sexist, pro-cop, anti-working class, pro-war and anti-communist ideology, consider themselves above the working class. But in this day and age of capitalist economic meltdown, sharper inter-imperialist rivalry leading to more and more wars, the bosses can't afford to bribe all those who serve them. In a way these writers are victims of the same crap they produce: they don't think about seeking the solidarity of production workers in the studios (truck drivers, cleaning staff, technical staff, etc.). A strike by those workers would up the ante and could really shut down the studios -- and would stop the scabbing by millionaires like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, and Ellen Degeneres (all members of the WGA).

Workers and youth should support the struggle of these writers (many of whom are not well-paid) because they are fighting the same bosses -- Sony, Disney, Viacom, General, Rupert Murdoch, etc.-- who have made our lives even more miserable. But, we also must sharpen the ideological struggle against the crap these writers produce.

Puerto Rico Teachers Defy Strike Ban

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, January 29 -- Over 500 teachers picketed the Caguas region of the Department of Education as more than 25,000 members of the Puerto Rican Federation of Teachers (FMPR) prepared to strike February 1 for higher wages, better working and school conditions and against the strike-breaking Law 45, which calls for firing of public workers who strike. The teachers are also fighting the bosses' media and union hacks affiliated with the AFL-CIO who actually support Law 45 containing the strike-breaking clause. The government decertified the FMPR for violating this anti-strike law.

These militant teachers deserve the support of all teachers in the U.S. and internationally. It is a particularly important struggle for public workers in the U.S. who face the same kind of union-busting law.

Good Riddance to an Anti-Communist Mass Murderer

Suharto, Indonesia's former military dictator, finally kicked the bucket after a long illness. Unfortunately, he died in bed and not at the hands of the working class, to whom he brought so much suffering.

Suharto was the leader of the 1965 military coup that ousted the nationalist regime of Sukarno. "Throughout the country, members, supporters and suspected sympathisers of the Parti Kommunist Indonesia [PKI] were massacred; it was estimated that up to one million were killed, while many more were imprisoned or detained without trial." (The London Independent, 1/28) It was one of the bloodiest massacres in recent history, and the CIA helped the death squads all the way, supplying them with the names of communists and sympathizers.

More than a decade later, the Suharto regime committed more mass murder, this time against 200,000 in East Timor, which was occupied by Indonesia after it had became independent from Portugal. The Indonesian army also massacred many thousands in West Papua and oil-rich Aceh (where Exxon-Mobil has huge investments).

Suharto served in the Dutch colonial army (Indonesia had been a Dutch colony). Then, during World War II, he won promotion in the puppet army controlled by the Japanese fascists. After the war, he joined the anti-Dutch struggle until Indonesia became independent in 1950.

His regime lasted from 1965 until May 1998, when, after a mass rebellion, Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, suggested he step down to avoid more turmoil.

Corruption was rampant in his regime. It's estimated that his family and cronies stole anywhere up to $35 billion, using their control of state power. But justice wasn't served and Suharto was able to live out a quiet life within his fortified villa. The new rulers refused to try him or his crooked sons for corruption.

Indonesia's communist movement was one of the world's biggest. The PKI was a mass-based party, but it made a fatal error: it tried to unite with Sukarno who they saw as the "progressive bourgeoisie," actually joining his government -- only to be massacred when Suharto seized power in 1965, leaving Sukarno in a figurehead role. The PKI had no strategy for a real revolutionary struggle to smash capitalism and imperialism. Its ill-fated faith in "lesser-evil" capitalists was paid in blood.

The communist movement in Indonesia has not recovered from that mistake. This led to Suharto and his cronies never paying for their crimes against the working class. Let's make sure this doesn't happen in the future.

REDEYE REDEYE

Stimulus for poor? Dems say no

House Democrats and the White House have reached an agreement on an economic stimulus plan.... The Democrats appear to have buckled,... dropping demands for provisions that would have helped the most in need. And those happen to be the same provisions that might actually have made the stimulus plan effective....

But the Bush administration has apparently succeeded in killing all of these ideas, in favor of a plan that mainly gives money to those least likely to spend it...and Democrats accepted. (NYT, 1/25)

Class war behind `tribal' wars

Here is how the story has been framed: the peaceful Kenya we know and love from our holiday snaps has suddenly erupted in senseless, tribal barbarism....

The coverage shows how quickly the west reverts to racism. Why is the word "tribal" only used to refer to Africa? Why don't we talk of Belgian...tribes? No, only in Africa is inter-ethnic violence cast as "ancient," immutable tribalism, associated in the European mindset with barbarism and irrationality. It's a language of self-congratulation -- we are civilised, Africans are not....

But Kenya is a complex society with 48 different ethnic groups and the highest internally displaced population in Africa... and its burgeoning, largely unemployed, population struggles to secure some of the gains of the recent economic boom.

It's hard to imagine any country negotiating such chronic insecurity and rapid social and economic dislocation without conflicts of interest flaring up....

The violence that results is certainly barbaric... but it is not about a primordial African capacity for savagery.... On a continent that has seen more wars since 1990 than in the whole of the previous century, violence can be a form of communication of last resort. When all other channels of seeking justice for embittered grievances in a corrupt regime appear to have been exhausted, some will see violence as the only way to protect their interests....

What we are seeing in Kenya -- and in other unstable developing countries -- is how human beings behave when faced with the kind of chronic insecurity that globalisation is incubating the world over. (GW, 1/18)

Marxist students active in Iran

TEHRAN - In early December, a surprising scene unfolded at Tehran University: 500 Marxist students held aloft portraits of Che Guevara to protest President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies. Smaller groups of Marxist students held similar protests in several other cities....

Leftist students...refer to the government as a capitalist regime and condemn pro-democracy politicians who support change as "bourgeois...."

A woman...writes "Reform died, long live revolution...."

"We don't think we can change anything in the near future...but as students we think we can transfer our knowledge about class, capitalism and equality to society, especially the workers." (NYT, 1/20)

Food prices up; world-wide riots

From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.

The food price index...climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages.

...Food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen....

Huge demand for biofuels has created tension between using land to produce fuel and using it for food. (NYT, 1/19)

Disasters built into capitalism

After every crisis, regulators say they will cure the financial system of the recent folly, reassuring the public that the caustic asset du jour -- Latin American debt, Internet stocks, mortgages in Florida -- will never again be allowed to bring the banks down.

Yet the recurrence of disasters suggests that the risky cravings of the masters of the universe are uncurbed. All that happens is that the next crisis takes a somewhat different form....

There's nothing like a smart banker motivated by an otherworldly bonus to get around the most carefully written regulatory limits on his or her ability to make money.

...They don't have to return past bonuses when the year is bad. (NYT, 1/25)

Economic Collapse Burying Workers; Will Spark Wider Wars

The global economic collapse is crushing workers even more. The UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) predicted that the subprime crisis and rising oil prices will increase world unemployment by five million (Agence France Press, 1/23) over and above the already 189.9 million now jobless. That forecast was reached before the current turbulences in the world's financial markets. "We still don't know the impact of the stock market crisis on the employment figures," explained ILO chief José Salazar-Xirinchs.

Trenton, NJ Mayor Douglas Palmer, president of the U.S. Mayor's Conference, told 250 mayors meeting in Washington that the subprime crisis is "an economic tsunami...hitting our cities." A recent Conference study said home values would drop by $1.2 trillion this year.

The mayors are asking for immediate federal help, but -- even though some cities are suing banks and speculators who caused the subprime mess -- their main response has been to cut social services even more nation-wide. Sacramento city officials have responded to a $55 million projected budget shortfall for next year by ordering an immediate hiring freeze and ending some discretionary spending. In Virginia, Fairfax County -- facing a $220 million deficit for the coming fiscal year -- is considering cuts to school districts. On January 24th, billionaire New York City Mayor Bloomberg announced an across-the-board 5% cut for all city departments, for a total slash of $1.5 billion in two years, including a $505 million dollar reduction in schools.

The effects of the current economic crisis are also hitting countries closely linked to U.S. imperialism. During the current world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, the governor of Mexico's Central Bank reported that his country's economy will be hit badly -- 40% of Mexico's Gross Domestic Product depends on trade with the U.S. Already, Mexico is predicting a slowdown in growth for 2008. On top of that, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrant workers in the U.S. are losing their jobs because of the subprime crisis (many work in construction) and general economic collapse, reducing their remittances to relatives back in Mexico.

This racist aspect of the subprime crisis is affecting Britain and Spain. Immigrant workers involved in construction there are losing their jobs.

International financier George Soros is not bullish about this crisis. He told the Davos economic forum that there is a profound difference in the current crisis, marking the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. He called it the worst economic crisis since World War II. The hope that the rising economies of China and India will help ease the situation is being dashed since they depend on exporting to the U.S. and European markets, hard-hit by the current crisis. For example, incomes for workers in the U.S. have not risen in real terms for three decades because of downsizing, racist wage-cuts and the lack of mass fight-back by the union movement. The subprime crisis has put working-class homeowners -- who borrowed money based on the rising values of their homes -- in a hole, decreasing consumer spending. Less consumption and a falling U.S. dollar might spur China and other countries, who have lent the U.S. trillions by buying Treasury bonds, to cash in their investments, sinking the U.S. economy even more.

Soros is worried that resulting political tensions, including U.S. protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

That "worse" could turn economic conflicts into a shooting war among the world's imperialists for a bigger share of the capitalist pie. The subprime and credit-crunch crises are just symptoms of a capitalist system based on speculation, endless imperialist wars and racist-fascist attacks against the international working class. None of the tricks the bosses used in recent decades have worked, including Thatcherism, Reagan's "trickle-down voodoo economy," Clinton's "new economy" or Bush's tax cuts. U.S., British and other capitalists' turning away from production has created an even more parasitic capitalist class, still more dependent on financial speculation and increasing fraud, without creating real value. Each new scheme -- dot.com, subprime mortgages, etc. -- created bigger bubbles, dragging the world economy down.

But capitalism won't fall by itself. Since its birth the profit system has been based on boom-and-bust cycles, accompanied by massive wars, recessions and depressions. The anarchistic capitalist production system will continue as long as we workers let them make us pay with our blood for their profits. Previous wars and crises led to workers' revolutions: the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions. As the international working class prepares for May Day 2008, we in the Progressive Labor Party must step up our efforts to win workers, youth and soldiers worldwide to see that the only way out of this capitalist hell is building a massive revolutionary communist movement to bury the bosses once and for all.

The Demon Is Capitalism

A Demon of Our Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Perils of FInancial Innovation

By Richard Bookstaber

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007

"Complexity cloaks chaos" concludes Richard Bookstaber in A Demon of Our Own Design. He draws on insider knowledge of recent Wall Street debacles to paint a future of bigger, more frequent financial collapses. The need to reinvigorate value-producing manufacturing becomes more severe with each crash: the attacks on the working class sharper.

Historically, many empires have been undone by letting go of their domestic manufacture-based economies. A seventeenth-century Spaniard enthused: "Let London manufacture... as long as our capital can enjoy them. ...All the world serves [Madrid] and she serves nobody." Eventually, London used its manufacturing to become the center of a new empire, while's Spain's empire declined.

Speculation: U.S. Imperialism's Hidden Weakness

The financial sector now accounts for 31 percent of U. S. corporate profits -- up from 20 percent in 1990 and 8 percent back in 1950. But, larger percentages of financial profits come from hedge fund speculation. New York Times business columnist Floyd Norris blames these financial "innovations" for spreading the housing-related credit market crisis.

On the other hand, China has a growing industrial economy allowing it to become an emerging imperialist competitor. Not long ago U.S. "experts" questioned China's economic viability since Chinese banks carried too many non-performing loans. China Investment Corporation, the state-run investment fund, will spend two-thirds of its $200 billion shoring up these banks. Their percentage of "bad" loans has already dropped by half.

Chinese imperialists got this capital from exploiting workers in their vast, rapidly-expanding manufacturing sector. They can get away with it because capitalist leaders long ago hijacked the communist revolution. They've turned it into it's opposite -- another exploitive capitalist nightmare.

Spiral to Hell

Bookstaber gives a running account of financial "innovations" beginning in the 1980s. He explains the mathematics behind investment strategies that caused such infamous disasters as the 1987 crash and the demise of Long Term Capital Management. He worked with many of the players and admits to contributing to financial catastrophes.

He freely admits speculative "financial tools" help for only a few years. The investment community "invents" one speculative scheme after another trying to stay ahead of the inevitable payback. By now, the very design of financial markets insures a "liquidity spiral to hell."

His solution is to reduce "tight coupling and complexity of financial transactions." The financial markets shouldn't use "every financial instrument that can be dreamt up." Speculation shouldn't rely on large sums of borrowed money. This "leverage" speeds up the spiral to catastrophe, spreading the danger to areas beyond the original investment. Bookstaber hopes "simpler financial instruments and less leverage will create a market that is more robust and survivable."

He never asks why U.S. bosses turned to financial speculation in the first place. Industrial opportunities to extract surplus value and profit failed to keep pace with those of emerging imperialist competitors. U.S. financial titans were forced to speculate to keep up. Bookstaber's solution is fanciful in this climate.

Workers Create All Value

The value of an automobile or airplane is greater than the sum of the parts that make it up. The amount of labor in production creates the increase in value. The boss can't use this extra value until he sells the product. Marx called this part of the process exchange. Exchange itself doesn't create any value.

As exchange becomes less connected to creation of value, it turns into speculation. One boss can make money at the expense of another, but no value is created in the exchange. That's what increasingly opaque hedge funds are all about. Eventually the house of cards collapses if no extra value is created to back up these financial "tools."

Ruling-class strategic thinkers have awakened to the danger and to the need to actually produce value. They are re-industrializing on the backs of low-paid immigrant and black labor, starting with expanding subcontractors.

Racist practices like this hurt all workers. The network of non-union subcontractors has grown to include low-paid sub-assembly and assembly factories. Conditions in traditional union plants -- with older white and black workers -- are being driven down to subcontractor levels. Even in union facilities, the new hires get paid half what veteran co-workers make. The bosses may not be able to stop speculation, but they can and will attack us. J

Re-industrialization with low-paid domestic labor is only the beginning. The bosses hope to rein in emerging imperialist competitors like Russia and China through control of Mideast oil. The current wars are only a prelude to more bloody oil wars. Eventually, direct confrontation will be necessary, leading to world war.

Poverty, war, racism and economic crisis are the demons of the capitalist design. We need a new design that produces for the needs of our class, not the profits of the bosses -- communism.

 

a href="#Elections’ Primary Goal: Win Workers To War, Racism, Police State">"lections’ Primary Goal: Win Workers To War, Racism, Police State

• Obama Lures Youth to Fight and Die in Wider Wars
• Clinton Team Drips With Serbian, Iraqi Blood
• Voting Never Solved Anything: Only Red Revolution Can

U.S. Imperialism: Killer By Suicide

Profs Fight for Right to Teach Anti-Capitalism in Classroom

a href="#Striking Miners Battle Mexico’s Bosses, Cops, Union-Busting Government">"triking Miners Battle Mexico’s Bosses, Cops, Union-Busting Government

Growing PLP Club in Spain Links Study and Action

Red Mechanics Needed: Detroit Totaled by U.S. Capitalism

Help Wanted: In Iraq

a href="#Capitalism Won’t Fall On Its Own">"apitalism Won’t Fall On Its Own

Ford Strike In Russia Ends

a href="#Bhutto’s Party and Musharraf, Two Sides of Capitalist Coin">"hutto’s Party and Musharraf, Two Sides of Capitalist Coin

Unity With African, Arab Workers Critical to Union Fight vs. French Bosses, Hacks

Battle for Resources Behind Endless Wars in Africa

4 Million Killed in Congo

Transportation Workers Can Be Key Force for Revolution

LETTTERS

Confidence in Working Class Pays Off

Worker from the West Need to Fight Racist Deportation Raids

a href="#Phony Wrestlers Hype Phony ‘War on Terror’">Ph"ny Wrestlers Hype Phony ‘War on Terror’

Revoking Union Rights Is A Law of Capitalism

Higher-paid Jobs Corrupted USSR Leaders

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

• Lessons of ‘Boston 75’ Crucial to PLP’s Future
• Steroids Helped Baseball Bosses Bulk Up Profits

Challenge Web Extra: Chile: Massacre of Miners a Century Ago Led to Building of Commmunist Party

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a name="Elections’ Primary Goal: Win Workers To War, Racism, Police State">">"lections’ Primary Goal: Win Workers To War, Racism, Police State

The Obama-Clinton battle in the Democratic Party primaries has spread the illusion that positive change results from voting to reform the profit system rather than from militant, revolutionary struggle to smash the bosses’ dictatorship. High voter turnouts for Barack Obama’s surprise victory in Iowa and Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire comeback signal a dangerous development for the working class.

Liberals push the myth that Obama and Clinton mark a decline in racism and an advance in women’s rights in the U.S. Obama is "fashioning a positive change in the very character of the nation,’’ gushed NY Times’ black columnist Bob Herbert. (1/12/08) A Times article the next day said, "Whoever wins the nomination....the victory will be a benchmark moment for the American promise of equality." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Obama and Clinton, in fact, will intensify the oppression of workers — male and female, black, Latin, Asian, Arab and white. Illinois Senator Obama didn’t lift a finger when thousands of mostly black workers were laid off in Chicago’s Cook County hospitals, simultaneously slashing healthcare for a mostly black and Latino patient population. And Clinton voted for war in Iraq and for the military "option" against Iran.

Both Democratic front-runners represent a U.S. capitalist class seriously challenged by rivals from Iran to China. In the coming period, U.S. bosses will need millions of troops to kill and die in their expanding racist wars. They need to transform a debt-ridden, declining economy into a wartime one by slashing workers’ living standards and creating a police state. Obama and Clinton are vying, not to promote equality, but to become the chief executor of the rulers’ deadly plans.

Obama Lures Youth to Fight and Die in Wider Wars

Contrary to Obama’s capitalist-fed worshippers at the Times, racism, the rulers’ main tool for splitting and weakening the working class, remains rampant in the U.S. By every measure and in every area — income, unemployment, education, housing, health, arrests, imprisonment, deportation — black and Latin workers suffer the most, and this super-exploitation worsens conditions for all workers, under every Democratic and Republican presidency. Obama’s role is to mask that reality with the falsehood of "equal opportunity." He follows in the footsteps of ruling-class protégés Colin Powell and Condi Rice.

As Obama lures young people to the system, one job he can attempt for the rulers (win or lose) is to help reverse the 58% plunge in black military enlistment since 2000. "Man-of-the-people" Obama turns out to be a tool of the top U.S. imperialist financiers. He "has raised nearly $100 million in campaign contributions, nearly as much as the Hillary Clinton money machine. Three of his four largest groups of bankrollers are executives of Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan Chase." (NY Daily News, 1/11/08)

Clinton Team Drips With Serbian, Iraqi Blood

"Pioneer" Clinton aims to be the first woman to lead U.S. imperialism in war. She has constantly lobbied in the Senate to increase the size of U.S. forces. Her campaign advisors include a host of war criminals from her husband’s administration — Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger and General Wesley Clark, who all helped orchestrate Clinton’s terror bombing of Serbia and softening-up of Iraq with missiles and starvation-inducing sanctions.

Opportunistically seizing on people’s disgust with the Bush regime, Obama and Clinton babble about "change." But the change they have in mind is bad for workers. They want changes like those called for by the Clinton-appointed 1999 Hart-Rudman commission. It demanded a huge revamping of the state apparatus with vastly broadened police powers to put the nation on a war footing. It sought a government that could enforce the sacrifice of workers’ blood and bosses’ profits needed in global conflicts to preserve U.S. supremacy. Bush failed at this; Obama and Clinton hope to lead that effort.

Voting Never Solved Anything: Only Red Revolution Can

The best changes for workers in the last century — establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Russian and Chinese revolutions of 1917 and 1949 — did not occur in a voting booth. They grew from class-based armed struggle in the streets after years and decades of painstaking organizing in workplaces, schools, neighborhoods and the army and navy. Our Party’s long-term goal is to repeat those true working-class triumphs while correcting the political errors that led to their reversal.

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U.S. bosses have failed to win masses of working class youth — especially black and Latino — to kill and die for imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan. On October 31, the Army announced that it had started the October 1st recruiting year with the lowest level of "delayed entry" recruits since the beginning of the all-volunteer forces in 1973. The Boston Globe reports that in the military overall, recruitment among blacks has dropped by 58% since 2000 ("Military Sees Big Decline in Black Enlistees." 10/7/07).

Racism within the U.S. — especially against lower enlisted black and Latin troops — undermines the bosses’ ability to win workers to fight their wars in the first place. Blacks make up more than 22% of the army and only 12.3% of the total U.S. population. But Michael O’Hanlon, a senior advisor to the military, says that the trend of serving in the military is "at risk in the black community."

The Globe reports that the racist response to hurricane Katrina, the legal lynching of the Jena 6, and the history of disproportionate black deaths in Vietnam has spurred black youth to decline military service in higher numbers. To win more blacks to serve, politicians and media are trying to mislead and fool workers, promising anti-racist reforms like revamped hate-crime legislation. They only want to direct anti-racist anger away from the capitalist system.

In 2006 an Army report recommended increasing the pool of black officers in the combat arms branch of the Army office corps in order to build "the capacity for a long-term, sustained level of conflict." And this past October, two months after two nooses were found at the U.S. Coast Guard academy, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Elijah Cummings (Dem.-Maryland), and Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen, decried the incidents. What they feared was not more racist attacks on students and officers-in-training but rather the effects on "the strength of unity" within the officer corps that imperialism requires to keep U.S. workers killing Middle Eastern workers.

One way the bosses are trying to win black youth is by running Barack Obama as a serious contender for president. But Obama wants to expand the war on terror and shift the center of combat from Iraq to Afghanistan in order to free up troops for possible attacks on Iran, Pakistan or the Sudan. According to lower-enlisted black and Latin troops in contact with PLP, Afghanistan is more accepted than Iraq because troops are not as likely to die there, along with the perception within the military that the U.S. is winning. But Obama is looking out for U.S. imperialists’ interests, not for lower-enlisted troops.

According to a recent Army War College report entitled "U.S. Interests in Central Asia and Challenges to Them," U.S. imperialists need Afghanistan as a base to project military power and to fend off Russian and Chinese imperialists’ influence over oil/gas-rich states in the region, regardless of who becomes president. Already, the "good" war has killed thousands of Afghans and over 600 coalition troops.

No matter what the bosses do to win workers to fight, overall recruitment trends continue to fall short of the troops the military needs to relieve the strain of current deployments. In October, the Senate voted down the Dream Act, a Pentagon-backed bill that targeted hundreds of thousands of undocumented, mainly Latino, youth for recruitment. Lawrence J. Korb, a top strategist for U.S. imperialism, say the U.S. needs 100,000 more troops the next few years and warns, "If we cannot get sufficient numbers of the right people on a volunteer basis, as Lt. General Lute, President Bush’s war czar noted, returning to the draft will have to be considered."

PLP and friends must link the racism of the justice system and imperialist wars to local bosses and to the capitalist system. Within the military, we need to influence troops to do what they can to resist killing for imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the bosses building to expand support for the "war on terror," fighting racism, especially against Arabs and Muslims, becomes even more important.

Union mis-leaders have told PL unionists that raising the war distracts from bread-and-butter issues. Anti-war groups have told PL’ers that racism is a related but separate struggle. And soldiers won to bosses’ ideology say the main enemy is those who are planting IEDs (roadside bombs), not the bosses pitting workers against each other to fight their wars. It’s up to PLP to combat these lies and win our base to take action that exposes capitalism for what it is — a racist, sexist, imperialist system that must be destroyed.

U.S. Imperialism: Killer By Suicide

There are many ways in which U.S. imperialism kills people. One of the least know is GI suicide: one veteran soldeir commits suicide every 84 minutes — 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.

A CBS-TV report (11/13/07) on figures from 45 of the 50 states revealed that in 2005, 6,256 veterans committed suicide: 120 every week, 17 per day. If the other five states had reported, the final figure might approach 24 per day, or one every hour.

In the 20-24 age group, the suicide rate is up to four times the civilian average.

The onset of symptoms of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder is often delayed for decades, but it has reached epidemic proportions, which the Pentagon denies and refuses to even count.

Most youth do not enlist because they want to kill civilians. But experiencing the carnage in Iraq and Vietnam, among other imperialist wars, leads to another type of murder by war: GI suicides.

Profs Fight for Right to Teach Anti-Capitalism in Classroom

CHICAGO — The situation in U.S. higher education mirrors the increasing crisis and growing ferocity of U.S. rulers against other parts of the working class. They raise the rate of exploitation, aided by the complete sellout by the trade union leadership. Huge cutbacks in state and federal money mean that even "public" colleges are so expensive that they are scarcely public any longer. Students take 5-6 years to graduate, and graduate students take almost a decade to get their doctoral degrees.

Almost three-fourths of college classes are taught by graduate students, part-time, and adjunct faculty who work for less than a living wage, normally with no benefits and no job security from year to year. A campaign funded by "conservative" ruling-class forces to intimidate teachers away from criticizing capitalism and its horrors has been so blatant that many of the more secure full-time and tenured faculty recognize that some form of opposition is needed.

PL members and friends carried the campaign against these abuses and for communism to the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the largest convention of college teachers in the world. As in the past we worked with our friends in the Radical Caucus (RC) to recruit more faculty and graduate students to class struggle and ultimately to the Party.

The RC’s reform struggles focused on three resolutions to the MLA Delegates. The first, on the relation between super-exploitation of teachers, their lack of job security, and lack of freedom to teach anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, passed with some debate.

The second resolution, urging freedom to criticize Zionism in the classroom, was sidetracked by a backstage agreement between one delegate who is also head of the liberal American Association of University Professors (AAUP), supposedly an "academic freedom" group, and the MLA leadership. The explicit defense of those who teach anti-Zionism was replaced by a general statement that all teachers should be free to teach as they wish. This ignores the big attacks against those teachers who criticize Zionism — and that was the AAUP leader’s goal. A third resolution, against the politically-motivated firing of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, was watered down to be passed in a weaker form.

The "liberal" AAUP leader and the "liberal" MLA Executive Board were exposed as failing to stand up for those faculty who want to attack U.S. imperialism and Zionism. We need to stress this more, and prepare better for next year.

We met many new, good people who will help build our struggles. We had some good discussions about the Party and communism, and are following up. We should have organized to leaflet the convention itself, as in previous years. We were also weak in distributing CHALLENGE. That error is being corrected now in post-convention contacts.

We have renewed our determination to make explicit anti-capitalism, along with anti-racism, the "bottom line" of all our public statements in sessions and meetings. A modest beginning must be improved in future years.

Most of our friends believe that a "humane" capitalism without imperialism and war is possible. They think, and want to believe, that U.S. bosses can be won to making the U.S. like what they think Denmark or Switzerland are. This is impossible, but most of our colleagues "want it to be true." The Democratic candidates for President are feeding those illusions with promises of "Change!" and "Dump Bush!" Revisionists — phony "communists" and "socialists" — are building those illusions, leading our class down the path to world war. We have to win more and more teachers to seeing that there is no hope in capitalism, and that they need to join PLP, to smash capitalism with revolution for a communist world.

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CANANEA, SONORA, MEXICO, January 14 — The miners of Cananea — whose struggle marked the beginning of the 1912 Mexican Revolution — are again fighting back against their bosses and the bosses’ state. This past week hundreds of state and federal cops attacked copper miners who have been striking for almost six months. Twenty miners were injured, some seriously, and many have been arrested.

The mine, owned by the Grupo Mexico (GM) capitalist group — which also owns two mines and a smelter group in Arizona — is raking in huge profits from high copper prices on the world market. Yet it refuses to grant workers a decent wage hike, reopen a hospital serving them and their families, and improve mine safety and working conditions. GM’s chief financial officer is a former executive of a Kimberley-Clark subsidiary in Mexico. That’s the paper company founded by the family of Wisconsin Congressman James Sensenbrenner, sponsor of the racist anti-immigrant bill that sparked mass mega protests in all major U.S. cities in 2006.

The bosses are trying to break the strike by declaring it "illegal." On January 12, the miners won an appeal against such a declaration.

The miners are also battling government and company plans to bust their union and bring in a company union. It has become the longest walkout in the history of the Union of Mine, Smelter and Allied Workers, surpassing the 2006 Lazaro Cárdenas, Michoacan, strike when workers beat back an attack by an army of cops and soldiers. Miners’ strikes have spread since February 19, 2005, when 65 miners died in a huge explosion in the GM-owned Pasta de Conchos coal mine in the northern state of Coahuila.

The 1912 Mexican revolution didn’t free Mexico’s rural and urban workers from the yoke of capitalism and imperialism. Today, all the contradictions in Mexico are sharpening. Now, a nationalist section of the local capitalist class, led by López Obrador, wants to use the anger of workers and youth to fight for a bigger share of the capitalist pie for their own interests. Obrador lost a fraudulent election in 2006 to the current President Calderón, a pro-U.S. lackey. The country is being militarized, with Pentagon help, under the guise of "the war against drugs." For workers, the only way out of this hell is to turn their struggles into schools for communism and join and build the internationalist communist PLP.

PLP calls on workers and students in the U.S. and Mexico to denounce this attack on the Cananea miners and unite in international workers’ solidarity.

Growing PLP Club in Spain Links Study and Action

SPAIN — "I didn’t know that an international party existed that was so concerned about the workers of the entire world," said a friend, a student from France, when I showed her CHALLENGE-DESAFIO at a meeting of a club formed in one of the largest cities here. Our club began with a Turkish worker and myself, an immigrant worker from El Salvador. Now we’re more than ten workers of different nationalities. We’ve joined marches organized by the transit unions and other mass reform groups fighting for better transit city-wide.

We met to review international events. It became complicated because two workers from Ireland didn’t understand much Spanish, but a youth from Venezuela translated our discussion on dialectical materialism. One was very excited because he hadn’t understood before why — if the communist line was correct — the old Soviet Union failed. Then he read a CHALLENGE explaining some of the errors committed then. We all concluded that in order to establish a system in which we’re all equal, instead of fighting for socialism as a stage between capitalism and communism, we must fight directly for communism.

Our French friend was quite taken with the recent workers’ and youth mass protests back home. Then when we read CHALLENGE, she saw the title headline saying when workers unite, we can stop the whole capitalist machinery. She took several copies to continue sharing communist ideas with her fellow students in France.

We met a week later in an area "occupied" by squatters to celebrate a member’s birthday, which led to turning a bad thing into a good thing. While discussing the racist police repression here against immigrants and social groups in general, the cops knocked at the door. Someone had called them to report a group of "disorderly" squatters in the neighborhood.

The good thing: we organized everything in a way that seemed natural. Two people left to talk to the cops. One stayed to guard the doors to bar their entrance, and another pair organized the rest to make a plan. The police said we couldn’t meet here, to go elsewhere. So one group left for the park and the others (immigrants without "proper" papers) stayed. Then we got the police to leave.

Afterwards, we all returned and initiated a sharper discussion. We said we need to print more leaflets and try to organize struggles with revolutionary, not reform goals.

These friends of the Party are now excited because they understand communist ideas more clearly, including the significance of union struggles for reforms and the real struggle that all workers must carry out worldwide, the fight for a communist system, organized by the only international communist party, PLP. We must fight to build more CHALLENGE readers’ clubs everywhere.

An internationalist communist worker

Red Mechanics Needed: Detroit Totaled by U.S. Capitalism

DETROIT, MI — "There are not enough park benches in the state to accommodate all the homeless people that are being created." That’s how one worker who faces losing her home described the sub-prime mortgage crisis that is affecting one out of every 21 homeowners here. Another said, "It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black. All working-class people are going through the same thing. We’re all just one step from being on the corner asking for food and money."

The home foreclosure rate here is the second highest in the country, and eight times the national average. Fifty years ago, when GM, Ford and Chrysler ruled the auto world, Detroit had the highest rate of home ownership of any major city in the U.S., and the highest median income. Today, with those same auto bosses fighting for their lives, and being increasingly challenged on their home turf, Detroit is one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with a median household income of only $35,500. Gambling casinos have replaced closed factories and there is hardly a supermarket or movie theater within the city limits. This is one of the clearest examples of the racism that is built into the profit system, as about 75% of Detroiters are black.

Since 2000, the metro area has lost 126,000 jobs. Many of those affected by layoffs and the recent wave of UAW-negotiated auto contracts are also facing foreclosure. In August, foreclosure notices were served on 260 homes per day. In the fall, the Wayne County treasurer’s office published a 121-page list of foreclosures. According to the Detroit News, more than 70,000 homes in the tri-county metro Detroit area entered some phase of foreclosure between January 2006 and September 2007. In some Detroit neighborhoods, the rate was 1 in 7 homes. This represents more than 250,000 active and retired workers and their children. Another wave of foreclosures will hit in March 2008, when many more adjustable mortgages will reset to a higher rate.

Help Wanted: In Iraq

On December 14, hundreds of workers lined up for the "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles Job Fair." The Army was seeking more than 500 civilian welders, heavy mobile equipment mechanics, production controllers, administrative assistants, supply technicians and quality control specialists. The workers were hoping to earn between $138,000 and $212,000 for working 12-hours a day, seven days a week for 366 days in Iraq!

The deputy chief of staff for personnel at the Army’s TACOM Life Cycle Management Command said, "When an economy is down, we have more opportunities to get qualified applicants." The young black worker, who makes $50,000 a year working two full-time security guard jobs said, "…the neighborhood I live in, it’s no different than Iraq. I’m not scared."

This is a long way from the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, where Army brass was literally under fire, from Vietnam to Detroit, from Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers. It’s also a long way from the role played by young black Vietnam vets and auto workers who rebelled in solidarity with their Vietnamese brothers and sisters. But the collapse of the old communist movement gave the bosses a new lease on life. It opened the door to decades of massive racist attacks with little or no fight-back and very little class consciousness.

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This past summer, the Detroit News examined economic conditions that sparked the Detroit Rebellion, and found:

•Detroit blacks had less buying power in 2000 than in 1967,

•In 2000, black median family income was down 6 percent from 1970, while white median income rose 18 percent,

•In 2005, blacks were 2.5 times more likely to be unemployed than whites – the same gap that existed in 1960.

Overall, there is more poverty in the U.S. now than 40 years ago and the poverty rate is about triple for black and Latin workers than for white workers. What’s more, the level of racist police terror and the rate of incarceration are far more oppressive than anyone could have imagined back then. The schools are much worse.

As with every crisis or "natural disaster," from sub-prime mortgages to Hurricane Katrina, black workers get hit first and hardest. Racism is at the very core of capitalism, created to justify slavery and the very cord that holds the whole profit system together. And while billions are lost on Wall St., and a few heads roll, millions of workers, children and the elderly are having their lives wrecked by the bosses and bankers. Building a mass PLP and increasing the base for CHALLENGE newspaper is the only way to answer the racist horrors of capitalism.

While this sub-prime crisis is very serious for the bankers and bosses, it is important to remember that the bosses can survive any crisis, even defeat in imperialist war. The only crisis they can’t survive is communist revolution. And the future of that movement is in our hands, not theirs.

Ford Strike In Russia Ends

The three-week strike at the Ford factory in Vsevolozhsk, located right outside St. Petersburg, ended on Dec. 14. Ford workers are among the lowest-paid factory workers in Europe, making between 16,000 and 25,000 rubles ($600-1,000) a month. This is comparable to auto factory wages paid in Latin America.

Ford used office workers to maintain one production shift, and toward the end of the strike managed to start a second. Nevertheless, the strike crippled production and exhausted the union’s strike fund. The police harassed the picketers and strike leaders were threatened with arrest.

Ford workers voted to go back to work after the bosses agreed to a wage increase. The union and the company agreed to settle all unresolved issues by Feb. 1. This was the longest strike in the post-Soviet era, the first under the new Labor Code and the first where strikers won a general amnesty against reprisals.

The workers failed to win their demands of a 30 percent wage increase, higher pensions and reducing the work day. But a strike leader, reflecting the fighting mood of the workers said, "I think [Ford] should agree to concessions. They would hardly want to see a new strike in the spring."

Lesson of Mack Ave. Wildcat: Scratch A Liberal, Find A Fascist

In December, Justin Ravitz died. He was the judge in 1974 who tried to jail the Chrysler workers who led the Mack Avenue Sit-Down strike. In August 1973, 350 workers seized the plant after a comrade was fired for his role in an anti-racist health and safety struggle, and reported to work the next day, refusing to leave.

Chrysler security was driven out of the plant, and the next day, the workers faced off against the Detroit police chanting, "FIGHT BACK! – FIGHT BACK!" It finally took 1,000 thugs organized by the UAW, just about everyone on the payroll and many KKK members, to violently retake the plant for the bosses. A white comrade and a black worker who gave crucial leadership to the action were arrested and each charged with two counts of felonious assault.

Ravitz had a reputation as an anti-racist lawyer and criminal court judge. He was involved in the legal dismantling of STRESS, a police undercover unit that murdered 20 people, 17 of them black, and fought to have more black people on juries. He called himself the only Marxist judge in the U.S., banned the American flag from his courtroom in protest of the Vietnam War, and refused to stand for the pledge when he was sworn in. But when it came to prosecuting PLP and communist-led workers, Ravitz was on the side of Chrysler, the UAW leadership and the Detroit police.

At the time, the bosses were still trying to retake control of the major cities, after the armed rebellions of the late 1960’s. Henry Ford and the New Detroit alliance of bosses, bankers and politicians were calling the shots in Detroit, pulling the strings of Coleman Young, a former Communist Party auto organizer and Detroit’s first black mayor, and a City Council of preachers and fake radicals.

PLP relied on auto workers and youth to wage a political defense around the city, exposing Ravitz and the bosses he served. Every notice posted inside the plant soliciting prosecution witnesses was torn down in minutes. Literature saturated numerous plants, Wayne State University, and unemployment and welfare offices, calling on workers and students to defend PLP, the Mack Sit-Down and exposing Ravitz, the UAW leaders, and the rest. Many supporters attended the trial, and many more gave money. The black worker who was arrested, a Vietnam vet, joined the Party on the very day he was called to testify.

Ultimately, the case was tossed out. There was a provision in the law at the time that the prosecution had to produce witnesses from a cross section of the population that witnessed the alleged crime. The Chrysler bosses, UAW and the Detroit police could not produce one Chrysler production worker to testify against the defendants. Not one. Case dismissed. Ravitz was beside himself, and scolded the cops and Chrysler bosses for failing to make their case.

A lot has happened since then, and today Detroit is a shell of what it was. Every anti-racist "reform" has given way to more and deeper racist oppression, from mass unemployment and poverty to crumbling schools and over-crowded jails. The infant mortality rate here is comparable to that of the poor countries in the Caribbean. This is the legacy of the reformers like Ravitz, who above all else were loyal to the profit system until the end. And we are better off for having fought them.

Mack Ave. Defender

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The recent murder of Benazir Bhutto released the pent-up fury of workers and youth in Pakistan against the repressive and exploitative military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. Workers and youth clashed with the police and army in cities nation-wide. Fifty-eight were killed, 89 injured, 800 shops, 185 banks, 27 railway stations and 13 polling stations burned.

Benazir Bhutto, was a former prime minister and chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). She had recently returned from exile to take part in elections after a deal with Musharraf worked out with the U.S. and Britain. Her assassination blew up that deal. (See Jan. 16 CHALLENGE on how that was a big blow to the U.S.-U.K. "war on terror," and on the inter-imperialist rivalry behind events in Pakistan.)

But even though Bhutto’s murder sparked the masses’ fury, it was really fueled by a smoldering discontent with the country’s rigid class system, poverty, oppression and a widening gap between the rich and poor. Despite a rapidly-expanding economy, conditions for the working class have worsened as the cost of basic necessities rise and wages fall.

New anti-labor laws strip away previously-won rights to organize. Among 20 million industrial workers only two million have contracts, leaving 18 million who can be fired at any time and paid as bosses see fit. Workers have no social security, health care or pensions. In a population of 168 million, (the 6th most populous country on Earth) 70% are agricultural workers, many of them "housewives" who work without pay, and landless peasants dependent on wealthy landlords for survival. Forced labor and child labor are common.

Privatization is making bosses even richer. The government is handing over the country’s state-owned utilities and major industries to individuals, often army officials. As the new bosses "downsize," workers lose jobs. Privatization of colleges, which previously received government funding, means that working-class youth cannot afford an education.

Benazir Bhutto was part of the same capitalist class, as corrupt as the generals who run the country and dominate its businesses and banking sectors. In her two terms as prime minister she acquired immeasurable wealth. Her husband, known as "Mr. Ten Percent," served eight years in jail for extortion. Before the assassination, Benazir was facing corruption charges.

The Bhutto family, among the biggest landowners in the southwest province of Sindh, has feudal-like control over the lives of thousands of landless peasants and sharecroppers and sees the PPP as its personal domain. The PPP’s first chairperson was Benazir’s father; her will names her 19-year-old son as heir to the party’s leadership.

The PPP was founded in 1967 during a fierce revolutionary-type fight-back. In 1968-69, under the influence of a worldwide anti-Vietnam War movement and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, workers occupied factories, peasants surrounded landed estates and youth took to the streets. This anti-capitalist movement cut across ethnic and national lines, uniting around one slogan: "Revolution! Socialist Revolution!" It nearly overthrew the government but failed because the movement had no party with the strategy of taking state power. In addition, many workers joined the PPP, attracted by its stated aim of a classless society, only to be misled into the dead-end struggle of reforming capitalism through electoral politics.

The PPP leadership, acting in its own class interest, deflected the revolutionary aspirations of the masses and never delivered on its promise of ending exploitation. Her government also helped prop up the fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan and led to the Taliban. Yet some workers still look to the PPP as the way forward.

But revolutionary ideas can be embedded in workers’ consciousness. They surfaced in the mass movement of the 1980s and are present again today as Pakistan falls into political turmoil. Revolutionaries of the 1960s missed the historical opportunity to take power. Now the working class is organizing again and learning from its past mistakes, as well as from the experiences of revolutionaries worldwide, that the fight for a classless society is not for socialism but for communism.

(This is the first part of a series on current struggles in Pakistan.)

Unity With African, Arab Workers Critical to Union Fight vs. French Bosses, Hacks

PARIS, January 9 — Workers are searching for effective ways to fight the government’s continuing attacks on them. The next test of strength will be a public workers’ strike on January 24.

Yesterday President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted he wants to abolish the 35-hour work-week and impose racist immigration quotas. On January 6, Budget and Civil Service Minister Eric Woerth repeated his refusal to uniformly raise public workers’ wages, which fell 6% between 2000 and 2006 due to inflation. Wage negotiations for public workers will begin January 14.

On November 20, some two million public and private workers struck for higher wages. (See CHALLENGE, 11/28/07 and 12/12/07) When Woerth refused to consider an across-the-board wage hike on Dec. 19, six union federations representing public workers called for demonstrations and a strike on January 24. Five teachers’ unions joined the strike call, demanding higher wages and protesting the government’s decision to eliminate 11,200 jobs.

Education Minister Xavier Darcos then announced he will test strike-breaking "minimum service" in public schools in at least four cities that have signed strike-breaking contracts with the national government. Scabs will baby-sit pupils to keep them in school and not disrupt parents’ work schedules, minimizing the strike’s impact.

Scabs will be paid with money docked from the strikers’ wages. The unions denounced "minimum service" as an assault on the right to strike.

These attacks stem from the inter-imperialist rivalry that is pressing the bosses in each country to drive for maximum profits by taking them out of the pockets of the working class, smashing the social contract that has existed since World War II. Only international working-class unity can begin to meet these attacks.

Increasingly, workers here realize that they must meet escalating government attacks with greater working-class unity across public sector-private sector divisions. Responding to this rank-and-file pressure, the FO union confederation called for private-sector workers to join the January 24 demonstrations, but stopped short of calling on them to strike.

The SUD-Education union in northern Brittany issued a sarcastic statement denouncing "an isolated, one-day strike by only public workers," asking why the major trade unions insist on: (1) pursuing the losing 24-hour-strike strategy, (2) negotiating crumbs while abandoning fundamental demands, and (3) allying with the government’s effort to smash the welfare state. SUD-Education 22 nevertheless backed the strike call.

Several recent developments underlined workers’ and students’ combative mood. The public television union is calling for a strike to oppose plans to merge the five public TV companies and lay off workers.

The CFE-CGC nurses’ union is calling for a strike to protest unpaid overtime hours. Each nurse is owed an average of 70 hours overtime pay from 2007.

Tolbiac University students here voted to strike and occupy university buildings to protest Sarkozy’s "reforms." Classes were disrupted and cancelled, and access to elevators was blocked. The students condemned "the privatization of the universities, and the axing of some academic departments," and also raised the anti-racist demand of "papers for all undocumented immigrants."

This is an important step in making the fight against racism central to workers’ and students’ overall demands. The rank and file must link their struggle to that of African and Arab workers and youth against racist unemployment and police terror. Otherwise, the rulers will have accomplished their goal of dividing and weakening the entire working class.

Nevertheless, as of today, the CFDT union confederation — whose leader was denounced as a sellout and expelled by angry workers from the November 20 Paris march — still wanted to look at government proposals before considering joining the strike.

These pro-capitalist union misleaders will push workers to the bottom. Communist leadership is needed to turn workers’ and students’ growing frustration with the union hacks’ betrayals into an understanding that only communist revolution can abolish the whole capitalist system, with its bosses, reactionary governments and labor fakers.

Battle for Resources Behind Endless Wars in Africa

The bosses’ mass media reports about Africa only when Madonna or Angelina Jolie adopts another baby or when another massacre or tragedy occurs. But they rarely explain what’s really happening there. This series will present a communist analysis of events on that continent.

Kenya is the latest victim of a combination of imperialist super-exploitation of Africa’s workers and its resources and how crooked capitalist politicians use tribal politics to pursue their own interests. For many years, there was little tribal conflict in modern Kenya; people basically got along. U.S. and British imperialists used Kenya as a base to invest, super-exploit and wage their "war on terror" in the region. But amid growing inter-imperialist rivalry and capitalist economic turmoil, the imperialist-created "stability" of Kenya was bound to fail.

The power struggle between President Kibaki and opposition leader Odinga sparked an explosion. Kibaki stole the December election and now refuses to give Odinga a piece of the action despite calls by Koffin Annan, Barack Obama (whose father is Kenyan), Gordon Brown (UK Prime Minister) and Condi Rice. Hundreds have died in clashes between supporters of both politicians, and 500,000 now need immediate relief because of this politicians’ dogfight.

4 Million Killed in Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has again erupted into a bloody civil war, particularly in its Eastern region. It’s being labeled a re-play of the fight between Tutsis and Hutus that led to the murder of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda and Burundi over a decade ago.

A front-page NY Times article (1/10) reported: "The recent clashes in eastern Congo…have exacted a grievous toll on a region ravaged by a decade of war. Around 400,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, thousands of women have been raped and hundreds of children have been press-ganged into militias, the United Nations says….But the fighting is also rekindling the kind of ethnic hatred that previously dragged this region into the most deadly conflict since World War II."

The rebels fighting the Congo army are Tutsis, who many see representing the Rwandan rulers who aim to control this part of the Congo. But while this conflict is defined as involving ethnic and tribal politics, economic and political factors are really behind this endless war in that country. (Since the 1990s, this war has killed over four million people, beginning with the fall of long-time strongman Mobutu, a rabid anti-communist first installed by the CIA and then propped up in his last few years by French imperialism).

The real fight is over the region’s mineral wealth — gold, diamonds and coltan (used in ballistic missiles and cell phones) are among the many lucrative minerals mined there. Usually, local bosses and generals work as subcontractors for multi-national corporations from Europe, the U.S. and South Africa which buy and trade these minerals.

(Future articles will explore the role of inter-imperialist rivalry in the misery of Africa; Chinese and Russian energy giants’ involvement in the imperialist power game, from Darfur to Nigeria; Pentagon creation of a new command to protect U.S. imperialist interests in the region; and how the powerful working class of South Africa and Nigeria can play an important role — if given red leadership — in helping liberate all of Africa from imperialism and their local capitalist lackeys.)

Transportation Workers Can Be Key Force for Revolution

For several weeks last fall, French transit workers engaged in a series of strikes to defend their pensions and jobs. Other workers and students also struck. Meanwhile, the cops murdered two youths, sparking an anti-racist rebellion of African and Arab youth. It is inter-imperialist rivalry that is spawning increased racist attacks on our living standards worldwide, attacks which impel these strikes and rebellions.

French bosses are using president Sarkozy to attack industrial workers and youth, shredding the old social contract. The pro-capitalist union leaders refuse to counter these attacks. The bosses have their strategy for the future; what is ours?

The major imperialist powers are freely investing capital globally. New transportation and communications systems are creating rapid, mass migration of workers. The industrial working class is expanding, especially in India and China, where migration is mainly internal, from rural areas to the cities. In Europe and the U.S., migration is primarily from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. In Latin America, workers migrate from poorer countries to those somewhat less poor — from Haiti to Dominican Republic, from Nicaragua and Honduras to El Salvador, from neighboring countries to Brazil and Argentina. The bosses use this mobility to force large pools of unemployed workers to compete for jobs. We can use this greater connection to build an international movement against capitalism.

Transportation systems that move people and commodities are becoming increasingly critical to capitalist profit. The transportation industries can be the Achilles heel of capitalism if we can organize breakthroughs here. This adds importance to the recent transport strikes in France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, and the struggle in mass transit worldwide.

Our strategy is to unite the unemployed, immigrant and industrial workers in a movement for communist revolution, bringing workers to power and crushing the racist bosses. With communist leadership, transportation workers can take the lead.

French transit workers were able to draw students and other workers into the struggle, but lacked the leadership to unite with the unemployed and immigrant youth. Communist leadership is necessary to develop the anti-racist class consciousness required to advance at this time.

Among transit workers in NYC, Washington D.C., Chicago and the West Coast, we’re fighting racist attacks and cutbacks that target a mostly black work-force that serves an even larger black, Latino and immigrant population. We struggle to keep the fight against racism in the forefront of contract fights and union elections. We organized support for those left to die in New Orleans during Katrina, and more recently for the Jena 6. We have tried to pass union resolutions and collected money from co-workers.

Mainly, we’re fighting to spread CHALLENGE and PLP literature in our garages, bus barns and workplaces. We’re trying to develop personal and group discussions among co-workers, inviting them to study-action groups and PLP club meetings. Self-critically, we can do much better on this. The better we do, the better we can do. We must fight against getting buried in the daily demands of "union work."

The transportation unions are shadows of their former selves. Strikes, like the 2005 NYC transit walkout, are seldom used and often broken. This year the rulers will spend over a billion of our dollars in a sucker’s bet on the 2008 presidential elections. Clinton, Obama and Edwards are the bosses’ shell game. Whoever we choose, we lose! No matter who’s elected president, more and deadlier imperialist wars will still rage, racist terror will be used to attack and divide us, and transportation workers will face more cutbacks and attacks. These are the laws of capitalism.

Transit workers, airline workers, railroad workers and truck drivers are the lifeline of modern industrial society. We can be a key force for communist revolution. The current inter-imperialist rivalry is leading to wars that will make Iraq look like a tea party. Slowly but surely, a new generation of black, Latino and women transportation workers will be building a mass international PLP to end the profit system once and for all.

LETTTERS

Confidence in Working Class Pays Off

Recently, industrial workers in the Party got together to discuss the present and future state of industrial work. At this meeting the idea that we have been too timid in talking to our co-workers came up. We decided to be bolder and work harder to expand our CHALLENGE networks. This emphasis on boldness lies in having confidence that the working class can understand local, national, and international issues and how they are all connected. Most importantly, our practice must be based on the knowledge that workers can and will understand and identify with our Party line.

This new emphasis has paid immediate dividends for the workers who attended the meeting. Shortly after I returned to work my conversations with my co-workers became more political and the content of the conversations was pushed to the left, not just by me but also by my co-workers.

The quantity of conversations increased as well. While having lunch last week one of my co-workers, out of the blue, asked me what I thought about the new UAW contract. Seizing the opportunity, I put forward the Party’s analysis regarding the ruling class’s push to "re-industrialize" and how this push was a reaction to growing inter-imperialist rivalry. One co-worker brought up the Navistar strike and how the presence of UAW scabs is a sign of this intensifying struggle. The conversation then took on a life of its own as we discussed the Russian and Chinese push to build a massive industrial base in preparation for war and how the sub-prime loan crisis has exposed U.S. weakness in the face of its adversaries. The conversation expanded my potential base from just one person on the job to five.

All our lives the ruling class tries to tell us that the working class is stupid and incapable of understanding the world around them. But when you have confidence in the working class and you boldly put communist politics forward you realize that myth of the stupid and complacent worker is a capitalist lie. It is important that when we talk to workers sympathetic with our politics that we trust their ability to understand them.

Worker from the West Need to Fight Racist Deportation Raids

When we heard about a fascist ICE (immigration police) raid that rounded up many of our undocumented working-class brothers and sisters at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, we figured if it happened there it could happen at our airport. My co-workers — CHALLENGE readers — were glad to help distribute flyers calling a meeting to discuss anti-immigrant racism.

The week before there was much political discussion among immigrants and citizens who helped build for this meeting. Led by our anti-racist shop steward, it was multi-racial and included Latino and black workers from El Salvador, Mexico and the U.S. However, one weakness was that no African immigrants came, influenced by nationalist thinking that says, "Well, this raid only affects Latino workers." This only aids the racist U.S. bosses and must be addressed. When one group of workers is singled out, none are safe.

In reviewing the O’Hare incident, we realized our airport hasn’t had such a raid since 9/11. We need a plan to warn our fellow workers on all shifts in case the ICE police show up. Soon afterwards, when the union mis-leader visited the airport, the shop steward asked, in front of the airport workers, what would the union do if there’s an ICE raid. This question disturbed the misleader who had no concrete answer or plan.

Later a black woman worker remarked, "You could tell the union leader really didn’t want to talk about that." It exposed the racism and incompetence of our union leadership. Since half our membership is Latino, we need a plan to fight anti-immigrant racism, a part of capitalism which the bosses use to super-exploit immigrant workers and then discard them after they’ve made millions off their labor.

In fighting racist deportations, PLP is following the anti-racist traditions of abolitionists like John Brown and Harriet Tubman and the Dutch communists in World War II who led workers to protect Jews from Nazi attempts to deport them to concentration camps.

The racist U.S. bosses use anti-immigrant racism to scapegoat immigrants just as the Nazis did with Jewish workers. PLP is building a movement of communist-led workers to smash such U.S. fascism with communist revolution that would benefit all workers.

Airport Red

a name="Phony Wrestlers Hype Phony ‘War on Terror’"></">Ph"ny Wrestlers Hype Phony ‘War on Terror’

I wrote a letter to a local paper based on a CHALLENGE editorial exposing the split in the ruling class over war with Iran.

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard some yahoo state that U.S. troops are stationed around the world to protect "our" freedom, I could purchase a BMW.

On Christmas Eve, I was forced to watch the World Wrestling Entertainment tribute to the troops in Iraq. Imagine that spectacle: a bunch of phony wrestlers entertaining "our" troops fighting a phony "war on terror." How appropriate!

Of course, nobody mentioned that the war was based on the lie that Iraq had WMDs. Instead we’re told that the mission is to ensure a "bright future" for the Iraqis and an end to persecution there. The viewer is also told that the Saddam Hussein regime executed the entire Iraqi soccer team in a stadium and therefore the U.S. invasion was correct.

This reminded me that 3,000 Chilean workers were murdered in a stadium following the U.S.-backed coup there in 1973. So U.S. imperialism should know a lot about soccer stadiums.

One thing I like about CHALLENGE is it always points out the need for communist revolution. If it was possible to reform capitalism to meet workers’ needs, there’d be no real need for communist revolution. Some "left" groups (like the "Communist" Party) don’t seem to grasp that fact.

Reform of any sort will not be on the agenda in capitalist-imperialist Amerikkka. The head honchos in the labor movement won’t even launch serious unionization drives.

CHALLENGE is not afraid to tell it like it is.

Red Coal

Revoking Union Rights Is A Law of Capitalism

Recently all of Mexico’s capitalist parties (PAN, PRI, PRD) approved the elimination of the labor rights of hundreds of thousands of office workers in state-run companies and as well as "mixed" ones (combined state-run and private) — PEMEX (oil), IMSS (health care) and CFE (electricity).

The legal protection of the current contracts was eliminated. Now the bosses can freely establish contract conditions through individual work agreements (CIT), dividing and weakening the workers.

In PEMEX, 32,000 office workers are forced to sign CIT work contracts. One clause bars a worker from appealing unjust company decisions, including being fired.

The bosses have spread the lie that these workers are an "elite," loyal to the company, and sworn enemies of rank-and-file unionized workers. Many of the latter believe this bosses’ tale. But in reality working conditions for the office workers and the unionized workers are similar.

The majority of these office workers receive only a few crumbs more than the rest of the workers, and are often forced to work long hours without overtime and without any recourse against the bosses’ abuses. Only the higher directors and very specialized professionals receive bigger salaries. The majority carry out functions very similar to those of unionized workers.

This division is the cutting edge in eliminating workers’ rights since these attacks will later be extended to unionized workers.

The office workers are starting to organize in associations to defend themselves. However, although they recognize the importance of uniting, they consider the legal road as the main way to fight the bosses. This limits their power and effectiveness.

We’re active in these organizations where we’ve distributed DESAFIO-CHALLENGE and leaflets. We’re struggling to overcome passivity and to be bolder in presenting the Party’s ideas. We want to show these workers that defending ourselves from the bosses’ attacks legally will fail in the long run and leave us frustrated.

All workers must see clearly that the laws of the capitalist system function to guarantee the bosses’ profits. Working-class victory can only be guaranteed through uniting the workers and organizing a revolutionary communist party which fights for a society that workers control. This is the struggle of the communist PLP. Join us!

A Red Worker, Mexico

Higher-paid Jobs Corrupted USSR Leaders

CHALLENGE’s recent back-page historical article on the Russian revolution urged readers to study and learn what the Communist Party did right and what it did wrong.

Good idea.

But in your suggestions about where to look for errors, there is an important blank space. That is the fact that in the 1930s Communist Party members who moved up as leaders –– even very minor or local leaders –– moved up to a standard of living much higher than the average worker. Yes, putting forth "socialism" as the immediate goal opened the door to wage differentials. But, keeping communism as the long-range goal would not be believable unless party members set an example by not taking excess income.

When Anna Louise Strong, a sympathetic reporter, visited the USSR for some time in the 1930s, she was shocked to be offered a country home. "We’re all getting them," she was told by party members. She did not report on this at the time, fearing it would feed anti-communism.

Whatever mistakes Stalin may have made, I consider this the greatest harm he did to communism. Leaders who have a financial stake in keeping their jobs cannot honestly listen to and represent the workers. In fact, the leaders split-interests paved the way for the growth of a Party central leadership that ended up condemning Stalin and enriching themselves and their cohorts as they reverted to capitalism.

Ancient Red

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Clear case of insurer-murderer

The 17-year-old had been in a coma after complications following a bone marrow transplant to counter leukaemia. Her liver failed and doctors referred her for an emergency transplant. She was fully insured and had a donor but Cigna refused to pay….The family… could not afford the down payment of $75,000.

The family mounted a protest of 150 people outside Cigna’s Glendale offices. The demo was amplified by an internet campaign…. Cigna decided to reverse its decision….

The news drew cheers but the crowd grew sombre when they heard her condition had deteriorated. A few hours later her life support was switched off. "She passed away, and the insurance [company] is responsible," her mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, said.

The case points to growing disenchantment with healthcare in America. "This is what’s wrong with our health system – insurers decide treatment, not doctors…" (GW, 1/4)

Neocons trace to anti-Stalin cult

…Neo-conservatism was the final stop of an ideological journey for a group of… young Trotskyists that included Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer and Melvin Lasky… Along with Irving Howe… the veterans eventually drifted away from Trotskyism, becoming stalwarts of the anti-Communist left, where they were joined by Norman Podhoretz… few if any of them expressed concern when they discovered that Encounter, a magazine that Irving Kristol co-founded in 1952, was secretly underwritten by the Central Intelligence Agency. (NYT, 1/13)

Black workers lost more homes

… Wells Fargo made high-cost loans, with an interest rate at least three percentage points above a federal benchmark, to 65 percent of its black customers in Baltimore and to only 15 percent of its white customers in the area…

Wells Fargo allowed mortgage brokers to charge higher commissions when they put borrowers in loans with higher interest rates than the customers qualified for…

Now, Baltimore is a city in a foreclosure crisis…

Half of Wells Fargo foreclosures occurred in census tracts with populations that were more than 80 percent black. (NYT, 1/8)

Capitalist system: big trouble ahead

The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world… Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies –– for example, institute honest government and a free market economy –– they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax.

[But] we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels… Whether we get there willingly or not… our present [is] unsustainable. (Jared Diamond, NYT 1/2)

Capitalism doubles mental ills

… studies in the United States, Britain and Australia reveal that [mental illness] almost doubled between the early ‘80s and the turn of the century.

Capitalism has massively increased the wealth of the wealthy, robbing the average earner to give to the rich.

In itself, this economic inequality does not cause mental illness.

But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations… Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people…can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

…Most damaging of all [is] the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don’t succeed, there is only one person to blame –– never mind that it couldn’t be clearer that it’s the system’s fault, not yours. (GW, 1/11)

Iraq: US bombings multiply by 5

The Iraq air war may be the longest in history. In one way or another it has been undermining Iraq’s sovereignty, destroying its infrastructure, and killing and maiming its people for over 16 years. And there’s no end in sight.

Despite global pressure to withdraw, President Bush –– and indeed the broader U.S. power structure –– has no intention of giving up Iraq. The potential oil bonanza is too huge. And Iran –– with its oil bonanza –– is next door.

That air war is intensifying. The U.S. dropped five times as many bombs in Iraq during the first half of 2007 as it did in the first half of 2006. As U.S. troops withdraw, the air attacks will multiply.

From the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to Korea and South East Asia, to the first Gulf War and now to Iraq –– air war is the signature of U.S. war making. (MinutemanMedia.org, 12/27)

a name="Lessons of ‘Boston 75’ Crucial to PLP’s Future"></a>"essons of ‘Boston 75’ Crucial to PLP’s Future

The four months between May Day 1975 in Boston and the first day of school there in early September remains one of the sharpest sustained periods of struggle our Party has yet experienced. The anti-racist summer project BOSTON 75 remains rich in lessons and examples.

The most important is that gutter fascists like ROAR can be beaten even when they are protected to the hilt by the bosses’ state apparatus and made to appear invincible by the bosses’ media. The battle of May Day 1975 had already exposed ROAR as a paper tiger. In the ensuing months, the tiger lost its fangs and claws.

The BOSTON 75 volunteers were relatively few in number. Most had little experience in politics or class struggle. They were young, the majority in their twenties. They had to live on a shoestring. They confronted the daily fury of the ruling class’s dictatorship. Between June and September, the volunteers saw the inside of Boston’s jails more than 200 times. Some were arrested twice or even three and four times. A few eventually received prison sentences.

Yet, despite these attacks, they won a clear strategic victory. They proved that a small force of bold, determined anti-racists under communist leadership could at least temporarily thwart a ruling class bent on building a mass-based fascist movement. The numbers tell the story.

The day before the Boston schools opened in September 1975, ROAR led a demonstration of 3,000 people at City Hall, down from the 15,000 in a similar racist mobilization in 1974. Sporadic racist violence characterized the 1975-76 school year, but it never reached the proportions of 1974-75. ROAR’s public activities dwindled to a series of poorly-attended anti-integration "mothers’ prayer marches." Fascist Louise Day Hicks soon abandoned politics altogether and in time fell into disgrace after her son was exposed as a dealer of illegal drugs. Shortly after BOSTON 75, the ROAR organization was dead in the water. PLP and the Committee Against Racism (CAR) deserve the lion’s share of credit for killing it.

BOSTON 75 therefore belongs to the living history of the PLP and the working class. For four months, against great odds, communists and anti-racists inflicted important political and tactical defeats on the ruling class of a great city and its plans to turn a large portion of the working class into Nazi thugs.

The project nonetheless had serious weaknesses; their lessons remain valid today. The most important was political, which grew out of the Party’s basic line at that time. By 1975, PLP had rejected nationalism — the idea that there were "progressive" bosses, even though they all believed in capitalism and would try to stop the working class from taking the road to revolution. This tied into also rejecting the theory of making revolution by stages, the idea that we could get to communism while still retaining some of the elements of capitalism (such as the wage system) — socialism — because workers "weren’t ready for communism." But we still believed in socialism. We didn’t come to understand this error until seven years after the adoption of Road to Revolution IV in 1982. (For the full text of this document, see the PL website, PLP.org)

In practical terms, we continued to initiate reform organizations through which we would function, such as CAR — later InCAR. We had founded it in 1973. It achieved much: organized BOSTON 75 and the fight against ROAR; launched militant mass struggle against leading academic racist theoreticians like Richard Herrnstein and E.O. Wilson; and led many battles against attempts to revive the Ku Klux Klan.

But ultimately, with all their militancy, CAR and InCAR were still reform organizations. In creating them, we had committed two serious mistakes. Firstly, we were substituting them for existing mass organizations in which we should have been deeply active and struggling directly for communist ideas and the Party, both during the BOSTON 75 project and elsewhere over the long run. Secondly, related to the first, was the implicit belief that the workers and students we expected to move to communism needed a "half-way house" — a PLP-led militant reform organization — on the way to joining the Party. This was an opportunist error, allowing us to win people to militant reform, something less than the communism we stood for. We thought we had licked this aspect of opportunism, at least in theory. We were wrong.

In the ensuing three decades, we’ve been trying to absorb these lessons, as the pages of CHALLENGE show. In the face of rising imperialist war and the bosses’ advance towards police-state fascism, this task has become increasingly urgent today. We defeated ROAR, a specific manifestation of U.S. fascism, despite working with one hand tied behind our back. It would be sheer folly to think that the experience could be repeated in the present period with an identical political approach and tactics.

We fight to preserve the spirit of boldness, militancy, anti-racism, and class hatred that characterized PLP’s work during the campaign against ROAR. We reject the opportunism of "two-stage" approaches to communist organizing. The victory against ROAR was an important battle, but it was temporary. The war against the profit system continues. The lessons learned in Boston more than 30 years ago should help the Party improve its leadership in the battles and trials ahead.

Steroids Helped Baseball Bosses Bulk Up Profits

Under capitalism, money ultimately ruins everything, even the games that are designed to divert workers from the wars and fascism rising around us. On December 13, Major League Baseball released the Mitchell Report, which told us what we already knew: that baseball — like the Olympics, the Tour de France, and every other big-money sport — is hopelessly infected with performance-enhancing drugs.

After naming more than 80 players, from superstars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to average players like Paul LoDuca, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell declared that "everyone" in baseball was to blame for the spread of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH), from club management to the players’ union. But when it gets down to cases, the report essentially convicts individual players and low-level pushers like Kirk Radomski, the one-time Mets’ bat boy, while giving a pass to Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners and executives who have seen no evil as long as their profits and bonuses kept rolling in.

As Dave Zirin notes in his online column, Edge of Sports, the report was stacked from the beginning. Mitchell was appointed by Selig, whose family owned the Milwaukee Brewers until 2005. The ex-senator sits on the boards of the Boston Red Sox and the Walt Disney Company (which owns ESPN), and his law firm has earned tens of millions of dollars by lobbying for Big Tobacco and General Electric. Mitchell is a high-priced mouthpiece for his corporate bosses, first and last. His report gives baseball executives some needed damage control on the steroid front, along with leverage to re-open contracts with the Players Association in the owners’ ongoing struggle to grab a bigger slice of the money pie.

For communists, there is no "good" side in this controversy. In their desperation to gain an edge in the brutally competitive major leagues, the players — from the surly Barry Bonds to the God-fearing Andy Pettite — have been corrupted into liars, cheaters, and hypocrites. They bear responsibility for the countless high school athletes and insecure adolescents who ape their drug-enhanced heroes on the path to torn tendons, liver and kidney damage, diabetes, heart attacks, depression, and suicide.

But as in every enterprise in this society, the owners paint the landscape. As Howard Bryant points out in Juicing the Game (Viking, 2005), baseball’s steroid era was born in 1994, when a player strike led to a cancelled World Series, depressed attendance, and a sharp drop in network television revenues. The owners’ response was to lure back the fans and sponsors with artificially inflated home run totals. They built smaller ballparks, shrank the strike zone — and looked the other way at rampant steroid use. In 1998, when an AP reporter spotted a vial of androstenedione (a "legal" steroid developed in East Germany) in Mark McGwire’s locker as McGwire was en route to his record 70 home runs, "the entire baseball establishment," Bryant wrote, "crushed…the story." (In contrast to the media’s racist focus on Bonds, McGwire remained an all-American hero until 2005, when he humiliated himself by dodging questions at a Congressional hearing.) In 2001, the owners renewed their five-year TV contract with Fox for $2 billion, nearly four times higher than the previous contract.

To date, only two middling major leaguers have received 15-day suspensions in the aftermath of the Mitchell report, but no matter how the sport changes as a result of the report, history tells us that baseball will remain business as usual — an enterprise run by capitalists for capitalists, with the next season’s profits the only record that matters.

Challenge Web Extra

Chile: Massacre of Miners a Century Ago Led to Building of Commmunist Party

A century ago, on Dec. 21, 1907, Chile’s army and police massacred over 2,000 miners and their families in the town of Iquique. It was one of the worst individual atrocities in the history of Chile and Latin America.

Earlier that month, thousands of dockhands in the town’s northern port — mainly handling saltpeter — struck to demand better working conditions. During the next few days, thousands of workers from the saltpeter companies in the Atacama Desert flats, controlled by Chilean and foreign (mainly British) capital, entered Iquique to join the strike. The workers tried to negotiate some economic demands, but the bosses insisted the laborers return to work as a precondition for negotiations.

Chile’s President Pedro Montt initially acted as a mediator in the conflict. But as the workers’ strike grew, the authorities decided that the 5,000 workers occupying the Santa María school and the 2,000 who had taken over the Manuel Montt plaza posed a threat to the system. When the workers refused to move elsewhere, Interior Minister Rafael Sotomayor urged the town’s mayor Carlos Eastman to remove the workers by any means necessary.

At 3:45 PM on Dec. 21, Gen. Roberto Silva Renard gave the order to open fire with machine guns on the Chilean, Bolivian, Peruvian and Argentine strikers occupying the Santa María school, many of them of indigenous origin. Many workers and their relatives were shot and even cut through by bayonets and horse cavalry carrying lancers. Many were killed when they were forced back to their jobs, returned in the same trains carrying saltpeter.

The massacre was basically hidden from Chile’s history until 1969 when the late Luis Advis composed the Cantata of Santa María de Iquique and the internationally known Chilean folk music group Quilapayún recorded it in 1970.

But the massacre, and many more that followed, made the workers and the trade unions politically conscious. They turned away from their previous "mutual aid" role and broke from the control of the Catholic Church.

Working-class leaders who survived the massacre, like Luis Recabarren, called it a "crime of capitalism" and formed the Socialist Workers Party. The imperialist World War I led to the first workers’ state headed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The 3^rd Communist International, led by the Bolsheviks, influenced revolutionary workers in Chile and worldwide. Under the leadership of Recarraben the Communist Party of Chile (CPC) was formed.

The bloody repression did not stop the workers’ mass struggles. In 1909, some 200,000 workers struck nation-wide. From 1916 to 1921 there were 13 general strikes throughout Chile. The country’s CPC was born from these mass struggles.

Unfortunately, decades later what the bosses’ repression couldn’t accomplish, the internal opportunism that rotted the old world communist movement did, turning Chile’s CP, the largest in Latin America, into its opposite. It helped bring Salvador Allende to power, creating illusions among workers about capitalist democracy. But these illusions were soon shattered by the heirs of the 1907 murderers of Iquique’s miners. General Pinochet’s fascist coup, organized by the new imperialist masters (Kissinger, the CIA and ITT), killed and jailed tens of thousands of workers and others.

Today, Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first woman President, is a member of Allende’s same Socialist Party. She has continued the capitalist class’s attacks on workers’ struggles, including the copper miners’ strike several months ago. Chile’s workers need to learn from their history and rebuild the communist movement, based this time on fighting for communism, rejecting any faith in all bosses and their capitalist "democracy."

An Internationalist Reader